"If we measure our knowledge not by what we know, but by what we don't, we are just ignorant fools."

Judge Dee in The Two Beggars

06/12/09

When I began writing about naval surface warfare, I realized that I needed to be consistent. Here is the definition of a naval surface engagement used in German Fleet:

A naval surface engagement is ". . . an encounter between purpose-built surface warships displacing at least five hundred tons full load where torpedoes and/or gunfire were exchanged. This definition excludes the many actions involving motor-torpedo boats, auxiliaries, and armed merchant cruisers or raiders where either opponent had only such ships engaged."

I had to limit my inquiry and ensure I was comparing apples to apples. If I considered the hundreds of actions involving MTBs, armed trawlers, and raiders, it would never end. Secondly there is a big gap between the larger MTBs, which displace less than 200 tons and the smallest torpedo boats which come in at roughly 600 tons. There were few purpose built warships during the World War II period that fell in between. The smallest ships I am interested in are armed with at least a 4-inch gun (88-mm gun in the case of the Germans), and can go at least 16 knots. This definition seemed to work for every navy. Within this definition I figure 163 surface engagements occurred in World War II.

Why not Taranto?

A  review of Struggle for the Middle Sea recently published in Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis (August 7, 2009) made several good points. “O’Hara, with access to previously little-seen archives, particularly from Italy, gives a new and stunningly important view of World War II, replete with geography lessons which remain valid today.” However, “he sailed past the British attack on Taranto on November 11, 1940, with barely a mention, despite the fact that this was the inspiration for Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack.”

On 11 November twenty-one Swordfish flying in two waves from the British carrier Illustrious attacked Taranto, Italy’s main naval base. They torpedoed three battleships knocking one out for the entire war, one for four months and one for six months. This highly successful raid is the subject of several books and it rates at least a chapter in most histories of the Mediterranean conflict. The reviewer’s assumption, that I skated past Taranto because it is so well covered elsewhere, has merit but it is not the only reason.

For my work the strategic implications of Taranto are important and in the book I note that they were not all that Churchill or Admiral Cunningham made them out to be. Italian battleships sortied on 17 November, less than a week after they were reportedly neutralized, causing the failure of a Malta fly-off operation, and again on 26 November in response to a Malta convoy. Overall, Taranto did little to alter the basic dynamics of the situation at sea. For those to whom this statement seems controversial, the Taranto raid is the subject of a major article I have co-authored which will appear in Warship 2010. There the attack’s impact and implications and the damage actually inflicted are fully discussed. I would have liked to do this in Struggle for the Middle Sea, but there just wasn’t room for this and everything else I wanted to say.

Fortnight of Infamy: The Collapse of Allied Airpower West of Pearl Harbor by John Burton. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2006.

Mr. Burton, an aviation history enthusiast, has published his first book, a narrative of the first two weeks of the air war over Malaya and the Philippines. Fortnight of Infamy also sets the stage with a brief overview of the prewar organization and doctrine of the Japanese, Americans and Australians.

Allied airpower failed miserably in this period and this book explains why. The second half is filled with cockpit level details of aerial combat in the style of Lundstrom and Shores, which, according to the footnotes seems to be constructed from Bill Bartsch's Doomed at the Start, Chris Shore, et al.'s Bloody Shambles and Sakai Saburo's Samurai. This is not my area of expertise so I'll just say I enjoyed the book. Mr. Burton is a talented writer and his narrative moves at a rapid pace, while retaining a professional tone. I'll refer to this book in the future as an excellent starting point for details about early air operations. I also understand that Mr. Burton is at work on a follow-up volume taking the airwar up through the loss of the East Indies. This would be a welcome addition to the literature.

Sea of Thunder by Evan Thomas. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006.

A treatment of the Pacific War leading up to the Leyte battle viewed through the lens of four participants: Admiral William Halsey, Commander Ernest Evans, Admiral Ugaki Matome and Admiral Kurita Takeo.  Leyte has been the subject of at least ten books with more on the way. Sea of Thunder is directed toward the general reader and Thomas writes in an interesting and agreeable style. Ugaki's diary provides him with plenty of material and, of course, an author could float a library on Halsey's words and actions. Commander Evans is, for me, the most interesting of the four, unfortunately there is little about his career compared to the others.  Kurita is Thomas' true hero. He concludes that Kurita had tired of sacrifice and his action in not pressing forward can be explained by a desire to preserve the lives of his men.  This conclusion is based on speculation.

"Confucianism, not bushido, was the real Kurita family ideology. . . . For Kurita, the obligation of loyalty caused a tremendous conflict. Loyalty to whom? To his emperor, surely. But he could not be sure what the emperor truly wanted, for his will was interpreted--and twisted--by the senior military at Imperial General Headquarters. Kurita felt the pull of obligation to his superiors--but also to the men under his authority and to his own family and lastly, to himself, to his own sense of honor and right and wrong."

Thomas concludes of Kurita: ". . . his brain was befogged, benumbed by a blizzard of conflicting obligations." There it is, in a nutshell. Three admirals and one commander makes for a slightly skewed presentation. Thomas could have considered  balancing the perspective of his narrative by focusing on a Japanese destroyer commander. Shigure's Commander Nishino Shigeru would have been perfect.