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THE CAMPAIGN ON NEW BRITAIN. By Lt. Col. Frank O. Hough, USMCR, and Major John A. Crown, USMCR, Historical Branch, Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps. U. S. Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., 1952. 220 pages. $3.75.
Reviewed by E. B. Potter
{Professor Potter is Chairman of the Naval History Committee at the U. S. Naval Academy. Co-author of “American Sea Power since 1775," he is now working on a new, analytical naval history.)
The American campaign on New Britain was in many ways the most efficiently conducted operation in World War II. The 1st Marine Division never did a better job— not at Guadalcanal, at Palau, or at Okinawa. The Seventh Fleet and the Fifth Air Force gave well-nigh perfect support. Clearly an operation so well executed deserves recording and study. Yet because the campaign has since been proved unnecessary, historians have tended to neglect it. Morison gives it 20 pages; Knox, only five lines. Others have been inclined to follow Knox rather than Morison. So it was important that somebody put down the facts while participants are still around to clear up details. The authors of the new Marine Corps monograph, The Campaign on New Britain, have done just that—with meticulous scholarship and in a clear and moving style.
Of course, neither General MacArthur nor the Joint Chiefs of Staff knew back in 1943, or for a long while afterwards, that the New
Britain invasion could have been dispensed with. The target had been assigned back in 1942, when the Joint Chiefs directed the South Pacific and Southwest Pacific forces to coordinate in a drive on the Japanese bastion of Rabaul. That directive led to the Allied occupation of Guadalcanal and New Georgia and Lae and Finschhafen and to the naval battles of Savo Island, the Eastern Solomons, and a dozen others.
By the fall of 1943 the Joint Chiefs had abandoned the plan for recapturing Rabaul as too costly and no longer necessary. Instead it would be by-passed, while from an encircling ring of captured bases Allied planes would batter it into impotence. MacArthur stood at Finschhafen, ready to break through the barrier of the Bismarcks via Vitiaz Strait—but only when two conditions had been fulfilled: Halsey must invade Bougainville in order to establish an airfield closer to Rabaul; the 1st Marine Division must secure Vitiaz Strait by capturing the far shore, Cape Gloucester on New Britain.
Admiral Halsey carried out his part of the assignment in early November; the Marines began theirs the day after Christmas. Hindsight based on post-war information tells us that the first invasion made the second unnecessary. For from Bougainville Halsey’s Solomons Air Command, aided by the Fifth Air Force out of New Guinea and even by some carriers that got into the act, had Rabaul about knocked out before Christmas. The whole Bismarcks defense system was on the point of collapse.
Not realizing that the door to the Bismarck Sea and western New Guinea stood open before him, MacArthur ordered the 1st Marine Division into New Britain. Supported by the guns of Admiral Barbey’s VII Amphibious Force and the planes of General Kenney’s Fifth Air Force, the Marines stormed ashore at Cape Gloucester, crossed a narrow beach, and immediately found themselves in a sniper-infested swamp. Then the monsoon rains began to come down, day after day, seemingly in solid sheets. Often waist-deep in mud and water, the invaders forged ahead, somehow built roads and bridges for their tanks, and in less than a week captured the enemy airfield.
Here the news writers and the historians leave them. “The civilian press correspondents who had accompanied the expedition,” says our monograph, “gratefully poured the water out of their typewriters and caught the first available LST for more hospitable shores.” Yet the hardest fighting was about to begin.
While public attention was focused on the invasion of the Marshalls to the northeast and on the capture of the Admiralties to the northwest, General Lemuel Shepherd’s Marines on New Britain broke out of their perimeter, shattered defending General Mat- suda’s 65th Imperial Army Brigade, and put the survivors to flight. Then to plug the coastal escape route, they made a series of amphibious forward hops terminating on the Willaumez Peninsula a hundred miles east of Cape Gloucester.
Towards the end of April, 1944, when the Japanese on New Britain had all been killed, captured, or bottled up in the Rabaul area, a U. S. Army garrison relieved the 1st Marine Division, which then retired to the Russell Islands for rest and re-training. From there the Division went on to Palau and greater glory.
