TIRPITZ: The Life and Death of Germany's Last Super Battleship
By Niklas Zetterling & Michael Tamelander, CASEMATE, USA 2009.
Reviewed by Capt. John A. Rodgaard, USN (Ret.)
Zetterling and Tamelander tell the story of the Tirpitz, Germany's last super battleship, and the desperate, if not obsessive, efforts by the British to destroy her with a comprehensively different perspective from their previous work about the battleship's sister, Bismarck: The Final Days of Germany's Greatest Battleship. In their introduction to the book, the two Swedish scholars admit that it was impossible not to compare Tirpitz's fate with that of her sister, whose pursuit and destruction occurred during a single week in May 1941, 70 years ago.
Compared to the meteorically short career of the Bismarck, that of the Tirpitz is played out over a much longer period of time and across some of the most inhospitable regions of the European theatre of war - the Arctic. Her mere existence greatly affected British maritime strategy, which saw the battleship as a major threat to allied convoys, especially those to Russia. For three years, the British executed several operations, some extremely imaginative and resourceful, that attempted to directly or indirectly knock out the behemoth once and for all.
Zetterling and Tamelander write about the direct operations that were planned and executed by the British; human torpedoes, carrier air strikes and midget submarines were used against Germany's super battleship. The one major indirect operation that denied the Tirpitz a French dry dock to refit if the battleship had sortied into the Atlantic is also highlighted.
The authors provide an excellent synopsis of the attack on the dock that was first documented at length by C.E. Lucas Phillips in his book The Greatest Raid of All. I first became aware of the commando raid against the dry dock located in St. Nazaire France, when in junior high school. At a book fair, I purchased a paperback edition of the Greatest Raid of All. In fact, a movie was made about this raid.
Finally, the authors provide the reader with a succinct account of the RAF operation that sank the German behemoth with 10,000-pound "Tallboy" bombs flown by Lancaster bombers from 9 and 617 squadrons - 617 was the famed "Dam Buster" squadron.
The authors have woven Tirpitz's story extremely well and in doing so explain the strategic implications and dramatic battles surrounding the super battleship. Their book is an excellent study of an aspect of naval strategy the Germans used with such aplomb. As a "Fleet in Being", Tirpitz was truly a Sword of Damocles hanging over the allies. Her presence in Norway would pay handsomely, when in July 1942, the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, Admiral Dudley Pound, ordered a Russian-bound convoy, PQ-17, to scatter, because intelligence indicated the Tirpitz had sortied from its moorings to intercept. The consequence of this decision was nothing short of a disaster; PQ-17 was slaughtered by the Luftwaffe and patrolling U-boats.
Zetterling and Tamelander have succeeded in their hope to provide a better understanding of the role Tirpitz played in the remorselessly greater maritime campaign that was the Battle of the Atlantic. Their work is a welcomed addition to my library.
Captain Rodgaard recently co-authored "A Hard Fought Ship-The Story of HMS Venomous." See Rear Admiral Callo's review below.
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A Hard Fought Ship - The Story of HMS Venemous
By Robert J. Moore and John A. Rodgaard, Holywell House Publishing, 2010 (first published in Great Britain by Robert J. Moore, 1990)
Reviewed by Rear Admiral Joseph F. Callo, USNR (Ret)
Every ship has a unique life, and in the case of HMS Venomous, that life was long and useful, and it covered a wide spectrum of missions as the tactical roles of destroyers evolved between the end of World War I and the end of World War II. Similarly, every ship has a unique "personality," a tone or spirit that is created day-by-day by those who serve in her. And in the first chapter of A Hard Fought Ship the spotlight is focused on that aspect of a ship's career, plus the fortunes of war: "[I]n the end, a warship's ability to perform in combat rested upon the quality of the crew and a little bit of luck. We will see that Venomous had both."
