Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942

If volumes 2 and 3 reach the level of non-fiction story telling Ian Toll has achieved with "The Pacific Crucible," a new standard in Pacific War history will be set. This book is extremely well written and factual. Toll is blessed with the story teller's gift. This is a very solid work of non-fiction, but written with a style and cohesiveness that emphasizes the "story" in "history." There are no parts that are dry, or academic or drag. It is a thrilling tale very well told. I'm a history buff and have read a lot on World War II. One of the pleasure's of Toll's book is that even with that pedigree, I learned a lot. Not only about small actions like the Halsey raids with the Enterprise right after Pearl Harbor, but also great facets of the Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway (about which I have read a fair amount). This is a volume that explores all levels of the struggle. National and military leadership and personalities are plumbed as well as the actions of individual pilots, crew members and soldiers. Toll does an excellent job of leaving the strategic level and enlivening execution of plans with a strong focus on the individuals who actually had to do something other than write and pass along papers. His background on Japanese military thinking and training as well as a very good examination of the political morass that led Japan to war (and the always fascinating story of inter service rivalry in Japan) are about the best I've read and validate the decision making and actions of Japanese during the conflicts covered (validate in terms of their rationale becomes clear given their culture). Also satisfying is that the author has produced a vast number of individual Japanese remembrances and commentary on the events and actions covered in this tome. Having both sides perspectives rounds out the conflicts well. Yammato and Nimitz are the primary strategic level actors and the backgrounds on both are short enough to not lead the reader astray of a fast paced story, but long enough to give the reader a sense of the man. Also well done is Toll's examination and telling of the great role American code breakers played in giving the (in the early war) over-matched Americans an equalizer by having a good idea where and when the Japanese would move. I can't be more positive about this book. It is excellent history well-told. Definitely compares well with and is similar to Rick Atkinson's marvelous trilogy on the American Army in the ETO.

This is the first of three seminal books by Ian Toll on the largest major naval-driven war in history. He is meticulous on laying the groundwork for why the Japanese believed they needed to start the war in the Pacific, and guides the reader through those first agonizing 18 months for the U.S., Australia, and all the small island nations. Toll is one of the small number of historians who is also a gifted writer and researcher, and he rewards the interested reader on almost every page with conversations, strategy, tactics and discussions of the context and mood of the aggressors and the defenders. An amazing work. If he only wrote these three books and nothing else, his place would be set among historians in general, and naval historians specifically. Luckily for us, the man continues to write.

Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942. Ian W. Toll. 2011. Kindle ed. Writing this book was a massive undertaking and it is very well done. Toll used a vast number of sources but weaves it all together in a well-ordered story. He had to make choices, what to include, what to leave out, and he made the choices well. Reading the first pages, I thought it started out slow, with stuff about life at the Naval Academy, the influence of Alfred Thayer Mahan on naval strategic thought in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and Theodore Roosevelt. Then Toll jumps to Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. No mention of Japan’s invasion of China and Korea, the war in Europe, the ban on steel and oil exports to Japan, or Japan’s planning of the attack. Nothing on the failure of radar operators to recognize the attack. Toll focuses on the reactions of people in Honolulu, Pearl Harbor, and the White house. There are grizzly details of the wounded sailors. There are fine details of FDR’s study, how he began the afternoon, how the admirals, generals, and Eleanor were reacting. There are other books that give many more details about the Day of Infamy. Soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, Churchill arrived at the White House for a three-week visit, which Toll describes in great detail. Churchill’s overriding goal was to get Roosevelt committed to the war and victory. They worked out arrangements for how the Pacific war would be run by the Combined Chiefs of Staff, CCOS. Toll tells a lot about Admiral King. He is kinder to King than some historians. After the excitement of the Pearl Harbor attack, Toll backtracks to give many details about Yamamoto, Japan’s relations with the western powers before the war, the rivalry between Japan’s army and navy, and the increase of power of young Japanese officers. FDR ordered Nimitz to go to Oahu and take command, having fired Admiral Kimmel. Nimitz was promoted over many other admirals. He was the chief of the Bureau of Navigation, which was the navy’s personnel department. Toll gives good descriptions of Halsey’s attack on Japanese air bases in the Marshall Islands, the Japanese attacks on the Philippines, Singapore, and Java, mistakes made by MacArthur, and the Doolittle raid on Tokyo. The last half of the book is about the Battle of Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, including an excellent description of the intelligence work that broke the Japanese codes and identified the Japanese plan to attack Port Moresby, Midway and Alaska. The description of the Battle of Midway is mostly complete and very engaging with many details. I would have liked to have read more about why Stanhope Ring took the wrong heading and failed to find the enemy fleet, and why the torpedo bombers didn’t get protection from the F4F Wildcats. Maybe there just aren’t answers to those questions. There were two great scandals of the Battle of Midway. The American torpedo bomber attacks were failures, but not for lack of courage of the aircrews. The TBD bombers were slow and outdated, the torpedoes had insufficient range and often did not work, and the TBDs did not have fighter support. The bravery of the TBD crews, in spite of these shortcomings, was spectacular. Almost all of them died trying to attack the Japanese carriers. They contributed to the victory by keeping the Zeros and carriers occupied and distracted until the SBD dive bombers came in to kill the carriers. The other scandal is how Commander Joseph Rochefort was treated after the battle. He was in charge of Hypo, the Combat Intelligence Unit for the Pacific Command. Without his work on decoding messages, the battle would have been vastly different. After the battle, Captain John R. Redman and his elder brother, Rear Adm Joseph R. Redman, managed to take credit for the intelligence coup and to punish Rochefort for proving them to be wrong. In the weeks before the Battle of Midway, the Redmans disagreed with Rochefort’s assessments and opposed Nimitz’ plan to ambush the Japanese at Midway. John Redman was chief of OP-20-G, the Washington-based Navy Radio Intelligence Section. Joseph Redman was director of naval communications. Joseph Redman was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal, Rochefort was denied his and was recalled to Washington to waste his talents. I highly recommend this book and I am eager to read the other two volumes by Toll. It is better than Shattered Sword or Miracle at Midway, and about equal to Incredible Victory.

I enjoyed Ian W. Toll's, SIX FRIGATES, so I decided to try his PACIFIC CRUCIBLE. I think we are starting to get good histories about World War II, where we are getting beyond the praising of the victors, and useful critiques of their decisions and actions. I would class PACIFIC CRUCIBLE in the useful critique category. It is highly readable, covers the origins of the conflict between the U S and the Japanese Empire. The chapter on pre-Pearl Harbor Japan was a revelation to me, I kind of knew the antagonisms between Japan and the west, particularly the U S, but this chapter sharpened my perception. Years ago I read both AT DAWN WE SLEPT and MIRACLE AT MIDWAY, both by Gordon Prangue, as well as seeing the hollywood histories: TORA, TORA, TORA and MIDWAY, and the awful PEARL. I knew that HYPO in Hawaii was reading the Japanese naval transmissions, and had confirmed Midway as a major Japanese target via the broken de-salination ruse. What I didn't know, or forgot, was just how much of the the Japanese battle plan we were aware of. We were able to place an inferior force of 3 Aircraft carriers, every operational carrier we had in the pacific at the time, and ambush the Japanese Striking force. Despite a series of uncoordinated attacks between Midway based and carrier based aircraft, the annihilation of attacking american torpedo squadrons, enough carrier based dive bombers arrived at just the right moment, attacking the Japanese Carriers with just enough coordination and accuracy, to mortally disable three of four carriers in a matter of less than fifteen minutes. Toll also covers preliminary air raids in the Marshalls by Admiral Halsey, the string of Japanese victories: Pearl Harbor, Wake Island, the Philipines, the dutch east indies and against the British Empire throughout the pacific-indochina-indian ocean area of operation. The successful anvil attacks, torpedo planes attack the ships bow from both sides so if they maneuver away from one attack they maneuver into the other, on British battleships. The inability to credibly challenge the Japanese in the early months of WWII. The Roosevelt and Churchill meeting from December 1941 through January 1942, where the working relationship between the two allies, their mutual priorities and goals were established. The Doolittle Raid, and the Battle of the Coral Sea, which Toll credits as both a strategic victory, it stopped the Japanese assault on Port Moresby, and secured Australia, and a tactical victory, the Japanese carriers involved were not available for the Midway attack. Yamamoto, for all his likability, comes off as something less than the Naval Genius of the Pearl Harbor attack. He was the prime force behind the Midway assault, it was a high stakes gamble which, had he won, would have made the War in the pacific worse for us, but the attack was ill considered, Midway had no real importance to Japan, other than as a place to draw an unprepared American navy into piecemeal attacks. A diversionary attack was made in the Aleutians, to which two Japanese Carriers were dedicated. In hindsight, had those Carriers been part of the main attack at Midway, they could have been held in reserve against the presence of American carriers. On the American side of the ledger, Cmdr Joe Rochefort the head of HYPO becomes the indispensable man, he and his group correctly read and interpret the Japanese radio intercepts. He was able to persuade Adm Nimitz of his analysis, and because of this the American Carriers were waiting for the Japanese at the right time and in the right place, and the Japanese were not aware of their presence until it was too late.

