Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy
Gregory L. Vistica. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995. 390 pp. Ind. Notes. Photos. $27.50 ($24.75).
Reviewed by Colonel W. Hays Parks, U.S. Marine Corps Reserve (Retired)
Greg Vistica, former journalist for The San Diego Union-Tribune who first reported the events at Tailhook ’91, now with Newsweek, has endeavored to parlay his initial Tailhook stories into a major expose of the U.S. Navy and its leadership over the past two decades. He has produced an account that is sensationalist, unscholarly, and inaccurate. It falls short of its claimed mark through incomplete research and faulty analysis—in large measure owing to the author’s inadequate knowledge or understanding of his subject—or worse, his lack of objectivity.
Vistica’s account begins in the Carter administration years, where (he argues) the Navy leadership knowingly built the Soviet Navy into a far greater threat than it actually knew it to be. Therein lie two of the premises of his book: that there existed within the Navy a cabal of high- ranking conspirators who knowingly lied about the Soviet Navy threat, and that this willingness to lie carried over to all other activities of the Navy’s leadership.
His principal target is John Lehman, who during his Reagan administration tour as Secretary of the Navy, pressed hard and effectively for a 600-ship Navy. Lehman’s personal and official acts were seriously flawed, the author argues, directly leading to significant cost overruns, failed or marginal programs, further moral decay in flag ranks and the Navy’s civilian leadership, and the mistreatment of women by Navy and Marine Corps officers that reached a peak at Tailhook ’91. The initial scenario is the debate within Navy intelligence in the late 1970s regarding the roles and capabilities of the Soviet Navy. Vistica sides with those who argued that the Soviet Navy was a defensive force. As such, therefore, it did not warrant a U.S. Navy of the size desired by a succession of leaders, civilian and military. He accuses the Navy leadership of suppressing the facts in the process.
He stumbles from the outset, suggesting a clarity of the facts that might (viewed in their best light) have been clear after the fall of the Soviet Union, but that were far from clear at the time they were being debated. This also was the time of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and Soviet support of Vietnamese actions in Southeast Asia, actions which Vistica fails to mention. He neglects the role of the United States as a maritime power, and the significance of power projection in that role in order to reinforce and defend NATO against a Warsaw Pact attack. He ignores the lesson of history when, in two World Wars, an enemy navy possessing less strength and capability than the Soviet Navy of the 1970s and 1980s came close to defeating its opponents, by attacking their reinforcement capabilities with a “defensive” weapon—the U-boat. With the advantage of hindsight, Vistica sees clear “facts”—about which reasonable men could differ at the time—and then suggests that one side in the debate was engaged in a larger conspiracy to suppress the obvious. “For twenty years” claims Vistica, “cloaking its warnings in Cold War rhetoric, the Navy had chosen to perpetuate a lie.” His conclusion that “the Navy had known all along that the Soviet fleet was defensive in nature and not a threat to the United States” not only impugns the integrity of a generation of naval leaders, but flies directly in the face of considerable evidence to the contrary.
Vistica makes clumsy—or intentional—mistakes in the process. He claims that the Chief of Naval Operations (unnamed by Vistica, but Admiral David McDonald), as the president of the “quasi-official” Naval Institute, refused to let that institute publish Robert Herrick’s work on the Soviet Navy—then cites it in a footnote with the Naval Institute as its publisher during McDonald’s term. The recent debate and official Navy reactions over publication in the Naval Institute’s Proceedings (August 1995) of Larry Di Rita’s satirical commentary about the condition of the Navy in the 21st century is the most recent example that puts the lie to Vistica’s effort to characterize the Naval Institute as anything other than the private institution it is. Vistica struggles with his description of the Naval Institute throughout his book, referring to it without naming it as an “obscure publishing house affiliated with the Navy” in noting its publication in 1984 of Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October.
