Ed Rotondaro
09-14-2011, 11:21 PM
Hi all:
I have a couple of book reviews for you. If any of these books have already been reviewed please feel free to ignore my musings. Most of these books were obtained by accident since I belonged to a book club that shall not be mentioned and it had a practice to send me stuff I didn’t want. I dropped them and had to make a decision. What to do with these books? Get rid of them on line? Read them?
Well I opted to read them. First up is a rather short but interesting book “The Bomber Boys” by Travis Ayres (NAL Caliber 2005). It is a collection of the recollections of five members of the US Army Air Force who served in WWII and served on B-17s, mainly based in England. The bulk of these men were very young 19 to 20 years in age and served later in the war from 1944 onward.
Three of the veterans were navigators, one was a waist gunner and the other was a belly turret gunner. Two of the aircraft were shot down, but the rest managed to finish their tours. Probably the most amazing story is that the waist gunner. He was on the October 1943 raid against the ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt where the USAAF lost 60 bombers and their crews either as POWs or dead. This man’s bomber was hit but amazingly all the crew was able to bail out safely and make it the ground. The gunner was separated from the rest of his crew who captured almost immediately. He managed to make his way across Germany by sleeping and hiding during the day and traveling at night. He ate what he could find in farm fields. He managed to get to France where people offered him food and even money. Finally he reached neutral Spain, only to be arrested by Spanish soldiers. Placed in a small jail he was aided by a British RAF major who had made contact with his embassy. The major got him out a few days later and the British provided with badly needed cloths and food. He was returned to England once his health improved He received the Silver Star for his accomplishment.
The other four stories are good but not quite as compelling. Overall the book is another fine example of first hand accounts of wartime experiences. I give it an A-.
Next up is “Fire and Fury, The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945” by Randall Hansen. The author’s credentials are quite impressive. He is currently a professor at the University of Toronto. He has a doctorate from Oxford and was a visiting fellow in UCLA’s history department. The fact that he is a Commonwealth scholar lends a lot of credence to his arguments about the bombing campaign. The book opens up with the destruction of Hamburg on July 24, 1943. This sets the tone of what the author’s basic premise is “When does war end and slaughter begin?” He then jumps back to the Blitz of London and the affect that had on British aerial strategy. They found their daylight bombing skills to be less than effective. Enter Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris who was the commander-in-chief of RAF Bomber Command. He and a group of like minded officers pushed to use area tactics at night to destroy cities. This was totally at odds with the American concept of trying to limit civilian casualties and hit strategic targets such as factories, power plants, rail yards, oil production, etc. The bulk of the book accounts the successes and failures of both strategies.
What Bomber Harris never got was that as long Germany could build weapons, produce fuel, and transport it to either front, destroying cities was futile. In fact it was plain murder. Professor Hansen gives some notable examples of when the RAF went after strategic targets like famous dam buster raid. They were quite effective and should have coincided with American efforts at strategic targets. The greatest mistake the British made according to the author was not participating in the direct campaign against the Luftwaffe prior to the D-Day invasion. The USAAF had worked a concerted plan to hit airfields, aircraft factories and to directly engage the German fighters. Equipped with long ranged P-51 Mustangs and P-47 fighters, the war was taken directly against the vaunted Luftwaffe and the attrition was something Germany could not sustain. Yet despite this, Harris would not commit to this campaign. He kept destroying cities and achieving nothing but a body count. His own superiors questioned his course but he managed to brush them aside with Churchill’s support. It is not surprising that post war an embarrassed Britain pretty much ignored him. Fire and Fury may well be the single best account of the bombing campaign over Germany available. It is highly recommended. I give it an A+.
