Book Reviews, Professional Reading & Book List

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o. Careless Word .

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A Needless

Amenc’n m°T ^{Kings Point}- ^{NY: The} 552 nn _ni^Merchant Marine Museum, 1983.

^PP' ^lus- Append. Bib. $45.00

Ma ^b'' ^Co,onel Lane C. Kendall,

>ne Corps Reserve (Retired)

^cord^fm^{01 l0Ve}’ ^lhis comprehensive U. s..fi ^lne circumstances in which 757 by enem*^ ^Sb-^{PS Were} *^{ost t0 or} damaged ing W„'r , ^a,?!^{ion or war}time hazards dur- ieveijp.. ^^ar ** *^{s a} tribute to the ach- ^Merchan_t^SNa^{nd sacrifices} of the U. S. when th ^?^arinc fr^om 31 October 1940, man mi^ ‘re ^^ayv‘^lle struck a Ger- l4Sem„^ei°” ^l^^e Australian coast, until son Was”]^ ^w^^en the Niels Poul- Italy Tc °^{St t0 a m}>^{ne near} Gorgona, ner, hav ^{6 aUl}^°^r'^{s an} experienced mari-

^Cer _........ . ^{1,18 sa}’'^ed as a cadet, third offi-

ships Hi SCCOnt' °fficer on six merchant Inci_udⁿⁿ⁸ *^{he war}-

of th_ese ^{6 ln} encyclopedic treatment men lost ^tf_i^Sua*^t*^es are rosters of the sea- ^nanie a' u°^{tb a}'pd^abetically and by ship flag ’_sh ^chr°nological listing of U. S.- ^causes 'rtf *°^{St or} damaged from all Which s if ^nun'bers of submarines which H^{,n S}^*P^S> and a list of ships author '^SapP^eared with all hands. The ^voluni_e^{at 110w}'^edg^es that because this after th_P ^W3j ^comPded about 35 years time nvi ^Snd ^^or'd War II, by which of j_ndi !\y ^records had been lost, the list Read ^{U3IS is} incomplete, ies” _oj.^mS through these brief “obituar- 'utpartiaPt ^IPS’ °^{ne is} Impressed by the death a 'i^ ^War 'ⁿ ds distribution of three tuf disaster. Three sailing ships, ship_s h ^S, *^vc Ashing trawlers, and 360 ^enenty ^{Ul t bePore} 1940 were lost to ^Uafties w',¹⁰⁰ °^{r m}'^nes- Many of the cas- Worl_d \y^{Cre bUdt or} ^^a’d down during nterciai yt ^anC' ^bat* ^served a full com- ^tered intn,k‘^ilne..^before.^thcy were mus- Were _ea° ^{t le} military effort. These ships exceedj ^ ^targets- With a speed rarely siibrnarj¹'" ^ten ^^nots’ they almost invited ship_s to'j.^{eS t0 attac}A them. While surface ^Cannot ^ ^{316 cons}'derably faster, they ^ered suh^"^a^ ^{tbe s}P^egft °t nuclear-pow- those '^narmes. a fact well known to Ca_Dtai° ,T^{St plan lo}gistic support. tistic_s i- Moore sets forth the vital sta­tement ⁿ°^{Wn a}hout each ship, a short sta- age, andP^art’^cu*^ars °f the last voy- t e number of casualties, if any.

He also summarizes the attack on the ship, and, if an enemy submarine was involved, that craft’s ultimate fate.

Included in the volume are six survi­vors’ accounts typifying the experiences of merchant mariners, ten citations for the Merchant Marine Distinguished Ser­vice Medal, a sample letter of commen­dation, a crew list drawn up after the re­ported loss of a ship without survivors, a specimen memorandum recommending payment of insurance for a missing ves­sel, a telegram notifying next-of-kin of a seaman’s death from enemy action, and the citations accompanying gallant ship awards.

Ten pages of photographs of ships on fire or sinking and hundreds of individual ship pictures add to the book’s value.

Captain Moore has provided a conven­ient record of wartime casualties. This grim story shows us that without the vet­erans from Hog Island and the other ship­yards created during World War I, as well as those resurrected by maritime “bone yards,” World War II might have had a different outcome.

Colonel Kendall was Commercial Shipping Adviser to Commander, Military Sealift Command, from 1960 to 1969. He is the author of The Business of Shipping as well as of numerous articles in the mari­time press. Colonel Kendall also writes the annual U. S. Merchant Marine Review in the May “Naval Review Issue” of Proceedings.

