Military History

Reviewed by Joseph Moretz, PhD The story of the American War of Independence has oft been told but rather less has been said of the maritime portion of that story and less still has been told from the perspective of the Royal Navy. It is to this end that Quintin Barry, a retired solicitor and employment judge, offers Crisis at the Chesapeake: The Royal Navy and the Struggle for America 1775-1783 as a rejoinder. In a well-reasoned and highly readable monograph, Barry surveys that war’s broader naval context and the competing challenges faced by Admiralty and flag officers alike as they sought to restore imperial control on the rebellious American colonies. Hindsigh…

Reviewed by LCDR Donald A. Baker, USN An ancient Jewish teacher once said, “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for their friends.” If risk to life and limb is any indication of an individual’s commitment to this ideal, then Coastguardsman Chris D’Amelio’s very personal and intimate account of rescuing fellow citizens in his memoir Life and Death at Cape Disappointment is a consummate example of what the principle looks like in practice. As a qualified surfman, the Coast Guard’s highest small boat qualification, D’Amelio had first-hand experience performing search and rescue (SAR) missions from his post at Coast Guard Station Cape Disapp…

Reviewed By Jeff Schultz Mike Norman and Michael Jones’ The Falklands War: There and Back Again – The Story of Naval Party 8901 is a gripping memoir of the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas War told from the perspective of the Royal Marine commander of Naval Party 8901 (NP-8901), the British troops assigned to defend the islands. NP-8901 surprisingly survived the initial Argentine occupation without loss and steadfastly volunteered to participate in the later recovery of the Falklands in this peculiar, late-stage, imperial conflict set against the backdrop of the Cold War. Mike Norman is a thirty-year veteran of the Royal Marines who served proudly from 1962 to 1992 in loca…

Reviewed by Jeff Schultz Mariano Sciaroni and Andy Smith’s “Go Find Him and Bring Me Back His Hat”: The Royal Navy’s Anti-Submarine Campaign in the Falklands/Malvinas War is an important look at the relatively obscure rivalry between a few Argentine diesel submarines and the Royal Navy’s anti-submarine defenses such as helicopters, warships and the Royal Air Force’s maritime patrol aircraft which tried to limit the threat to the Task Force vessels as they transited to the disputed islands. Most related books focus on the land and air aspects of the war instead of the exhausting battle above and beneath the sea fought by tired crews trying to find elusive diesel subma…

We are joined this month by The Honorable Steven Honigman, Geoffrey Beaumont, the son of artist Arthur Beaumont, and Navy Art curator, Gale Munro. Join us as we discuss the important work of Navy painter Arthur Beaumont. The post Blog first appeared on Naval Historical Foundation. View the full article

Reviewed by Anton K. Smith Too little is written about the roles and sacrifices of professional women contributing to the war effort in World War II. An established author, renowned historian, and former British sailor, Peter Hore works to correct the deficit in this new book about Britain’s Women’s Royal Navy Service, whose members quickly became known as “Wrens.” Gathering a wealth of information directly from the aging heroes who long kept their secrets, Hore focuses on those Wrens that contributed signals intelligence from an array of coastal listening posts around England’s southern approaches to “Station X,” the code name for Britain’s now famous, war-time cente…

Reviewed by Major Chris Ketcherside, USMC (Ret.) Guidelines for the Leader and the Commander is a collection of chapters, lectures, and manual excerpts General Clarke penned over the course of his career based on his hard-won experiences in positions of leadership in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War, as well as in peacetime. Gen. Clarke’s guidelines first force potential leaders to engage in self-reflection, to see if they are truly ready for leadership, and then he discusses, in broad terms. the importance of training, time management, and setting a personal example, among other subjects. This text is very Army centric, but there are numerous basic l…

Reviewed by Dr. Joseph Moretz In Turret Versus Broadside, Howard J. Fuller, a Reader in War Studies at the University of Wolverhampton in Great Britain, relates the history of the Royal Navy’s struggle to retain maritime supremacy in the face of ironclad warships innovated by the U.S. Navy during the Civil War. The engagement between ironclads in April 1862 off Hampton Roads might have ended in a tactical draw, but the strategic effects of the encounter between the USS Monitor and the CSS Virginia were of an altogether higher order. It represented a continuance of the Union Navy’s blockade against the Confederacy to be sure, but also across the sea there was a rea…

Reviewed by CAPT Derick R. Fix, USN Unlike Anything That Ever Floated is one of the newest additions to the Savas Beattie Emerging Civil War Series, which offers compelling, easy-to-read overviews of some of the Civil War’s most important battles and stories. Author Dwight Sturtevant Hughes provides a captivating narrative of the Battle of Hampton Roads and the clash of the ironclads USS Monitor and CSS Virginia. Hughes, a United States Naval Academy graduate, retired surface warfare officer, and Civil War naval historian is well-suited to this task, having previously published A Confederate Biography: The Cruise of the CSS Shenandoah and currently serving as a cont…

Reviewed by Major Chris Ketcherside, USMC (Ret.) The Ten Thousand-Day War at Sea is a companion book to the Hampton Roads Naval Museum’s exhibit of the same name, though it does hold up well enough on its own as a short summation of all U.S. Naval operations during the conflict in Vietnam. The book is relatively short at 101 pages, and most of these are given over to photographs of Naval actions in Vietnam and the related exhibits at the museum. It is organized by topic, covering every facet of Naval operations during the war, including special forces, logistics, gunfire support, surface actions, aviation, and so on. Also covered in their own sections are exceptio…

