The Big E: The Story of the USS Enterprise, Illustrated Edition

"The unbelievable career of the bravest and most effective warship America ever built, excitingly recorded." -- Life

"An action-packed drama of living men in a ship with a soul." -- San Francisco Examiner

"After reading Commander Stafford's lovingly detailed saga, you may well wonder: Why didn't they preserve the Big E for posterity, just as they did Old Ironsides." -- Arizona Republic

A lasting tribute to the USS Enterprise, this heavily illustrated, new edition tells the classic tale of the carrier that contributed more than any other warship to the naval victory in the Pacific. The original book, published in 1962, has remained one of the most celebrated World War II stories for more than four decades.

The Big E participated in nearly every major engagement of the war against Japan and earned a total of twenty battle stars. The Halsey-Doolittle Raid; the Battles of Midway, Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, the Philippine Sea, and Leyte Gulf; and the invasions of Iwo Jima and Okinawa are all faithfully recorded from the viewpoint of the men who served her so well.

This superb study of a great ship, her crew, and the action they saw has been called one of the finest pieces of naval writing to emerge from the war. Author Edward Stafford mined genuine nuggets from the mountain of research and lengthy interviews he conducted to write this book. He answers questions such as: What was it like to be inside the cockpit of a Dauntless dive bomber as it bored in on its target or what kind effort was required to unstick the ship's huge rudder when it was damaged by a bomb? Literate and scholarly as well as highly dramatic, the book will appeal to historians and the general public alike.