This looks like another grab-bag chapter, covering much of 1943 in the Pacific. Fortunately, he doesn't spend a ton of time on strategy this time around, going straight into the Komandorskis, an interesting and often-overlooked battle. There's an interesting note to his mention of the superiority of American gunnery. One of the reasons the Japanese made relatively few hits was that their patterns were too tight, turning a salvo that might have made a single hit into a miss. Other than that, we see the same sort of turn-away at the last minute that later happened at Samar. Other than that one action, the Aleutians campaign is most notable as being both extremely unpleasant to serve in and extremely unimportant strategically.
But the majority of the chapter is from Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, the longest volume in the series, and one of the best in the series. (I know I've said that several times, but if I had to pick standout volumes, it would probably be The Battle of the Atlantic, Operations in North African Waters and Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier. Possibly not coincidentally, Morison personally observed all three campaigns and the latter two are covering campaigns that have otherwise seen little attention from historians.) I do find it interesting that Morison explicitly mentions codebreaking with regards to Yamamoto's death, as that's not done in the earlier volume, although it's pretty obvious in retrospect. But that's also probably the most famous incident covered in the entire chapter, despite half a dozen quite intense and interesting land and naval battles, to say nothing of Bismarck Sea, the most interesting action involving the B-25 Mitchell.
I also found this chapter interesting as a bridge between the early and later parts of the war, as seen by the ships involved. The early actions around New Georgia, like the battles for Guadalcanal, were fought by prewar ships, while the ships named in the actions around Bouganville were all commissioned after the outbreak of war, the firstfruits of the torrent of warships soon to pour from American yards and drown the Japanese Empire.
PT boats also come up a lot in this chapter, relatively more than I recall them appearing in the parent volume. Much of this is probably down to the occupant of the White House when Two-Ocean War was written, and the resulting interest in PT boats, an interest I don't personally share. (That said, PT-109 is mentioned in Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, written while Kennedy was still a junior member of the House of Representatives. It gets a little over a page, slightly more detail than is given here, although much less out of place given the scale of that work.)
Recent Comments