Product Description

A longtime professor at the Naval War College who once directed strategic and long-range planning for the Navy and Marine Corps in Europe considers the transformation of the U.S. Navy from a defensive-minded coastal defense force into an offensive risk-taking navy in the very early stages of World War II. Noting that none of the navy’s most significant World War II leaders were commissioned before the Spanish-American War and none participated in any important offensive operations in World War I, Douglas Smith examines the premise that education, rather than experience in battle, accounts for that transformation. In this book, Smith evaluates his premise by focusing on the five carrier battles of the second world war to determine the extent to which the inter-war education of the major operational commanders translated into their decision processes, and the extent to which their interaction during their educational experiences transformed them from risk-adverse to risk-accepting in their operational concepts. His book will interest students of the Pacific War, naval aviation, education, and leadership.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #634764 in Books
• Published on: 2006-12-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 346 pages

About the Author
Douglas V. Smith is Professor of Strategy and Head of the Strategy and Policy Division at the U.S. Naval War College. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, and Naval War College, and holds a Ph.D. in military history from Florida State University.

Customer Reviews

Inaccurate and biased, with some really muddled thinking
This book ought to have been a significant contribution to the analysis of the War in the Pacific. Unfortunately, it is instead a step backwards. There are so many inaccuracies, unsupportable biases and wierd causalities proposed by the author that it strips all credibility away from what ought to have been the strength of the book, a senior naval officer's assessment of the effectiveness of various US commanders in carrier battles. Add to it some really muddled thinking and imprecise writing and you have a book that is damaging to the study of naval history of the period.

There are lots of things that the author says that are just plain wrong. For example, He states that 21 ships were sunk at Pearl Harbor (correct answer: 8). Later he asserts that in the opening months of the war the Japanese had "sunk or disabled nine battleships," where the correct count is 7 (5 at Pearl Harbor, plus the battleship Prince of Wales and the Battlecruiser Repulse). He states that "Hong Kong and Thailand would be overrun as a prelude for moves against Burma and Malaya." In fact, Malaya was the opening attack in the war, and Thailand would not be "overrun," but its government would side with Japan. He states that the Japanese added drop tanks to Zeros for use against "the Dutch and British oil holdings in Southeast Asia." No, they were developed in order to allow Zeros to escort bombers from Taiwan to the Philippines, and thus freeing two carriers for the Pearl Harbor attack (see Okumiya and Horikoshi, ZERO!). In discussing the surface battles around Guadalcanal, he states that the battlecruiser "Hiei was so well armored that she was impervious to broadside gun fire" Presuming that by "broadside gun fire" Smith means gunfire against the ships belt armor, in fact, Hiei was only armored to battlecruiser standards, meaning an 8-inch belt thinned to 3 inches at the ends. The 8-inch/55 guns on the San Francisco class heavy cruisers could penetrate 8 inches of armor at 13,000 yards or less; the battle where Hiei was lost to cruiser gunfire was fought at ranges well under 10,000 yards. Smith also implies that Hiei's steering machinery compartment was part of the ship's vulnerable "topside compartments and superstructure," as he asserts that the rest of the ship was "impervious," leading one to wonder if this is just a case of imprecise writing, or if Smith is unaware that Hiei's steering machinery was located below the waterline.

Then there is my favorite: "... the first reserve officers who saw service in the war entered the Naval War College with the class of 1942." Incredible.

There are many more examples of this ilk. In addition to getting facts wrong, it is painfully obvious that the author does not know or understand naval combat in WW II in the Pacific - there are too many "throw-away" comments that attest to this lack of understanding. For example, Smith asserts that battleships were not moved to the Pacific after Pearl Harbor because "most were required in the Atlantic Theater." In the Atlantic, the Germans had Tirpitz operational and two battlecruisers damaged at Brest. The British had 3 battleships in the home fleet, one at Gibraltar, and one in workups in the Caribbean for a total of 5 battleships in theater, plus two more in home yards being repaired. The British felt sufficiently secure in their battleship numbers in the Atlantic theater that they had dispatched 5 battleships to the Far East. While the British would cartainly appreciate any reinforcements, there was no "requirement" to keep US battleships in the Atlantic, much less the 5 that were there in January 1942. The real reason was fuel: tankers were in such a shortage that the US could not deploy and support their existing Pacific Fleet battleships to Pearl Harbor, much less accommodate transfers of LantFleet battleships. Smith obviously has not read the current literature on US battleship employment during the war, and the reasons why the battle squadron remained on the US West Coast. In fact, in several places in the book Smith is totally oblivious to the logistics constraints of the Pacific Theater, which contributes to the lack of credibility of many of his arguments.

Smith's idea of causality is often strained. For example, he states that "as a result of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ... only fourteen destroyers, seven heavy cruisers and one light cruiser were available to support the American Carrier groups [at Midway]." Let's examine that bizarre idea. On 1 May 1941 US forces totaled 13 heavy cruisers, 11 light cruisers and 80 destroyers in the Pacific. Pearl Harbor deducted 2 light cruisers and 2 destroyers, or under 4% of the total number of ships. One has to suspect that there were reasons other than the attack at Pearl Harbor for a shortage of ships to support the carriers at Midway. Smith's assertion that the shortage was due to "Pearl Harbor" is not credible.

