Never Call Me a Hero: A Ledgendary American Dive-Bomber Pilot Remembers the Battle of Midway s
N. Jack “Dusty” Kleiss with Timothy and Laura Orr. 312 pp. New York: William Morrow, May 2017. Maps. Footnotes. Photos. Appendix. Glossary. Index. $26.99.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral Jeremy “Bear” Taylor, U.S. Navy (Retired)
The author of Never Call Me a Hero insists he was “an ordinary pilot doing ordinary work.” Jack “Dusty” Kleiss was no ordinary pilot. In fact, with his deadly accurate dive-bombing hits on three Japanese warships, including two aircraft carriers, in the June 1942 Battle of Midway, Dusty Kleiss was and remains in a class by himself. Nor is his book an ordinary volume about the decisive U.S. victory at sea that put the Imperial Japanese Navy on the defensive for the duration of the war.
The book is as much a tribute to his Scouting Squadron Six mates as it is a personal memoir. He makes clear who he thinks the real heroes of Midway were—those who gave their lives in what has been called “the greatest naval battle in history.”
And that’s what makes Never Call Me a Hero different from the hundreds of other books on the subject, and why it is a worthy read. Kleiss was there. He had two carriers and a cruiser in his bomb scope and delivered killing blows to the decks of the enemy’s capital ships while under fire. He was in the van and with the men and machines—the vaunted Dauntless SBD—that delivered victory. The author speaks boldly—“In 1942 the SBD replaced the battleship.”
Never Call Me a Hero is an autobiography: Dusty Kleiss as a farm boy, a U.S. Naval Academy midshipman, and an officer in the surface Navy in the 1930s before his career as a naval aviator and his 15 minutes of glory at Midway. It is a book about going to sea, carrier aviation in the early days, straight-down 70-degree dive bombing, and a life of service to God and country. He calls his story “a history of naval aviation.” It is the story of a rugged individual every man and woman should wish to be.
It is also the love story of a happy warrior. He shares his unreserved love of life, country, flying, his squadron mates, and above all, Jean, who believed in him, inspired him, stuck by him, loved him, and married him. As a consequence, this is a book with and about feeling. Kleiss is not shy about sharing his most tender thoughts and memories of his wartime romance or his love for the men with whom he went to war. This is much more than a vivid remembrance of his heroic role in the “six minutes that won the war” at Midway.
His original and unique sources—including the wartime letters exchanged with his soul mate, Jean, and an earlier journal of his combat experience he titled “Log of War”—are presented with crisp and unvarnished candor. Timothy and Laura Orr have done a masterful job of sifting through more than 70 years of Kleiss memorabilia, records, documents, and a 30-hour oral history, slowly and methodically over four years, to produce an imminently readable war story with wide appeal.
Full disclosure: I was a strike-fighting light attack tailhooker with thousands of dives of 45 degrees—Kleiss would call them “glides”—in my 6,000 flight hours, more than 1,000 carrier landings, and more than 200 “glides” on North Vietnamese bridges, missile sites, and other military targets. I loved this book. Jack “Dusty” Kleiss is my kind of “ordinary pilot,” human being, and hero.
Rear Admiral Taylor commanded an attack squadron, a carrier air wing, a replenishment oiler, the USS Coral Sea, (CV-43,) and the strike-fighters of the Pacific fleet before retiring in 1992. He blogs on rollingthunderremembered.com.
American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution
A. Roger Ekirch. 236 pp. New York: Pantheon Books, 2017. Prologue. Notes. Index. Illus. $30.
Reviewed by Frederick C. Leiner
American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution is naval history at its best—beautifully written, deeply researched, and thoughtfully connected to larger themes of American life.
On the night of 21 September 1797, the men of the 32-gun British frigate Hermione, then in the Mona Passage, mutinied, killing Captain Hugh Pigot and many of his officers. A. Roger Ekirch, a professor at Virginia Tech, provides a nuanced profile of Pigot and capsule sketches of the ringleaders of the mutiny, demonstrating how an unrelenting and capricious disciplinarian drove experienced sailors to murderous measures. By Ekirch’s superb writing, the savagery of the mutiny comes to life almost cinematically. Their killing spree over, the mutineers brought the Hermione into La Guira in colonial Venezuela on the Spanish Main, from whence they scattered, knowing that the Royal Navy would go to great lengths to find and hang them.
One of the ringleaders of the Hermione mutiny was an Irishman named Thomas Nash, who had blood on his hands in killing Pigot. In February 1799, Nash sailed into Charleston, South Carolina, on board a merchant ship and was overheard talking about his service on board the Hermione. At the request of the British consul, Nash was taken into custody.
