With Leyte over, this chapter was always going to be smaller and less impressive, covering a campaign forgotten in the shadow of that great naval battle. But it’s a good reminder of the early days of the kamikaze campaign, and we encounter a mention of our friend the proximity fuze. Also, it’s worth pointing out that by this point in the war, US air defenses were strong enough that the kamikazes were actually more effective in terms of lives lost per bomb hit than conventional bombing, even if it takes a uniquely Japanese mindset to actually implement the plan.

There’s also an interesting reappearance of “current politics c.1963″ when Morison starts talking about how it’s a problem that the Allies didn’t more more swiftly into Indonesia. 1963 was the start of the Indonesian confrontation, basically an undeclared war between Britain and Indonesia over the creation of Malaysia, and I suspect Morison talks about that mostly because it was in the news at the time.

And this was going to be a short chapter, so operations in the Philippines got combined with Morison’s account of the war against Japanese commerce fought by American submarines. It’s a rather lurching shift to go back to 1942, and the necessity to cover a campaign of this scale means that almost all individual elements are lost in the early years, except for an admittedly amusing story about carrying Muslims to the Philippines (although I still can’t figure out why they wouldn’t be able to eat ice cream). This is better in 1944, although the rapid-fire recounting of actions (some of which I’ve read about at much greater length) is a lot to take in all at once.

Also, I should point out that ″Shinano″ did not have a 30 cm flight deck. That’s a full foot of armor, and I’m not sure any ship ever built had a deck that thick. It was a more normal 3″/7.5 cm, and ″⁣Shinano″⁣ is the canonical example of progressive flooding caused by insufficient watertightness, although the complacency of the crew didn’t help much. I am also sad that the coolest submarine of the war, ″⁣Barb″⁣, was only mentioned briefly once, and didn’t receive recognition for blowing up a train, sneaking in absurdly close to the enemy coast and setting a speed record on the way out, or using rockets to pioneer the modern submarine mission of land attack.

The battleship Jean Bart was under construction when the German offensive smashed the French army in 1940. She was being built in Saint-Nazaire, on the country's Atlantic Coast, and after defeating the armies in Belgium, the Germans took some time to prepare for further offensives, giving the French a chance to get her to sea and safely out of German hands. This would only become possible around June 20th, when the tides were right, a channel to her building dock had been dredged, and last-minute efforts would make her about ready for sea.

French dredge Pas de Calais II being launched in 1933

As the departure day approached, it looked like things were coming together. The channel was on schedule for completion, and Jean Bart would be met by HMS Vanquisher, who would escort her to safety on the Clyde. But the political situation was in flux, and on the 17th, her destination was changed to North Africa. The British were not informed. But bigger changes came the next day, when word reached Saint-Nazaire that the Germans were approaching, and the ship needed to leave as quickly as possible. The need to fill the dock meant they'd miss the next tide, so the first opportunity would come at 0300 on the 19th, and a bit of unfinished work in the channel meant that at one point it had lost 5m of its 50m width, making a narrow squeeze for Jean Bart's 33m beam. But the bigger challenge was that it would have to be navigated in the dark. Two teams spent the afternoon of the 18th frantically working, one to make the final preparations for sailing, the other planting scuttling charges in case she was unable to do so. Read more...

And now we come to the naval climax of the war, the greatest of all sea battles: Leyte Gulf. This chapter is jam-packed, and as such, Morison keeps the strategy section fairly short, and with only one obvious lie, that Admiral King wasn't anti-British. He was in fact a very confirmed Anglophobe, although possibly only as an extension of general misanthropy. Then there's the decision to massively accelerate the landings on Leyte, which Morison if anything undersells as a truly awe-inspiring logistical achievement. The actions of TF 38 before the attack get fairly short shrift, with the escape of Houston and Canberra from the waters off Formosa getting only a brief mention. It's one of the war's great epics of naval engineering, and I really need to write it up at some point.

