Book Reviews

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NOTABLE NAVAL BOOKS OF 1956 By Associate Editor Robert M. Langdon

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh annual survey of the outstanding naval books of the current year. No ef­fort is made to cover fiction or books appearing in for­eign languages. British book prices are usually stated in shillings and pence. As is stated above, any of these vol­umes may be purchased through the U. S. Naval Insti­tute which gives a discount to its members.

The two most important naval books of 1954 were written by Admiral S. E. Morison, usnr (Ret.) and his British counterpart, Cap­tain S. W. Roskill, rn (Ret.). This year these two veteran authors score high again, but they must share their prominence with a rel­ative newcomer to the field, Alan Moorehead whose Gallipoli (Harper, $4.50) has received the plaudits of critical reviewers on both sides of the Atlantic. But before Moorehead and his well-received volume are formally intro­duced, attention should be given to Morison and Roskill.

In 1954 readers of the morison series were led through the Mediterranean to Sicily, across to Salerno, and up the Italian coast to Anzio. Now in The Atlantic Battle Won: May 1943-May 1945 (Little, Brown, $6.00) Mori­son takes up where he left off in Volume I, Battle of the Atlantic (1947) and brings to a conclusion “that war of groping and drown­ing, of science and seamanship”—the battle against the German U-boats for control of the supply routes. Throughout this volume Historian Morison is at his best—as well he should be, for in preparing this volume he had what was not entirely available for use in the first half of the Atlantic story, namely in­creased archival sources on both sides of the Atlantic, personal accounts by participants —British, American, and German, and valu­able analyses and commentaries prepared by students of the struggle. And finally he has the intangible advantage of improved per­spective. But in another sense each succeed­ing Morison volume is prepared under in­creasing difficulties coming from veritable tons of primary and secondary sources which have to be consulted. To bring order and syn­thesis out of this welter takes the deft hand of someone of the Morison-class—of which there happens to be only the master.

The Allies won the Battle of the Atlantic, concludes Morison, by superior training and tactics, by planes in combination with con­voys, and by the intelligent use of science as well as by excellent seamanship.

Volume XI will wind up the European war with the dual invasion of France in 1944 and will probably be available before the end of 1957. Then the remaining three volumes will finish off the Pacific War.

Captain S. W. Roskill, rn (Ret.), was something of a newcomer to the naval his­tory writers guild in 1954, but by now he is firmly established as a master of his trade.

By the two volumes of his yet-incompleted War at Sea he has written his name high on the list of great naval historians of all time. His first volume appeared in the spring of 1954 and created considerable stir by his forthright statements concerning Admiralty meddling in minute fleet and ship operations. As this reviewer wrote in 1954, that aspect of the Roskill book was relatively minor albeit sensational—sensational when one realizes that these volumes are, after all, units of the Official British History Series.

Volume I carried the British sea story down to what appeared to be the depths of despair when late in 1941 the Japanese sank the Prince of Wales and the Repulse—that “fleet” which was to “save” Singapore, and Volume II continues the sea story to June 1, 1943. But the depths of defeat had not yet been reached in 1941 as Roskill’s Volume II (H.M. Stationery Office, S9.00) reveals. The opening months of 1942 held yet unforeseen setbacks for the British and their Allies.

In this volume Roskill reveals his adroit­ness as a champion organizer—juggler may be a better term—by keeping the entire globe’s sea struggles boiling and seething in such a way as to make the careful reader aware of the global effects of, say, the 1942 Indian Ocean operations, or the Battle of Midway, or the pathetic fate of Convoy P.17 on the Murmansk Run early in the summer of 1942. Roskill is never hurried in relating the appropriate amount of background and detail to furnish the reader with a clear com­prehension of the events under consideration. And once the event has been completed the Roskill analysis is right there just as the au­thor and the author alone has conceived it. Roskill’s organization, clarity, thoroughness, ease of telling, and appropriate candor make his books models of what naval history should be. He goes out of his way neither to approve nor to malign, but he does not hesitate to speak of the enemy’s skill and gallantry just as he states again—and without overempha­sis—that the British Admiralty was prone to intervene excessively in the conduct of fleet operations—even after Mr. Churchill’s ten­ure as First Lord.

