The Coast Guard
Edited by Torn Beard. Westport, CT: Hugh Lauter Levin, 2004. 352 pp. Photos. Index. $75.00.
Reviewed by Captain W. Russell Webster, U.S. Coast Guard (Retired)
The Foundation for Coast Guard History, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to assist the Coast Guard's history program and promote a better appreciation of the service on the part of the general public, has assembled some of the finest writers of Coast Guard material in its new book entitled The Coast Guard.
Readers are captivated from the start by a poignantly written foreword by veteran newsman Walter Cronkite, Honorary National Commander of the Coast Guard Auxiliary, the service's civilian volunteer arm. The iconic journalist and war correspondent writes unabashedly about his decades of observing the Coast Guard's heroics at war during the Battle of the Atlantic, Normandy, North Africa, Korea, and in Vietnam. His fascination with the Coast Guard does not end there, however.
He also writes with great emotion and admiration about his personal maritime interactions with the Coast Guard after being overrun by the same Nor'easier that spawned the book The Perfect Storm and during other difficult voyages. Cronkite lights the fuse for the subsequent chapters, which chronicle the service's storied 215-year history as a humanitarian and military service under three different government departments.
Readers who thirst for variety will welcome the depth and organization of The Coast Guard. For those whose focus is on the traditional humanitarian roles of the Guard, John Galluzzo's section, "That Others May Live," will satisfy. Here, purists can immerse themselves in tales from the U.S. Lifesaving Service, a predecessor organization to the modern-day Coast Guard, and enjoy rescue tales about Keeper Joshua James, the service's most decorated life saver. James died conducting an arduous rescue drill at age 75. During his 60-year career serving the nation as a rescuer, he saved more than 1,000 people.
If interests lie with the Coast Guard's involvement as a military service, the book does not disappoint and provides unique insights into the service that has been a part of every major conflict from 1799 to the current war on terror. Especially gripping is Robert Browning's account of the Coast Guard's sole Congressional Medal of Honor recipient, Signalman Douglas Munro, and his service at Guadalcanal. Munro gave his life evacuating and saving lieutenant Colonel Chesty Puller's 7th Marines near Point Cruz, Guadalcanal.
I particularly enjoyed P. J. Capelotti's chapter on the Coast Guard's activities on and after 11 September 2001. The author recounts Boatswain Perez's gripping onscene account of seeing the underbelly of a commercial airliner make its fateful approach to the World Trade Center. Capelotti then chronicles the service's many contributions in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. This section, more than any other, highlights the Coast Guard's flexibility, adaptability, and malleability when new missions were assigned and assimilated .
Even animal lovers will chuckle at Coast Guard canine antics and heroics. Imagine a dog that would not stop barking until its military masters recognized the nearby German trawler shrouded in fog. Or readers can learn of the service's use of some 1,800 dogs and horses to patrol thousands of miles of coastline against German saboteurs during World War II.
Boat enthusiasts will enjoy clayton Evans's discussion of the service's different small craft. Nautical neophytes likely will be aghast at the relative insignificance of these vessels when compared to some of the sea states encountered by Life Saving Service and rescue station personnel over the years. There are so many stories that even the 1952 rescue of 32 crewmen from the stricken tanker Pendleton using a 36-footer is briefly recognized in a photo partially captioned, "Out from Chatham, into seventy-mileper-hour winds on a stormy night in February 1952." Readers will appreciate the ruggedness and durability of older Coast Guard boats that were built for a single purpose-to survive horrific weather and mountainous seas.
The Coast Guard does a masterful job of navigating the diversity of the service's myriad missions. There is literally something for all readers-be they lighthouse or animal lovers, environmental enthusiasts, aviation aficionados, or military buffs. Complementing the cogently written chapters is a carefully assembled mosaic of hundreds of photos and artwork from the Coast Guard's archives. The Coast Guard is worth the sticker price, for the reading or as an artful coffee table decoration. It is the latest in a series of oversized coffee table books that focus on military services. I recommend it highly.
Captain Webster retired from the Coast Guard in 2003 after a 26-year career. He is an assistant federal security director for the Transportation Security Administration at Logan Airport in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Captain's Vengeance
Dewey Lambdin. New York: St. Martin's, 2004. 336 pp. $25.95.
Reviewed by Commander Tyrone G. Martin, U. S. Navy (Retired)
It is January 1799, and Captain Alan Lewrie is returning to Kingston, Jamaica, in his frigate Proteus following independent duty seconded to the British Foreign Office. For the preceding two months, he has been on a fruitless search through the Windward and Leeward Islands for a valuable prize he had taken that has mysteriously disappeared, and with it, his prize crew.
In Kingston, Lewrie finds a new chief of staff to Admiral Sir Hyde Parker (one less critical of Lewrie's reputation and thus friendlier) as well as his missing crew members, who are recovering in the local hospital after having been retrieved from marooning in the Dry Tortugas. The senior survivor, a petty officer currently known as Toby Jugg (formerly Joseph Hosier, formerly Patrick Warder), tells Lewrie the midshipman prizemaster had been used for target practice and that, when last seen, the prize had been headed north. Lewrie vows to even the score.
