Dead Reckoning

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Lehr provides the definitive account of what became known as "Operation Vengeance": the targeted kill by U.S. fighter pilots of Japan's larger-than-life military icon, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the naval genius who had devised the devastating attack on Pearl Harbor. The high-stakes operation was undertaken sixteen months after Pearl Harbor, a longshot mission hatched hastily at the U.S. base on Guadalcanal. Lehr goes behind the scenes at Station Hypo on Hawaii, where U.S. Navy code breakers first discovered exactly where and when to find Admiral Yamamoto, on April 18, 1943, and then chronicles in dramatic detail the nerve-wracking mission to kill him. He focuses on Army Air Force Major John W. Mitchell, the ace fighter pilot tasked with conceiving a flight route with the new twin-engine P-38 Lightning with its fabled "cone of fire."