Book Review - Battles of the Falklands War by Gordon Smith

 Battles of the Falklands by Gordon Smith

London: Ian Allen Ltd, 1989          ISBN 0711017921

This is a somewhat dry, but very useful book. Built around 40 maps, the book is a day-by-day account of the invasion of the Falklands and South Georgia by the Argentinians, the build-up of the British task force and their arrival in the conflict zone, and the battles naval, aerial and on land that led to the British victory. There is a potted history of the Falkland Islands at the beginning of the book, appendices at the end covering British awards for Gallantry, British ships lost and damaged, British and Argentinian air losses, and a useful bibliography.

Even though this could be almost classed as a reference book, there is still much to be gleaned and learnt about this short and vicious conflict, one that almost seems to have been forgotten these days. Not emphasised in this book, but still obvious, is the weather. In the middle of the Atlantic, at 51 degrees south, the weather even in summer can be treacherous, but in May and June, when the major battles of the war took place, the seas are rough and the land is cold and blizzard-prone. It's not mentioned in this book, but surely the Argentinian leaders assumed that by invading in April, the weather would be a protection from quick action by the British to re-take the islands.

They were so very wrong in thinking that. The British very quickly mobilized naval and land forces to head down to face the Argentine forces. This was a huge logistical effort, undertaken very quickly, and it is a credit to those that organised and undertook those logistical operations that they managed to transfer thousands of troops and dozens of ships and aircraft, and all the ancillaries, ammunition, food and fuel required so quickly, generally in an efficient manner.

That this was a battle about control of sea and air space was clear to the British command, but perhaps less so to the Argentinians (this book is written from the British viewpoint, so the reader gets little to no insight into the strategies, tactics or thinking of the Argentine side). From the sea point of view, the British would have thought that they had the advantage, which in the end proved to be the case. Although the Argentinian Navy was quite large, and did have some modern ships (ironically their modern ships were made by British shipyards), mostly they were older (the General Belgrano was an ex USN WWII cruiser) and had limited capacity against the modern ships of the RN. While the sinking of the Belgrano was shocking and controversial at the time it happened, strategically it made perfect sense: the Belgrano, with its 6 inch guns, could have made short work of the British carriers if it had got within range, but more importantly its sinking had the effect of sending the rest of the Argentinian Navy back to port for the rest of the war. This had a huge effect on not only the Argentinian ability to interdict and fight the Royal Navy, but to assist the Army troops on the Islands.

The battle for airspace was much more contested, and was a much more even fight. The British side were hamstrung by their very limited number of fighter and attack aircraft (approximately 40 Harriers/Sea Harriers), and no AEW capability. The Argentinian side were hamstrung by the distance from their bases to the Falklands, which left them very little time for battle flying once there, and the fact that the British carriers could position themselves much closer to the active area while being out of range to any Argentinian 'plane. It's fair to state that it was in the air where Argentina had its biggest successes - while not managing to down more than one British fighter (others were destroyed by ground fire or accident), they did manage to sink seven ships, several helicopters, and do other damage to naval vessels and on the ground. In achieving this, they lost over 50 aircraft, losses which were unsustainable and led to air attacks reducing as time went on.

In the end, after a few nasty battles, the Argentine garrison surrendered, not because they thought they couldn't fight, and fight well, but with the realization that without supply and support from the Navy, and with diminishing capacity of the Air Force to assist, the end was inevitable. The Argentinian commander onsite disobeyed the Junta in Buenos Aires and surrendered, thus no doubt saving many hundreds of lives on both sides.

Battles of the Falklands War is not a true history, but rather a chronology and as such doesn't go into the whys and wherefores of the battle. But there are things that we can glean from this sorry bit of history, some of which resonate now in 2023, more than forty years later. One is that undemocratic dictatorships eventually drown in their own dreams of power and glory, another is never dismiss democracies as unable to stand up to naked aggression, and the third is that, quite often, logistics win wars.