FEAR GOD AND DREAD NOUGHT: The Correspondence of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fisher of Kilverstone. Selected and edited by Arthur J. Marder, University of Hawaii, Vol. I: The Making of an Admiral, 1854-1904. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1953. 377 pages. $5.50.
Reviewed by Robert G. Albion
(Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and A fairs at Harvard University, Dr. Albion was Assistant Director of Naval History and Historian of Naval Administration from 1943 to 1950.)
The problems which faced Britain’s Royal Navy a few decades ago have a particular significance for the United States Navy today in view of this nation’s present world responsibilities. One of the writers who has done most to analyze those British developments is Marder, who holds one of the very few chairs of naval history. His Harvard doctoral thesis, published as The Anatomy of Sea Power: A History of British Naval Policy in the Pre-Dreadnought Era, 1880—1905 in 1940, was a distinguished and original study. He is now working on its sequel, which will carry the story to 1914. This work, and his recent Portrait of an Admiral: The Life and Papers of Sir Herbert Richmond, are byproducts of that study. This is the first of three projected volumes of Fisher correspondence. These will supplement, rather than supplant, the existing books on the man whom Marder calls Britain’s greatest admiral since Nelson: Fisher’s own Memories and Records (both 1919) and Admiral Sir R. H. Bacon’s two-volume The Life of Lord Fisher of Kilverstone (1929).
The value and interest in this volume lies in the wide variety of lively comment made by a man who was often as delightfully immoderate and ebullient as was his great contemporary, Theodore Roosevelt. Marder has selected these well from the huge mass available, and without “judicious omissions.” The letters start with some charming whimsy from the young midshipman on the China Station; their pertinence increases steadily as Fisher rapidly became one of the outstanding figures of the Royal Navy.
In this brief space, one can only hint at the variety of wealth scattered through the pages. Those interested in “career tactics” can study how he continually indoctrinated his pet publicists and politicians; though Fisher constantly trod on the toes of the conservative and lethargic he managed to secure a constant succession of flattering assignments both afloat and ashore.
Those interested in organization and administration will appreciate his remark that “a rotten system may be run effectively by good men but duffers would spoil the work of the Angel Gabriel!”
Perhaps the most striking of all the letters are those from Fisher as Commander-inChief of the Mediterranean Fleet from 1899 to 1902. Those were the exact years when England was engaged in the Boer War and had scarcely a friend on the Continent. In letter after letter, one can sense the tension over a sudden attack from the French and Russian fleets—he was “absolutely certain that the Battle of Armageddon will be fought in the Mediterranean.” The German naval rivalry, which would dominate the rest of Fisher’s career and shift his concern to the North Sea, had scarcely begun to cause concern. Meanwhile, he did all he could to keep the Navy in a state of “instant readiness for sea.”
There were several targets for Fisher’s contempt. Referring to “the utter ineptitude of Military Officers,” he wrote, “Half the year they are on leave and the other half everything is left to the Sergeant Major.” As for Marines, “The only officer we can never educate is the Marine Officer! It’s an absolute impossibility because he’s brought up on military lines.” From Paris, he wrote, “the Americans swarm so everywhere that the whole place is quite nauseous to me.” The Italian navy and others received like comments.
Marder has written some fifty pages, introducing ably each of the successive stages of the career of the man who, as he says, “found a Navy paralyzed by dead formulae; his electrifying ardor for efficiency and reform left it vibrating with a new and intense life.”
EUROPE. Second Edition by Samuel Van Valkenburg and Colbert C. Held. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1952. 826 pages. $7.50.
Reviewed by Dr. George B. Cressey {One of America's most eminent geographers, Dr. Cressey is Maxwell Professor of Geography, Syracuse University)
It is possible that more college students have learned their geography of Europe from the old Van Valkenburg and Huntington Europe than from any other text. The second edition, by Samuel Van Valkenburg and Colbert C. Held, continues the good features of the old and adds others. Three quarters of the text is new or revised. Of the hundred maps, half are new or redrawn. Whereas the first edition had no photographs, there are now 31 halftones. These add to one’s understanding, but their number is so small that the value is questionable. While the quality of the pictures is excellent, the maps still leave much to be desired in terms of cartographic artistry.
