This html article is produced from an uncorrected text file through optical character recognition. Prior to 1940 articles all text has been corrected, but from 1940 to the present most still remain uncorrected. Artifacts of the scans are misspellings, out-of-context footnotes and sidebars, and other inconsistencies. Adjacent to each text file is a PDF of the article, which accurately and fully conveys the content as it appeared in the issue. The uncorrected text files have been included to enhance the searchability of our content, on our site and in search engines, for our membership, the research community and media organizations. We are working now to provide clean text files for the entire collection.
m re?u'ar anc* associate members of the Institute may save by ordering books through the Book Depart- 0.fnt' A discount of 20% or more is allowed on books of the Naval Institute and a discount of 10% on books of tier publishers (except on foreign and government publications, and on books on which publishers do not give a “«««*). Allow reasonable time for orders to be cleared and books to be delivered directly to you by publishers. Address: Secretary-Treasurer, U. S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland.
STILWELL’S mission TO CHINA. (U. S. Army in World War II—The China, Burma, India Theatre.) Charles F. Ro- rnanus and Riley Sunderland. Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1953. 441 pages. $5.00.
Reviewed by Gene Z. Hanrahan
(A consultant on Asian politico-military problems for the Operations Research Office, the Johns Hopkins University, Mr. Hanrahan saw World War II service with the Marine Corps in the Guam and Iwo Jima campaigns and was stationed in China after the war.)
Vinegar Joe Stilwell had all the attributes °f a good field commander. He could train men and he could lead them in battle. But high level planning and policy debates were alien to the whole makeup of this colorful old warrior. The tactician in him rebelled against diplomatic intrigue and subtle political maneuvering. Yet, when ordered to head the U. S. military effort in the China-Burma- India theatre in the early days of the Pacific war, he inherited probably the most complex politico-military command of World War II.
Stilwell’s mission was to break the Japanese blockade of China and, if possible, initiate a counterattack through the China mainland. Attempting to build a strong fighting machine out of the badly organized and poorly led Chinese armies, the fifty-nine year old soldier soon found himself on the horns of a dilemma. War as he knew it was the exception—the rule was incessant wrangling over national interests, arguments and rivalries over command, and unending indecision—the deadliest foe of any tactician.
A page from his diary, picturing the desperate situation during his famous “retreat” out of Burma, seems best to sum up the galaxy of problems he continually attacked but was destined never to resolve:
Hostile population; no air service; Japan initiative; inferior equipment. . . inadequate ammunition . . . inadequate transport ... no supply set-up; improvised medical service; stupid gutless command; interference by CKS [Chiang Kai- shek]; . . . rotten communications; Br. [British] defeatist attitude; vulnerable tactical situation defeatist attitude; . . . hopeless.
The story of Vinegar Joe’s determined but heartbreaking efforts to create military order out of political chaos—to solve the insoluble—has finally been gathered together and detailed in Stilwell’s Mission to China. Two capable army historians spent more than seven years sifting records, documents, and personal memoirs in preparation for this study. Their work is thorough, well-documented, and remarkably objective* The first of a three volume series on the CBI theatre, this study ends in October, 1943, but it is a compact and complete story in itself.
Up to now the role Stilwell played in our fruitless wartime adventure in China has been at best a controversial one—at worst he has been made the scapegoat of our failure there. This book corrects this inaccuracy and does much to return the long beleaguered old soldier to his rightful place in history.
No less important and perhaps of even greater interest to the naval reader is the amazing contradiction evident in our strategic planning for the CBI theatre. As late even as the close of 1943, Roosevelt, Stilwell, and Marshall held to the questionable view that Japan had to be beaten through China. This was at variance with existing naval doctrine which argued that defeat of Japan’s island empire must be achieved through the application of sea power.
The continental and/or insular strategy for defeating Japan never came to a test largely because of internal wrangling over ways and means. Stilwell’s plan to strike at Japan with a strong ground force was countered by Chennault, a voluble advocate of “victory through airpower.” Chennault won a long list of presidential advisers over to his side with the amazing boast that given less than 200 planes, his tiny force would “destroy the effectiveness of the Japanese Air Force” and “accomplish the downfall of Japan,” this, “probably within six months, within one year at the outside.”