I so thoroughly enjoyed Mr Toll’s second volume in this series that I decided to read his first installment and I am very glad I did! Many good reviews have been written so instead of a review I would like to indulge in a little critique but I would like to make clear that just because Mr Toll did not fashion his story to include a few things that I think important and just because he indulges in a theme that I think is a red herring does not detract from his wonderful narrative. The red herring theme is not really a very important part of the overall story. The author makes reference a few times to a supposed rivalry or competition between naval air and the battleship folks. It comes across as if the “black shoe” navy did not really trust that aircraft could make any meaningful impact in war. On page 57 (paperback) he says: “The fate of Force Z…settled old and bitter arguments. …it was a conceptual triumph within naval circles all over the world for the cause of aviation, and did more than even Pearl Harbor to undermine the power of the Mahanian ‘big gun club.’” There was no power to undermine. The navy, to include the “black shoe” admirals, had fought hard to keep control of its investment in its air wing. They wanted aircraft and the platforms to launch them. In the run up to the attack on Pearl Harbor it was the Japanese carrier fleet that was getting all the attention. President Roosevelt, the War and Navy Departments all were concerned about the tremendous threat posed by the Kido Butai. This was before Pearl Harbor and before the demise of Force Z. The fate of Force Z was a Churchill decision against the advice of his admirals. That those two attacks had a major influence on “the cause of aviation” is a story that has been retold over and over. The thing is, history, facts and naval spending going on in America in the run up to war show that to be wrong. A fiction. A myth. Back in 1940 Carl Vinson, Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee said, "The modern development of aircraft has demonstrated conclusively that the backbone of the Navy today is the aircraft carrier. The carrier, with destroyers, cruisers and submarines grouped around it[,] is the spearhead of all modern naval task forces." He had just got a massive naval spending bill through the House. It called for 18 Essex Class carriers and the planes to stock them. It is called the Two Ocean Navy Act. Mr Toll mentions that bill but he gets the amount of expenditure wrong. The proposal CNO Admiral Stark delivered to Vinson was for 4 billion but Vinson bumped it to 8 billion. The above quote from Vinson came from the news conference after passage. Reporters wanted him to explain why the government was spending so much money. The government and the navy would not invest so much treasure and resources unless the navy really wanted naval air power and the carriers to launch it. Among other classes of ships, the bill also called for 2 Iowa Class battleships and 5 Montana Class battleships. The US Navy wanted a powerful modern force that would not ignore the battleship but it did want a preponderance of carriers that would be the backbone and spearhead of the modern task force. The navy was committed to air power to be the decisive striking force of the fleet well before that terrible week in December 1941. Since the aircraft carriers, and the six major carrier duels between the US and Japan, had such a tremendous influence on the fighting and the outcome of the Pacific War it would have been nice if the author could have told the reader what the two carrier forces looked like at the start. And, since his narrative refers to the doctrine and influence of Mahan, it would have been nice to get a picture of the battleship fleets of both countries as well. For the sake of taking stock of the US Navy’s actual combat doctrine he should have also investigated the influence of war gaming at the Naval War College and fleet exercises conducted in the 1930’s. The author discussed the importance of Theodor Roosevelt to modernizing the navy in his day but did not mention Carl Vinson once, the man responsible for the navy that won the war in the Pacific. In the epilogue to this fine book the author does a superlative job of summarizing the Battle of Midway and the fate of Joe Rochefort. He does a fine job of illustrating how Rochefort is remembered by historians but does not paint a complete picture of how he is remembered today by his country. He was posthumously awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal in 1985, he was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1986 by Ronald Reagan and he was inducted into the National Security Agency/Central Security Service Hall of Fame in 2000. Then the author continues with the carriers vs battleships theme: “Now [after Midway], somewhat belatedly, the Japanese navy acknowledged the primacy of carriers over battleships and other surface units. Hulls that had originally been laid down as battleships were converted on the stocks to new carriers.” I know of only one battleship that was converted to a carrier after Midway, the Shinano, a Yamato Class battleship. No other battleships or battlecruisers were laid down. There was a plan for a super Yamato Class but those plans did not get very far. Meanwhile the Japanese planned for six Taiho Class carriers, 1 was built, and 15 Unryu Class carriers, three were built. The Unryu Class were laid after Midway. It seems the evidence points to the Japanese really wanting carriers but that does not fit in with the author’s desire to depict a preference for battleships. That said, I think Mr Toll has still produced a richly detailed story that does a great job of examining the issues that influenced Japan’s decision to make war with the US and the events of the first six months of the war. This is, I think, a very necessary contribution to Second World War literature. There are many books covering the war against the Nazis but not so many that cover the war against Japan. A very curious thing about the paperback edition I received: the text is missing the notes citation numbers. I have a nice list of notes in the back of the book but I have to really struggle to figure out which part of the text they refer to. I am considering buying the hardcover.

