Admiral John S. McCain and the Triumph of Naval Air Power
William F. Trimble. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2019. 370 pp. Maps. Photos. Index. $38.
Reviewed by Richard Frank
William Trimble earns a snappy salute for this excellent biography of a figure who played a key role in the triumph of U.S. naval air power. About 83 percent of the text covers McCain’s World War II service. That emphasis on the most significant phase of the subject’s life is a hallmark of masterful biographies. Trimble also shines with his wide-ranging research in primary and key secondary sources and with his even hand on both McCain’s achievements and his failures.
John McCain, grandfather of the late Senator John McCain, served with distinction as a surface officer until, at age 52, he qualified as a naval aviator. Those pre–World War II officers who won their wings near the beginning of their careers called an officer who switched late in his career to aviation a “Johnny-Come-Lately” (JCL). Like other JCLs, McCain’s seniority by rank, not flight experience, secured a series of key billets in aviation, such as command of the carrier USS Ranger (CV-4) and, much later, the mighty fast-carrier task force command in 1944–45. As Trimble properly emphasizes, McCain pursued a remarkably diverse career not only in carrier, task group, and task force command, but also through patrol aviation, technological development, administration, personnel, logistics, and public relations.
Leading the South Pacific land- and water-based air units during the earliest part of the Guadalcanal campaign marked McCain’s first important wartime command. He struggled with enormous challenges but readily won the confidence of Marines and Army aviators. Then followed the role of administrator in Washington, mainly wrestling with naval aviation personnel and logistical issues.
His JCL credentials aroused the criticism, sometimes venomous, of long-time naval aviators. Trimble overall gives McCain good marks in the first half of the war, without neglecting valid criticism. McCain’s performance becomes subject to far more pointed reviews in 1944–45. In August 1944, McCain took command of one of the four carrier groups of the Pacific Fleet’s fast-carrier Task Force 38. This was intended to season McCain for the exalted role of commander of Task Force 38 under Admiral William F. Halsey Jr. as commander Third Fleet. They would alternate these positions with Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher (commander, Task Force 58) and Admiral Raymond Spruance (commander, Fifth Fleet), respectively. An early naval aviator, Mitscher exhibited conspicuous disrespect for McCain, an attitude shared by other early aviators, such as Vice Admiral John Towers, who also coveted command of the fast carriers.
During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, by Trimble’s account McCain performed well in a subordinate role. After that, McCain took over Task Force 38, then facing the deadly challenge of Japan’s resort to massive, land-based kamikaze attacks. With guidance from his very able chief of staff, Commander John “Jimmy” Thach, McCain innovated tactics and training that helped curb, but did not eliminate, the effectiveness of the kamikaze. McCain and Halsey would rotate roles with Mitscher and Spruance in January and then in May 1945.
It was confrontations with typhoons in December 1944 and June 1945 that proved the most controversial episodes of McCain’s career. Trimble aptly describes these events and levies judgments that assign due fault to McCain. There were extenuating circumstances, such as inadequate institutional structures for communicating weather data, but McCain and Halsey bore final responsibility. After the second typhoon, McCain would not return as a task force commander. McCain died suddenly only a few days after Japan’s surrender, but instructive lessons of his life live on in this biography.
Mr. Frank is an internationally recognized historian. His next book, Tower of Skulls, the first volume of a trilogy on the Asia Pacific war, 1937–45, will be published next spring.
Seapower States: Maritime Culture, Continental Empires and the Conflict That Made the Modern World
Andrew Lambert. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018. 399 pp. Notes. Biblio. Index. Images. Maps. $30.
Reviewed by Captain Sam J. Tangredi, USN (Ret.)
In Seapower States, British naval historian Andrew Lambert explores the “cultural identity” of “seapower,” a social identity that—in his view—“is wholly artificial” (not necessarily required by geography) and deliberately chosen by nations that are “disproportionately engaged with global trade, unusually dependent on imported resources, and culturally attuned to maritime activity,” but often militarily weak. The effort of such states to command the oceans is a survival mechanism; the fear of loss of control over their sea lines of communications and the threat of being gobbled up by continental empires propels them to attempt domination over other seapower states, as well as continental states adopting a sea power strategy.
Note the difference between Lambert’s use of “seapower” and “sea power.” It is the dependence on seaborne trade that creates and defines Lambert’s “seapower states,” which is why the United States does not qualify. In contrast, Lambert’s historical seapower states are Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain. (The modern versions of the latter two do not qualify because they can no longer attempt to command the seas.)
The author provides details concerning the naval power of his selected seapower states, and the book is a useful summary of their maritime rise and fall. However, despite citing their importance, the book does not contain much detail on the impact of maritime art or literature on societies, betraying his real interest—how naval power furthered the evolution of democracy among the small states that pursued it. His obvious initial example is classical Athens. Yet, once beyond it—and dealing with Carthage, Venice, the Dutch, and Britain—the book is unpersuasive. Factors other than dependence on the sea, which propelled the economic prosperity of Lambert’s identified seapowers—particularly British dominance of the emerging Industrial Revolution in a pre-industrial world—are barely examined. Great Britain used and controlled the sea, but it was more dependent on the steam engine, textile technologies, and exports from its later colonies, such as India, than the oceans themselves.
However, the major reason Seapower States seems so unpersuasive is that the author makes only modest efforts to persuade. Assertions are made boldly. Alternative explanations are, when identified, poorly developed. Counterarguments rarely are refuted because they mostly are ignored. Lambert asserts but does not explain.
