Amazon description – The Far Shore: Book III of the Skies of Fire Series
The Japanese have abandoned Guadalcanal—but the battle for the Solomons is far from over.
Late summer, 1943. American forces are driving north through the Solomon Islands, and the Japanese are fighting tenaciously to stop them. Munda, Vella Lavella, Bougainville and the great Japanese fortress at Rabaul lie ahead.
Major Tadeusz ‘Tuffy’ Kowalski has already fought one war with the legendary Flying Tigers and another from the battered airfields of Guadalcanal. Now back in Marine green and flying the powerful F4U Corsair, he is an experienced combat pilot in a theater where experience is purchased with blood.
Then the Marine Corps gives him a different challenge.
Command.
Selected to take over the newly formed VMF-412, Tuffy must turn a collection of young pilots, veteran Marines and temperamental Corsairs into a combat-ready fighter squadron. He has good men beside him—some old friends, some untested newcomers—and precious little time to prepare them for the war waiting across the Pacific.
But not every battle is fought in the air.
Tuffy must contend with senior officers who seem more interested in regulations, equipment and old grudges than getting another fighter squadron into combat. At the same time, his life at home is unraveling. His troubled former wife remains hospitalized, their four-year-old son Teddy is being raised by his grandparents, and the woman Tuffy loves must decide whether she is willing to build a life with a man who may never come home.
Soon the newly christened Hell-Bent Devil Dogs of VMF-412 are headed west.
From the coral runways of the South Pacific, Tuffy leads his Marines against Japanese fighters over the northern Solomons, flying in the same skies as legendary Marine aces Gregory ‘Pappy’ Boyington and Kenneth Walsh. The victories mount—but so do the empty chairs, missing pilots and letters home that every squadron commander dreads writing.
Tuffy Kowalski knows how to fight.
Now he must learn how to lead.
And as the Hell-Bent Devil Dogs battle their way toward Bougainville, he will discover that a commander's success isn't measured by the enemy aircraft he destroys.
It's measured by how many of his Marines he can bring home.
The Far Shore is Book III of Frank A. Mason's Skies of Fire series, a sweeping historical novel of Marine aviation, the F4U Corsair, friendship, love, loss and the brutal air war for the South Pacific.
Genre: Thriller
The Japanese have abandoned Guadalcanal—but the battle for the Solomons is far from over.
Late summer, 1943. American forces are driving north through the Solomon Islands, and the Japanese are fighting tenaciously to stop them. Munda, Vella Lavella, Bougainville and the great Japanese fortress at Rabaul lie ahead.
Major Tadeusz ‘Tuffy’ Kowalski has already fought one war with the legendary Flying Tigers and another from the battered airfields of Guadalcanal. Now back in Marine green and flying the powerful F4U Corsair, he is an experienced combat pilot in a theater where experience is purchased with blood.
Then the Marine Corps gives him a different challenge.
Command.
Selected to take over the newly formed VMF-412, Tuffy must turn a collection of young pilots, veteran Marines and temperamental Corsairs into a combat-ready fighter squadron. He has good men beside him—some old friends, some untested newcomers—and precious little time to prepare them for the war waiting across the Pacific.
But not every battle is fought in the air.
Tuffy must contend with senior officers who seem more interested in regulations, equipment and old grudges than getting another fighter squadron into combat. At the same time, his life at home is unraveling. His troubled former wife remains hospitalized, their four-year-old son Teddy is being raised by his grandparents, and the woman Tuffy loves must decide whether she is willing to build a life with a man who may never come home.
Soon the newly christened Hell-Bent Devil Dogs of VMF-412 are headed west.
From the coral runways of the South Pacific, Tuffy leads his Marines against Japanese fighters over the northern Solomons, flying in the same skies as legendary Marine aces Gregory ‘Pappy’ Boyington and Kenneth Walsh. The victories mount—but so do the empty chairs, missing pilots and letters home that every squadron commander dreads writing.
Tuffy Kowalski knows how to fight.
Now he must learn how to lead.
And as the Hell-Bent Devil Dogs battle their way toward Bougainville, he will discover that a commander's success isn't measured by the enemy aircraft he destroys.
It's measured by how many of his Marines he can bring home.
The Far Shore is Book III of Frank A. Mason's Skies of Fire series, a sweeping historical novel of Marine aviation, the F4U Corsair, friendship, love, loss and the brutal air war for the South Pacific.
Genre: Thriller
Used availability for Frank A Mason's The Far Shore