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Mud, Muscle, and Miracles: Marine Salvage in the United States Navy
Capt. C. A. Bartholomew, USN.
Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center and Naval Sea Systems Command, 1990.
505 pp. Photos. Illus. Maps. Figs. Append. Notes. Bib. Ind.
Reviewed by Captain Eugene B. Mitchell, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Mud, Muscle and Miracles is the most comprehensive book ever written on marine salvage in the U.S. Navy. Captain Bartholomew has chronicled Navy salvage from the early days, when the battleship Maine sunk in 1889 at Havana harbor, to the modern day recovery of the remains of NASA’s space shuttle Challenger in 1986. The latter, the largest search-and-recovery operation ever conducted, involved thousands of people, an armada of surface ships, a nuclear- powered submarine, and dozens of manned and unmanned submersibles and was directed by the author, Captain Bartholomew, also known as “Black Bart.
Fortunately, Mud, Muscle and Miracles is eminently readable. It has none of the characteristics of a textbook on salvage. Instead, it is a technical history complete with detailed accounts of salvage work performed in the intervening century between the Maine and Challenger operations. It is an exciting book in which the author succeeds in developing the evolution of the Navy salvage organization and its contribution to the success of naval operations in the two World Wars and the Korean and Vietnam wars.
The style makes Navy salvage operations understandable and interesting to a wide body of readers, not just the small community of Navy salvors. It is recommended reading for all Bag officers and other senior commanders who may have to command or otherwise deal with salvage or search-and-recovery operations. The book is replete with the names of many who have been a part of Navy salvage through the years—men such as Admiral Isaac C. Kidd during much of his career, Fleet Admiral (then Captain) E. J. King who commanded the raising of the submarines S-4 and S-51, and many, many others who served our Navy well.
Well-chosen diagrams and sketches support the text, helping the reader to understand difficult aspects of the significant operations. Particularly excellent ones depict:
- The lifting of the sunken submarine Squalus (SS-192) in 1939.
- The problems confronting the salvors clearing the harbors of Casablanca, Oran, Bizerte, Palermo, and Naples in the North African and Italian campaigns of World War II.
- The massive pulling arrangements to refloat the grounded battleship Missouri (BB-63) in 1950.
- The use of the heavy-lift craft Crandall (YHLC-2) and Crilley (YHLC-1) to lift and remove wrecks from the blocked Suez Canal in 1974
Photographs are used efficiently throughout the text. Especially interesting episodes portrayed include:
- The interlocking, watertight, earth- filled coffer-dammed basin around the sunken battleship Maine pumped down to permit examination of the ship in the dry to determine the cause of the explosion that sank her and helped bring about the Spanish-American War.
- The massive parbuckling structural and rigging arrangements used in righting the capsized battleship Oklahoma (BB-37) in the aftermath of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
- The discussion of the location and recovery of the nuclear weapon lost off Palomares in the mid-air collision of a B-52 bomber and a KC-135 tanker (Photographs show the weapon on the bottom in 2,500 feet of water and on deck after recovery.)
- The combat clearance operations of U.S. ships and dredges sunk in the Saigon and Mekong rivers by Viet Cong swimmer-sappers
Besides conveying the difficult working conditions, photographs show many of the individuals named in the book. This is appropriate, because Mud, Muscle and Miracles is a book about people and their endeavors in a hard and unforgiving
The mud is missing here, but the near-miraculous recovery of the space shuttle Challenger's pieces took a lot of muscle on the part of the crew of the salvage ship USS Preserver (ARS-8).
The Difference Between Saving or Losing a Ship
Captain Charles A. Bartholomew, the top U.S. salvage officer, believes that the U.S. Navy must expand its salvage capability in the post-Cold War era. As the international balance of power changes, U.S. ships may find themselves anywhere on the globe doing just about anything—fighting in brushfire wars, trying to keep the peace, escorting tankers, or evacuating refugees. In any scenario, the Navy may face missiles, mines, guns, or a violent turn of nature that can sink ships. In many situations, salvage can prevent a disaster and even influence the tactical situation at sea.
“For fleet operations, you need salvage,” Bartholomew said. “There’s no substitute for it. Salvage can make the difference between saving a ship or losing it.”
That theme is one Bartholomew touches on often in his new book Mud, Muscle, and Miracles: Marine Salvage in the United States Navy. The book tells the story of Navy salvage from the late 19th century to the recent high-tech, deep-sea retrieval of parts from the space shuttle Challenger.
Bartholomew helped make some of that history, doing salvage work in Vietnam and subsequently serving in a variety of diving and engineering billets. He has participated in the salvage of 16 ships, many airplanes, and the Challenger. For five years he’s served as the Navy’s Director of Ocean Engineering and Supervisor of Salvage and Diving.
