Probably the biggest limitation on Two-Ocean War's battle history is the fact that ULTRA, the British program to decrypt and disseminate German Enigma traffic, was not declassified until a decade after it was written. This shows up early in this chapter, where it talks about the futility of hunting groups as opposed to convoys. In fact, hunting groups were used, particularly in the spectacularly successful campaign against the German U-boat tankers in 1943. More broadly, the questions of the appropriate strategy against submarines is a complicated one, and the fact that WWI and WWII came to similar answers is somewhat coincidental. (If you want more on this, there's a good summary in Norman Friedman's new Cold War Anti-Submarine Warfare.)
Also worth commenting briefly on is that, yeah, in retrospect the fall of France was pretty improbable. The German generals who told Hitler it would be a disaster were, by conventional lights, quite right, and it wouldn't have taken all that much for it to actually be a disaster. But instead, France fell, and we got the war as we now know it.
Beyond that, we're seeing Morison's tendency (with one notable exception) to lionize American figures on full display here. King is also famous as "the most even-tempered man in the Navy - always in a rage", which doesn't really come across in the description. He was definitely a competent and effective admiral, but I don't think Morison's superlatives are entirely deserved.
On the Pacific side, there's more of the same problems that showed up in the first chapter. I will note, for instance, that his count of fleet strength doesn't include Repulse and Prince of Wales at Singapore, or the Dutch and Australian cruisers in the southwest Pacific. His evaluation of Yamamoto's strategy is also off. The basic outline is not difficult to follow given modern sources. Yamamoto was trying to deliver a major shock to the US in hopes of forcing us out of the war, and, failing that, to give Japan time to expand and fortify her perimeter. I don't think his account of the politics on Japan's side is much better, but it's been a while since I read much on this. If anyone is interested in a recent and quite readable book on this, I'd recommend Tower of Skulls by Richard B Frank (Amazon affiliate link).
Despite my criticisms, I think this chapter was an improvement on the last one. The Atlantic side was the first time we've seen Morison's genius for describing the operational side of things, and next time out, we'll get his account of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which will play far more to the book's strengths.
Comments
Morison gives a LONG LIST of "everyone who hated King" before polishing King's halo....
Yes, but it's as part of polishing said halo, which I wish he'd do a bit less of. Possibly my most serious criticism of him as an author (as separate from criticism of his work because we've learned more) is that he is almost never critical of an American admiral, even when criticism is warranted. (Almost, I said. We'll get to Fletcher in a few weeks, where there's the opposite problem.)
"I don’t think his account of the politics on Japan’s side is much better, but it’s been a while since I read much on this."
The historiography of prewar Japanese politics is a mess. The people get treated as an anonymous blob who had parliamentary democracy, then there was fascism/totalitarianism/snarl word du jour thanks to the Army and Navy. Even in our anti-racist age, no individuals who resisted militarism and mass atrocities against foreigners get remembered the way German individuals under Hitler have been.
Morison may be inaccurate about Yamamoto, but he comes across as fully human, more so than white American leaders getting their halos polished, or Fletcher or Doenitz.
So how guilty is FDR of not traveling to a summit in Alaska with Japanese PM Konoe (between early August 1941 and his October replacement by Tojo), where Konoe planned to offer terms that would have gotten him assassinated if sent from Tokyo over diplomatic channels? Morison puts all the blame on Cordell Hull, but he wants FDR to be flawless, so...
"....we know that the fall of France was the greatest upset to world balance of power between 1871 and 1949, when China went Red"
a) missed opportunity to say the 2nd fall of france, and b)yup post war politics remain in play
In retrospect, I made a major error in my critique of his section on Japan, which is that he barely mentions China and I forgot to call that out. The thing I really got out of Tower of Skulls was the centrality of China to the entire course of the buildup of the war. Yeah, it's often mentioned in passing, but it's just a thing that was happening in the background, not a key place where things are happening. I may edit the OP to call this out more explicitly.
WRT Kanoe, Frank points out that he had presided over the incursion into China as well as a bunch of other provocations before he started talking about a summit, and generally handled the diplomacy incredibly badly. ("No, I won't give you what you want, but let's talk.") There was really no chance the US would say yes to the Japanese demands to even have the conference, and Hull isn't even really mentioned in that section. Frank also paints Grew as the only person on the American side really in favor of the conference. Grew was a Boston Brahman and Harvard alum a few years older than Morison, so I would be deeply unsurprised if the two knew each other and not at all shocked if Grew was the source for that section, which of course would favor his view.
