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 move 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.

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.

Problems continued to occur aboard in the last minutes before leaving. While an auxiliary boiler could provide steam for the turbogenerators, the circuit breakers had not been properly calibrated, and each time they tripped, the feed pumps for the boiler stopped, plunging the ship into darkness until an emergency diesel generator could be started. Restoring normal operations took an hour or so, and the decision was made to jam the circuit breakers closed to make sure it didn't happen again. And once the ship was afloat, it was realized that a slight list meant the draft to port was 20 cm greater than to starboard, cutting the margin on sailing from 40 cm to 25. Some quick rebalancing of fluids, with the results read by an engineer with a flashlight because the dock's power had already been sabotaged, raised the margin to 33 cm, but it was still going to be extremely tight.

Finally, at 0320, Jean Bart started to move. High water was only 40 minutes away, and an hour after that, she would either be in the main channel or stranded. Things had already begun to go wrong. Two tugs would control the battleship's bow, while a third would pass beside her in the drydock with only centimeters to spare to secure her stern. Unfortunately, that tug had grounded on the way in, and delayed things five precious minutes. Worse, as the tugs at the bow began to pull Jean Bart out, the hawser at the stern parted, and she cleared the dock at close to 3 kts. To make matters worse, the dock itself didn't align with the channel. A fan-shaped area had been dredged to allow the ship to be turned about 30° to align with it, but with the failure of the stern hawser, Jean Bart ran aground on the bank. But the tide was still rising, and the stern tug soon pulled her off, and the other tugs turned her to the appropriate heading. This was a tricky procedure in the dark, and the captain mistook debris for one of the channel markers, causing the bow to ground on the port side of the channel, followed moments later by the stern grounding to starboard. By this point it was 0345, and within 15 minutes, operations were complicated by a falling tide.

HMS Vanquisher

Other tugs were swiftly called in, and the mighty ship was finally pushed off at 0425. But she was now in the channel, and it was only about 10 minutes before she was finally free and orders were given to start the engines. A few minutes after that, a trio of Heinkel bombers appeared overhead, and although AA fire from various guns kept them at altitude, one bomb hit the ship between the two turrets, doing minor damage to the ship. French fighters soon appeared overhead, and the Germans headed for home, leaving Jean Bart free to move under her own power for the first time. The tugs were cast off, and she made for the open sea, picking up destroyers Mameluk and Le Hardi on the way. HMS Vanquisher also appeared with a pair of tugs, part of the abortive plan to move the battleship to British waters, but they were sent away, and operations began to transfer fuel from a fleet tanker to Jean Bart. This was complicated, as the French had only begun to experiment with underway replenishment a few years before,¹ so both ships had to heave to about 60 nm out to sea, and it took 90 minutes to get the hoses across and another 6 hours to get all of the fuel and water transferred.

But even as the fluids were being pumped across, engineering problems caused by the Jean Bart's hasty departure were appearing. The steam-powered ventilators hadn't been completed, leaving only the electrical ones used when the ship was alongside, which were unable to keep up with the needs of a ship actually using her machinery. Temperatures in the engine room rose as high as 70°C before engineers managed to get one of the turbo-ventilators working. A bigger problem was leaks in the condensers, which were costing four tons of feedwater an hour. The ship was stopped, despite the threat of nearby U-boats, and the engineers managed to get things under control in only an hour, although overheating and vibration limited the ship's speed to no more than 12 kts, enough to make the Admiral nervous. Worse was to come 90 minutes later when the vacuum pump for the starboard condenser exploded, forcing that set of shafts to be shut down again and cutting speed to 7 kts.

Jean Bart in Casablanca harbor

The engineers quickly concluded that the pump was beyond repair, and the only feasible option was to replace it with one scavenged from the inoperative aft turbines. But this was not a standard procedure, and it took 18 hours for the exhausted engineering team to get the new pump up and running. And while that work was underway, it became apparent that the condenser was leaking feedwater to a point where they would be unable to reach Casablanca. The solution was to run the fresh water provided for washing through an auxiliary boiler and use it as feedwater, along with water condensed out of the AC system for the boiler room, which was pulling out 800 L/hr. This wasn't great for the boilers in the long run, but that was a secondary concern.

