
David J. Fitzpatrick |
Review of
John A. Adams, If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War: An
Analysis of World War Two Naval Strategy. Bloomington:
Indiana Univ. Press, 2008. Pp. x, 458. ISBN 978-0-253-35105-0. |
The
Second World War in the Pacific was the greatest naval conflict in
history. For nearly four years, the Japanese and American navies
(the latter receiving minimal assistance from allied powers) dueled
over that ocean's vast expanses, employing numerous fleets, hundreds
of warships, thousands of aircraft, and hundreds of thousands of
fighting men. This conflict would therefore appear to present a
perfect opportunity to assess the validity of Alfred Thayer Mahan's
concepts regarding naval warfare. Unfortunately, John A. Adams,[1] in
If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War, turns that idea on its
head: he presumes all of Mahan's ideas to be gospel and then
measures the performance of both nations' admirals against them. Not
surprisingly, few officers in either navy fare well in this
disappointing book's analysis. Also not surprisingly (except,
perhaps, to the author),
the book shows the problems of evaluating the conduct of war
according to theoretical prescriptions.
If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War seems not to have seen an
editor's pen. Its title and subtitle are emblematic of larger
difficulties: the former employs the nonidiomatic past tense rather
than the past perfect;[2]
the latter promises a book that is "An Analysis of World War II
Naval Strategy," which it is not, since it omits Germany's U-boat
campaigns, among other topics. These problems, apparent even before
the reader opens the book's cover, are the prelude to a text that
abounds with one- and two-sentence paragraphs, sentence fragments,
and unfocused paragraphs with no coherent topic.
A
good editor might also have caught some of the text's historical
errors. For example, Adams refers throughout to American signals
intelligence operations against Japan as "Ultra" (239 and passim),
but this term appropriately refers only to a very narrow range of
signals intelligence operations against Germany, not Japan.
Adams also misstates casualty figures for the Battle of Okinawa in
writing (414) that all Japanese troops were killed; it was in fact
the only battle in which large numbers of them surrendered (ca.
30,000 of the 130,000 total).[3]
Though
relatively minor issues in Adams's larger thesis (that there were
few Mahanians on either side), such errors will not inspire
confidence in critical readers.
Most
importantly, a competent editor might have saved Adams from
contradicting his own conclusions, sometimes in the same paragraph.
For example, he contends that "A Japanese victory at Guadalcanal
would not have changed the war's outcome," yet, only three sentences
later, that "victory at Guadalcanal in the fall of 1942 was Japan's
last hope" (107). Such glaring inconsistencies are common in the
book.
Adams presents the naval conflict in the Pacific as a giant war game
over which Mahan is the ultimate umpire: "in private Captain Mahan
might have cautioned the American admiral"; "if MacArthur could have
ever stomached advice, Mahan might have gently edged him to the side
of the room"; "Mahan might also have noted that Japan seemed to be
bifurcating her fleet" (153, 162, 261). Such observations are not
only stylistically annoying, creating an image of schoolmaster Mahan
lecturing his students, they frequently presume that the admirals
and generals Adams is evaluating had near-perfect intelligence. For
example, his critique of Raymond Spruance's actions at the Battle of
the Philippine Sea assumes the admiral knew both the condition of
the Japanese mobile fleet as well as its operational plan (287-89).
He presumes William F. Halsey must have known, due to the status of
aircraft and air crew training, that the Japanese battleships, not
the carriers, were the "center of gravity," at the Battle of Leyte
Gulf (352). And he assumes Yamamoto Isoroku, at the Battle of Santa
Cruz Islands, had a clear understanding both of Halsey's fleet's
condition and of his intentions (156-57). Of course, these commanders possessed
no such knowledge, unlike Adams's
"schoolmaster" Mahan, viewing the war from his god-like perspective.
Some
of Adams's contradictions expose the problems of a purely Mahanian
analysis of the war in the Pacific. In critiquing American strategic
decision making in 1944, Adams concludes that the drive along the
New Guinea coast toward the Philippines was strategically
unimportant because "there was nothing in the South Pacific [sic]
that was remotely likely to bring the Japanese fleet to battle"
(260). This is certainly a Mahanian line of thought, but Adams
offers no reason to think that bringing the Japanese fleet into
battle was the only factor to be considered in setting
strategy. In this and other instances, he simply accepts Mahanian
strategic prescriptions. Moreover, he soon contradicts his entire
critique when he acknowledges that the American invasion of the
Marianas diverted the Japanese fleet from MacArthur's landing at
Biak to the Central Pacific (271).[4]
So, apparently, it was possible that U.S. activity in the Southwest
Pacific could instigate a fleet action there.