In reading Volume II with its veritable storehouse of appendices, maps, tables, and illustrations, one reaches the conclusion that although the history of Britain’s World War II naval efforts will be told and retold, it will never be better related than when Roskill is the narrator.

Now to the newcomer—Moorehead and his Gallipoli. The theme is, of course, the An­glo-French 1915 operation to drive through the Turkish Straits, thereby eliminating Tur­key as an enemy, and rendering aid to their Russian Allies—and to themselves. The oper­ation failed miserably, but Moorehead’s aim to tell the entire story has been fulfilled com­pletely. A journalist by profession, Moore­head deals with this historic event with ad­mirable adroitness and brings clarity and simplicity, yet sufficient thoroughness, to an event which has rightfully been called the most controversial campaign of modern times. If a reader of history wishes to be in on high level planning, land with the troops, dig in on beaches, experience frustration, and withdraw ignominiously—Gallipoli provides the means.

History up to 1860

First a rectification of an omission in the 1954 listing of notable naval books. At Holland’s University of Utrecht is Ancient History Professor J. H. Thiel whose earlier writings on Roman sea power are well known and appreciated by students of that remote era. In 1954 this same meticulous author brought out his scholarly History of Roman Sea-Power Before the Second Punic War (North-Holland Publ. Co., $8.00), a volume which provides a sound introduction to the origins and growth of Roman sea power prior to 218 B.C., and then launches into a masterful description and analysis of that same force during the first war against Carthage, 218-202 B.C.

Leaving the ancient field and moving rapidly into the medieval and early modern eras, we encounter that ubiquitous warrior and historian Sir Winston S. Churchill whose two volumes on the History of the English-Speaking Peoples (Dodd, Mead, $6.00 each) make excellent reading, not for any new data but rather for their Churchill- ian presentation. The first, The Birth of Britain, includes appropriate references to early English sea power, such as the role of King Alfred and the reorganization of the fleet by Henry V in 1414. Then in The New World are presented the beginnings of the Royal Navy under Henry VII and its growth under Henry VIII, the global strife with Spain, the Dutch Wars of the mid-17th century, and the beginnings of Britain’s wbrld power. The great Churchill can not, obviously, employ the effective “I-was- there” technique as he did so masterfully in his World Crisis and his Second World War, but, as always, he instills much of his own vitality into these names and events.

Another volume which contributes con­siderably to a fuller understanding of the growth of British sea power, particularly for the Dutch Wars and the War of the League of Augsburg, is David Ogg’s England in the Reigns of Janies II and William III (Oxford, S6.00).

One of the more erudite naval studies to appear this year is C. Harvey Gardiner’s Naval Power in the Conquest of Mexico (U. of Texas, S4.95). Gardiner not only takes Cortes by sea to Mexico, but then, once that 16th Century conquistador is on the thresh­old of his victory over the Aztecs, Gardiner relates how Spanish sea power on Lake Texcoco, a mile and a half above sea level and two hundred miles from the sea, proved decisive.

Thirty years ago R. G. Albion published his near-classic Forests and Sea Power in which he analyzed the Royal Navy’s timber problem from 1652 until 1862. From Ohio State University’s Paul W. Bamford now comes a parallel study Forests and French Sea Power 1660-1789 (Univ. of Toronto, $5.00). This valuable work includes an account of the depletion of France’s native timber supply and of her undesirable naval store dependence on the Baltic, Black Sea, and North American areas.

Who hasn’t longed for a trip to Tahiti! In his Voyage to the Amorous Islands (Es­sential, $5.00) Newton A. Rowe reveals that this longing is not alone associated with the Nordhoff and Hall era, for ever since HMS Dolphin sailed in 1766 to confirm rumors of giants in Patagonia—and found none—but rounded Cape Horn to inspect the South Seas—from that time on there has been profound interest in the climate and society of those “Amorous Islands.”

