5 replies to this topic

[Kip]

I am reading "How Carriers Fought" by Lars Celander.  All about the how it was done.

 

Part I is Carrier Operations, with 9 chapters; Navigation and Communication, Flight Operations, Aircraft Carried, Finding the Enemy, Detecting Incoming Strikes, Aerial Attacks, Defending Against Aerial Attack, Fighter Direction, and Logistics (interesting statistic here; the IJN consumed over 12 million tons of oil during the war, which was the US production of 2 weeks).

 

Part II is Carrier Battles of World War II, with 9 chapters; Early Scouting and Raiding by Carriers, Battle of the Coral Sea, Battle of Midway, Operation Pedestal, Battle of the Eastern Solomons, Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, Battle of the Philippine Sea, Battle of Leyte Gulf, and Carrier Operations in a Larger Context.

 

Part III is The art and Evolution of Carrier Operations, with another 9 chapters; Combat Models, Concentration vs. Dispersion, Fighters vs. Bombers, Battleships vs. Carriers, Armored Flight Deck vs. Size of Air Group, Effectiveness of Heavy AA Guns, World war II Carrier Design Revisited, The Art of Carrier Operations, and Evolution of Carrier Operations.

 

Highly recommended for this group.

[healey36]

Read it and wasn't too impressed. Here's a much better book: Pacific Carrier War: Carrier Combat From Pearl Harbor to Okinawa by Mark Stille (former naval officer and lifelong student of the war in the Pacific). There's so much mythology built up around USN/IJN operations during those 44 months after Pearl Harbor, much of it repeated in Celander's book and, to be fair, by many other historians. Stille's book goes a long way toward slaying some/most of that stuff. 

[Kip]

Fair enough.  Just ordered Stilles book so I can compare.

[healey36]

I'll be interested to hear what you think.

[Kip]

Just finished Stilles book, "Pacific Carrier War: Carrier Combat From Pearl Harbor To Okinawa".  It is a very good book but different than "How Carriers Fought" in my mind.  Stilles book is WHAT happened during the battles, with some tactics illustrated.  Celander's book is the How the different parts and pieces went together, while also describing, minimally, the battles.  In my mind they complement each other.  Celander is the parts of the machine while Stilles is the whole in use.

[healey36]

A fair assessment, and thanks for your thoughts. I'll go back and have another look at Celander's book. His was an interesting approach to the subject, which is more than I can say for many recent efforts. I just didn't learn much from it, which is likely the product of having read so much on the topic over the years. Stille's book struck me for its having taken on some of the oft-repeated but seldom-refuted notions around some of these engagements, such as Midway having been a "miracle", when in fact it was a well-planned ambush largely based on intel extracted via the broken IJN cyphers, or Philippine Sea and the seeming inevitability of it when the historian's focus is nearly always "The Marianas Turkey Shoot", rather than how it could have been a much closer run thing had Ozawa stuck to the plan. 

 

Anyway, good stuff...glad you enjoyed the book(s). I wish I could find more time to read.