Flagship Hood
Alan Coles and Ted Briggs. London: Robert Hale, 1985. 269 pp. Ind. $16.97 ($15.27).
Reviewed by Captain John O. Coote, Royal Navy (Retired)
In September 1922, Brazil celebrated its independence with an assembly of warships from many nations in Rio de Janeiro. The festivities included a mini- Olympic Games between the crews. At the end, everything hinged on the final bout in the boxing match. The British champion, a stoker petty officer from the battlecruiser Hood, was the clear favorite to beat his American opponent from the USS Maryland (BB-46), for he was not only the unbeaten Royal Navy champion but also held the national amateur title.
More than 4,000 yelling partisan sailors in the stadium watched as the British boxer walked toward his opponent to touch gloves before the fight began in earnest. Without any regard to convention (or the Marquis of Queensberry rules), the Yankee summarily dispatched his unsuspecting adversary with a haymaker that knocked out the pride of the British Beet. A reputation for invincibility was thus shattered in an instant—by a sucker punch.
The analogy between this event and the awful moment nearly 20 years later when the Hood was wiped out during her only hostile encounter with an enemy capital ship is apt. Throughout the interwar years, the world’s longest, smartest, and most graceful warship symbolized Britain’s faith in its naval supremacy “to maintain intact for the good of mankind the far-flung Empire.” Unexpectedly, these words were from a French newspaper reporting her goodwill visit to Quebec, Canada, in 1924.
Yet from the day of her launching just before the end of the Great War, the certainty of her dreadful end had been designed into her. Her glass jaw was that her protective deck armor was too thin to prevent plunging shells from penetrating her cordite rooms. The protection had been sacrificed to give her the 32-knot speed specified for the battlecruiser squadron. In the event of a fire in the magazine, warships all had trunking to let explosive gases escape. But the Hood went to sea without any. The Admiralty ruled that “enemy shells are meant to remain outside British magazines.”
Before sailing on her trials, the Hood's designers knew that she needed at least another 1,500 tons of lateral armor, but there Was nothing left to sacrifice by way of compensation. So she went about her business of showing the Hag around the seven seas, hosting receptions and dances under ceremonial striped awnings on her holy-stoned quarterdeck, the size of a parade ground.
Many knew that the lessons of Jutland, where three of Vice Admiral Sir David Beatty’s battlecruisers had been blown out of the water, had not been fully acted upon. The Hood had the sleek, fast lines of a revolutionary battlecruiser, but was in reality an inadequately armored battleship.
One person who was well aware of this fatal flaw was Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, commanding the battlecruiser squadron at Scapa Flow in early 1941 Holland was ordered to intercept the 52,000-ton German battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen before they could break out of the Denmark Straits and savage North Atlantic convoys. He had with him the Hood and the 14-inch gun battleship Prince of Wales, straight out of her builder’s yard with contractors’ men still on board. On making visual contact at a range of 17 miles, he did not wait to concentrate his other forces (two shadowing cruisers and three destroyers) but turned to close the range, thus blanking off half his main armament and giving the enemy gun superiority. Holland was determined to reduce the risk of a high plunging broadside.
Seven minutes later, all but three of the Hood's company of 1,421 were dead, her grave marked only by a pyre of black smoke. Miraculously, destroyers closed from 60 miles away and found the three survivors: an 18-year-old midshipman, a 21-year-old seaman, and young Ted Briggs, just promoted to ordinary signalman on his eighteenth birthday.
This gripping book, which has journalist Alan Coles as its co-author, is much more than the story of a starry-eyed lad achieving his life’s ambition on being drafted to Britain’s mightiest man-of-war as his first ship. It paints a picture of the fleet’s training and leisure activities between the wars that should have alerted the nation at the time that the Royal Navy was not in good shape for World War II. The navy’s morale was dented by the mutiny at Invergordon in which, unbelievably, the Hood's hand-picked crew played a leading role. A needless collision during maneuvers with another battlecruiser, the Renown, led to the courts- martial of the admiral and both captains amid a blaze of publicity and recrimination. When war finally came, the Hood led Force H on the ignominious task of destroying the French fleet at Oran, killing many old friends made during comparatively recent peacetime exchange visits.
The first half of this admirably researched and documented book, appropriately subtitled "The Frightener,” is by Alan Coles. The wartime story is provided by Briggs under the heading of “The Frightened.” The epitaph came from Beatty’s old chief of staff. Admiral Chatfield, who wrote in a letter to The Times of London published uncensored within a week of the catastrophe:
“Hood was destroyed because she had to fight a ship 22 years more modem than herself. This was not the fault of the British seamen ... but the direct responsibility of those who opposed the rebuilding of our battle fleet until 1937.”
Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers
Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May. New York: The Free Press, A Division of Macmillan, Inc., 1986. 329 pp. Bib. Ind. $19.18 ($17.26).
Reviewed by Richard A. Best, Jr.