Researching the book showed Bartholomew that, depending on the military situation, the budget, and whether or not flag-rank officers see a need for it, the status of Navy salvage has ebbed and flowed over the years. At present, he is concerned about the direction of salvage readiness.
“The story of Navy salvage is one of ups and downs, just like a sine wave,” Bartholomew said during a recent interview. “Right now, we’re beginning to decline, and we’re trying to arrest that decline.”
Ask Bartholomew what salvage forces will need during the remainder of the 20th century and into the next one, and the first thing he talks about is ships. During World
War II. he said about 8% of Navy vessels were either for salvage or towing. That same ratio in a 500-ship navy dictates that 40 ships be designated for salvage work. But the number now is nowhere near that high; the Navy, in fact, has about 16 vessels, and some planners want to cut that figure in half. If that happens, Bartholomew wonders if the ratio between salvage vessels and the rest of the fleet will be out of balance, exposing the Navy to needless risks and difficulties.
Ships are not Bartholomew’s only concern. Navy planners, he believes, must address at least two key personnel issues. First, the Navy must do a better job of taking care of officers in the salvage field by providing career planning and development for them. Unless this is done, the service may find itself without the necessary diving, engineering, and leadership skills just when it needs them most. Second, salvage reserve units, which Bartholomew praises for their talent and enthusiasm, should be integrated more closely with regular ones to provide depth of experience and smooth coordination if reservists are called.
Salvage faces one other great challenge in Bartholomew’s view: It needs to help other Navy officers to understand its value. That means making the case for salvage not as a logistical afterthought, but as an integral part of combat readiness. And that means keeping the salvage units as close to the action as possible.
Today, much of the Navy’s salvage forces are “flyaway teams,” meaning that they are airlifted to damage sites. This concept can work well in many situations— harbor clearance, raising vessels, and repairing battle damage. But the best way to prepare for these problems is to keep salvage vessels and fly-away teams near operations.
“We need to have salvage people at the front in a hostile environment, not hundreds of miles away,” he said. “We saw that in World War II. Today, as it was 45 years ago, it’s important for salvage teams to go with the fleet and work to repair battle damage as soon as it occurred.”
—Interview by Ed Crews
venue. The author well and truly states in the preface;
“Salvage is not for every one. It is hard work—dirty, dangerous, and demanding. The jobs look easier than they are. The risks are high, the problems severe and unique, and the line between success and failure thin.
“Salvage is also tremendously exciting and satisfying. The thrill of a salvor when a stranded ship refloats or a sunken ship rises has few parallels. On the other hand, the defeats are devastating. Because salvage is the kind of work it is, it attracts people who invariably have tremendous abilities and confidence, with egos to match. It also requires mature individuals willing to take extraordinary risks but with judgment not to take unnecessary ones, and who are able to submerge their egos so they can function as a team.”
The moving foreword by Admiral Kidd, the patron of divers and salvors, echoes the tone of the author’s treatment of the literally hundreds of men whose exploits provided the reason for such a book.
Accounts of the salvage work focus on the salvors. The heroism of early-day salvor Frank Crilley in the salvage of the F-4 (the Skate [SS-23]), the Navy’s first submarine loss, is described in the context of the salvage operation and captured in a photograph of President Calvin Coo- lidge presenting the Medal of Honor to
Chief Crilley. Rescue of 33 crewmen from the hull of the sunken submarine Squalus and subsequent salvage of the boat—achieved with innovations including the introduction of helium-oxygen diving and the McCann Rescue Chamber. The emphasis quite correctly is primarily on the four hard-bitten chief petty officers John Mihalowski, James McDonald, William Badders, and Orson Crandall— all shown wearing Medals of Honor. The list goes on in an unbroken string to the present.
Much of the color of the larger-than- life people who have made up salvage crews is captured in an effective set of unusual footnotes. It is infrequent that a reviewer tells a prospective reader to “read the footnotes.” This is one of those times.
Salvage is not all glory or the challenge °f operations. The background work that occupies most of the hours of senior salvors, the fights to ensure legislation is in Place, to maintain readiness, to mobilize lor conflicts, and to ensure salvors’ place in the Navy is maintained in the face of changing organization, budgets, and requirements. Descriptions of this complete the salvage equation and balance the book.
Obviously the book was painstakingly researched; it draws on an extensive bibliography of hundreds of published and unpublished documents as well as the Personal records and accounts of dozens °f people. Given the current age of the contributors and the proclivity of the Navy to clean house of old records, this book may have come just in time. It will endure as a good reference as well as find, even-handed, objective history of the contributions by so many able people.