"I can run wild for 6 months....after that, I have no expectation of success" was Admiral Yamamoto's oft-cited remark to the war planners in the Japanese government prior to Pearl Harbor, and Ian Toll's book very capably describes the enormous expansion of Imperial Japan along almost all points of the compass in the first 6 months of the war until they were checked at Coral Sea and decisively beaten at Midway. Toll writes in a very readable style and his historical judgements are well-reasoned and sound. If you're an armchair strategist, you'll enjoy this book, and if you like exciting accounts of naval battles, you'll love this book, and happily you get both. Toll gives somewhat balanced attention to both sides with the U.S. understandably receiving the greater weight (I would have preferred more attention to the Japanese side since the U.S. side is more familiar, but of course the publisher undoubtedly envisioned a predominant U.S. readership.) The author indicates that most of the Japanese militarists recognized the superior economic power of the U.S. but believed that their superior "fighting spirit" would overcome such material disadvantages. The precise timing of the Pearl Harbor attack coming an hour before the diplomatic note was delivered to Cordell Hull certainly galvanized America and heightened the U.S.'s own "fighting spirit". I particularly enjoyed Toll's comparison of the Japanese and U.S. Navies with the former emphasizing offense and night actions while the U.S was superior in air reconnaissance, damage control and firefighting (the superiority of which were evident at Midway). The vivid descriptions of carrier warfare with their unique tactical imperatives was fascinating. My understanding is that this kind of naval warfare was unique to WW II, and that we'll never see warfare involving carrier-based fleets searching for other carrier-based fleets on the earth's oceans again. The author shows the influence of massed fleets and the overriding importance of the big-gun battleship in both navies before WW II, and interestingly enough, how battleship proponents had a stronger influence in the Japanese Navy than the U.S. Navy even into the war itself. (There's the usual speculation that perhaps Pearl Harbor dealt a fortunate blow to the U.S. Navy by decimating the Pacific Fleet's battleships but preserving its carriers, who were at sea that day, and thus almost forcing a re-orientation toward naval air warfare.) Toll often seems to compare favorably the sober realism of the Japanese Navy with the fanaticism of the Imperial Army, and that's fair to a point, but we shouldn't forget that the Japanese Navy made the critical decision to force Japan to withdraw from the 2nd London Naval Conference in late-1935 when its "fleet" faction prevailed over the "treaty" faction, whose few remaining members were quickly retired from service, and a naval arms race commenced in earnest. To simplify, the Navy wanted to go south and east against the U.S. and Britain, while the Army wanted to go west and north against China and the Soviet Union, and the Navy's argument for acquiring the resources of the East Indies for resource-poor Japan prevailed. Some reviewers have criticized the omission of Guadalcanal and ending the book with the momentous battle of Midway. I believe that Midway -- and the book covers Midway in fascinating detail -- is the appropriate endpoint; after all, Midway has been described elsewhere as the greatest naval turning point since Trafalgar, and to paraphrase Churchill (when talking about El Alamein) Guadalcanal may have been the "beginning of the end", but Midway was the "end of the beginning". Admiral Yamamoto hoped to lure and destroy the U.S. carriers at Midway and thereby expand Japan's defense perimeter, which might force a negotiated peace; instead, he lost four frontline carriers and Japan was faced with a prolonged war of attrition it could not hope to win.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 by Ian W. Toll. It covers the early portion of the Pacific Theater in World War II through the Battle of Midway from both the Allied and Japanese points of view. Toll begins Pacific Crucible by looking at how the Japanese came to decide to go to War against the United States and taking a look at the states of the Japanese and US Navies. He also looks into the leadership of both navies, particularly Yamamoto, Nimitz, and King. After examining how the attack on Pearl Harbor came about, he explores the Europe-first strategy and how the war would be fought in the Pacific. From there, he goes through the early chronology of the Pacific War, showing how it was truly a closely run thing in the beginning but also showing how the United States Navy learned from it to become the force that would come to dominate the Pacific by the end of the War. One of the central themes of the book was the hubris and contempt with which both the Japanese and United States Navies held their opponent and how that changed through the early part of the war. The Japanese never really lost their contempt for the Americans and became infected with "Victory Disease" that clouded their judgement and created flaws in their planning. On the other hand, the Americans learned from each defeat at the hands of the Japanese, becoming a stronger and more effective fighting force in the process. As a lifelong radio enthusiast, I love Toll's emphasis on the United States Navy's communications intelligence operation. He not only describes how they came to get inside the Japanese Navy's communications but also shows how the Navy's leadership came to not only trust communications intelligence but put a premium on it in planning and decision making. It's pretty cool that a group of folks who would today be considered geeks or nerds played a considerable role in not only the US victory at Midway, but the Allied victory in World War II as a whole (take into account Ultra and efforts into communications intelligence against Germany). Pacific Crucible is well written and never falls into the history book trap of getting dry. He does a good job of developing the personalities of the leaders and doesn't go into minutiae that would, while delighting the anorak, would turn off the casual reader. Reading the Kindle version, I was very pleased to find well placed maps of excellent quality that illustrated battle movements (which are frequently hard to visualize in naval battles). This is definitely a five star book and one that I would heartily recommend to anyone interested in how the United States Navy got off of the floor after receiving an almost knock out punch at Pearl Harbor, gathered itself together, and began to win World War II in the Pacific.

