War in Korea, 1950-1953
D. M. Giangreco. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1990. 332 pp. Photos. Maps. Bib. $40.00.
Korean War Almanac
Harry G. Summers, Jr. New York, NY: Facts on File, 1990, 330 pp. Photos. Maps. Tables. Bib. Ind. $24.95
Reviewed by Colonel Wendell N. Vest, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Both of these books refer to the Korean War as “the forgotten war,” but the term might not be appropriate during this 40th anniversary. A spate of recently published books retell the story of that conflict, particularly the whys and wherefores of U.S. involvement, and reflect upon the effect of that war on U.S polities since. These two books add to this Hurry of accounts, using slightly different approaches. They are interesting, but not unique.
War in Korea might be more aptly tailed “The Korean War in Pictures.” It Has a text, but this is used simply to introduce the phases of the war that are then shown in photographs. More than 500 black-and-white photographs depict events in Korea, beginning with the arrival of the U.S. occupation force (and, incidentally, the Soviet occupation force after Japan’s surrender in 1945) and ending with the armed truce in 1953. In between, the photographs tell the story of events that led to war and show who fought the war and how. The pictures remind the reader that the war occurred in an extremely rugged and primitive county, in sometimes severe weather, and that it was fought by other allies as well as Americans and Koreans. Sections focus on specifics, such as the air war and foe war at sea, as well as the use of armor in the war, how helicopters were used, etc. The pictures are well selected. Some are very familiar; many are new.
Two photographs represent the unique character of the war particularly well. Once shows the first U.S. troops to be committed to the ground war arriving at Taejon, Korea, by train on 2 July 1950. A dose look at this picture gives the reader a feel for the unreadiness and softness of hoops coming from the easy life of occupation duty in Japan. The troops in this picture have little knowledge of the bitter fighting in store for them, and it is probably just as well. The second photograph is that of General Matthew Ridgway just after his arrival in Kimpo airport on 27 December 1950. The general is there to take command of the Eighth Army after his predecessor’s death. The Eighth Army is retreating before massive Chinese force, which severely mauled some Eighth Army forces in North Korea just weeks before. General Douglas MacArthur has told Washington that unless massive reinforcements are sent immediately and his air forces are permitted to strike bases in China, the Eighth Army, as well as other forces in Korea, would face disaster. General Ridgway looks unprepared and almost comical. He lacks proper cold-weather clothing, having no gloves and the wrong hat. The comparison to the bundled-up colonel from Eighth Army staff is striking. In spite of his appearance, within a month Ridgway reversed the situation almost singlehandedly.
The Korean War Almanac is also misnamed. “Almanac” is defined as an annual publication containing a variety of information, or a calendar. “Encyclopedia” is a more precise description of the type of book that Colonel Summers has produced: “a work that . . . treats comprehensively a particular branch of knowledge in articles arranged alphabetically.” Colonel Summers has compiled and presented alphabetically a great deal of information about the Korean War— military terminology, organization, leadership, and weapons, just to name a few. He has included a chronology of events in the war, beginning with the attack on the Republic of Korea by the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea on 25 June 1950, and ending with the exchange of prisoners of war during Operation Big Switch in August 1953. Most of the war’s important events are covered (as are some not so important ones, such as the promotion of Corporal Harry G. Summers to sergeant on 11 November 1950).
The book covers a wide variety of information useful to anyone unfamiliar with military terminology and the general trend of events in the Korean War. Colonel Summers has flavored some of the information with his personal view, particularly in his assessment of some of the personalities involved in the war. The extensive bibliography, as well as his recommendations for further reading on almost every article, are excellent.
There are some factual errors, but for the most part the information is well researched and presented, though Summers does misspell the first name of Marine Commandant Lemuel C. Shepherd, Jr., on several occasions. Another area of writing, or perhaps editing, annoyed me. First Summers carefully informs the reader, in the article entitled “Army,” how military organizations are designated—Army is spelled out, as in Eighth Army; a Corps is designated by a Roman numeral, i.e., X Corps; and divisions, regiments, and battalions are designated by Arabic numerals, i.e., 1st Marine Division, 2d Infantry Division, 5th Marine Regiment, 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment, etc. But then he proceeds to spell out division designators as if they were armies—i.e.. First Marine Division, Second Infantry Division, etc.
In spite of these minor criticisms. Colonel Summers has compiled a lot of useful information. The four articles on strategy are especially well written and thoughtfully presented. Most uninformed readers tend to think that the Korean War was “lost” because “victory” was not achieved. But “victory” in the case of Korea is hard to define, and even harder to achieve. Summers provides the reader with an excellent analysis of the shifts in U.S. and United Nations objectives during the course of the war, brought about by a misunderstanding of the solidarity in the communist camp and by a fear that an expanding war might get out of hand.
The policy of a limited war with limited objectives fit into the overall strategy of containment and, though contrary to historic U.S. view of how wars are fought, denied the aggressor his goal and returned the status quo ante. This situation has survived 38 years and the Republic of Korea thrives today. The idea of a limited war has its detractors even today, but the real purpose of any war is to achieve some political goal, not necessarily the total destruction of the enemy. Advocates of destruction win out in setting goals only when the political aims are not well defined.
