Military History

By Michael W. Shelton, Morley, Missouri: Acclaim Press, (2022). Reviewed by John E. Fahey, Ph.D. Rear Admiral (ret) Michael W. Shelton took an unusual path to the Navy. In West Point Admiral: Leadership Lessons from Four Decades of Military Service he recounts his time at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and Seabee assignments ranging from Vietnam to the Pentagon. The book grew in part from an essay Shelton wrote for Dan Rice’s West Point Leadership: Profiles of Courage and heavily emphasizes how to develop effective leadership, “based on ethical decision-making, mutual respect, shared risk, and empathy for the troops (10).” His career from Wes…

By Capt. James R. “Ros” Poplar, USN (Ret) As we approach Veteran’s Day many members of America’s Greatest Generation are no longer with us and in the not-too-distant future there will be none as 2025 will mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. One of those silent warriors was my father James R Poplar, Jr. whose military service and subsequent contribution to American society typifies many of the silent warriors of that era. My father was enrolled in Duke University when the war broke out, but he was able to obtain his parents’ consent to enlist in the United States Navy at an early age where he volunteered to serve in submarines upon completion of …

By David F. Winkler, Ph.D. Staff Historian Today marks the centennial of the first “Navy Day” existence. With the belief that a naval arms race had been a leading cause for World War I, general public sentiment supported President Warren G. Harding’s call in June 1921 to convene a Washington Naval Arms Conference. As documented in Ryan Wadle’s book Selling Sea Power, Navy leaders felt betrayed by the national leadership that had convened and approved of the outcome of the conference that curbed new battleship construction and invoked tonnage limits on other ship classes. Thus, they orchestrated through the Navy League of the United States a celebration that would be h…

By David F. Winkler, Ph.D. Staff Historian Just over a century ago, on October 26, Langley, departed from a York River anchorage at 7:15 a.m., and steamed into the Chesapeake Bay off the “Tail of the Shoe” shoal just inside Cape Henry. Having taken over as the officer of the deck for the 8 till noon watch, Ensign Tate recorded the morning events noting “At 10:50 started maneuvering ship to land plane, at various courses and speeds.” With that, Langley turned into a 30 mile-per-hour northeast breeze that Chief Electrician Joseph Weller termed as “very rocky.”. Tate then recorded: “At 10:59 plane A-606 piloted by Chevy circling ship.” Flying over Langley’s stern in an A…

Vice Admiral William H. Rowden, USN (covered). By Rear Adm. Sam Cox USN (Ret.) With deep sadness the NHF reports the loss of another strong champion of naval history – Vice Adm. William H. Rowden, USN (Ret.) who passed on 15 October 2022 at age 92. Vice Adm. Rowden served as a Director on our Board of Directors for two decades from 1995 until 2015 when he achieved director emeritus status. During his tenure he led the audit committee, assuring the organization remained on solid financial footing. Before his two decades of service to our foundation, he served the nation for four decades as a Surface Warfare Officer. A young William H. Rowden took the oath of offi…

By Dwight S. Hughes, Savas Beattie, Barnsley, El Dorado Hills, CA, (2021.) Reviewed by Capt. Richard Dick, USN (RET). Dwight Hughes’ Unlike Anything That Ever Floated is an excellent overview of the conception, hurried development, and brief (but spectacular) service of the ironclads Monitor and Virginia and the men who built, directed, commanded, and sailed in them. While not the definitive history of either ship, the book covers the human, technical, strategic, and tactical aspects of their careers well and incorporates recent discoveries from ongoing work on the recovered portions of Monitor being preserved and studied at the USS Monitor Center at the Marin…

By Richard L. Wright, Xlibris (2022) Reviewed By: Michael Romero, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Following the end of the American Revolution, the fledgling United States immediately found itself in dire financial straits. With no funds available to maintain them, the handful of surviving Continental Navy vessels were sold, and the service disbanded. The ratification of the U.S. Constitution in 1788 empowered Congress “To provide and maintain a Navy,” but what exactly does that process entail? Captain Richard Wright’s To Provide and Maintain a Navy: 1775-1945 shows how that question has been answered from the time of the U.S. Navy’s founding through the end o…

