Book Reviews, Professional Reading & Book List

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The Naval Air War in Vietnam

Peter B. Mersky and Norman Polmar. Annapolis, MD.: The Nautical and Aviation Publishing Company of America. 1981. 224 pages. Ulus. Maps. Glossary. Index. $17.95 ($16.15).

Reviewed by Lieutenant Michael N. Pocalyko, U. S. Navy

The Naval Air War in Vietnam is his­tory, commentary, an appreciation for the Navy's air striking power, and a chronicle of strategies, ships, aircraft, operations, and the men who fought in Vietnam. With more than 200 pho­tographs. it is also a visual record.

Peter Mersky and Norman Polmar chronologically tell the story of naval aviation’s involvement in the Vietnam War in a refreshing way, combining historical fact, the authors’ opinion on the conduct and limitations of the air war, and the many sea stories brought back by the men who flew the planes. In the preface. Vice Admiral Wesley L. McDonald (Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Air) calls this book “the most complete chronicle of the air war in Vietnam yet to be published." Ted Swartz bags a MiG-17 from his A-4C with a Zuni rocket. Clyde Lassen flies his UH-2 deep into enemy territory at night on a daring search-and-rescue mission for which he is awarded the Medal of Honor. And Dieter Dengler makes his escape from Laos after being shot down in his A-1H Skyraider and imprisoned. Randy Cunningham and Willie Driscoll fight a “swirling dog­fight” as they become the Navy's first aces of the war in an F-4J Phantom II.

Here, too. is the Thanh Hoa Bridge, which “came to symbolize the heart­breaking frustration felt by U. S. pi­lots.” Mersky and Polmar detail the various limits placed on pilots, and deal with the causative political consider­ations of Presidents Johnson and Nixon, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger. The au­thors explain the strategy and ration­ale for specific campaigns and actions. They make use of news accounts and press conferences: the public’s van­tage of the naval air war is braced against that of the men who were there, as in this passage from A-4 pilot Eliot Tozer’s war diary:

"All theories aside, what I've got is personal pride pushing against a web of frustration. One of the ways to slice through the webbing and be free, at least for the moment, of al­most all frustration is to press the attack home and while you link and claw away from all the reaching AAA hear the FAC—“Shit-hot, two, you got the son of a bitch!” The authors are succinct and nervy in their analysis of what they see as bad calls during the war which came from the Washington civilian establish­ment. In the chapter “Policy and the Continuing Air War,” Commander in Chief Pacific, Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp’s call for interdiction—. . hinder external assistance to North Vietnam from China and Russia, to stop the flow of supplies south to the Viet Cong, and to destroy the North Vietnamese capacity to make war . .   —is posed against Secretary

McNamara’s objectives: “raise South Vietnamese morale, reduce the flow of supplies to the south, and make the North understand the futility of any

attempt to subjugate South Vietnam.”

The real excitement in this volume is in the parts about the aircraft and ships that made up naval air and quite simply put iron bombs on target. All of the other missions which supported that end are detailed—fighter combat air patrol, photographic reconnais­sance, electronic warfare, search and rescue, even carrier on-board deliv­ery. The authors go beyond the fa­mous Hueys, Skyhawks, Spads, Cru­saders, Skywarriors, and Phantom IIs, stepping deeper into the files and memories of Vietnam to introduce the OP-2E Neptune, the P-5 Marlin flying ocean surveillance patrols during “Market Time,” the Marine Corps’ last O-IE Bird Dogs, and the elec­tronic warfare and photographic var­iants of the A-3, F-8, and A-6. The stories of these aircraft and dozens of others, and the photographs of them in action (with very accurate captions) make this book a very welcome study of an important subject.

Lieutenanl Randy Cunningham recounts his success in shooting down three MiG-17 fighter aircraft during the Vietnam War. He and his radar intercept officer Lieutenant (junior grade) Willie Driscoll survived a “swirling dogfight” to become the U. S. Navy's first Vietnam War aces.

