Yukikaze’s War: The Unsinkable Japanese Destroyer and World War II in the Pacific
Brett L. Walker. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2024. 327 pp. Figs. Sources. Biblio. Index. $29.95.
Reviewed by William Twaddell
Brett L. Walker’s Yukikaze’s War is an account of the exploits of the “unsinkable” Japanese destroyer as seen through the eyes of its crew, but also a whirlwind review of the centuries of political, military, and cultural thought—and propaganda—that led to the war in the first place.
Walker is the Regents Professor of History at Montana State University in Bozeman, where he teaches and researches military history—specifically the Pacific war. Nine of his books are about Japan.
Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) destroyers were named to symbolize Japan’s “divine landscape.” They linked sailors and the public to the Emperor—chief Shinto priest—who was viewed as a living god. The Japanese government used propaganda campaigns to convince people of their ethnic purity derived from their God-Emperor and that they were the “superior race in the world.” These ideas permeated the thinking of their crews.
Yukikaze means “Snowy Wind,” symbolizing connection to that “heavenly landscape” and the unique national essence of the Japanese. One of 19 Kagerou (Gossamer) class vessels, she was launched on 24 March 1939. Built from lighter, stronger steel, she featured new bow, stern, and keel designs. Armed with three 5-inch twin turrets, 4 0.52 antiaircraft (AA) guns, 28 25-millimeter AA guns, 8 Type 93 (Long Lance) torpedoes, and 36 depth charges, she was a fast, seagoing killer.
Walker describes Japanese improvements in torpedoes and ship designs and the increasing Japanese need for oil. That need was why the War Cabinet decided to strike south, negating ideas of Siberia. Pearl Harbor was a preventive step to block the U.S. Navy from interfering with southern operations.
Moving their newly acquired huge reserves of oil, natural gas, minerals, and slave laborers to Japan, Japanese freighters and tankers were quickly attacked. Escort duties overrode the IJN’s long-looked-for final slugfest with the U.S. Navy. The Yukikaze’s mission was to escort those vessels safely from their departure points to harbors in Japan.
Advanced designs and proficient sailors helped sink Allied ships and win several battles. This Yukikaze and her crew persevered from the first day of the war to the last. Attacked several times, such as while escorting the doomed battleship Yamato on her suicidal run, the Yukikaze suffered a minimum of casualties and gained a reputation as a lucky ship. After the war, she became a refugee transport ship and, later, was sent to the Republic of Taiwan’s Navy before being scrapped in 1970.
One strong point of the book is Walker’s discussion of the change, in 1944, from employing sound naval strategies and tactics to a “kamikaze” spirit. Suicide attacks were an attempt to preserve national honor. Well-reasoned arguments for attacking the U.S. Navy’s supply lines were rejected. In addition, Walker’s translations of the crew’s personal letters and excerpts of official Naval and government reports provides substance and perspective, giving readers a view of standing on the deck of the Yukikaze as she sliced through roiling Pacific waters.
Safeguarding sea lanes is a never-ending concern. New ships have been launched to escort oil and guard “vital territory.” In Walker’s words, the Yukikaze has become an avatar of the need for, and dependence on, oil and the violence too often involved in securing and keeping that resource. A splendid book.
Mr. Twaddell graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy with the Class of 1973 and served more than five years as a Marine Corps officer. He now lives and teaches in Japan.
Codename Nemo: The Hunt for a Nazi U-Boat and the Elusive Enigma Machine
Charles Lachman. New York: Diversion Books, 2024. 326 pp. Illus. Biblio. Index. $29.99.
Reviewed by Ingo Heidbrink
U-505 is arguably one of the best-known Nazi submarines by Americans as millions of visitors have seen her since her 1954 presentation at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. She is one of the few U-boats captured during World War II, despite the misconception that it was the only one seized. She was also the submarine from which an Enigma-M4 machine and other vital German codebooks were retrieved, aiding the eventual cracking of the ciphers used by the Kriegsmarine.
In his new book, Codename Nemo, journalist Charles Lachman provides the complete story of U-505’s construction, North Atlantic operations, capture, successful towing to port, and, finally, delivery to the museum. For readers of wartime stories, the book is written in an accessible and entertaining narrative style. Lachman emphasizes individual actors who were involved in the history of the boat, from the original German crew to those who masterminded and carried out the plan to capture U-505 and tow her to port. The book’s most unique features are the various dialogues among the actors. While it might read like a work of fiction, the dialogue was collected and extracted from a variety of sources, ranging from historical documents to oral history recordings, and thus provides an authentic take.