By David F. Winkler, Ph.D. Staff Historian On October 17, 1922, America’s first carrier, USS Langley held a fixed position in the York River as preparations proceeded for a historic milestone. Naval Aviator No. 41, Lt. Virgil “Squash” Griffin, climbed into a cockpit of a VE-7SF biplane (BuNo. A-5932). As Griffin prepared for takeoff, winches on the stern pulled and released lines to the aft anchor buoys to adjust the ship’s heading into the wind. Griffin, who would later earn the nickname “You All” Griffin by Langley’s crew during his XO tour a decade later thanks to his Alabama drawl, earned his “Squash” moniker at the U.S. Naval Academy as a member of the Class …

By Michał A. Piegzik Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb, Ph.D. The initial volume in this two-part work, The Darkest Hour, Volume 1: The Japanese Naval Offensive in the Indian Ocean 1942 – The Opening Moves, was reviewed by me and published in Thursday Tidings on 1 September 2022: www.navyhistory.org/2022/08/the-darkest-hour-volume-1-the-japanese-naval-offensive-in-the-indian-ocean-1942-the-opening-moves/. The concluding volume became available on 15 September and is considered herein. Briefly some background: the Polish author, Michał A. Piegzik, holds a doctorate in law from the University of Wroclaw (2015) and lives and works in Japan as a researcher in Japanese fa…

By Phil Keith with Tom Clavin, Hanover Square Press [HarperCollins], (2022) Reviewed by John Grady “To the Uttermost Ends of the Earth” is one of the best works aimed at a general audience on the naval aspects of the Civil War. Phil Keith and Tom Clavin have brought back to life one of the most rakish figures of the war, Raphael Semmes, the Maryland-born Confederate raider and given much needed attention to John Winslow, the North Carolinian and relentless hunter of his former shipmate who was then commanding CSS Alabama. The CSS Alabama’s record of taking more than 60 vessels registered in the United States during its cruising of the world’s oceans remai…

By Norman Polmar (Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of blogs by Norman Polmar, author, analyst, and consultant in the naval, aviation, and intelligence fields. Follow the full series here.) Soon after I went to work for Navy Times in late 1959, the editor-in-chief, John Slinkman, came over to my desk and dropped a newspaper clipping. I picked it up; it was about nuclear-propelled submarines. “Call Rickover and see what he has to say about this,” said Slinkman. “Admiral Rickover?” I asked. “Do you know another?” he responded. A few minutes later I called the Department of Defense operator and asked for Admiral Rickover. A secretary answered, I told…

By Norman Polmar Photo courtesy of U.S. Naval Institute (Editor’s note: This is the seventeenth in a series of blogs by Norman Polmar—author, analyst, and consultant specializing in the naval, aviation, and intelligence fields. Follow the full series here.) In July 1983 a friend asked my wife, Beverly, and me to attend a bar-b-q at his home. Among the few others at the gathering was a rather tall, interesting young man wearing sun-glasses. I was introduced to Tom Clancy and his wife. I knew immediately who he was. The year before he had an article published in the Naval Institute Proceedings —“The Floating Shell Game.” His article called for placing MX ballisti…

By Andrew Hendrie; Pen and Sword, Barnsley, UK, (2022). (Reprint) Reviewed by Capt. Richard Dick, USN (Ret.) Andrew Hendrie’s Short Sunderland is a comprehensive operational portrait of the most famous British World War II maritime patrol aircraft. The author’s impressive research briefly covers the aircraft’s development, entry into service, production, and modification, and particularly its operational service around the world during and after World War II. Hendrie reviews every theater in which the aircraft served and all of its users (British, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand, and Norwegian). He includes every U-boat sinking in which the aircraft participa…