Anxious to thwart Stilwell’s plans of reform in the Chinese army, Chiang Kai-shek sided with Chennault and mounting pressure on all sides finally led Roosevelt to reject the proposals of both Marshall and Stilwell. It is a matter of record, of course, that Chan- nault’s ambitious claims were never realized.
Stilwell’s Mission to China is a refreshing change over the dull historical narratives so common in official studies. It may well be the best work yet to come out of the Army series and should prove a welcome addition to the library of any student of military history.
MARINES IN THE CENTRAL SOLOMONS. By Major John N. Rentz, USMCR. Historical Branch, Headquarters, U. S. Marine Corps. Washington, D. C.: Government Printing Office, 1952. viii+186 pages. ,$2.75.
Reviewed by John H. Kemble
(Mr. Kemble is Professor of Military History, U. .S'. Naval War College.)
There were three major phases of the campaign in the Solomon Islands in 19421943: Guadalcanal, the Central Solomons, and Bougainville. The first of them initiated the real American offensive against the
Japanese in the Pacific, and they culminated in the control of the whole group which made possible the neutralization of the prime Japanese base at Rabaul in New Britain. The book under review deals with the second phase of the Solomons Campaign, although in the series of Marine Corps Monographs of which it is a part, both Guadalcanal and Bougainville have been covered in volumes already published.
Following an introductory chapter in which the geographical character of the region and the general strategic concept of the campaign receive attention, the author launches into a discussion of the detailed planning for the operation in the Central Solomons which had as its focal point the seizure of the Japanese airfield at Munda Point on New Georgia Island. The major part of the book covers Marine ground and air action from June 28, 1943, when forces landed on Vangunu Island at the eastern end of the New Georgia Group, until Vella Lavella at the western extremity of the chain was secured on October 9 of the same year. Munda Airfield, the principal objective, was occupied on August 5. The Epilogue contains an assessment of the campaign as a whole, a comparison with Guadalcanal, and an analysis of the tactical lessons learned. There is an excellent and well annotated bibliography, listing not only published works but also documents such as operation plans, intelligence reports, action reports, and war diaries. The book contains a well-selected series of photographs and splendid maps.
In his narrative, Major Rentz gives sufficiently detailed material to enable the reader to gain more than a superficial impression of the operation. Naturally there is emphasis on the Marine forces engaged, but coordinated and associated Army activities are not slighted, and the support furnished by the Navy is described. In fact, it is the author’s considered opinion that the principal lesson of the campaign was the demonstration of close cooperation between the Marines and the Army. Although in his conclusion, Major Rentz mentions “gross inadequacies and inefficiencies” revealed in the campaign, these are not discussed in detail, and the reader is left to discover them mainly by inference.
In this, as in earlier volumes of this series,
A knowledge of the Court decisions which interpret the Rules of the Road is a necessity for the sea-going officer. Some of the more important ones could be added to the few, quoted. One of these decisions is that covering the authority of the pilot on board a merchant vessel. A clearer legal definition of the phrase “risk of collision” is available than the one given on page 702.
These omissions and corrections are minor in comparison to the accuracy, comprehensiveness, and usefulness of this valuable work. No ship’s library (Navy or merchant marine) should be without a copy.
CONTAINMENT OR LIBERATION? An Inquiry into the Aims of United States Foreign Policy. By James Burnham. New York: The John Day Company, 1953. 256 pages. $3.50.
Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Samuel S. Stratton, U. S. Naval Reserve
(Author of “Korea: Acid Test of Containment," which won the Naval Institute Prize Essay Contest, 1952, Mr. Stratton was a member of the Naval Intelligence School,
Anacostia, until his recent return to his civilian career as a radio and television news commentator.)
