Ironclaw: A Navy Carrier Pilot's Gulf War Experience Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an extraordinarily well written first person account of life as a Naval Aviator. Have you ever wondered what kind of men we send into harm's way, what they're like and where they come from? Are they different from the rest of us? What's it like to fly and fight a Naval aircraft in a real shooting war? Sherman Baldwin has your answers. Rather than the bravado common to other first-person combat stories, Baldwin's account is told with a great deal of humanity. Certainly there are the accounts of combat and carrier operations that will have you on the edge of your seat. But this is really the story of a man (not a machine) in an extraordinary situation doing extraordinary things on behalf of his country. I know men like this. They are my heroes, and Sherman Baldwin captures their lives and experiences as well as his. If you want to feel proud about America, read this book.

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The United States Navy in the Pacific, 1897-1909 Review

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(More customer reviews)Braosted's 2 volumes paint a vivid picture of important things that our Navy and government were involved with in the Pacific area during the first third of the last century. It is true that many of these events were mere footnotes in history; but what fascinating footnotes they are. For instance, the strange account of how the US along with a dozen or so other nations operated and maintained segments of the Trans-Siberian Railroad during much of World War I. Want to know about the huge stockpile of military equipment we and the allies stashed in warehouses at Vladivostock, how the Russians left the war before using any of then, and about the 50,000 well armed, well trained and highly motivated Czechoslavakian troops sent from the Eastern Front to go fight in the West when someone would transport them. They cooled their heels virtually within a stones throw of that stockpile. To me it is one of the most tantalizing historical "what if's" when contemplating what might have happened if they had captured those stores and then decided to do something about the problems in Russia.
The books reveal a lot of history that is very hard to find elsewhere. Our "gunboat diplomacy." our mounting difficulties with Japan, How the Panama Canal changed the whole military situation in the Pacific.
These are important books that may at first glance appear as dry as dust, but I assure you that they are interesting and exciting reading.

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Sinking the Rising Sun: Dog Fighting & Dive Bombing in World War II: A Navy Fighter Pilot's Story Review

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(More customer reviews)Autobiographies of World War II Navy fighter pilots are pretty rare. In this 2007 volume from Zenith Press, William Davis, an F6F Hellcat pilot who served in the Pacific, offers a rare, from-the-cockpit look at carrier combat in the latter stages of the war. Fans of the Hellcat and the Pacific air war will enjoy his engaging memoir.
Davis joined the Navy in early 1942. After various misadventures in Training Command, which are detailed in the book, he joined VF-19, commanded by Hugh Winters, in August 1943. In the typical hurry-up-and-wait military tradition, the eager Hellcat pilots of VF-19 weren't sent into the war zone until July 1944, embarked on USS Lexington.
In the coming months VF-19 saw much hard combat, resulting in the squadron claiming 155 air kills and almost 200 ground kills. Davis' share of the action included scoring a bomb hit on the Japanese carrier Zuikaku, being shot down off Luzon and scoring a number of kills. In the book Davis claims at least seven kills but apparently only four were officially confirmed, his name not being found on any USN Aces list. Air Group 19 returned stateside in December 1944, Davis subsequently working for Bell Aircraft in the postwar period.
SINKING THE RISING SUN is exciting and fun reading. Davis writes in an easy, engaging style, detailing the funny, exciting and boring events that made up the life of a Navy fighter pilot in the mid-war years. Recommended.

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Death of a navy;: Japanese naval action in World War II Review

