I read that book as a teenager in the 1960s, along with Martin Caidin, Sakai Saburo, Adolph Galland, Hans Rudel, Walter Lord, and just about every WWII book I could get my hands on. I think I still have it floating around somewhere.
Looking back on it, I think it to some extent represents the tenor of the times. Compare it to "Flight of the Intruder", and you see the "greatest generation" combat experience sanitized for an innocent audience vs the "me generation" warts-and-all depiction of the terrors and stresses of naval air combat. My high school English teacher would have said: "romanticism vs realism".
As for technical accuracy, there's a huge gulf between the Hellcats of Newhafer, and the Phantoms of my time, and I never went to sea or saw combat, so I'm a poor judge. I do think some of Newhafer's descriptions of technical matters are a bit simplified and his depiction of the Japanese ace was a bit stereotypical, but this was his first book, after all.
Cheers,
Wes