I wasn't able to see the contents of this book too well on my device, so I am unable to give a reliable review. I do believe that the story had merit and was worth purchasing for the classroom. I have one student in particular in love with the genre.

'The Last Stand of the Tin Can Soldiers' the book by James D. Hornfishcer with adaptation by Doug Murray and art by Steven Sanders is a graphic novel adaptation of a non-fiction book about a World War II battle in the Pacific.

In October of 1944, Allied forces were landing on the island of Leyte near the Philippines. A small task force called Taffy 3 made up of a handful of destroyers and escort ships and planes finds themselves squaring off against the Japanese Center Force and finding themselves extremely outgunned. They make a stand that made the history books.

This is a really good adaptation. Doug Murray keeps the narrative concise and doesn't overload the frames with prose. The art is also a nice crisp style. Do be warned that it is suddenly quite graphically violent at times.

I received a review copy of this graphic novel from Dead Reckoning and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Thank you for allowing me to review this graphic novel.

The gripping story about how the U.S. prevailed over the Japanese Navy in World War II against overwhelming odds. The author does a great job of detailing individual moments of bravery along with the larger battle. Warning, this is war at its worst and quite graphic.

Years ago as a pre-teen I read a comic book titled, "The 'Nam." Written by Doug Murray, a veteran of the Vietnam War, 'The 'Nam" was gritty stuff for an eleven-year old. I did not know much about the war at the time, only that an uncle had fought there years before my birth. Obsessed with military history, especially American military history, and reading everything I could about it, I discovered that learning about war through the medium of the comic book was completely awesome.

This was years before I learned of other comic books such as "Sgt. Rock" or the graphic novel through "Age of Bronze" a retelling of the Trojan War. I feel the graphic novel is a fantastic way to engage younger audiences and get them excited about history. It doesn't hurt to have fantastic writers such as Doug Murray, or the late Jim Hornfischer, the author of the Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors.

Set in late October 1944, during the Battle off Samar, a set piece naval battle in the larger Battle of Leyte, the graphic novel unashamedly tells the story of Taffy 3, a unit of small American destroyer and destroyer escorts that held off the main Japanese fleet steaming towards General MacArthur's landing forces at Leyte with the intent of destroying them. Protecting the escort carriers of the Taffy ships, the smaller U.S. Navy vessels did what they could against overwhelming odds. The Japanese fleet, under command of Admiral Takeo Kurita, consisted of Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, as well as three other battleships, six cruisers, and 11 destroyers.

Despite a miscue on Admiral Halsey's part, taking the bait of a decoy Japanese force and steaming to do battle with them, the fight that took place off Samar was legendary, as the smaller U.S. Navy ships of Taffy 3 attacked and continually hammered the larger Center Force enemy ships despite being outnumbered in nearly every way imaginable. The graphic novel is a great platform for visually taking in how the action played out (as reading accounts of it can honestly be quite confusing as the narratives jumps ship-to-ship. commander-to-commander, etc.).

There are some cuss words within the story, but this is overshadowed by the gruesome violence illustrated during the course of the battle. I applaud the writers and the illustrator, Steven Sanders, for not shying away from what large caliber shells can do to a human body. If anything, it definitely adds to the gritty realism that was naval warfare in the Second World War. Sailors were horribly burned, maimed, and killed in a variety of ways onboard ship, and the dangers did not end there. If the men of Taffy 3 managed to survive the horrific gunfire and their ship being sunk, they then had to contend with the ocean, sharks, Mother Nature, and the enemy before being rescued. Often, rescue did not come in time for many of those who managed to exit their sinking ship. Surrender and an impending stay as a POW of the Empire of Japan, was not something Allied sailors wanted to contemplate.

The Japanese were not known to be gracious to Allied servicemen who surrendered. As I read through the novel, I wondered if Mr. Murray would capture the moment a Japanese destroyer slowly steamed past American survivors of USS Johnston, her sailors rendering the American survivors bobbing along in the sea a salute for putting up such a splendid fight. I was not disappointed. I was, however, a bit disappointed in how Commander Ernest Evans, a Medal of Honor recipient for his role in the battle seemed to receive some short shrift, especially when it came to how his disappearance just as Johnston sank is seemingly not given further discussion. Another event the novel gets correct is in incorporating the first kamikaze to sink an Allied ship, the unfortunate escort carrier St. Lo.

Overall, Hornfischer's well-researched and written book about the battle lends itself very well to the graphic novel treatment. The writing and illustrations add a tremendous sense of drama to an already dramatic historical event without going over-the-top. Targeted at comic book readers of any age, especially those into enjoyable but often repetitive fictional superheros, the novel gives the reader a chance to learn about some real-life superheros who saved the day to make the world a safer place for us all. The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors would make an excellent gift for a history buff of any age.