Reviewed by Mr. Tom Phillips, USN (Ret.) This 8.5×11.5-inch booklet of 64 pages is #26 of 30 in a series by Ship Craft. As such, it is less likely to appeal to historians than advanced scale modelers with a bent for customizing standard scale models into works of fascinating art. The author, Roger Branfill-Cook, has previously written several books on naval vessels and armaments, including Torpedo: The Complete History of the World’s Most Revolutionary Naval Weapon, X.1 The Royal Navy’s Mystery Submarine, and River Gunboats: An Illustrated Encyclopedia. Other entries in the Ship Craft series focus mostly on single ship classes—e.g., Kongo Class, Yorktown Class, Bismar…

Reviewed by Capt. Charles “Herb” Gilliland, USN (Ret.) Raise your hand if you’ve heard of Lafayette! Now keep it up if you’ve heard of Louis Duportail! I thought not. This reviewer knew nothing of Duportail either before reading this book, in which Prof. Norman Desmarais presents strong evidence that such obscurity is undeserved. As the back-cover claims, Duportail was indeed “instrumental in the American cause of independence.” To fight and win the Revolution, George Washington needed more than the colonies could provide: more troops, more weapons, more money, more ships. All these were generously provided by France. But America also needed military engineers, an…

Reviewed by Charles C. Kolb, Ph.D. This unique volume is a compilation focusing on seven major naval engagements from ancient times to the modern era that illustrates the significance of controlling the Mediterranean Sea. The author, Quentin Russell, earned a doctorate in 19th Century Anglo-Greek relations from Royal Holloway, University of London, and co-authored Ali Pasha: Lion of Janina – The Remarkable Life of the Balkan Napoleon (Barnsley, South Yorkshire and Havertown, PA: Pen & Sword Military, 2017) with Eugenia Russell. In addition, he writes and produces for theater and television. The book begins with an introduction, “Control of the Sea” (pp. 1-15),…

This month, we delve into Major League Baseball in the 1940’s, and how wartime affected America’s favorite pastime. We are joined by former Houston Astros TV Announcer, Bill Brown, and naval historian and baseball fan, Paul Stillwell for a densely informative discussion. The post Blog first appeared on Naval Historical Foundation. View the full article

Two students and seven teachers from around the country were awarded prizes by the Naval Historical Foundation (NHF) for outstanding projects with naval/maritime themes in the annual National History Day (NHD) competition that concluded June 19. Winners of the coveted NHF Coskey Prizes for Naval History were Jessie Henderson of Bradley Central High School in Cleveland, TN, and Rebecca Bemiss of John F. Kennedy Middle School in Plantsville, CT. Ms. Henderson’s project was a Senior Individual Documentary entitled, “Aerographer’s Mates: Communicating Weather from Sea to Shining Sea.” Ms. Bemiss’s entry was a Junior Individual Performance, “Mavis Batty and the Geese That…

Reviewed by Rory McAlevy How do you explore the last 150 years of British seafaring history in just one book? One shipwreck at a time, according to the author of Breaking Seas, Broken Ships: People, Shipwrecks & Britain, 1854-2007. Ian Friel followed Britain and the Ocean Road, a deft and historically sound coverage of the history of British maritime history from the Middle Ages to the Victorian period, with this work which carries the narrative into recent years. With Breaking Seas, Broken Ships, Friel covers a range of stories from Britain’s height of imperial power to the very different world of the early twenty-first century, and throughout each story he maint…

Flight International's World Air Forces 2021 (no registration required this year): https://www.flightglobal.com/reports/world-air-forces-2021/141456.article

Very interesting Russian Wikipedia entry on "Uspekh" targeting complex (1966 on), found casually when looking for Tu-95RTs Bear-D units and bases (You can use Google Translate). With details of operational procedures (Tu-95RTs operating in pairs, perhaps for triangulation) and great peacetime loses. Also down on the page links to other targeting and EW systems: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/МРСЦ-1_«Успех»

Reviewed by CDR Brian Emory, USN Chief Warrant Officer Kevin P. Gilheany has done a wonderful job delivering a memoir of his service in the Coast Guard. His writing style is easy to read and always engaging in a book that’s can be completed in one sitting or over a weekend. His story begins in his youth where he developed two key goals that would stay him throughout his life. The first happens while watching the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade near Fifth Avenue in New York City. It was there that he fell in love with the sound of bag pipes and dreamed of being able to play them someday. The second event happened during the Bicentennial Celebration in 1976 when his m…

Reviewed by Jon Middaugh, Ph.D. Donald Stoker, a Professor of Strategy and Policy for the U.S. Naval War College’s Monterey Program at the Naval Postgraduate School from 1999-2017, has written a tightly argued case for improving the approach American leaders use for fighting wars. The recommendations and insights in Why America Loses Wars deserve widespread circulation among strategists. But despite the author’s background, his focus falls on military and political considerations writ large and offers few insights tailored to the Navy. The work stems from a premise that American and Western leaders have, since World War II, failed to clarify when the country is at war…