After the vacuum pump was repaired, the revolutions were increased, although the ship soon ran into problems with vibration caused by a bent propeller blade, most likely a result of the second grounding during the launch. But despite this, she was soon able to make 21 kts, and maintained this speed for the next two days, finally dropping anchor at 1655 on June 22nd. Despite all of the problems, she had averaged 16 kts on passage, surely the speed record for a warship in her first three days afloat. Jean Bart would remain there for the next two and a half years, until the Americans appeared offshore and she fought Massachusetts, the only battleship to survive a gun action against an American counterpart during the war. After the French capitulated, she would spend the rest of the war providing parts for Richelieu before being completed by the restored French Republic, the last battleship to enter service with any nation.

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.

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.

But by the time they came around building Richlieu's sister, Jean Bart, the international situation had become critical enough to unlock some extra infrastructure budget, and she was to be built in a new and unique facility at Saint-Nazaire. It was composed of two parallel docks, one that was normally dry and where the basic assembly would be completed and another that was much deeper and typically kept full of water where final fitting out would be done. They were separated by a low platform a meter above the dry side, which gave the engineers a place to assemble materials and played host to five cranes, including the enormous Grue Gusto, capable of lifting 240 tons. After the hull was mostly complete, it would be floated from the dry to the wet side over the central platform.¹ It's not entirely clear what advantage this had over just building a conventional drydock, but it's possible that it was cheaper and building mostly in the open was easier.

The construction dock used for Jean Bart postwar. The construction platform is on the left, the fitting-out dock on the right.

Another factor may have been the local geography. The shipyard, Ateliers & Chantiers de la Loire, was on the north side of the Loire estuary, almost a kilometer from the main shipping channel across relatively shallow water. This meant that a special channel would need to be dredged to get the ship out, probably acceptable for a ship launch every couple years, but a major pain for regular use of a drydock.

But it would also be a major pain for other reasons as Jean Bart neared completion in early 1940. She had been "launched" at the beginning of March, with seven months of fitting out ahead before she went to sea for the first time. Unfortunately, it was only two months later that the German offensive began, punching through the lightly-held Ardennes and outflanking the French and British armies before they had a chance to react. By the middle of the month, it was clear that all of France was at risk, and efforts began to make Jean Bart ready for sea in the hopes of keeping her out of Hitler's clutches. The highest tides on the Loire arrived at two-week intervals, and it looked like the best option was to shoot for a series around June 20th. The ship would obviously be far from finished, cutting the required channel depth by a meter, but it looked like she could be made ready to move under her own power and the dredging completed in time.

Richelieu's sternpost under construction, because I couldn't find anything more relevant

Immediately, the project to get the ship complete had top priority, with the number of assigned workers limited only by the need not to get in each other's way. The first priority was to get at least some propulsion completed, although the full system, with 4 turbine sets and six boilers, was quickly discarded in favor of just the outboard shafts, driven by 3 boilers, which should still let the ship make 25 kts. The work was down to the wire, with the propellers installed on June 7th, the boilers first being lit about a week later, and the final connection of the turbines to the shafts taking place on June 18th, 12 hours before the ship was scheduled to depart. Other systems were almost as close to the wire. The electrical generators were accepted that same afternoon, although the distribution system continued to have serious problems. The rudder and steering system was tested on June 16th, but it would be of limited use because the gyrocompass only turned up on the 18th and was taken aboard for later installation, while the magnetic compass had yet to be calibrated to account for the distortions of being on a massive steel ship. Other critical systems included internal communications and quarters for the reduced crew, but some really important features, like internal watertight bulkheads, had to be left unfinished to make the date.

One problem hovering over all of the planning and preparations was weight. A great deal was already aboard the ship, and the biggest variable was completion of the ship's armament. The secondary turrets were not available, so the openings were simply blanked off, while the turntables and gun mountings for the main guns had just been installed. Initially, the plan was to fit all eight guns and leave the turret armor off, but by June 10th, it became apparent that this wasn't feasible, and a switch was made to installing the guns and armor in Turret I, in the hopes that Turret II's guns could follow for installation wherever the ship ended up. This worked less well than expected, as the crane being used to move guns 5 and six broke after loading only the first one, and the second one was sabotaged before the Germans arrived. A pair of 90mm mountings, without fire control or ammunition, were installed, as were some lighter AA guns scavenged from around the dockyard.

But even as the projected date was drawing near, so were the German Armies, and getting her out would be an adventure in its own right. We'll pick up the story next time.

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.

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.

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.