Captain Mitchell retired in 1973 as Supervisor of SalVage. As Pacific Fleet Salvage Officer, lie was awarded the Legion of Merit with Combat "V lor salvage work in Vietnam. He currently is a program manager for the ocean engineering group for VSE Corporation, a defense contractor.
As I Saw It
Dean Rusk, as told to Richard Rusk. Daniel S. Papp, editor. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990. 672 pp. Photos. Append. Ind. $29.95 ($26.95).
Reviewed by Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr-, U.S. Army (Retired)
Few books can be classified as “must reading,” but former Secretary of State Dean Rusk’s autobiography is one ot them. The Washington bureaucracy had few heroes, in and out of uniform, during the Vietnam War, but for many. Rusk "'as the exception. “He may not have been right,” one critic later said, “but he Was a man. He towers over the rest of those pygmies.” As a colleague put it, “If I had to define [his] essential quality, I would use the word ‘character.’ 1 don t know what you think the word ‘character means, but I myself would be quite happy to let Dean Rusk’s life define it.”
Ay / Saw It is the story of that life, a story that almost did not get told. “When I joined President Kennedy as his secretary of state in January 1961 I announced that 1 would never write a memoir, Rusk begins. But in June 1984 his son Richard, who had broken with him over the Vietnam War, returned home to “reforge the broken chain.” This autobiography was the result—“not a formal memoir or a book based on documents but a human story, father and son.”
And quite a story it is, beginning with his childhood in Cherokee County, Georgia, his studies at Davidson College and later as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and continuing with his service in World War 11 as an Army colonel in the China- Burma-India theater. His military career ended with his assignment to the Operations Division of the War Department General Staff in Washington where he and Colonel Charles Bonestccl, with the aid of a National Geographic map, arbitrarily chose the 38th parallel as the dividing line in Korea between U.S. and Soviet forces.
Later chapters detail his experiences in the State Department during the Korean War and his work as president of the Rockefeller Foundation (“the best job in America,” he calls it) from 1952 to 1961. But the heart of the book is Rusk’s experiences as secretary of state in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations from 1961 to 1969.
From start to finish, it was one crisis after another, from the Berlin crisis to the
Cuban missile crisis to problems in the Congo to the Dominican Republic crisis, the Arab-Israeli Six-Day War, and the Pueblo (AGER-2) affair. And most of all, there was the war in Vietnam.
“Since leaving office in January 1969,” he writes, “1 have been offered many chances to present a me a culpa on Vietnam, but 1 have not availed myself of these opportunities. ... I have not apologized for my role in Vietnam, for the simple reason that 1 believed in the principles that underlay our commitment to South Vietnam and why we fought that war.”
Particularly important to military leaders are Rusk’s comments on command. “1 have served at both ends of military command—receiving orders in the China-Burma-India theater during World
War II and giving orders for Vietnam in the sixties,” Rusk notes. “In some ways it is more difficult to give orders, although you can’t tell veterans that. . . . But in making decisions or obeying them, I had a duty to perform. It was that sense of duty—that someone must do this job and make those decisions—and also my belief in the principles that underlay our policies that sustained me as secretary of state.”
Colonel Summers is cdilor of Vietnam magazine, contributing editor for the Journal of Defense & Diplomacy, and a syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times. He was recently named a Distinguished Fellow of the Army War College.
Prints in the Sand: The U.S.
Coast Guard Beach Patrol during World War II
Eleanor C. Bishop. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1989. 82 pp. Photos. Figs. Ind. $9.95 ($8.95).
Reviewed by Michael I). Hull
German agents and saboteurs proved that U.S. coasts were not secure from enemy aliens intent upon infiltration and destruction when they landed on the beaches of Long Island and Florida in the summer of 1942. Immediate action was clearly needed to ensure coastal security.
So, on 25 July 1942, a month after the landing incidents, a national Beach Patrol Division was organized at U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters under Captain Raymond J. Mauerman. The Army was given the job of defending land areas and the Navy maintained inshore and offshore patrols. The Coast Guard, which had been transferred in 1941 to the Navy Department for the duration of World War II, was ordered to operate an “information system” using beach patrols, picket boats, and watchtowers. The beach patrol system became a special agency whose purpose was to act as the “eyes and ears” of the Army and Navy, and to guard the coast but not to repel invasion.
The story of the U.S. Coast Guard Beach Patrol, long overshadowed by the Coast Guard’s achievements on the high seas during the war, is told for the first time in a new book by historian Eleanor Bishop, a former teacher and State Department analyst. She traces the development and the activities of the agency, which boasted 24,000 officers and enlisted personnel (from age 17 to 73) at its peak.