Both of these books help in removing the word “forgotten” as an adjective for the Korean War, and provide useful adjuncts to any Korean War library.
Fatal Voyage: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis
Dan Kurzman. New York: Atheneum, 1990. 344 pp. Photos. Maps. Append. Notes. Bib. Ind. $19.95 ($17.95).
Reviewed by First Officer Robert Guttman, U.S. Merchant Marine
When Quint, the fisherman in Peter Benchley’s novel Jaws (Doubleday, 1974), is questioned about his obsessive hatred of sharks, he explains that he had been a crewman on board the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) when she was sunk by a submarine, and had spent five days in the Pacific Ocean watching sharks devour his shipmates one by one. Jaws is, of course, a work of fiction, but the loss of the Indianapolis with 880 of her crew of 1,196 men just before the end of World War II is a harrowing reality. The chain of events that led the ship to her doom, the ordeal of the survivors, and the unique and controversial trial that followed form the subject of this book.
On 29 July 1945, the Indianapolis was steaming from Guam to Leyte, where she was scheduled to become the flagship of the U.S. Fifth Fleet. Although she was unescorted, her captain and crew saw little reason for apprehension. They had just completed a record-breaking passage across the Pacific to deliver a secret weapon to the island of Tinian that, they had been told, could quickly end the war. Some of them would later learn that they had delivered the first of the only two atomic bombs ever to be used in war.
In order to arrive in daylight. Captain Charles R. McVay III had reduced speed to 17 knots. The Indianapolis was not steering a zigzag course to foil submarine attack because the captain had been assured by the Commander in Chief Pacific staff officers, from whom he had received his movement orders, that there was no submarine activity along his route. (In fact, no fewer than four Japanese submarines were known by naval intelligence to be operating in that part of the Pacific, but that information was classified “ultra-secret” and Captain McVaV was never informed.)
Shortly after midnight on 30 July, Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto of the Japanese submarine I-58 could hardly believe his luck when he found himself lined up for a torpedo shot at what he mistakenly identified as a U.S. battleship of the Idaho (BB-42) class. Hashimoto found it hard to believe that a major warship could be steaming all by herself; escort vessels had to be nearby. Therefore, after hearing all three of the torpedoes he launched explode, he dove to avoid the inevitable depth-charge attack.
When no attack materialized, Hashimoto surfaced to finish off his victim to pick up a few survivors to ascertain her identity. To his astonishment, the ship was gone. The I-58 searched the area in vain for survivors and wreckage.
The torpedoes that struck the Indianapolis sliced off 40 feet of her bow, destroyed the forward engine room, and severed all the internal and external communication systems. She sank in less than 15 minutes, taking an estimated 400 men with her. The remainder of the crew was scattered along a mile-long stretch of ocean, because the ship had still been making way even as she was being abandoned. Many were in agony from burns and other injuries, and most were soaked with fuel oil. A few men clung to rafts, but most had only life jackets to support them. Many did not even have life jackets and, when a man died, his life jacket was often removed and passed on to a survivor who lacked one.
Ironically, although nobody received the Indianapolis’s distress message Navy intelligence intercepted Commander Hashimoto’s triumphant message from the I-58. Unfortunately for the crew of the Indianapolis, since no distil messages were received and no large U.S. warship had been reported overdo it was not taken seriously.
There the matter would have rested- but for the sharp eyes of patrol bomber pilot Lieutenant Wilbur C. Gwinn. Spotting an oil slick that he thought to be from a Japanese submarine, he was beginning his bombing run when he noticed that the sea was littered with what looked like “tiny black bumps.” When he closed his bomb bay and turned his plane around for a closer look, Gwinn saw hundreds of men in the water. He had no way of knowing, as he notified his squadron and dropped off what survival gear he had, that they had already been in the water for more than four days. It was not until the following morning, when they were finally rescued, that the Navy learned that the Indianapolis had indeed been sunk.
For most of the 316 survivors, the ordeal was over. For Captain McVay, howler, it was far from over, as he became foe only U.S. Navy officer ever to be court-martialed for losing his ship in combat. He was charged with two counts negligence: failure to steer a zigzag course and failure to order the ship abandoned. The highlight of the dramatic trial was the appearance of Commander Hashimoto, who, in a bizarre twist of events, found himself summoned halfway around the world to testify for the Prosecution at the court-martial of the captain whose ship he had sunk. Captain McVay was exonerated of the second count, but he was convicted of having not Peered a zigzag course—a fact that he never denied.
On the level of a story of survival at sea against impossible odds. Fatal Voyager is difficult to fault. A wealth of official information, much of it previously unreleased, and firsthand accounts complied from as many U.S. and Japanese Reviving crewmen and outside protagonists in the drama as the author was able to interview are skillfully interwoven to Present a new, detailed, and heartbreakingly vivid account of this true tragedy of errors. It ranks with any work of fiction by Nicholas Monsarrat, Alistair MacLean, or C. S. Forester.