Now we come to one of the best of the books. I did purchase this one at the recommendation of a fellow lover of history. It is “Neptune’s Inferno, The US Navy at Guadalcanal” by James Hornfischer, Bantam Books. Mr. Hornfischer has already established his credentials as a naval historian with his previous books “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” and “Ship of Ghosts”. He hits the mark perfectly with this one. Neptune’s Inferno marks the coming of age of the USN in WWII in the Pacific. Every battle that was fought from the August 1942 invasion of Guadalcanal is detailed. The issues of fire control are covered in detail with ability for the lay person to understand. I was most impressed by the way Admiral Norman Scott prepared his task force for battle. Constant gunnery exercises were held with ships shooting deflection against their own.
The description of the Savo Island battle is the best short account of this complex and in many cases one of the most controversial surface actions of the war in the Pacific. Many years ago, not long after I had joined the NWS forums, we had a long and at times heated debate over the battle and what could have been done differently on the Allied side. Hornfischer’s analysis is stark. Nothing could have helped unless the spotting message of the Australian pilot had reached Admiral Ghormley and been acted on. Then perhaps Admiral Fletcher would not have departed and could have launched an airstrike that might have deterred Admiral Mikawa’s strike force. But none of this happened. The IJN came in and despite USN radar achieved total surprise and nailed four cruisers. What is interesting is the fact that most of damage done was by accurate 8” gunfire rather than the vaunted “Long Lance” torpedoes.
The succeeding battles and the change in command structure are well detailed. The very detailed descriptions of the two nights of battle that are collectively referred to as the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal are especially good. One comes away with the impression that Admiral Ghormley made a bad decision by appointing his subordinate Admiral Daniel Callaghan as commander of the ad hoc US cruiser and destroyer task force that had the hapless job of trying to stop an IJN task force with two battleships (actually battlecruisers as the USS Washington would demonstrate to Kirishima a night later). Callaghan did little tactical briefing or planning with his captains. One can readily contrast this with how Admiral Norman Scott had trained and briefed his people a month earlier for Cape Esperance. This is also true of how Admiral Willis Lee had drilled the crew of the USS Washington in radar, gunnery and possible damage control problems unlike Capt. Gatch of the USS South Dakota.
The carrier battles are not neglected either with the two sides still struggling to find a way to strike the decisive blows that eliminate the others air power. Instead they pretty much negated their carrier arms. The problem for Japan was that the Essex class and Independence class carriers were on they way. The IJN could not ever contemplate a carrier battle until mid-1944 at Saipan with disastrous results.
My only real complaint is that the battle of Tassafaronga that marked the end of the surface naval actions of the Guadalcanal campaign is not given as much attention as the earlier battles. An IJN task force bent on reinforcing the Japanese on Guadalcanal takes on a powerful US task force of four heavy cruisers, a light cruiser and six destroyers with only 8 destroyers and manages to savage the USN sinking one heavy cruiser and putting three others while losing one destroyer. Now much of the battle really concerns the torpedo attacks by the IJN, but the author really seemed to be in a hurry to move on to other issues. The book finishes up the Hepburn Commission’s investigation into Savo Island and the subsequent suicide of Captain Howard Bode of the USS Chicago for the perceived blame for the defeat. Sometimes one can still be a casualty of war even if not killed in battle.
In conclusion, “Neptune’s Inferno” is a superb account of the role of the USN at Gaudalcanal and is required reading by anyone wishing to gain deeper understanding of the steep learning curve that the navy went through in the first full year of the war.
Well to continue on our nautical theme we have one of our own, Mr. Vincent O’Hara joined by a diverse team to produce on “Seas Contested; The Seven Great Navies of the Second World War”; Naval Institute Press, 2010. His fellow editors include the admirable (no pun intended) Richard Worth and W. David Dickson.