By Barrett Tillman, Osprey (2022) Reviewed by: Capt. Chuck Good, USN (Ret.) Much ink has been spilled over the years on how wars begin, and almost as much on the treaties and negotiations which formally signal their end and dictate their terms. At Dawn We Slept and The Guns of August remain classics on how things start. As to how the end is marked, thousands of pages have been compiled on the great peace treaties: Versailles, Vienna, Paris. But few authors and scholars choose to examine the implementation of these pieces of paper – how the killing actually stops “in the trenches” while conflicts still rage. The classic of this underrepresented genre is a litera…

By Michał A. Piegzik Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb, Ph.D. Readers won’t confuse this book, just published in the Asia @ War Series No. 31 (Warwick, England: Hellion and Company Limited, 2022) with similar titles: The Darkest Hour by Caroline Tung Richmond (New York: Scholastic Press, 2016) is an espionage novel about women in World War II designed for teens and young adults. Neither will it be confused with “The Darkest Hour” a science fiction film or “The Darkest Hours” British television series (8 episodes, 2013) Nor with the award winning “Darkest Hour” with Gary Oldman (Universal Pictures, 2017), the historical fiction war film about Winston Churchill’s early…

By Edward Farley Aldrich, Guilford, CT: Stackpole Books, (2022). Reviewed by Ed Calouro When he first set out to write The Partnership: George Marshall, Henry Stimson, and the Extraordinary Collaboration That Won World War II, author Edward Farley Aldrich did not plan to write a dual biography. His original intention was to focus on the five years Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson and US Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall, worked side-by-side in the War Department. While undertaking his extensive research on these two major World War II leaders, Aldrich concluded their stories could not properly be told without also describing their upbringing, educ…

By Mark Harris; Helion, Warwick, UK, (2021). Reviewed By Capt. Richard Dick, USN (Ret.) Harwich Submarines in the Great War is the detailed story of the 1914 British overseas submarine campaign. “Detailed” really does not do the author justice. Mark Harris’s research is little short of astonishing. He has plumbed British, German, and French archives, the papers of Adm. Roger Keyes, RN (Commodore in Charge, Submarine Service, 1912-1914), and the British and German official histories to tell the story, in depth, of every British offensive submarine patrol in the North Sea in 1914 (and the 1914 Baltic patrols) from the outbreak of war in August through the end of …

Captain Rinn following his talk about Operation Ernest Will and the Samuel B. Roberts to Dr. Winkler’s Middle East Operation course at the USNA in 2019. The Naval Historical Foundation mourns the loss of Capt. Paul X. Rinn, an individual who embraced history as Surface Warfare Officer, a factor that likely contributed to the survival of his ship – the guided missile frigate Samuel B. Roberts (FFG-58) – when she hit an Iranian-laid mine on April 14, 1988 in the Persian Gulf. Captain Rinn’s embracing the heritage of the previous two ships to carry the Samuel B. Roberts name was eloquently told in Bradley ***ton’s No Higher Honor: Saving the USS Samuel B. Roberts in the P…

By Matthew J Garretson, Friends of Naval Aviation, Pensacola, FL (2021). Reviewed by Ens. Sydney M. Willis, USN Blue Angels Decades Vol: 1 is a comprehensive history of the Blue Angels, the Navy’s Flight Demonstration Squadron, through the view of primary documents in their archives. The book transforms a collection of documents into a coherent timeline of the Blue Angels’ history. Mathew Garretson, the author, lets the documents speak for themselves and only adds captions to each providing more context or stories that connect them to make a cohesive timeline. Garretson is a naval historian who focuses primarily on aviation and is the print historian for the Bl…

By Ken W. Sayers, McFarland Publishing (2021). Reviewed by Jeff Schultz Ken Sayers’s U.S. Navy Patrol Vessels: A History and Directory from World War I to Today provides a thorough look at the multitude of patrol vessels from the mid-19th century USS Michigan to the modern Cyclone-class which have served the United States Navy in varying capacities since World War I across many oceans and waterways. Sayers, a former USN officer who served on a Pacific Fleet destroyer, at the Pentagon, and later worked for IBM, assembled this 550-page tribute to the lesser US Navy surface combatants from the World Wars, into the Cold War conflicts and even the modern day. Sayer…