HMS Venomous was a "V & W" class destroyer, and she was launched in the upper Clyde on 17 April 1919. Immediately after launching she was moved to a fitting out basin that she shared with the ill-fated battle-cruiser HMS Hood. Her first assignment was to participate in the Fleet Review in the Thames to mark the end of World War One. Subsequently, she was ordered to the major Royal Navy anchorage at Scapa Flow, were she joined the remains of the powerful German fleet that had been scuttled there at the end of "the Great War."
The story of Venomous stretches on from that point to the end of World War II, and in the process, there are insights into segments of naval history in the Baltic, Mediterranean, North Sea, Arctic Ocean, English Channel, and the Atlantic. As one might expect, a significant number of the ship's missions were non-combat, but there were also noteworthy periods of intense, life-and-death action. Both the former and the latter types of duty are made more poignant in the book with the words of those who served in or with Venomous during her service.
Typical is the recounting of the torpedoing of the destroyer tender HMS Hecla, while in the company of Venomous during the night and early morning of 11/12 November 1942. The ships were transiting from Freetown, South Africa to Gibraltar, and it's the words of one of Hecla's crew members, Electrical Artificer Edward Coleman, that capture the horror of the event. He and much of the crew had already abandoned ship, and after his recue he talked of the final few minutes before his ship sank:
"I heard men singing. But they were not drunk. As I cast around me in the darkness, I suddenly realized they were still on Hecla, now settling by the stern. They had gathered on the foc'sle singing hymns. 'Abide with me' and 'Eternal Father strong to save' carried clearly cross to me. I willed them to abandon ship; I prayed that they would join me in the drink but to no avail."
In a more routine situation, one that involved getting under way after an extended period in port, it's once again the actual words of someone involved that give texture to the event. In this instance it's the thirteenth captain of Venomous, Lieutenant Commander Donald G.F.W. McIntyre, who sets the scene: "Smoke began to pour from her funnels and machinery came to reluctant life giving the ship that vibration which is its soul. In due time we nosed our way into the Firth of Forth for trials and exercises."
Whether it's the sinking of Hecla or a relatively routine departure from port for sea trials, in this book we constantly see the ship's operations through the eyes of those in or directly involved with her. Consequently the reader sees the story from "the inside," rather than as outside observer. Another important feature of A Hard Fought Ship is its 170 photographs (many are personal photos taken by crewmembers) and 12 maps and plans that help make events clearer.
A Hard Fought Ship is an expanded version of a book that was published initially in 1990. For those who go down to the sea in naval ships and those who are interested in what it means to serve in a hard-working Royal Navy destroyer , this is a special opportunity to get the story from those who lived the events that constitute the narrative of HMS Venomous.
Retired Royal Navy commander, historian, and author, Alastair Wilson, puts the book in a special perspective: "I would rate this as being up in the same class as The Cruel Sea for a picture of small ship life in World War 2."
Rear Admiral Callo is an award-winning naval author specializing in 18th and early 19th century British and American naval history topics.
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Nineteen-Gun Salute: Case Studies of Operational, Strategic, and Diplomatic Naval Leadership during the 20th and Early 21st Centuries
Edited by John B. Hattendorf and Bruce A. Elleman. Naval War College Press/Government Printing Office (2010).
Review By Corbin Williamson
Nineteen Gun Salute is a collection of short biographies of American admirals who demonstrated exceptional leadership qualities during their naval service. The admirals were skilled operational and strategic commanders as well as diplomats. The work avoids the most well-known 20th century admirals such as Nimitz, King, and Halsey, though Spruance is included. Each admiral is identified by a single characteristic such as multilateral or honest, which serves to provide a useful collection of desirable traits when take in totality. A short summary of each admiral included follows.
William Sims was an early advocate of Anglo-American relations, an alliance that later became the "bedrock" of American grand strategy. William Standley was an efficient, economical CNO who aligned the Navy with a business mentality while successfully guiding a naval expansion program through the corridors of New Deal politics. William Leahy's blunt honesty combined with common sense helped him work well with people of differing opinions as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Kelly Turner was not in fact 'Terrible' but was a skillful organizer whose intellect and hard work ethic served him well as did his singular focus on the objective.