When this book is good, it is very good, but there are some prejudices of the authors and, regretfully, some inaccuracies. An extraordinary amount of emphasis is placed on photographic reconnaissance, for example, with rel-

atively little on Marine Corps aviation or the riverine navy helicopter forces supporting the "Brown Water Navy.” A section on an RF-8 pilot's postwar career chances reads apologetically, contributing little to the history. The inaccuracies are not abundant, but some are glaring. The Helicopter At­tack Squadron Light Three (HAL-3) is called VAL-3; the first returning prisoners of war are not identified within the context of their early re­lease and later allegations of collab­oration: the EA-6B "would throw out massive energy beams to blind the en­emy facilities,” a rather romantic if not altogether inaccurate description of active electronic countermeasures: and the pilots killed in the USS Or- iskany (CVA-34) fire were actually caught asleep in their staterooms hours after the last night recovery—they had not “just returned from the mission" when the fire started at about 0700 on 26 October 1966.

This is a pilot's book—one best read and understood by those of us who know how to talk with our hands and appreciate the subtlety and acute in­sight into a pilot's tolerance within the limits placed upon him and his ma­chine or the professionalism inherent in a "classic Alpha Strike.” For the non-flier or the serious student of Vietnam, this is important reading, for here is the flavor, the perception, and the visual portrayal of Navy Air.

Lieutenant Pocalyko is a LAMPS helicopter pilot from Helicopter Anti-Submarine Squadron Light 34 at NAS Norfolk. Virginia. He is serving on board the USS Briscoe (DD-977) on radar picket station in the Persian Gulf.

Sea Power: A Story of Warships and Navies from Dreadnoughts to Nuclear Submarines

Admiral of the Fleet Lord Hill-Norton and John Dekker. London, England and Winchester. MA.: Faber and Faber,

Ltd., 1982. 208 pp. Illus. SI8.95 (SI7.05).

Reviewed by Captain John O. Coote,

Royal Navy (Retired)

It is said that nations get the gov­ernments they deserve. According to Sea Power this proposition also ap­plies to the state of a nation's navy.

Lord Hill-Norton served nearly half a century in the Royal Navy as a cadet at Dartmouth to a five-star admiral as chairman of the Military Committee of NATO. He first went to sea in 1932 during those autumnal days of Brit­ain’s undisputed command of the high seas. Britain entered World War II with more carriers than the U. S.Navy, more submarines than the German Navy, and more capital ships, cruis­ers, and destroyers than any other power. The role of the Royal Navy was never doubted—to protect the sealanes from Auckland. New Zea­land. to Liverpool. England, sustain­ing Britain's authority and commer­cial interests in the Persian Gulf, the Yangtze basin, the Caribbean, and the Indies.

This was all done with ships and crews appropriate for their diverse missions and is fascinatingly told in this seven-part adaptation of a tele­vision series. That these ships and crews did not prove wholly suitable for World War II—let alone as poten­tial combatants in the next conflict— is the subject of some penetrating analysis by the authors. Lord Hill- Norton was in the thick of it all. From 1962 until relinquishing his post as Chief of the Defence Staff in 1973. he was among those responsible for planning for the ships and weapons—against quixotic political constraints—which some now find wanting in quantity and quality.

Each section of the book deals with the evolution of a different type of combat ship by the major naval pow­ers, from battleships to destroyers. The book is lucid, informative, and well- authenticated with excellent archive pictures. Reading about the big guns of Rear Admiral Jesse B. Oldendoif s battleships polishing off the huge, wounded Japanese battleship Yama- shiro in the Surigao Strait in October 1944, it is hardly surprising that nos­talgia may have played its part in the recent decision to reactivate the 40- year-old U. S. Navy battlewagons as part of President Reagan’s Navy. The fascination of commanding a battle­ship is aptly evoked in Sea Power by a quote from a letter to The London Times in 1922 from Admiral Sir Percy Scott: "To be Captain of a battleship is the ambition of every naval officer. Who else in the world travels about in the same comfort . . .?"