The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine

Andrew Cockbum. New York: Random House, 1983. $16.95 ($15.25).

Inside the Soviet Army

Viktor Suvorov. New York: Macmillan, 1983. $15.95 ($14.35).

Reviewed by Captain Paul Schratz, U. S. Navy (Retired)

A number of interesting studies of the Soviet military have appeared recently. The Threat: Inside the Soviet Military Machine and Inside the Soviet Army are two of the most fascinating, offering a wealth of information for the casual reader, the armchair strategist, or the se­rious student of Soviet affairs. Viktor Suvorov (pseudonym) is a former Soviet Army officer who defected to Britain after service as a tank company com­mander in Czechoslovakia and on the

Soviet General Staff. Andrew Cockbum is a writer on defense matters whose tele­vision documentary “The Red Army” won a Peabody Award in 1982.

Cockbum’s primary sources are emigres who came to the United States in the 1970s, all veterans of compulsory service in the military. Largely over­looked by Western intelligence agencies because of a lack of resources, those few the CIA singled out to be interviewed were questioned largely on order of battle or technical details of weaponry. The social, non-technical factors of morale, discipline, and leadership which deter­mine combat effectiveness were ne­glected. (A five-year, $7.5 million proj­ect to correct this deficiency was announced in Washington on 29 Septem­ber 1983.)

Both Cockbum and Suvorov show that, in reality, the Soviet armed forces are very different from how they are usu­ally perceived. A brutal and degrading military service aggravates the ills of Soviet life—alcoholism, corruption, ra­cial tension, and political unreliability. The conscript army is poorly disciplined, badly equipped, underfed, and under­trained, led by a self-serving officer corps, obsessed with the “perks” of of­fice: country houses, servants, and pri­vate stocks of food. Because of the deg­radation and wretched way of life for the enlisted, few serve beyond their conscript service. As a result, there are few career non-commissioned officers.

In the navy, the ordinary seaman can­not be trusted on foreign “show the flag” cruises. When the cruiser Sverdlov vis­ited Britain for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, Western observers were impressed with her smart appear­ance. Tfley did not know that every one of the 900 men on board was an officer. Because of the low quality of recruits, officers in all the services are required to perform just about every function more technical than dialing a telephone.

The enormity of the Soviet 5.8 mil­lion-strong armed forces is also seen as deceptive. Excluding non-combatants such as the politically unreliable, the honor guards, construction and railroad troops, internal security, civil defense and occupation forces, plus the 495,000 on the Chinese frontier, the net for a NATO war is about two million on each side. The “honor guard” forces are par­ticularly interesting: nine full-strength “court divisions” serve only for parades, fetes, and ceremonies—108,000 care­fully selected men who receive no com­bat training.

Cockbum and Suvorov agree that in the event of war Soviet troops would sur­render by the millions. Yet, both fail to make an important distinction. Russians surrendered by the millions against Adolf Hitler and Napoleon Bonaparte, too. Yet, the Russians won both wars. The performance of the Soviet Army would be totally different in a defensive war fighting for Mother Russia than it would be in an offensive campaign be­yond the Soviet borders. One should never overlook the eternal truth in the peasants’ cry: “You own us, but the land is ours.” Suvorov projects a vision of power for the Soviet Army quite different from the impression created by his earlier book. The Liberators.

Cockbum believes that the U. S. de­fense community willfully inflates the Soviet threat in order to justify its own expensive weaponry, just as Soviet gen­erals use the Western “threat” to build support for their own glamorous weap­ons. The imitative trends toward complex and expensive new weapons force both sides to buy fewer, more expensive mod­els. For example, the MiG-25, in which Lieutenant Viktor Belenko defected to Japan had one-third the radius given by U. S. estimates and could not fly faster than Mach 2.5 for fear of melting the tur­bines. The F-15, which the United States developed to match the MiG, has seri­ously compromised performance at Mach 1 and has been “detuned” by the Air Force to operate at only two-thirds the planned speed. A frustrated Ivan Selin of the Pentagon Defense Systems Analysis Office claims caustically that in the world of strategic analysis “we pro­gram weapons that don’t work against threats that don’t exist.” All Soviet fight­ers seem severely limited in range. In the Vietnam Conflict, no Soviet aircraft were observed more than 100 miles from their bases, a limitation also noted in their air­craft operations from carriers at sea.

