The Air War at Sea in the Second World War

285 pages

Dr James Bosbotinis

Having read Martin W Bowman’s The Men Who Flew the Vought F4U Corsair (reviewed online on 6 June 2023), and given the subject of this book, one was anticipating a rewarding read. However, as will be discussed, this book has some significant flaws. The author, Martin W. Bowman, has written extensively on particularly aviation history, and in The Air War at Sea in the Second World War, focuses on the maritime contribution to the British and US war efforts, including both sea- and land-based airpower, encompassing flying boats through to carrier-borne fighters and Tallboy-armed Lancasters delivering the coup de grace to the German battleship Tirpitz.

The book follows a broadly chronological approach, across 15 chapters, covering, first, the primarily British use of maritime airpower in Europe, before turning attention to the US in the Pacific. This covers major episodes including the Norwegian campaign, the strike on Taranto, the attacks on the Illustrious in January1941, the hunt for the Bismarck, the Channel Dash, operations against the Tirpitz, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway and around the Solomons, as well as the operations of the British Pacific Fleet. There is also an interesting chapter on Dutch operations in the first months of the war against Japan in and around what is now Indonesia. Notably, the Battle of Leyte Gulf is only accorded a footnote at the end of a chapter on the Battle of the Philippine Sea, which is most surprising in a book on the air war at sea. Similarly, the author suggests in mid-1944, “Numerically, Japan possessed a much larger carrier force than the United States”; in his Leyte Gulf, Mark E. Stille  notes that, ahead of the US invasion of Saipan in June 1944, Japan had amassed a force of “nine carriers and over 400 embarked aircraft”. In contrast, the US Navy’s Fast Carrier Task Force consisted of “15 fleet and light carriers with almost 900 embarked aircraft”.

This highlights a central issue with this book: the number of both editing/proof reading mistakes, and errors. There are areas of repetition, including a superfluous footnote; in the chapter on the Bismarck, there is an apparent mixing up of the account of operations from the carriers Victorious and Ark Royal;  various typos (for example, Admiral Sir Bertram ‘Ramsey’ instead of Ramsay); ships are mis-classified – the battleship Duke of York is referred to as a battlecruiser, the US battleship Washington as an aircraft carrier; and Svalbard is referred to as “a group of Norwegian islands in the north Atlantic”. On page 92, the author states “It remains unclear to this day whether Bismarck sank as the result of British gunfire or was scuttled by her crew”; in his The Fleet Air Arm and the War in Europe 1939-1945, David Hobbs cites David Mearns, who led a 2001 expedition to the wreck of the Bismarck, and noted that “Our investigation along both her starboard and port sides shows most definitely that Bismarck was mortally wounded by the British torpedoes”. It appears from the text, that Bowman uses Gerhard Junack’s account of the sinking of the Bismarck as source material, however as Iain Ballantyne writes in his Bismarck: 24 Hours to Doom, “Gerhard Junack maintained after the war that, as he watched the Bismarck turn turtle and sink, there were no signs of torpedo damage, but wreck surveys since the conflict have found that is not true”.

Whilst the book draws heavily on the accounts of veterans, which, for the most part, adds to the text, it can also be problematic. A quotation on page 267 from a letter sent home by a Royal Navy Corsair pilot in May 1945, although reflecting the attitudes of the time would now be considered an example of racism. There are other errors or aspects of the text that are somewhat flawed, for example, on page 190, the author writes that “Langley, Ranger, Wasp, Hornet and  Yorktown, would form the back of the Pacific Fleet from 1941 to 1945”: he subsequently, and correctly refers to the loss of carriers such as Yorktown at Midway: in contrast, the Langley – sunk in February 1942, is referred to in its later incarnation as an Independence-class light carrier, but without mentioning that it is a different ship. Unfortunately, the various errors, flaws, and typos do detract from the quality of the book, which would otherwise be a good read. There is much in The Air War at Sea in the Second World War which would be of interest to members of the NR, but it cannot be recommended given the problems with the text.