In an epilogue, however, author Kurzman finally gets to the ulterior purpose of his book. He is lobbying Congress for a Presidential Unit Citation for the Indianapolis survivors and posthumous reversal of her captain’s conviction. Even reviewing the facts he presents, both remain dubious causes. While there may be some truth to the charge that Captain McVay was the scapegoat of a bureaucracy covering its own negligence, the fact remains that at sea the captain bears full and sole responsibility for his actions, and his negligence cannot be mitigated by pointing the finger at others ashore. Regardless of the lack of warning, Captain McVay had 25 years of experience at sea, four of which were in wartime, and in a time of continuing hostilities should have taken appropriate measures to ensure the safety of his ship. As for the appeal for a unit citation, while one cannot help but sympathize with the crew of the Indianapolis after the ordeal they underwent, theirs was nevertheless little different from that of thousands of other seamen during the war, many of whom were never rescued. Being torpedoed is hardly sufficient to warrant such a citation; if it were, then every vessel sunk would receive one and the award would quickly lose its distinction.
The Battleships
Siegfried Breyer and Gerhard Koop. Edward Force, translator. West Chester, PA: Schiffer Publishers. Ltd., 1989. 160 pp. Photos. Append. $22.95. ($20.65).
Reviewed by David Walsh
This is an outstanding work, another volume in the series “The German Navy At War 1933-45,” first published by Germany’s Pallas Verlag.
The U.S. publishers have accomplished much here, especially in the graphics, reproducing the hundreds of excellent photographs of German cruisers, pocket battleships, and battleships that fill the German edition. Most are crisply detailed and the paper quality uniformly high. Like other books in the series, The Battleships also includes related color illustrations—in this case wartime photos of Germany’s capital ships Bismarck and Tirpitz, flags and standards, paintings, and the like. Meanwhile, charts and appendices trace the large ships’ development from keel-laying to their melancholy fates.
The translation appears mostly competent, if sometimes a bit literal and stilted. In most readers’ minds, the legendary Bismarck was a good deal more than a “floating unit.” Yet given the vast technicalities involved, the text is highly readable and admirably concise. Important construction highlights are laid out, but happily absent are the minutiae of shell-racking or fire-control systems more suited to naval architects.
The authors also address the stifling constraints the Versailles Treaty imposed on Germany and the innovative ways Adolf Hitler turned some of them to his advantage. Most impressively. Germany squeezed near-battleship armament— three turrets of three 11-inch guns—onto much smaller vessels, such as the cruiser Scharnhorst. (Until 1935, Germany was permitted capital ships no larger than 10,000 tons standard displacement, far lighter than those of, say, France. It was also limited to 11-inch batteries versus others’ 15-inchers.)
Moreover, naval engineers perfected weight- and cost-effective electric welding, rigged the heavy cruiser Gneisenau with the flared “Atlantic prow” to increase speed and defeat heavy waves, and accommodated ship-launched reconnaissance planes. Such advances helped in the development of the battleships Bismarck and Tirpiiz when Hitler (too late, Breyer and Koop observe) launched an intensive naval rebuilding campaign in the late 1930s. As it happened, these two warships were Germany’s only full-size battleships in World War 11.
The authors also provide background on the various international and bilateral naval agreements Germany signed in the 1920s and 1930s. In the political sphere, we are reminded that Hitler left the Kriegsmarine (Navy) as the armed forces’ poor relation, keeping his fleets small until 1939 in accordance with the Anglo-German Naval Treaty.
Other Titles of Interest
The Anatomy of Error: Ancient Military Disasters and their Lessons for Modern Strategists
Barry S. Strauss and Josiah Ober. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. 272 pp. Maps. Bib. Ind. $18.95 ($17.05).
On to Westward: The Battles of Saipan and Iwo Jima
Robert Sherrod. Baltimore, MD: The Nautical & Aviation Publishing Co., 1990. 311 pp Maps. Tables. Append.
Pan American’s Ocean Clippers
Barry Taylor. Blue Ridge Summit, PA: Aero. 1991. Photos. Maps. Tables. Gloss. Bib. Ind. 213 pp. $15.95 (14.35) paper.
The Role of Intelligence in Soviet Military Strategy in World War II
David M. Glantz. Novato, CA: Presidio Press. 1990. 262 pp. Maps. Append. Notes. Ind. $27.50 ($24.75).
The Truman Presidency
Michael J. Lacey, editor. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. 458 pp. Notes Ind. $37.50 ($33.75).
The War Time Adventures of an English Sea Puppy
LCdr. Michael Badham, Royal Navy (Ret.)- 47 pp. Photos. $8.95 paper. Order directly from author: Bay Shore Rd., Bath. ME 04530
The Warrior’s Way: England in the Viking Age
Stephen Pollington. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., 1990. 192 pp. Photos. Ulus Gloss. Append. Bib. Ind. $24.95 ($22.45)
The Western Way of War: Infantry Battle in Classical Greece
Victor Davis Hanson. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. 244 pp. Gloss. Bib. Ind $8.95 ($8.05) paper.