A Blue Sea of Blood

Tells the story of the USS Edsall, a WWII-era destroyer that disappeared on a mission to java on March 1, 1942. Drawing on research, this book investigates not only the Edsall's final action, but also her pre-war career and the uses to which her story was put - both by the Japanese propaganda machine, and later by the US Navy.

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On the morning of March 1, 1942, the WWI-era destroyer USS Edsall--under orders to deliver some forty Army Air Force fighter crews to the beleaguered island of Java--split off from the USS Whipple and the tanker Pecos and was never seen again by Allied forces. Despite the later discovery of bodies identified as Edsall crewmembers near a remote airfield on the coast of Celebes, what happened to the ship remains a matter of mystery and, perhaps, deliberate obfuscation. This book explores the many puzzling facets of the Edsalls disappearance in order to finally tell the full story of the fate of the vessel and her crew. Based on exhaustive research of the historical record--including newly deciphered Japanese documents and previously unrevealed material from the crews family members--Upon a Blue Sea of Blood offers a painstaking reconstruction of the ships history. The book investigates not only the Edsalls mysterious final action, but also her wide-ranging pre-war career and the curious uses to which her story was put--generally under false pretenses--first by the pre-war U.S. Navy and then by the Japanese wartime propaganda machine. And finally, military historian Donald Kehn considers the circumstances surrounding the curious obscurity of the Edsalls heroic service and final battle in American histories. Redressing six decades of official indifference, Kehns account recovers a significant chapter missing from the history of World War II--and tells a long-overdue story of courage and tragic loss.