News, Articles and Comment

BRE. The latest book review is now available. It considers a book examining the development of the Gaudalcanal-Solomons campaign through March-October 1943 in the southwest Pacific.

BRE. The latest book reviews are now available. One considers a reprint of a 1946 memoir of convoy and corvette operations in the Battle of the Atlantic. The other looks at the US approach the neutralisation of the Japanese bastion of Truk in the Pacific during the Second World War.

BRE. The latest book review is now available. It considers the official Staff History of the Arctic Convoys with an added introduction by G H Bennett and foreword by Vice-Admiral Sir Simon Lister.

Ed. In his analysis of strategic lessons to be drawn from the Second World War [40/4. p. 432], Captain S. W. Roskill, RN, wrote, “It took much ‘sad experience’ to show that Malta could have been properly defended and could have been kept in use as a base.” Roger Plumtree reconsiders the Maltese narrow margin with the question in mind: was Roskill wrong? A 15 minute read.

Ed. The author examines the leadership styles of Vice Admiral Sir Peter Gretton, Captain Donald Macintyre, and Captain Frederick ‘Johnny’ Walker during their Battle of the Atlantic convoy commands. Cultivating a high degree of trust among well-trained officers and crews enabled battle-winning delegation and initiative to develop. A 40 minute read.

Ed. David Waters concluded his 1995-1996 series of reflections on the Battle of the Atlantic [84/2 & 84/3] by returning to the question of convoy ‘laws’ and his concern that ideological assumptions and abstract thought concerning future operations would once again take precedence over the scientific conclusions he had reached forty years before. A 25 minute read.

Ed. The author reflects on Admiral Sir Henry Leach’s extensive career, highlighting his perseverance during the Second World War and the Falklands War, and his zeal for the tenacious defence of his particular corner, despite personal and national tragedies. A 15 minute read.

Ed. In this second instalment of his reflections on the Battle of the Atlantic [84/1, p. 68], former Naval Staff historian David Waters, wary of the pernicious abuses of language so frequent in military affairs, asked the difficult question of why the convoy lessons of the First World War were not learnt before the Second. Republished here as part of the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic. A 20 minute read.

Ed. In 1995 staff historian David Waters began publishing in the NR [83/4, p. 349] a series of commentaries on the Battle of the Atlantic, a subject he had mastered while working on The Defeat of the Enemy Attack upon Shipping (1957). He was inspired in this case by the renewed naval history discourse, evident in a review of S. Howarth and D. Law, eds., The Battle of the Atlantic 1939-1945 (1994), the International Naval Conference on the battle held in Liverpool in 1993, and related writings in the NR [83/1, p. 84 & 83/2, p. 159]. Republished here as part of the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic. A 15 minute read.