George F. Kennan’s doctrine of “containment,” under which U. S. foreign policy has been conducted (more or less) since 1947, is easier to criticize than to replace with a wholly convincing alternative. Dr.Burnham’s latest volume, for all its readability and provocativeness, is no exception to this rule.
Briefly, his thesis is that against communism either you move forward or you move back; there can be no permanent standing still. Because containment is designed only to hold the line, it has failed and would, if continued, be as disastrous to our security as was the Maginot Line philosophy in France.
Dr. Burnham’s alternative is to roll back Soviet power—first from the satellites of Eastern Europe, ultimately from the USSR itself. In place of the goal of “co-existence” he calls for full-scale “political warfare,” committed as resolutely to the destruction of world communism as communism is committed to the overthrow of “capitalist” democracy. Traditional diplomacy is out, and “any possibility of agreement with the infidel” is excluded in advance.
1 e Marine Corps has done a service for the Professional military man and the military 'storian, as well as for the generally interested civilian, by setting forth in orderly, actual form a satisfactorily and usefully detailed narrative of one of the significant Phases of the War in the Pacific.
MARINE LAWS. By Commander Frederick K. Arzt, U. S. Coast Guard, Equity Publishing Corporation, Stony Brook, L. I., N. Y. 1953. 1200 pages. $6.95.
Reviewed by Commodore Ralph S. Wentworth, U. S. Navy (Retired)
(Commodore Wentworth has served in the Navy about jorty years. During this time he has commanded several 5 ups, been attached to the Naval War College, and seen service in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.)
t This volume follows a predecessor entitled Navigation Laws of the United States, 1940.
I he author, Commander Arzt, states that the scope of the earlier volume has been broadened and its utility enhanced. This is an accurate statement. The present volume contains all, and if not all, then nearly all of the U. S. laws, regulations, and international conventions which govern the construction, outfitting, manning, inspection, repair, and operation of a U. S. merchant vessel in peace and war. The duties and responsibilities of the Coast Guard in relation to merchant vessels are included. The author has appended, to some paragraphs, his comments which contain pertinent Court decisions, additional information, and references to other publications for further knowledge.
Although Commander Arzt has compiled in this one book nearly all of the Marine Laws, there are some omissions for which the officer or student must look elsewhere. The following omissions may be noted:
(a) Pilot Rules for Inland Waters, the Great Lakes and Western Rivers.
(b) Rules of the Road for the Panama Canal.
(c) Explanation of Time Signals.
(d) Description of weather and hurricane warnings.
The book is arranged and subdivided in an advantageous manner. However, the duties and services of the Bureau of Shipping might be gathered into one chapter for a clearer picture oPthat serviceable agency.
In saddling containment with all the errors of the past, Burnham overstates his case. Whether you call it a “temporary expedient” or what, containment’s contribution towards dispelling our rosy post-war illusions and repairing the folly of hasty disarmament cannot fairly be downgraded. Indeed, one might argue that our current difficulties in Asia stem less from inadequacies in containment as a theory than from a failure to apply that theory more consistently.
Yet there are flaws in containment, the chief one being the hope that with its outward spread at last arrested, the communist apparatus will in time undergo a “mellowing” of its revolutionary intent. Actually, wc could wake up some day to find instead that the Soviets had used the interval to consolidate their present holdings so thoroughly as to shift the balance of world power irretrievably against us. These shortcomings, dramatized in the stalemated Korean war, have spurred the search, in government and out, for some alternative.
Unfortunately, many of the detailed questions that would have to be answered before the assets and risks of “liberation” could be fully calculated are not covered in this volume. Just what specific “political” operations, for example, are contemplated? If “political” pressure gets no results, what military operations are indicated? How adequately could present armed forces levels backstop such a policy? What changes, if any, would be entailed in our current approach in Korea?
For Dr. Burnham questions like these are “technical problems of application” to be worked out in translating liberation “from general idea into detailed reality.”
One detail he does plump for, though, is an end to “balanced” military forces in favor of predominant air power. This reviewer finds it hard to go along here. The mass destruction of strategic bombing (whatever may be said for it in all-out war) seems least likely to provide the close support and finger-tip control essential to successful insurrection under the noses of the Soviet police.