The U. S. Navy is steeped in history. As the former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral James Watkins, wrote in his contribution to the Naval Institute’s supplement to the January 1986 Proceedings, The Maritime Strategy:
“Our professional ethic, standards, and codes of behavior are the legacy of 200 years of naval tradition. We depend on this legacy to provide us perspective, help us through difficult periods, and bind together the community of seagoing men and women.”
Today’s Navy is built on historical experience—lessons learned resulting in new ships, aircraft, tactics, and training. Every senior naval officer is a product of this inescapable tradition; every major decision, however innovative, is tempered by it.
In other parts of our government, it ain’t necessarily so. Political appointees frequently come into office having little background in the history of their agency and/or the origins of various crises they have to face. Richard Neustadt and Ernest May, eminent historians at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, have written an intelligent and instructive guide for these folks, "those who govern—or hope to do so.”
The authors relate horror stories that they attribute to the failure to weigh, or even seek out, pertinent historical background. These include: the Bay of Pigs fiasco; the Ford Administration’s ill- starred swine flu innoculation program; the Carter Administration’s first futile attempt to negotiate deep cuts in strategic weapons; and the subsequent derailing of SALT II following the mid-1979 discovery of a “new” Soviet combat brigade in Cuba, which the intelligence community had first detected in the 1960s, but later had forgotten.
In this book, which grew out of their innovative course at the Kennedy School, Neustadt and May prescribe useful rules of thumb for decision makers facing crises. Responsible officials should analyze the backgrounds of crises before they rush to lay out options for action. The authors suggest a methodology for spelling out what is known, what is unknown, and what is being presumed, and urge caution in applying analogies, which can be simultaneously seductive and misleading. They also recommend that decision makers should assess the backgrounds of other players in the crisis, and know how certain agencies are structured, why they were created in the first place, and the inevitable institutional biases. Examples are taken from the Central Intelligence Agency that bear out one of the great truisms of government life that “where you stand depends on where you sit.”
Neustadt and May modestly acknowledge that they offer no paneceas; “. . . our hopes have to do with margins: a little sharper sense of purpose here, a little clearer sense of danger there.” Essentially, they concede, they are arguing for better staff work. In view of the disasters that have been encountered in such efforts as the failed Iranian hostage rescue mission and the ill-fated Beirut peacekeeping mission, this is not an effort to be casually shrugged. So often in the political and bureaucratic tugs-of-war that drive decision-making, little thought is given to compiling relevant historical antecedents. A driving, “can do” attitude may only be a cover for wishful thinking. Sound historical analysis, the authors argue, will inform judgment and warn against faulty assumptions. It will not, of course, preclude bad choices and resultant disaster, but it i ay improve the odds.
Navy decision makers have a major advantage over the inexperienced appointees in other parts of government. They know their service; they possess perforce extensive historical background regarding the Navy’s organization and capabilities. They will likely understand our nation’s maritime strategy and the ways in which the Navy can support the fundamental objectives of national policy, which have been in place since the late 1940s. They will also know what cannot be done.
There is, nonetheless, much that naval officials can learn from this book in dealing with limited crises. As Admiral Watkins noted in The Maritime Strategy, “Between 1946 and 1982, in some 250 instances of employment of American military forces, naval forces constituted the principal element of our response in about 80% of the crises.” In other cases, naval forces played important supporting roles. There are many lessons to be learned from careful “case studies” of these past crises. The Neustadt/May criteria can help decision makers sort out the known, unknown, and presumed in future contingencies. Effective staff work can also identify the key events that led to the crisis at hand and help prepare a response, based on likenesses and differences with previous incidents. In dealing with the Soviets, our Navy’s decision makers must contribute a careful assessment of Soviet naval policy—and the men who implement it, as well.
Civilian officials, on occasion, like to move carriers around and send ships, sailors, and Marines to show the flag and establish a presence. They look for “surgical strikes” to achieve certain missions without, they hope, risking wider hostilities. These decision makers deserve solid advice, informed by knowledge of historical experience, of the likelihood that such options will achieve their goals and at what costs. The Navy is in the best position to offer such advice; Neustadt and May provide some suggestions to make sure it is well founded and well received.
Atlas of Maritime History
Richard Natkiel and Antony Preston. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1986. 256 pp. Photos. Maps. Ind. $29.95 ($26.95).
Reviewed by Robert L. Scheina
Few books merit the accolades that should be bestowed upon the Atlas of Maritime History by Richard Natkiel and Antony Preston. For people who rapidly brush through the stream of coffee-table picture books that flow from presses today, where the maps are borrowed and the text is tired, this worthwhile addition to naval literature will give good reason to sit back, book in hand, and have a second cup.
The strength of this work lies in its artful weave of strategy, tactics, explorations, economics, technology, and social history. The strategic concerns of the Athenian-Spartan struggle in the ancient world, balanced against the tactical events of that day, reappear in the fabric of the more modem Napoleonic Wars. The impact of technology upon maritime history, including the use of Greek fire by the Byzantine Empire, the adoption of special horse transports by the Normans in medieval times, and the significance of cannon recoil during the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, is masterfully detailed throughout. The authors track the social impact of the Norman conquest on the maritime evolution of Great Britain and the implications of the slave trade upon both African and American history. Further, they touch on the economic influences that shaped maritime history, such as the rise and fall of the Hanseatic League and the evolution of the Italian city states.