This is a most interesting and informative work. Don’t go looking for warships histories or naval battles here. Don’t go looking for biographies. Go looking for insights into how a nation decides on the navy it builds and how it operates it. Using a brilliant “template” format, the editors succeed in harnessing the talents of experts in each navy and follow a format that covers a background history of each navy along with its command structure, ship types, and use of intelligence, air assets and overall performance in accomplishing its mission. The real gems are the navies that are not covered as well in the English language such as the French, Russian and Italian navies. In general each navy seems to have been designed for the war it was intended to fight, although one can get the picture that the IJN was really not thinking clearly. With all the weapons it had at its disposal coupled with the USN’s need to fight two wars, it could have done better. Also the RN comes off as thank god Churchill convinced Roosevelt to beef up the Atlantic fleet. Britain would never have been able to deal with the IJN on its own. It was better to let the USN break the IJN and then join in late 1944.
“On Seas Contested” is a superb book that belongs on the bookshelves of any naval enthusiast who wants to understand why a particular navy succeeded or failed at its missions in WWII. I give it an A+ grade.
“The Day of the Panzer” by Jeff Danby, Casemate 2008. This book is one I bought based on a review by Robert Forczyk, a prolific Osprey author whose works I respect. Turns out he was right all the way.
Mr. Danby is not a credentialed historian and proves in this book that one doesn’t need a few letters after one’s name to be a good historian. One merely needs a desire to find out what happened and to present it correctly. Jeff Danby succeeds here.
Initially the author set out to find out his grandfather had died in battle. After several years and many trips to Europe, he was able to turn his quest into a fine account of soldiers in battle.
The book covers a classic small unit engagement in South France not long after the landings in August from Operation Dragoon. I had recently read the Osprey Campaign title by Steven Zaloga which covered the advance of the unheralded 6th Army Group, a mixed formation of mainly US and Free French divisions plus a small British contingent up the so-called “Champagne Coast to link up with Patton’s Third Army. The American component was primarily an infantry formation consisting of three divisions plus a cavalry task force of brigade size. Each US division had a tank and tank destroyer battalion attached to give them a decent armor force. The German forces were primarily second line divisions that lacked full strength and had very little armor.
The author’s grand father was a 1st. Lt commanding a platoon of Sherman tanks. He was a replacement for a veteran officer who had been killed in an artillery barrage. The US forces advanced rapidly after their August 15th landing and were in position to totally isolate the Germans and then link up with Patton’s Third Army. Unfortunately the 15th Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division had the bad luck to stumble upon the corps headquarters of the German Army in Southern France. A daylong battle ensued as L company supported by the author’s grandfather’s tank platoon shot it out in narrow streets and wooded terrain. A Panther tank annihilated the author’s grandfather’s tank killing him and most of the crew. L Company lost 13 dead but managed to hold on. By grim irony, the next day a Sherman tank crew noticed a long barreled gun poking out of the woods and assumed it was an anti-tank gun. They fired and smashed the barrel. Their follow up shot torn the barrel off of the Panther tank’s mantlet and the crew had to surrender. So there was some payback in this small unit action for the slain tankers. The book concludes with liberation of most of Southern France and the capture of Lyon in early September. General Alexander Patch commanding the US 7th armor was attempting to encircle and capture or destroy the German forces, but like his counterparts in Normandy at the Falaise Gap, he was not able to close the noose with the force3s available to him. The campaign was largely a brilliant success with much less loss of Allied life and more importantly the capture of the two vital ports of Toulon and Marseille during the period of August 19th thru August 25th. When compared to the failure of General Montgomery’s forces to seize Cherbourg, these two ports would for a considerable time be the main source of re-supply for the Allied drive in the fall of 1944.
“Day of the Panzer” succeeds more as an easily readable overview of the campaign in Southern France then anything else. Since Mr. Danby’s grandfather played a minor and abruptly short in the campaign, he wisely concentrates on the rest of the company and the battalion and how the battles played out. I do recommend reading it in conjunction with Steven Zaloga’s Osprey Campaign book “Operation Dragoon” for a fuller picture of a sadly neglected part of WWII history. Jeff Danby is to be congratulated on good research, a vivid and detailed style of writing and for bringing to light a very successful Allied campaign. My Danby is working on another book covering a US Armor battalion and I for one look forward to reading it. A+ in my book folks.
