Engineers of Victory

by Paul Kennedy

  6. There is a summary of the Japanese military position in R. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), ch. 2; but above all, A. Coox, “The Effectiveness of the Japanese Establishment in the Second World War,” in A. Millett and W. Murray, Military Effectiveness, 3:1–44 (London: Allen and Unwin, 1988).

  7. See a nice speculative essay by J. Black, “Midway and the Indian Ocean,” Naval War College Review 62, no. 4 (Autumn 2009): 131–40.

  8. Best discussed in A. Danchev’s intellectual biography of Liddell Hart, The Alchemist of War: The Life of Basil Liddell Hart (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988).

  9. Willmott, Great Crusade, 314ff. For a rather similar discussion, see Liddell Hart, History, ch. 29.

  10. Apart from Willmott, Great Crusade, see P. Kennedy, Strategy and Diplomacy 1870–1945 (London: Fontana, 1983), ch. 7, “Japanese Strategic Decisions, 1939–45,” for a development of this argument.

  11. The best brief recent analysis is by W. Tao, “The Chinese Theatre and the Pacific War,” in S. Dockrill, ed., From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima (London: Macmillan, 1994). There is also the vast library of books on Stilwell in China, the most entertaining being B. Tuchman, Sand Against the Wind: Stilwell and the American Experience in China 1911–1945 (New York: Macmillan, 1970).

  12. The immensely difficult struggle by British Empire forces in the India-Burma theater is analyzed in vast detail in the official history, S. Woodburn Kirby et al., The War Against Japan, 5 vols. (London: HMSO, 1957–69); and a later rendition in C. Bayly and T. Harper, Forgotten Armies (London: Penguin & Allen Lane, 2004). As a compensation, it also gave cause for the best single-volume memoir by a general of the entire war, namely, Slim’s Defeat into Victory (London: Cassell, 1956).

  13. J. Masters, The Road Past Mandalay (London: Michael Joseph, 1961). The pun on the title of Kipling’s poem/song is obvious. The clearest and most balanced book of all: L. Allen, Burma: The Longest War, 1941–45 (New York: St. Martin’s, 1984).

  14. MacArthur’s driving nature and his strategic opinions are covered in W. Manchester’s American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978). There are also acute running comments in Spector, Eagle.

  15. For Eichelberger (and the “don’t come back alive”) instruction, see Spector, Eagle, 216; for the Marines, see the fine “1st Marine Division (United States,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1st_Marine_Division(United_States) (accessed June 2010).

  16. Liddell Hart, History, 620.

  17. Ibid., 617; and, in very good detail, S. E. Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947–62), vol. 8, ch. 9.

  18. L. Allen, “The Campaigns in Asia and the Pacific,” Journal of Strategic Studies 13, no. 1 (March 1990): 175. This is an extraordinarily rich source and summation, especially for the Japanese side.

  19. Ibid., 165.

  20. E. S. Miller, War Plan Orange: The U.S. Strategy to Defeat Japan 1897–1945 (Annapolis, MD: U.S. Naval Institute Press, 1991), has the full story.

  21. The best reminder of this important point is in M. van Creveld’s ingenious work Supplying War: Logistics from Wallenstein to Patton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).

  22. For massive detail, nothing will beat the official History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II, 5 vols. (Washington, DC: U.S. Marine Corps, 1958–68). The single-volume classics are A. R. Millett, Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps, 2nd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1991), ch. 12; and J. A. Isley and P. A. Crowl, The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War: Its Theory, and Its Practice in the Pacific (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), ch. 1–3.

  23. The “Success … Failure” quotation is from Isley and Crowl, U.S. Marines, 14–21.

  24. Millett, Semper Fidelis, 320.

  25. Isley and Crowl, U.S. Marines, 26.

  26. For a full treatment, see D. A. Ballendorf and M. Bartlett, Pete Ellis: Amphibious Warfare Prophet 1880–1923 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997).

  27. See Millett, Semper Fidelis, 327; there is also a lively account in Isley and Crowl, U.S. Marines, 30–31.

  28. Millett, Semper Fidelis, 336.

  29. Both Morison’s official naval history volumes, especially vols. 5–8 and 12–14, and the U.S. Army’s official history volumes (dozens of them) cover their respective service’s record in the Pacific theater. For a smooth-running commentary on the marines, the army, and amphibious warfare, see Spector, Eagle.