But all of this brevity is in service of getting to the main event. Sibuyan Sea is quickly dealt with, but he spends plenty of time on Suriago Strait, the last action between battleships, which Morison gives a fitting rhetorical sendoff to. Then Samar, where I would complain that he falls into the too-common trap of focusing on Johnston over the other escorts in Taffy 3, but I'm also wildly biased in favor of Hoel for various reasons. The other major factor that I think gets ignored in Morison's account of Samar is Kurita's probable sleep deprivation, and the mental strain of having a couple flagships shot out from under him, which likely contributed to his remarkably bad decision-making.

And then there's Cape Engano and the infamous incident with Task Force 34, and I think Morison sort of drops the ball on this one, because there's really no discussion of the confusion that led to the San Bernadino Strait being uncovered beyond the bare fact that it happened. For those who don't know, the conventional view is Halsey is primarily responsible for the screwup, although I'm in the more recent revisionist camp that points out that Halsey's priority was the Japanese carriers, not covering the landings directly, so it was ultimately up to Kinkaid to make sure he was covered. (Although this doesn't excuse Halsey's poor phrasing of his orders, which everyone outside Third Fleet misunderstood.) I also feel compelled to point out that if he had left TF 34 to block Kurita, it would have done wonders for the historical reputation of the battleship, because nobody would believe how little damage Kurita's fleet did to Taffy 3 in real life. But Morison basically skips all of this because he can gloss over it and talking about it doesn't really make the USN look good.

When the French resumed battleship construction in the 1930s after the lapse of the Treaty System, they were faced with a problem. A large infrastructure program in the early part of the century had left them well-equipped to build battleships 200 m long, but as ships got faster, they also got longer, and by the mid-30s, 200m was typical for a heavy cruiser, and battleships would need to be considerably longer. A few 250m drydocks were available, but most building facilities were still at the old limit. To get around this, Dunkerque, the first of the new ships, was built in two sections, a 197m main hull and a 17 m bow, the two then being attached in one of the longer drydocks.

Strasbourg is launched in Saint Nazaire

This worked quite well, and when the only long set of ways available, originally used to build the liner Normandie, was taken up by Dunkerque's sister Strasbourg, the decision was made to build Richelieu, the first of their 35,000-ton treaty battleships, in the same manner. The center section, 197m long, was built in the same drydock as Dunkerque, while the 43m bow and 8m stern were built elsewhere and mated up in drydock. Read more...

It's time once again for our regular Open Thread. Talk about whatever you want, so long as it isn't Culture War.

Overhauls are Falklands Part 1, The Spanish-American War Part 4, LCS Parts one, two and three, A visit to Texas, and for 2025, Orbital Missile Defense and Carrier Operations Parts one, two and three.

And now we come to the last full chapter of the European War, a naval account of the invasion of France. I quite enjoyed this chapter, probably because, unlike so many other chapters, none of it felt rushed. There was good coverage of everything from the strategic background to Overlord and Anvil/Dragoon (and yes, you might claim that it went on a bit too long dumping on Churchill's opposition to the second one, but I am absolutely here for dumping on Churchill's screwups like that) to the logistics of the invasion and the action on the beaches. I also like that the Southern France invasion wasn't shortchanged as it so often is in discussions of the European War. Normandy was undoubtedly important, but I'm not sure I've ever seen it undercovered in any history of WWII ever.

Beyond that, the only thing of particular interest in this chapter was Morison's point about the ways in which the different logistical situations of the Americans and British drove their approaches to planning. I had never quite put that together before, but it does make a lot of sense of why there was tension between the two sides over how much planning needed to happen and when.

Also, a couple of brief notes. First, Arkansas was firing 12", not 14", and I also think Morison underrates how difficult the fighting was for some of the British troops on June 6th. But that's about it, although I am reminded that I should look more into the coastal gun battles during this period.

Reader Ryan recently was in Hawaii, and kindly agreed to share his review of the various facilities there, ranging from the battleship Missouri to the air museum on Ford Island and various facilities ashore.

