A compelling account of the failure of Imperial Japan's Operation Ro-Go, intended to take the offensive in the Solomons theater of the Pacific War, but which became Japan's first line of defense against the Allies' Rabaul raids and Bougainville landings. By the midpoint of World War II in the Pacific, Japan was on the defensive. At the end of 1943, after a year of tumultuous air combat around Rabaul and the Solomons, 173 Japanese aircraft were sent to Rabaul. The plan was for them to participate in Ro-Go Sakusen (known as Operation Ro, Ro-Go, or B) to strike Allied air power and shipping in...