The Pearl Harbor family of historical sites frames itself as telling the story of the beginning of America’s Pacific War with the site itself and the conclusion of the war at the surrender signing on the decks of the USS Missouri. Ultimately the story this complex is trying to tell is that of the US Navy in the Pacific War – the ideal flow in my mind is start with the tale of loss at the Arizona memorial, then to the guerrilla campaign waged by USN submarines across the Pacific, the rebuilding of US airpower at the air museum, and then culminating in the story of seapower and victory told aboard the Missouri (alas the tour bus runs visitors center→Missouri→Air Museum, so for most folks the air museum gets the short shift, though it works too). I would strongly recommend the overall package to anyone visiting Oahu, on the strength of the historical value of the site itself, the sombre experience of the Arizona Memorial, high end regional quality air & submarine museums, and one of 4 museum Iowa class battleships. In the general area but not for a same day visit, there are a plethora of coastal defense sites (the pillboxes made convenient hiking trail markers after the war) around the island, as well as some supplementary, local scale museums, memorials, cemeteries, and historical sites scattered around Oahu (the army has a free one right on the beach at Waikiki).

The Pearl Harbor Visitor Center

The main visitor’s center is located in Pearl City, tucked away after the end of the modern military shipyard there (keep an eye out, this remains a major US fleet base and you’ll likely see a fair amount of active duty ships as well). This is your centerpoint logistically speaking – right now that primarily means either driving (lot is reasonably sized, but can get overflowed in peak tourist season), rideshare (typically <$40 within the city of Honolulu), tour bus (many package options from the popular Waikiki Beach area and some of the nearby resorts), & city bus. There is a light rail station within walking distance, but the light rail system primarily services the residential areas of Pearl City/some parts of Honolulu, so this isn’t yet a great tourist option – check back in 2030 or so.

The visitors center hosts the terminus for the ferry to the USS Arizona memorial, the Pacific Fleet Submarine Museum, the Eternal Patrol memorial garden, a VR multimedia experience (my group skipped for time) and the main gift shop. It also serves as the bus terminal to Ford Island, where the Battleship Missouri & Aviation Museum are located. I believe you technically can drive to the island yourself, but you will be required to comply with normal rules for entering a US military facility (primarily providing identification to the visitor control station) and parking on base at the Missouri is very limited, though there seemed to be lots of space at the air museum. That said, almost everyone should use the free shuttle bus from the visitors center if you plan on attending more than one of the various attractions (which does not require any ID). Of note, they follow sporting event style restrictions on bags – if you want to bring one in, make sure it is of a clear plastic material. There are food options available at all of the sites, though they tend to start shutting down around 3 pm-ish (they seem to operate on island time rather than posted time unlike everything else).

The Arizona Memorial

As a large complex spread across 3 main locations, a visit can get logistically challenging, and there is enough going on that it will be difficult for the average reader of this blog to satisfactorily explore each part in a single day – if you’re going to try you really do want to get an early start (hours are 7 am – 5 pm). I would estimate that the Arizona Memorial takes 1-1.5 hours, the submarine museum 1.5-2.5 hours, VR experience an hour, the grounds of the visitors center another half hour, transit around the sites 30-45 minutes, the Missouri 2-4 hours, and the Air museum 1-2 hours (so 7 hours minimum for everything, though more likely closer to 10 or 12 hours). All tickets (except the Arizona) to attractions are valid for 2 days (management understands how big the site is).

The USS Arizona Memorial site is a platform built over the sunken wreck of the USS Arizona, one of the battleships sunk in the Pearl Harbor attacks. It is the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines, and fundamentally exists as a memorial to their grave. The memorial hall itself is spartan, with only a few plaques explaining the sinking and dominated by the memorial wall, that bears the name of those who died. Some pieces of the ship remain visible, notably barbette #3 and one of the masts, and depending on water clarity that day more can be viewed underwater. The memorial is surrounded by the ongoing restoration project for the historic quays that were used to host battleship row

Barbette 3 of Arizona

Visiting the Arizona is the most complicated portion of the entire experience, and one that I don’t recommend to anyone who I wouldn’t take on a tour of Arlington National Cemetery or Flanders Field Cemetery. At the visitors center, there is a free 30 minute film on the Pearl Harbor attacks that is worth watching and takes place in the same building the ferry departs from (apparently they originally were bundled together, but the logistics got sufficiently complicated they decided to run the two separately). Access to the memorial is run separately by the US Park Service, and requires you to have a reserved timeslot (cost of $1) to get on the ferry. Timeslots are opened up in 2 chunks, 1 month and 1 day before the date in question – and like all park service reservations these are incredibly difficult to actually secure without a healthy dose of luck. Fortunately, there is also a standby line, which when you arrive at the visitors center find this first thing (on your left as you enter) and put down your name/phone number – I visited in the off season and was able to catch the 2nd ferry after arriving (they depart every 15 minutes).