In Ben Franklin's Privateers (Louisiana State, $3.75) an experienced naval historian, William Bell Clark, has employed careful research to reveal “Poor Richard” as the organizer of a minute force of three cutters which preyed upon British commerce in 1779-80 for the specific purpose of obtaining unwilling Britishers to be used in prisoner- for-prisoner exchange operations. Bell reveals that these French-owned and Irish smuggler- manned ships quickly achieved their purpose -—and also involved Franklin in some un­foreseen complications.

Horatio Hornblower fans are ever await­ing eagerly the next episode from that fictional character’s creator, C. S. Forester. Deviating from fiction for the first time in his distinguished literary career, Forester has produced The Age of Fighting Sail (Doubleday, $5.00), the story of the Naval War of 1812. Under Forester’s unexcelled narrative style, Old Ironsides and Isaac Hull, $tephen Decatur and the United States—and all the other great men and ships of that strange war come to life and capture the reader’s eagerness to push on to learn the outcome.

American Civil War

One wag has recently opined that the true victor of the American Civil War is the American book publisher. Few followers of current best seller lists will disagree with that conclusion, and 1956 only serves to substan­tiate it.

In the 1880’s Century Magazine “scooped” the Civil War field by publishing the greatest collection of “I-was-there” accounts of any war up to that time. These 350-odd essays by more than 230 Civil War participants and observers were published, with hundreds of maps and illustrations, in the four- volume Battles and Leaders, a work which has come to be something of a collector’s item. Late this fall two publishers rendered immense service to the millions of Civil War fans by once again making this great work available. The more ambitious of the two projects is the entire Battles and Leaders (T. Yoseloff, $30.00) which presents, un­abridged, the greatest collection of first­hand accounts of the Civil War. A less massive but equally appreciated volume is

Ned Bradford’s Battles and Leaders (Apple- ton-Century-Crofts, $8.95), a one volume edition of the best from the entire series. Containing 44 of the original essays and many sketches, this edition includes a number of Civil War naval selections in­cluding two on the Monitor-Merrimac scrap, and one each on the Vicksburg campaign and the sinking of the Alabama.

R. V. Bruce’s Lincoln and the Tools of War (Bobbs-Merrill, $5.00) is a unique and re­freshing account of Lincoln’s associations with inventors, inventions, experiments, and ordnance officials. For the first time there is here presented in one volume the whole documented story of the technological problems and progress in which Lincoln was interested and involved. This story quite naturally includes such figures as Dahlgren and Ericsson as well as data on rockets, balloons, submarines, mines, and potassium nitrate.

Mr. Lincoln’s Admirals (Funk and Wag- nalls, $5.00) consists of nine biographical sketches covering the Civil War careers of five Union naval officers of admiral rank, Farragut, D. D. Porter, Foote, DuPont, and Dahlgren; and four other Union naval heroes, Cushing, Collins, Winslow, and Worden. Far from definitive though these sketches are, taken together they consist of a rather useful collection of a partial who’s who of the Union Navy.

The late Fletcher Pratt was one of the more successful popular historians of his time. Often and rightly under suspicion by his scholarly contemporaries, Pratt produced several dozen books, many dealing with the Civil War. Late in 1955 there appeared his The Civil War in Pictures (Holt, $10.00) con­sisting mainly of photographs and sketches from Harpers Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Magazine. Early this year he brought out Civil War on Western Waters (Holt, S3.50) a rather pleasing—but at times inaccurate— account of the rams, turtles, torpedoes, mortar boats, tinclads, and ironclads which ranged up and down the Mississippi and her adjoining streams. One of Pratt’s most useful features is a rather detailed “pedigree” of each Confederate and Union craft which was built and fought on those waters.

Surprisingly enough the era between 1865 and 1939 was the subject of few if any naval books of significance. There is, of course, a certain naval angle in The Last Voyage of the Lusitania (Holt, S3.75), and the authors have skillfully exploited that angle in their account of the U-boat attack within sight of the Irish coast during the spring of 1915. This popular volume will have far to go, however, before it reaches the sales records of the 1912 Titanic story so dramatically told by Walter Lord in A Night to Remember (Holt, S3.75, and Bantam, 25(f). Mr. Lord is said to be engaged in research on “a day to remember”—Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.

