Brought to life by the personal accounts of six Navy pilots and one British POW, this is the history of the U.S. Navy airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong.

Trawling through historic records, Steven K. Bailey discovered that the story of the U.S. Navy carrier airstrikes on Japanese-held Hong Kong during the final year of World War II had never been told in full.

Operation Gratitude involved nearly 100 U.S. Navy warships and close to 1,000 planes. Target Hong Kong brings this massive operation down to a human scale by recounting the air raids through the experiences of seven men whose lives intersected in January 1945: Commander John D. Lamade, five of his fellow U.S. Navy pilots, and British POW Ray Jones watching from the ground. 

Using oral histories, diary transcripts, and official documents long forgotten in the archives, this book expertly reveals the intertwined experiences of these seven brave men and of those who flew, fought, and died in the fiery skies over Hong Kong.