The new U. S. M-l tank costs three times as much as the M-60 it will replace, has less range, reliability, ammunition capacity, and is much more vulnerable to heat-seeking missiles. Because of its greater cost, the Army will have far fewer than for the same amount of money spent on M-60 models. But procurement is jus­tified by the threat of the Soviet T-72, which compares unfavorably even with the M-60 it supposedly rendered obso­lete, having less range, far less reliabil­ity, thinner armor, a third less ammuni­tion capacity, and a dangerous automatic gun loader that occasionally mistakes the gunner’s arm or leg for a shell. It was the “superior” T-72 that was so easily de­stroyed in Lebanon by the “outmoded” U. S.-built M-60s.

The Soviet military goes to great lengths to exaggerate its capability by skillful use of strategic deception. The glossy Pentagon brochure Soviet Military Power, cited frequently by President Ronald Reagan and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, carries an impressive illustration of the new Pushkino anti-bal­listic radar in Moscow, a massive win­dowless structure 12 stories tall and cov­ering a city block. (Another is being built at Abalakovo, 500 miles north of Mon­golia and 3,000 miles from the Pacific Coast.) Suvorov claims the Pushkino emits the high-powered, electric signals the enemy would expect, but the cavern­ous interior is empty, without either a computer or a command complex; the entire structure was built primarily to deceive the West.

Suvorov’s discussion of the organiza­tion of the Soviet armed forces and the structure of Soviet high-level decision making is particularly valuable. Western analysts make a career out of determining

the pecking order in the Soviet hierarc V Suvorov makes it simple. He sugg^es that we look at the Pravda newsphoto the 7 November parade and ‘ ‘Take a re pencil and mark the General Secretary and the four other members of the P° buro standing closest to him. These ar the members of the Defense C°uⁿⁱ-'' They run the country. . . . Now mark General Secretary, the member of politburo closest to him and the five rna shals nearest to him. This is the Stav a, the Chief Military Council, served by General Staff. Unfortunately, ^SuV°^r°_)l adds little on the internal workings wni he certainly learned during his servic loom tKot nrirchlmv fillc

istrative role.                         _h

with the General Staff.                          .

The many high commands in the j services also create a muddle of bat • hierarchies. Western analysts common^ overestimate the influence of the Sovi military commanders in chief. For ^ex^ⁱⁿ^ pie, those who tend to rate Admiral ^e ^ gei Gorshkov as a new Mahan, foremos^ strategist and architect of the new Sovie Navy—including the U. S. Naval In^s^

tute on occasion—will be surprised

.                                                         admin-

Operational control of the Soviet Nor em Fleet is directly under the Stavka, 1 other three fleets are under the comman ers in chief of the respective strategy commands. Gorshkov serves as advise^ to the Stavka on operational use of nava units but has no operational planning f^un tion. Planning and strategic direction ar wholly the responsibility of the Gener Staff, which is dominated by a continen^ tal—not a maritime—strategy. S°^vl®. naval strength in each of the four fleets l based on the submarines; major surta units like nuclear-powered missile ^cruis ers are classed as auxiliaries. The on y exception is the aircraft carrier, which i considered part of the naval air force, separate arm in each of the fleets, vorov aims to deflate the Gorshkov my¹ ■ The title of the chapter is “Why does t ^e

est consider Admiral Gorshkov a s rong man?” His conclusion: “No mat­er how powerful the West may consider orshkov, the fact remains that the So­viet Navy ranks fifth of the five Armed Services.”

Perhaps both authors are illustrating a ⁿew version of the old Krokodil saw ^a °ut capitalism and socialism:

Question: What are the U. S. armed forces like? Answer: Bureaucratic, inefficient, and corrupt with troops that uck military skills, armed with weap­ons too complex to be useful. Question: What are the Soviet military goals? Answer: Catch up and overtake ^lhe Americans.

^^aPtain Schratz graduated from the U. S. Naval Acad- V in 1939 and established a distinguished record in submarine force. With a Ph.D. from Ohio State diversity, he is widely known as a writer on foreign ^,CV and national security affairs. He retired as a Professor at Georgetown University in 1981.

On His Majesty’s Service

■John B Hattendorf, Editor. Newport, RI: ■stributed by the Naval War College Press, ^3. 249 pp. Illus. Ind. No Charge.

Reviewed by Rear Admiral Ernest M.

U- S. Navy (Retired)

On His Majesty’s Service is an inter­ring account of one able officer’s expe- fience in a little-known facet of World War II.