So, Smith's book suffers from poor fact checking and poor understanding of causality. He also contradicts himself in several places, making for some very confusing reading. For example, the number of fighters the Japanese were to land on Midway was given in one place as 22 and in another as 33, and the carrier Shoho either carried 18 or 31 aircraft. His analyses are similarly muddled: when looking at the Coral Sea campaign, he first says that the US attack on Tulagi was *good* as it was necessary to eliminate a Japanese reconnaissance base, and later he says it was *bad* because the US forces revealed their position and might be "trapped." Trapped? By what? Where did that come from? Good or bad? Both?

All of this is prelude to the biggest problem with this book: the assertion that the evil battleship admirals of the "Gun Club" unfairly (yes, "unfairly" is the word Smith uses) held back the development of the aircraft carrier as an independent strike platform. Here Smith parrots the arguments and biases of O'Connell's truely monumental disaster, "Sacred Vessels." "Sacred Vessels'" arguments have been exploded by a number of critics; it is sad that Smith did not consult them before echoing O'Connell in his dissertation. But even then, most of the arguments that he puts forward about the path of aircraft carrier development between the wars is destroyed by Hone, Friedman and Mandeles book "American and British Aircraft Carrier Development 1919-1941," which is in Smith's bibliography, but which he apparently did not read, or perhaps just did not decide to discuss their arguments in his work. How did that get past the committee?

Smith asserts that the US Navy was in the grips of the Gun Club to keep the aircraft carrier as an auxiliary to the battleship. "Mainstream thinking within the Navy's top leadership held that naval aviation was an adjunct to battle fleet operations rather than an integral part of its offensive lethality. The Japanese attack established beyond doubt that this philosophy was seriously in error." He goes on to say that "... the most forward -looking elements of technology and doctrine were conspicuously absent from naval education of the interwar period." He complains about "the study of gun platform battles bereft of radar (not available until 1936) ..."

There are lots of things wrong with these statements. First, on a purely factual note, radar was not available in 1936. The first experimental set went on the destroyer Leary in April of 1937, and the first production radars (the CXAM) began installation mid-1940. It would be rather hard for the NWC to teach about radar's "forward-looking elements of technology" when the characteristics and performance of the technology was yet to be established at sea.

"This bias in the senior Navy hierarchy was reflected in the War College course of study." He criticizes the curriculum for concentrating on the "study of gun platform battles". In WW II in the Pacific, there were 5 carrier v. carrier battles; over that same time Vincent O'Hara has documented 40 gun engagements.

He complains that in 1925 the Navy "lacked a concrete plan for employing its air assets in operations with fleet units." In 1925! Langley was not commissioned until late 1924, and the Sara and Lexington not available to participate in fleet training until 1929. It would take experimentation and practice to determine how many aircraft could operate off a carrier, in what size groups, and with what lethality and loss and accident rates. Smith's argument that the lack of a "concrete plan" in 1925 exhibits a bias against carrier aviation shows that he does not understand the process of innovation in the inter-war navy, a process that depended very heavily upon a very sensible policy of testing and experimenting before committing the Navy to any long-range plan. Any navy "concrete plan" developed in 1925 would have had to depend greatly upon the British examples, who were at that time the leading operators of carrier aircraft at sea. A plan based on the British example would have resulted in a very different carrier force than the one that was available to the American Navy in 1941.

The American carrier development relied on experimentation and trial and error. As a result of this experimentation, US carrier aviation developed very differently than that of the British. Had we followed the British example, US carriers would have been restricted to about half the number of aircraft that they eventually carried, and would be capable of strikes out to only about 125 nm rather than over twice that distance. Strikes would have been in penny packets rather than full-deckloads of 70 aircraft or more. Smith's argument not only does not hold water, it betrays a fundamental weakness in his understanding of the Navy's process of development and progress in the carrier air arm, and the role of the NWC in this process.

Smith ignores the evidence of this progress. For example, there was the famous strike by carrier aircraft against the Panama Canal in the 1929 fleet exercises, and the surprise attack against Hawaii in the 1932 exercises. Smith sniffs at the level of damage assessed by the umpires and uses this as "evidence" of bias against carrier aviation, an attempt to "cheat" and structure the final results in terms amenable to the prejudices of the battleship clique. While picking this nit, he ignores the huge mote, the very fact that these strikes were even conducted! If there was a systematic bias against carriers as independent strike platforms these missions would have never had been carried out at all - the stogy old battleship admirals who commanded the exercises would have instead tethered their carriers to the battle line.