The visitors center itself has a smattering of artifacts, memorials, and history scattered about what is a very nice waterside park area. Most notable is the garden memorial to the 52 USN submarines on eternal patrol due to wartime service, with a plaque of short history dedicated to each. If you didn’t buy package tickets online, you can purchase them here, or at each individual site.

A Mk 45 nuclear torpedo

The far end of the visitors center is dominated by the the Pacific Fleet museum, which has 4 main focuses. There are two indoor halls, one dedicated to the role of submarines in the Pacific War, and another dedicated to the evolution of their role during the cold war. Outside is the large artifact garden and the USS Bowfin, which is a fairly typical example of a WW2 fleet boat (great for those new to naval museums, but it does not offer anything particularly unique relative to the dozen other fleet boat museums around the country and is a good candidate to skip for time in favor of the more unique offerings).

The halls are well done but in my opinion suffer from a lack of artifacts and an over-reliance on text and life of a submariner stories (I’m spoiled though because I live near the Naval Undersea Museum in Keyport, Wa and that is hard to top as a submarine museum).¹ The artifact garden has a great collection of torpedoes and submarine rescue gear as well as a MAC (Multiple All Up Round Canister) prototype from the end of the cold war dropped with absolutely no context, from the navy converting four Ohio class ballistic missile submarines to fit 3 Tomahawks into a single Trident missile tube.

The USS Missouri (despite Bean’s best efforts, the most famous of the Iowa class battleships)² was only commissioned in June of 1944 (the last US battleship completed), and like most of the Iowa class saw only limited combat duty, primarily shore bombardment in WW2. She was decommissioned in 1955 after being the first battleship to participate in the Korean War, and then was reactivated in 1984 as part of the 600 ship navy until her final decommissioning and conversion to a museum ship in 1995. The ship has the 1 & 2 decks fairly open (access to crew quarters and mess decks) and the flying bridge as part of normal access. They regularly run guided tours, or you can self guide yourself through reasonably well. She has two notable features that distinguish her from her 3 sister ships – the first is the highlight of the signing of the documents of surrender by the empire of Japan and the allied powers that brought a formal end to the Pacific War. The second is tucked away ignominiously in the depth of 2 deck, and is a plaque memorializing the incident in which the Missouri set a record (since broken) for the largest ship ever grounded in the Chesapeake Bay, and her captain whose name graces this blog’s annual (anti-) award for excellence in naval performance, the William D Brown Memorial Award. I ran out of time to do either the bridge tour or engine room add ons, which each have a couple of time slots every day – it feels like the Missouri has a fair bit higher visitor count than any of the other battleships and it does show a bit in how they arrange visitor handling (though I don’t have data to back that up).³

A Zero with a costumed docent

The final stop on the tour is the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, the main hall is dedicated to naval aircraft that fought the Pacific War (although with the exception of a Zero in good shape, the Japanese examples are all in fragments that were once aircraft form). There is the requisite Doolittle raid display, though it is overshadowed by the Midway exhibit next to it. The only real complaint I have is that the historical narrative kinda peters out right after Midway and devolves into a small collection of late war artifacts (also Guadalcanal is almost completely neglected). Tucked away behind the main building in a way that is difficult to realize it is there and poorly signed to is the aircraft park and hangar 47, which contains a wide array of WW2-modern aircraft, from the nice pristine models to a B-17 they pulled out of a swamp and most of the fuselage of a D3A “Val” dive bomber. Also detached from the main building is the former control tower for Luke Field, which hosts a small display on historical aircraft firefighting on the first floor, and then has a rooftop observation deck with a very cool set of signage that lines up specific views from the tower with various events from December 7th as well as a short video on the attack.

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.

Sometimes it was worse at the front; sometimes worse at the harbor. Quartermasters buried their dead and amphibious duck drivers went down with their craft. Infantrymen, dug into the Mussolini Canal, had the canal pushed in on top of them by armor-piercing shells, and Jerry bombers circled as they directed glider bombs into LSTs and Liberty ships. Wounded men got oak leaf clusters on their Purple Hearts when shell fragments riddled them as they lay on hospital beds. Nurses died. Planes crash-landed on the single air strip...