Yes, Konoe was Prime Minister during the invasion of China (beyond Manchuria) and the Rape of Nanking. Wikipedia-level historiography adds the negativity "played a central role in transforming Japan into a totalitarian state by pushing through the State General Mobilization Law and establishing the Imperial Rule Assistance Association." The term "appeasement" was used in August-autumn 1941, implying a moral equivalence between Konoe and Hitler perceived at the time. Obviously if FDR was going to demand withdrawal from China as a condition for ending the oil embargo, the odds were in favor of Konoe leaving the summit without a deal and the Japanese government moving ahead with invasion of the Dutch East Indies and the whole plan to secure a Pacific perimeter around that economically necessary conquest. But I haven't found a source that was inevitable: indeed Chiang Kai-Shek was afraid of a treaty not requiring Japanese withdrawal and lobbied fiercely.
The Japanese demands, which they were pretty open about, were "lift the oil embargo and stop supporting Chiang, and we'll think about stopping invading China". This was an obvious non-starter for FDR, who is at the very least going to demand that they actually tie stopping the invasion to lifting the oil embargo. In practice, I suspect that this is only given a major role because Morison relied heavily on Grew for this section and this was Grew's hobbyhorse.
I don't think that quite follows. Chiang is basically existentially dependent on the Americans, and so any risk, however minor, that the US sells him out is going to be met with heavy lobbying. It would take a lot of confidence to not lobby in this case.
I am curious what everyone thinks about John Toland's book 'The Rising Sun'
Tower of Skulls on my very long Kindle list of books to read.
I find it interesting that Hull is blamed for most, if not all, of the diplomatic failures of the time. I know Hull was SecState, but he still answered to the president. Is this part of the FDR halo polishing?
I agree with most of the comments here about the haigiography of most of the Americans mentioned. It struck me as very odd compared to the current batch of historians, who seem to have a lot less of an axe to grind.
Its an interesting time to be reading history. The historians who lived it have had their innings, and now we're getting to the end of the era of historians who knew the historians who lived it. I strongly suspect in the next 30 or so years, we'll end up with a more balanced understanding of what actually happened.
Does the UK have a "keep this file secret for 100 years" like it had 10, 20 and 30 years secrets? If so, I'll be very interested in finding out what comes to light in the 2030 to 2045 era.
Belushi TD
I have a copy of Toland’s book, but have not read it. Presumably, I picked it up after seeing it recommended somewhere reasonably trustworthy.
Re Hull, I suspect that it was a case of Morison buying Grew’s line on the Japanese (which as best I can tell was unique to Grew) and then needing someone to blame for the conference not working. Hull was the obvious choice, because it can’t have been FDR.
I checked the book I have on Morison, but there was no direct mention of Grew. Doesn't necessarily prove anything, but it would have been nice to know they were friends or something.
Kimmel gets a bit of the halo-polishing too ("an energetic, dedicated officer...") and only ~20 years removed from being scapegoated a bit for Pearl. I'd never read that particular perspective on why the fleet was tied up in port on weekends.
He does stay true to the now-80-year-long American tradition that the war started in 1941... and maybe in 1939 if you'd like... but the stuff happening in China in 1937, that was something "not World War 2".
I really enjoyed the sub-chapter on the Atlantic. Interesting that a German sub had a shot at the Texas... she should be open to the public again late this year or early next. :-)
“the futility of hunting groups as opposed to convoys. ..hunting groups were used, particularly in the spectacularly successful campaign against the German U-boat tankers in 1943.“
I don’t think there is any doubt that convoys are the appropriate strategy against submarines. This is basic common sense and force multiplication; given that escorts are a limited resource, placing them where submarines have to approach, rather than wasting escorts searching for subs such that some escorts are doing nothing, is the only way to go. ‘Hunting groups’ only make sense when there is some outside element that has already located the sub (Ultra code breaking in WWII, it would have been SOSUS against Soviet subs in the Atlantic). But sending forces toward a “known” enemy position (to the extent that sub locations can be known) is not at all what the ‘hunting group’ strategy entails, at least as far as the contrast to convoys.
The campaign against U-boat tankers is also not a great example for the utility of hunting groups. There were only 10 of them and locating a sub that has to radio every few days to coordinate linkup, then stay in a general area waiting for an attack sub, then stay surfaced and motionless for the better part of a day during the transfer is a far different proposition then locating an attack sub that communicates less frequently, moves more frequently, and does both irregularly. There is also the fact that each tanker sub supported multiple attack subs. Sending two hunter groups against two tankers and managing to sink one might take four attack subs off station, both now and with reduced time on station in the future. But sending four groups against attack subs would sink two (if success rate stays the same, it might be lower, see above) - that’s twice the forces committed for half the result.