  30. Quotation from C. G. Reynolds, The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1968), 1.

  31. A nice summary is in ibid., 4–13; for technical data, see M. Stille, Imperial Japanese Navy Aircraft Carriers 1921–1945 (London: Osprey, 2005).

  32. Reynolds, Fast Carriers, ch. 3, “Weapon of Expediency, 1942–1943,” gives the context in the critical period of the Pacific War. S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–1945 (London: HMSO, 1954–61), vol. 2, discusses HMS Victorious’s unusual experience.

  33. Extremely useful details are in “Essex Class Aircraft Carrier,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/Essex_class_aircraft_carrier (accessed May 2010). The author’s notations and further references are the best I have seen.

  34. These exploratory missions are covered in Reynolds, Fast Carriers, ch. 2, and Morison, History, vol. 7.

  35. Spector, Eagle, 257.

  36. For the Rabaul attacks, see Morison, History, vol. 6, Part 4, 369ff; see also Reynolds, Fast Carriers, 96ff.

  37. The number of books and articles on the legendary Hellcat come close to the total for the equally legendary Spitfire. The best starting place may be with another one of those remarkably scholarly Wikipedia articles on aspects of the Pacific War: “F6F Hellcat,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F6F_Hellcat (accessed May 2010).

  38. Ibid.; Reynolds, Fast Carriers, 57, and passim.

  39. Most historians of the war in the Central Pacific realize that there was something of a hiatus in the fighting—at least in the significant fighting—between November 1943 (Tarawa) and June 1944 (Marianas, Rabaul), so they tend to devote less space to operations in those months and more to the arrival of the newer weapons systems, the coming of radar, and so on. Morison, being the official naval historian, fills this gap in History, vol. 7.

  40. “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot”—apart from Midway, everyone’s favorite aerial clash of the Pacific War. Reynolds, Fast Carriers, 190–204, is as good as any. Morison, History, has terrific details on 8:257–321.

  41. Reynolds, Fast Carriers, makes the strongest (in my view, overly forced) argument about the Jutland analogy on 163–65, 209–10, followed by Spector, Eagle, 312.

  42. Reynolds, Fast Carriers, has a rather generous ch. 9 on the performance of the British Pacific Fleet; Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991), ch. 28, is a gloomy and almost dismissive account.

  43. Two excellent introductions: C. Berger, B29: The Superfortress (New York: Ballantine, 1970); and an impressive Wikipedia entry, “B-29 Superfortress,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B-29_Superfortress (accessed May 2010). Both these works have fine lists for further reading.

  44. All of these details are in Wikipedia, “B-29 Superfortress.”

  45. Berger, B29, has a wonderful section on “The Battle of Kansas,” 48–59. The “urgent struggle for airspeed” is a neat phrase from the Wikipedia article. Also excellent on the problem solvers of the B-29’s many defects is Herman, Freedom’s Forge, 297–322.

  46. Berger, B29, 60–107.

  47. John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire 1936–1945 (London: Cassell & Company, 1971) 676, 745. For the larger issue, see the powerful reflections of M. Sherry, The Rise of American Air Power: The Creation of Armageddon (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

  48. I could not find a satisfying study of Moreell, but there
are some basic biographical details in “Ben Moreell,” Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben_Moreell (accessed spring 2010).

  49. Almost all that follows is taken from “Seabees in World War II,” another very thorough Wikipedia entry on aspects of the war in the Pacific and Far East, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seabees_in_World_War_II (accessed spring 2010).

  50. Ibid.

  51. Spector, Eagle, 318–19.

  52. The best insight into this tale of independence and resourcefulness comes from reading the memoirs of the American submariners themselves, of which there are many. For a taste, try Richard H. O’Kane, Clear the Bridge! (New York: Bantam, 1981); James F. Calvert, Silent Running: My Years on an Attack Submarine (New York: John Wiley, 1995)—withering in his comments on the Naval Ordnance Bureau; and Edward Beach, Submarine! (New York: Bantam, 1952).

  53. Giving much detail is Clay Blair, Silent Victory, 2 vols. (New York: Lippincott, 1975); good comparative comments are in P. Padfield, War Beneath the Sea: Submarine Conflict 1939–1945 (London: John Murray, 1995), especially ch. 9.