This wasn’t a beachhead that was secured and enlarged until it eventually became a port for supplies coming in to supplement those being expended as the troops pushed inland. Everything was expended right here. It was a constant hellish nightmare, because when you weren’t getting something you were expecting something, and it lasted for five months."

I do like that he gives a nod to smaller operations like Sardinia, Corsica and Elba, which are even more overlooked than Salerno, but I'm not sure I agree with his praise of PT boats. As noted earlier, they were quite popular due to who was occupying the White House.

One thing I must note before closing this section is that Morison's parenthetical about monitors is wrong. The American monitor was a result of the specialized conditions of the Civil War, which put a premium on building quickly and didn't care too much about seagoing performance. Yes, there was some focus on coastal attack, but before the "New Navy" era, they were the backbone of the US fleet. The British monitor was a pure coastal-attack vessel, built starting in WWI and often making use of surplus turrets to deliver heavy firepower ashore. The US never built any of this type, probably because their poor seagoing performance meant you needed bases close to the area you were operating in, and those were short on the ground in the Pacific.

Then there's a somewhat lurching shift back to the Atlantic, where we once again pick up the story of the battle against the U-boats. And once again run straight into the fact that Ultra wasn't declassified. The CVE hunter groups were heavily dependent on Ultra to help find targets, and the campaign against the "Milch Cow" tankers in particular (which had to rendezvous with the boats they were to refuel, a procedure coordinated by radio) was so successful and so dependent on codebreaking that it's a minor miracle the Germans didn't realize what was going on. And, because it's "new weapons week", we also get our first glimpse at the ASW homing torpedo. And there's one of my favorite stories from the Atlantic, that of Borie's battle with U-405, which I've never written up for some reason. I did recently get a book on the encounter, so maybe that will change...

Beyond that, it's a good account of the period when the Allies were clearly on the ascendant in the Atlantic, but still faced a number of challenges as Donitz, one of the best German commanders of the war, hunted for weakness wherever it could be found. The war at this point was truly worldwide, and while Morison's narrowing of the scope in Two Ocean War means this usually doesn't show up, it did here, and I'm glad of it. There's also some mention of the fascinating supply route between Germany and Japan, which involved sending a ship or submarine loaded with whatever strategic materials were in relatively good supply, along with occasional prototypes and blueprints of your latest wonder weapon for the other power to copy. It didn't move material amount of stuff, but it was how we got stuff like Japan's attempt at a jet fighter.

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.

The second cable would have another major advantage over the first, in the form of an appropriate ship to lay it. Great Eastern had been the brainchild of renowned engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who had decided that he would build a ship capable of going straight from Britain to Australia.¹ Iron shipbuilding had made this possible, and the vessel that emerged was almost six times the tonnage² of any other ship afloat, and would not be exceeded in size until the dawn of the 20th century. Brunel died in 1859, shortly after her maiden voyage, thus missing a very expensive lesson in why this sort of size jump is generally a bad idea. Great Eastern proved far too large to make money as a passenger liner, but she was perfect for laying cable. When she set sail in June 1865, all 7,000 tons of cable were aboard, saving the trouble of a splice in the mid-Atlantic.

Great Eastern

Unfortunately, that didn't mean the crew wouldn't have to splice cable. Only a day out of Ireland, an electrical fault was detected, and the cable would need to be hauled back aboard until the problem could be found. This sounds easy, but the only machinery for taking the cable aboard was forward, which meant that the cable had to be cut and the end moved to the bow, a complicated and difficult process, before recovery could begin. Ten hours and ten miles of cable later, the problem was located. A piece of iron wire had been driven straight into the core, short-circuiting the whole thing and raising questions about sabotage. But a new section was spliced in, and the great ship headed west again, only to have the cable go entirely dead, only to mysteriously resume service shortly thereafter. Another fault was detected on the seventh day, and after the whole recovery process was repeated, the same type of short circuit was found. Measures were put in place to prevent sabotage, and the work continued on.

It was these measures which found the cause of the problem a few days later, when one of the watchers noticed a similar defect going through the rollers and into the sea. Unfortunately, it was too late to stop it, and the whole process of recovering the cable began for a third time. During the process, a worker noticed broken armoring wires on the tank underneath where the defect had rested, the brittle iron having snapped under the tremendous weight of the cable above. But in their haste, nobody remembered to tell Ireland what was going on, a decision that caused a great deal of consternation when the cable broke as it was being raised. By this point, Great Eastern was almost three-quarters of the way across the Atlantic, and the water below was at least 2,000 fathoms deep.³ Broken cable ends had been routinely retrieved in much shallower waters, but there were serious concerns about Great Eastern's ability to find the cable end over two miles below and bring it to the surface.