It is a concisely written, detailed, and lavishly illustrated study of an unsung group of heroes who helped defend the
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The horse Marines in China? Not quite. But these mounted members of the Coast Guard Beach Patrol helped to guard some 50,000 miles of U.S. shoreline in World War II.
United States in a tense and doubt-filled time, when German U-boats prowled off the coast and when there seemed to be the real possibility of an invasion.
Civilian-volunteer members of the Coast Guard Temporary Reserve, which had been established in 1939, made up the early patrol sections. Most of the men were unpaid and worked part-time. However, some of the temporary reservists carried out full-time duties and received military pay, particularly those in the picket boat patrols.
The author provides fascinating detail about the training, tactics, installations, and equipment of the patrols, which operated from Maine to Key West and from South Texas to Seattle. Using picket boats, jeeps, trucks, watchtowers, horses, and dogs, the Beach Patrol covered 50,000 miles in ten coastal districts.
The largest division of the Beach Patrol was the mounted patrol, which covered more territory, employed more men, and used more animals than any other section. When it was authorized by the Secretary of the Navy in September 1942, it was realized that a mounted patrolman could cover twice as much area as one on foot, and could reach areas inaccessible to jeep patrols. Many experienced horsemen flocked to the mounted patrol, including cowboys, polo players, former sheriffs, horse trainers, Army Reserve cavalrymen, jockeys, rodeo riders, and Hollywood stunt men.
The Army, explains the author, played a key role in helping the Beach Patrol get organized, particularly the dog and horse patrols.
Two years after it was founded, says the author, the organization’s “achievements were measured, not by major incidents which occurred, but by no record of a major incident.” The patrol “had been a great success.”
This book is engaging and worthwhile.
Mr. Hull is a journalist and freelance writer with 35 years’ newspaper experience on both sides of the Atlantic. He is currently a copy and obituaries editor at the Springfield, Massachusetts, Union-News. He served in the British Army from 1952 to 1955 and is a military historian.
Warship Losses of World War Two
David Brown. New York: Sterling Publishing, 1990. 256 pp. Ind.
Reviewed by Norman Polmar
This is the first truly comprehensive effort since World War II to produce an inclusive listing of warship losses. It covers all surface warship losses, of all navies, to all causes. The coverage begins on 27 August 1939 (when the German torpedo boat Tiger was lost at 0230 in a collision with the destroyer Max Schultz, off Bornholm, with two men lost) and concludes on 23 August 1945 (when the Japanese escort ship No. 75 disappeared while on passage from Wakhanai to Hokkaido—possibly mined).
Between those two dates, Brown provides an accurate and detailed listing of the devastation at sea. In addition to losses, the book describes those ships captured and those scuttled.
Brown, head of the Royal Navy’s historical branch and a highly regarded naval writer, makes use of several recent revelations on what actually caused some of the sinkings, correcting popular stories and the early postwar assessments.
The first part of the book (130 pages) is a day-by-day account of warship losses; the second part summarizes warship classes and characteristics, warship weapon characteristics, has detailed maps of the war theaters, and an interesting statistical analysis of warship losses. The last feature, however, is somewhat frustrating; the reader can ascertain that 47 carriers were sunk during the war (all types) and that four were sunk in the Atlantic, but it is impossible to determine the cause of each loss unless one knows the name of the specific ship and locates it in the index. And while Brown analyzes the losses (for example, 16.66% of all escort losses occurred in the Atlantic theater, while the Arctic-Norwegian theater had the highest proportion of surface losses in the European theater at 37.97%), the aggregating of all ship types—from carriers to minesweepers—• to determine those statistics makes the data of limited value.
But this minor flaw aside, the book will be invaluable to any serious student of World War II at sea. Reportedly, this book will be followed by a companion volume addressing submarine losses in World War II.
Mr. Polmar is a widely known naval analyst and author, and a frequent contributor to the Proceedings.
The Norton Book of the Sea
Captain John O. Coote, editor. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. 406 pp. Bib. Ind. $23.00 ($20.70).
Reviewed by Lieutenant Scott Hastings, U.S. Navy
The W.W. Norton & Company is best known for its anthologies of literature— specialized collections of poetry and prose widely used as textbooks in college English courses. Thus it was a pleasant surprise to find John Coote’s Norton Book of the Sea as thoroughly readable from cover to cover as it is.
Captain Coote, a retired Royal Navy captain, served in the Soviet convoys and submarines in World War II and commanded a submarine at age 38. He also regularly contributes to Proceedings, has written navigational texts, and is an avid recreational sailor. Although his background is evident in the bias of the selections he included, it has not detracted from his collection at all.
Coote has done an outstanding job of linking passages taken from diverse sources into a coherent narrative that captures you and takes you on a long odyssey through the history, legends, literature, and lore of the sea.
