Armed Bluejackets Ashore: US Navy Landing Guns 1850-1942
320 pages
Andy Field
I enjoyed reading Armed Bluejackets Ashore, which covers the US Navy’s transition from the Civil War, through the Spanish-American War and into the 20th century, ending just at the outbreak of the Second World War. There are examples of naval landing parties going ashore in the Civil War, in the Philippines, China, and Vera Cruz, an intervention I knew little about and found fascinating, and the evolution of the Marine Corps from ships’ guards to a landing force is also covered.
My initial opinion was that the book meandered between these topics, at one time discussing the technicalities behind the landing guns, at another detailing the activities of the various landing parties, without really holding together.
The Prefactory, (or Introduction), sets the scene, with an account of a fictional landing, with a cadet and his 3” landing gun and crew going ashore in support of a naval landing party. Then follow two chapters about the Dahlgren boat howitzer, the USN’s first landing gun, how the gun was used, ashore, on boats and aboard ship, followed by a chapter on their howitzers during the Civil War.
Following a similar chapter on naval landing parties going ashore at Shinmiyangyo, Korea, in 1871, the period 1870-1880 and the development of a new, breech-loading, landing howitzer are discussed, along with the 1885 Panama Expedition. Chapters five & six then cover the small arms used by naval landing parties, and the continued issues the USN faced in developing rifles and naval landing guns for use ashore.
The chapter, ‘American Imperial Adventures’, covers US naval landings in Hawaii, Cuba, the Philippines, China, and Samoa, followed by a chapter detailing the development of new guns for use on the ships of America’s “New Navy”. Subsequent chapters cover the transformation of the marines into an Advanced Base Force, the US intervention in Mexico in 1914, and the part played by naval landing parties in the US involvement in World War 1 including the Intervention in Russia. Chapter 12 takes us back to a discussion about guns, this time the development of the Mark XI, and Mark XII, 3” landing guns, as well as the continuing use of naval guns in China in the 1920s.
US warships, including aircraft carriers, were still being issued with landing guns and equipment for naval landing parties well into the 1930s, some only losing them just before America’s entry into World War 2. The swansong of US landing parties was probably seen during Operation TORCH, and the largely unsuccessful attempts to land raiders from the destroyer-transports Dallas, Cole and Bernadou at Casablanca. (HMSs Walney and Hartland at Oran, and HMS Malcolmand Broke at Algiers attempted similar assaults. All three attempts were roughly handled by the French defenders).
As Mr Lawry writes in his conclusion, “As the war wore on, American sailors participated in many additional missions ashore, on beaches or elsewhere, whether as boat handlers, scouts, raiders, or underwater demolition team members…but they were no longer part of traditional landing parties….” The marines had evolved into the amphibious assault force in a way far beyond its earlier experiences. Sadly, for the reader, this is “… beyond the scope of this work…”. That is a phrase the appears more than once, which left me feeling that the story was sometimes left incomplete, but which would have inevitably resulted in a much larger book.
The book is extremely well illustrated throughout, but I felt as if I needed some clearly labelled diagrams to help with my understanding of how the guns worked. One thing I personally found distracting was Mr Lawry’s habit of, when mentioning a ship, he followed this with the main armament in brackets, for no readily apparent reason, other than the book featured guns.
As I stated at the start of my review, I enjoyed reading this book, but I have to say that it left me slightly puzzled. It was not just about landing guns, although there was a lot of detailed information about their development. It was not just about landing parties, although I found some of the most interesting parts of the book were about them, and would rather have read more on their activities, and ignored the development of the guns completely. Importantly, would I recommend readers of the NR buy this book? No, not at £40. That seemed a bit more than I would want to pay for a book that, whilst enjoyable to read, didn’t quite hit the mark.
