The Attack on Pearl Harbor: Strategy, Combat Myths, Deceptions
Alan D. Zimm. Philadelphia: Casemate Publishers, 2011. 480 pp. Illus. Maps. $32.95.
Reviewed by John B. Lundstrom
More has been published about the Japanese raid on 7 December 1941 against Pearl Harbor than on any other single event of the Pacific war. The assault on the U.S. Pacific Fleet in its ostensibly secure Hawaiian lair represents the paradigm of the war-opening strategic surprise attack. Rarely, though, in the vast literature, is the event itself treated strictly as a military operation.
That is the objective of Dr. Alan Zimm’s book The Attack on Pearl Harbor. He examines in exhaustive detail the reasons why Japan took such a great gamble and what it expected to gain from it. A retired naval commander and now a research scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Zimm uses modern methods of operational analysis to determine exactly how the Japanese planned and executed the great raid.
In a lucid and highly critical examination of the aerial attack plan and the raid, Zimm follows every torpedo and bomb in determining how the principal planners, Commanders Minoru Genda and Mitsuo Fuchida, allocated their resources, what they intended to accomplish on Oahu, and what really occurred. Zimm concludes that far from “brilliant,” as is commonly accepted, the planning exhibited rigidity and surprising flaws: “It was not state of the art for the period, did not employ all the available tactics and techniques, and failed to anticipate what should have been obvious problems.”
Moreover, execution was not always sound. According to Zimm, the Japanese carrier aviators for the most part were not (at least not yet) the elite fliers as is generally assumed. He stresses that Japanese plane losses would have been much higher, possibly even catastrophic, had U.S. forces received even a short warning. He also asserts that the Pacific Fleet would likely have been better off weathering the enemy raid while at sea, where its antiaircraft fire alone would have inflicted a very heavy toll of the attackers without sustaining commensurate damage in return.
A brief review can scarcely do justice to the many new interpretations Zimm offers in this provocative book. His discussion of such topics as a third strike and whether Pearl’s oil tanks were vulnerable, Fuchida’s plunging reputation, the possible blocking of the sea channel, and the midget subs is very valuable. Where his analysis can be questioned is his understanding of what truly was state of the art for carrier warfare in 1941.
Zimm takes too much for granted with regard to prewar carrier doctrine and tactics, which were not yet that sophisticated. He does not appreciate that no navy other than Japan’s could have even attempted such a comprehensive daylight assault on a well-defended enemy fleet base. None of the other naval powers thought of carriers in terms of more than one or two, whereas Japan employed six. Zimm does not deal with the efficient Japanese integration of air groups from different carriers, far beyond U.S. or British capability at the time. He also disparages the benefit of Japanese combat experience in China, where air doctrine and tactics had been tested.
Nor does Zimm say much about carrier operations in the crucial first year of the war that truly illustrate that “state of the art” in December 1941. He ignores the learning curve that the early raids and battles provided to the U.S. Navy.
Some of his assertions are wrong. He states, for example, that plane losses in the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea kept the Shokaku and Zuikaku “out of the war for approximately a year,” whereas they fought in two battles for Guadalcanal. He specifically cites the bloody and futile 12 November 1942 torpedo attack by 16 (he says 21) Japanese medium bombers against U.S. ships at Guadalcanal as a model of how U.S. ship antiaircraft fire would likely have repulsed the Pearl Harbor raiders had the fleet been at sea.
“There is no reason to believe that the attacking Japanese aircraft would have been any more successful off Oahu than they were off Guadalcanal.” The facts hardly justify that position. Those particular bomber crews scarcely had the skill in torpedo attack of the carrier pilots. Moreover, U.S. ship antiaircraft fire was generally ineffective in the early actions and only improved gradually in the first carrier battles. Zimm also ignores the threat posed by the waiting Japanese subs had the Pacific Fleet rushed to sea just prior to the attack.
Alan Zimm’s book is a worthy, useful analysis of the Pearl Harbor attack. In certain areas, though, its judgments must be tempered by a closer historical examination of subsequent events.
United States Naval Aviation, 1919–1941
E. R. Johnson. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2011. 352 pp. Illus. Bibliog. $45.00.
Reviewed by Hill Goodspeed
In the annals of aviation history, the era between the world wars known as the “Golden Age” was marked by thrilling air races, colorful personalities, and revolutionary aircraft designs. This extended to naval aviation, the period that is the subject of E. R. Johnson’s book United States Naval Aviation, 1919–1941.
The first section sets the stage, providing a brief overview of key events and people that shaped the development of interwar naval aviation, including the Washington Naval Treaty that benefited carrier construction and the tactics that evolved during the period’s fleet problems. While correctly citing the accomplishments of flag officers such as William A. Moffett, Joseph Mason Reeves, and Ernest J. King, Johnson notably leaves out the work of Rear Admiral John H. Towers, chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics in the years 1939–42. He instead cites William F. Halsey, John McCain, and Marc Mitscher, officers whose influence and acclaim were more during World War II than in the peacetime years of development.