Whether you have been to sea on a battleship, a small sailboat, a fishing boat, a submarine, or only from an armchair, this book will speak to you and have something in it which you have experienced and know to be true, and much more that you have not experienced but suspect could be true. This is the essence of the sea story that Coote has so skillfully captured—the idea that there is always a bigger wave in the next storm, a brighter shore just over the horizon or at the end of the next passage, and that unless you were right there on the ship with those who experienced the story being recounted, you really could not understand. Words cannot express what the sea offers, whether it be in beauty or fury, power or imagination. In the Norton Book of the Sea, words come as close as they can to doing just that.
Coote has divided his book topically; the sections are “Captains and Crews, “The Dark Side,” “The Lighter Side,” “Far Horizons,” “Sweethearts and Wives,” “Trade in Peacetime,” and “War at Sea,” as well as a skillfully written prologue that explores “What It Is All About,” the “Wind and Waves,” and “The Sea’s Mysteries.” Within each section he demonstrates considerable latitude, moving without missing a beat from history books to personal narratives to classics of sea literature to official military communiques to textbooks to popular fiction—all linked by his own insightful prose, which keeps the larger topic in focus. He does not intrude, however, or make his views known at the expense of the authors whom he is quoting; he lets their words tell the story, allows their work to stand on its own merit. And what rich and alive work it is! The three-thousand-year human experience of the people who go down to the sea in ships comes alive on these pages with a voice that speaks as one of the experience of the sea.
A good example of his ability to bring diverse sources together harmoniously comes at the end of one of his longest segments, a section from “The Dark Side” dealing with a legendary passage— rounding Cape Horn. First Coote offers us numerous accounts from singlehanded sailors such as Sir Francis Chichester and Joshua Slocum. The latter, the first to sail alone around the world, in 1896, later wrote about his undertaking:
“The sea was confused and treacherous. ... I saw now only the gleaming crests of waves. They showed white teeth while the sloop balanced over them. ‘Everything is for an offing,’ I cried, and to this end I carried on all the sail she would bear. ... No ship in the world could have stood up against so violent a gale. ... In no part of the world could a rougher sea be found than at this particular point.”
After more graphic descriptions of the “Howling Fifties” (a reference to the latitude) from the days of the tall ships, Coote concludes the section with a delightful passage from Edward Beach’s Around the World Submerged (Hodder and Stoughton, 1965). The different perspective from the calm of a submarine in the mid-20th century accented the previous segments. Although winds on the surface were estimated at about 25 knots from the west with seas about 12 feet high, the submarine had the luxury of going “back and forth five times in front of the Cape before all hands had their view” through the periscope.
In the next few pages he moves to the seagoing experiences of the Apostle Paul, followed by descriptions from the biography of C.H. Lightoller, the senior surviving officer from the Titanic. Elsewhere he quotes Admiral Chester Nimitz, the 107th Psalm, and Joseph Conrad’s Typhoon, all in the space of two pages. He skillfully links the voyagers from antiquity such as Odysseus and Noah to their modern-day emulators like Ernie Bradford, author of Ulysses Found (Hodder and Stoughton, 1963), Thor Heyerdahl of Kon-Tiki (Allen and Unwin, 1950), or Tim Sevcrin of The Brendan Voyage (Hutchinson, 1978). By the end of the book, the reader is no longer surprised by the juxtaposition of Jules Verne and Tom Clancy in the “War At Sea” section.
Throughout, however, the editor’s predilection is toward firsthand, true accounts drawn from the 19th century, the golden age of the tall ships, and the 20th century, the era that will someday be considered the golden age of the sailing yacht. The true strength of the collection is in Coote’s skill at including passages from books that are little read today, some of which are out of print. Captain Coote has obviously spent a lifetime reading books of the sea, and this work is a culmination of that lifetime. His list of sources is an excellent reading list for lovers of sea literature. If there is a weakness that the American reader may find, it is the editor’s preference for things British—the Royal Navy, British sailing ships, and sailing in the British Isles. Coote apologizes for this in the prologue, but since Americans count themselves among the heirs to the British seagoing tradition, and the U.S. Navy has inherited the traditions of the Royal Navy, this is a small criticism of a work so diverse and well put together.
Superintendents of the U.S. Naval Academy, when speaking of naval officers on the faculty, are fond of saying, “There’s nothing like a good sea story to liven up a dull class.” W.W. Norton has livened up its line of textbook anthologies considerably with this book and whether you have seen the graybeards of the southern ocean personally or if you only enjoy the sea vicariously, this book is good reading for lovers of the sea and its stories. Coote quotes J.M. Synge on the first page of the prologue: “A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, for he’ll be going out on a day when he shouldn’t. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drownded now and again.” If you count yourself among those who are afraid of the sea and enjoy being “drownded now and again,” read this book.