Covering the maritime history of the world from antiquity through the 1980s— especially in a 256-page text—is an ambitious undertaking. Yet this is a well- balanced book without undue emphasis on any time period or nation. The major danger for this type of book is over simplification, and this is almost always successfully avoided.
The authors should have looked more closely at the decline of whaling in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, however, and how technological changes, the successful refining of petroleum, and the invention of spring steel influenced this industry. Also, the same strong social interpretation that added perspective on the slave trade was not carried through on the chapter on the Opium Wars and the China trade. And the authors’ discussion on current Antarctic Treaty claims is overly simplified.
Obviously, readers drawing from their own respective parochial viewpoints will likely find some aspect of history that was missed by the authors. And yet, one event, the late nineteenth century War of the Pacific, fought principally between Chile and Peru, particularly warranted inclusion because it was primarily decided at sea and in the end reshaped the power politics of the West Coast of South America.
If a strong text is an inadequate reason to buy an atlas, the quality of the maps should prove convincing. The book is rich with two color, screened maps that are both accurate and easily understood^ even this reviewer can determine what is water and what is land at a mere glance, a feature too often missing in books today.
Steady as She Goes: A History of the Compass Department of the Admiralty
Cdr. A. E. Fanning, Royal Navy (Ret.). London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office (HMSO) Books, 1986. (Distributed in North America by Beman Associates, Lanham, MD.) 462 pp. Ulus. Append. Bib. Ind. $48.50 ($43.65).
Reviewed by John H. Beattie
This first history of the Admiralty Compass Observatory (ACO) reminds us well that it wasn’t always so easy for mariners to find their way over the horizon—or for that matter, over the next wave on a stormy night. Founded at the instigation of Captain (later Rear Admiral) Sir Francis Beaufort, Hydrographer to the Admiralty, in 1842, the ACO has grown from simple beginnings to being responsible “for everything that matters in navigation equipment for the Royal Navy.” This is a semiofficial professional study of the research and development of ancient and modern compasses— and much else besides—in the third- oldest U. K. Government Scientific Establishment, now at a “nonmagnetic” site at Slough near Heathrow London Airport.
The author. Commander A. E. “Tony” Fanning, spent 26 years in naval uniform and, after retiring in 1958, was the deputy director and then senior naval officer of the ACO from 1962 to 1978. He was closely involved in the expansion that took place there with the advent of the Polaris projects and the introduction of inertial and satellite navigation in the Royal Navy.
The book addresses marine, aviation. and land navigation and instrumentation covering compasses of all types, ships inertial navigation systems (SINS), logs, modem sextants, radionavigation receivers, and plotting tables. It is set against the interesting background of naval and some merchant naval and aviation history, and gives an entertaining account of the personalities involved. Historians will find it a marvelous reference book spotted with colorful anecdotes and stories of William Bligh, James Cook, J. A. Fisher, Robert Fitzroy, and Matthew Flinders and Sir William Thomson—and the resounding influence they each had in their time. For those at sea with time on their hands, the book is full of lessons and principles, most of which continue to be relevant.
Fanning devotes his first six chapters to the development of magnetic compasses and binnacles and the distortions that arose from the use of iron in shipbuilding. Had the “floating compass” designed by E. S. Ritchie of Boston in 1860 been accepted by the Royal Navy, Britain might not have found itself lagging behind U. S. development over the next four decades.
The early development of the gyrocompass and the pioneering efforts by Elmer Sperry in the United States and Dr. Herman Anschutz-Kaempfe in Germany are also covered. Before 1914, the gyrocompass was seen by naval officers mainly as a complicated super gadget and a stable reference for gunnery. However, submariners took an immediate interest in it for navigation and were given top priority when the units were fitted in Royal Navy ships in World War 1. In the surface community, the battlecruiser Tiger had eight gyro repeaters by 1914, a figure which apparently rose to 240 when the last British battleship Vanguard was fitted 30 years later.
The interwar years are dominated by the up and down story of the legal battle between the Sperry and S. G. Brown companies over patent infringement and the frailty of a few Admiralty officials at that time. The cost of legal redress and the difficulties endured by the participants are important lessons.
Fanning’s chapter on World War II cites a few examples of U. S. material that the Royal Navy found inadequate and had removed or modified from lend- lease ships and aircraft. However, over the 140 years covered on balance, the U. S. Navy emerges with a sound record, particularly since World War II and its development of SINS.
Steady as She Goes is a handsome book that is a companion volume to Seek and Strike: Sonar, Antisubmarine Warfare and the Royal Navy 1914-54 (Bernan Associates, 1984) and the past work of the U. K. Underwater Detection Establishment and the Admiralty Underwater Weapons Establishment (see review, July 1985 Proceedings, p. 117). It is hoped that a trilogy will be completed by a third volume on radar and the past work of U. K. naval surface electronics and weapons establishments.