Naval Gazing Book Club - Two-Ocean War Ch16

With the European war mostly closed, we move from the Philippines north into some of the best-known battles of the Pacific War. I don't have a lot to say about Iwo Jima, but was amused by his comment that Okinawa was somewhere "where American forces seem destined to remain until the cold war waxes hot or the communist menace fades." And here we are, six decades later, with the communist menace that he spoke of gone, and yet American forces remain on Okinawa.

I was also intrigued by his comments about the New York Fire Department providing the impetus for the development of fog nozzles, which I don't think came up when I wrote about the subject. I did a bit more digging, and discovered that while nothing Morison says is technically wrong, the framing is extremely weird. The fog nozzle was pushed on Adm. Cochrane at BuShips by Harold J. Burke, who was a member of the New York City Fire department, but was a Lieutenant in the Naval Reserve at the time, and he did go on to run the damage control school with Lt. Thomas Kilduff, who was formerly of the Boston Fire Department. As far as I can tell, there was no particular institutional involvement by either city's fire department in the DC school or program, which would explain why I'd never heard about this.

I certainly appreciate Morison's skillful portrait of the Okinawa landing, and of the destruction of Yamato, although I have to nitpick his comment that "not another battleship was ever built". Both Vanguard and Jean Bart were completed after the war, and I maintain that the battleship remained important for a decade or so after this. I also feel compelled to point out that the effectiveness of the armored flight decks on British carriers is overstated, and that the smaller air wings imposed by said decks meant they were hit about as often as the Americans, despite having far fewer ships.

And then we come to the horror of the kamikaze attacks on the Americans off Okinawa, one of the most brutal battles of the war. I don't have much to add to Morison's account, except to call him out for ignoring the loss of the William D. Porter, a favorite here at Naval Gazing. But with that campaign closed, next week will be our final chapter in the book.