Eric Hammel (1946–2020)

I had been doing some research on the air war in the Solomons during 1942/43 when I saw this volume available on Kindle and decided to pick it up. I have three other Hammel works, one for WW2, one for Korea, and one for Vietnam, which I enjoyed reading. So I thought I would enjoy this book as well.

As I started reading "Cactus Air Force: Air War Over Guadalcanal", it soon became clear that Hammel was not the sole author--Thomas Cleaver is credited as co-author. I have read Cleaver's work as well, so I was not worried. Both authors share similar styles, and I still find the topic fascinating. So I proceeded with my read. The book was published by Osprey in 2022 and is credited with 336 pages. There are 20 chapters that seem to flash by at an incredible pace from Operation Watchtower's initiation on 7 August 1942 until tapering off in late November 1942. The pace of the narrative was troubling. By the time the story reaches the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in the fourth week of August, less than three weeks later, the book is in Chapter 10 and the read is more than 60% complete. A more detailed description of the book's contents is not really needed --any student of the Guadalcanal campaign will not encounter any surprises in these pages.

The backstory to this book is the story of the coauthors and the propriety of the project. It is clear from Cleaver's introduction that Eric Hammel became ill shortly after the book project got underway and was incapacitated enough to preclude producing the kind of book his readers were accustomed to reading. Hammel requested help from Cleaver until Hammel's illness became so severe that the project could no longer continue, at least as a collaboration. Hammel passed in 2020, but through the efforts of Hammel family members and Osprey, the "Cactus Air Force" project restarted that same year with Cleaver as the sole author. Cleaver spent the next two years assembling materials Hammel had assembled over the years to complete this volume.

The result is a disappointment to me. Posthumous publishing can work (I look at the Norman Friedman work with the materials of the late John Lambert on the Royal Navy Weapons of World War II series as an example), but it does not work here. In looking at Hammel's body of work on the Solomons campaign, what was missing was a definitive history of the air campaign based out of Guadalcanal itself. Ownership of the real estate to build airfields on the island was the central purpose of the campaign, so a book that covered the air war as fought from Henderson Field, Fighter One, and Fighter Two would have been a worthwhile endeavor. What the reader ends up with this book is some of that intent swallowed by the other events Hammel has covered in more detailed in his four other books on the Guadalcanal campaign. The pace of the book that I mentioned above makes it appear that Hammel had written a good part of the first half of the book: Cleaver then obtained Hammel's notes and materials to assemble the rest of the book. Cleaver ends the book not with anything about the air campaign as it stood in late 1942, but with the naval battle of Tassafaronga--a battle that had no air component to it at all.

I think the publication of this book was a mistake, but that is not Eric Hammel's fault nor is it Tom Cleaver's fault--in this case the blame lies fully with Osprey. Having approved the project with Hammel to begin with, the Osprey management should have seen that this project without Hammel would be problematic. It is a disservice to both Hammel and Cleaver to have allowed the project to go on to present such an ordinary history to appear under the name of a well-regarded historian.… (meer)