December 7th, 1941 – A day that shall live in infamy August 15th, 1945 – We hereby proclaim the unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters and of all Japanese armed forces and all armed forces under Japanese control wherever situated. Read more...

So here we have another chapter that mixes the Mediterranean with the Atlantic, as the Allies go ashore in Italy, beginning with the landings at Salerno. Salerno, south of Naples, is plausibly the most undercovered of the war's amphibious operations relative to how hot it was as a battle. The traditional story of amphibious warfare in Europe is about 90% Normandy and the remaining 10% gets sliced up among, prominently, Torch and Anzio, with Sicily probably also coming in ahead of Salerno. But it was the first large-scale deployment of guided bombs, as well as being the American landing that came closest to disaster of any in the war.

Of course, disaster is not the same thing as failure, which brings us to Anzio. Morison prefers not to dwell on it, but I think it's worth quoting cartoonist Bill Mauldin's excellent book Up Front to give a sense of what it was like there: "Anzio was unique. It was the only place in Europe which held an entire corps of infantry, a British division, all kinds of artillery and special units, and maintained an immense supply and administration setup without a rear echelon. As a matter of fact, there wasn’t any rear; there was no place in the entire beachhead where enemy shells couldn’t seek you out. Read more...

Starting in the 1840s, the electric telegraph began to link together the world's cities. Initially, this was only over land or bridgeable rivers, but soon, efforts were made to pass cables underwater, at least over short distances. Intercontinental cables remained a dream until the arrival of Cyrus Field, an American who put together a company to bridge the North Atlantic. His first attempt, laid by American and British warships in 1857, failed when the cable snapped 300 miles out from Ireland, but he raised more money and tried again the next year. That cable was more successful, in that it did provide a telegraph link between the two countries, but it was so noisy that it would take hours to send a message. To make matters worse, construction and operational defects meant that it failed completely in only a month.

Inside a cable tank

The cable's failure provoked widespread skepticism, a matter made worse by the failure of an even more expensive cable through the Red Sea to India, and a commission of inquiry was set up to investigate the problems of submarine cables. The commission, a joint effort of the British government and the Atlantic Telegraph Company whose members included physicist Charles Wheatstone, published a 560 page report that confirmed that the problems with the cable were ones of design and operation, and that the concept itself was not inherently flawed. Unfortunately, it would take many years for Field to raise the money necessary to try again. Pretty much everyone in his own country was distracted for some reason, and the British ended up providing the lion's share of the money for the second attempt. This time, there was no rush to prepare the cable, and samples were made and thoroughly tested, with the final version being over twice as strong and three times as conductive as the first cable. Read more...

This is another chapter that is basically a straight adaptation of one of Morison's books, in this case Volume 8, with which it shares a title. Unfortunately, the first half gets extremely short shrift, which I think is sad. As much as I am not a fan of Douglas MacArthur, Morison's full account of the New Guinea campaign has long convinced me that it is one of the great military accomplishments of WWII, and he simply doesn't use enough space here to do it justice. I also am not sure that Morison's claims about only MacArthur being able to pull it off are true, but I will agree that it is the one unambiguous piece of evidence the case in favor of him being a great general has going for it.

One thing that jumped out was Morison ascribing the inactivity of the Japanese fleet to American air superiority. While that's certainly part of the picture, the increasingly perilous oil situation the Japanese found themselves in was also a major component not only of the ships not moving, but also of the Japanese inability to train replacement pilots, and it's weird that he doesn't even mention that. That section also has another veiled reference to codebreaking in the Pacific Fleet "finding out" where the enemy submarines were and sending hunter-killer groups after them. And of course, this is where England put up an unmatched score of 6 boats in 12 days, despite the efforts of the group commander to spread kills out among the ships of the unit. For kill number 6, she was only allowed in after 3 other DEs had failed, and promptly added to her tally. Read more...