At this point, the authors welcome to their debate an opinion first aired in the New Statesman last May and not without its supporters. It argued that admirals left unchecked will al­ways have an obsession for over-com­plicated. over-expensive ships, while holding in contempt the cheap, ungla­morous ships which are needed in large numbers in a military crisis. The result is a costly and highly vulnerable sur­face battlefleet designed to perish nobly in a North Atlantic Gotterddmmerung, which could not take place until after the incineration of half the British population. So now the Royal Navy has "comically unsuitable ships for fishery and inshore protection,” in­adequate mine countermeasure forces, few troop transports or warships ready to fight in the North Sea or the narrow waters—a serious matter for an island depending on keeping the sea-lanes open for 95% of its supplies in war­time.

The epilogue is a verbatim report of Lord Hill-Norton's speech to Parlia­ment last July during the debate on the cuts Mrs. Thatcher's government wished to impose on Britain's defense forces. He described them as the sec­ond attempt by a Tory administration to destroy the Royal Navy during the last 24 years; the first occurred when Duncan Sandys swung the axe in 1957. The speech was a fighting, well-rea­soned exposure of the folly of Minister of Defence John Nott’s intentions, not merely in reneging on some of Brit­ain’s commitments to NATO but in dropping its guard and relying solely on the Trident deterrent and the short war theory.

Unfortunately, neither the govern­ment nor the public, basking in the warm summer of an imminent Royal Wedding, paid the slightest attention to the admiral's warnings. So it is well that he set it all down in this important record of the whittling down of the Royal Navy’s surface fleet to a point of little significance in strategic terms.

Captain Coote was a Royal Navy submariner who saw war service off Norway and in the Mediter­ranean and later held four sea commands. 1948­54. At age 38. he resigned to go into newspaper publishing in Fleet Street, ending as Deputy Chairman of Beaverbrook Newspapers.

SThe American Magic: Codes, Ciphers and the Defeat of Japan

Ronald Lewin. New York: Farrar. Straus and Giroux. 1982. J22 pp. Illus. Append. Bib. Ind S14.95 (Si 1.96).

Reviewed by Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton. U. S. Navy (Retired)

The author's earlier book. Ultra Goes to War (McGraw-Hill Book Co..

1978), told of British achievements in breaking German military ciphers and codes (and of their use in war opera­tions in the European theater) in World Warll . American Magic tells of U. S. success in breaking Japanese codes and ciphers, both diplomatic (Magic) and military (Ultra) and their use in the Pacific War. His title is confusing, im­plying that decrypted diplomatic codes produced the intelligence behind the victories in the Pacific. Lewin says "the American achievement was no less significant than that of the British and it is high time that it was given fullest emphasis ... in the Pacific as on the German fronts, the end came earlier and many thousands of lives were saved because of their ability to read the enemy’s signals.”

American Magic is based largely on heretofore highly secret material now declassified for public scrutiny. It brims with now-it-can-be-told stories from a British viewpoint of American use of Ultra and Magic in a wide variety of military problems.

Lewin's coverage of the Pearl Har­bor episode is ambivalent: he finds an obsessive concern for the security of Magic; deplores that "the command­ers at Pearl were not kept on their toes by constant and up-to-date informa­tion;" and the “failure to set up a re­alistic organization for putting Magic to its best possible use.” He asks if Magic did, in fact, disclose Pearl Har­bor as a target and discovers two Mag­ics (Tokyo to Honolulu. 24 and 29 September 1941) subdividing Pearl Harbor into coded grids for reporting the locations of warships and aircraft carriers, including when “two or more are alongside the same wharf.” After accepting the Washington defense that they were not “. . . materially differ­ent from other messages concerning ship movements . . . ,” he finds “it . . . difficult to fault . . . Washington for failing to see anything alarming in the September messages about Pearl Harbor; nor can it be easily believed that on receipt of them Kimmel and Short would have smelled a strong scent of danger.” As a historian, he fails to discriminate fact from fiction and see that those two messages were not only different but were unique, the only Magic regarding ship movements that subdivided any U. S. harbor or port for reporting the precise location of warships. Thus, he failed to rec­ognize a historic intelligence cover-up!