Lieutenant Hastings currently serves as weapons officer on the precommissioning unit Chosin (CG-65). He has taught English at Purdue and the U.S. Naval Academy. His article, “Sea Stories,” won the first prize in the 1988 Vincent Astor Memorial Leadership Essay Contest.
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Guardians of the Arsenal: The Politics of Nuclear Strategy
Janne E. Nolan. New York: Basic Books, 1989, 320 pp. Bib. Notes. Ind. $21.95 ($19.75).
Reviewed by Rear Admiral W.J. Holland, Jr., U.S. Navy (Retired)
This book will interest those who watch either politics or national strategic policy, but will entrance those interested in both. Dr. Nolan vividly demonstrates how policy plays second fiddle to the politics. Her insights are often too accurate for comfort.
Dr. Nolan is new to the strategic commentary field, and her credulity sometimes is taxing. For example, she seems never to have detected how few military officers outside of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) believe nuclear weapons have any use. Nevertheless, her book is worthy of the attention of any who intend to work in matters of national policy because she addresses three issues of great importance: First, “The . . . failure to define reasonable, practical parameters for deterrence, a set of agreed guidelines against which forces could be measured and choices made.” Second, the inability of the U.S. political process to deal with technical matters. And third, the inability to find a use for nuclear weapons beyond major retaliatory strikes and thereby give these very expensive forces any use except deterrence.
Dr. Nolan surveys the inconsistencies and lack of coherence in national policy on nuclear weapons from Harry Truman through Ronald Reagan, with a side trip into the political labyrinths surrounding the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). But this book is not history or analysis. Dr. Nolan has offered political commentary while providing little background in deterrent theory and showing no concern about technology. She does not mention the fathers of deterrent theory once, and the closest thing to a technical description is how the security device at the entrance of the Space Defense Initiative Office failed to function properly.
Dr. Nolan’s thesis is “that those who have ultimate authority for determining the structure of nuclear forces, beginning with the president, have neglected their constitutional responsibilities.” She shows how the military, the SAC specifically, has filled the vacuum left by civilian leadership. The lack of an effective policy on nuclear forces has left the design and construction of those forces subject to the beliefs of those who operate them. “As long as politicians resist thinking beyond the superficial explanation that nuclear weapons are for ‘deterrence’ undefined,” says Dr. Nolan, “they cede the ability to engage in an effective examination of how deterrence can best be achieved.”
The author is convinced that whoever defines the aim points defines strategic weapon systems. From this rises the book’s one concrete suggestion:
“Move at least some of the functions of JSTPS [Joint Strategic Targeting Staff] to the Pentagon. . . . With the remoteness of the JSTPS from Washington, its integration as part of SAC, and past neglect by civilians of its activities, bomber pilots and air force missile commanders have come to dominate not only these operational matters but also far broader questions, including the number and types of nuclear weapons ‘required’ to fulfill targeting plans.”
Not surprisingly, she finds that “the political sanctity of the triad does not rest on strategic considerations.”
Dr. Nolan’s critique of the Congress in relation to SDI is devastating. “This issue really brought out the worst tendencies in Congress: its high political profile and amorphous objectives were easy targets for florid rhetoric and political opportunism.” And that’s just the beginning! For military officers, she shows how easily those involved in program management can be captured by proponents of political messages.
But SDI is a digression from her real question: How much deterrence is enough? She does not propose an answer but demonstrates how cultural biases, political ineptness, and technological ignorance have prevented the question from being addressed. Henry Kissinger, the chief proponent of using small numbers of nuclear weapons in “useful” options, was unable to turn his academic ideas into real plans when he had the power to do so. “The directives from Kissinger—the ‘criteria’ for limited options to which he still refers proudly—• were completely vague. . . . And it was not clear what the payoff would be.” In the end, Dr. Nolan found, “SAC had simply adapted vague policy directives to fit its abiding interest in a large option for prompt launch.”
Although attempts to find some useful purpose for the strategic forces in which so much has been invested have foundered repeatedly, “ . . . nuclear forces nonetheless remain explicitly valued in the centers of government as the cornerstone of security.” Regardless of the changes in the governments of the Soviet Union, China, or other major powers, nuclear systems will probably remain so valued for the rest of this century.