World War II—Official Works

All wars provide material for books, but certainly World War II has—or soon shall— outdistance all other encounters in that respect. For as revealed in previous years in this annual round-up, the Second World War takes first place among subjects of noteworthy naval books. In addition to the Morison and Roskill volumes already men­tioned, there appeared in 1956 more than a score of good World War II naval books. High on the merit list stand four official British histories of World War II. In the UNITED KINGDOM MILITARY SERIES (of which Roskill’s War at Sea is a member) appeared Volume II of The Mediterranean and Middle East (H.M. Stat. Off., $6.53) by Major General I. S. O. Playfair, and others. This volume is subtitled “The Germans Come to the Help of the Ally” (1941)—referring, of course, to that year’s momentous events in Libya, Egypt, Malta, Greece, Crete, Iraq, and Syria. Typical chapters on “The Conse­quences of the German Attack on Russia” and “The Struggle for Sea Communications July-October 1941” reveal the value of this second member of a proposed six-volume series on this one theme.

The British plan six official volumes of Grand Strategy, and instead of waiting until these six can appear in chronological se­quence they are releasing them as soon as they are completed. For that reason John Ehrman’s Volume V (H.M. Stat. Off., S7.82) is the first to appear. This volume, covering fourteen months (August 1943- September 1944) of the central direction of the war, and its companions of the future will help to supply the background for the so-called operational volumes—just as the latter in turn supply background for these volumes. Let no one assume that the great wartime conferences at Quebec, Cairo, Teheran, and Quebec again will be told herein as interestingly as participant Church­ill told in his Second World War, but for solid, authoritative, scientifically-prepared history, one should not sell short this strategy series.

In addition to the military series re­ferred to above, the united kingdom civil series contains a number of volumes, both published and in preparation, which are of vital interest to students of naval affairs. None of these volumes studies will be more important than C. B. A. Behren’s Merchant Shipping and the Demands of War (H.M. Stat. Off., $6.53) which describes the needs those British ships had to meet in the vari­ous phases of the war, and then goes on to assess how far they did meet those needs, and by what means and at what cost. Start­ing in the 1930’s, this detailed study carries the problem right to the end of the war, dwelling frequently, of course, on the Anglo-American “shipping alliance.”

Also meriting mention here are two other civil histories—North American Supply (H.M. Stat. Off., $6.53) by H. Duncan Hall, and Studies of Overseas Supply by Hall and G. C. Wrigley. These studies in international wartime economics deal heavily with the intricacies of such topics as of pre-Lend Lease and Lend-Lease problems, and Anglo- American joint boards. One unique topic in the second volume is “Scientific Collabora­tion Between the United Kingdom and North America.”

For several years following World War II none of the official British histories appeared, and there was even criticism in Parliament of the alleged dearth of publications. In typical British fashion, however, when the work is finished, then and only then is it released, and by the time the 27 civil and 30-odd military volumes are completed they will constitute the most complete account of any nation’s total war effort.

Before leaving the official history field mention must be made of a massive volume in the great u. s. army in world war ii series. Global Logistics and Strategy (Govt. Print. Off., $6.25) by R. M. Leighton and R. W. Coakley is the first systematic attempt since the war to analyze—both in detail and as a major theme—the manner in which limitations of supply and transportation shaped the central direction of strategy by the Anglo-American high command. Here for the first time is a comprehensive account of military lend-lease operations.

World War II—Private Works

Leaving the official history field we turn now to the private accounts of World War II, and first deserving of notice is the third and final volume in a British-published series by A. C. Hardy entitled Everyman's History of the Sea War (Nicholson and Watson, $4.00 per volume). The first two volumes were published in 1948 and 1949 and told the story down to September, 1943; this final volume, published late in 1955, completes the sea war. This is no simple narrative dealing solely with sea fights; Author Hardy, himself a student of archi­tecture and shipping problems, includes excellent chapters on naval construction— such as landing craft and Japan’s giant Yamatos, chapters on the international re­lations aspects of the sea struggle, and finally, of invaluable use, a detailed appendix of the major naval war losses for the period covered. The book also contains a detailed index.