The new edition opens with the statement that “Europe is the fountain of Western civilization,” and points out that “no other area of comparable size in the world displays such variable man and land relationships.” This is a book of facts, but its value lies in the fact that it is also a book of ideas. The first fourteen chapters treat Europe as a whole, then follow thirty-one chapters on the various countries. The regional balance is indicated by the space distribution, with sixty-two pages for Great Britain, forty-nine on France, sixty-five on Germany and seventy-one for the Soviet Union. The Fenno-Scandian countries receive seventy pages. The authors accept the conventional limits of Europe along the Urals, but do not critically evaluate this line through the heart of the U.S.S.R.
The contributions of Ellsworth Huntington are still obvious, especially in the material on climate, and the cultural importance of the area around the North Sea. This area, “Europe A,” stands in contrast to “Europe C” to the south and east in its environment and economic development. Van Valkenburg and Held define geography as being “concerned with the distributional aspect of things, whether they be people, mineral deposits, soils, cities, steel plants, types of agriculture, canals, types of climate, or other such phenomena.” They observe these features in order to arrive at significant patterns, and finally to interpret the area in its varied relations.
The scope of the volume is suggested by the following quotations. In the chapter on Norway, one reads “the fame of Norwegian
fishing and whaling activities and the small amount of arable land might obscure the fact that the foundation of Norway’s economic life is, after all, the soil, and that agriculture and forestry continue to be the mainstay of the people.” Under Britain is the statement that “the trouble is, therefore, not so much that Britain has declined but that others have surpassed it ... it is really quite a miracle that Britain continues to do so well.” The chapter on France opens with the statement “To those who know the country, the expression ‘France’ carries with it a very definite connotation of an intimate relationship between a land, a people, and a culture.” Agricultural limitations in Hungary are due to the fact that “in some sections the soil is unproductive because poor drainage allows water to stand in undrained pools until it evaporates and impregnates the soil with salt.” Finally on the land of the Soviets, “Culturally and economically, the interior location has served to isolate Russia both by sheer distance and by the nature of the peripheral zones. Consequently, Russia has not been subjected to numerous stimulating contacts that have contributed to the development of either the country itself or to the breadth of thinking of the people.”
UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II . . . The Technical Services . . . THE TRANSPORTATION CORPS: RESPONSIBILITIES, ORGANIZATION, AND OPERATIONS. By Chester Wardlow, Office of the Chief of Military History, United States Army. Washington, D. C.: U. S. Government Printing Office. 1951. 454 pp. $3.25.
Reviewed by Colonel George C.
Reinhardt, U. S. Army
(Colonel Reinhardt, a frequent contributor to the Proceedings, is a member of the staff and faculty at the Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.)
This volume, first of the series to deal with the Army’s technical services, presents a documented statistical study of the enormous problems encountered in Army Transportation’s “operating problems and relationships in the Zone of the Interior” during the last war. The preface at once makes clear that other volumes are necessary to cover actual operations in the zone of interior as well as overseas. It likewise explains that the discussion is not confined to the Transportation Corps because of (1) that Corps not being organized until three months after the United States entered the war, and (2) the collaboration necessary between the Transportation Corps and other governmental agencies as well as “close collaboration with the British Ministry of War Transport.”
So broad an assignment is an exacting task which almost certainly had to be presented as “the experience of the Transportation Corps as reflected in Army records.” Other records will doubtless occasion other opinions as the many controversial issues treated would intimate.
The first two of the history’s ten chapters set the stage for the creation of the Transportation Corps (31 July 1942) which logically developed from the Transportation Service, established three months earlier to combine functions then widely spread among a branch of G4, The Quartermaster-General’s transportation division, the ports of embarkation, staging areas, regulating stations, and holding or reconsignment points.
Another two chapters deal with the Corps’ headquarters and its field establishment as they evolved during the war years. Shipping, as the most engrossing concern of the Corps, receives more than one-third of the space of the entire volume, including one chapter on “Relations with Other Ship Operating Agencies” that examines the inherent inefficiencies of divided control of that vital facility. Unification’s MSTS, MATS, and TC responsibility for rail movements for all Services appear logical answers to numerous difficulties outlined in these pages.
The thoughtful reader might also deduce arguments for centralized control, at least in wartime, of naval and civilian shipping, of military and commercial air lines.