The point is that Smith's thesis is not the result of evidence. He has a bias that he wants to prove, and he picks out selected things that he thinks supports his thesis. But his biases are supported by very little evidence, and what evidence he does offer can easily be turned into counterarguments against him. In the end, it is down to his opinion that battleship admirals (whoever they might be) "unfairly inhibited carrier air potential." And this opinion has been totally exploded even before Smith published this book. As mentioned earlier, in "American and British Aircraft Carrier Development 1919-1941," Hone, Friedman and Mandeles carefully examined the evolution of carrier operations in the interwar years, and came to conclusions diametrically opposed to those entertained by Smith - there was no clique of Battleship Admirals "unfairly" holding carrier aviation back, but rather an innovative process of "test a little, build a little" that was supported by the navy hierarchy and led to the effective and efficient US carriers going into WW II. Significantly, Smith lists this book in his bibliography, but he does not address any of the points made by Hone et al, a rather interesting omission.

After Pearl Harbor Smith asserts that "The Gun Club proponents were forced to change their thinking drastically and embrace the carrier as the sole surviving centerpiece of offensive naval lethality." This does not hold water, either. On 1 December 1941 the United States had 14 operational battleships, 3 undergoing yard periods, and 3 more to be commissioned in the first half of 1942 - a total of 20 battleships. At Pearl Harbor 5 of these battleships were sunk, leaving 15 battleships against 11 Japanese battleships. At the same time, the Americans had 7 operational carriers. Certainly 15 battleships could constitute some centerpiece of offensive naval lethality, unless Smith is proposing that Pearl Harbor stripped the capability from all battleships, a proposition that would be deemed preposterous by anyone participating in the Guadalcanal campaign. So, the "Gun Club" had forces available. If they would have dominated the Navy as Smith asserts, they could still have initiated a battleship movement against Japan, but the logistics support was not there. Instead, they transitioned rather seamlessly into using carriers as independent striking platforms, something that they had always recognized and planned to do in War Plan Orange. Smith's interpretation of events is warped by the prejudices of his initial unjustified biases.

There are some good things in this book. Some of the analyses of the battles and discussions of "grading the admirals" contains good points. But the problem is that the good points are interlarded with inaccuracies, errors, and insufficient analysis. He throws many opinions out as facts. For example, he gives Admiral McCain "poor grades" as a land-based reconnaissance commander without any analysis of the numbers of aircraft, availability rates, the search patterns used, communications, or anything. No analysis is done. He just assumes that, since the result was not all he would have wanted it to be, the that Admiral deserves a "C" grade. Based on what he presented, I would not be so bold.

The bottom line is that I cannot recommend this book to anyone other than serious students of the Pacific War, people who are already so familiar with the war that they can filter out the large amount of manure in this book and uncover the ponies beneath.

Dr. Alan D. Zimm (CDR USN ret).

Outstanding Historical Study
As an amateur military historian, my reading is done for self-interest and leisure. Having said that, I found this book to be an outstanding historical study of the commanders and their decisions in the five crucial aircraft carrier battles of WW II: Coral Sea, Midway, the Eastern Solomons, Santa Cruz, and the Philippine Sea.

The author (Dr. Douglas Smith) is on the faculty at The Naval War College of Newport, RI and he has impeccable academic credentials. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, Naval Postgraduate School, The Naval War College, and holds a Ph.D. from Florida State University. Yet even with the author's impressive credentials, this is not another stodgy, hard-to-read book on obscure events of WW II. It is well-written and even entertaining at times, especially when the author / professor issues each commander a grade on the command decisions made during the heat of the five key battles.

I found the book to be a nice balance between the unknown (fresh material researched from the archives of The Naval War College) and the well-known (the biggest naval battles in the largest naval campaign the world has ever seen). I learned a great deal of new information on already well-studied events.

This book shines new light on the command decisions made by the U.S. Navy's top leadership, men like "Bull" Halsey, Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance, and Frank Jack Fletcher. It proves that more than luck or good intelligence brought success to the U.S. Navy in the Pacific Theatre of WW II. The outcome of the five Pacific carrier battles can be attributed to the merit of the decisions made by the naval commanders: their aggressiveness, decisiveness, and wisdom.

Published by The Naval Institute Press, you find meticulous documentation from original sources. That is helpful for scholars. But for the amateurs like myself, it never bogs down into tedious reading.

I'm so glad I own this book!

Analytical and somewhat scholastic view of 5 key carrier battles of Pacific War
This is a very analytical and somewhat scholastic view of the US decision making at the five key carrier battles of the Pacific War. The focus is on the US military and especially the US commanders, what they experienced at the time of each battle, their perspectives, the decisions that they made and why they made them and the results of their decisions. After this, each decision maker is rated on 8 criteria and given a grade from F to A+. I'm sure that the grades and the reasoning can be questioned especially for the Battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz. The author appears to have a positive bias towards Admiral Frank Fletcher which isn't shared by other writers. Also, he seems to give Halsey and Kincaid a pass on what happened in Santa Cruz. However, the perspectives of Coral Sea and Midway are good, and for those two battles alone, this book is worth the buy. However, this is for a reader of the Pacific War who has already read a basis history on these events.