  54. Edwin P. Hoyt, The Destroyer Killer (New York: Pocket Books, 1989).

  55. S. E. Morison, Two Ocean War (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1963), 510–11.

  56. Exact statistics for Japanese losses in the Pacific are (as for so many other conflicts) virtually impossible to arrive at. For example, a heavy explosion might convince a submariner that his target had been destroyed, but it might only be damaged—or the torpedo might have exploded prematurely. And in a hectic action, an aircraft and a sub might claim to have sunk the same ship. Wartime medals were awarded on the basis of what appeared to be substantive proof of kills. But at the end of the war a Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee (JANAC) was set up to compare all claims with Japan’s own records. In almost all cases—including the overall totals—the figures were strongly reduced, yet without altering the overall picture. For the figures above, see Padfield, War Beneath the Sea, 476, and Morison, Two Ocean War, 511.

  57. The story is told in every general account (and almost all memoirs) of the Pacific War. The clearest explanation, even though containing much technical detail, is a five-part article by Frederick J. Milford in the Submarine Review, appearing between April 1996 and October 1997. See in particular Part Two (October 1996), “The Great Torpedo Scandal, 1941–1943.”

  58. The quotation and statistics following come from Roskill, History, vol. 3, part 2, 367.

  59. Calculated from Mackenzie J. Gregory, “Top Ten US Navy Submarine Captains in WW2 by Number of Confirmed Ships Sunk,” at http://ahoy.tk-jk.net/macslog/TopTenUSNavySubmarineCap/html (accessed March 2010).

  60. Quoted in Morison, Two Ocean War, 486.

  61. C. Boyd and A. Yoshida, Japanese Submarine Forces in World War Two (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995). See also the various comparisons made in Padfield, War Beneath the Sea.

  62. Morison, Two Ocean War, 486.

  63. Padfield, War Beneath the Sea, ch. 9, is, as ever, reliable here.

  64. R. Spector, “American Seizure of Japan’s Strategic Points, Summer 1942–44,” in S. Dockrill, ed., From Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima: The Second World War in Asia and the Pacific, 1941–45 (London: Macmillan, 1994), ch. 4.

  65. The best brief, and rather sardonic, account of the Aleutian Islands is in Spector, Eagle, 178–82.

  66. Liddell Hart, History, 356–62.

  67. Morison, History, vol. 8, is the most detailed.

  68. Millett, Semper Fidelis, 410–19, is excellent on the Marianas campaign.

  69. Morison, History, 8:162.

  70. J. B. Wood, Japanese Military Strategy in the Pacific War: Was Defeat Inevitable? (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2007).

  CONCLUSION: PROBLEM SOLVING IN HISTORY

  1. A. Bryant, The Turn of the Tide, 1939–1943: Based on the Diaries of Field Marshall Viscount Alanbrooke (London: Collins, 1957); A. Bryant, Triumph in the West 1943–1945 (London: Collins, 1959).

  2. See Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 1939–1945: Field Marshal Lord Alanbrooke, ed. Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2001). This later edition is a model of its kind. It not only includes many of the more candid entries that Bryant had felt it prudent to omit while Churchill and other key personages were still alive, but it also distinguishes between Alanbrooke’s original uncensored entries, Alanbrooke’s later notes, and Bryant’s own variants (see “Note on the Text,” xxxi–xxxiv).

  3. See Andrew Roberts’s clever use of the Alanbrooke diaries in Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West (London: Allen Lane/Penguin, 2008).

  4. Alanbrooke, War Diaries, 433.

  5. Ibid., 557. “It was a wonderful moment to find myself re-entering France almost 4 years after being thrown out” (entry of June 12, 1944).

  6. The phrase seems to have been invented by the great historian of Stuart Britain, J. H. Hexter, in “The Burden of Proof,” Times Literary Supplement, October 24, 1974—part of the raging debate in those years on the causes of the English Civil War.

  7. The claim comes in the penultimate paragraph of Hinsley’s 1988 Harmon Memorial Lecture to the U.S. Air Force Association, “The Intelligence Revolution: A Historical Perspective.” It is actually a wonderful piece, showing due skepticism of the many popular works of the 1970s and 1980s on spy rings, decrypting geniuses, and intelligence breakthroughs. So it is odd that he put his neck so far out with this nonprovable estimate.