The majority of the book focuses on the aircraft that rolled off assembly lines, providing coverage of those produced by such recognized manufacturers as Grumman and Boeing while also detailing aircraft made by the likes of Kinner Airplane and Motor Corporation, whose Navy contracts were small and fleeting. Previous works by such authors as William T. Larkins, Ray Wagner, Gordon Swanborough, and Peter Bowers have provided profiles of interwar aircraft, but Johnson’s work combines the best aspects of previous efforts in one volume.
The book groups aircraft by their missions, which allows readers to chart the technical evolution and capabilities of respective classes. Each story includes summaries of design, development, and usage complemented by performance statistics and three-view drawings. The latter are particularly of interest in that many other works provide these detailed views of only major types of aircraft.
Photographs illustrate each airplane, and although many will be recognizable to students of naval-aviation history, the author has chosen an impressive range of images. A view of an NY-2 trainer taxiing on the waters of Pensacola Bay provides not only an excellent view of the aircraft, but also a look at a Gosport, the device that allowed instructors to communicate with students in open-cockpit aircraft, in action. The shot of the single Great Lakes XSG-1 in flight with its unorthodox cockpit arrangement reveals the trial and error that came with finding the right design to fulfill the mission. If there is any shortcoming in the photographs, it is in the lack of credits to show the repository or collection from which respective images were drawn.
In addition to the American-built service aircraft of the era, the author includes a section on foreign types procured by the U.S. Navy for various purposes, notably flying off makeshift decks of battleships, operations that triggered the development of the aircraft carrier. Another section is devoted to racing aircraft; the speed contests of the interwar years were important in both aircraft and engine development, as well as exposing the public to naval aviation. In addition, a chapter on lighter-than-air craft is particularly beneficial in its breakdown of the early classes of non-rigid airships.
The information on ships of the period addresses all types of vessels with a connection to aircraft operations, from carriers to seaplane-equipped battleships and cruisers. Johnson provides most interesting coverage of the various classes of seaplane tenders that operated with the fleet, detailing both vessels converted for duty supporting flying boats and ships built for the purpose as the number of seaplanes in service grew.
There is nothing groundbreaking in the history presented in United States Naval Aviation, 1919–1941. The book would have benefited from the author’s examination of period issues of the Bureau of Aeronautics Newsletter and oral histories and memoirs of those who served in the interwar years, to provide additional facts and details of the flying characteristics of some of the aircraft. Yet, in its wide-ranging coverage and the inclusion of color plates and a glossary of naval and aeronautical terms, the book is a valuable compilation that tells the story of a pivotal age in naval aviation’s first century.
The Battle of Midway
Craig L. Symonds. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. 464 pp. Illus. Maps. Bibliog. $27.95.
Reviewed by Robert J. Mrazek
The Battle of Midway in June 1942 has been called the most important naval battle ever fought between two great powers. The Japanese thought it would be a walkover, “as easy as twisting a baby’s arm,” according to one of their officers. Their self-assurance was justifiable: The empire was at the pinnacle of its glory. Having already destroyed the last vestiges of European colonial power in the western Pacific, Japanese confidence in their navy, commanders, warships, combat aircraft, and each other was boundless.
For its planned attack on Midway Atoll, Japan had assembled 162 ships, the largest naval force in history to that point. Less than six months after the Pearl Harbor attack, the Americans were able to muster a force of just 24 warships. In spite of these fearful odds, Admiral Chester Nimitz, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, chose to confront the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Throughout his long and distinguished career as a naval historian, Craig L. Symonds, former professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, has written extensively and well about the Civil War, including his well-regarded Lincoln and His Admirals. In The Battle of Midway, Symonds has effectively synthesized the huge mass of information about the Midway battle into a fast-moving, highly readable account filled with nuggets of fascinating biographical material about many of the principals, both American and Japanese.
Symonds embraces all the latest scholarship of distinguished historians such as John B. Lundstrom, Jonathan Parshall, and Anthony Tully, whose dedicated research efforts have led to the rewriting of history as it pertains to key elements of this battle. He uses his early chapters to set the scene for the fight with a valuable template of critical events that took place before it, and the important decisions made by American and Japanese commanders that affected its outcome.
Symonds rightly extends enormous credit for the eventual victory to codebreaker Joseph Rochefort, whose brilliant and intuitive intelligence assessments permitted Admiral Nimitz to set up the successful ambush of the Japanese fleet with a much inferior force. He also provides an illuminating account of how Rochefort’s career was later derailed because of personal animus and jealousy by the Redman brothers, two well-placed senior intelligence officers in Washington (see Elliot Carlson’s new book Joe Rochefort’s War [Naval Institute Press, 2011] for a thorough account of Rochefort’s life and work).