I have a couple of book reviews for you. If any of these books have already been reviewed please feel free to ignore my musings. Most of these books were obtained by accident since I belonged to a book club that shall not be mentioned and it had a practice to send me stuff I didn’t want. I dropped them and had to make a decision. What to do with these books? Get rid of them on line? Read them?
Well I opted to read them. First up is a rather short but interesting book “The Bomber Boys” by Travis Ayres (NAL Caliber 2005). It is a collection of the recollections of five members of the US Army Air Force who served in WWII and served on B-17s, mainly based in England. The bulk of these men were very young 19 to 20 years in age and served later in the war from 1944 onward.
Three of the veterans were navigators, one was a waist gunner and the other was a belly turret gunner. Two of the aircraft were shot down, but the rest managed to finish their tours. Probably the most amazing story is that the waist gunner. He was on the October 1943 raid against the ball bearing factories at Schweinfurt where the USAAF lost 60 bombers and their crews either as POWs or dead. This man’s bomber was hit but amazingly all the crew was able to bail out safely and make it the ground. The gunner was separated from the rest of his crew who captured almost immediately. He managed to make his way across Germany by sleeping and hiding during the day and traveling at night. He ate what he could find in farm fields. He managed to get to France where people offered him food and even money. Finally he reached neutral Spain, only to be arrested by Spanish soldiers. Placed in a small jail he was aided by a British RAF major who had made contact with his embassy. The major got him out a few days later and the British provided with badly needed cloths and food. He was returned to England once his health improved He received the Silver Star for his accomplishment.
The other four stories are good but not quite as compelling. Overall the book is another fine example of first hand accounts of wartime experiences. I give it an A-.
Next up is “Fire and Fury, The Allied Bombing of Germany 1942-1945” by Randall Hansen. The author’s credentials are quite impressive. He is currently a professor at the University of Toronto. He has a doctorate from Oxford and was a visiting fellow in UCLA’s history department. The fact that he is a Commonwealth scholar lends a lot of credence to his arguments about the bombing campaign. The book opens up with the destruction of Hamburg on July 24, 1943. This sets the tone of what the author’s basic premise is “When does war end and slaughter begin?” He then jumps back to the Blitz of London and the affect that had on British aerial strategy. They found their daylight bombing skills to be less than effective. Enter Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris who was the commander-in-chief of RAF Bomber Command. He and a group of like minded officers pushed to use area tactics at night to destroy cities. This was totally at odds with the American concept of trying to limit civilian casualties and hit strategic targets such as factories, power plants, rail yards, oil production, etc. The bulk of the book accounts the successes and failures of both strategies.
What Bomber Harris never got was that as long Germany could build weapons, produce fuel, and transport it to either front, destroying cities was futile. In fact it was plain murder. Professor Hansen gives some notable examples of when the RAF went after strategic targets like famous dam buster raid. They were quite effective and should have coincided with American efforts at strategic targets. The greatest mistake the British made according to the author was not participating in the direct campaign against the Luftwaffe prior to the D-Day invasion. The USAAF had worked a concerted plan to hit airfields, aircraft factories and to directly engage the German fighters. Equipped with long ranged P-51 Mustangs and P-47 fighters, the war was taken directly against the vaunted Luftwaffe and the attrition was something Germany could not sustain. Yet despite this, Harris would not commit to this campaign. He kept destroying cities and achieving nothing but a body count. His own superiors questioned his course but he managed to brush them aside with Churchill’s support. It is not surprising that post war an embarrassed Britain pretty much ignored him. Fire and Fury may well be the single best account of the bombing campaign over Germany available. It is highly recommended. I give it an A+.