From the perspective of a professional historian, the book might not seem to provide much new to the existing body of analytical knowledge on U-505, but, as it was written by a journalist, this likely was not the author’s intent. When thinking about the book’s target readership, two groups come to mind: museum visitors who have seen the original U-505 and want to learn the boat’s story, and/or those who have heard the story of the boat’s capture and want a reliable account without diving into professional historical writings. For both groups, the book will be a good choice as it is a captivating read and a well-researched account—a rare combination.
If there is one criticism of the book, it is the references for the original dialogues and quotes. While the sources are provided at the end of the book, they are not connected to the individual quotes, just the pages on which the quotes are used. This makes it difficult to connect the quote to the respective reference.
For the professional maritime or naval historian there is not much new information or analysis in Codename Nemo. However, the book is still easily recommended as it provides an example of how historically accurate information can be presented as a captivating story with some of the qualities of a page-turner without compromising the reliability or reality of the account. If maritime and naval historians want to reach broad audiences and not only the small group of colleagues equally invested in analytical discussions and interpretations, Lachman’s book might serve as an example—not as a replacement for the traditional historical literature, but as an addition to the existing body of research.
In German, the term history and the term story both translate to the same word: geschichte. Lachman’s book demonstrates that describing history accurately and writing a good story are not mutually exclusive.
Dr. Heidbrink is professor of history and chair of the Department of History at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, and president of the International Maritime History Association.
Chamber Divers: The Untold Story of the D-Day Scientists Who Changed Special Operations Forever
Rachel Lance. New York: Dutton, 2024. 420 pp. Notes. Biblio. Index. $32.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Kyle Cregge, U.S. Navy
A scientist consumed with his work, pushing the boundaries of his field, not only out of curiosity, but also because the Nazis are raging through continental Europe. A scientist whose personal relationships with women lacked the clean monogamy celebrated in his time, and whose support for the Communists during Spain’s civil war invited the shadow of his nation’s internal security services. That same scientist led a team of Anglosphere and German-Jewish peers who each contributed not only their minds but their bodies to the science of the war effort—ultimately enabling one of the most important military actions of World War II. He was John Burdon Sanderson (J. B. S.) Haldane, and—much like J. Robert Oppenheimer—his science exemplified “theory will only take you so far.”
Analogies to the Father of the Atomic Bomb aside, Rachel Lance has written a fascinating story from collected declassified works and history. The “chamber divers,” were the scientists who regularly entered pressure chambers in their lab to explore the human limits of pressurization and how the mixture and measure of oxygen and nitrogen that humans breathe enable or disable their cognition, maneuver, and general function. A first glance may find this an esoteric, weird science, yet it was fundamental to the war and still informs special operations today.
Lance begins her story in 1942 in Dieppe, where a mostly Canadian raid onto German-controlled French shores ended in disaster. The lack of beach reconnaissance, understanding of German defenses, weather, and terrain led to nearly a third of the 6,500 men put ashore being captured, another third wounded, and the remaining third either dead or retreating. Further complicating the Royal Navy Admiralty’s problems was the 1938 accidental sinking of the submarine HMS Thetis. Four men escaped, yet questions remained about whether more could have survived and how to optimally employ submarines in a war increasingly relying on them. The chamber divers’ work—which cost them collapsed lungs, seizures, delirium, and other injuries—led to future special operators and midget submarines deploying to roll back Germany and enable the D-Day invasion.
While Haldane may have been the ringleader of the chamber divers, Lance goes to great pains to highlight the other men and especially the women whose contributions to science and the war effort went otherwise underwritten. Helen Spurway, Haldane’s PhD student and later wife; Ursula Phillip, the German-Jewish refugee and feminist; Hans Grüneberg, another German Jew whose math proved soldiers should land at Normandy without heavy body armor; and more than a dozen others whose personal lives seem special-made for fiction. Their impact is lasting—Lance, a scientist herself, details how the current understanding of decompression sickness, oxygen toxicity, and many other tactical assumptions are derived from the work done by the chamber divers.
While the book is well researched, I would have welcomed the inclusion of footnotes throughout, rather than just at the end, to tie the research more explicitly to its source; and at times Lance’s desire to introduce her characters led to halting prose. But her background does enable the lay scientist to understand the meaning and value of the divers’ advances. All told, Chamber Divers is an enjoyable and truly untold narrative history that will reel in any who like stories of rough-edged scientists who did what they must. If there is any lesson for our times, it is that intellectual diversity and support of the civilian workforce can be as important as the courage of those facing the fires of combat.
LCDR Cregge is a surface warfare officer. He is the operations officer for the USS Pinckney (DDG-91).
