Armored Ships: The Ships, Their Settings, and The Ascendancy That They Sustained for 80 Years
Ian Marshall. Charlottesville, VA: Howell Press, 1990. 180 pp. Bib. Illus. Ind. $39.95 ($31.96).
Reviewed by Dr. Malcolm Muir, Jr.
This handsome and unusual volume is neither a systematic nor a detailed operational history of armored ships. Nor is it a design study that focuses on ship characteristics. Indeed, the author never even defines closely the term “armored ship.” But under this vague rubric, Ian Marshall illuminates a variety of interesting vessels from the Kaiser’s light cruiser Emden to the Imperial Japanese behemoth Yamato.
Armored Ships makes no pretense of being a scholarly work in the usual sense of the term. Although Marshall does ground his text in the standard historical works, his documentation is minimal. The reader is thus unable to verify quickly some of the author’s more intriguing assertions, such as his contention that the Vichy Richelieu struck the British Barham with a 15-inch projectile off Dakar in September 1940 at “the remarkable range of nearly 50,000 yards.” If true, this would have been the longest ranged hit ever scored by a battleship rifle.
In some ways, too, Armored Ships is frustratingly unfocused. An illuminating look at big-bore gunnery is counterbalanced by an irrelevant digression on the Zimmermann Telegram. Marshall treats the Whitehead torpedo after tackling the Japanese decision to build the Yamato- class ships.
And a few niggling errors irritate. The plan view of the Warspite is either of the Queen Elizabeth or Valiant during World War II. The 18.1-inch projectiles fired by Yamato did not weigh 50% more than the 16-inch shells of the Iowa (BB-61). The figures were actually 3,200 versus 2,700 pounds. The Tirpitz sank after being hit by six-ton, not 1,200-pound, bombs. And in many cases, Marshall’s paintings are removed by several pages from the text that they illustrate.
But what illustrations! Marshall, who has shown his work widely at such galleries as the Royal Society of Marine Artists in London and the Imperial War Museum, presents the reader with 17 evocative pencil sketches and 58 glorious full- color plates. Some of the compositions are taken from well-known photographs, such as a 1905 view of SMS Preussen in the Kiel Canal or a 1919 image of the New Mexico (BB-40) and Texas (BB-35) in the Pedro Miguel Locks.
Other nautical scenes come from the author’s imagination and research. In either case, Marshall’s art is meticulous for its accuracy of detail in depicting both ships and setting. For example, Marshall shows the new British dreadnoughts Thunderer and Conqueror navigating the tricky Smeaton Channel in front of the Victorian pleasure pier at Plymouth in 1912; in another painting, the cruiser Good Hope docks in Table Bay while flying the flag hoist; “I have a service telegram.” Marshall occasionally fixes harbor views in time by the state of completion of such great bridges as the Golden Gate or the Firth of Forth.
Exactitude of detail aside, most of Marshall’s paintings rise above mere illustration. The author/artist is comfortable with a variety of styles, and his best work is reminiscent of that from the easels of some great modem masters. For example, Dewey’s flagship Olympia (C-6) waits for war in 1898 at Hong Kong in an atmosphere redolent of a Monet. Marshall captures the Placentia Bay rendezvous between HMS Prince of Wales and USS Augusta (CA-31) in August 1941 with the grays of a John Singer Sargent. Marshall portrays HMS Royal Od under fire at Jutland with the spareness of a James A. M. Whistler.
In striking contrast are Marshall’s hard lines and exact details suggestive of a Canaletto in the dramatic rendering of HMS Queen Elizabeth transiting the Suez Canal in early 1941. And Marshall occasionally comes close to that greatest of all marine painters, J. M. W. Turner. 01 particular note in this vein are Marshall s portrayal of UN Mikasa passing under the high-level bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 1902 and his Turneresque depiction of the immense size of HMS Alexandra and Agincourt as they steamed through the Dardanelles in 1878.