In the summer of 1940, long before ^earl Harbor, wisely perceiving that ag­ression would inevitably sweep us into this world conflagration, the Navy De­partment began to send officers to Britain ^as observers. They were to learn firsthand ine lessons of the European war so that !^heU. S. Navy could integrate these into ■is doctrine and training. The Navy sorely ⁿeeded to learn from the British expen­ses after the national folly of the 1920s and 1930s, when we followed the will- ⁰ -the-wisp of disarmament, against pro­tests by the Navy, while aggressors steadily seized territory and built up arms. We have seen this folly repeated in the 1970s even as the Soviets practiced ^e*pansionism around the world.

At the beginning of September 1940, then-Lieutenant Commander Wellings sailed from Halifax in a seven-knot con- ^v°y to report on convoy operations and fleet tactics. That same month, a fast I'ner sped out of the Saint Lawrence River carrying six others of us in various fields of concentration—mine was pri­marily antiaircraft gunnery, radio direc­tion finding (radar), and other new devel­opments, which were to be followed ashore as well as afloat.

This volume covers in detail Admiral Wellings’s time with the British—mostly at sea—until his return to the United States in early June 1941. It is a day-by-day account of his experiences, observations, and impressions, taken from his personal diary, official diary, letters to his wife, reports, messages, and other sources. He wisely kept full rec­ords. Selections from these papers, now at the Naval War College, are admirably edited by one of our most talented, accu­rate, and well-balanced historians, who, as a young officer, was of much benefit to our Office of Naval History.

Most of the entries cover Admiral Wellings’s convoy voyage to England; another of nearly three months to Cape Town, South Africa, and back; and life on various British warships, including the giant HMS Hood, in which both of us served at different times. But for the grace of God, I would have been on board when the Bismarck sank the Hood with the loss of all hands but three.

A significant part of Admiral Well­ings’s account covers his home­ward-bound cruise in HMS Rodney, dur­ing which the battleship participated in the chase and sinking of the Bismarck. Our paths had crossed several times at Scapa Flow and elsewhere, though we seldom knew it, especially since I spent much time visiting experimental, train­ing, and operating establishments. By chance, they crossed this last time over­seas as the plane on which I was home­ward bound, via Lisbon, passed over the area where the Bismarck was sinking.

Admiral Wellings’s accurate contem­porary observations of the Battle of Brit­ain seem to be of an era more remote than half a century ago—seven-knot convoys, 120-knot torpedo planes, Hitler’s navy with only 40-odd diesel submarines at the outset, and a handful of surface warships perilously threatening Britain’s lifeline in 1940-1941.

In reviewing this or any book on Adolf Hitler’s war of aggression, cyni­cally stimulated by Joseph Stalin, one should soberly ponder the chance for freedom’s survival in the 20th century’s waning years. Ill-prepared, the forces of freedom face one of the mightiest navies the world has ever seen at the disposal of another scheming, ruthless aggressor.

A 1925 graduate of the Naval Academy, Admiral Eller served in the Pacific for most of World War II. He also graduated from the National War College and served on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and commanded the Middle East Force. He retired in 1954 but was recalled to active duty as Director of the Naval His­tory Division, Navy Department. He won the Naval Institute’s General prize Essay Contest three times.

Libyan Sandstorm: The Complete Account of Qadaffi’s Revolution

John K. Cooley. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1982. 320 pp. $16.00 ($14.40).

Reviewed by Lieutenant Commander Walter L. Jacobsen, Judge Advocate General's Corps, U. S. Navy

Because Colonel Muammar al-Qadaf- fi’s pilots have attacked U. S. warplanes in international airspace, he at one time ordered an Egyptian submarine to sink the Queen Elizabeth II, and he has large stockpiles of Soviet weapons, every well-read naval officer should know who Qadaffi is and what he thinks. Many Americans, including uniformed lectur­ers on terrorism, write him off as impene­trable, unpredictable, and “crazy.” In­sanity is the most common characteristic attributed to Qadaffi. This is an unwise way to view an opponent. Qadaffi needs to be studied and understood. Libyan Sandstorm is the place to start.

