What Are You Currently Reading? 2016

**Backwards Observer** · 10-13-2016

Blitzed by Norman Ohler

Who Shot the Water Buffalo? by Ken Babbs

**Backwards Observer** · 11-02-2016

Europe's Inner Demons by Norman Cohn

A Quarter Century of War by David North

**Morgan** · 11-02-2016

"The Modern Mercenary" by Sean McFate

**Backwards Observer** · 11-09-2016

The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes

The Modern Mercenary by Sean McFate (sure, why not

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**Bill Moore** · 11-21-2016

As a ground pounder I knew little about the realities of Naval Combat beyond what I read in "To Rule the Waves" by Arthur Herman (another great book) and few historical readings where the Navy played a supporting role. After reading "Neptune's Inferno" I now have a great appreciation of the type of combat our sailors endured in the Pacific Ocean during WWII.

https://www.amazon.com/Neptunes-Infe...ct_top?ie=UTF8

Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal, by Jame D. Hornfisher

A fascinating account of the U.S. Navy's very closely run fight against the Japanese Navy in the vicinity of Guadalcanal. If the Navy would have lost this fight, the Marines would have likely been routed from Guadalcanal, leading to another Bataan Death March. This book provides a very detailed account of the various battles, to include the horrific carnage suffered in these battles.

There were parallels to the Civil War, when Lincoln was looking for a General who would fight the army, which he found in Grant. The Navy struggled for a short while to identify their combat leaders and those who could adapt to modern war, especially how to employ radar successfully. The battles themselves, especially at night, pointed to the difficult challenge of identifying friend and foe, and hesitation in shooting allowed the enemy to shoot first resulting in grave losses. The Navy learned quickly and adapted, and even on a shoestring budget they prevailed. This book tells that story well.

A couple of quotes from the book below.

“the Navy was reshuffling its decks and getting the footing it needed for this new kind of fight. Distinctions were being drawn between officers who were battle-minded and those whose savage instincts were reserved for advancing their own careers."

The battles
“It is continually proved that the ability of a single individual can make or break the entire situation.”

“Call it what you will, their navy [the Japanese] is exercising every function of control of the sea and every single resultant advantage is accruing to them. . . . The usual indecision, fear of a surface fight, trying to do it all by plane in the teeth of steadily repeated proofs that it could be done that way, has now brought us to this. We are forced into a surface fight.”

One lesson arrived swiftly: that war is the craft of putting ordnance on target decisively, and it is really nothing else. This lesson was being learned the world over in more than a dozen languages. The rigmarole of military life, after all, was designed in part to shape the character of men to respond effectively in that half second where a vital decision must rise instantly from habit.

"books could ever teach a man to respond effectively to the sensation of bulkhead shattering or a keel buckling underfoot. Think creatively, imaginatively, about what combat is really like, he hold his inquisitors, and what would you do if you lost control over your survival. You have to talk like that to your shipmates. There are no secrets here, but what you find is that some people are constitutionally unable to perform that way. Unless everybody does his job, and learns to do it under duress, there can be no fighting ship."

The way America handled its “first team” differed markedly from Japan’s. The Americans brought them home after inaugural experience under sustained fire and employed them to train the next wave. The Japanese left them on the front to fight until the inevitable happened, and saw their human assets waste away.

Having confronted the Imperial Japanese Navy’s skill, energy, persistence, and courage, Nimitz identified the key to victory: “training, TRAINING, and M-O-R-E T-R-A-I-N-I-N-G.” Improvements in doctrine, and its standardization of basic maneuvers helped make its victories possible after 1943.

Graff giving a memorial in the late 90s, “We were the youthful hope of the nation and promise of mankind. Taking the world as we found it, in our way and in our time, we tried to remake the world—more hope, more possibility, a much larger community for happiness. That is what, years ago, brought us to Guadalcanal.”