I'm no wartime history buff or maritime buff so maybe this just wasn't for me because of that. But this was super boring and didn't hold my attention at all. I will definitely not be reading the novel that this was based off of because if I was bored by a book with pictures, I will be snoozing through just words.

I read this book in one sitting--it is that powerful of a telling of the Battle off Samar, and how US Naval Destroyers and their escorts were able to beat a superior Japanese force. Even though you know the outcome, there are times in the book that will make you wonder how it happened at all. The battle is shown in its full bloody, burning fire and gore--Murray and Sanders are not shy about showing dead and dying sailors, decapitations and burns. To do otherwise would trivialize what happened. The conclusion of the battle is a relief, as there is always the next battle and little time to mourn the dead. Ultimately, the story left me with the question--are battles won not by those who have an obvious advantage, but instead by those who make the fewest mistakes?

An engrossing, compelling read--highly recommended.

Author & historian James D. Hornfischer has just today published the book “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy’s Finest Hour”. Mr. Hornfischer has published a dozen books. This is the graphic novel version of his book by the same name.

I categorize this graphic novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of violence. The book tells the story of the U.S. Navy’s engagement with the Japanese Navy, known as the Battle off Samar. The battle occurred in October of 1944 as U.S. forces began landing on Leyte in the Philippine Islands. The Japanese had lured the US Third Fleet away from Leyte and the vulnerable beachhead. When the Japanese moved to attack Leyte with the 23 ships Center Force only Taffy 3 stood in their way.

Task Unit 77.4.3, Taffy 3, was formed from the U.S. Seventh Fleet. It was made up of just 13 ships. Three Destroyers, Four Destroyer Escorts, and Escort Aircraft Carriers. It was a lightweight unit to stand in the way of the Japanese. The Center Force was led by one of the most powerful battleships in the world, the Yamato.

I enjoyed the 1+ hours I spent reading this 208-page graphic novel. The book was very engaging and the graphics were well done. It makes me want to read the full book. I like the selected cover art. I rate this book as a 4 out of 5.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Before unmanned drones high in the sky were the main US offensive weapons, more rudimentary strategies were used. Travel back to 1944 when steel and men fought surrounded by relentless seas. Learn about The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, a brave but highly outmatched small naval group, as they fight near the Philippines.

With its bright and beautiful seascapes, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is beautiful. It sets the scene for a David vs. Goliath battle between the United States and Japanese navies. There are some graphic injuries depicted here so it is best for middle school and up.

I learned a lot about how WWII naval warfare and communication worked (or didn’t work) without reading a dense history textbook or memoir. I recommend it to anyone looking for an up-close look at World War II naval warfare. 4 stars!

Thanks to Dead Reckoning and NetGalley for a copy in exchange for my honest review.

I debated between a 3 or 4 star rating, & went with the 4 to reward the ease of learning about an important WWII naval battle. This is a graphic adaptation of the book of the same title.....& reading this whets my interest to read the original! This graphic/comic form is illustrated, in enough detail to satisfy both a younger & older reader. The coloring of the illustrations is also just right, using bright colors at just the right points in the story. The text also gives up just the right amount of details to make the reader think that there might be more to this story....whether a young or older reader! I actually learned quite a bit about naval ships, their sizes, what compromised a particular fleet, the region of the area this battle took place in, & something of famous characters of that time period..........all this in a graphic/comic form! This is real good & I'd recommend it to everyone.....you wouldn't even have to have a specific interest in history......it's a great story that is so easy to follow thru due to the ease of the comic/graphic form.
I received an e-ARC from the publisher Dead Reckoning via NetGalley for review purposes. This is my own fair/honest review

It was fine, but not great. The style of the art is very blocky for the humans, though the ships are very well depicted. I also did not appreciate the constant use of slurs for Japanese people. I understand that the J word was used quite frequently in the 1940s, but it doesn't really add to the story today.

I received a copy of this book for free in exchange for a review, but all opinions are my own.

An intense graphic novel that details the consequences of getting intelligence and command strategy wrong; the fog, tedium, uncertainty, and horrific carnage of war; and the heroism in small moments from individual captains and sailors. A woefully overmatched US Naval unit manages to stave off disaster against an overpowering Japanese force, and this book does a great job at detailing the strategic overview and development, the tension of the leadup to the battle, the individual moments of courage and death, and the moments when things could have gone very differently. A really interesting work of graphic history.

I read James Hornfischer's book about the Battle off Samar on the recommendation of a veteran friend of mine from the US last year, and absolutely adored it. It was the kind of book that told a true story in a way that you are hard-pressed to remember you aren't reading a completely fictional one.