In the end, then, Armored Ships is itself rather like an impressionist painting. The author does not pretend to a photographic or encyclopedic view of the great warships; rather, he hopes to capture, through stroke of brush and pencil, their essence. Marshall has reached this goal with consummate skill. Any lover of the sea and of ships will want to own this fine volume. Worth the price by itself is Marshall’s dramatic vista of the German cruisers Scharnhorst and Dresden coaling from the captured four-masted barque Drummuir in the Beagle Channel under the wild coast of the Tierra del Fuego on 2 December 1914, just six days before their destruction off the Falklands.
This People’s Navy: The Making of American Sea Power
Kenneth J. Hagan. New York: The Free Press, 1991. 434 pp. Bib. Illus. Ind. Photos. $27.95 ($22.36).
Reviewed by Lieutenant Colonel Merrill L. Bartlett, U. S. Marine Corps (Retired)
America’s naval heritage still sparks a Persistent passion among readers of history- The number of fine monographs and essays on this subject that appear each year testify to this interest. Most published materials, however, deal with specific events or personalities rather than with recurring themes that embrace the broad spectrum of the subject. Ken Hagan, a history professor and currently the director of the U.S. Naval Academy Museum, seeks to overcome this shortfall with a penetrating, incisive analysis of our Navy’s strategy as it evolved coincident with the unique American character.
Readers expecting yet another dull slog from the American Revolution to the confrontation in the Persian Gulf will be appreciative. Hagan deals with the evolution of policies and strategies, not with ships and captains. The author describes American naval policy until 1898 as Suerre de course (hit and run) and provides sufficient historical examples to support his thesis that such was America’s overriding naval strategy—whether by political design or fiscal necessity. Reginning with the publication of Alfred Thayer Mahan’s theories in 1890, and culminating in the war with Spain in 1898, America’s naval policy became one of guerre d’escadre (large-fleet engagements). The author takes pains to remind us that in 1900, the United States was only one of four powers in the quest for naval supremacy; 45 years later, America stood unchallenged.
The author is both iconoclast and revisionist. Admirers of the venerable Matthew Fontaine Maury may be disconcerted at Hagan’s assertion that the indefatigable reformer’s attacks on the Board of Commissioners were misdirected; defects in that organization came about because of direction—or lack of it—from the President, the Secretary of the Navy, and Congress. Hagan stretches his credibility furthermore by suggesting that Southern opposition to the construction of a fleet—built in the North and manned largely by Northerners— foreshadowed fears of the Union blockade of the South during the Civil War.
The text of This People’s Navy is uncluttered by detail. The author moves swiftly through the panorama of American naval heritage. Readers looking for mention of every engagement and every naval hero—accompanied by maps, charts, and tables—should stick to E. B. Potter’s Sea Power (Naval Institute Press, 1981, second edition) or Paolo E. Coletta’s The American Naval Heritage in Brief (University Press of America, 1980, second edition); for stirring engagements and stupendous illustrations, Nathan Miller’s The U.S. Navy: An Illustrated History (Naval Institute Press, 1977); and for a valuable reference to everything and anything of note with regard to the U.S. Navy, Jack Sweetman’s American Naval History: An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present (Naval Institute Press, 1991, second edition).
One example may suffice. Hagan dismisses the Civil War, correctly, as relatively unimportant in the history of the U.S. Navy—a decision likely to invite criticism from buffs of that ordeal. Most naval historians agree, however, that while the Civil War provided a legacy of naval heroism, it did not contribute to a coherent naval policy for the republic.
As with the authors of other volumes in the publisher’s “History of American Wars Series,” Hagan attempts to show the evolution of the Navy within an institutional framework—albeit buttressed by national concerns and all the while buffeted by the vagaries of international diplomacy. Traditionalists among naval historians will likely argue that This People's Navy contains too much diplomatic history and too little naval history.
In his haste to get at the evolution of policy, however, Hagan sometimes chooses strange incidents to support his conclusions. Citing Captain John “Mad Jack” Percival’s 19th-century adventures in Hawaii in an attempt to mollify critics of wayward seafarers is an odd bit of history to relate, given the brevity of the text. On the other hand. Commodore James Biddle’s mission to East Asia in 1845-46—an important precursor to Commodore Matthew C. Perry’s successful diplomatic triumph in Japan— receives nary a mention.