If you would like to know what happened when and to whom in the Falklands War, this book is worth fishing out. If you are after a more rounded history of the conflict, there are better books to read.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Dreadnought by Robert K. Massie

 Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the coming of the Great War by Robert K. Massie

New York: Random House, 1991                              ISBN 0394528336

This blockbuster of a book, which arrived with a splash in 1991, has left me strangely unsatisfied: there is no doubt that Robert Massie has written a highly readable, detailed, and interesting book about the maneuverings of both British and German politicians and royalty, and the construction of the British and German navies, from the later 1800s through to the declaration of war in 1914. The problem at the core of this book is that no matter how much the naval arms race between Britain and Germany affected relations between the two countries, in the end it had little to do with the outbreak of war per se. Therefore, what we have here are really two separate stories that do not meet, and a book with a misleading title.

That stated, this is still a book worth reading for a lively description of the personalities involved in both the naval and political worlds of the time, and of the differences in outlook of both Britain and Germany. Through these pages we see the development of England's strategy, from "Splendid Isolation", to the realization that preserving peace meant preventing German hegemony over the other great powers of Europe. German strategy was more confused, as it revolved to a much greater degree around the whims of one person, the Kaiser (who had a much greater role in foreign affairs than that bestowed on the British monarch). The tragedy for Germany was that Wilhelm II was by turns arrogant, blustering, indecisive, and prone to over-excitement. His desire for Germany to be a great power meant, in his eyes, competing with England, including on the high seas. This strategy was a fundamental mis-understanding of both British personality and strategy and was in the end fatal for both Wilhelm and Germany. In the same vein, British mis-understanding of the Germans and the Kaiser did not help defuse the situation.

Britain, through geography, history, and empire, was a sea-going nation. It's very survival in the Nineteenth Century relied on being able to ensure freedom of the seas for its marine activities. This need led to the "two power standard", whereby the Royal Navy wanted enough ships to defeat the combined might of the next two greatest sea powers combined. The naval development of Germany was based on two flawed doctrines - one, that to be a great power and be respected as such one needed a great fleet (not true: Germany was a great power owing to their military strength on land - they had no need of a navy to garner respect), and two, that the Royal Navy's strategy would be to blockade Germany (this was never a British intention, and would not have been possible in any case).

The British saw the development of the High Seas Fleet as solely aimed at themselves, and therefore as an existential threat to the survival of the British Empire. Once that thought became entrenched in the minds of the English Cabinet, they moved from being un-involved in European affairs, to developing an understanding (the Entente Cordiale) with France as a bulwark against German aggression. Prior to the existence of the German Fleet, Britain was not too bothered about war between Germany and France - after the fleet's growth, the thought of the Kaiser having control over France, and its fleet, could not be borne. Massie explains these tensions well, and also documents the points of friction that occurred between the great powers in Africa (Boer War, Fashoda, Tangier, Agadir), and the Balkans (Balkans War 1912).

In his vivid descriptions of statesmen, the reader is often struck by the irony that a great appreciation of the "other" was usually apparent. Thus many of the British, such as Haldane, had a great appreciation of German culture, and many of the Germans were Anglophiles. Even the Kaiser saw much to admire in Britain and her achievements (he was after all the grandson of Queen Victoria).

Massie, in 900 pages, gives us much detail of various policies and strategies on both sides, but fails to uncover any "smoking gun", or deep-seated antagonism that forespoke of the coming of War. In fact - as he points out - in early 1914 both England and Germany thought a more peaceful period was coming into being after the turmoil of the previous few years. Massie's description of the aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is clear and concise and shows the duplicitous role played by Germany, as well as their complete inflexibility regarding their plans for war; a fatal, and dare I state foolish, mistake.

As a narrative history of the time, well fleshed-out with good character portraits and explication, I can recommend this book. As a ground-breaking piece of history, it doesn't add much to what already exists.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Retribution by Max Hastings

Retribution : the Battle for Japan 1944-45 by Max Hastings

New York: Vintage Books, 2007                  ISBN 9780307275363

Max Hastings and Antony Beevor have become the doyens of World War II history in the early Twenty-First Century. Retribution is an interesting concept; an overall look at the final twelve months of the entire Eastern War. How to tackle such an immense task is a valid question, which Hastings has answered by looking at topics in turn. He begins with the summit held at Hawaii in July 1944 between Nimitz, MacArthur and Roosevelt, where the future of US strategy for the war was confirmed. Hastings sets the scene in this chapter, briefly covering the flow of the War to this stage, and laying out for the reader the tensions that existed between the Allies, and within the US itself.