Following Pearl Harbor, security rules that previously had prevented the flow of Magic and Ultra to command­ers in chief in the field were modified for speedy distribution. Attack on en­emy ciphers and codes shifted in priority from the diplomatic area to the military field. The U. S. Navy’s success in breaking the principal high- level Japanese naval code is outlined without details or new material. In­teresting and illuminating quotations from Ultra messages highlight the background of those early battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. (Editor s Note: See “Eyewitness,” pp. 40^45, in this issue for a discussion of an Ul­tra leak.) Without Ultra, the outcome of many critical battles on land, at sea.

These two machines made major contributions to the Allied victories of World War II. At left is an American version of the machine used in England to decode the German Enigma cipher. The Japanese never broke the ciphers of the Sigaba, the American machine below.

and in the air of the Pacific would have been vastly different. More specifics would have been welcome.

Magic disclosed the plans of Axis blockade runners and furnished criti­cal intelligence on the European thea­ter. German, Japanese, neutral, and captured freighters, employed to carry strategic cargoes and run the blockade between Germany and Japan, were tracked down and destroyed in the At­lantic by Allied forces thanks to Magic. General Hiroshi Oshima’s—the Jap­anese Ambassador to Berlin—reports from Berlin on his conferences with Hitler on German technology, new weapons, details of German defensive preparations, and their concept of ma­neuver for the expected Allied land­ings in Normandy were put to good use by the Allies. Magic revealed Ja­pan’s peace feelers and the determi­nation of its leaders “for the whole country, as a mass, to pit itself against the enemy in accordance with the Im­perial Will as long as the enemy de­mands unconditional surrender.”

In discussing the use of atomic bombs to end the war, Lewin con­cludes that “if one sets the evidence supplied by Magic about a peace mood against the intelligence furnished by Army and Navy Ultra about Japan's defense preparations, it is at least un­derstandable why Truman took his de­cision.”

Admiral Layton served in intelligence posts, in­cluding Pacific Fleet combat intelligence officer throughout World War II. for his career. He re­tired from active duty in 1959 and worked in Japan for Northrop Aircraft Corporation.

Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, Volumes VII & VIII

James L. Mooney, Editor. Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1981.

Illus. Bib. Vol. VII: 735 pp. $18.00 ($16.20). Vol. VIII: 577 pp. $17.00 ($15.30).

Reviewed by Colonel Raymond E. Messier, U. S. Army (Retired)

With the recent publication of Vol­umes VII and VIII of the Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, the U.S. Naval Historical Center completes its project begun more than 22 years ago of compiling a capsule history of the nearly 10,000 ships which have flown the flag of the American colonies or of the United States. The achievement can only be described as colossal in its scope and inspiring in its dedication.

The two most recent volumes— on the histories of ships whose names begin with the letters T through Z—were originally intended to be published as a single volume. With ship biographies gradually expanding as the series matured, the detail pro­vided in the planned final volume would have filled more than 1,300 pages; sheer mass dictated the divi­sion into two volumes. Herein lies the only shortcoming of the series— Volume VIII contains no appendix. Readers of the earlier volumes will re­call the fascinating appendices detail­ing the development of ship types, air­craft, and related historical topics. Not so for Volume VIII; Volume VII does include a splendid account of the story of the almost 1,200 LSTs commis­sioned during World War II and later. With LST-I entering service in De­cember 1942, the type was not avail­able for the first U.S. offensive op­erations at Guadalcanal or in North Africa; one wonders how these land­ings succeeded without the service of this unsung workhorse of amphibious warfare.