The final two chapters on Zone of the Interior (ZI) commercial carriers and Army rail and highway operations in the United States, describe the war load upon land transportation and the numerous divergent agencies to be coordinated in its functioning.
This volume should serve as an admirable source book for research into the vital, complex question, by no means solved in two world wars, of integrating national transport, land, sea, and air into the national struggle for existence which is modern war.
SEVEN BRITONS IN IMPERIAL
RUSSIA, 1698-1812. Edited by Peter
Putnam. Princeton: Princeton University,
1952. 468 pages, $7.50.
Reviewed by Anthony E. Sokol
(Executive Head, Department of Asiatic and Slavic Studies, Stanford University, Dr. Sokol is also a research associate, Hoover Library on War, Revolution, and Peace.)
Any serious student of international affairs knows that if he wishes to understand the present he must first study the past. This anthology of observations on 18th Century Russia, compiled by a member of the Princeton History Department, represents a valuable contribution to such an understanding.
Out of twenty-six British travelers who recorded their impressions of Russia between 1698 and 1812, the editor selected seven as being the most interesting to the modern reader because of their character and background, the contents of their work, and the significance of the historical period which they describe. Each chapter consists of a biographical sketch of the author of the selection, a critical analysis of the historical situation, and excerpts from the original writing.
Done very skillfully, the critical part reveals the editor’s thorough knowledge of the subject, but despite its sound scholarship it is quite readable even for the layman. In one case, however, the editor seems to imply that Russia’s maritime traffic with Europe dates only from the year 1553 (page 12), when direct commercial relations were established with England. He overlooks the fact that long before that the Hanseatic League had carried on regular commerce with Novgorod and other Russian cities.
The first among the writers represented in this book is John Perry, hydraulic engineer in the service of Peter the Great. His story is mainly one of frustration of his engineering ambitions and of the difficulties encountered in Russia by a stranger. Nevertheless, he
reveals an enthusiastic belief for the immense potential strength of the country and for Peter the Great, while he has nothing but disgust for the reactionary and primitive character of the Russian people.
The next writer is John Hanway, a member of the Russia Company of British merchants, who shows little interest in anything but the commercial relations between the two countries.
In contrast to this, William Richardson, humanist scholar and secretary to Lord Cathcart, the British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, attempts an interpretation of the Russian national character which is of considerable interest to the modern student of that country. Deploring the fate of the Russian peasant, he blames all the evils of the system on the form of government which “will always be the principal cause of the want of virtue and genius in this country. . .
More tolerant than he, the Archdeacon William Coxe, traveling tutor, biographer and historian, is yet repulsed by some of the conditions he finds. Talking about the failure of Peter’s reforms, which have been described so enthusiastically by others, he makes a remark which may be applicable to present-day Russian: “For though a nation, compared with itself at a former period, may have made a rapid progress toward improvement; yet, as the exaggerated accounts which I had heard and read of the great civilization diffused throughout the whole empire, led me to expect a more polished state of manners, I must own I was astonished at the barbarism in which the bulk of the people still continue. . . .”
The next traveler selected, Robert Ker Porter, was painter to the Court of Alexander I and a favorite of Russian society. Although he had no great interest in social affairs, he made some interesting remarks concerning the Russian soldier. That topic is treated more thoroughly, however, by the last of the seven authors, Brigadier General Sir Robert Thomas Wilson, who was attached to the Russian army throughout the main part of the Napoleonic Invasion.
Although the editor wisely refrains from drawing analogies with present conditions, the reader will find many comparisons between Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, or between Russia and Western Europe suggested by the various selections. They may lead him to wonder whether the state of the USSR and its policies are a result of Communist domination, or whether they are only a phase and projection of what has always existed in Russia.
Altogether, the book is a welcome addition to the literature on Russia and will prove stimulating to the general reader as well as to the specialist.
DIVIDED WE FOUGHT. By David Donald, Hirst Milhollen, Milton Kaplan and Hulen Stuart. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1952. 441 pages, 500 illustrations. $10.
Reviewed by Captain E. John Long,.
U. S. Naval Reserve (Inactive)
('Captain Long is a writer and editor. During World War II he served as Chief, Pictorial Division, Office of Public Information, Navy Department, and also was photographic editor of Battle Report, a narrative history of the U. S. Navy in World War II.)