His chapters then range from Burma, the Philippines, the Island Campaigns (focusing on Iwo Jima), the Nationalist Chinese, Prisoners of War, the Communist Chinese, the bombing offensive, and finally the atomic bomb and Russian offensive in Manchuria. While he writes well and at times eloquently about specific incidents, he also develops some themes throughout the book that are worth discussing.

The first theme is that of logistics, supply and technology. Early in the book, Hastings repeats the astonishing statistic that for every four tons of supplies shipped by the US to its armed forces, Japan shipped two pounds to theirs. While America realised the importance of supply, Japan didn't, and Hastings points out that the Japanese never came to grips with the idea that supply was just as important as the fighting quality of their troops.

America not only won the supply battle, but also the technology battle, and Hastings shows that more than in previous wars, improvements in technology, often gained at great expense, sometimes drove policy. Having spent a fortune on developing the B29, the US felt they had to find a way to use it. Enter Curtis LeMay, who changed the precision bombing tactics favoured by the USAAF up until 1944 to area incendiary bombing, the success of which meant some post-fact justification, given the previously espoused aversion to bombing civilian areas. Hastings' chapter on the atomic bomb is also instructive in this respect, with the political leaders not really grasping the World-changing nature of the device before it was used, but with the amount of money and effort required to create it part of the decision-making process. Hastings is also aware of the politics behind the decision to use the atomic bomb, with the US desire to win the war before the intervention of the Soviets certainly playing a part.

The friction between the Allies is a fascinating story, well-portrayed in this book. The US were very reluctant for the Colonial Powers to take up their former territories after the War, to the extent that they refused to help the French in Indo-China, while Britain and Australia for differing reasons were critical of the US efforts to sideline their input to Japan's defeat. The games played by the Nationalists in China eventually saw them lose the whole-hearted backing of the US, as the latter country began to fully realise the corruption and ineffectiveness of Chiang's regime.

The conflict within the US armed forces and government is also well-covered by Hastings. MacArthur was in many ways a loose cannon: his narcissism led to many a failure, but his popularity back home meant he couldn't be relieved of command. Hastings paints the re-taking of the Philippines as more wasteful than it should have been, with the destruction of Manila essentially a by-product of MacArthur's vanity. Hastings has little time for MacArthur as a battle commander, and no time for his publicity-seeking or politicking. He also deprecates Halsey for his error in pursuing the Japanese carrier decoy at Leyte Gulf, which Hastings puts down to Halsey wanting to one-up Spruance. There is no love lost either for Mountbatten, whom Hastings sees as out of his depth. In fact the only Allied commander whom Hastings admires is Slim, all the while acknowledging that Burma was in many respects a sideshow of the War.

And what of the Japanese commanders and government? It was clear to many if not most, that the War was lost in 1944, so why did they fight on? Honour and "Face" were certainly part of the equation, but also the mistaken belief that if they inflicted massive losses on the Allies, Japan might be able to reach a negotiated truce. Their lack of understanding of Allied feelings and indeed self-knowledge of their own actions in the War led them to believe - even as late as July 1945 - that they could reach an armistice that would allow them to keep Manchuria, Formosa and Korea and not be occupied. The combined blows of the atomic attacks and the Soviet invasion of Manchuria gave the Emperor a way of forcing a surrender onto his government while maintaining some sort of "Face", and a way to "endure the unendurable". The devastation that such wrong-headedness unleashed on their own people and country almost beggars belief, but as the title of this book suggests, perhaps it was a just punishment for what the Japanese perpetrated across most of Asia.