The main body of these newest vol­umes follows the format and content of earlier works in the series, except for the aforementioned lengths of ships’ biographies. While Volume I might be said to contain thumbnail sketches, Volume VIII contains sketches of a thumb, a hand, and even an occasional lower arm. For those unfamiliar with the format, each entry begins with a ship name. The first five volumes provide at least a few words on the origin or meaning of each ship name, however obscure. For exam­ple, the name of the minesweeper Peerless (AMC-93) means “matchless or without equal.” The final three vol­umes dispense with such trivia, and thus we remain ignorant of the origin of the unlikely name of the patrol gun­boat Tact (PG-98). The more signifi­cant names, especially those of per­sons, are more than adequately covered, however. Ensign Norman Vandivier, namesake of the DER-540 and posthumous Navy Cross winner at Midway, is allowed a biographical sketch of more than two columns, while the like-named radar picket ship has a story barely covering one column. The ship names themselves give no small amount of entertainment and ed­ucation in the fields of biography, as­tronomy. geography, and mythology, among others. AK.A-45, for example, was named for Tabora. minor planet number 721 of the solar system, a number significantly larger than the number of planets previously known to this writer. The planet, in turn, was named for a ship, the German ocean liner Tabora on board which a con­ference of astronomers was held in 1913 with the purpose of naming the newly discovered planet.

Immediately following each ship name, in chronological order, is the story from birth to death of each ship which has borne the name. This is the meat of the series. The skipper of a harbor tug or net tender desirous of inspiring his crew with the illustrious record of his ship need have no fear of being left out of the series. Big guns and torpedoes are not a prerequisite for inclusion. Apparently, the editors believe that any U.S. Navy ship is a fighting ship—they are all here.

Citing the stories of the ships Wash­ington, we find biographies both un­usual and normal. Unusual in that eight ships have carried this distin­guished name, more than is custom­ary.

The Fighting Ships series is replete with biographies covering peace and war from before the Revolution to the present: John Paul Jones’s Bon- homme Richard; the Constellation, veteran of five wars between 1794 and 1955; the Hartford, captor of New Orleans, Vicksburg, and Mobile; Ad­miral Dewey’s Olympia (C-6) of “fire when ready” fame. All are there to inspire. Perhaps only the truly dedi­cated might peruse these books by the hour, though they are not heavy read­ing, and can be entertaining as well as informative.

Taking no time for rest, the Naval Historical Center is preparing to com­pletely revise and update Volume I, and hopes to update all the volumes eventually. What lover of ships can escape having this outstanding series close at hand?

Colonel Messier was a field artilleryman before retiring in 1972. He is now a freelance writer.

_______________________________________ A Division of One__________________________

My sister wrote a glowing report that her son was being promoted and transferred to a naval air station, where he would be in charge of the Coast Guard personnel stationed there. We immediately sent congratulations to our nephew on his new command.

About a week later, we received a letter from him. "I don’t know what Mother told you about my new ‘command’,” he wrote. "But it was cut in half last week when one of my men went home on leave.”

Mrs. Patricia Klein

(The Naval Institute will pay S25.00 for each anecdote published in the Proceedings.)

Books of Interest

Compiled by Professor Craig L. Symonds, Associate Editor

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naval affairs

Batfish! The Champion “Submarine Killer" Submarine of World War II

Hughston E. Lowder with Jack Scott. Englewood ClifTs. NJ.: Prentice-Hall. 1980.

232 pp. Illus. Append. Ind. $10.95 ($9.86).

In many ways typical of the dozens of U. S. submarines that severed the lifelines of the Japanese Empire in World War II. the Bat- fish (SS-310) is memorialized in this action- oriented account by a former member of her crew. The account is episodic and con­centrates on the boat's 14 successful sink­ings—including three Japanese subma­rines—and on rescue operations. There is also a chapter on the decision to create a permanent memorial for the Batfish in Muskogee, Oklahoma.

Dardanelles: A Midshipman's Diarv,

1915—16

Henry M. Denham. London. England: John Murray. 1981. 200 pp. Illus. Maps. Ind. £11.00. (Approx. $19.76).