This last point is an example of the partisan style of the book. Vistica uses adjectives, adverbs, and gratuitous descriptions of objects, acts, and persons as weapons to steer readers down his chosen path. Thus the liberal Brookings Institution, with which Vistica agrees, is a “landmark think tank,” while he characterizes the conservative Heritage Foundation as “ultraconservative” so that readers will place the latter in a pejorative light. Naval enlisted graduating from boot camp “goose-step” rather than march, a tasteless effort to equate U.S. military personnel to Nazis. The decision to retire Admiral Hyman Rickover was a “plot” by John Lehman and Casper Weinberger, suggesting something illicit about a decision that—from Vistica’s description of Rickover—was long overdue. The 17,000-ton, 592-foot USS Guadalcanal (LPH-7) is described as a “giant ship,” while the 37,000-ton, 898-foot Soviet cruiser-carrier Kiev is “insignificant." Former Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Frank Kelso was a “country bumpkin,” and former Secretary of the Navy Jim Webb was “not a large man,” a description apparently intended to belittle, but inconsistent with Webb’s near-six- foot height.
The book shifts from its initial focus to a tour de force of the Lehman years, describing John Lehman’s successful effort to become Secretary of the Navy, his arguments for a 600-ship Navy, his actions in surrounding himself with like-thinking persons while wresting away from the Chief of Naval Operations the stewardship of the Navy. Lehman also is criticized for some of the naval operations that occurred during his tenure and those of his successors (for which Vistica holds him accountable owing to his selection of Admiral Ace Lyons, his uniformed clone), Lehman’s role in the selection of flag officers, his conduct when with junior naval aviators, and his own actions in “qualifying” to become a naval aviator.
In the process, he discusses the experience of naval aviation during these years—the acquisition of the F/A-18, the much-troubled A-12 Avenger program, and the debate within the F-14 community over its missions. But this is not done with the greatest accuracy: F/A-18 difficulties were the inevitable teething problems of a new aircraft, which Vistica seems unable (or unwilling) to grasp, for example. These problems and Lehman’s leadership came to a head at the 1991 Tailhook convention and reunion. Vistica concludes by summarizing its events and the subsequent investigations, as well as several other incidents involving naval personnel which, he argues, reflect a continuing failure of naval leadership.
Vistica falls short in many respects. His research and reporting of most events are seriously flawed. In discussing the decision to conduct a freedom-of-navigation (FON) exercise into the Gulf of Sidra in August 1981, for example, he apparently was unaware that the FON program was the idea of President Carter’s National Security Adviser Zbignew Brzezinski, that it was formulated because of the vast number of expansive territorial sea claims (up to 200 miles) being proffered by coastal states during negotiation of the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention, and the effect these illegal claims (including Libya’s) had on the United States in its discharge of its superpower and maritime power responsibilities.
Although Vistica claims that “only a handful” of people in the Reagan administration were involved in planning the 1981 FON exercise (thereby suggesting something sinister about its execution), this reviewer (a participant in that planning) recalls it was handled as a routine Joint Chiefs of Staff action, with all involved fully aware of its implications. The rules of engagement had not been “softened" as Vistica asserts; U.S. recognition of the right of pre-emptive self-defense was public knowledge, having been published in the unclassified Navy Regulations in 1973. But pilots could not shoot “if they were threatened” as Vistica claims, because the authority to respond to hostile intent had been retained by the exercise commander. Rear Admiral James Service.
Vistica’s work is less than conclusive in other respects. To bolster his statements, he uses footnotes that fall short, or even support opposite conclusions. For example, his main text suggests that Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Thayer resigned because of disputes with John Lehman, but his footnote points out that Thayer resigned when he was indicted for insider trading. In another example, he repeats Paula Coughlin’s allegations regarding her assault in the gauntlet at Tail- hook ‘91 and subsequent reporting of the alleged incident—but his footnotes raise serious questions as to those events and Coughlin’s veracity.
On other occasions, the text simply is sloppy. Former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Thomas B. Moorer is repeatedly referred to as “Tom Moore,” while former Commandant of the Marine Corps General Paul X. Kelley’s last name repeatedly is spelled “Kelly”—inattention to detail that a half- dozen senior journalists with leading national newspapers (in conversations with this reviewer) not only described as “unprofessional” and “inexcusable,” but also suggested had raised serious doubts as to the substance of the arguments made. On one occasion, a footnote repeats the statement in the main text without further support; another footnote in the main text refers to a non-existent footnote. These types of mistakes might be understandable when one is working against a 30-minute deadline, but not when an author works on a book for more than four years in an area in which he claims expertise.