That is not to say there is no strength in Lambert’s approach. The inclusion of art, national culture, and political evolution in the study of sea power is indeed important and unique. These are areas of maritime history that previously have been confined to specialists. Lambert is correct in asserting sea power is not synonymous with naval strategy. However, Alfred T. Mahan made the same point in his early writings, a fact that Lambert—much preferring Julian Corbett as the classical naval strategist—does not fully acknowledge. In contrast, Corbett looked at sea power almost exclusively through a military lens.
Lambert also highlights the linkage between the evolution of democratic society and the openness of maritime trade. Indeed, the merchant class, enriched by seaborne trade, supplanted the political power of the landowners in the states that he examines. However, Lambert cannot quite explain why merchant-dominated oligarchies eventually gave way to greater political participation—and Carthage, Venice, and 17th-18th–century Holland were all oligarchies that never quite evolved into democracies.
In short, Seapower States is not complete. At this point in Lambert’s research design, the weaknesses overwhelm the strengths. Seapower States is provocative but not satisfying. There is enough historical detail to interest the dedicated reader and provoke the confirmed navalist; however, a more thoroughly argued sequel is needed.
Dr. Tangredi has been appointed the Leidos Chair of Future Warfare Studies and the director of the Institute for Future Warfare Studies at the U.S. Naval War College. Author of numerous books and Proceedings articles, he received the U.S. Naval League’s Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Excellence for his edited volume Globalization and Maritime Power.
The War with Hitler’s Navy
Adrian Stewart. Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Maritime, 2018. 224 pp. Illus. Notes. Biblio. $34.95
Reviewed by Peter Hooker
Adrian Stewart’s latest book, The War with Hitler’s Navy, is one of the most recent contributions to a growing body of literature that is reexamining the role of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during World War II. Stewart, who is the author of more than eight historical volumes, presents a very readable synthesis of the Kriegsmarine throughout the war. Chapter 1 outlines the development of the German Navy from the ascension of Adolf Hitler to power until the outbreak of World War II. Stewart points to the construction of the three Panzerschiffe (known commonly as pocket battleships) of the Deutschland class, the two battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, and the mammoth battleships Bismarck and Tirpitz. Though vastly outnumbered, these powerful vessels nonetheless would play a critical role during the war.
Chapters’ 2 through 5 highlight how these ships, along with U-boats, proved an effective and serious fighting force against the Allies. In particular, he details the invasion of Norway, the first U-boat “Happy Time,” and the threat posed by the German surface ships breaking into the Atlantic to disrupt and destroy Allied shipping. Nonetheless, Stewart argues, the need to preserve these few and valuable vessels hampered more daring operations, especially after the loss of the Graf Spee in December 1939 (see “A Battle Badly Fought,” pp. 14–19) and the heavy casualties sustained during the invasion of Norway in 1940. In contrast, the Allies threw everything they had at the Germans to prevent the severance of merchant shipping.
Chapters 5 though 9 detail the dramatic decline of the Kriegsmarine, beginning with the loss of the Bismarck, shortly followed by the destruction of German supply ships as well as auxiliary raiders, and finally the brief withdrawal of U-boats from the Atlantic in 1943. Not even the restationing of the remaining surface ships and some notable successes in the Arctic Ocean could prevent the gradual destruction of the German fleet.
Stewart writes with a flair for drama and action. Of particular note is his emphasis on the often-neglected role of the German code-breaking service, B-Dienst, and the operations by the surface fleet in the last months of the war. However, this volume hardly breaks new ground in our historical knowledge of the Kriegsmarine. Indeed, one only need look at Stewart’s bibliography to see that he relies extensively on the official histories and other accounts that have already been thoroughly researched and critiqued, such as the postwar memoirs and autobiographies of officers. Notable are the memoirs of Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, who commanded the German Navy from 1928 until his resignation in 1943, and his more well-known successor Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, also head of the U-boat arm.
Unfortunately, the tensions between Raeder, Dönitz, head of the Luftwaffe Hermann Göring, and Hitler are only fleetingly mentioned here, as are their broader and competing strategic goals.
Nor does Stewart give a complete picture of the war with Hitler’s navy. The Mediterranean theater and Indian Ocean, for instance, are almost entirely ignored. The Mediterranean was of special interest to Raeder, as he hoped to trap a significant proportion of the Royal Navy by a combined effort to seize Gibraltar and the Suez Canal. Though his plan never came to fruition, it does demonstrate the importance of placing the war at sea on a wide scope.
Stewart also is hampered by his tendency to fall back onto the well-trodden paths of naval history. The U-boat aces and the destruction of the Graf Spee, Bismarck, Scharnhorst, and Tirpitz dominate most of the book. The remarkable global cruise of the Admiral Scheer, or the dislocation of the Atlantic convoy system by the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau in early 1941, and the German auxiliary cruisers hardly get the attention they deserve. Still, The War with Hitler’s Navy presents a very readable overview of the major battles at sea, both on, above, and beneath the surface. It is a worthy addition to the bookshelf of a general reader.
Mr. Hooker is a PhD candidate with the University of Newcastle, Australia. He has an interest in maritime and naval history from the 18th to 20th centuries. He has published several articles and was awarded a Faculty Medal for his research into the German and Japanese navies during the interwar period.