Henry Denham was a midshipman on board HMS Agamemnon when she participated in the ill-fated attack on the Dardanelles in World War 1. Though security regulations forbade keeping a journal. Denham did so secretly, recording his reactions to the events of that controversial operation. The publishers have added photographs and detailed maps that enable the reader to fol­low the action.

Flotilla: Battle for the Patuxent

Donald C. Shomctte. Solomons. MD.: The Calvert Marine Museum Press, 1981. 257 pp. Illus. Appen. Bib. Ind. $12.50.

Few naval historians today defend the es­sentially passive defense policies of the Jefferson Administration. In the only true test of that policy in the War of 1812. the gunboats and row barges of the Chesa­peake Bay flotilla failed to prevent a British descent on Washington. D.C. Though the author of this history does not argue that the gunboat policy was wise, he does insist that Captain Joshua Barney's small flotilla was more successful than it could have been expected to be.

The Invergordon Mutiny

Alan Ereira. Boston. MA.: Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1981. 182 pp. Ind. $14.95 ($13.45).

British Broadcasting Corporation pro­ducer Alan Ereira asserts that the "biggest modern mutiny” experienced by the Royal Navy forced Ramsay MacDonald’s Na­tional Government to abandon the gold standard in 1931. Offering a narrative based largely on personal testimony from lower- deck participants. Ereira assesses the eco­nomic reality behind governmental deci­sions which provoked unrest at Invergor­don. Ereira's account is readable, fascinating, and evokes a social image of Britain in the 1930s that transcends his na­val focus.

MARITIME AFFAIRS

Live Oaking: Southern Timber for Tall Ships

Virginia Steele Wood. Boston. MA.: Northeast­ern University Press. 1981. 206 pp. Illus. Bib. Ind. $21.95 ($19.75).

Live oaking was an activity, not a com­modity. This handsome volume is a history of the men who went live oaking—cutting and transporting the heavy timber that made the hulls of such American vessels as Old Ironsides. This sprightly written book de­scribes the methods and life-style of the live oakers. As a result, it is both a useful tool for maritime historians and a fasci­nating social history of 18th and 19th cen­tury America.

Majesty at Sea: The Four Stackers

John H. Shaum. Jr., and William H. Flayhart. III. New York: W. W. Norton and Co., 1981. 168 pp. Illus. Ind. $29.95 ($26.95).

Only 14 four-funnel passenger liners were built, all between 1897 and 1921. But in their heyday, they were the most opulent means of travel available. Among them were the ill-fated Titanic and the Lusitania; other four-stackers served during World War I as troop ships or disguised raiders. How­ever, the most interesting part of the book concerns the splendor of these vessels in peacetime. Many photographs display the luxuriousness of the accommodations and of a life-style that no longer exists.

MILITARY AFFAIRS

Jane's Weapon Systems, 1981-82

Ronald T. Pretty. Editor. London, England and Boston. MA: Jane’s Publishing Company. 1981. 1.006 pp. Illus. Ind. $140.00 ($126.00).

This newest edition of Jane's recounts and illustrates trends recognized in the 1970s. Weapon systems have become so expen­sive that the economic issues of weapons procurement now dominate military con­siderations. Moreover, despite approxi­mately equal military spending by the United States and the Soviet Union, the Soviets seem to be getting more for their money. Most of (he major new entries in this vol­ume are Soviet. The editor wonders in the foreword if this activity is not deliberately designed "to exert pressure on the West­ern economic system by forcing it to un­dertake increasingly expensive military programmes."

The Papers of George Catlett Marshall Volume I: The Soldierly Spirit, December 1880-June 1939

Larry I. Bland. Editor. Baltimore. MD.: Johns Hopkins University Press. 1981. 742 pp. Illus. Ind. $30.00 ($27.00).

