Reviewed by Cmdr. Peter B. Mersky, USNR (Ret.)
Authors seldom address this subject when writing about military aviation in World War II, but particularly U.S. Naval Aviation aboard aircraft carriers far away from shore-based support. This new book is written by a serving captain and former SH-60 helicopter aviator, who is now an instructor professor at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, with a Ph.D. in American history, with special emphasis in naval history.
While it is of great interest, the text tends to be somewhat long-winded and in drastic need of attention to terminology, such as the use of “bi-wing” when referring simply to “biplanes.” Nonetheless, the author describes the development of much-needed organizations that served the growing fleet of aircraft carriers, especially following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, that thrust America into what had largely been a “European War.” However, the war was spreading, indeed, taking over most of the world thanks to the success of Nazi Germany and the Japanese Empire and their allies.
The occasional inclusion of little-known aircraft such as the Curtiss F4C-1, a one-off type that really did not belong as a main type of the period shown, particularly in a graph on page 25, is an example, and I wonder just where he found it. The F4C-1 was a minor development of the short-service (circa 1922-1927) TS-1, which was designed specifically for America’s first carrier, the USS Langley (CV-1). The Langley was originally a collier named Jupiter, built in the days when ships used coal as a source of power.
Fisher mentions the Grumman F3F, the last biplane fighter from that company, but not the earlier F2F, nor the fact that the following F4F-3 Wildcat had fixed wings and only four .50 caliber machine guns in the wings, or that the F4F-4 incorporated innovative folding wings with three .50 caliber guns in each wing. The F4F-4 was the only Navy and Marine Corps fighter available to meet the onrushing Japanese after Pearl Harbor on anything approaching equal terms until mid-1943 when Grumman’s F6F Hellcat went into combat in late August 1943. All of which added to growing maintenance and supply-chain concerns in the early months of the Pacific war aboard ship or at far-flung Marine shore bases like Wake Island (late December 1941) and Guadalcanal (mid-1942 through early 1943).
A lengthy discussion concerns the developing requirements of maintaining and repairing the first aircraft that entered early military service, as well as the same problems during the First World War using the large number of Naval Air Reserve mechanics who had been called to active duty. However, little consideration had been given to the growing need for even more enlisted maintainers because of building the fleet in Europe and what it foreshadowed for American needs if the Navy was eventually drawn into the conflict, which we now know was inevitable after Pearl Harbor.
By 1941, the Navy had established a better-defined system of training sailors as skilled seamen who were learning a trade in specific areas in their rate, or rank. It was a somewhat complicated sequence at first, but it eventually paved the way to a highly-skilled system that became what we know today with even more complex systems and aircraft.
Fisher certainly had his work cut out for him, digesting all his obvious research, then describing the training in different schools, accompanied by thousands of student sailors in different geographic locations. The training eventually produced the amazing number of highly-skilled mechanics in such a short time who went out with the many air groups in their many carriers and other air-capable ships that were rolling down the ways at different yards to service all the different aircraft that were slowly but surely bringing the war closer to Japan.
We are reminded of what Japanese Adm. Yamamoto feared on the day of the attack on Pearl Harbor: that the attack, though an immediate success, was really doomed from its conception if and when America could martial its great industrial might.
In another related but growing vital area, the increasing tempo of all U.S. military recruitment, as well as production, quickly saw the formation of groups of female mechanics to service the rising number of aircraft and their internal systems that could not be addressed only by existing groups of men, especially those squadrons at sea, and in combat. Increasing the number of women to serve in shore-based installations could release men to go to squadrons aboard carriers and other air-capable ships.
An unusual, then-little-known aspect of this interesting note was the establishment of female units, eventually becoming large organizations collectively titled WAVES—Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service—considered a combined unit of the Navy, which included a second membership, Women Marines. A similar membership developed in England, taking the acronym WREN (Women’s Royal Naval Service). Members underwent training in normally male roles. Finally, “black” units in the U.S. trained in the same positions but were generally kept in shore-based billets, ostensibly maintaining the country’s segregated policies.