Each year seems to produce more and more single volumes on one aspect or one person’s experience during the war. The versatile writer Felix Riesenberg, Jr., has brought forth his Sea War (Rinehart, $5.00) which tells the story of the men of the U. S. Mer­chant Marine in World War II—those un­sung heroes who suffered more casualties, proportionately, than those of any other service in the war. For a ringside—even a participant’s—view of such events as the Caribbean slaughter or the Murmansk Run or a dozen other episodes, Sea War provides the means.

One of few senior officers to emerge from World War II and undertake to write popular accounts of events with which he was closely associated is Vice Admiral

Charles A. Lockwood, usn (Ret.), who was Commander U. S. Submarines in the Pacific from 1942 until the end of the war. Lock­wood’s Sink ’Em All and Hell Cats of the Sea have scored high in previous years. This year he and his skilled collaborator, Hans Adamson, score twice, first with Zeros, Subs and Zoomies, later with Through Hell and Deep Water (both Greenberg, S4.50 each). The first is a series of the most spine-tingling aviator rescue operations im­aginable—carried out by U. S. subs often operating right in the Japanese front yards. The latter volume deals with one theme, Sam Dealey and the USS Harder, a thrilling story of one of the most daring and effective sub skippers in the Pacific.

High among the more outstanding U. S. Navy photographs to come out of World War II was the carrier USS Franklin after she had been hit by a Japanese kamikaze in 1945. One important man’s vivid but modest account of what took place on that fright­fully injured carrier is told by Chaplain Joseph T. O’Callahan, S.J., in his I IFas Chaplain On The Franklin (Macmillan, $2.75). For his heroic work aboard that valiant carrier whose casualty list was the highest in U. S. Navy history, Father O’Callahan received the Medal of Honor. He now receives a sincere vote of apprecia­tion for revealing this story.

What is probably the most authoritative account of the underwater demolition ac­tivities is Commander F. D. Fane’s The Naked Warriors (Appleton-Century-Crofts, $5.00) which describes in most dramatic fashion UDT training and achievements from Tarawa to the present. Fane’s suspense- filled accounts take in the major amphibious landings of World War II and Korea and end by relating the more recent “peaceful” explorations from the arctic to the tropics. A smaller, less ambitious, frogman story is told in E. T. Higgins’ Webfooted Warriors (Exposition, S3.00) which appeared late in 1955.

One specific “naked warrior,” the mysteri­ous Commander Crabb, late of the Royal Navy, is the subject of Marshall Pugh’s Frogman (Scribners, $3.50) which deals mainly with Crabb’s daring activities during the war—at Gibraltar and elsewhere. As w^rould be expected, Crabb’s mysterious dis­appearance in Portsmouth, England, last spring is also the subject of Air. Pugh’s conjecture.

British writers and publishers have been more active than ever in their laudable program of bringing out comparatively short and refreshingly crisp accounts of men, ships, and weapons of World War II and now and then of earlier wars. One of Britain’s more accurate and prolific writers is P. K. Kemp whose evolutionary H.M. Destroyers (Herbert Jenkins, 16/) traces the story of the DD from the pre-1900 era up to the present. Ronald Healiss was serving aboard the HMS Glorious in June, 1940, when she was sunk off Norway by the German battle­ship Scharnliorst. He tells of his adventure in Adventure Glorious (F. Muller, 8/6). In recent years Kenneth Poolman produced two single-ship accounts, Kelly and Illus­trious, and he continues his popular tech­nique by presenting this year Ark Royal (Kimber, 18/) a dramatic account of that carrier’s career from her completion in 1938 until her sinking in mid-November, 1941, only twenty-five miles from Gibraltar.