This book is certainly a must-read for anyone interested in the history of World War II: there is much more within its pages than this review has covered, all of it interesting and well-written.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead

Gallipoli by Alan Moorehead

London: Aurum, 2007 (first published 1956)           ISBN 9781845132392

It's appropriate on this day of all days that this is the book I'm reviewing. One hundred and two years ago, at dawn on 25 April 1915, the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps landed on the Gallipoli Peninsula as part of an Entente amphibious landing designed to take Turkey out of the War. The venture was a disaster for the Entente, as well as for the Ottoman Empire.

Moorehead's narrative of the campaign is still - sixty years after it was written - the ideal entree to the story for someone who knows little of what went on, or perhaps has a too Australian-centric view of what occurred in the eight months Entente troops were invested on the Peninsula.

While the landings in April and the battles thereafter were the blooding of the ANZACs, the preponderance of the landing forces were British and French troops, including many Indian and African regiments.

Moorehead's over-arching theme is one of missed opportunities on sea and land, and of poor decision making. It was British and French diplomatic bungling that brought Turkey into the war on the side of Germany rather than the Entente powers. Once this had occurred the Navy decided that if it could force the Narrows, Turkey would capitulate. They were not far from the truth in this - Moorehead paints a scene of a fractured and fragile Turkish government run by the Young Turks, and how the sight of a British battlefleet in the Istanbul Roads probably would have brought an armistice.

To achieve this outcome the ships needed to get through the Bosphorus. They so nearly succeeded. Just at the moment the Turks could no longer defend the straits with guns or mines, the British - shaken by their losses - decided that they needed an army to take the Peninsula by land, as they couldn't take it by sea alone. The respite allowed the Turks to recover somewhat while the British planned the landing.

The fact that the British did this planning in three weeks explains in part its eventual failure, although to get so many men ashore at all - it was until that time the largest amphibious operation ever - was a kind of success. The overall commander of the force, Hamilton, had a part in the failure as well. A man of poetic temperament and undoubted bravery, he was a leader who let his subordinates run their battles: a good trait, but Hamilton's lack of clear tactical objectives and orders led to much confusion on the battleground.

Despite the rushed planning and Hamilton's quirks, strategic victory on the first day was a near-run thing. Even though the ANZACs landed in the wrong place, and were faced with a maze of gullies and cliffs rather than the more easily sloping land they expected, some few managed to scale the heights before being thwarted at the last moment by Mustafa Kemal, whose ruthlessness and drive during the Campaign started him on the path to becoming Ataturk.

Although the beachhead was precarious, it held: the Entente forces were not strong enough to dislodge the Turks, and neither could the Turks repulse the invaders. The appalling loss of life that occurred during both the Entente and Turk attacks is chronicled well by Moorehead. The battles that have become the staple of Australian and New Zealand military history, such as Lone Pine, The Nek and others that have become bywords for bravery and sacrifice, are put into perspective by Moorehead by showing the greater moves that were going on around them. The landing at Suvla, which Lone Pine and The Nek supported, which was doomed to fail as Moorehead so clearly shows, was the last throw of the dice by the Entente; and after the failure recriminations began.

Both Hamilton and Churchill (who was the initial supporter of the Naval plan) paid the price of failure with their careers and for many other commanders Gallipoli was their last battlefront posting. For many more though it was a schooling ground of great importance, not the least of these "students" being Monash, Blamey and Morshead.

When the decision to evacuate was made it was done so with a heavy heart, and with the expectation that evacuating might cost anything up to forty thousand casualties. The fact that the entire Peninsula was evacuated with only a couple of dozen deaths was a triumph of careful planning: a terrible irony, as careful planning before the campaign began may have led to victory. As it was, the Entente gained nothing and lost tremendously both in men and material.

The Turks won a great victory, but still lost their Empire.

Moorehead tells this story exceedingly well: as a seasoned war correspondent he can portray battle with a skill that made his byline famous in World War Two, and as an Australian he brings much feeling to the description of ANZAC in particular. His ability to sum up a person or a stiuation in a few well-chosen phrases is remarkable and goes a long way to making his books compulsive reading. His choice of primary material is always apt and to the point, and while reading this book it occurred to me that Antony Beevor owes much to Moorehead.

If you want to know more about this episode of the Great War, this book is the perfect place to start.