Symonds describes the scenes of the Battle of Midway itself with the knowing eye of a fine historian. His principal focus is on events that took place 4 June 1942 during the hours in which four Japanese aircraft carriers leading the advance force were destroyed by dive bombers launched from the Enterprise (CV-6) and Yorktown (CV-5).
Although it’s a relatively minor point, I would respectfully disagree with Symonds’ stated thesis that the American victory at Midway owed little to fate, but rather resulted from “decisions made and actions taken by individuals who found themselves at the nexus of history at a decisive moment.”
Certainly there were many examples of superb decision-making by the American commanders, but there were also many instances of incomprehensibly poor conclusions. Captain Marc “Pete” Mitscher exemplifies these. Commanding the USS Hornet (CV-8) during the battle, on the morning of 4 June he ordered the “flight to nowhere” in which the carrier’s 54-plane air group, fully one-third of Admiral Nimitz’s strike force, was sent in the wrong direction. Symonds goes into great depth to catalogue this story and offers one of the best analyses I have read of Captain Mitscher’s quirky personality.
Fate played an important role in achieving this critical victory. There was no planned coordination of the courageous attacks by the three torpedo squadrons that came in one by one and helped buy the battle time that allowed the dive bombers to arrive from the Yorktown and Enterprise under optimum battle conditions. Due to the fact that the Japanese fighters were largely focused on destroying the torpedo squadrons at altitudes of less than 1,000 feet, the dive bombers were free to deliver their attacks without harassment from three miles above.
Craig Symonds has crafted an excellent addition to the pantheon of important literature about the transcendent American naval victory at Midway. The Battle of Midway deserves to be read and enjoyed.
One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power
Edited by Douglas V. Smith. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010. 336 pp. Illus. Notes. Index. $44.95.
Reviewed by Thomas Wildenberg
The centennial of naval aviation has brought forth an abundance of seminars and publications in celebration, including One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power. It contains a collection of papers solicited from various faculty members and frequent lecturers at the Naval War College, with the intention of providing a complete picture of the development of naval aviation from its earliest days to the modern era. This is an extremely bold undertaking considering the breadth and scope of the field.
Does the book succeed? To some extent, yes. It does a good job of chronicling the bureaucratic infighting that affected the organization and growth of aviation within the Navy during the early years. It also does a fairly good job of describing the development and evolution of the major types of aircraft—carrier based, rotary wing, jet, lighter than air, and so on—that have seen service with the U.S. Navy.
Each paper is presented as a separate chapter arranged more or less in chronological order. One of the best is written by Hill Goodspeed, whose duties at the National Museum of Naval Aviation include historian. He is the only true naval-aviation historian in the bunch, as evidenced by his excellent paper covering the years 1922 to 1945. His thesis is simple: “If there was one driving force behind the development of aircraft for the 1920s and 1930s,” Goodspeed writes, “it was the realization of the importance of shipboard aircraft.” He goes on to explain how the threat of enemy air power in a fleet action stimulated tactical thought, “which, in turn, influenced the design of the planes tasked with delivering the blows against the enemy.” Goodspeed is 100 percent on track and does a good job of describing how and why particular aircraft were developed and adopted, and how they performed.
Also outstanding are Norman Friedman’s two chapters on U.S. aircraft carriers. Friedman, a noted naval analyst and well-known author in the naval-history community, provides a superb description of the evolution of the aircraft carrier. He begins with an explanation of how plans for the first U.S. carriers were influenced by both foreign designs and the Navy’s early experiences with shipboard flight. He then gives an excellent account of the progression of flight-deck operations based on changes in equipment, aircraft, and tactical needs of the fleet. Although much of this information has previously been provided in his book U.S. Aircraft Carriers: An Illustrated Design History (Naval Institute Press, 1983), both papers provide a useful summary and render a fresh approach to this extremely important aspect of naval air power.
Two papers that warrant mentioning are “Straight Up,” by Kevin Delmar, and “The Transition to Swept-Wing Jets,” by Robert Rubel. The former chronicles the rarely told story of the Navy’s introduction to rotary-wing aircraft, with an honest appraisal that is not very complimentary to the service. Rubel’s chapter contains useful information on the operational differences between piston and turbojet aircraft, and why this causes problems when attempting to make carrier landings with jet aircraft.
Much of the information in the remaining chapters is also available in other works—George van Deurs’ Wings for the Fleet, Richard Knot’s The American Flying Boat, and my own biography of Joseph Mason Reeves, All the Factors of Victory—or is so cursory as to be of little interest to the serious student of naval aviation. But mainly what’s missing is the excitement and pioneering spirit that has characterized naval aviation from its beginnings. No battles, record-breaking flights, or breakthroughs in technology are highlighted or described in detail. Perhaps the authors and/or editor felt that these aspects of history have been covered before. Maybe so, but in this sense the book misses the mark—the “three wire,” in aviation parlance.