Vistica’s final pages are dedicated to repeating old allegations against the present Superintendent of the Naval Academy, Admiral Charles R. Larson (about an alleged 1990 rape a U.S. Navy female by Russian sailors) and Admiral Joseph W. Prueher (about his handling of the 1990 handcuffing of Midshipman Gwen Dreyer to a urinal by fellow midshipmen). In each case he takes one side of the story, the side adverse to the Navy, rather than presenting balanced accounts of either; and he does so with innuendo and accusations that are highly inaccurate. In the Dreyer case, for example, he accuses the Navy of “keeping the public in the dark,” even though as a journalist he is bound to have a clear understanding of the Privacy Act.
Vistica begrudgingly acknowledges Admiral Prueher’s nomination for and confirmation as Vice Chief of Naval Operations, suggesting that the Navy “simply waited until the time was right politically for Prueher to be nominated,” an accusation entirely at odds with the well-known positions on women’s issues taken by Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jeremy Boorda and Secretary of the Navy John Dalton in the aftermath of Tailhook ’91. That Admiral Prueher has been subjected to three confirmation processes by the very fine filter of the Senate Armed Services Committee during Vistica’s period of writing—most recently to become Commander in Chief Pacific as Vistica’s book was going to press—suggests that the U.S. Senate and the present Navy leadership reached decisions as to the facts that differ markedly from Vistica’s portrayal.
There is value in a history of the Navy over the past two decades. Greg Vistica’s effort is best compared to a wide receiver in a football game who breaks into the clear as the ball arcs his way. As the ball reaches his hands, however, he turns to run before he has firm possession—and drops the ball. An experienced receiver has the maturity to know better. Greg Vistica may have been in the right place, but because of his preconceived opinions, lack of objectivity, and antiestablishment “gotcha” journalism style, he never had a chance; he dropped the ball.
Colonel Parks was the Naval Institute’s Proceedings Author of the Year for 1990. His “Tailhook: What Happened, Why & What’s to be Learned” (Proceedings, September 1994) received the Association of Naval Aviation’s naval aviation article writing award for 1994.
Memorandum for the Deputy Secretary of Defense: “Advancement of Rear Admiral Kimmel and Major General Short”
(Office of the Under Secretary of Defense, Personnel and Readiness, 1 December 1995)
Reviewed by Commander Thomas B. Buell, U.S. Navy (Retired)
The Department of Defense (DoD) has released is final judgment on the longstanding controversies bearing on the senior commanders at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked on 7 December 1941. In a 49-page, heavily footnoted report dated 1 December 1995, John P. White, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, wrote that the DoD had examined whether Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and Major General Walter C. Short should be posthumously advanced on the retired list to their highest temporary grades of admiral and lieutenant general. Addressed to Senator Strom Thurmond, whose good offices had reopened the case, the report concluded that their advancement on the retired list was not warranted. Its predictable findings will change neither minds nor opinions, but it is significant, because the government has closed the case once and for all.
This final DoD action, which is consistent with earlier government responses, is a blow to the petitioners for Kimmel’s redemption. At a 27 April 1995 meeting, Captain Edward L. Beach, U.S. Navy (Retired), spokesman for an advocacy group comprised largely of retired flag officers and Kimmel family members, had requested Senator Thurmond’s assistance to restore the ranks of Kimmel and Short. The restoration, said Beach, would mean that the government would admit that the two men were wrongly treated and would be, in effect, a national apology. Senator Thurmond thereupon persuaded the DoD to undertake a fresh assessment.
Edwin Dorn, Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, took charge of the exhaustive study, assembling a team that gathered oral and written data; reviewed applicable Federal law, court decisions, and military regulations; and considered legal and historical precedent. The investigative team discovered nothing new, so the study became a matter of interpreting the same material that had been worked over many times.
Secretary Dorn summarized his findings in five parts.
- Responsibility for the Pearl Harbor disaster should not fall solely on the shoulders of Admiral Kimmel and General Short; it should be broadly shared. Comment: This finding is consistent with most historical works and official reports. Dorn summarized the well-known instances of coordination lapses between Kimmel and Short, and between Washington and Hawaii. As a result, wrote Dorn, “The run-up to Pearl Harbor was fraught with miscommunication, oversights and lack of followup,” all of which contributed to the consequences of the Japanese attack.