But even without the final word on such details, Containment or Liberation? is a stimulating introduction to the basic issue of our day, and as such deserves a wide audience.
WAVES AND TIDES. By R. C. H. Russell, M.A. and Commander D. H. Macmillan, RNR (retired), F.R.I.C.S., Assoc. I.N.A. With a foreword by Herbert Chatley, D.Sc. (Eng.), M. Inst. C. E. New York. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1953. 348 pp. $6.00.
Reviewed by F. G. Walton Smith
(Dr. Smith founded the Marine Laboratory, University of Miami, in 1943 and has since, as Us director, developed research in fisheries, ocean currents, and other phases of oceanography. He is co-author with Henry Chapin of The Ocean River, the story of the Gulf Stream.)
The great movements of the ocean are not always visible. There is a flow of millions of tons of water each second in the Gulf Stream with little or nothing for an observer on the deck of a vessel to see, although indirectly it leaves its evidence clearly enough in the navigational log. The enormous quantities of sediment and dead organisms slowly raining on the sea floor add to the seafloor only a small fraction of an inch each year, yet in geological time they have built rocks many thousands of feet in thickness and have had much to do with the formation of the world’s oil fields. There are two ocean phenomena, however, which are not only directly visible but which are of immediate practical interest to the navigator, the harbor engineer and, in fact, to all whose work takes them near the sea. Both of these are dealt with in Russell and Macmillan’s book on waves and tides, in such a way that the average person, with no special training in the physical sciences, should have no difficulty in understanding the causes and effects of waves and tides.
The subject is an important one. Both long period tidal movements and the short period movements of waves must be taken into account in military landing operations, and the ability to predict them played a large part in such large scale operations as the invasion of France by the Allies during World War II. The design of harbor works and other structures exposed to the damaging effects of wave action and the intricate problems of beach erosion are even more important during peace time. The navigational importance of tides and tidal currents is often overlooked and this itself is a tribute to the painstaking work of the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, the British Admiralty, and other agencies re-
sponsible for the mathematical predictions which make up our Tide Tables. (In spite of the importance of waves and tides, nothing °1 a similar comprehensive and popular nature has been written since Vaughan Cornish Published his book on ocean waves in 1934.)
To describe the physical forces of nature and their effects in a manner acceptable to the lay reader is not an easy task. On the one hand is the temptation to abandon scientific accuracy and clear description in favor of the Purple passages of an emotional approach. While this frequently enough serves to make such a book acceptable to a larger audience, Jts success is usually purely monetary, since tt serves no useful purpose, and may indeed do harm through overdramatization. On the other hand, there is a natural desire on the Part of an author writing on his own subject to produce a monograph in which the technical aspects are exhaustively treated. In doing this he usually succeeds also in making the text virtually a foreign language as far as the nontechnical reader is concerned. The authors of Waves and Tides have fallen into neither of these pitfalls, but have covered the subject in sufficient detail and sufficiently accurately to make the book useful to scientists and acceptable to the lay reader.
The book is not an exhaustive scientific treatise. Nevertheless it is a useful summary of information for the general oceanographer, the fishery scientist or marine biologist, and the harbor engineer. In this respect it is assured of a warm welcome. For these purposes the bibliographical references are sufficiently adequate and the tendency to stress the empirical rather than the theoretical is no handicap. Waves and Tides can be strongly recommended to all who are interested in these ocean phenomena.
FAR FROM THE CUSTOMARY SKIES. By Warren Eyster. New York: Random House, 1952. A Novel. 372 pages. $3.75.
Reviewed by Rear Admiral A. A.
Ageton, U. S. Navy (Retired)
(Admiral Agelon, a frequent contributor to the Proceedings, is particularly interested in fiction of the U. S. Navy. He is best known, however, for his work in navigation and as author of The Naval Officer’s Guide.)