At a dinner that evening with the chief of staff, Captain Nicely, Lewrie is chagrined to be reunited with Mr. Peel of the Foreign Office and to meet Gideon Pollock, a British merchant with an establishment at New Orleans, among other places, who provides intelligence to Peel on an ad hoc basis. As the meal progresses, Lewrie learns that Peel is trying to discover what is developing in the Louisiana area, currently under the administration of the moribund Spanish empire, and that Lewrie, because of his past experience in the region, once again is being drafted into that service. Lewrie's objections are overcome by Nicely's assurances that such temporary duty will not cost him command of the Proteus. Mollified, Lewrie helps develop the plan whereby he and a picked party of his sailors, including Toby Jugg (whose past seems to include "exposure" to piratical types), will proceed as passengers in Pollock's company ship to New Orleans and seek to discover the strengths of the various political activities there. They are ordered to pose as a guard force hired by Pollock to protect the merchant's goods as they pass through the city and get sent "up country."
New Orleans turns out to be a pot boiling with barely sensed currents roiling under the surface. Elements of the Creole community are working to overthrow Spanish rule and return the territory to France. The Americans, Lewrie finds, have a party similar to his on a reconnaissance to discover if the colony can be acquired for the new nation. Lewrie's own government is pondering an invasion and is assessing whether it would be more efficient to come down the Mississippi or strike from the sea. And, of course, there are the pirates of Barataria and their hidden links with city notables.
Dewey Lambdin has great fun stirring this pot with dirty tricks, surprise encounters, an assassination attempt using what might be called a "stealth rifle," and a return by Lewrie to his ways as "Ram Cat" Lewrie. A battle delivering the pirates their just deserts tops the action. This novel is another fun read from this author.
Commander Martin is a frequent contributor to Proceedings and Naval History.
Lightning Strike: The secret Mission to Kill Admiral Yamamoto and Avenge Pearl Harbor
Donald A. Davis. New York: St. Martin's, 2005. 370 pp. Photos. Notes. Bib. Index. $25.95.
Reviewed by Commander Craig Felker, U.S. Navy
On Palm Sunday in 1943, U.S. Army Air Forces aviators staged one of the boldest operations of the Paeific War. Sixteen P-38 Lightnings launched from Guadalcanal to kill Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The architect of Pearl Harbor was directing operation I-Go, a massive air assault against U.S. forces on Guadalcanal and New Guinea. Deceived by exaggerated reports of success, Yamamoto decided to visit forward units on the island of Bougainville to congratulate his pilots personally. As the Betty bombers carrying him and his staff approached their destination, however, the "Cactus Air Force" pilots, who had navigated the 450 miles from Guadalcanal undetected, surprised them. The ensuing air melee was intense and confusing, but the pilots assigned to kill Yamamoto broke through his fighter escort and found their target. Yamamoto's plane was hit and crashed into the jungle. Japan's greatest naval strategist since Heihachiro Togo was dead. Pearl Harbor had been avenged.
Donald Davis, a former correspondent for the Associated Press, effectively applies his skills as a journalist to bring life to this historical drama. He gives Yamamoto a human face. He is depicted as a complex man, a strategic visionary who wrote poetry and kept a mistress. The young Army pilots sent to kill him are portrayed as the consummate all-American boys. Davis's characters are bound together in an equally colorful narrative. The story moves quickly between fleet headquarters, intelligence offices, and the battlefield. The author's description of the bloody fighting on Guadalcanal reveals how tenuous the outcome of the battle actually was.
Actors and events converge in the skies over Bougainville, but Davis's narrative does not end with the climactic air battle. The journalist's eye looks beyond events in 1943 to the ensuing controversy over the downing of Yamamoto's plane. Fear of compromising U.S. intelligence capabilities led to an unprecedented level of secrecy about the mission. The planes did not use their gun cameras over Bougainville, leaving verification to human eyes and memories. According to Davis, initial credit for the kill was given to Captain Tom Lamphier. After the war, however, another pilot on the mission also claimed credit for Yamamoto's plane. In the ensuing decades the controversy grew, fueled by surviving Cactus Air Force pilots, and an organization was formed specifically to refute Lamphier's claim. A 1978 Air Force victory credit board report only added to the controversy when it revised the official report, and assigned both Lamphier and Rex Barber, the second pilot, credit for the kill.
To Davis, however, the controversy continues. And that is the problem with. Lightning Strike. The book focuses too much on the personal dimension. Davis sacrifices historical explanation for the sensational and controversial. The story of the mission certainly is riveting. The extraordinary courage and skill of the Army pilots never should be forgotten. But what truly is significant is the historical context surrounding the mission. Army aviators arrived on Guadalcanal as an ad hoc group, and fought with their Marine counterparts for survival. They were warriors in the truest sense. As Guadalcanal became more secure, however, layers of organization began to grow around the flyers. By the time they flew the famous mission, the pilots were no longer warriors. Modern, industrialized war transformed them into technicians. The military bureaucracy viewed Yamamoto as little more than a target of opportunity.
Davis's emphasis on the controversy also is problematic. Missing from his bibliography is any reference to the Spring 1992 issue of Air Power History. In it, Dr. Richard Kohn, who at the time was chief historian of the Air Force, published a response to the president of the second Yamamoto Mission Association, who had requested yet another inquiry into the controversy. Kohn offered recently received testimony from the pilot of the second bomber carrying Yamamoto's chief of staff. Although the pilot did not personally witness the downing of Yamamoto's plane, his testimony revealed that the intercept had begun at least 25 miles from the crash site, enough time for both Lamphier and Barber to have attacked the bomber at different times. Kohn concluded that the evidence did not justify reversing the official record. He also cautioned against focusing too much on individual achievements, and ignoring the significance of the event. The mission to kill Yamamoto was a success of intelligence, technology, organization, and human courage. But as Kohn implies, in popular history, the story often can obscure its meaning. Readers of Lightning Strike will find a sensational story-but they should look elsewhere for the history.
Commander Felker recently received his doctorate in history at Duke University and now teaches military history at the U.S. Naval Academy.