Now we come to one of the best of the books. I did purchase this one at the recommendation of a fellow lover of history. It is “Neptune’s Inferno, The US Navy at Guadalcanal” by James Hornfischer, Bantam Books. Mr. Hornfischer has already established his credentials as a naval historian with his previous books “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” and “Ship of Ghosts”. He hits the mark perfectly with this one. Neptune’s Inferno marks the coming of age of the USN in WWII in the Pacific. Every battle that was fought from the August 1942 invasion of Guadalcanal is detailed. The issues of fire control are covered in detail with ability for the lay person to understand. I was most impressed by the way Admiral Norman Scott prepared his task force for battle. Constant gunnery exercises were held with ships shooting deflection against their own.
The description of the Savo Island battle is the best short account of this complex and in many cases one of the most controversial surface actions of the war in the Pacific. Many years ago, not long after I had joined the NWS forums, we had a long and at times heated debate over the battle and what could have been done differently on the Allied side. Hornfischer’s analysis is stark. Nothing could have helped unless the spotting message of the Australian pilot had reached Admiral Ghormley and been acted on. Then perhaps Admiral Fletcher would not have departed and could have launched an airstrike that might have deterred Admiral Mikawa’s strike force. But none of this happened. The IJN came in and despite USN radar achieved total surprise and nailed four cruisers. What is interesting is the fact that most of damage done was by accurate 8” gunfire rather than the vaunted “Long Lance” torpedoes.
The succeeding battles and the change in command structure are well detailed. The very detailed descriptions of the two nights of battle that are collectively referred to as the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal are especially good. One comes away with the impression that Admiral Ghormley made a bad decision by appointing his subordinate Admiral Daniel Callaghan as commander of the ad hoc US cruiser and destroyer task force that had the hapless job of trying to stop an IJN task force with two battleships (actually battlecruisers as the USS Washington would demonstrate to Kirishima a night later). Callaghan did little tactical briefing or planning with his captains. One can readily contrast this with how Admiral Norman Scott had trained and briefed his people a month earlier for Cape Esperance. This is also true of how Admiral Willis Lee had drilled the crew of the USS Washington in radar, gunnery and possible damage control problems unlike Capt. Gatch of the USS South Dakota.
The carrier battles are not neglected either with the two sides still struggling to find a way to strike the decisive blows that eliminate the others air power. Instead they pretty much negated their carrier arms. The problem for Japan was that the Essex class and Independence class carriers were on they way. The IJN could not ever contemplate a carrier battle until mid-1944 at Saipan with disastrous results.
My only real complaint is that the battle of Tassafaronga that marked the end of the surface naval actions of the Guadalcanal campaign is not given as much attention as the earlier battles. An IJN task force bent on reinforcing the Japanese on Guadalcanal takes on a powerful US task force of four heavy cruisers, a light cruiser and six destroyers with only 8 destroyers and manages to savage the USN sinking one heavy cruiser and putting three others while losing one destroyer. Now much of the battle really concerns the torpedo attacks by the IJN, but the author really seemed to be in a hurry to move on to other issues. The book finishes up the Hepburn Commission’s investigation into Savo Island and the subsequent suicide of Captain Howard Bode of the USS Chicago for the perceived blame for the defeat. Sometimes one can still be a casualty of war even if not killed in battle.
In conclusion, “Neptune’s Inferno” is a superb account of the role of the USN at Gaudalcanal and is required reading by anyone wishing to gain deeper understanding of the steep learning curve that the navy went through in the first full year of the war.
Well to continue on our nautical theme we have one of our own, Mr. Vincent O’Hara joined by a diverse team to produce on “Seas Contested; The Seven Great Navies of the Second World War”; Naval Institute Press, 2010. His fellow editors include the admirable (no pun intended) Richard Worth and W. David Dickson.