- To say that responsibility is broadly shared is not to absolve Admiral Kimmel and General Short of accountability. Comment: “Advocates argue,” wrote White, “that the failure of Washington officials to provide the critical intercepts to the Hawaiian commanders excuses any errors made in Hawaii. It does not.” While Captain Beach argued at the Thurmond meeting that the Navy was ready, and that Kimmel should not be criticized because the fleet was not at battle stations, Dorn emphasized that Kimmel and Short knew that war was imminent and should have undertaken more aggressive measures of readiness. While the attack might not necessarily have been prevented, wrote Dorn, had the fleet been vigilant, the “magnitude of the disaster” would have been reduced. Significantly, Secretary White severely criticized Kimmel for relying on Washington to alert him of an impending attack. “Indeed, placing exclusive reliance on Washington for tactical as well as strategic warning of air attack was an act of misplaced faith. . . . This faith was not justified,” wrote White. “Even with today’s satellite intelligence and instantaneous worldwide communication, it still is not prudent to depend exclusively on Washington for timely and unambiguous information. . . .”
- The official treatment of Admiral Kimmel and General Short was substantially temperate and procedurally proper. Comment: This conclusion is clouded in semantics and legalisms. Dorn acknowledges that the two officers “were the objects of public vilification,” both in the press and in Congress, and that the Navy and War Departments yielded to the clamor by releasing “very hurtful” information to the media. Nonetheless, he could find no major fault with the investigative procedures per se, because the services hewed to the letter of the law in the treatment of their two officers. On the other hand, the two services cast Kimmel and Short adrift to fend for themselves in a sea of hostility. Was that the right thing to do? The DoD report makes neither moral nor ethical judgments.
- History has not been hostile to Admiral Kimmel and General Short. Comment: This is a somewhat subjective but not unreasonable finding, intended to answer the Kimmel family concerns with the “stigma and obloquy” flowing from early charges and their persistent effect on public opinion. While Samuel Eliot Morison was harsh in his 1948 appraisal of Kimmel and Short, other reputable historians have since been progressively moderate in their assessments. Indeed, it would not be presumptuous to say that public opinion today about Kimmel and Short either is largely indifferent or altogether uninformed. White concludes that continuing scholarship and historical inquiry are the best ways to understand what happened and why. “There is nothing that government can or should do to alter that process.”
- There is not a compelling basis for advancing either officer to higher grade. Comment: Secretary White elaborated, “The highest retired grades to which an officer may aspire should not be conferred on anyone as an apology. Rather, those grades should be reserved for those officers whose performance stands out above all others.” Both White and Dorn asserted that neither Kimmel nor Short fell into that category.
The most interesting aspect of the report is what it did not say. During the war, the services discriminated in whom they fired and whom they retained in command in time of disaster. We need only think of General Douglas MacArthur and the loss of the Philippines, and Admiral William F. Halsey and the losses sustained by the Third Fleet in the typhoons. Both men were retained for political reasons. Kimmel and Short were expendable. Secretary White’s report sidestepped that minefield with the comment, “[T]he decisions affecting Admiral Kimmel and General Short were tailored to their individual situations; what did or did not happen to others is not an appropriate consideration.”
Likewise, the report did not address the hypothetical consequences of recommending Kimmel and Short for posthumous advancement. Obviously, it would establish an intolerable precedent. Senior U.S. commanders in many wars have been relieved under controversial circumstances, resulting in stress to them and their families and damage to their pride and reputation. A legion of descendants and advocates would demand equivalent remedies.
Finally, this concluding episode in the case of Kimmel and Short versus the government was wholly political, and the probability of winning the case was nil. The greatest handicap of both men was that they never have had a constituency with any influence in the Senate, the body with the final say on any advancement in rank. A roomful of retired flag officers pleading their case was not enough. Significantly, Short had no Army advocates at the meeting with Senator Thurmond. Neither were representatives there from influential veterans’ organizations, nor from any sector that senators listen to. Hence, the administration had no incentive to expend any measure of political capital in such an effort.