Unfortunately the book is marred by its sensationalist tone and poor standards of accuracy. Characterizations of people and organizations are often arrogant, and usually harshly judgmental. For many of the more outrageous tidbits, the author cites as her source, “Interview with a Pentagon official” or “Former NSC staffer.” Descriptions drawn from the few identified sources whom this reviewer knows personally seem to be inflated in importance. These two characteristics make one suspicious of the accuracy of other allegations made by those unidentified—did they really know what Dr. Nolan indicates they did? The reader needs to overcome irritation at these defects because some great commentary is mixed in with what occasionally seems to be just gossip.
Admiral Holland served most of his 32 years of active-duty service in submarines. As a flag officer, he served in the National Military Command Center and as Director of Strategic and Theater Nuclear Warfare in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations.
Books of Interest
By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
rhe Atlantic Turkey Shoot: U-Boats off •he Outer Banks in World War II
James T. Cheatham. Greenville. NC: Williams & Simpson, 1990. 61 pp. Photos. Maps. Append. Notes. $9.95 paper.
Few Americans realize the extent of German U-boat activity along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard early in World War 11. This brief but informative book looks at this aspect oi the war through the eyes of coastal residents in North Carolina whose lives were directly affected.
ffi The Atlantic War Remembered
John T. Mason. Jr., editor. Annapolis. MD: Naval Institute Press, 1990. 380 pp. Photos. Ind. $29.95 ($23.96).
Like its companion volume, The Pacific War Remembered (Naval Institute Press, 1986), •his collection of oral histories brings World
War II to life through the words of those who Were there. Twenty-eight firsthand accounts •ake the reader to the beaches of North African and Normandy, to the storm-plagued and U-boat-infested convoy waters of the North Atlantic, and to the Big Three conference at Yalta. The book also follows wartime recruiting for the WAVES, the early days of radar, •he cleaning up of racketeering in the U.S. aircraft industry, and battling bedbugs in Admiral William D. Leahy’s quarters; and looks over Winston Churchill’s shoulder as he makes preinvasion plans for Overlord.
Fighting Words: From War, Rebellion, and Other Combative Capers
Christine Ammer. New York: Dell, 1989. 302 pp. lllus. Ind. $5.95 paper.
Many words and phrases used in everyday English have their roots in military operations and traditions. This entertaining and informative collection of 750 such words and phrases includes some of the more obvious—such as the "Mae West jacket”—and some of the more obscure—“free lance” and “caddie,” for example. Those of us who did not know that the oft-heard “chauvinism" originated from the devotion of one of Napoleon's soldiers, or thought we knew of Civil War General Joseph Hooker's contribution to the English language may find this book worthwhile.
The First Golden Age of Rocketry
Frank H. Winter. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990. 340 pp. Photos. Illus.
Figs. Append. Notes. Bib. Ind. $29.95 ($26.95).
Whether transporting astronauts to the moon or delivering multimegaton warheads to hostile territory, today’s missiles and rockets owe their existence to the pioneering technology of Englishmen William Congreve and William Hale. This book traces the development of the gunpowder rocket from its origins in the Far East to the momentous developments during the Industrial Revolution; it is a fascinating work.
The Gulf
David Poyer. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1990. 464 pp. $19.95 ($17.95).
This novel, by a Naval Academy alumnus and author of the successful The Med. begins with the sinking of an U.S. destroyer by an Iranian missile and accelerates into what Stephen Coonts, author of Flight of the Intruder (Naval Institute Press, 1986), calls “the best military adventure writing to come along in years."
Knowing the Ropes: A Sailor’s Guide to Selecting, Rigging, and Handling Lines Aboard
Roger C. Taylor. Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing, 1989. 146 pp. lllus. Append. Gloss. Ind. $17.95 ($16.15) paper.
Clear, easy-to-follow illustrations and explanatory text describe the techniques for handling lines on a modern sailboat. Included are the necessary knots, handling heavy weights, going aloft, dealing with safety gear, and
many other skills to help convert the landlubber to a functional sailor.
Lucius I). Clay: An American Lift-
Jean Edward Smith. New York: Henry Holt, 1990. 836 pp. Photos. Append. Notes. Bib. Ind. $29.95 ($26.95).
Few Americans have ever heard of Lucius Clay. Yet General Clay "ruled" occupied West Germany, much as General Douglas MacArthur oversaw Japan. He not only faced the challenges of building a democracy in a formerly totalitarian state and of revitalizing a crippled economy, but had to grapple with the growing challenges of the early Cold War. This biography recounts the life of this forgotten figure in U.S. history—who also played vital roles in Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and in World War 11, and whose grave is marked by a footstone placed there by the citizens of Berlin which reads, "We thank the defender of our freedom."
Nuclear Arguments: Understanding The Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates
Lynn Eden and Steven E. Miller, editors. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1989. 338 pp.
Tables. Append. Notes. Ind. $49.95 ($44.95) paper.