British anti-submarine warfare is the theme of several 1956 volumes. Probably the most thrilling is the autobiographical ac­count U-Boat Killer (Weidenfeld and Nichol­son, 15/) by Captain Donald MacIntyre, rn (Ret.), whose account of how he ter­minated the careers of U-boat aces Schopke and Kretschmer appeared in article form in the September, 1956 Proceedings. Walker, R. N. (Evans, 15/) by Terence Robertson is the story of Captain Johnnie Walker, r.n., whose ASW methods were so successful as to cause the Admiralty to state in 1950 that Walker more than anyone else won the Battle of the Atlantic. William MacDonald’s Stand By for Action (Kimber 18/) is the varied and incessant career of a young officer whose ship was sunk in a Norwegian fjord. He survived to command a corvette and later a destroyer in farflung operations stretching from Anzio to Nor­mandy and then to the Pacific War and the liberation of Hong Kong. Robert Hughes’ Through the Waters (Kimber, 18/) is the reminiscence of HMS Scylla’s gunnery officer who sailed on the Murmansk Run, on operation torch against North Africa, fought blockade runners, patrolled the Bay of Biscay, and later fought in the Channel on D-Day. Sydney Hart, a former Royal Navy rating, relates his unique experiences aboard a British submarine in Discharged Dead (Oldhams, 13/6).

One of the Royal Navy’s greatest World War II sailors, Admiral Sir Bertram Ram­say, is the subject of Ramsey at War (Kimber, 18/) by David Woodward whose other two volumes, Tirpitz and Secret Raiders, won high praise in recent years. Ramsay is also the subject of one of the brief character sketches contained in David Divine’s Six Great Sailors (Hamish Hamilton, 10/6). The other five, incidentally, are Howard of Effingham, Blake, Henry Morgan, Bligh, and Keyes. Another useful summary vol­ume is John F. Turner’s Victoria Cross Winners in the Royal Navy (Harrap, 9/6) which relates in brief the stirring episodes in the lives (and deaths of eleven) of the 24 men who won that highest honor during World War II.

The Other Side

Activities on the other side—mostly German—are the themes of several note­worthy British volumes. Probably the best is Terence Robertson’s Night Raider of the Atlantic (Norton, $3.75), the story of the re­markable career of Otto Kretschmer whose capture by Captain MacIntyre has been referred to above. Fritz-Otto Busch retells what is becoming a fairly well-known story in The Drama of the Scharnhorst (Hale, 15/). Excellent is Dudley Pope’s Battle of the River Plate (Kimber, 18/) which brings to the Graf Spee episode the most skilled and authentic account yet presented. Pope has woven a thrilling story by taking the reader first aboard the raider Spee and then to the British hunters led by Commodore H. H. Harwood. A similar theme is Michael Powell’s The Graf Spee (Hedder and Stough­ton, 18/), a volume prepared by the pro­ducer of the forthcoming movie on that subject. The career of the Spee’s sister-ship Admiral Scheer, is told by her wartime com­mander, Admiral Theodore Kranke, assisted by H. J. Brennecke in The Battleship Scheer (Kimber, 18/).

Possibly the most outstanding of all the German armed merchantmen "was the At­lantis which stayed at sea for almost two years in 1940 and 1941 under the remarkable leadership of Bernard Rogge who has now written of his ship’s achievements in Under Ten Flags (Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 20/s). The same ship’s career has been de­scribed, somewhat less authoritatively, in Ship 16 (John Day, $3.75) by J. Mohr and A. V. Sellwood.

From the Italian submarine commander Admiral Aldo Cocchia comes Submarine Attacking (Kimber, 18/), a personalized ac­count of his role as chief of the Italian sub­marine base at Bordeaux, France, and later as a director of Italian sub operations against the Royal Navy in Mediterranean waters.

The only 1956 significant volume to come from the Japanese side of World War II was Zero (Dutton, $5.00) by M. Okumiya and J. Horikoshi. These two authors were in­timately associated with the development of the Japanese airplane Zero and have de­scribed in detail the plane’s wartime career. Unfortunately the book is reportedly marred by a number of errors.