In this first novel, Mr. Warren Eyster, who served a long hitch as an enlisted man during
World War II, apparently sets out to tell in fictional terms of “how it was” in the destroyers in that private little war known as the Battle for the Solomons. In the telling, he has achieved an orderly and fairly agreeable conception of his subject, demonstrated a good grasp of character presentation, derived some brilliant and authentic dialogue, and presented some very effective description. His sunset scene in Chapter Eight in sensitive appreciation recalls to mind many a lovely facet of that familiar phenomenon; his description of a typhoon from the viewpoint of various men below decks and topside will long be remembered among the writings about the sea.
But if the reader seeks a conventional plot, a human protagonist confronted by the usual human and natural antagonists, he should look elsewhere. This is an unusual novel of the sea; for the first hundred pages, this reviewer puzzled without success over the ancient question: Whose story is this? And then he recalled an earlier novel of the Navy, Marcus Goodrich’s Delilah, in which the ship herself was the central character. In Mr. Eyster’s story, the crew of the Dreher is the protagonist, as singular and unconventional a crew as ever manned a Navy destroyer in wartime, a crew which seems bent upon its own destruction. Until toward the end of the book, the Japs are only a distant and portentous menace, occasionally lobbing a few shells at the Dreher with but little damage to ship or crew. The Japs kill enough of the crew eventually, certainly, but there are at least three murders and two suicides for which only the crew, itself, is responsible. The most dangerous antagonist of the crew is the “wet rot” which attacks in varying degrees of seriousnesg the crew of any ship, which is long exposed to the close confinement of one man with another in the humid heat and stench, the moments of excitement and months of boredom, of war at sea in the tropics.
As has become usual in war novels about our Navy, the Regular comes off badly. That petty persecutions and even murder could take place undiscovered and unpunished under the circumstances described certainly was not usual—the Captain and his officers would have to be completely unobserving and unknowing— they are not so drawn. The author does well by his Captain Rowe, giving him a creed that sounds familiar:
“Anything that will kill Japs or Germans, ] want. A destroyer has the single purpose of destruction. . . . How to destroy—that is what counts. We cannot destroy without great risk to ourselves until we are a machine. . . . When you say to yourself that you can do so-and-so blindfolded, then you have only begun to master your job. . . . Learn now, make mistakes now, for 1 shall have no mercy on the man who fails in his duty in a moment of crisis. ...”
But the Captain, in his interest in building a machine, permits a sadist, Malone, the bos’nmate, to become a petty tyrant and places him in a position to wreak his vengeance on any man of the crew who crosses him. There may have been ships like the Dreher, but they were, fortunately, the exception, not the rule; however, it is the exceptional in life which produces conflict and drama; there is enough of both in this book to make exciting fiction.
ACROSS THE SPACE FRONTIER. By Dr. Wernher von Braun, Willy Ley, Dr. Fred L. Whipple, Dr. Joseph Kaplan, Dr. Heinz Haber, and Oscar Schachter. Edited by Cornelius Ryan. With full-color illustrations by Chesley Bonestell, Fred Freeman, and Rolf Klap. New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 147 pages. $3.95.
Reviewed by Captain Otis C. Gregg,
U. S. Navy
(Completing a tour of duly as Head of the Department of Aviation, U. S. Naval Academy, Captain Gregg assumed command of the U.S.S. Princeton in A pril, 1953.)
The past fifty years has seen the development of powered flight to supersonic speeds. The last decade of this period also encompasses the era of the great and almost unbelievable scientific achievements which have been made in connection with the development of both the atomic and hydrogen bombs. It is quite reasonable to think, therefore, that space travel is scientifically possible and that we have arrived at the threshold of interplanetary flight. By approaching the book with these accomplishments in mind and by ignoring all thoughts of the multitudinous problems which remain unsolved, this reviewer was able to project himself into space along with the authors and illustrators.