The inclusion of an IBM-compatible computer software disk enhances this worthwhile collection of essays by experts in the field of arms control. The disk—available in 5'/i-inch or 31/2-inch—contains a program that familiarizes users with the performance capabilities of current world nuclear forces and provides an interactive glimpse into the world of nuclear war planning.
Strategic Atlas: A Comparative Geopolitics of the World’s Powers
Gerard Chaliand and Jean-Pierre Rageau. New York: Harper & Row. 1990. 224 pp. Maps.
Charts. Append. $29.95 ($26.95) hardcover,
$17.95 ($16.95) paper.
From the distribution of Sunni vs. Shiite Muslims in the Middle East to navigation routes in the Arctic, this is an invaluable reference work for those interested in the military, population, natural resource, ethnic, climatic, religious, and many other factors that contribute to the world’s strategic picture. The color maps arc- striking, the cartographic projections unusual, and the statistics up to date—making this book useful to both office-holding geopoliticians and to us average citizens who seek background information to the evening news.
Book Order Service
USNI Members: Proceedings offers the books in the review sections at a discount as a benefit to Naval Institute members. (Prices enclosed by parentheses indicate the member price.) Members may also order most books of other publishers through customer service at a 10% discount off the list price. (Please note your membership number when ordering books.) —.
Non-members: Books marked [AJ arc the Naval Institute Press selections that may be purchased through customer service by nonmembers at list price.
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The Times Atlas and Encyclopaedia of the Sea
Alastair Couper, editor. London: Times Books Limited, 1989. 272 pp. Photos. Illus. Maps.
Charts. Append. Gloss. Bib. Ind. $65.00 ($58.50).
Formerly The Times Atlas of the Oceans, this new edition covers the many aspects of the ocean environment including natural resources, the ocean-atmospheric system, life in the depths, and use of the sea by merchant shipping and naval forces. This large reference book is far more than a coffee-table adornment. Famous ocean explorer Jacques Cousteau calls this winner of the American Library Association’s Award for the Finest Reference Book of the Year “an invaluable working tool for all involved in marine matters.”
YVargaming in History (Series)
Various authors. New York: Sterling Publishing, 1990. Approx. 100 pp. Photos. Illus. Maps.
Tables. Append. Bib. Ind. $7.95 ($7.15) each, paper.
This series of books offers expert advice and helpful hints to wargamers. Each of the books focuses upon a particular military campaign— such as the Second Anglo-Boer War, the battle of Waterloo, and the U.S. Civil War—and provides data on weapons, tactics, unit organizations, and other information useful in wargaming.
Other Titles of Interest____
The Air Campaign: Planning for Combat
Col. John A. Warden III, USAF. Washington, DC: Pergamon Brassey’s, 1989. 161 pp. Photos. Tables. Notes. Bib. Ind. $18.95 ($17.05).
The Defeat of Che Guevara: Military Response to Guerrilla Challenge in Bolivia
Gary Prado Salmon. John Deredita, translator. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. 288 pp. Photos. Illus. Maps. Tables. Append. Ind. $45.00 ($40.50).
Every Spy a Prince: The Complete History of Israel’s Intelligence Community
Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1990. 466 pp. Photos. Notes. Bib. Ind. $22.95 ($20.65).
Prisoners of War? Nation-States in the Modern Era
Charles S. Gochman and Alan Ned Sabrosky, editors. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1990. 336 pp. Tables. Figs. Notes. Ind- $49.00 ($44.10).
Recovering from the War: A Woman’s Guide to Helping Your Vietnam Vet,
Your Family, and Yourself
Patience H. C. Mason. New York: Viking- 1990. 444 pp. Append. Bib. Ind. $22.95 ($20.65).
The Road to War: The Origins of World War II
Richard Overy and Andrew Wheatcroft. New York: Random House, 1990. 364 pp. Photos. Illus. Maps. Append. Notes. Bib. Ind. $24.95 ($22.45).
Strategic Air Command: People, Aircraft and Missiles: Second Edition
Norman Polmar and Timothy Laur, editors. Baltimore, MD: Nautical and Aviation Publishing Co., 1990. 326 pp. Photos. Illus. Tables. Figs. Gloss. $19.95 ($17.95).
Torpedo Squadron Four: A Cockpit View of World War II
Gerald W. Thomas. Las Cruces, NM: The Rio Grande Historical Collections, New Mexico State University, 1990. 249 pp. Photos. Illus. Maps. Key. Notes. Ind. $25.00.
United States Overseas Basing: An Anatomy of the Dilemma
James R. Blaker. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1990. 197 pp. Maps. Tables. Figs. Append. Bib. Ind. $39.95 ($35.95).
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