At long last here is a general treatment of the Civil War that gives the U. S. Navy a fair measure of credit for the part it played in the ultimate victory of the Union forces. Equally noteworthy is its treatment of the gallant but losing fight waged by the naval forces of the Confederacy. One entire chapter of the book’s fourteen is devoted to the role of the forces afloat, and scattered throughout the volume are numerous references to the slow strangulation of the South through the tightening effects of the Union Navy’s blockade, to the river gunboats that cut the Confederacy in two, and to the vital service of supply rendered by countless thousands of unsung barges, tugs, ferryboats and excursion steamers. Nor is the pursuit of commerce raiders neglected.
Subtitled “A Pictorial History of the War 1861-1865,” this is not just another picture book. Fast-running, easy reading text gives meaning and continuity to striking, and in many cases startling, battle photographs and sketches. At first glance the book appears to have too many portraits of bushy-chinned generals, North and South. But, as the story unfolds and the war progresses from one campaign to another, the importance of leadership becomes more and more apparent. The reader finds himself studying the portrait for some evidence of greatness, or lack of it, that lead to victory or disaster. The photographic lens reveals strength and character, as well as abstraction, hauteur, vanity and even insolence. Some of the subjects must have been unaware that they were being recorded for posterity, because blouses are unbuttoned or only partly buttoned. (Or perhaps photographers were not as brash and dictatorial then as they are today!)
Not all the 500 photographs and sketches are shown here for the first time. The book had an ancestor in “The Photographic History of the Civil War” published in 10 volumes in 1911. This famous set contained 3800 illustrations, but it has long been out of print, and will likely remain so. The editors and publisher of Divided, We Fought felt there was not only a need for a book that would select the best of the Brady and other photographs in the set, but which would, through modern processes of reproduction, bring out the real quality of the original negatives, many of which were taken and processed on the field of battle. This they have admirably done, blending with them the campaign sketches of Alfred R. Ward, his brother William Ward and Edwin Forbes.
Naval interest ranges from the celebrated duel between the U.S.S. Monitor and the C.S.S. Virginia (Merrimac) to bombardment of Southern ports and amphibious operations off Hatteras and during the Peninsular campaigns. The quiet but efficient leadership of Gideon Welles, the Connecticut landlubber whose appointment as Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy had been greeted with sneers, is nicely brought into focus. Here, too, is the frail-looking Dahlgren and his ponderous guns, and vivid -picturization of the exploits of Farragut, Porter, Du Pont, Foote, and Semmes.
Authors should not be held responsible for dust-jacket blurbs, which are prepared by publishers to catch the eye of bookstore browsers. Thus it may not be fair to cite a jacket comment: “The Civil War is the best photographed war in history—surpassing even World Wars I and II.” If quality is meant, maybe the subject is open to debate, but if “best” means quantity, the author of this review can certify that more photographs were taken during World War II than in all other wars combined.
MODERN SHIPS. By Lieutenant Commander John H. La Dage, U.S.M.S.
Cambridge, Md.: Cornell Maritime Press,
1953. 377 pages, 203 illustrations. $6.50.
Reviewed by Walter N. Larkin
(Captain Larkin, a graduate of Kings Point, is an instructor at the Masters, Mates, and Pilots Up-Grade School and a maritime consultant in New York, N. Y.)
Modern Ships, a reference text, was written for the special requirements of personnel in the Merchant Marine. The author, Chief of the Section Applied Naval Architecture at the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy, Kings Point, has compiled this volume from the outline of the course of instruction given at Kings Point. He has passed over lightly many of the usual subjects discussed in such volumes and has treated with emphasis those phases of ships design, construction, and operation which have not been accorded the importance which they deserve. For this reason the material and information of this book should be made available for ready reference in the library of a ship’s officer. The author has approached the subject with the idea that the present or prospective ship’s officer is not required to be a ship’s designer or shipwright, but a professionally educated merchant marine officer.
The application of naval architecture to the course of study at Kings Point is reflected in the chapter headings of Modern Ships which are as follows: Principle Dimensions and Characteristics; Modern Types of Ships, Tonnage Measurements; Classification Freeboard and Load Lines; Strength of materials and ship; Lines, offsets and mold loft; Riveting and Welding; Tank, Bilges and Piping Systems; Turning and Steering; Launching; Drydocking; Ship Calculations; The ship in Waves; Resistance and Powering; Propeller and Propulsion; and Ship Trials.
