Just finished this one. It is honestly an insane read. Kleiss was one of the squadron commanders that attacked the Japanese fleet at Midway on 04JUN42. Scouting Six, his guys, ended up sustaining 60% casualties in the engagement but crippled the entire Japanese Navy in about a five minute period through an astonishing feat of aerial marksmanship. Anyone who's been in can tell this dude is a verified badass who saw probably some of the rowdiest naval combat in history.

The autobiography in the beginning is a bit detailed talking about his childhood etc, but stand by when stuff gets real. Definitely one of the best books I have read in years written by a dude who is, very obviously, an actual hero. 5/5 stars.

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/never-call-me-a-hero-n-jack-dusty-kleiss/1125815631

I have it here on the bench to read. I picked it up as documentation for a 1/48" model of the SBD he flew at Midway that a local museum asked me to build. I hope to get to this winter.

Didn't pull many punches in his opinions of commanders. Thought highly of Adm. Halsey, Kimmel not so much. Kimmel was very disdainful of aviators, and showed it.

Thanks for thr thread!

Hope you get to it! Gives a real ground's eye view of the SBD and its contributions to history.




That's the great part about this book- you can tell it's an unfiltered, no BS perspective from one of the guys who personally flew all these operations you read about. Pretty cool getting a peek into the team room of one of the most important bomber squadrons probably in aviation history.

Good book!

Liked it a lot. His descriptions of our planes and tactics at this stage of the war, IMO, show how brave these guys were. It wasn't unusual to lose a few planes and pilots on a "routine" mission before they even get to the battle of Midway.

His conversation with his friend assigned to the dive bomber squadron, Torpedo Six, on the morning of the Battle of Midway was impressive. They were to be using planes that were so inadequate everyone was not only surprised they were using them but how they were using them. I might be wrong but based on what I read those guys didn't really comment on it, just got in the planes knowing they were likely to be killed, did their job and got killed. When they left Kleiss stated, "It was a gut-wrenching goodbye. I knew this was likely farewell forever."

Reading that part of the book was chilling. To realize that Torpedo Squadron 6 was practically in what was a kamikaze attack with extremely unreliable torpedoes.