‘The Endurance’ author Caroline Alexander turns her attention to World War II in new book

Like the subject it covers, it takes a while for “Skies of Thunder” to get going.

Caroline Alexander’s World War II aviation history deals with Allied efforts to get supplies to China, a mission hampered when Japan captured the Burma Road, the tricky land route to China. Military flight was still fairly new, but it was the only way for the U.S. and Great Britain to move men and materiel where they needed to be in the region.

Or were they needed? One frustration of the “The Endurance” (the gripping account of a doomed Antarctic expedition) author’s new book is, if you know much about the war, you know China didn’t end up being especially helpful because its leader, Chiang Kai-shek, was so demanding and unreasonable.

That frustration is a worthwhile issue for Alexander to explore. Allied pilots doubted the worth of their missions, which involved not just flying over the treacherous, uncharted Himalayas during monsoon season but also making decisions while oxygen-deprived, under-trained and hampered by malaria medication that caused hallucinations. So perhaps it makes sense for Alexander to transfer pilots’ frustrations to readers.

It’s not a ton of fun to read, though. Alexander’s account is beautifully researched and clear, but it’s also slow to get off the ground (like some Allied planes). The first chapters establish context, particularly in little-understood Burma (now Myanmar), but they force Alexander to sidestep a key rule of journalism, which is that focusing on people is the best way to engage us in a story.

Alexander has almost no characters in the first 100 or so pages of “Skies,” with people wandering into and out of her book for just a couple pages, not long enough to make an impact. Chiang, although he’s the villain of the piece, helps; he’s so vivid and confounding that he makes for fascinating reading. So does another man who comes off poorly: Joseph Stilwell, the American general who seemed determined to match Chiang tantrum-for-tantrum and who, bizarrely, hated the British (his literal allies) more than the Japanese against whom he was doing battle.

Using diaries and letters, Alexander eventually humanizes the war with people such as Bob Boody, a pilot whose non-regulation trip to visit his fiancée ended up altering the course of his life forever, and reporter Eric Sevareid, who was on hand for a dramatic plane crash and eventual rescue.

Those sections come alive with memorable details about the startled residents of southeast Asia who were compelled to assist airplanes that crash-landed in their midst. (Alexander could have used a keyboard shortcut that typed the phrase “never to be seen again” for the many iffy flights that seemingly vanished into thin air.)

The loss of life in “Skies of Thunder” — and, obviously, in the war itself — is shocking. And it’s certainly worthwhile for Alexander to point out that this particular corner of the war could have been fought better (the U.S.’s primary interest was keeping China from “going Communist,” not training its people for battle). But, in the end, there doesn’t appear to be a great answer to the basic question of “Skies”: What on earth were we doing there?

By: Caroline Alexander.

Publisher: Viking, 460 pages, $32.