At War at Sea: Sailors And Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century: Sailors and Naval Warfare in the 20th Century - Hardcover

Spector, Ronald

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0713996013 ISBN 13: 9780713996012

Publisher: Allen Lane, 2001

Synopsis

AT WAR AT SEA traces (from 1905 to the present) the story of the world's great navies and the crews that manned them. In a series of brilliant set pieces Spector brings to life the battles that have defined the modern age: from such giant battles as Jutland and Midway to the 'routine' terrors of the U-Boat wars. He is equally strong on such harrowing naval encounters as the British evacuation of Crete or the American 'river war' in Vietnam.

About this title

Review:

You couldn't accuse Ronald Spector, author of At War at Sea of poor timing. Just under one hundred years ago, the Russian and Japanese navies were slugging it out at the Battle of Tsushima; in late 2001 the American and British navies were gathered in the Gulf raining cruise missiles down on Afghanistan. As an example of just how much naval warfare has changed in the past century, it couldn't be bettered; from bombarding one another with 12-inch shells, the modern battleship has become a hi-tech resource most usually deployed against targets on land or in the air. Ronald Spector is a history professor at George Washington University in the United States, and so it comes as little surprise that he has a tendency to view the world with an American bias. Each chapter of this book details a key naval battle that influenced the way in which war at sea was fought, most of which happen to have involved the US. We start with the Battle of Tsushima, before moving on to Jutland, the principal engagement of the First World War, but a few Second World War episodes apart, the focus remains largely on the American involvement; for instance the Falklands crisis is passed off in just over a page, the same amount of space accorded to the shooting down of a civilian aircraft by the USS Vincennes.

Not that the book is any the worse for this, as Spector's central thesis of the changing technological and strategic values of the navy remains persuasive; it's just that British readers may have difficulties recalling the finer points of US naval actions in the Vietnam War. Spector, though, is an engaging historian, not least because he is acutely aware that regardless of the sophistication of the hardware, there is always room for human error. In the1990s the Vincennes incident was caused by critical errors, and the century has already got off to a bad start with a civilian target in Afghanistan having been taken out through someone mistyping the co-ordinates. As Spector points out, with the best will and the best brains in the world you can never rule out the cock-up theory of history.--John Crace

Synopsis:

Modern naval warfare began in the misty waters of the Korean Strait in May 1905 in an apocalyptic battle between the Russian and Japanese fleets. To universal astonishment the Russian fleet was annihilated. Of the 38 russian ships engaged, 33 were either sunk or captured. Ronald Spector's "At War At Sea" traces, from 1905 to the present, the story of the world's great navies and the crews who manned them. In a series of brilliant re-creations, Spector brings to life the battles that have defined the modern age: from such giant set-pieces as Jutland and Midway to the "routine" terrors of the U-Boat wars. He is equally strong on such harrowing naval encounters as the British evacuation of Crete or the American "river war" in Vietnam. What sets this book apart from others in the field is Spector's fascination both with the changing hardware of naval war and with the pressures put on the sailors who had to cope with this new technology. "At War At Sea" illuminates the huge changes that a century has made in ship and weapon design, but above all it shows that it is the quality of the men perched inside these armoured giants that has created victory or defeat.

About this edition

• Publisher: Allen Lane
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0713996013
• ISBN 13: 9780713996012
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 496