Hagan’s handling of World War II begs for additional treatment. He mentions the brown shoe vs. black shoe Navy, but offers no conclusions or amplifying information. Like others before him, he scores Admiral William F. Halsey for missing the Battle of Leyte Gulf, one of the few times that Hagan drifts into tactics and battles and away from his superb discussion of strategies and a navy to support them.
Nevertheless, Hagan does convincingly argue a dichotomy with regard to America’s commitment to a two-ocean war: while the U.S. submarine force fought a traditional 19th-century guerre de course, the rest of the Navy was engaged in a 20th-century Mahanian guerre d’escadre. But the success of the submarine in World War II demonstrated that the hit-and-run strategy was still viable in the modem era, despite the bleatings of the Mahanians.
The author’s prose is crisp and characterized by well-chosen phrases, sometimes pungent or outright acerbic. For example, Hagan is sure to precipitate controversy with his assertion that the employment of aircraft carriers in limited wars such as Korea and Vietnam is dangerous, inefficient, and has proven to be largely ineffective.
Whereas the writing and editing of This People’s Navy is meticulous— Chinese names are rendered not only in the traditional Wade-Giles system of transliteration but also in the newly accepted Pin-Yang style, for example—the absence of footnotes or endnotes does not lend itself to serious students of naval history.
Hagan ends his monograph on a particularly discordant and disconcerting note. Two of his seemingly “unnecessary battleships” (Wisconsin [BB-64] and Missouri [BB-63]), redolent of the Reagan era if not the age of Theodore Roosevelt and Mahan, were at this writing busily bombarding Iraqi targets in Kuwait. Yet the Defense Department’s budget for fiscal year 1992 calls for their return to mothballs. New Left historians will find grist for their intellectual mills throughout This People’s Navy, especially as they apply Hagan’s lessons to the confrontation in the Persian Gulf.
Professor Hagan has long been the enfant terrible of American naval history; his reputation for diligent scholarship, astute observation, and keen intellect precedes him. Much of his historical energies have been devoted to criticism of Mahan and Mahanians. But even Hagan cannot help admiring those naval officers who, in the finest tradition of Mahan, have demonstrated that “aggressiveness carried to the point of recklessness is a touchstone of fine naval leadership.” Those who have benefited from Hagan’s teaching and scholarship either appreciate his wry commentaries or are horrified by them. This People’s Navy, while promising to precipitate a fair amount of intellectual flatulence among navalists, will cause a new generation of naval historians to rethink any number of sacred shibboleths.
“A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway 4-6 June 1942
Robert J. Cressman, et al., editors. Missoula, MT: Pictorial Histories Publishing Co., 1990. 226 pp. Append. Bib. Illus. Ind. Photos. $12.95 paper.
Reviewed by Colonel Robert E. Barde, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
Like Gettysburg, the Battle of Midway continues to attract the attention of readers and writers alike. In the nearly 50 years since that epic encounter, practically everyone has seen an article, book, or film on the June 1942 events. This latest work is somewhat different from earlier accounts, however, not so much in factual materials as in the abundance of photographs that are included.
A Glorious Page is the combined work of six contributors, all but one of whom has previously written on the Battle of Midway, at least in part, in his published work. The genesis of this new title lies in a symposium held at the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation in Pensacola, Florida (and cosponsored by the Naval Institute). During the May 1988 meeting, numerous participants, as well as historians and other interested individuals, relived those momentous actions in the mid-Pacific. Included in the assemblage were three former Japanese naval officers, knowledgeable from their side of the battle, although none served on board key ships of the forces involved.
In the past, readers have been able to view portraits of a few of the senior officers involved, as well as the sinking of the carrier Yorktown (CV-5) and the fatally damaged Japanese battle cruiser Mikuma. In this soft-cover history, the authors have included photographs— nearly 300 of them—from both public and private sources. Several were taken from ships in the screens of the two U.S. task forces. Unfortunately, the quality is frequently poor. This is more than offset, however, by the inclusion of more than a dozen photos of the dioramas produced by designer Norman Bel Geddes. They present perhaps the most informative overview of selected parts of the overall battle.