This is a most interesting and informative work. Don’t go looking for warships histories or naval battles here. Don’t go looking for biographies. Go looking for insights into how a nation decides on the navy it builds and how it operates it. Using a brilliant “template” format, the editors succeed in harnessing the talents of experts in each navy and follow a format that covers a background history of each navy along with its command structure, ship types, and use of intelligence, air assets and overall performance in accomplishing its mission. The real gems are the navies that are not covered as well in the English language such as the French, Russian and Italian navies. In general each navy seems to have been designed for the war it was intended to fight, although one can get the picture that the IJN was really not thinking clearly. With all the weapons it had at its disposal coupled with the USN’s need to fight two wars, it could have done better. Also the RN comes off as thank god Churchill convinced Roosevelt to beef up the Atlantic fleet. Britain would never have been able to deal with the IJN on its own. It was better to let the USN break the IJN and then join in late 1944.
“On Seas Contested” is a superb book that belongs on the bookshelves of any naval enthusiast who wants to understand why a particular navy succeeded or failed at its missions in WWII. I give it an A+ grade.
“The Day of the Panzer” by Jeff Danby, Casemate 2008. This book is one I bought based on a review by Robert Forczyk, a prolific Osprey author whose works I respect. Turns out he was right all the way.
Mr. Danby is not a credentialed historian and proves in this book that one doesn’t need a few letters after one’s name to be a good historian. One merely needs a desire to find out what happened and to present it correctly. Jeff Danby succeeds here.
Initially the author set out to find out his grandfather had died in battle. After several years and many trips to Europe, he was able to turn his quest into a fine account of soldiers in battle.
The book covers a classic small unit engagement in South France not long after the landings in August from Operation Dragoon. I had recently read the Osprey Campaign title by Steven Zaloga which covered the advance of the unheralded 6th Army Group, a mixed formation of mainly US and Free French divisions plus a small British contingent up the so-called “Champagne Coast to link up with Patton’s Third Army. The American component was primarily an infantry formation consisting of three divisions plus a cavalry task force of brigade size. Each US division had a tank and tank destroyer battalion attached to give them a decent armor force. The German forces were primarily second line divisions that lacked full strength and had very little armor.
The author’s grand father was a 1st. Lt commanding a platoon of Sherman tanks. He was a replacement for a veteran officer who had been killed in an artillery barrage. The US forces advanced rapidly after their August 15th landing and were in position to totally isolate the Germans and then link up with Patton’s Third Army. Unfortunately the 15th Regiment of the 3rd Infantry Division had the bad luck to stumble upon the corps headquarters of the German Army in Southern France. A daylong battle ensued as L company supported by the author’s grandfather’s tank platoon shot it out in narrow streets and wooded terrain. A Panther tank annihilated the author’s grandfather’s tank killing him and most of the crew. L Company lost 13 dead but managed to hold on. By grim irony, the next day a Sherman tank crew noticed a long barreled gun poking out of the woods and assumed it was an anti-tank gun. They fired and smashed the barrel. Their follow up shot torn the barrel off of the Panther tank’s mantlet and the crew had to surrender. So there was some payback in this small unit action for the slain tankers. The book concludes with liberation of most of Southern France and the capture of Lyon in early September. General Alexander Patch commanding the US 7th armor was attempting to encircle and capture or destroy the German forces, but like his counterparts in Normandy at the Falaise Gap, he was not able to close the noose with the force3s available to him. The campaign was largely a brilliant success with much less loss of Allied life and more importantly the capture of the two vital ports of Toulon and Marseille during the period of August 19th thru August 25th. When compared to the failure of General Montgomery’s forces to seize Cherbourg, these two ports would for a considerable time be the main source of re-supply for the Allied drive in the fall of 1944.
“Day of the Panzer” succeeds more as an easily readable overview of the campaign in Southern France then anything else. Since Mr. Danby’s grandfather played a minor and abruptly short in the campaign, he wisely concentrates on the rest of the company and the battalion and how the battles played out. I do recommend reading it in conjunction with Steven Zaloga’s Osprey Campaign book “Operation Dragoon” for a fuller picture of a sadly neglected part of WWII history. Jeff Danby is to be congratulated on good research, a vivid and detailed style of writing and for bringing to light a very successful Allied campaign. My Danby is working on another book covering a US Armor battalion and I for one look forward to reading it. A+ in my book folks.