Fortress Rabaul: The Battle for the Southwest Pacific, January 1942-April 1943 (Rabaul Trilogy)
by Bruce Gamble (Goodreads Author)
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The winner of the Gold Medal (Military Writers Society of America) and Editor's Choice Award (Stone & Stone Second World War Books) is now available in paperback format. Since its 2010 release, Fortress Rabaul has been hailed as the triumphant midpoint of Bruce Gamble's award-winning military nonfiction trilogy, following his critically acclaimed Darkest Hour (December 2006) and preceding Target: Rabaul (November 2013). In this, the Zenith Press series' renowned second installment, Gamble chronicles the crucial role of Japan's island stronghold - Fortress Rabaul - located in the Southwest Pacific during World War II. For most of the war, the mere mention of Rabaul sent shudders through thousands of Allied airmen. With millions of square feet of housing and storage facilities supporting a hundred thousand imperial Japanese soldiers and naval personnel, Simpson Harbour and the airfields there were the focus of hundreds of U.S. Air Force missions. Recounted through Gamble's meticulous, airtight research and told in his signature accessible narrative style, you'll quickly see why Colonel Walter Boyne, USAF (Ret.), has called Fortress Rabaul his "tour de force."





A native of central Pennsylvania, Bruce Gamble is an award-winning author and historian specializing in highly readable narratives about World War II in the Pacific.

During his career as a Naval Flight Officer in the closing years of the Cold War, Bruce logged nearly 1,000 hours as a navigator in EA-3B Skywarriors, including deployments aboard aircraft carriers in the Pacific and Indian Oceans. Later, while serving as a flight instructor in Pensacola, Florida, he was diagnosed with a malignant spinal cord tumor. After undergoing a complicated surgery, Bruce was medically retired from the Navy in 1989.

Starting over as a wheelchair user, Bruce volunteered at the National Naval Aviation Museum and eventually worked part-time as the staff historian for the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. Over the next several years he collected oral history interviews and wrote numerous articles for Foundation magazine. Bruce then made the leap to freelance writing and published his first book, The Black Sheep, in 1998.