Raymond Spruance's propensity to delegate and his ability to identify 2nd and 3rd order effects served him well in a series of fortuitous assignments. Thomas Kinkaid's broad perspective and discipline helped him as a planner and as a coordinator of large, joint operations on an aggressive timetable. Alan Kirk's skill at making powerful, well-connected friends aided him in the European Theater of Operations, where he sought the interests of the U.S. Navy over foreign organizations. Richard Conolly's enthusiasm and talent for empowering and encouraging subordinates helped him coordinate complex amphibious assaults.
During the Truman administration, Arthur Radford's willingness to forcefully advocate for his opinion played an important role in the creation of the Department of Defense. Due to his engineering background and openness to new technology, Arleigh Burke helped bring the Polaris missile program into service. Harry Felt's leadership was defined by his investment in subordinates and his willingness to express his views forcefully. Thomas Moorer's ability to trust his subordinates and the loyalty he demonstrated toward them brought him repeated success. Richard Colbert's long term pursuit of multilateral partnerships played an important role in the creating STANVFORLANT and courses for mid-grade foreign officers at the Naval War College. Elmo Zumwalt secures successive tours in high-profile assignments through non-traditional thinking combined with a personable touch.
James Holloway III illustrates the value of extensive background experience in operational command at all levels. Carlisle Trost maintained readiness when many expensive programs had a call on the Navy's budget and cultivated a broad array of connections and contacts. Leighton Smith's pattern of honesty combined with an "aggressive, take-charge" disposition helped with his command of the NATO Bosnia campaign. Joseph Prueher's background in Southeast Asia and flight experience proved invaluable in handling the 2001 EP-3 crisis with China.
This reviewer identified several themes that were particularly visible in many of the admirals surveyed: the ability to work well with foreign officers, a willingness to present views forcefully, and skill in cultivating a large range of contacts both in and out of government service. A final short essay by the editors ties together the biographies. The editors note the shift in the 20th century from a purely naval command style to a system that almost necessarily involved foreign nations. The difference between operational leadership, exercised on the theater level, and strategic leadership, exercised on the national level, is highlighted. Given the focus of many of the early essays on the Pacific campaign, the editors argue that this campaign was a clear demonstration of skilled operational leadership guided by effective strategic planning and oversight. A final comment on the post-Annapolis education of many of the admirals surveyed is welcome, though perhaps expected.
On the whole this engaging work highlights many of the lesser known successful commanders in the 20th century U.S. Navy and the leadership qualities that aided them in their success.
Corbin Williamson is a graduate student at Texas Tech University with an interest in U.S. Navy public relations in the interwar (1920s-30s) period.
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Theodore Roosevelt's Naval Diplomacy: The U.S. Navy and the Birth of the American Century
by Henry J. Hendrix, Naval Institute Press (Annapolis, MD), 2009.
Reviewed by Thomas P. Ostrom
Capt. Henry J. Hendrix, USN brings an impressive background of naval professionalism and scholarly credentials to the task of writing this history of President Theodore Roosevelt (TR) and the 14-month global cruise of the Great White Fleet of U.S. battleships named after U.S. stated, and assorted auxiliary vessels in 1907-1909.
The author, a 20-year veteran at the time of his book's publication, performed six overseas deployments, studied at the Naval Postgraduate School, and earned a Ph.D. from King's College in Britain. Captain Hendrix is the recipient of several literary awards, has written a number of articles for prestigious journals, and has served as a policy advisor in the Defense Department.
Hendrix traced TR's formative background from sickly child to rancher, boxer, New York City police commissioner, state legislator, governor, Republican progressive reformer, distinguished historian and author, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, and role as a U.S. Army officer in Cuban combat in the Spanish-American War (1898), from and after which the U.S. acquired colonial possessions that included the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba.
