Book Reviews

AEROSPACE / JANUARY 201944

Afterburner

The book starts at the end, with the tactical retreat of the Royal Navy during the Battle of Ceylon at Colombo and Trincomalee in March-April 1942

NEGLECTED SKIES

Naval Institute Press, 291 Wood Road, Annapolis, MD 21402, USA. 2017. 259pp. Illustrated. $34.95. ISBN 978-168247-157-9.

The premise of this book was intriguing due to not only the reader’s ignorance of the naval war in the Far East during WW2 but, also, a desire to know how the demise of British naval power occurred during the period detailed. Initially, a little confused by the description of the 1942 Japanese fleet, the Kido Butai (mobile strike force), as being a ‘new force’, as it had been believed for a long time that the Japanese had got many of their strategic and technological ideas from the British and Americans – the attack on Pearl Harbor was a strategy borne from the British attack at Taranto – this book opened the reader’s eyes to the extent of the ties between Britain and Japan and how differently their navies operated.

The book starts at the end, with the tactical retreat of the Royal Navy during the Battle of Ceylon at Colombo and Trincomalee in March-April 1942, which marked the end of British naval power being the dominant world force, and then continues to detail the battles and the politics that preceded it and, in particular, the Washington Treaty of 1921.

Reading further, it highlights the difference in doctrines and fleet dispositions between the British and Japanese navies, which had been affected in different ways by the 1921 Washington Treaty. The Kido Butai fleet disposition was carrier-centric comprising all the aircraft carriers of the Japanese navy in one fleet and supported by other ships including some battleships. Whereas the British fleets had an integrated fleet centred on the battleship and supported by an aircraft carrier, usually one.

It provides good reflection on the tactics used previously by the Royal Navy against the Italians in the Mediterranean and against the Germans in the Atlantic but significantly points out neither of those opponents had a naval air power, only land-based air support. It also highlights the dilemma of

fighting many enemies on two global fronts with very limited resources because, as efficient as some of the British naval air operations have been demonstrated, there was the inevitable spreading of naval resources too thinly, which were shown to be easily overcome by a concerted effort – namely the Kido Butai.

This is a well referenced book which analyses many aspects that affect the passage of all wars: politics, inter-service co-operation, technology and the leadership and experience of command. It ventures to deconstruct the political and economic decisions made at the time by the British and their perceived reasons to substantiate them. The analysis also considers many other factors affecting the operation of the navies leading up to the Battle of Ceylon: training, supply of materials, experience, mindset and events. There are many references to preceding sea battles during WW2, ranging from successes to failures and in those between, such as the Battle of Matapan, Norway and Crete and prudent retreats, which were particularly useful in the analysis of the Force Z mistakes; ultimately that an incomplete fleet and a show of peacetime gunboat politics was not appropriate to counter a full-scale invasion. It also provides revealing analysis, such as Britain’s underestimation of the Japanese naval force which, together with the pressure of war elsewhere led to the Royal Navy’s Eastern Fleet being a collection of ageing ships with little air cover (carrier or land-based) and only really fit for convoy protection.

An interesting fact highlighted was that the two top-tier naval air powers of the time, the US and Japan, both retained separate army and navy air forces, unlike Britain which amalgamated them in 1918. The amalgamation ended up with the dual control of the pre-WW2 Fleet Air Arm, by the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy, for its operation, control and equipping but the differences of the dual-control factions were laid bare by exploring the differences in backgrounds and outlooks of the two services, for example, the Royal Navy was

The light aircraft carrier HMS Hermes was sunk off Batticaloa by Japanese dive bombers on 9 April 1942. RAeS (NAL).

The Demise of British Naval Power in the Far East, 1922-42By A Britts

JANUARY 2019 45i fFind us on Twitter Find us on LinkedIn Find us on Facebook www.aerosociety.com

To conclude, this book was initially found to be information-heavy with which the reader may struggle but perseverance is soon paid off

By C F Morris

Naval Institute Press, 291 Wood Road, Annapolis, MD 21402, USA. 2017. 259pp. Illustrated. $34.95. ISBN 978-1-68247-252-1.

Morris is an assistant professor of history at the US Air Force Academy. In writing this book on US strategic bombing he is embarking on a well-trodden path that has been previously walked by the likes of Biddle, Clodfelter, McFarland and Futrell among many others. On the dustcover, the publishers state that “relatively little is known about where the concept [American strategic bombing] originated or how it evolved [and this book]…provides a full spectrum intellectual history of the American concept of strategic bombing.”

The book itself is well laid out and follows a logical chronological path that starts with the activities of the 1st Aero Squadron in Mexico in 1916 and ends in 1941 prior to the arrival of US Army Air Forces bombers in the UK in May 1942. Both the bibliography and end notes are adequate and provide the basis for further academic research and Morris’s fluid and pacey writing style will also make it appeal to the general reader.

As would be expected, the majority of the book concentrates on the development of a “uniquely American version of airpower,” mainly through the eyes of Edgar Gorrell. It would be fair to say that there was very little that was ‘unique’ about American strategic bombing theory, as most of the theory had been assimilated from the British, French and Germans during WW1; a point acknowledged by the author.