From the German author C. D. Bekker, who two years ago produced the well- received Swastika at Sea, comes K-Men (Kimber, 18/), the story of German frogmen and midget submarines. As was true of Bekker’s first volume, K-Men is unusually well presented and one of the more depend­able popular accounts of Germany’s World War II naval efforts.

Novelist and historian Burke Wilkinson’s By Sea and by Stealth (Coward-McCann, $3.50) consists of ten detailed accounts dealing with some of the most exciting small-craft and submarine attacks of World War II. Several have appeared in periodicals elsewhere, but it is useful to have them here in one volume. The Italian attack on Alexandria, the midget-sub attack on the Tirpitz, and several others make this a drama- packed little book.

The Far East

Books on the naval aspects of the Korean affair are beginning to increase in number. In 1956 there appeared the second volume in the proposed five-volume u. s. marines operations in Korea, The Itichon-Seoul Operation (Govt. Print. Off., $3.00) by Lynn Montross and N. A. Canzona. This so-called “Official Marine Corps History” •—meaning that it has been prepared under the auspices of the Corps Historical Branch —is the most thorough and accurate account of Inchon presented to date.

The late Admiral C. Turner Joy’s How Communists Negotiate (Macmillan, $3.50) is a firsthand account of Joy’s bitter experi­ences as Senior Delegate to the Korean Armistice Conferences held in 1951 52. Quite another type of contact with the Communists is Thomas Dooley’s Deliver Us from Evil (Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, S4.00), a former Navy doctor’s story of the help the U. S. Navy extended by transport­ing tens of thousands of Viet Namese refugees from Communism in 1954.

Broad Surveys

The publication of Volume III of Britain’s Major General J. F. C. Fuller’s Military History of the Western World (Funk and Wagnalls, $5.00) was one of the most significant military and naval history events of 1956. Beginning with the major battles of American Civil War, Fuller concludes with the Battle for Leyte Gulf (1944) and pays particular attention to the naval aspects of the Russo-Japanese War, to Gallipoli, and Midway and Leyte Gulf.

Another broad-sweeping volume which has received deserved praise is Men in Arms (Praeger, $6.00) by R. A. Preston, S. F. Wise, and H. O. Werner. Taking as their theme the history of the interrelationship of warfare and society in the west, the authors have by skillful generalization and selection traced that theme from the age of the phalanx right up into the Cold War era. Men in Arms contains several useful chap­ters on the history of sea power; also a com­prehensive bibliography.

Miscellaneous

Several 1956 volumes contain more than passing reference to naval affairs either from an analytical or historical viewpoint. Walter Millis’ Arms and Men (Putnam, $6.00) gives a broad historical analysis of American military policies from our earliest times to the present. Britain’s foremost air power authority, Asher Lee, discusses naval air in one chapter of his Air Power (Praeger, $3.75). Lee first analyzes air power in World War II and then assesses the role which each type of operation may play in any future war. Cunard Line Commodore Harry Grattidge frequently brings in naval matters in his intriguing autobiography, Captain of the Queens (Dutton, $4.50). The role of Hugo Eckener and his German Zeppelins during World War I, when they were under the direction of the German Navy, is admirably revealed in Thor Nielson’s The Zeppelin Story (Wingate, 17/6). In his World’s Tankers (de Graff, $6.95), Laurence Dunn, Britain’s “one man Jane’s,” refers only slightly to U. S. Navy tankers but gives more attention to Royal Navy ships of that type. An excellent dwarf variety Jane’s is R. V. B. Blackman’s (he’s the editor of Jane’s Fight­ing Ships) The World’s Warships (Hanover, $3.50) which includes more than 125 excel­lent photographs along with appropriate vital statistics of the world’s modern war­ships.

From Japan comes a remarkable, pri­vately-published album, Naval Vessels— 1887—1945 Mitsubishi Zozen Built, which that ship-building firm, ably assisted by a leading Japanese Naval Constructor, Shizuo lukui, has produced. Liberally illustrated and filled with vital statistics, this volume has not as yet been offered for public sale, but word from the Japanese firm indicates this move is under consideration. Included herein are Japanese naval vessels of both world wars as well as of the current coastal security force.