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(More customer reviews)At first glance, Death of a Navy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II offers potentially unique insights into the Pacific war. Originally published in the U.S. in 1957, it is contemporaneous with works such as S.E. Morison's History of U.S. Naval Operations in World War II (1947-1962) and Mitsuo Fuchida's Midway: the Battle that Doomed Japan (1955) and so documents what would still have been relatively recent events. The author, Andrieu d'Albas, was a Captain in the French Navy and (presumably) wrote from the perspective of an informed non-participant. He also, according to the dust jacket, "...spent many months of duty in postwar Japan, married a Japanese woman, speaks Japanese fluently, and knows intimately many of Japan's former top naval officers and civilian leaders" and was thus able to obtain first-person accounts from the losing side. Taken together, these traits of the book and its author should have combined to make a unique contribution to the World War II history of the Imperial Japanese Navy.
Unfortunately they do not. While d'Albas correctly captures the general course of the Pacific War and its major battles, there are so many factual errors in Death of a Navy that their combined effect is to call into question d'Albas overall representation of events. For example, on p. xx of the Author's Foreword D'Albas twice refers to Japanese "two-engine bombers" in describing the attack on Pearl Harbor. (All of the Japanese aircraft involved were single-engine.) D'Albas confuses the Japanese aircraft carriers Ryujo and Ryuho for the first time on p. 47 and then adds to the confusion for the rest of the book. Someone not familiar with these ships would surely wonder how "Ryuho" was sunk at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons only to reappear at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. On p. 116, and again on p. 312, he described the Japanese Battleship Yamato's guns as being 17.9 inches in diameter. That they were 18.1 inches was well known by 1957, and yes, in this context two-tenths of an inch matters.
These errors are especially hard to explain in light of Rear Admiral R.A. Theobald's commentary (again quoting the dust jacket): "To make the picture even more complete, Rear Admiral Robert A. Theobald, USN, Ret., has dovetailed his own annotations into the narrative, giving corroboration and comment from the American naval viewpoint." Reading the book, however, the admiral's comments don't corroborate much. For example, how Theobald--who was Commander, Destroyers Pacific in December 1941 and present at Pearl Harbor during the attack--could have actually read the manuscript and missed the "two-engine bomber" error is hard to understand. Elsewhere, Theobald contradicts d'Albas (as on p. 193 in describing the shelling of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal) and the effect is to suggest carelessness and a real lack of concern for historical accuracy on the Author's part.
Death of a Navy is frequently cited as a reference, presumably because it is a concise history of the Pacific war and easily apprehended. A second edition was published in 1965, and that version may address and remedy the many shortcomings of the first. For my part, I'm not going to read it to find out, and I would not recommend anyone else doing so either. For those interested in a one-volume history of Japanese naval operations in World War II, Paul S. Dull's Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy (1978) is a better choice. Like d'Albas, Dull spoke Japanese and made extensive use of Japanese sources. Unlike d'Albas, Dull's book is well researched, accurate, complete, and worth reading. What is more, A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy is still in print and a bargain compared to almost any used copy of Death of a Navy one can find for sale.


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Military Power and Popular Protest: The U.S. Navy in Vieques, Puerto Rico Review

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(More customer reviews)Kate McCaffrey conducted on-site research in Vieques for about 10 years in order to present this very clear history of how the US Navy came to Vieques in the 1940's to conduct military practices and how the people of Vieques were successful in ending the bombing in 2003. I have a guest house in Vieques and keep a copy of Kate's book in each of my rooms so that visitors will know that our "island paradise" has been contaminated with 60 years of munitions and our people made sick with cancer and other illnesses from toxic military waste. I hope that everyone who reads this book will support a safe and complete clean up of Vieques and sustainable development of former navy lands that benefits our people. Kathy

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"McCaffrey's outstanding analysis movingly narrates the community's longstanding anguish and accurately situates the Vieques movement in the larger context of U.S. military policy in the Caribbean and Puerto Rico's unresolved status quandary. Those interested in understanding the Vieques crisis will find Military Power and Popular Protest an indispensible work." --Amilcar Antonio Barreto, author of Vieques, the Navy, and Puerto Rican PoliticsResidents of Vieques, a small island just off the east coast of Puerto Rico, live wedged between an ammunition depot and live bombing range for the U.S. Navy. Since the 1940s when the navy expropriated over two-thirds of the island, residents have struggled to make a life amid the thundering of bombs and the rumbling of weaponry fire. Like the army's base in Okinawa, Japan, the facility has drawn vociferous protests from residents who challenged U.S. security interests overseas. In 1999, when a local civilian employee of the base was killed by a stray bomb, Vieques again erupted in protests that have mobilized tens of thousands of individuals and have transformed this tiny Caribbean island into the setting for an international cause celebre.Katherine T. McCaffrey gives a complete analysis of the troubled relationship between the U.S. Navy and island residents. She explores such topics as the history of U.S. naval involvement in Vieques; a grassroots mobilization--led by fisherman--that began in the 1970s; how the navy promised to improve the lives of the island residents--and failed; and the present-day emergence of a revitalized political activism that has effectively challenged naval hegemony.Military bases overseas act as lightning rods for anti-American sentiment, thus threatening his country's image and interests abroad. By analyzing this particular, conflicted relationship, the book also explores important lessons about colonialism and postcolonialism and the relationship of the United States to the countries in which it maintains military bases.Katherine T. McCaffrey is an assistant professor of anthropology at Montclair State University, New Jersey.--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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The Age of the Ship of the Line: The British and French Navies, 1650-1815 (Studies in War, Society, and the Militar) Review