It was only the transformation of US bombing theory through studies at the Air Corps Tactical School and the influence of the ‘Bombing Mafia’ that led to the adoption of close formation, self-protecting, daylight bombing from 1942 and the subsequent failure of this tactic until the arrival of long-range escort fighters. It is perhaps that tactic that led the USAAF, to reassess all that went before in terms of its strategic theories, as it did the RAF with respect to navigation and bombing accuracy. Theory can only be proven with practice.

This book comes recommended as a concise study into the development of American bombing theory for the general reader.

Trevor NashMA MRAeS

class conscious and the Royal Air Force was merit conscious.

The author refers to many military historians, analysing their opinions and conclusions to either support the author’s own thoughts or to critique their findings. The author’s counterfactual propositions are interesting and appear well reasoned both in the speculative progression of events and the probable outcomes.

The penultimate chapter balances the outstandingly offensive force of the Japanese fleet with not only their lack of advances in aircraft technology, lack of radar and lack of trained pilots but also with how the US, together with its industrial might, learnt fast from battle experience to cut supply lines to overcome the Japanese. It also highlights the significance of good reconnaissance aircraft which the Japanese had mastered and which were as fast as the Grumman Hellcats.

The book’s conclusions nicely rounded off ‘the predicament of defence’ of Australia and the Far East colonies by the British and the military weakness of the colonies which was only highlighted when the British fleet had to go into battle.

There is a good inclusion of tables which compare the relative merits of ships and fleets but it was felt that the addition of appendices

would have been useful and illustrative to provide some comprehensive data, such as a list of the ships in the British and Japanese fleets, and the specifications of some, if not all, naval aircraft and aircraft carriers in the British and Japanese navies in 1942. Several maps are also included, tracing the course of ships in significant sea battles such as the sinking of the Bismark, Battle of Matapan and the demise of Force Z but a particularly repetitive irritant was the lack of a map for the movements of the Kido Butai and Eastern Fleet – what was considered to be a key subject of the book! Also, a map of the North Pacific and the Philippine Sea to show the rest of Far East battles would have been useful: Hawaii, Midway, Marianas Islands, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa.

To conclude, this book was initially found to be information-heavy with which the reader may struggle but perseverance is soon paid off with many interesting revelations of a complex international political-military situation by what seemed to be a no-stone-unturned analysis. However, it is astonishing that a map of the Kido Butai movements, to which many references are made, was not deemed necessary for inclusion.

Martin CreberCEng MRAeS

This book comes recommended as a concise study into the development of American bombing theory for the general reader

THE ORIGINS OF AMERICAN BOMBING THEORY

46

Book ReviewsAfterburner

AEROSPACE / JANUARY 2019

The book should come highly recommended; and this Third edition should be seen as a most worthwhile acquisition, even for those who already have an earlier edition

The subject matter of this book doesn’t fall within the confines of any single discipline. It is very much multi-disciplinary in nature. Indeed, the author concludes (on p 324) that to be a fleet planner, one needs a rather forbiddingly wide range of skills: project manager, demand forecaster, marketing guru, performance specialist, network planner, economist, engineer and diplomat! The book touches on all these possible roles.

With so much in it, the book is hardly one to be read at a single sitting. It seems especially appropriate for two purposes: one as an accessory for a course in air transport, for which it is a great resource; and the other as a source of reference for somebody conducting research into some aspect of airline operations. It is written in an appealing style, so much so that this reviewer almost thought the author was writing for him personally! The book should come highly recommended; and this Third edition should be seen as a most worthwhile acquisition, even for those who already have an earlier edition.

Dr J P HanlonUniversity of Birmingham

BUYING THE BIG JETS

Fleet Planning for Airlines – Third editionBy P Clark

Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon OX14 4RN, UK. 2017. xxi; 371pp. Illustrated. £34.99 ISBN 978-1-138-74982-5.

The Third edition of this successful book is not simply an update on previous versions but amounts to an expanded treatment of some important principles in the field of fleet planning. It contains much that is new. It includes, inter alia, further explanations of how project planning techniques can be applied to fleet planning; a discussion on the products of regional jet manufacturers who are extending their aircraft ‘families’ into the 100-plus seating capacity category, which in this book is the qualification used for inclusion as a ‘big jet’; and deeper consideration to how fleet planning differs as between low-cost airlines seeking cost leadership and full-service network airlines laying more emphasis on product differentiation.

The author explains that it is not his purpose to give an opinion on whether one particular aircraft type is better than another but rather to explain a process under which aircraft can be systematically evaluated in relation to the needs of the airline in question. To this end, in the Third edition, more space is devoted to issues involved in customising aircraft.

A useful case study running across several chapters involves an imaginary airline dubbed ‘Air Ballistic’, details of which are conveniently collected together at the end in a couple of appendices. There are also two other helpful appendices, one on equations useful for calculating various things in aircraft economics and the other showing operating costs for particular aircraft by route.

Above: Airbus A320-251 at Heathrow Airport. Mike Burdett.

Below: Narrow-body Boeing 737-330 in front of a Boeing 777 wide body. Aero Icarus.