Convoys are how you protect merchant ships, this has been true since the days of sail, and the statistics on the effectiveness of convoys during WWII are undeniable.
I'm not saying convoys weren't the right choice in WWII. But I think that the application ad infinitum, which Morison makes as part of his "application to current events", is wrong. The British reluctance to use convoys in WWI was based in some studies they had done of performance against surface raiders in the 1870s (IIRC), where the exact opposite was true. The technology of the day meant that raiders would be big and powerful, and that providing an effective escort against them wasn't economically viable. The other aspect was that because it was armed with guns and significantly faster than the merchant ships, a raider could be expected to sink most of the convoy. If the ships proceed independently, then the raider can sink any it finds, but it isn't finding them in a nice big cluster to sink at once.
And under those assumptions, not using convoys makes a lot of sense. The problem is that submarines violate these assumptions in ways that mostly swing the logic back towards convoys. The escort program was still really expensive, but less so than if they'd been countering heavy cruisers, but more importantly, submarines had limited ability to sink ships. A typical submarine might take out a ship or three, but because torpedoes take a long time to load and it can't stay with the convoy while submerged, you want to have as few clusters of targets as possible, and can basically get benefit from that, even if you have only enough escorts to keep the subs from just following around on the surface.
Why wouldn't that be a hunting group? Sure, you could define a hunting group to exclude that, and I'd generally agree with you in that case. But I suspect that this is another case of Morison commenting on 1963 through his book, and in that case, he's simply wrong, because the hunting groups that existed at the time were part of a more sophisticated strategy. There are options besides convoy for dealing with a submarine offensive, and the balance between them is heavily dependent on the exact details of technology.
Possibly not-yet-relevant question: why did Germany even have tanker subs? American subs seem to have ranged all over the Pacific without the use of tankers...or were they topping off with sub tenders at island bases? Or, indeed, were they simply built with bigger diesel tanks?
Possibly not-yet-relevant question: why did Germany even have tanker subs? American subs seem to have ranged all over the Pacific without the use of tankers...or were they topping off with sub tenders at island bases? Or, indeed, were they simply built with bigger diesel tanks?
The German subs were largely designed for use in the waters around Europe, and as such were smaller and shorter-ranged. The Type VII, the most common of the U-boats, was only about a third the size of a US Fleet Boat, which had been built with the range necessary for the Pacific War in mind.
Onux:
True, but the fact that the tanker sub supported other submarines means sinking it gives you a much bigger gain.
I was surprised to hear Morison excoriate the Neutrality Patrol as unfavorable to England - do you agree?
Also, thanks for the interesting discussion about Konoe's supposed peace offer. As I was reading Morison's description, I was thinking that sounded too good to be true.
So, Morison there is quoting Roskill, who wrote the closest RN equivalent to the 14-volume set. I checked my digital copy of the first volume of Roskill, and his comments on the Neutrality patrol are much more measured there. About the most negative thing he has to say is "the American President's order brought little advantage to our cause". Wherever the quote in TOW may be from, it's not from that volume (and the volumes are chronological), and I have no idea why Roskill would say such a thing. It was obviously at least vaguely pro-Allied, and anyone complaining is going to be saying we should have done more.
One thing that jumped out at me this time, as it didn't on previous reading (maybe 25-30 years ago), is Morison's take on the Orange plan. Yes, Miller's War Plan Orange was 25 years into the future when Morison wrote this - but who told Morison in the 40s that the old Orange plan had still been active, albeit folded into Rainbow, right up until Pearl Harbor?
“True, but the fact that the tanker sub supported other submarines means sinking it gives you a much bigger gain.”
@Anonymous,
I must have not made myself clear, because I absolutely agree that going after the tanker subs was a bigger gain. But that’s my argument: tanker subs are a unique case where it pays to dedicate forces to go after them, while doing the same for individual subs does not. As I tried to point out, two groups attacking two tankers and sinking one (50% success) causes the four subs supported by the tanker to have to go home and not sink your ships. But even if you send four groups after four individual subs, the same 50% rate only sinks two, and you have two still on station to attack your ships.
Hunting the tankers is worthwhile, hunting subs in general is not.