Commander Buell is a writer-in-residence at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He is the biographer of Admirals Ernest King and Raymond Spruance and is completing a book on the leadership of Civil War generals.
Over Lord: General Pete Quesada and the Triumph of Tactical Air Power in World War II
Thomas Alexander Hughes. New York: The Free Press, 1995. 314 pp. Photos. Notes. Selected Bibliography. Index. $28.00 ($25.20).
Reviewed by Major General J. D. Lynch, Jr, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired)
It is usually good to be right. What is not good is to be right and have accomplishments ignored and eventually forgotten. The latter was General Pete Quesada’s fate.
Working in concert with General Omar Bradley, Quesada forged a weapon of war that prowled the skies over western Europe, directly influencing the battles below. To the soldaten of the German combat formations trying to stem the tide of the Allies’ invasion, the pilots and aircraft of Quesada’s IXth Tactical Air Command became the feared “Jabos.” Lee and Stuart or Grant and Sheridan would have understood and done the same had it been within their power. It was tactical air support at its best. In the end . . . after World War II ... it was forgotten. Quesada’s triumph became a faint shadow of what might have been. Had this misfortune been borne by Quesada alone, it could be viewed clinically. But it wasn’t. And it can’t. A price—in some cases, the ultimate price—was paid by those countless thousands of infantrymen who served in the nation’s wars after World War II.
By 1968, the Air Force had gained control of all fixed wing tactical aviation operating over the then Republic of Vietnam. One October afternoon of that year we were in the DMZ planning a battalion-level assault for the following morning. Early in the evening, our close air support requirements were radioed to the 3d Marine Regiment. The following morning was beautiful. Not cloud in the sky. No aircraft, either. After a query to regiment, there was a long pause, then the answer. We were not in contact with the enemy; therefore, there would be no air support. Understood. Within a few minutes, the battalion reported its companies crossing the line of departure. Several minutes later, one of the companies was reported to be in contact with the enemy. Air support soon arrived. Only then did the battalion begin its movement to what became a successful assault.
That the battalion’s actions did not meet honor code standards may surprise some. So be it. Better that than risking or sacrificing the lives of Marines because the tactical air system was faulty. The real surprise after reading Over Lord is the degree to which the system had regressed. Twenty-three years earlier, Pete Quesada had done it better. Much better.
Hughes’ work starts with the Quesada’s recruitment in 1924 and traces a pre-war career that saw Quesada garner an impressive number of flight hours with little service in operational commands. He repeatedly served on the personal staffs of several high-ranking officers, making contacts that served him well when the Army expanded. The contacts also gave Quesada a broad perspective on air power and solid professional education opportunities at both Maxwell Field and Fort Leavenworth. The essential point is that Quesada avoided the air power doctrinal disputes of the 1930s. Of particular importance, he avoided adopting the views of the strategic air power proponents, saying of them after World War II that they, “. . . had allowed their doctrine to become their strategy.” An interesting if not profound observation and one that is potentially applicable any time major doctrinal changes are undertaken.
Quesada’s early World War II career is briefly treated by Hughes. Major Quesada, a fighter group commander on 7 December 1941, became a 38-year-old brigadier general one year later and began serving his combat apprenticeship in Africa under Air Vice Marshall Lloyd of the Royal Air Force. Eighteen months afterward. the newly promoted Major General Quesada was in England commanding the IXth Tactical Air Command (TAC) where, among other things, he held his ground against a skeptical Churchill who questioned Quesada’s assertion that the Luftwaffe would not interfere with the D-Day landings. It is Quesada’s service leading IXth TAC that properly dominates Hughes’ straightforward, systematic, and thoroughly documented work. The reader cannot help but be impressed with Quesada and the lengths to which he was willing to go to support the ground forces. Nor can the reader help but be impressed with the flow of Hughes’ thoughts as he describes everything from human relations to technical innovations.