[In respectful memory of Privates S.B. McGregor M.M. 2nd Field Ambulance, who landed at ANZAC Cove on 25 April 1915, and his brother James, 3rd Battalion, killed at Lone Pine in August 1915]

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Pursuit : the sinking of the Bismark by Ludovic Kennedy

Pursuit : the sinking of the Bismark by Ludovic Kennedy

London : Fontana, 1975                       ISBN 0006340148

The Bismark was the pride of the Nazi German Navy. At over 800 feet long, she was the largest battleship in the world, and with her sweeping bow and elegant superstructure, she was certainly one of the most beautiful. At the time of her sinking in May 1941, she was also one of the newest big gun ships afloat, and one of the most potent. So when the Royal Navy heard that she had escaped the Baltic sea along with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, they were very worried.

Ludovic Kennedy's account of the hunt, chase, and final destruction of the Bismark is short and to the point - he jumps straight into the planning for operation Rheinubung, the Nazi plan to send surface raiders into the Atlantic to disrupt the allied convoys from America - and he unveils a few little-known facts along the way.

The Germans didn't manage to keep their breakout secret very long. The Swedish cruiser Gotland spotted the Bismark and Prinz Eugen and their attendant destroyers before they had passed The Skagerrak, and thanks to sympathetic members of the Swedish Navy, the Naval Attache at the British Embassy was radioing the information to the Sea Lords the same day.

The key to Bismark's success was her ability to get into the open Atlantic unscathed, and hopefully un-noticed. That this didn't happen was partly due to good intelligence work, and some mystifying decisions by the German Admiral Lutyens, who spent a day and a night in the fjords of Norway, which gave the British time to get some ships together to track her down.

Lutyens' failure to refuel while in Norway turned out to be his greatest error, but more of that later on.

Kennedy tells this story in an almost cinematic way, constantly changing viewpoints from the Allied forces, to the Germans, and back to land HQ of both sides. This style allows him to cover all the bases, and to keep building tension until the final denouement. He often relies on an "I was there" style, describing what crew might have been doing or even thinking during the interminable hours of the chase (Kennedy was a junior officer on HMS Tartar, a ship in Captain Vian's destroyer flotilla that harassed Bismark the night before she was sunk). Sometimes his turn of phrase is a little clunky, but his description of the last moments of HMS Hood send chills up the spine, and his description of the chaos on Bismark just before she went down is horrifying - there is no romance of the sea here.

Because he was a naval officer and a journalist, Kennedy has been able to combine his innate knowledge of the sea with his ability to find facts, and come up with some fascinating insights into - as is emblazoned on the cover of my paperback edition - "one of the great sea sagas of all time". For instance it is little known that one of the key allied weapons in the search for the Bismark - their Catalina float planes - were crewed by US airmen seven months before the US declared war on the Nazis. Another amazing fact is that a German U Boat, U 556, actually sailed in between the two capital ships of the Allied "Force H" - HMS Renown and HMS Ark Royal - but could not do a single thing as she had run out of torpedoes! Shortly after this incident the Ark Royal launched the torpedo bomber raid that crippled the Bismark's steering gear and sealed her fate.

The only reason those planes were able to reach Bismark was owing to her lack of fuel. She had to get to the French coast, and because she had not refueled when she had the chance, she couldn't move further into the Atlantic to outrun her pursuers. If she'd had that freedom of movement she might have survived, as she would not only have avoided the bombers, but also the battleships that finally sealed her fate. HMS King George V and HMS Rodney were perilously short of fuel themselves, and had to head straight for port before the blazing hulk of the Bismark was finally dispatched by the torpedoes of the allied destroyer flotilla. In some ways this fact make the fate of the Bismark even more tragic.

The story of the Bismark is indeed one of the great stories of naval warfare. Two great ships were lost, along with thousands of lives, and this engagement turned out to be the last great battle fought by ships of the line. Ludovic Kennedy has brought the story alive, and if you think you might like to know more about this interlude of World War Two - the entire saga from Bismark's sailing to sinking took only nine days - it's well worth hunting out this book in your local library or second-hand book dealer.

Cheers for now, from
A View Over the Bell