Vincent P. O'HaraReseñas

I have rated this book 4 stars because of how well researched and detailed it is. If you are interested in naval world war two history, I think you will thoroughly enjoy this book. However, while I know a lot about WW2 I am not familiar with a lot of naval terms so I found it quite difficult to follow at times and I had to read it slowly. This book made me feel very ignorant at first but I know a lot more about the Mediterranean battles after finishing it.

Excellent. This is how you write a short pictorial ship monograph. Prinz Eugen is described from building to demise as an atomic target. The ship is placed within the context of heavy cruisers of other nations with its pros and cons. The operational history is tight yet complete (especially the less covered 1945 period of shore bombardment.

Though overshadowed by the larger battles in the Atlantic and the Pacific, the conflict in the Mediterranean, as Vincent O’Hara states in the beginning of this book, was “World War II’s longest air-land-sea campaign,” one that involved five of the world’s six largest navies. His book, an account of the clash between the surface forces, offers a balanced examination of the conflict that corrects many of the misconceptions which clutter our understanding of the conflict there. What emerges is a very different take on the war in the Mediterranean, one that provides far better insight into how the war developed and changed as a result.

Foremost among the myths that O’Hara pursues is that of Italian incompetence, which he dispels convincingly by noting their success in achieving their primary strategic objectives throughout most of the war, as well as the tenacious challenge they posed to the British. Though the Germans are traditionally seen as the Axis power which did the bulk of the heavy lifting in the region, O’Hara disputes this as well, noting that the Kriegsmarine’s combat performance there was in fact inferior to that of the much-disparaged Regia Marina. Nor are the British and French spared from O’Hara’s revisionary analysis, as he makes a strong case for the French fleet’s ongoing effort to preserve their nation’s sovereignty while arguing that the British only triumphed in the Mediterranean as a result of the infusion of American forces into the region in the fall of 1942.

O’Hara’s points are presented in a convincing and forthright manner, one that aids the book in challenging traditional attitudes about the war there. Yet it suffers from two significant flaws. The first is O’Hara’s focus on the surface actions, a curious decision which marginalizes vital components of the sea war. Even the famous air raid on the Italian naval base on Taranto, one of the turning points of naval history, is addressed in a mere two sentences that offer little consideration of the broader impact of the raid. O’Hara’s almost exclusive reliance upon secondary and published sources is the other major limitation of his work, as his trodding of ground well covered by others limits the real novelty of his argument. Such deficiencies limit the impact of what is otherwise a provocative reexamination of the war in the Mediterranean, one that every student of naval conflict in the Second World War can read for enjoyment as well as enlightenment.

As is the case of most of O'Hara's studies the particular attraction is the detailed examination of the operational matters at hand that he provides. This is certainly the most careful accounting I have yet seen of how the French defended their neutrality, and it was a sufficiently stiff fight that one is grateful that there was no emergency effort to crash Northwest Europe in 1942; it would have simply been a bigger Dieppe. This is not to say that the critics of a Mediterranean adventure didn't have a point, as nothing short of full-fledged assault on France was really going to do the job of beating the Germans, but sometimes you have no good options.

Another plus of this book, because O'Hara takes the French seriously, is to consider what the real French options were, whereupon the notion that Vichy should have just jumped at the Allied intervention looks much less much inviting considering the realities. As dubious as the regime of Laval and Petain now looks, one can appreciate their desire to save an at least semi-sovereign France from a full-blown Axis occupation, with all that entailed. O'Hara's further suggestion is that Admiral Darlan deserves some appreciation from a distance, as it took his influence to allow for a full-blown French participation in the liberation of France.

A crisp analysis of the the climactic convoy battles of 1942 wherein it's demonstrated that a cross-over point had been reached in the comparative abilities of the Royal Navy and Regia Marina, in which the British forces had essentially lost the war of attrition to the Italians; though this is perhaps a commentary on how Britain's world-wide commitments had caught up with her whereas the Italians had only one naval theater that mattered. O'Hara also muses on some of the ironies of history, particularly how the much celebrated North African campaign was really a sideshow for all involved, except that in 1940 the British had to go on the offensive SOME WHERE and taking on the Italians was their best option. The problem is that fighting in North Africa was arguably the choice that meant the empire East of Suez could not be defended, with all the history that follows in the wake of that debacle.

If one is looking for a good overview of the naval side of the Great War this is very much the book for you, as the editors have seen to the contributors providing a nice balance between detail and conciseness, aided by making sure that the same general format is used in all the essays. This makes it easier to compare and contrast the varied national experiences.

The technical capability overviews, the maps and the battle descriptions make it an exciting book. "The U.S. Navy against the Axis" is outstanding, once one accepts its titular limitations. It sounds a bit strange for international ears to read that "the war was now fifteen months old" at the end of 1943. While the book concentrates on the US war effort, some acknowledgment that the US arrived late to the party would have helped enlighten some US readers to the wider world. Some context on the early British-German experience with the passing dinosaurs, the cruisers and other big ships carrying big guns, as well as some information about the overall sum of surface battle missions would have been helpful as well. The author also underplays the enormous re-supply and logistics differential between Japan and the US.

The book makes a great case for the importance of first class technology (torpedoes, radar), air dominance and trained leadership crews. Dominating in two out of three of these factors allowed the Japanese navy to perform far above expectations. The US countered the Japanese by a) materially swamping them and b) by not playing the surface battle game. Planes and submarines meant the end of the big surface fleets. Recommended.

An excellant survey and analysis of how the surface forces of the USN performed in the war against Japan (mostly), with success being attributed not just to weight of metal and superior logistics, but to a willingness to be self-critical in regards to doctrine and operations. In this respect the battle off Samar becomes the USN's masterpiece of the war, as an unexceptional formation of basically auxiliary vessels is able to inflict savage damage on the remaining elite force of the Imperial Japanese Navy due to better doctrine and training.

O'Hara ends his book on the plea that the need remains for honest self-criticism as a foundation of success, as compared to the example of how the IJN squandered its advantages due to the failure to rise above stereotypical thinking and self-serving assumptions.

The particular value of this survey of tactical and operational naval warfare in the Mediterranean during World War II is that it brings a certain balance to analyzing the performances of the combatants. In particular, it makes a useful corrective to the superficial appearance of British superiority, when for much of the period in question it was the Italians who were maintaining a certain strategic ascendancy, despite arguably having more structural impediments to success.

That said, the author loses me a little bit at the end when he makes the argument that Britain "beggared itself fighting" in what turned out to be a secondary theater. Perhaps, but then one is really obligated to offer a counterfactual as to what strategic option the British should have pursued instead. Perhaps finishing the Italians off in North Africa before getting involved in the Balkans?