I won't go on about this except to say that it's an essay that blends political and military history in a most readable and credible way. It's a fine piece of work with all important points cited. It clears up incidents that are generally left foggy in most discursive accounts. Okay, Doolittle's B25 raid on Japan was launched early because it had evidently been spotted by a small Japanese vessel that had presumably revealed the task force's position. But is it true? The actor, Rod Steiger, claimed during an interview to have seen nothing more than a fishing vessel being shot to pieces by the big guns of American cruisers, with women an kids running around in a panic. Some accounts describe the encounter as accidental. There may or may not have been families among the crew but the rest of the claims are false. The Japanese vessel was part of a naval cordon around the home islands to provide precisely the radio warning it did. (The warning was lost somehow and is still circulating and bouncing around in the ether.) Cruisers expended vast amounts of ammunition without being able to badly damage the little vessel, which was tossing around on high seas like a cork. Aircraft managed to finish the job by riddling it with .50 caliber bullets. I described that incident in detail only to illustrate the kind of credible clarity this book enjoys. The author doesn't like Admiral King, back there in Washington, a doggedly old-school advisor. He likes Nimitz, a cool and pleasant person who got along with people. In skill and foresight, Nimitz and Yamamoto were equals. He's not a big fan of MacArthur, either, but gives His Highness a pass when caught with his pants down at Clark Field, hours after the Pearl Harbor attack, Mac's airplanes all lined up and ready to be bombed and destroyed. The general went into isolation for some 25 hours after this humiliation and never mentioned it in any speeches afterward. Coral Sea is treated fairly. The book ends with the Battle of Midway, satisfying the narrative requirement that the conclusion of any book written by the winners must end with a victory. And Midway was indeed an unequivocal American victory, due is part -- in large part -- to decoding nerds working in a dark, cramped basement. The book is highy recommended.