This
blind acceptance of Mahan's prescriptions leads Adams into other
contradictions. He is sharply critical of the Japanese Navy's
decision to seek decisive combat in the event that the Americans
invaded the Marianas:
Mahan certainly would have admired the [Japanese Navy's]
concentration of force. However, an inferior fleet should avoid
battle with a superior enemy.... Captain Mahan's writings repeated
the importance of the fleet in being. As long as it remained a
credible threat, it restricted the enemy's freedom of action, which
might delay an enemy victory but could not prevent it. One can
imagine Captain Mahan glumly choosing this alternative in the hope
that something better might show up. It would have been hard for a
dispassionate analyst to see much opportunity in the Japanese
position as the summer solstice approached (268).
Such
a Mahanian assessment of the Japanese decision might also be made of
the American decision to meet the Japanese fleet at Midway. Yet, in
that case, Adams concludes that "Mahan truly would have been in awe
of the bold decision of Admiral Chester A. Nimitz" (119). Nowhere
does he explain why Mahan would have seen the American move as
"bold" but that of the Japanese, under similar circumstances, as a
glum alternative.
Adams's analyses of the battles of the Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf
offer a similar dichotomy. Using impeccable Mahanian logic, he
sharply criticizes Raymond Spruance's insistence on protecting the
invasion fleet during operations in the Marianas in June 1944 and
his belated efforts to seek out and attack the Japanese fleet during
the Battle of the Philippine Sea (288-89). But, in evaluating
William F. Halsey's performance at Leyte Gulf, Adams proposes that
Halsey should have split his fleet, thereby violating one of Mahan's
inviolable axioms (351). Yet he also makes an interesting
observation regarding both of these controversial actions. At the
Battle of the Philippine Sea,
Spruance refused to be pulled too far away from the invasion fleet
and missed an opportunity to destroy Ozawa's carriers. Halsey [at
Leyte Gulf] allowed himself to be pulled away by Ozawa's fleet,
which was a shadow of its former self and almost precipitated a
disaster by allowing Kurita's battleships free passage to the
invasion fleet.... [Halsey later commented that] "I wish that
Spruance had been with Mitscher at Leyte Gulf and that I had been
with Mitscher in the Battle of the Philippine Sea" (350).
In
this conclusion, Adams implies that a sterile Mahanian analysis has
its limits when one considers the personalities involved. He is more
explicit in this regard only a few pages earlier when he concludes
(albeit awkwardly) that
Viewing this battle [Leyte Gulf] from the Japanese perspective
underscores the enormous pressure, the intense risk, the
overwhelming uncertainty, and constant possibility of near
instantaneous disaster that officers in all the war's naval battles
had to withstand. As Mahan continually emphasized, the most
important element in naval warfare is the trained and hardened
officers that can continue to function with immediacy in an
environment that would paralyze lesser men. In an information-rich
hindsight, it is easy to criticize decisions that had to be made
with only the information available (347).
This
is a valuable insight, and Adams would have done well to heed it
throughout his book.
If Mahan Ran the Great Pacific War has its strengths. For those
who wish to understand Mahanian ideas without trudging through
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, Adams offers a nice
summary. The book also has wonderful maps that will help readers
better grasp both operational and strategic issues. And, too, there
is an interesting, if poorly written, comparison and assessment of
the American and Japanese navies at war's start. Still, in the end,
this is a disappointing work.
Washtenaw Community College
fitzd@wccnet.edu
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[1] Adams is "an airline executive and longtime
business strategist with an interest in the use of economic
principles to analyze history [...] as an avocation he has
extensively researched military strategy and tactics," according
to the
Indiana Univ. Press webpage announcing his forthcoming The Battle for
Western Europe, Fall 1944: An Operational Assessment
<link>.
[2] Required in the protasis of a past
contrary-to-fact conditional.
[3] Cf. George Feifer, Tennozan: The Battle of
Okinawa and the Atomic Bomb (NY: Ticknor & Fields, 1992)
509–10.
[4] See, among others, Ronald Spector, Eagle
against the Sun: The American War against Japan (NY: Free
Press, 1984) 251-52.
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