There has long been the expressed desire for a first-rate pictorial history of the U. S. Navy, and Fred Freeman and Theodore Roscoe have attempted to fill part of that void by a most ambitious undertaking en­titled The Pictorial History of the U. S. Xavy 1776-1897 (Scribners, $12.50). They have produced a massive volume with hun­dreds of sketches, prints, and photographs, and considerable caption material. Despite a host of petty errors (such as wrong pic­ture, wrong caption, and wrong credit line), this work will undoubtedly stand for a long time, if for no other reason than for the gigan-

national Law for Seagoing Officers (Naval Institute, $4.50) Commander B. H. Brittin, usn, has filled a long need for a sound, not overly detailed, one volume treatment of this vital subject. The current role of the U. S. Navy’s research in rockets, satellites, and the like is told in the most recent edi­tion of J. Gordon Vaeth’s 200 Miles Up (Ronald, $5.00). The Navy also comes in for consideration in the provocative Military Policy and National Security (Princeton, $5.00), edited by W. W. Kaufmann.

Four books arrived too late to receive more than a brief mention that they exist and that they will appear in the 1957 survey. They are Arthur J. Marder’s Volume II of Fear God and Dread Nought (Cassel, 35/), being the 1904-1910 correspondence of Britain’s Admiral Sir John Fisher of Kilver- stone; Eugene S. Ferguson’s Truxton of the Constellation (Johns Hopkins, $5.25); Garde d’Haiti (Naval Institute, $4.50 and $2.70), the story of the role of the U. S. Marines and the story of those U. S. Marines who served in Haiti, 1914-1934, and trained the Haitian Constabulary; and Rear Admiral Dan Gallery’s Twenty Million Tons Under The Sea (Regnery, $5.00).

Finally, report should be made that the great annuals Jane's All The World’s Fight­ing Ships (McGraw Hill, $22.50) and Bras- sey’s Annual (Macmillan, $9.50) have ap­peared as usual. But there is hardly news value in this fact for they have displayed this perennial quality for going on seventy years. For the past dozen years they have been joined annually by a most useful but far less pretentious volume, The Navy Year Book and Diary (British Navy League, 7/6). The latter contains many superb photographs and a dozen valuable essays on naval affairs.

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tic task of just assembling the materials.

A much appreciated collector’s item is M. S. Robinson’s The Macplierson Collection (de Graff, $10.00), a magnificent volume on what is probably the British National Mari­time Museum’s foremost collection of mari­time prints and drawings. The extensive scope of the collection runs from the days of the Conqueror to the middle of the Nine­teenth Century.

Small but appreciated is a well-written and illustrated book entitled Customs and Tradi­tions of the Royal Navy (Gale and Polden, 15/) by Commander A. B. Campbell, r.n. Photographer Jack Engerman has, in An­napolis: The Life of a Midshipman (Lothrop, Lee and Shepherd, $3.50), presented a worth­while photographic account of the day-to­day goings on at the U. S. Naval Academy. Royal Navy Captain Jack Broome’s Make a Signal (Putnam, $3.50) is of genuine his­torical value in that it traces briefly the his­tory of naval signaling, then repeats and discusses a number of famous signals (many of which have never been available before), and finally devotes a number of pages to a rare signal collection of the “admiral’s washerwoman” type. Maritime devotee Alan Villiers tells with superb photographs the story of U. S. Coast Guard Academy’s training ship in the book Eagle (Scribners, $3.50). In another volume, Posted Missing (Scribners, $4.75), Villiers discusses the cir­cumstances present when a number of indi­vidual ships “went missing.” The most de­tailed, yet readable, account of the Eagle and her like is found in H. A. Underhill’s Sail and Training and Cadet Ships (Brown, Son and Ferguson, 35/). Admirably illus­trated with hosts of tables, drawings, and photographs, this work will someday become a genuine collector’s item. In his Inter­