Una descripción detallada, a veces con el apasionamiento de una novela, que refleja esos años de incertidumbre

Ian Toll has written a first-class history of the first stage of America's war in the Pacific, from 1941-42. War in the Pacific during World War 2 was incredibly complex, even though for the Western Allies it began nearly 2.5 years later than war with Germany. Toll has wisely decided to divide his history of America's Pacific War into 3 separate volumes, of which "Pacific Crucible" is but the first. It is well written and includes many of the smaller, but significant, human details of individual lives and experiences that makes for an attractive page-turner. Even though many books on this subject have previously appeared, I still learned interesting new things that I had not seen in at least a dozen other books by well known and lauded writers. Ian Toll's second volume in this series, "The Conquering Tide", covering the war from 1942-44, is now available and I am about half way through reading it. It too is an absolutely splendid read! One must keep in mind, however, that given the complexity of the subject, even Toll's use of three volumes to cover 3.5 years of war experience only results in a "relative synopsis" of the Pacific War. Entire volumes as long and longer than Toll's have been written on each of the major battles he covers in his books, and Toll has provided a good bibliography of many of the best of these works for the reader who wishes further details. Toll's books are an excellent place to start for the budding student of America's Pacific War, and a great read for the more experienced historian as well!

5 Sterne für 5 tolle Qualitäten des Buches: 1. Kompakt gegliedert, straff geschrieben, keine Längen. 2. Ein toller Sprachgebrauch begünstigt ein flüssiges Lesen, ohne flapsig zu werden. 3. Es wurde so viel zu dem Thema geschrieben und trotzdem erfährt man interessante Neuigkeiten. 4. Menschen entscheiden Kriege. Er schaut auf die Menschen hinter den Epauletten. 5. Obwohl ich das Ende aller Schlachten kenne, hatte ich einen Lesedrang, wie bei einem guten Thriller.

This is an account of the Pacific War at sea from Pearl Harbor to Midway. It is, apparently, the first of a trilogy going all the way to the Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay and beyond. It starts with an explanation of the Big Battleship paradigm of the great Naval thereorist, Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914), developed in his masterwork, The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 (1890). Don't be put off by this, as it is vitally important to Toll's main theme, which is that the Japanese and American navies, steeped in Mahan both, were quite slow to realise that the war at sea in WW II was going to be won by submarines and aeroplanes, not the huge battleships on which so many of their resources were lavished in the 1930s. Once it really gets going, after Pearl Harbor, the book is unputdownable. Toll is good on everything - strategy, tactics, intelligence, materiel, the personalities involved (FDR, Churchill, Nimitz, King and Yamamoto especially) -and the battle sequences are vivid, clear and thrilling. He has an eye for detail that brings the scene to life in an instant - the smell of paint burning on the flight deck, the roar of a Zero overhead, the colour of a sunset the night before battle - and a gift for lucid explanation that makes it easy to follow what happened and why. He is something like Beevor and Hastings in this, but his prose is more supple, his focus broader and his tone more relaxed. He is also less judgmental than Hastings and less preoccupied with atrocities than Beevor. In short, this reads like a great novel. Really like War & Peace at times. You feel like you are living as well as understanding it. If only all history books were like this! I cannot wait for the next two.

Je n'ai commencé à le que récemment mais je ne peux pas laisser tomber!