The U.S. president (1901-1909) made a post-presidential Third (Progressive/ Bull Moose) Party run during which he survived an assassination attempt. TR was a hunter, explorer, conservationist, and builder of the Panama Canal.
Hendrix explained TR's expressed need to control the Western Hemisphere via the Monroe Doctrine and his interpretation of it, and commitment to a strong U.S. Navy to deter Japan by exhibiting U.S. geostrategic power, naval bases, and coaling stations. Hence the motive behind TR's ordering the Great White Fleet of the U.S. Navy to circumnavigate the globe and visit foreign ports.
President Roosevelt was sensitive to Japanese pride and interests, and the discrimination Japanese suffered in America. Yet he was also conscious of Japanese Pacific objectives, and wanted the Great White Fleet to send a message.
Hendrix gives kudos to TR for negotiating the Treaty of Portsmouth (at the New Hampshire naval base) between tsarist Russia and Japan after the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). Roosevelt ironically received the Nobel Peace Prize for his diplomatic achievements, and the animosity of a victorious Japan whose officials concluded TR's "peace" deprived them of more extensive territorial spoils.
After the successful White Fleet voyage, the former U.S. Navy secretary decreed that the white navy warships (that were cooler in tropical temperatures) be painted a more concealing gray. The U.S. Coast Guard (then the Revenue Cutter Service) kept its vessels white, until World War II, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf combat convinced that sea service to go navy camouflage in wartime.
As Captain Hendrix points out, Roosevelt's award winning naval history, The War of 1812 against Britain, won praise, and the reciprocal influence and support of famed U.S. Navy leaders, Captain (later Rear Adm.) George Alfred Thayer Mahan, and Spanish-American War hero, Adm. George Dewey. The then retired naval commanders advised President Roosevelt on logistics and operational strategies for the White Fleet voyage.
The Great White Fleet was accorded hospitality at a plethora of ports in the U.S., Latin America, Asia (including Japan), the Mediterranean, and Atlantic Europe. The power and technology of the well-armed, steam-powered, coal-burning fleet convinced the Japanese, as did Adm. Matthew Perry's 1850's visits to Nippon, that it must expand its naval assets to counter European and American Asiatic imperialism.
The author described the White Fleet's welcome in 20 world ports, docking for supplies and fuel (coal), gunnery and mine-laying drills conducted en-route, crew and officer skills in heavy seas and typhoons, and communications methods (semaphore flag signals; wireless telegraphy).
Fourteen thousand sailors and U.S. Marines constituted the crew complement. The U.S. Marines were a backup force,Hendrix revealed, in case TR's intervention in Panama (to build the Panama Canal across the isthmus) caused Columbian military action.
The author used his naval expertise to compare and contrast the coercive, humanitarian, and nation-building paradigms of TR's 20th century U.S. Navy, and the requirements and missions of today's Navy with missiles, aircraft carriers, submarines, and advanced technology in the age of international terrorism.
Captain Hendrix has written a magnificent U.S. naval history that includes a detailed bibliography, photographs, notes, and index. But, given the complex geopolitical and diplomatic elements explained in this compelling history, the reader would benefit from the inclusion of maps to illustrate the historical geography of the voyage.
Thomas P. Ostrom is the author of three books on U.S. Coast Guard history. The latest, "The U.S. Coast Guard in World War II," is also reviewed in this publication.
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The United States Coast Guard in World War II - A History of Domestic and Overseas Action
by Thomas P. Ostrom, McFarland & Company, Jefferson, NC, (2009)
Reviewed by Charles H. Bogart
This is a well-written and nicely researched account of the U.S. Coast Guard during World War II. The author, using seventeen topical chapters, provides short, concise accounts of various missions carried out by the Coast Guard during the war. Each of these chapters is a standalone article highly suitable for publication in Naval History.