There is little in Over Lord to criticize. On occasion, Quesada had what appeared to be unnecessarily difficult relations with seniors and subordinates. The “why’s” are largely left to the reader. An informed analysis might have proven professionally valuable to students of combat leadership. Also, Hughes mildly disappoints by teasing the reader with an early observation that the Army and Army Air Corps could have learned much about air support doctrine from the Navy and Marine Corps, but then drops the subject completely. A detailed exposition of that point would have been beyond the scope of a Quesada biography, but there could have been more. Somehow, someway, it should be examined, especially in light of the renewed interest in expeditionary warfare and the projection of power from the sea.
A disappointed, perhaps disgusted, Quesada retired prematurely during the Korean War. He would never again influence tactical air support concepts, even when the Air Force made a belated attempt in the 1970s to accord tactical air a greater emphasis.
In a smooth flowing, eminently readable work, Hughes has resurrected Quesada’s triumph—a triumph which should be studied by today’s professionals. Pete Quesada’s run on life ended in 1993. In life, his example and that of his IXth Tactical Air Command were forgotten. That mistake should not happen again. Too much is at stake.
General Lynch retired from the Marine Corps in 1991. He commanded the Marine Corps Recruit Depot and Eastern Recruiting region, Paris Island, South Carolina. General Lynch is the Proceedings Author of the Year for 1995.
Books of Interest
By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
America’s Team: The Odd Couple: A Report on the Relationship Between the Media and the Military
Frank Aukofer and VAdm. William P. Lawrence, USN (Ret.), Nashville, TN: The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center, 1995. 225 pp. Append. Bib. Ulus. Ind. Notes. Photos. Tables. Free (Apply directly to publisher). Paper.
Aukofer (Washington Bureau Chief for the Milwaukee Journal who was an original member of the Pentagon press pool during the Gulf War) and Lawrence (retired vice admiral who is well known in military circles as a former POW who commanded the Third Fleet and served as Superintendent of The Naval Academy and Chief of Naval personnel) teamed up to study the problems inherent in military-media relations and to find ways to improve this vital but sometimes prickly relationship. Their findings are thought-provoking and an important step in a needed dialogue between two elements of society that need one another in a true democracy. The results of their studies, including excerpts from many interviews of key people in both domains, are included in this excellent report. Everyone who has a policy role in either camp needs to read this book.
The Dragon’s Breath: Hurricane at Sea
Cdr. Robert A. Dawes, Jr., USN (Ret.), Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1996. 240 pp. Append. Bib. Ind. Maps. Notes. Photos. $29.95 ($23.96).
In September 1944, the destroyer Warrington was lost in the Atlantic during a hurricane. Commander Dawes, her captain until just fourteen days before she went down, investigates and recounts her demise in this well-re- searched labor of love. Long focused on this disaster, Dawes’s research took on a new life in 1991 when copies of the official inquiry became available. Questioning some of the court of inquiry’s methods and findings, he nonetheless finds a number of reasons that contributed to this tragedy in which 247 men lost their lives. Some fourteen weather warnings were ignored, vital equipment had not been properly maintained, and long months of continuous operations had taken their toll on the proficiency of the ship’ crew. This account is historically revealing but also offers a number of timeless lessons for those who venture into the sometimes hostile realm of the sea.
Behind the Lines: A Corps Novel
W.H.B. Griffin. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1996. 435 pp. $23.95 ($21.55).
Griffin’s seventh novel about the U.S. Marine Corps takes place in the Philippines during World War II. Griffin’s fictional characters interact with the true-life personalities of Douglas MacArthur and “Wild Bill” Donavon in this action-packed war story. Kirkus Reviews calls this book “a welcome addition to Griffin’s masterful narrative of the U.S. Marines in WWII's Pacific theater, again illustrating how homefront politicking can play as important a role as firepower on certain battlegrounds.”
Soldiers, Spies, and the Rat Line: America’s Undeclared War Against the Soviets
Col. James V. Milano, USA (Ret.), and Patrick Bogan. Washington, DC: Brasseys, 1996. 264 pp. Append. Ind. Notes, $23.95 ($21.55).
At the end of World War II, using unorthodox methods that one expects to find in a spy novel, Colonel Milano began secret operations designed to thwart the Soviet occupation forces in Austria. Highly successful in some ways, introducing unforeseen complications in others, these operations included an underground network that aided Cold War refugees to escape the closing Iron Curtain. This so-called “rat line” unwittingly served as the means of escape for the “Butcher of Lyons.” Klaus Barbie. Laced with humor and insightful revelations, this memoir serves as an unusual account of heretofore closely guarded methods and secrets.