The chronological development of Midway is clearly set forth, starting with the discovery of elements of the Japanese occupation force by Navy patrol planes flying hundreds of miles west of the atoll. Discovery of the carrier attack, or Mobile Force—the Kido Butai, as the authors consistently refer to it—is followed by concise descriptions of the widespread engagement that collectively make up the battle of 4 June. The air attack on Midway Island, the unsuccessful aerial efforts of the island’s defenders, and those of the three carrier-based torpedo squadrons are preliminaries to the dive-bombing attacks from the Enterprise (CV-6) and the Yorktown that in moments set aflame the carriers Akagi, Kaga, and Soryu. A combined use of action reports, official and personal diaries, personal narratives, and interviews recreates those historical moments with dramatic intensity.
So too with the actions that folio"' Hiryu's two attacks on Yorktown. The Yorktown's effort to stay afloat is paired with planes from the American carriers setting aflame the fourth and last carrier of the Kido Butai, the Hiryu. Four Japanese carriers lost in a single day started the turn of the tide in the Pacific.
Although second to the events of 4 June, the authors skillfully recount the unsuccessful American efforts of the following day, the aerial destruction and loss of the Mikuma on 6 June, and finally, the sinking of the Yorktown and the destroyer Hammann (DD-412).
It has been nearly a decade since the last book on the Battle of Midway. Has this new book contributed additional material to our knowledge of the engagement? In a number of ways it has. It includes new, personal accounts by the pilots who attacked the Japanese and others involved in reconnaissance and rescue. It identifies the three men on whom the Japanese committed war crimes, disclosing their fate as well as the information they revealed. From Japanese sources not available to earlier writers, the reader can appreciate more completely the tactical situation confronting the commander of the Kido Butai, and his major subordinates, in the face of losing his primary offensive power.
Unique to A Glorious Page are five appendixes, one of which is of particular value. It endeavors to answer some of the questions about the Battle of Midway that have confounded historians, strategists, and tacticians throughout the years. For example, was the decision to abandon the Yorktown after the second attack a correct one?
In addition to the appendixes, an extensive bibliography likewise adds to the book significantly. A carefully designed spreadsheet, or graphics, would have been equally useful, however, showing the actions of the several American air units, including their numbers and types, as well as the damage inflicted and the aircraft that survived. While this information is contained in the text, the different aircraft, sites, times, and damage inflicted on the enemy are not easy for the initiate to Midway to assimilate.
For anyone interested in World War II history, this book should be on the reading list. It is a step well beyond earlier accounts, even to containing a history of •he early days of the atoll. A more careful editing would have reduced or eliminated the many typographical and syntactical errors, making this latest study on the Battle of Midway even better.
Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War
Correlli Barnett. New York: W. W. Norton &Co., 1991. 1,052 pp. Append. Bib. Ind. Maps. Notes. Photos. $39.95 ($35.95).
Reviewed by Sir James Cable
Correlli Barnett’s comprehensive history of the Royal Navy in World War II is an impressive achievement. He begins with a prologue set in 1918, just after the Armistice: a dramatic account of the German High Seas Fleet steaming between two long lines of British warships toward internment at the British base at Scapa Flow. Then come two chapters that describe how the Royal Navy later shriveled under the peacetime pressures of disarmament, financial stringency, and sheer folly (the abolition of the Fleet Air Arm). When war came in 1939, it burst upon a navy with too few ships and inadequate weapons, a navy ill prepared to defeat a single enemy, but which would soon have three.
Altogether, Barnett devotes 1,000 pages to describing that navy and its operations. His predecessor and only serious rival. Captain S. W. Roskill, needed twice as many for his official history of The War at Sea, which also had far more maps, charts, and tables. Barnett manages to be relatively brief because of his determined concentration on his subject: the Royal Navy. His references to other navies or to the campaigns of army and air force are kept to the minimum needed. This enables him to assemble and display much information that Roskill, writing some 30 years earlier, could not then exploit.