Doctor von Braun, the man who wrote the first and main chapter of this book, was the co-designer of the German V-2 rocket, and speaks with impressive authority on the means for accomplishing space flight. He leads off with a statement “within the next ten or fifteen years, the earth can have a new companion in the skies, a man-made satellite which will be man’s first foothold in space.’ He tells just how the U. S. Military can establish a “satellite space station” in an orbit around the earth and insists that such a “station” would put the United States far ahead in the race for power. Of course, the thought which comes to mind at once is that this same reasoning convinced Hitler that the V-2 was to be Germany’s salvation.
The remaining chapters of the book are written by outstanding contributors who are experts in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, rockets, and international law. They write in somewhat more restrained language than does Doctor Braun but all, in the main, support the idea of the future of space travel. The full-color illustrations are beautifully done.
BRITISH WAR PRODUCTION. By M. M.
Postan, London: Her Majesty’s Stationery
Office and Longmans, Green and Co.,
1952, xvi+512 pages. 32 s. 6 d.
Reviewed by Redvers Opie
(Dr. Opie, an economist with the Brookings Institution, was Counselor of Embassy at the British Embassy during the latter part of World War II.)
An account of the industrial mobilization in peace and war by the country that succeeded in converting to war purposes a larger percentage of its resources than any other country is of considerable topical interest. How topical indeed can be inferred from the fact that the change of “political and psychological climate” since the book was conceived made it necessary in the interests of security “that some topics should be eschewed altogether and that others should be cast in a form less specific . . . , the whole of the projected chapter on the quality of weapons, dealing with the problems of design, development, research, and innovation [having] been scrapped.” Similarly, the part dealing with the experience of firms and factories in actual production was curtailed because many of them are again engaged in war production.
This volume is introductory and synoptic, to be followed by a half dozen or so more detailed studies, much of the contents of which were used as raw material in the writing of this one. In his double capacity as Professor °f Economic History in the University of t ambridge and as a former temporary civil servant who had wide experience during the war, Mr. Postan is admirably equipped to deal with the problems of analysis and synthesis inherent in painting this broad picture.
The story may be viewed as consisting of four parts: the preparatory period, which runs from 1934 to Dunkirk (Chapters I to Hi); the attainment of the peak of industrial mobilization and the problems of production thereafter (Chapters IV to VI); the demobilization or “run down” of military production, which began during the war (Chapter VII); and general observations on the technical and administrative system, including the lessons of “planning” (Chapters VIII and IX). Even this general account contains a vast amount of interesting detail on the Production problems in expanding the Navy, Air Force, and Army, the latter being the Cinderella of the three services in its treatment by the financial authorities. Inherent technical differences as well as differences arising from political or strategic considerations are shown to have affected the relative rates of expansion of the three services.
Political and strategic assumptions are shown to have played an outstandingly important role, especially in the preparatory period. Before the beginning of rearmament, the assumption made in 1928 that no major war would occur for ten years was dropped, and the situation examined afresh. The decision was made in 1934 to make up for the lost time in rearmament in five years “thus by implication halving the ‘safe’ period within which no war was expected.” This set the pace and Mr. Postan shows that within the targets set considerable progress was made by the outbreak of war. In 1938, for example, a new maximum peacetime rate of expenditure on defense was attained. This was inadequate, however, and finance, treated as if it were “in the nature of a fourth arm,” continued to be a limiting factor on production. The underlying assumption that it was likely to be a long war conditioned the financial outlook until May, 1940, and justifies Mr. Postan in making Dunkirk rather than the outbreak of war the turning point in military production. It may be observed that after Dunkirk, external finance— the supply of dollars—continued to condition war production.
The main lesson of British experience is clearly expounded in the first and last parts of this survey. So long as the objective of British policy was “not so much preparation for war as the reinforcement of peace”—as it was from 1935 to 1938—the magnitude of rearmament was necessarily limited. It was taken “for granted that the economy . . . could not and must not be stimulated and reshaped to suit the needs of rearmament.” Yet in looking back it is obvious that large orders were essential to realistic planning— “to bring industry to a point at which it could be relied upon to turn out great quantities of weapons at the very outbreak of war.”
★