The Naval Mutinies of 1798: The Irish Plot to Seize the Channel Fleet
Philip MacDougall. Barnsley, South Yorkshire, England: Pen & Sword Maritime, 2024. 232 pp. Illus. Biblio. Indices. $49.95.
Reviewed by Frederick C. Leiner
Several books in the past few years have analyzed the British fleet mutinies at Spithead and the Nore in the spring of 1797, as well as the mutiny on board the frigate Hermione in the Caribbean in September of that year. The mutiny at Spithead was really a strike over “working conditions,” such as low pay, poor food, and lack of shore leave, which the Admiralty and Parliament could ameliorate and pardon. The Royal Navy broke the more radical and ideological mutiny at the Nore, which ended in hangings. The Hermione mutiny was largely a revolt against a sadistic commanding officer.
In The Naval Mutinies of 1798, Philip MacDougall adds an interesting and powerful story to those works. By the close of the 18th century, Irish Catholics had been subject to deep religious and legal discrimination by the ruling Protestant establishment in Ireland for centuries. In the 1790s, as MacDougall explains, Irish Catholics began organized, violent, underground opposition, led by the Society of United Irishmen, which dreamed of a representative republic and the end of English rule. The United Irishmen realized the success of a rebellion would depend on timely foreign intervention, which meant a French army, and a French army could arrive only via the French Navy.
A French invasion was not farfetched. After all, in the spring of 1798, the French Navy successfully transported 35,000 soldiers under Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt. Fantastic as it seems, far-off America feared a French invasion in the summer of 1798 because of the XYZ crisis and the breakdown of Franco-American relations.
The United Irishmen believed they could take advantage of turmoil in the Royal Navy. Many Irish sailors had been on ships taking part in the 1797 fleet mutinies, and the experience was, in MacDougall’s words, “clearly digested.” Irish sailors, many of whom were brought into the Royal Navy unwillingly, were disaffected by English and Protestant dominance of Ireland and, driven by revolutionary thought, were ripe for mutiny. The United Irish plot in 1798 was to induce those sailors to mutiny on board five ships of the Channel Fleet, sail the ships into Brest, and give them over to the French. Wolfe Tone, a leader of the United Irishmen, went to Paris to coordinate plans. If those mutinies could be well-timed, they would weaken the blockading Channel Fleet and strengthen the French Navy, allowing it to sortie with veteran French troops to land at Bantry Bay and join with Irish volunteers, to conquer Ireland.
The Irish rose in 1798. Even without widespread mutinies in the Channel Fleet, the French landed troops, but too few to succeed. The Irish rebellion was crushed by overwhelming force, and the English hanged many of the United Irish leaders and forced others into exile. The Naval Mutinies of 1798 provides a dramatic account of the maritime aspect of this story: The United Irish plot to seize control of British warships and the planned use of those ships in support of the rebellion.
The book details how the mutiny conspiracy developed and was coordinated, from land and between ships. MacDougall deals with what happened on each affected ship. The few successes occurred when the ships were isolated at sea yet near an enemy port. The failures were many, often because of a lack of secrecy (sailors speaking in code words, or in Irish aroused suspicions) or the belief that taking an oath of allegiance guaranteed loyalty. Though the most dangerous mutinies would have occurred in the Channel Fleet because of proximity to Ireland, MacDougall shows how mutineers also threatened ships in the North Sea squadron and the Mediterranean Fleet. Based on his prodigious research in British archives, newspapers, and minutes of courts-martial, MacDougall vividly portrays individual sailors, their motivations, the risings or planned risings on each ship, and what happened to the mutineers.
Two problems must be mentioned, however. First, the prologue recounts how mutineers navigated the 74-gun ship Defiance into Brest, flying the green Irish flag emblazoned with a golden harp, with the French firing cannon in greeting and singing the revolutionary anthem “Ҫa Ira.” It is a thrilling story. But it turns out to be fictional, a problematic and unnecessary narrative device to begin a work of history. Second, although the book shows deep research, it is not footnoted. There are only short “discussions of sources” for each chapter, which is regrettable.
These issues aside, The Naval Mutinies of 1798 is a good read, a short, powerful account of a little known, widespread conspiracy to mutiny in the Royal Navy and overturn English rule in Ireland at a critical time in the long war against France.
Mr. Leiner, a lawyer, is a regular contributor to Naval History about the Navy in the Age of Sail. His most recent book is Prisoners of the Bashaw: The Nineteen-Month Captivity of American Sailors in Tripoli, 1803–1805 (Westholme, 2022).