The British demanded his return based on the Jay Treaty of 1795, which provided for extradition for very few crimes, although murder was one of them. Nash claimed to be Jonathan Robbins of Danbury, Connecticut, and asserted that he had been forcibly impressed into the British Navy, providing him with a colorable defense to the murder charge. Nash’s/Robbins’s lawyers failed him, apparently not even seeking records from Connecticut to try to substantiate his nationality claim (which Ekirch notes likely was a fabrication) or raising the weighty questions of whether U.S. courts should exercise jurisdiction and whether the crime was in British territory (making Nash extraditable) given that the Hermione was on the high seas.
Attorney General Charles Lee, in a prior case of three Hermione mutineers apprehended in New Jersey, opined the United States had no obligation to return the suspected mutineers (who were then acquitted in a U.S. court), but President John Adams thought Nash was a murderer and was unsympathetic to his claims. The federal judge in Charleston, Thomas Bee, gave up Nash to the British, and he was duly tried, convicted, and hanged.
Nash/Robbins came to be seen as a symbol of resistance to impressment and to British authority, and whether Nash/Robbins was British or American mattered very little. The United States was supposed to be the land of asylum, a safe haven for the oppressed of all nations. The opposition Republican Party and press raised a clamor against the administration and Adams for meekly returning Nash/Robbins to his oppressors. The Adams-Jefferson election of 1800 is known as a watershed event in U.S. history, and Ekirch has made a major contribution by showing how Nash/Robbins aided Jefferson’s victory.
American Sanctuary is a terrific book, and demonstrates how important naval history can be in the hands of a masterful historian. Ekirch has written a superb narrative of a dramatic story, which echoes down to the present day.
Mr. Leiner, a lawyer, is a regular contributor to Naval History about the age of fighting sail.
Bloodstained Sands: U.S. Amphibious Operations in World War II
Michael G. Walling, Oxford, UK: Osprey, 2017. 512 pp. Abbrev. Biblio. Notes. Index. $30.
Reviewed by F. G. Hoffman
Few authors focus on the crucial cross-domain operations that allowed the Grand Alliance to project its power against the Axis. The success of the Allies in both major theaters was predicated on its rapidly developed expertise in amphibious warfare. This involved the critical transition from ship to shore, and required the integration of all arms. Michael Walling’s latest project, Bloodstained Sands, plumbs into this complex and highly choreographed military operation—the amphibious assault against a defended coast.
A past winner of the prestigious Samuel Eliot Morison Award for naval literature, Walling has established a reputation for clear writing and deep research from untapped personal stories and primary sources. While he has authored numerous books, this may be his most ambitious effort.
The literature is not exactly a vacuum or uncharted waters, but what makes Bloodstained Sands so interesting is the author’s devotion to a technique that lets the overall story come out in the words of the junior participants, drawn from interviews, diaries, and combat records. The level of detail is daunting and occasionally confusing. Then again, so was the nature of amphibious warfare and its evolution during the war.
Walling draws critical lessons from each major operation, summarized at the end of each chapter. These lessons are usually tactical but also capture the evolution of planning, intelligence, fire support (including flamethrowers), and tactical mobility. Had he covered Pelieu, Walling could have included a more critical assessment of how such operations served a larger strategic purpose (or not) and the costly aggressiveness of Marine commanders such as Chesty Puller.
Walling misses an opportunity to compare Marine and Army operations during the numerous operations covered in Bloodstained Sands. The Marines and Army drew on history for different lessons about the best way to make the dangerous transition from ship to shore. The Marines favored extensive preparation, including days of amphibious reconnaissance, detailed intelligence from photographic flights, and intensive naval fire support. The Army emphasized surprise, night operations, and deception over brute force. Marine objectives were typically small and heavily defended atolls or narrowly defined zones on larger islands such as Bougainville, with little option for maneuver.
This book will appeal to serious scholars of war as well as future generations who need to understand the inherent challenges of building combat power from the sea against determined defenses. Since the Greeks sailed against Troy, the ability to cross over the sea and over the beach has remained a prized capability that few have mastered. The need for such skills has not diminished. Bloodstained Sands offers insights on where we have been and where future naval officers may want to begin to think anew.
Dr. Hoffman holds an appointment as a Distinguished Research Professor at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, and earned a Ph.D. in War Studies from King’s College, London. He is also a retired Reserve Marine infantry officer.