This adaptation of the book into a graphic novel was a surprise I hadn't expected to ever see, but jumped at the chance to read the instant I saw it advertised. I had wished back then that the book were made into a film someday, not knowing then there's already one, but a graphic novel is just as good to me for the simple reason that the ability to see the events described in the book was what made me wish for a visual media adaptation. The sea theatre of WWII is especially difficult for me to visualise on my own and I always need pictures and whatever filmed material there is from the war, a difficulty that land battles don't pose. I can easily visualise tank-to-tank combat, but ship-to-ship combat has me wondering what side is starboard and whether a cruiser is bigger than a destroyer, or was that the other way round?

It's because of Hornfischer's book that I can now tell what "tin cans" are. They are the destroyers and destroyer escorts, the "little guys" amongst warships, the Davids throwing stones at Goliaths. And the sheer disproportion in numbers as well as size and firepower between the US Navy's Taffy 3 detachment and the Japanese Imperial Navy's largest (in every sense of the word) fleet is made all the more stark in this graphic novel thanks to the illustrated nature of the medium. The artist, Steven Sanders, does a great job of showing the full scope of the battle, doing detailed drawings of the ships that show their specific characteristics, with impressive bird's eye view graphics of the ships engaging in combat. The panels with the ships in total combat are his strongest, and fortunately the graphic novel focuses on the 2-hour battle off the coast of Samar even more than the book does, so there's quite a visual feast to be had here. The people, on the other hand, are more generic and typical for the comics style used here.

Doug Murray's adaptation does justice to the book. He has made the introduction much shorter, and given the story a cinematic feel, summing up the important context and personages more succinctly than in the book, and placing all the focus on the brief but intense and nerve-wracking naval battle, but keeping the most iconic small scenes, like the crazy pilot firing his handgun at the Japanese ship's control tower when he runs out of ammo, the Tacloban airfield incident, the courage of Commander Evans from the USS Johnston as his ship goes down, the salute by the Japanese to the vanquished American sailors floating on the water... It's very emotional to see these small scenes of sacrifice and humanity. And you can see it from both sides, because whilst the stars are the Americans, you do also see the Japanese side of the battle. You can see Admiral Kurita on the "Yamato" as well as his commanders on the other ships at the same time you're shown the USS Heermann, the USS Hoel, the USS Samuel B. Johnston, and the USS Johnston fight them to give the carriers a chance to flee.

I only wish there had been more shown of the "Yamato." That warship was a mammoth of impressive proportions, but we don't get to appreciate her majesty much. There's more about the "Yamato" in the book that's not conveyed in the graphic novel. I'd have loved had there been a bird's eye view of the huge battleship, it'd have made for superb visuals. Also, the last portions of the story, after Kurita's fleet has turned away, is much more summed up and leads to an ending that's a bit abrupt, which I think could've been avoided if the USS St Lo sequence hadn't been rushed.

I still prefer the book because there's far more details that can't be crammed into a graphic novel and that add much to the story, but I would highly recommend this graphic novel, especially for educational purposes, as it combines adventure storytelling and comics art to tell real history.

Graphic novel for adults and high school age students. Definitely not for middle grades and below. It is quite graphic, but does accurately show what happens to sailors when ships are attacked. Adaptation of a book by the same title. Excellent graphics. Provides great summary of the battle of Leyte Gulf in World War Two.

Doug Murray and company has turned James D. Hornischer's history of the battle of Samar between 23 Japanese ships (4 battleships, 6 cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers) and Task Force Taffy 3 - 13 American ships (6 escort carriers, 3 destroyers, and 4 destroyer escorts) that lasted over 2 hours into a riveting graphic novel. Between the American planes, the courage of the tin-can sailors, and sheer luck, most American ships survived while the Japanese fleet ended up retreating and destroyed.

Thanks Netgalley for the opportunity to read this title

Having read the author’s original take on the tale of Leyte Gulf, I was fortunate to receive an ARC of the graphic novel adaptation from NetGalley. Solid art, and as it is a war story, it is indeed occasionally graphic.

This is a wonderful account and awesomely illustrated book on the battle of Samar. It shows the heroism, and honor of the sailors that fought that battle against the odds and won.

If you like Naval history and great illustrations you will love this retelling and never forget the call sign Taffy 3. It actually makes the learning of history much more fun than I ever remembered. I got the eBook version and I would be willing to bet that the pictures and story are even better in the print version

This will appear on my blog on Oct. 10th

An outstanding graphic adaptation of a classic work. Doug Murray and the rest of the team do an excellent job of placing the reader aboard the various ships involved; we are right there on the deckplates as the horrors of naval combat erupt around us. Much like Christopher Nolan's 2017 film "Dunkirk", the authors create a very palatable sense of unease about the eventual outcome of the battle. Contemporary readers will of course know how the Battle off Samar turned out, but the sailors involved surely did not. Reading this book is the next best thing to taking a time machine back to the Pacific in October of 1944.

