Life originally came to the land from the sea. In the aeons since, man, in his long struggle to be free, has repeatedly sought salvation from the sea. Indeed, freedom seems inseparably united with the sea, and tyranny with giant, land-bound nations. Witness in antiquity Greece against powerful empires from Asia; England against Napoleon in the last century; the United States and its allies fringing the sea against Soviet and Red Chinese empires in Eurasia. No period marks the history of man's struggle for freedom more dramatically than the great war that burst like Apocalypse upon the Navy and America at Pearl HArbor. Coming to a close, appropriately, on the main deck of U.S.S. Missouri, this war began and ended with a fleet. It seems most fitting, therefore, that this well-selected anthology should be devoted to those giant events which took place at sea--for had they failed, freedom would have failed.
Reading a host of works on the war, the skilled and prolific writer S. E. Smith has wisely selected, for the most part, first-person accounts. They have the large virtues of authentic experience and instinctive reactions based on knowledge from years at sea that inevitably forge a man's character.
Stan Smith himself had a concentrated portion of such experience, serving in both oceans as a bluejacket. On 7 December, 1941, he left college in his junior year to enlist. He became a part of the sea, first as a seaman in a patrol craft in the rough North Atlantic, then in the battleship Arkansas, where he went up through the important radioman rates. After the North African invasion, Smith transferred to submarines and, in the newly built Lionfish, participated in war patrols under Lieutenant Commander Edward D. Spruance, son of the famous admiral who led the Fifth Fleet to its great victories.
Thus, having served afloat most of the war, Stan Smith has an advantage over most writers who might seek to edit such an anthology. He knows "the real thing" from experience. Hence, these gripping extracts bring the war back with a rush of memories that are filled with the beauty of the sea, mixed with its ruthlessness for him who errs, memories of the brutality and cruelty of war, yet of the nobility of man. War seems to call forth both the best and the worst in the human spirit.
In reading these extracts, I was struck by the limited perspective, usually even of those who had written years after the event. This is human. It is the way men reacted and thought at the time. It is the way man has always lived and reacted; for only the duty at hand is real. As on the sundial, all we have of life is "the hour on which the shadow stands." If we live the hour well, we have best served. We have ensured yesterdays of no regret, tomorrows of hope.
Hence, few understood the vast scope of the war. Few evaluated how individual events fell into the pattern of the whole. Appropriately and necessarily, most saw the tumultuous events, that broke about them like the fury of a storm-torn sea, in the light of only the immediate need and duty.
Moreover, few had any appreciation of the significance to future generations of this world struggle. They did not consciously perceive that this cataclysm was part of the ancient war of man's soul against tyranny--the yearning to be free that must surely come come from the Divine. If enough men afloat and ashore had perceived this truth as well as they fought, we would not have made some of the mistakes that caused us, having won the war, to almost lose the peace.
Those who fought so gallantly also did not usually understand the revolutions in invention and technology that have brought immense new power to national strength afloat. For the past century, these have steadily increased the ability of the sea to strike against the land. Steam first freed ships from dependance on wind and tide. Now, nuclear energy has solved the problems of frequent fueling. Armor has given ships a resistance equal to forts. Improved engines have given ships increased speed and made them harder to hit. At the same time, stereo range-finders, then radar, combined with electricity operating at the speed of light, and the remarkable "mechanical brains" of fire control computers, have given warships' guns precise accuracy--even when those ships are maneuvering at high speed on the unsteady sea.
The submarine and aircraft, in taking navies into the depths of the ocean and into the heavens, have shaped the true trident of Neptune. First heralded as the end of surface navies, by wise integration they have instead brought the United States Navy incredible new power. Incorporating aircraft as part of total fleet strength, the NAvy developed the aircraft carrier, with its embarked dive bombers, torpedo planes, and fighters, into one of the most powerful champions of freedom all history records--powerful in World War II, even more powerful today with supersonic planes and guided missiles, had brought phenomenal new capabilities to the fleet.
At the same time, the United States Navy has made large strides to counter similar new weapons of an enemy. Consider the airplane: IN the years between the world wars, and with increasing acceleration after Pearl Harbor, the Navy developed a defense against the airplane that became almost invulnerable. This included the carrier fighter and attack planes, radar, fighter direction, voice radio, anti-aircraft guns, influence fuze, automatic directors that "lock on" the target and solve the fire control problem instantly.
In the quarter of a century following World War I, the crude, anti-aircraft methods progressed to one of the most complex and efficient systems man has ever evolved. Radar measured the range to an attacking plane accurately and with the speed of light, even when far out of sight. The fire-control computers, parents of today's electronic brains, solved the problem of hitting the swift, invisible target miles away in the sky, and solved it without delay. The influence fuze ensured destruction. With these aids, by the middle of the PAcific war, hard-hitting, rapid-firing guns of every caliber made United States' warships so safe from air attack that the Japanese had to switch to those kamikaze tactics so graphically covered in this volume, in which planes and pilot ended up 100 per cent casualties--no way to win a war.
Since then, advances have accelerated both in the plane and in the missile, homing at supersonic speeds unerringly on its target, to protect against it. The surface Navy has not been destroyed by aviation. Because the United States Navy wisely integrated it into all aspects of offense and defense, the airplane brought the fleet immense new potential.
This same increase in effectiveness of strength based at sea applies to almost every other new development of this century, in which changes seem to accelerate change and to multiply the advantages of sea-based strength. Atomic energy, and the submarine in particular, point up this giant shift in balance of power in favor of national strength afloat. Unlike fixed land defenses, swiftly moving ships at sea are unprofitable targets for atomic explosives, and particularly unprofitable for ballistic missiles that must navigate to a precise, motionless point.
Sea power has decided all world wars since our birth as a nation--and most before. A nation's or a coalition's total power (military strength, industry, transportation, agriculture, will of the people, leadership) wins wars; but in a world was this total power can be projected only by the sea, and strength based in ships has made up an increasing part of the total power. Therefore, infinite new power at sea relative to that based ashore opens infinite possibilities. Although this change had been steadily occurring throughout our lifetimes, as the accounts in this anthology show, most men who fought had no comprehension of its scope or meaning. Their only thought was to do the best they could with what they had--while continually seeking more and better means.
Moreover, as this anthology shows, and as we who were there remember, many did not realize that in World War II the door opened wide to the United States as the world leader of man's dream of freedom. After World War I, we had shared this responsibility with others, and the country as a whole did not comprehend the meaning and needs of this responsibility. At the end of World War II, the mantle of leadership passed fully to the United States. Unhappily, too few Americans knew this, or understood, if they did know, the duties such a position implied. Fewer still comprehended that to assume leadership of the world we required a fleet that could reach all shores as the binding force of free nations, joined or divided by the sea according to their strength on it.
Hopefully, this anthology will help create this awareness. For if enough of us are not well aware of our duties and needs we shall surely fail in our great mission to guide freedom on course through the typhoons of our time.
Stan Smith has therefore performed a true service in presenting these dramatic accounts, that together tell the story of the great war as men saw it afloat. Though few then understood the meaning and significance of the war, the accounts together show that men instinctively fought nobly and well for the goal of freedom, toward which the United States is privileged to lead the world. If leaders today are inspired to serve as selflessly, as wisely, as courageously, we will not fail in our mission.
--E.M. Eller, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Director of Naval History
From: The United States Navy in World War II
Introduction
Compiled and edited by S. E. Smith
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