This is the first in a projected six-volume set that will include profiles of selected per­sonal and official correspondence of Gen­eral Marshall. The editors provide brief in­troductions to each chapter, but allow the letters, arranged chronologically, to tell the story. This volume covers the years of Marshall's education at the Virginia Mili­tary Institute, his participation in World War 1 in France as aide-de-camp to Gen­eral Pershing, and his tours in the Far East.

r 1:1250 Ships, over 1500 models to select. Also • J the new 1:2400 models. We have NAVIS, ' ? NEPTUN, HANSA, VIKING, MERCATOR, [ 3 DELPHIN, ATLANTIC, SANTOS, FLEET- 3 i LINE. SEXTANT, FRAMBURG, EAGLE, i

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World War II Photo Intelligence

Col. Roy M. Stanley. II. U. S. Air Force.

New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. 1981. 374 pp. Illus. Appen. Bib. Ind. S39.50 (S35.55).

With all the excitement in recent years about radio intelligence in World War II. one might overlook the role of photo intelligence, particularly in the selection of bombing tar­gets. This magnificent volume explores the early history, explains the interpretive methods, and offers detailed examples of photo intelligence. Colonel Stanley had ac­cess to more than 100.000 10-inch high cans of exposed film from World War II photo reconnaissance missions. Many of those photographs, remarkable for their clarity, appear here for the first time.

INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS The Battle for Peace

Ezer Weizman. New York: Bantam Books. 1981. 395 pp. Illus. Ind. SI5.95.

A central figure in the discussions con­cerning the settlement of the Six-Day War. Ezer Weizman wrote this account both to explain his own role in those negotiations and to justify the final agreements. Weiz­man was originally a hawk as Israel's De­fense Minister. However, he became an advocate of an agreement as the peace pro­cess unfolded and he was convinced that Anwar Sadat was serious in his protesta­tions of peaceful intent. This dramatic ac­count is written in the first person, and it illuminates the political relationships within Israel as well as the diplomatic issues.

From Muskets to Missiles: Politics and Professionalism in the Chinese Army, 1945-1981

Harlan W. Jencks. Boulder. CO.: Westview Press. 1982. 322 pp. Appen. Bib. Ind. S25.00 (S22.50).

This is a history of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA). from its origins in the early 1920s to the present, with em­phasis on the period since the Civil War (1945-49). Jencks focuses on the impact new technology and recurring political crises have had on the PLA. particularly on the officer corps. About half the book deals with the current force structure, the Chinese military industrial system, and personnel management. Lengthy appen­dices detail the organization and equip­ment of the modern PLA.

REPRINTS

The Age of Reconnaissance: Discovery. Exploration and Settlement. 1450 to 1650

J. H. Parry. Berkeley and Los Angeles. CA.: University of California Press. 1963. 1981. 366 pp. Illus. Ind. S22.50 (cloth). S8.05 (paper).

The Discovery of the Sea

J. H. Parry. Berkeley and Los Angeles. CA.: University of California Press. 1974. 1981. 279 pp. Illus. Bib. Ind. S22.50 (cloth). S8.05 (paper).

These two volumes on European expan­sion and the voyages of discovery have quickly become classics. The Discovery of the Sea chronicles the voyages of the ex­plorers—men such as Vasco da Gama. Co­lumbus. and Magellan. In The Age of Re­connaissance, Parry analyzes the factors which made these voyages possible and those of later explorers and settlers.

Logs of the Great Sea Fights, 1794-1805 (2 Volumes)

T. Sturges Jackson. Editor. London. England: Navy Records Society. 1900. 1981. 342 pp. and 343 pp. Ind. £15 each. Approx. S26.95 each.

This facsimile reprint will be invaluable to serious students of naval history. The first volume contains the logs from Lord Howe's flagship at the Glorious First of June. Sir John Jervis's flagship at Cape St. Vincent, and Admiral Duncan's log which includes the Battle of Camperdown. Volume Two covers Nelson's actions at the Nile. Co­penhagen. and Trafalgar.

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