A definitive table of contents breaks down
the chapter headings into 102 subheadings, covering a wide field of subjects heretofore found only by searching through many volumes. Each chapter is followed by a section of review questions suitable for classroom work or an aid to self study.
THE AIR ALMANAC, 1953, January- April. H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1952, 302 pages. Price 10s Od net.
Reviewed by Commander Edwin A.
Beito, U. S. Naval Reserve
(A member of the Department of Seamanship, U. S. Naval Academy, Commander Beito revised Dutton’s “Navigation and Nautical Astronomy," for its tenth (1951) edition and subsequent revised printings of that edition.)
Of general interest to the American readers is the statement in the Preface that “Beginning with this volume, the British Air Almanac and the American Air Almanac become a single publication, produced jointly by H.M. Nautical Almanac Office, Royal Greenwich Observatory, under the immediate supervision of D. H. Sadler, and by the Nautical Almanac Office, United States Naval Observatory, under the immediate supervision of G. M. Clemence and R. F. Haupt, to the general requirements of the military forces of the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada.”
This is the first attempt to produce an identical Almanac by the United States and Great Britain. To make it even more international in character, the French and Spanish equivalents of symbols and abbreviations are included so that the Almanac can be used by French and Spanish speaking countries without any language difficulty.
The unification of the American and British Air Almanacs has required a number of minor changes in both, but most of the changes are easily apparent. Anyone familiar with either Almanac should have no difficulty in using the new 1953 Air Almanac without any special preparation. Since the British Air Almanac follows very closely the style and arrangement of the 1952 American Air Almanac, only the important changes and additions to it will be discussed below.
The bottom lines for 12h and 24h on the daily pages have been omitted so as to give room for a space at the end of each hour, which adds to its readability. The declination of the sun, and planets is calculated for the mid-point of the hour and listed at the beginning of the hour. The two dots given at the half hour, therefore, do not have the same significance as in previous American Air Almanacs where they marked the boundaries of the tabulated declinations. This should be carefully noted by users of the previous almanacs. The declination for the moon is given at every ten minute interval.
The moon’s GHA has been adjusted so as to make unnecessary the small correction table given at the bottom of the moon’s parallax column. The age of the moon is given here.
Hour values have been added to the ecliptic diagrams to further assist in increasing the ease with which navigational bodies in the zodiac may be located and identified.
The rising and setting data for the sun and moon have been extended to 72° N, but remains at 60° S. A comprehensive correction table for heights up to 60,000 feet to be applied to tabulated times of sunrise and sunset and duration of twilight appears on two facing pages. For moonrise and moonset a half mean daily difference is given and a special table is provided to facilitate the correction for longitude.
The refraction table has been completely redesigned and extends up to an altitude of 55,000 feet. Convenient tables of temperature and coriolis corrections are given on the same page.
The SHA, declination, and magnitude of 57 selected stars are given on the inside front cover and also on the flap. The list differs somewhat from the previous list of stars, and the changes in both the American and British Almanacs are noted on a page devoted to star indices. On this page, lists are given of the stars used in H.O. 249 (AP 3270) and H.O. 218 (AP 1618), and those that can be used with the declination portions of those tables.
Four pages are devoted to listing the Standard Times for localities throughout the world.
The sky diagrams have the same form as the 1952 Air Almanac but they provide for the 57 selected stars. Only 22 stars have been included in the previous editions. The increase in the number of stars would seem advantageous, but it becomes somewhat more difficult to spot the particular stars to be used.
The explanation of Astrograph settings has been rewritten and contains very complete instructions with illustrations of many typical examples.
The table for conversion of arc to time has been shortened tc 180°. For angles greater than 180°, 180 is subtracted and 12 hours added to the result. Data for time are given for every four seconds only.