Only in recent years, for instance, have historians been allowed to describe the achievements of British and German cipher breakers. Those admirals thus enabled to read the signals of their opponents enjoyed an important advantage, and Barnett can often throw fresh light on some controversial operation by explaining who knew what and how soon.
Barnett also makes good use of the many books published since Roskill completed the last volume of his history in 1961. The memoirs of participants and scholarly studies of particular battles can sometimes fill a gap in the records or explain what was previously puzzling. As a civilian writing so much later, Barnett can also allow himself greater freedom to criticize than could Roskill, a naval officer producing an official history while many of the principal actors were still alive. For instance, Barnett is much harsher than Roskill in the judgments he passes on Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, the First Sea Lord.
It is worth comparing the differences in their approach to one particularly disputatious episode: the destruction of the Russia-bound convoy PQ 17 in June 1942, after Pound had personally ordered the escort to withdraw and the convoy to scatter. The two authors agree on the sequence of events and in their condemnation of the order (issued because Pound mistakenly believed the German battleship Tirpitz would attack the convoy). But Barnett’s censure is sharper and his narrative (which quotes an eyewitness account by one of Pourid’s staff officers) is much livelier than Roskill’s rather bland version.
As a whole, Barnett’s book is easier to read and some of his narratives— evacuation from Dunkirk in 1940 or naval planning for the invasion of Normandy in 1944—are particularly striking. He is at times a polemical writer but does not always allow himself enough space to justify his heresies. His view, for example, that Britain should have with-
drawn from the Mediterranean in 1940 seems politically unrealistic, even if at the time it enjoyed some naval support.
On another matter, his criticism of Churchill’s repeated and often misguided interference in the detailed conduct of naval operations is nowadays widely echoed, as is his censure of the unsuccessful bomber offensive that deprived the Royal Navy of essential air support. Less predictably, Barnett endorses Churchill’s preference for concentrating British efforts against Japan in Southeast Asia. Barnett deplores the successful insistence of the British Chiefs of Staff, largely for political reasons, on sending to the Pacific a British fleet that the U.S. Navy neither wanted nor needed.
The brief operations of this fleet, with its inadequate aircraft and its hastily improvised fleet train, bring Barnett to the end of his story. This is a conclusion that allows the author to restate his constant theme: the survival of Britain and its share in final victory owed more to the courage and devotion of officers and men than to the often inferior equipment they had to use. This is a good story well told, and the book can be warmly recommended to anyone interested in naval history.
Other Titles of Interest
A Frozen Hell: The Russo-Finnish Winter War of 1939-40
William R. Trotter. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 1991. 301 pp. Ulus. Ind. Maps. Notes. $22.95 ($20.65).
Hegemonic Rivalry: From Thucydides to the Nuclear Age
Richard N. Lebow and Barry S. Strauss, editors. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991.307 pp. Ind. Notes. $34.95 ($31.45) paper.
Hell Divers: US Navy Dive-Bombers at War
John F. Forsyth. Osceola, WI: Motorbooks International Publishers, 1991. 160 pp. Photos. $12.95 ($11.65) paper.
Naval Chronicle 1799-1818: Index to Births, Marriages and Deaths
Norman Hurst. 1989. 158 pp. Append. $15.00 paper. Order directly from the author: 25 Byron Avenue, Coulsdon, Surrey CR5 2JS, United Kingdom.
OSS Special Weapons & Equipment: Spy Devices of WWII
H. Keith Melton. New York: Sterling Publishing Co., Inc., 1991. 128 pp. Append. Bib. Gloss. Illus. Ind. Photos. $14.95 ($13.45).
The Restoration Navy and English Foreign Trade 1674-1688
Sari R. Hornstein. Hants, England: Scolar Press, 1991.311 pp. Append. Bib. Gloss. Ind. Maps. Tables. $78.95.