Since WWII isn’t really in my knowledge wheelhouse, I have not read the original book that this comic is based on. That isn’t to say I don’t like WWII stuff, I enjoy reading about it A LOT, I’m just not as informed on it as I am with things like The American Civil War. I took classes on that particular era in American history, and visit museums and such all the time, for WWII that isn’t really as available with most being in places far away. Because of this, things that are probably well-known to the WWII aficionados end up amazing me, since most of it is new information. That is how I felt reading The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by Dead Reckoning and The US Naval Institute Press. I know a bit about the Japanese Battleship Yamato from an unlikely source – Japanese science fiction anime, but to see “our side” of one of it’s battles was cool. To see a rag-tag group of small ships take on the might of one of Japan’s most notorious fleets and flagships is heroism incarnate.

This comic does a great job of showing both sides of the battle, what all the commanding officers were thinking, and hopes and even prayers of the men of multiple ships. AS with many war books from Dead Reckoning, the artist doesn’t shirk on even the goriest of details. That might sound like I’m being a gore-hound, but I truly feel it’s important to see all horrors of war as a deterrent and to stop over-the-top notions of it being like GI Joe or something. As with many military battles, a lot of what happens in this book is predicated on a handful of mistakes that allow things to get out of control. Some of the soldiers shown in the narrative are insanely brave, being able to push forward in a seemingly hopeless situation is never something anyone wants to end up having to do, but here you had entire ships pulling together to try to create miracles.

The stuff happening on the USS Johnston was especially harrowing, with the ship all but disabled, and a majority of the crew cut to shreds by Japanese guns, one would think they would be sitting ducks. The crew valiantly held their own until they were almost one of the last ships sunk by the Japanese Fleet. Commander Ernest Evans comes across as a true heroic badass, keeping his crew going until the bitter end.

I haven’t read the source book, as stated before, but the graphic novel is easy to follow and very action packed. I loved how it contained maps showing what was happening on a macro scale during the battle. It’s always hard to get a sense of what is happening in Naval battles, so that definitely helped. Maps are always a cool touch that a lot of these war comics do that I enjoy. The artwork in the book is very good, and I will unashamedly bring up that Steven Sanders lives in my neck of the woods (Kansas City) according to the back of the book, I might have to see if he comes to Comicon one of these days!

I enjoyed this book a lot, and it educated me on a display of peak heroism I was unaware of prior. I learned a number of things during the reading of this book. For example, I had no idea how flimsy some of our naval ships were in comparison to huge Japanese behemoths, a fact that eventually was not a good thing for Japan in the same way Germany made increasingly huge weapons that started to be overrun by mass-produced allied planes, tanks, guns etc. This is also why the book is titled the way it is, the ships were sometimes so thinly protected that shells would pierce through with no explosion unless they hit a piece of structural material. I also didn’t know that Japan started doing kamikaze runs so late into the war, considering how notorious that is. I will have to keep an eye out on other books by any of the people involved in this books creation, and may even look into the original novel. Another grand slam by Dead Reckoning, always the best war comics out there bar-none!

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is a graphic novel that covers a battle in WWII. The art is good, the coloring may be better then the copy I read, at times was dark and muddy but that doesn’t mean the finished product won’t be better. The book reads quickly as the story is fast paced and confusing action as war is chaotic. Overall it is a good story of WWII that we need to remember the sacrifice of all our brave men and women.

Based on the book of the same name, this graphic novel illustrates the events of the Battle off Samar in which the Taffy 3 composed of 6 Casablanca class escort carriers, 3 Fletcher class destroyers, and 4 John C. Butler class destroyers escorts, under the command of Clifton Sprague faced Commander Takeo Kurita's 2nd fleet lead by the super-battleship Yamato (the largest and most heavy gunned ship in WWII), alongside one Nagato, and two Kongo class battleships; 6 heavy cruisers (2 Mogami and 2 Tone, 1 Myoko and 1 Takao class), 2 Agano class light cruisers and 11 Ashaio and Kagero class destroyers.

Compared to the large range, heavy guns the japanese's fleet had, in addition to their advanced in technology torpedoes, American's forces were completely mismatched. However, a bad decision from Kurita will turn the tables in favor of USA's ships rendering the encounter in a victory that cost thousands of casualties.

The readers see through the lenses of different ships the struggles the marines faced during the hours of battle, and doesn't shy away from scenes of gory, instant dead by shrapnel. The general approach of this battle doesn't give space to go depth into individual characterization of some of the commanders, ensigns, etc. portrayed here. However the illustrator manages to capture the impressive ships amidst the vast open sea thus giving a sense of imminent tragedy in the most dramatic scenes.

The art was ok. I liked very much the ships and planes, the faces of the people not so much.

Overall i think this is a great way to learn about this battle without investing hours and hours in a history book. If you want more details you can always look out its source material. Personally, i will, in the future.

Thanks to Netgalley for giving me the ARC in exchange of an honest review