A new and excellent star and constellation chart is provided on the inside flap. It contains the names of constellations and the names and numbers of the 57 selected stars. Other stars are given Bayer letters. The sidereal hour angle (SHA) appears both on the top and bottom of the chart. It is unfortunate that right ascension (RA) was not given at the top or at the bottom. RA is preferable for finding the local meridian, and in the same almanac the star numbers are given in order of right ascension. Many navigators know the approximate right ascensions of the common navigational stars
It is noted that there are two styles of figures used, probably resulting from a compromise between the two almanac offices concerned. This will cause mild confusion to both British and American users.
One outstanding change is the use of the name Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) instead of Greenwich Civil Time (GCT) This is in accordance with a U. S. Chief of Naval Operations letter, dated 12 September 1950, which states that beginning 1 January, 1953 the column headed GCT in the present Nautical and Air Almanacs will be headed GMT.
The tabular accuracy of the almanac remains about the same as before and is well within the accuracy needed for air navigation. The almanac states that “The maximum error that can arise in the intercept, through the limitations of tabular accuracy, is 3' for the Moon and 2' for the sun, planets and stars—. The error resulting from the use of the Air Almanac in deducing a position from two observations will rarely be as great as 5 miles (less than one case in ten thousand).” These inaccuracies are within the tolerances for air navigation, but the surface navigator should resist the temptation of using the air almanac for marine navigation.
SEA DEVILS. By J. Valerio Borghese. Translated from the Italian Decima Flottig- lia Mas by James Cleugh and adapted by the author. London: Andrew Melrose. 1952. 263 pages. 18 s.
Reviewed by George K. Tanham
(Dr. Tanham, a member of the California Institute of Technology History Department, held a Ford Fellowship for the study of military history at Oxford, 1952-53.)
The story of the Italian Tenth Light Flotilla is an exciting saga and yet a tale of disappointment and frustration. The toll of two hundred and sixty-five thousand tons of Allied naval and merchant ships is a record to be extremely proud of, but, as Commander Borghese’s book so clearly reveals, there were many more operations which failed, due to material failure or the vigilance of the British, than succeeded. Whether the Tenth would have been able to strike decisive blows to the British in the Mediterranean Sea had it been ready in June, 1940, and so influenced the outcome of the war, as Commander Borghese intimates, is to be doubted, particularly in the light of Pearl Harbor. However, the successful attacks on the British battleships, Queen Elizabeth and Valiant, in December 1942 did weaken greatly the British fleet in the Mediterranean, but only for a brief time. The book certainly shows that, with all due respect for the very great skill and exceptional bravery and determination of the men of the Tenth, the use of small craft in spite of occasional spectacular results, did not in the long run constitute a proper means of winning the naval war.
The origins of the Tenth go back to World War I when two daring Italians in swift torpedo boats successfully attacked Austrian ships in the harbor of Pola. Development work was recommenced in Italy in 1935 and, with the exception of two critical years continued until Italy withdrew from the war in 1943. The work was carried out at the naval base at La Spezia with the greatest secrecy possible, but, as Commander Borghese says, it is easier to get “an Italian to lay down his life than make the sacrifice of holding his tongue.” The Tenth was divided into two divisions: the surface, which operated the self-destroying torpedo boats, and the underwater, which manned the two-man submarines, “pigs,” and trained and controlled the undersea divers, the “frogmen.” The latter division carried out the most successful attacks. In order to get the small submarines, with their very limited range close to the harbors to be attacked, transport submarines were created. These carried the pigs as near as possible, then released them and returned to their base. Usually three midgets were released and proceeded to gain the harbor and attack their objectives. The crews then sought the land and either escaped to neutral territory, or were captured by the British, or perished. The most successful attack of the pigs was against the harbor of Alexandria in December, 1942, when an oiler was sunk and two battleships damaged. Shipping in Gibraltar also suffered, when after three failures, the midgets sank three merchantmen in September, 1942. The most spectacular achievement of the “frogmen” was that of one, Ferraro, who in one month operating out of Alexandro sank two vessels loaded with chromium and damaged another. The Tenth was also used in operations against Malta and Sudo Bay and by the Germans in their campaign in the Crimea.
Though perhaps overcharged with emotion, the book does portray the intense patriotism and readiness for self-sacrifice of the men of the Tenth. There are some excellent diagrams showing the structure of the pigs and the plans of attack on the British harbors, as well as numerous photographs. Commander Borghese has a good story to tell and tells it with pride and pleasure.