Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/March 2024/Book reviews




 * By Hawkeye7

When World War II began, the United States Navy had seven aircraft carriers operating about eighty aircraft each; the navy had about 2,000 aircraft in total. In 1940, a major shipbuilding effort was approved that resulted in the Essex-class aircraft carrier, and President Franklin Roosevelt ordered the navy to expand to 15,000 aircraft. It was immediately realised that a major overhaul of aviation training would be required to provide enough aircrew.

Just as important, but neglected in most accounts, was the provision of specialist crewmen to maintain those aircraft, and each aircraft required eight to ten maintenance crewmen. The effect of salt-laden sea air on the aircraft and spare parts, especially when the aircraft were normally parked on the deck, was an intractable problem. This book is about how this challenge of providing the required maintenance support personnel was met.

Providing huge numbers of specialist tradesmen involved the US Navy completely transforming its training programs. Before the war, it had operated a kind of apprenticeship system, mechanics earning their ratings on ships or repair facilities. The wartime system involved creating large schools where maintenance personnel such as Aviation Machinist's Mates and Aviation Ordnanceman were taught their trades. Some were considered more important than others; repairing a radio involved a great deal of technical skill, but the consequence of a radio malfunction was not as life-threatening as an engine or airframe failure.

Top-ranking graduates were given ratings; the rest had to earn their ratings through performance on the job. Who controlled these training facilities was the subject of a turf war between the chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, and the chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, Rear Admiral John H. Towers. For the first time, women and black men (the latter in segregated classes) could also qualify in aircraft maintenance occupations. The book is enlivened with some of their personal stories.

Shipboard organisation also changed. Before the war, maintenance personnel were assigned to each squadron, as they were in the air force. This meant that when a squadron was relieved or rotated, the maintenance crew were also disembarked and replaced. This proved too cumbersome in wartime. Instead, each carrier had a Carrier Aircraft Support Department that performed maintenance functions for whatever aircraft were embarked. The number and mix of aircraft changed over time with the introduction of new types, and by 1945 the Essex class were usually carrying more than a hundred aircraft, which were now mostly fighters. When an air group moved ashore, its maintenance was undertaken by Carrier Aircraft Support Units.

The author is an assistant professor of naval and American history at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis. He was also a naval aviator who reached the rank of commander. The book is based on his PhD thesis, and the subject matter has been largely unexplored. However, there is plenty of room for more to be written on the subject.

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 * By Hawkeye7

I looked forward to this book. There are many books about Douglas MacArthur, but none about his staff officers like Richard K. Sutherland, Richard J. Marshall, Stephen J. Chamberlin, Courtney Whitney or Bonner Fellers, despite their being a colourful lot. This book is about Charles A. Willoughby, Mac's G-2 (intelligence officer), one of the most controversial owing to the intelligence failure in the Korean War, when a massive Chinese force deployed undetected by American intelligence and inflicted one of the biggest and most humiliating defeats the US military has ever had.

The book is a complete mess. Part of the problem is the subject, a slippery character, who created a fake resume. The book relies on secondary sources, which is unfortunate, because so many of them contain errors. But the author contributes a plethora of errors of his own. Many of these are unlikely to be made by someone familiar with World War II: the assault on Hollandia was by the US Army, not the US Marines (p. 154); Robert Eichelberger and Walter Kruger were army generals, not marines (p. 155); Krueger was not promoted to general until March 1945 (p. 155); Tomoyuki Yamashita was the "Tiger of Malaya", not "Malaysia" (p. 43). Others require some original research, rather than relying on the flawed secondary sources: House of Bolivar was a journal article, not a book (p. 5); The Economic and Military Participation of the United States in the World War, 1917-1918 is a 68-page monograph, not a monumental study (p. 6); Willoughby's first wife did not die in 1940 (p. 191).

All of this is problematic when it comes to the bulk of the book, about intelligence in World War II and Korea. Both are well-covered in the literature, but what is lacking in the book and the literature is a real understanding of how a military intelligence officer works in the field. Sorting the news from the noise is a ominipresent issue; so too is balancing an assessment of enemy intentions rather than capabilities. Many intelligence officers have commented on the problem of a staff officer making recommendations to his commanding officer when the commander has their own ideas (and is usually right). This is a worthy subject, but despite a PhD in Modern European History and work as an intelligence officer, the author is unable to pull it together into a coherent work.

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 * By Hawkeye7

This is not a biography; it only covers Patton's life in detail from the time of Operation Torch in November 1942 until shortly before the Third Army became active in August 1944. His life before that is summarised in the introduction. Nor is it a combat chronicle; in this timeframe there were only three periods in which Patton was in operational command: briefly in Morocco, for seven weeks the Tunisian campaign, and for five in the Allied invasion of Sicily. The book concentrates on the personal details rather than the intricacies of military decision making, so it tells you about his leadership rather than his command.

Although clearly an admirer of Patton, the author does not shy away from the blots on his record like the infamous slapping incidents and the Biscari massacre, which are covered in detail. So too is his racism, anti-semitism, paranoia, thoughtlessness, abrasiveness, impetuosity and lack of self control, all illustrated through a plethora of snippets. Some of these were personal peccadilloes but others were results of the American military system; there is no effort to explain which was which. His personal flaws occasionally led to grave results, such as the death of one of his aides.

For me, something that shines through is the character of Dwight Eisenhower, Patton's boss, who was six years younger. It fell to Eisenhower to deal with Patton and his other generals. There were several reliefs as Eisenhower tried to find good generals. I could have wished for the book to tell me more about Patton's staff, many of whom remained with him for the entire war. There isn't even much about his chiefs of staff, Hugh Gaffey and Hobart Gay, certainly not enough for the reader to evaluate Patton's struggle to retain the latter as his chief of staff.

Readers with an interest in the subject should enjoy this book.

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 * By Nick-D

The Weaponisation of Everything is an overview of how military, intelligence, propaganda and criminal acts are being used in conflicts between modern states and non-state groupings. Its author, Mark Galeotti, has written widely about crime and the Russian security forces.

This is an interesting and useful book. Galeotti provides a fast-paced and very readable narrative and covers a lot of ground in the book's 229 pages. As the title indicates, the book forms a useful 'field guide' for this type of conflict, and Galeotti illustrates it with well-chosen examples. Importantly, he provides some very sensible analysis of the effectiveness of these tactics and doesn't buy into the common narratives suggesting that countries like pre-2022 Russia or China rarely put a foot wrong. He also provides good examples of how underhanded tactics can be countered, and makes the important point that countries that are seeking to defend the rules-based order should stop engaging in these approaches themselves as this behaviour is self-defeating (e.g. it's difficult for European countries to criticise the actions of countries in the Persian Gulf when they are also cynically selling military hardware to them).

The most obvious flaw of the book is that despite being completed in 2021, it hasn't aged well. Galeotti argued in the original edition that future conflicts would largely be bloodless. However, the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and geo-political trends in East Asia point to the continuing relevance and risks of 'kinetic' warfare between nation states. The paperback edition includes an afterword written in August 2022 responding to this, but it feels rushed and unconvincing. Hopefully Galeotti follows up with an updated edition, or a collaboration, that more fully explores the nature of modern conflict by recognising the role of conventional warfare.

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Legion: Life in the Roman Army (major exhibition at the British Museum, London)