John Cooley begins with Qadaffi’s September 1969 coup and quickly fills us in on his background. Qadaffi had a strong identification with another con­temporary symbol of Arab nationalism, Gamal Abdel Nasser, also a product of the military. A single chapter is spent on Libya’s history from the Ancient Greeks to the present. Cooley provides an in­formative and objective account of the fascinating intrigues between the big oil companies and Libya. He discusses the Libyan nationalization of oil properties and the rise of the Organization of Petro­leum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

The most astonishing sections of the book are those describing the early role that Western intelligence played in keep­ing Qadaffi in power. In the months after his coup, both members of his own revo­lution and other North African states were unhappy with his assumption of power and plotted against him. Yet, Qadaffi was saved from several of these early attacks on his power by the U. S., British, and Italian intelligence services. In fact, at one time some in the Arab world thought he was a U. S. agent.

One foiled attempt to eliminate Qadaffi involved Morocco and is described in detail. That incident helps to explain Qadaffi’s animosity for King Hassan and Libyan support for the King’s opponents. Ironically, as a result of early U. S. ef­forts to keep Qadaffi in power, now that U. S. policy has changed, most of the acceptable individuals who might sup­plant him have been neutralized or killed.

U. S. support of Qadaffi is best ex­plained by the feeling that, while he might have been a bit eccentric about Is-

The Perfect Gift

rael, he was a staunch anti-communist. This theory was not really wrong, it sim­ply ignored the fervor of his Moslem be­liefs, which are most clearly manifested in his intense hatred of Zionism and Is­rael. It is this fervent Moslem nationalism that explains his support of Palestine Lib­eration Organization terrorism and Mos­lem revolutionary movements from the Philippines to Africa and his relationship with the Soviet Union.

The question is, do the Soviets use Qadafft, or does he use them? The an­swer is both. Neither is philosophically persuaded by the other, although Qadaffi does espouse a Nasser type of Arab so­cialism. However, there need be no phil­osophical unity for both to achieve their goals. For the Soviets, this is the destruc­tion of the United States. For Qadaffi, it is the destruction of Israel. As long as the United States and Israel continue to be linked, Qadaffi and the Soviet Union will find their relationship convenient.

In understanding Qadaffi’s philoso­phy, Cooley has greatly benefited the average reader. He has done the tedious task of sifting through Qadaffi’s “Green Books” of revolutionary philosophy to find the essentials. For those readers who do not require a detailed study of those works, the chapter summarizing them provides an adequate understanding of the thrust of the Libyan Revolution and the possible developments.

Throughout the chapter on terrorism, the name of Edwin Wilson, an ex-CIA employee, appears. Wilson recruited past and present CIA and U. S. Army person­nel in his work for Qadaffi. He set up a guerrilla training camp to teach terrorists how to make bombs. Two engineers from the Naval Weapons Station at China Lake spent their annual leave one year at Wil­son’s training site in Libya. In addition, night vision devices and an exotic re- mote-controled helicopter were stolen from the same naval station and presuma­bly wound up at the training site.

Qadaffi has never claimed to be against individual Americans, just the U. S. sup­port for Israel; so he formed the “people to people” program. Its aim was to by­pass the media, reaching directly to members of the U. S. population to show Libya in a favorable light. Qadaffi was, at the same time, supporting Libya’s stra­tegic interests. The prime example, which Cooley chronicles in detail, is the Billy Carter connection. The thrust of Libya’s interest in Billy Carter was to have President Jimmy Carter lift the em­bargo on some U. S.-built aircraft through Billy. Qadaffi’s interest in Billy also led to later attempts by Carter Ad­ministration officials to use him in the

Iranian hostage situation.

Libyan Sandstorm also reports on t ^e Gulf of Sidra attack, Qadaffi’s efforts o acquire atomic weapons, and his inter in Libya’s southern neighbor, Cha ■ Cooley explores thoroughly the Libya¹¹ French rivalry in the sub-Sahara with h^s focus on Chad, providing valuable bac ground to understanding today’s events in North Africa.

Cooley has served in the Middle Eas for 26 years as a correspondent tor I Christian Science Monitor, UPI» ^a NBC News, and he is currently wit ABC News in London. This is his ^lourt, book on North Africa and the A^ra world. Libyan Sandstorm contains pains takingly detailed support for each P^oia he makes. The notes at the end of ¹ book are an excellent source for any ⁱⁿ telligence analyst needing to flesh ⁰ files on Qadaffi and the significant even surrounding Libya. Cooley writes in terse, fast-paced style typically identit^|e with journalists.   ,

Libyan Sandstorm is easy to follow an hard to put down. It is an excellent intr° duction to a man who is so often in ¹⁰ day’s headlines and yet is so little unde stood.

Commander Jacobsen is the military legal advisC' Headquarters, Naval Investigative Service.