Great Eastern prepares to grapple for the cable

Because nobody had expected to try and grapple for a cable in the mid-Atlantic, there wasn't an appropriate rope onboard, and one had to be constructed from shorter sections of wire rope. The first two attempts successfully caught the cable, but the grapple rope broke as it was being hauled up, forcing a section of hemp line to be used as part of the third attempt. Unfortunately, it too parted while being hauled up, and after nine days the men aboard Great Eastern finally decided that there was no chance of recovering the cable on this trip.

But they had made it most of the way across the Atlantic, and grappled for a cable in previously-unknown depths. Field quickly set about raising money for a third attempt in 1866, which would not only lay an improved cable (with the fragile armoring wires replaced with something less likely to cause problems) but also grapple for the broken end of the 1865 cable and complete it as well. The winter was also spent making improvements to Great Eastern, everything from providing continual electrical testing to allowing the cable to be taken in over the stern to scraping the hull clean of fouling. The result was an almost anticlimactic voyage in July 1866, a two-week crossing from Ireland to Newfoundland where the biggest source of excitement was a brief tangle inside a cable tank that was swiftly sorted out. Her progress was carefully followed by the newspapers in Europe, but those in America could only watch and hope. Finally, on July 27th, the great ship appeared off Heart's Content, on the southeastern corner of the island, where deep water close to shore would keep the cable safe from the depredations of fishermen and anchors. The two continents were finally and permanently linked, although a break in the cable across the St. Lawrence meant it was two days before the news reached New York.

Paying-out machinery on the deck of Great Eastern

Field had triumphed, and his cable made £1000 on its first day in operation. But his work was not yet done, and after two weeks, Great Eastern again set sail for her battle with the deep. Supporting ships had located the previous year's cable and marked its line with buoys, although expectations of a quick recovery were dashed as the grapple repeatedly returned coated in the fine mud of the seabed. After a full week, the cable was finally hooked and dragged to the surface, but it had been fatally weakened by the repeated attempts to grapple it, and within five minutes it snapped and was lost to the deep again. More attempts were made, but each time the cable was lifted, it snapped once again. Finally, after about three weeks, the expedition moved a hundred miles eastward, where the water was slightly shallower and the cable hopefully undamaged, and tried a new strategy. The thirtieth grapple run snagged the cable, but it was hauled only halfway to the surface before the line was buoyed and Great Eastern moved off a few miles to repeat the process. Now that a great deal of strain had been relieved, the cable was easily hauled aboard, and rapidly taken down to the electrician for testing.

The cable comes ashore at Heart's Content, Newfoundland

Back in Ireland, a small team had spent the last year monitoring the broken cable to ensure that it didn't develop new problems, and occasionally receiving "messages" from the deep, the result of geomagnetic fluctuations picked up by a thousand-mile antenna. But on that day, the message was clear. The cable had been wrested from the Atlantic, and Great Eastern would finish the job she had started the previous year. This time, her progress was eagerly followed on both sides of the Atlantic, reports back to Ireland being passed over the completed cable to those waiting in Newfoundland. Despite weathering a storm on the way, Great Eastern arrived at Heart's Content on September 7th, giving Field not one but two channels for messages between Europe and the Americas.

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.

I was also confused by Spruance choosing Indianapolis as his flagship because she was expendable. That seems like a weird thing to want in a flagship, as the Admiral in charge presumably isn't, but a check of a biography I have of him made sense of it. He wanted to be able to direct his flagship where he thought his presence would be most useful, which ruled out a battleship (taking such a powerful unit out of position was a bad idea) and thought that he might end up exposing the ship to enemy fire when observing a landing, so wanted something that wouldn't be too badly missed if it was damaged in his service and had to be sent back for repairs.

Then you get the actual battle of the Philippine Sea, the greatest and last carrier battle of the war. Of course, much of the actual killing was done by submarine, and Morison doesn't spend much time on the story of Taiho, or "why you are exceedingly careful with your avgas systems". I also think he doesn't spend nearly enough time on how much this battle differed from earlier carrier battles. The expectation prewar had been that whichever side got its shot in first would win, but thanks to radar and the CIC, the Spruance's force was able to tank the Japanese attack and survive unscathed.