In setting the tone for the book, the author examines Coast Guard activities in the months before the United States' official entry into the war, discusses the pre and wartime administrative organization of the Coast Guard, and looks at the wartime leadership of the Commandant of the Coast Guard, Admiral Russell R. Waesche. Coast Guard war time missions covered in the book include domestic port security, the Greenland Patrol, guarding the Aleutians and Bering Sea, participating in convoy service as both gunners on merchant ships and as part of the naval escort, performing various functions in support of amphibious assault landings in the Mediterranean and the Pacific areas including action during the Normandy Landings, providing crews to man U. S. Navy ships, maintaining navigation on the Great Lakes, undertaking a variety of aircraft support and patrol missions, development of LORAN and the helicopter, and performing day to day rescue missions. During World War II, the Coast Guard served in every theater of operation and lost 1,030 of its members during the war.
One fact that becomes clear in reading this book is that during the war years, the Coast Guard had to not only participate actively in the defeat of the enemy but continue to perform its normal job of maintaining navigational aids, conducting ship safety inspections, and carrying out search and rescue missions. The book ends with excerpts from two letters written home by a Coast Guardsman during the war, an investigation into the loss of LCI (L) 91 due to enemy action and a letter of condolence written by a commanding officer to the parents of a dead Coast Guardsman.
Much of the story presented within this book is told through the author's focusing his discussion on what was experienced by a variety of individuals and ships. The reader is thus presented with a kaleidoscope of small events that illuminate the greater event under discussion. The text is supported by a nice array of maps and photographs. This book thus supplements, and does not replace, those two standard authoritative works on the World War II Coast Guard, Guardians of the Sea and The Coast Guard in World War II. The book under review is designed to provide the casual reader with a wealth of details about the Coast Guard during World War II. However, since the book is organized by subject matter and not chronologically, each chapter to some extent recapitulates a topic discussed in another chapter. Those seeking more information on the Coast Guard will find a nice bibliography at the rear of the book. The book should appeal to anyone interested in the Coast Guard or warfare at sea.
Charles Bogart of Frankfort Kentucky is a frequent contributor to Naval History Book Reviews.
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Books Currently Available for Review
We have a number of books here in our offices that are available to be reviewed. If you are interested, please contact Dave Colamaria at dcolamaria@navyhistory.org.
Ship Killers: A History of the American Torpedo. Thomas Wildenberg & Norman Polmar, Naval Institute Press, 2010, 288 pages.
Horrible Shipwreck! Andrew C.A. Jampoler, Naval Institute Press, 2010, 294 pages.
Black Sheep: The Life of Pappy Boyington. John F. Wukovits, Naval Institute Press, 2011, 249 pages.
Battle Surface! Lawson P. "Red" Ramage and the War Patrols of the USS Parche. Stephen L. Moore, Naval Institute Press, 2011, 342 pages.
Silent Killers: Submarines and Underwater Warfare. James P. Delgado, Osprey Publishing, 2011, 264 pages.
Among Heroes: A Marine Corps Rifle Company on Peleliu. First Sergeant Jack R. Ainsworth (edited by Ambassador Laurence Pope), preview copy, 83 pages.
Counterinsurgency Leadership in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Beyond. Edited by Nicholas J. Schlosser and James M. Caiella, Marine Corps University Press, 2011, 204 pages.
Potomac Fever: A Memoir of Politics and Public Service. J. William Middendorf II, Naval Institute Press, 2011, 213 pages.
Kamikaze: Japanese Special Attack Weapons 1944-45. Steven J. Zaloga (illustrated by Ian Palmer), Osprey Publishing, 2011, 48 pages.
DestroyerMan. John T. Pigott, Bevan Press, 2007, 152 pages.
The Politics and Security of the Gulf: Anglo-American Hegemony and the Shaping of a Region. Jeffrey R. Macris, Routledge, 2010, 322 pages.
E-Boat vs MTB: The English Channel 1941-45. Gordon Williamson, Osprey Publishing, 2011, 80 pages.
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