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(More customer reviews)For almost 200 hundred years the British and French navies dominated the world. As two of the world's leading industrial economies of the day, their wealth permitted them to produce fine ships with the dual purpose of protecting their own shores and seeking out new lands as part of their respective imperialist dreams and this book is the story of those navies.
Author Jonathan R. Dull is the retired senior editor of the series "The Papers of Benjamin Franklin" whose previous works include the award-winning "The French Navy and American Independence; A Study in Arms and Diplomacy, 1774-1787" and "The French Navy and the Seven Years War." It was because those previous works both involved the French Navy (whereas this particular book includes the French and British navies) I was concerned that Mr Dull may have come to this work with a bias towards the French (be that bias for or against!) but was delighted to learn this was not so.
With the emphasis always remaining on the effect of global events on the navies in question, the chapters commence with the origins of the "Ship of the Line" (so called because these fleets sailed in single file or, in a straight line - one behind the other). We then learn about Louis XIV and his wars, the age of peace, the outcome of the seven years war, the war of American Independence, French Revolution, Napoleonic wars and finally, supremacy in the age of sail.
Then, as now, warships were vastly expensive and, in this first-ever joint history of both navies, we find a completely impartial view of the various shipbuilding programmes, campaigns, strategies, battles and even the diplomacy of the day. The author also draws the interesting conclusion that the greatest tragedy for both nations was the Franco-British wars which stood to destroy both their common security and the economic prosperity both had enjoyed during their brief period as Allies!
There are two maps (Europe and the Caribbean) and seven battle diagrams. I have to add that I found the latter to be so simple as to be quite excellent with my favourite - the Battle of Aboukir Bay (sometimes called the Battle of the Nile), reproduced exactly as I have described that scene so many times.
Whilst the lack of pictures (there are none at all) does not detract from the overall impact of this important work, some images of either important ships or portraits of the leading protagonists would have improved the book.
Altogether, however, a first rate work.
NM


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For nearly two hundred years huge wooden warships called "ships of the line" dominated war at sea and were thus instrumental in the European struggle for power and the spread of imperialism. Foremost among the great naval powers were Great Britain and France, whose advanced economies could support large numbers of these expensive ships. This book, the first joint history of these great navies, offers a uniquely impartial and comprehensive picture of the two forces—their shipbuilding programs, naval campaigns, and battles, and their wartime strategies and diplomacy.

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Navies of Rome Review

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(More customer reviews)This is an excellent and readable study of the subject. The chapters are:
P001: Beginnings: Foundation to the First Punic War, 753 to 264 BC
P043: A Great Naval Power: The First Punic War, 264 to 218 BC
P083: Interbellum & The Struggle Resumed, 218 to 201 BC
P119: The Growth of Empire, 201 to 86 BC
P151: The Road to Civil War, 86 to 44 BC
P183: The End of the Republic, 44 to 13 BC
P219: The Early Empire, 12 BC to AD 70
P253: Apogee and Nadir, AD 71 to 285
P285: Renewal and Decline, Ad 285 to 476
Appendices, Bibliography & Index - pp315-348
40 maps and illustrations, 14 colour plates
I really don't have much to say in comment; this is a comprehensive narrative history of the Roman navy, with interspersed "boxes" covering specialist details such as layouts of oar-banks and number of rowers, ship-board artillery and even shield patterns. It is well-written and readable, although, especially in the late-empire period, it does dwell in great detail on the land campaigns - usually when there is not much naval activity - so this is actually a military history of Rome but from a naval viewpoint.
Further reading:
See Hellenistic and Roman Naval Warfare 336BC - 31BC for a discussion of pirates in the ancient world - one man's pirate was another man's merchant adventurer, which might account for the speed with which Pompey cleared the seas, and why the vast majority of pirates were allowed to surrender unharmed; not the behaviour you would expect from the Romans...

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This publication represents the first true examination of the Roman Navy as an independent arm of the military. Though many may perceive the Roman Empire as a primarily land based organisation, an empire forged by the formidable legions of infantry, the truth is that the Roman Empire was as much a maritime empire as that of the British in the nineteenth century, and in fact the Roman Navy was the most powerful maritime force ever to have existed. It secured the trade routes and maintained the communications that allowed the Roman Empire to exist. It brought previously untouchable and unreachable enemies to battle and enabled the expansion of Imperial power into areas thought hitherto inaccessible. In the Mediterranean its power was un-rivalled and it maintained bases scattered around the coasts of Western Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. At the height of its power the Roman Navy employed tens of thousands of sailors, marines and craftsmen who manned and maintained a fleet of warships numerically far larger than anything in existence today. And yet this fascinating aspect of Roman rule has remained largely unstudied. Structured around a detailed chronology of the establishment, development and eventual decline of Rome's sea going forces, this work examines the role of naval warfare in the construction of Europe's first great empire. Bringing together archaeological, pictorial and documentary evidence, it suggests many new avenues for research and highlights a long overlooked arena of naval scholarship.

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