  8. R. Spector, Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York: Free Press, 1985), 457. Chapter 20, “Behind the Lines,” is an impressive survey on many aspects of the intelligence war—and the limitations.

  9. I had already composed these paragraphs before David Kahn sent me his extremely important article, “An Historical Theory of Intelligence,” Intelligence and National Security 16, no. 3 (Autumn 2001): 79–92, which I had quite missed earlier. Note especially 85–86: “Intelligence is necessary to the defense, it is only contingent to the offense.”

  10. D. Kahn, “Intelligence in World War II: A Survey,” Journal of Intelligence History 1, no. 1 (Summer 2001): 1–20, a fine summation because it repeatedly asks for the proof that intelligence worked.

  11. It comes as something of a relief to this author that the most powerful criticism of certain U.S. commanders toward British ideas and inventions are made by American historians themselves: see Paul A. Ludwig, P-51 Mustang: Development of the Long-Range Escort Fighter (Surrey, UK: Ian Allen, 2003), on Echolls’s opposition to the P-51; and W. Murray and A. R. Millett, A War to Be Won: Fighting the Second World War (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 249–50, on the slaughters of the chiefly U.K. merchantmen along the eastern seaboard (“It was Admiral King at his worst; he was simply not going to learn anything from the British, whatever the costs”); and ibid., 418–19, about Bradley’s unwillingness to learn anything about the “tactical problems confronted by an amphibious assault on prepared defenses.” Compare this American confidence of their own sheer muscle power with Churchill’s insistence that it would not be by vast numbers of men and shells but by devising newer weapons and by scientific leadership “that we shall best cope with the enemy’s superior strength,” a key refrain in P. Delaforce’s Churchill’s Secret Weapons (London: Robert Hale, 1998).

  12. P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Random House, 1987), esp. 355, Table 35.

  13. C. Barnett, The Swordbearers (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1963), 11.

  14. See, among others, A. Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (London: Harper Collins, 1991); and the contrasting S. Bialer, ed., Stalin and His Generals (London: Souvenir Press, 1970), and H. Heiber, ed., Hitler and His Generals (New York: Enigman Press, 2003).

  15. See D. Edgerton, Britain’s War Machine: Weapons, Resources and Experts in the Second World War (London: Allen Lane, 2011), a sharp contrast with Barnett’s The Audit of War: The Illusion and Reality of Britain as
a Great Nation (London: Macmillan, 1986).

  16. Malcolm Gladwell, “The Tweaker: The Real Genius of Steve Jobs,” New Yorker, November 14, 2011. In a rather wonderful way, Herman’s book on American innovation and productivity in WWII, Freedom’s Forge, passim, is simply an extended version of this story of constant improvement of an initial design to get a satisfying final product.

  17. One thinks here of that brilliant work by H. Hattaway and A. Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983).

  18. Neatly summarized in A. Grisson, “The Future of Military Innovation Studies,” Journal of Strategic Studies 29, no. 5 (October 2006): 905–34, paying due tribute to Barry Posen, Eliot Cohen, Williamson Murray, MacGregor Knox, Timothy Lupfer, and other notable figures in this field. My own brief venture here was in my 2009 George Marshall Memorial Lecture, published as P. Kennedy, “History from the Middle: The Case of the Second World War,” Journal of Military History 74, no. 1 (January 2010): 35–51. On The Genius of Design, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00sjIfg. The Millett and Murray “military effectiveness” concepts run through this present text, and many an endnote.

  Bibliography

  SPECIAL REMARKS

  The alphabetical bibliography that follows below is chiefly of the standard type, but I would like to make several comments upon sources used for this book. The first is in regard to the well-known electronic database Wikipedia and others like it. Many university professors worry about the incomplete or nonverifiable aspects of entries, and about an undue reliance of their students upon easy-to-access electronic sources rather than the wonderful experience of slowly perusing books on musty library shelves and discovering works that have escaped the imperfect electronic catalogs. I understand that very well. But I have to confess to being mightily impressed by certain of the lengthy and detailed and scholarly (and anonymous) Wikipedia entries to which reference is made here, in particular to those which relate to aspects of the Pacific War. They are substantive and very well documented, and I would like to pay tribute to their authors (or the single author, since many suggest that the same craftsman was at work). Many other Wikipedia items are, as is alleged, rather embarrassing to peruse.