The Corsair Years
Andrew Jones. Paducah, KY: Turner Publishing, 1995. 176 pp. Photos. $24.95 ($23.70).
James Michener writes that Captain Andrew Jones story is “Told with verve and skill" and “should find a well-deserved place in the annals of the Pacific campaign.” Art Buchwald describes this work as “a wonderful yarn from World War II.” Jones was a Marine pilot in the Pacific campaign and this is his personal memoir.
American Command of the Sea Through Carriers, Codes, and the Silent Service
Carl Boyd. Newport News, VA: The Mariner’s Museum, 1995. 80 pp. Bib. Ulus. Ind. Maps. Photos. $13.95 ($13.25) paper.
Historians often agree that three of the most important elements in American victory at sea in World War II were the aircraft carrier, the submarine, and the breaking of enemy codes. Professor Boyd focuses on these three elements in this concise book. He concludes with a chapter that looks beyond World War II entitled “Implications for the New Navy.” Heavily illustrated, this book includes recently declassified government photographs and an assortment of pictures from private collections never before seen in print.
Dictionary of the Modern United States Military
S.F. Tomajczyk. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996. 800 pp. Append. Bib, Ind. $125.00 ($118.75).
Over 15,000 entries define terms associated with today’s military, including official name, acronyms, and slang terms. Anyone encountering but not understanding such technical terms as “multispectral invisibility” and “quinacrine hydrochloride” or slang terminology such as “nuclear coffee,” “mule,” and “brag rags” will find this book most useful. WARNING: some of the slang is rather prurient in origin and quite graphic in expression.
Men-of-War: Life in Nelson’s Navy
Patrick O'Brian. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. 96 pp. Illus. Ind. Tables. $23.00 ($20.70).
Despite the enormous popularity of his many Napoleonic era novels, readers are often confused by the nautical terminology and the historical milieu that add such color to these best-selling books, this concise and beautifully illustrated volume is the ideal companion for those who wish to get underway with O’Brian and roam the seven seas in search of enemy vessels. Chapters explain “The Ships,” “The Guns,” “The Ship’s Company,” “Life at Sea,” and the “Songs” that are so much a part of O’Brian’s novels.
Bluewater Sailor: The Memoirs of a Destroyer Officer
Don Sheppard. Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1996. 352 pp. Photos. $24.95 ($22.45).
The author of the well-received book Riverine now turns his writing talents from the brown waters of Vietnamese rivers to the more traditional blue water operations of the U.S. Navy in the 1950s and 60s. Sheppard’s memoir not only provides insight into Cold War naval operations, but it bristles with Sheppard’s hard- won views on leadership, strategy, and naval policy. This book takes the reader into recent history via the engine rooms and bridges of workhorse destroyers as they chase submarines, replenish in rough waters, and meet the terrors of a typhoon head-on.
Feuding Allies: The Private Wars of the High Command
William B. Breuer. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1995. 352 pp. Bib. Ind. Notes. Photos. $30.00 ($27.00).
A behind-the-scenes look at the Allied leadership during World War reveals much strife, some of it understandable, some of it inscrutable. Interservice, international, and personal rivalries are revealed as Breuer explores transcripts of top-secret strategy sessions, communiques, interviews, and private diaries to discover the cracks underlying the united front we are used to seeing. Uncovered are rifts between Churchill and Roosevelt, MacArthur and Patton, and DeGaulle and Great Britain.
The Rendezvous and Other Stories
Patrick O’Brian. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. 250 pp. $ 11.00 ($9.90) paper.
These stories are from the early work of the famed writer whose seventeen Aubrey/Maturin novels have earned him a loyal following not equalled since C.S. Forester’s “Hornblower” series captured the imagination of nautical readers. The earliest of these stories dates from 1950 and the most recent was composed in 1974. These powerful stories have as a central theme man’s relationship to nature and they serve as reminders of past experiences as well as vicarious vehicles into worlds beyond the common experience.