The book’s single folio of photographs is fine, but a second collection would have been useful, with the emphasis on the various personalities—American, Allied and enemy—the writer mentions throughout the text.
Oddly, the “list of Illustrations” on page XI shows tables, not photos, that are in the single folio of photos. I have never seen such a mistaken listing. For an expensive discussion of the magnitude of this book, one collection of 22 black-and-white photos, and including one good color picture on the cover is not anywhere sufficient to support the narrative text. Surely, there are more photographs available of personalities mentioned on both sides as well as more images of the many different types of aircraft that were such a part of the growing number of squadrons and air groups that fills out the burgeoning number of carriers and other air-capable ships of the book’s title.
When Fisher begins noting TBM Avengers, while addressing FM Wildcats (only in an endnote) that filled out air groups in the growing number of small-carriers, especially the mass-produced escort carrier (CVE), he fails to adequately explain that the automobile giant General Motors was tasked to build these particular aircraft—hence the TBM and FM designations—so Grumman could concentrate on building the F6F Hellcat that was changing the war in the air against such enemy aircraft as the veteran Mitsubishi Zero (and perhaps noting that Mitsubishi competitor Nakajima was doing the same thing in Japan). As always, this is where a knowledgeable and alert editor would and should have been a major part of a book’s team.
As the book moves toward its conclusion, the author describes the development of the Aviation Supply Office (ASO) and Beneficial Suggestion Programs, known as “Benny Suggs,” which fill out two interesting developments that may be remembered by readers of a more recent generation. As the author notes, the ASO concept created a veritable “Sears catalog” (page 159) of what was available from the Aviation Supply Depot (ASD) that was established in October 1944 as the far-flung fleets were supporting island-hopping campaign’s trek closer to the Japanese Home Islands.
Benny Suggs was a program intended to generate interest in individual members of the Navy to get personally involved by coming up with specific “inventions” resulting in monetary rewards from small value such as War Bonds to numbers as high as $5,000.
When referring to Japanese aircraft in WWII, the author uses “code names” the Allied code system developed in January 1942, but was not in general use until late 1942, a common error, or misconception by many authors, even those writing histories of a particular subject.
I have to say the worst error of the book—again, one that should have been definitely caught by an editor—involves an enlisted Navy technician who, while working on an SBD Dauntless on the flight deck during a Japanese attack jumped into its rear cockpit and unlimbered the dive bomber’s single .30 caliber machine gun to fire back at the enemy planes on Feb. 1, 1942. The author mistakenly uses the name “Devastator” to refer to the SBD. Devastator was actually the name of the Douglas TBD torpedo bomber that was still in use in some air groups in the early months of the war, and is mainly known for its role in the Battle of Midway in June 1942 when many of the TBDs in the battle were shot down, including all those of VT-8 flying from the USS Hornet (CV-8). He also notes the technician (whose name he apparently does not know but was, in fact, Machinist’s Mate Bruno Gaido) was firing 7.62mm bullets in a single machine gun, which is also an error I have never seen but was actually a size of bullet used in Europe, not the U.S., where a .30 caliber bullet was slightly more potent than the European round. Perhaps the author and editor might have been forgiven this error, but honestly, it indicates how much the degree of an editor’s knowledge by an editor is so important.
He compounds his error by confusing it with a similar action involving LSOs (Landing Signal Officers) aboard the USS Enterprise (Lt. James G. Daniels III and Lt. Robin M. Lindsey) months later, on Oct. 26, 1942, at the Battle of Santa Cruz, by which time, their SBDs were equipped with twin machine guns. So, there were actually two such incidents involving two different carriers, and an enlisted man in the first incident, two lieutenants in the second, and two different dates with nearly nine months between them.
While Fisher’s research and desire to describe several very intricate, often complicated aspects of carrier organization and operation is commendable, he often gets lost in the story and again should have had advantage of an equally dedicated and knowledgeable editor. Nevertheless, his research and assimilation of this important historical coverage into his narrative definitely adds to the overall story off how Navy sea-based units were able to keep their many aircraft and related systems functioning in the high-pressure combat deployments.