From 1939 to 1945, history’s greatest naval war raged on, above, and below every ocean and major sea. It involved thousands of vessels, tens of thousands of aircraft, and millions of men and women. It fostered technological advances, such as radar and guided weaponry, and sired revolutionary developments in naval warfare, such as carrier task forces and self-sustaining, transoceanic armadas.
Seven great navies dominated this war: the German Kriegsmarine, the Italian Regia Marina, and the Japanese Teikoku Kaigun squared off against the United States Navy, Great Britain’s Royal Navy, and the Soviet Voenno-morskoi Flot. Occupying a unique position was France’s Marine Nationale—first an Allied force, then an independent one, and finally Allied once again.
This naval war has generated an enormous body of literature: battles and campaigns have been described and dissected; biographies, memoirs, technical works, and specialized histories abound. However, within this literature there exist several deeply rooted problems. The first is a tendency by many authors to focus on the superficial similarities among the navies, such as warship designs, weaponry, and command structures, and to disregard their profound differences in tradition, doctrine, and national objectives. The second problem is the existence of a subtle bias permeating much of the analysis, a flaw to which the English-language readership has been especially exposed. The Anglo-American fleets were the war’s largest and most successful, and many of their former officers, such as Stephen Roskill, Samuel E. Morison, and Donald McIntyre, dominated the first generation of World War II naval historians. They wrote from the perspective of their own traditions and doctrine and quite naturally scrutinized the conduct of their foes by these criteria. Representing the victorious side, the authority of their judgments has gone largely unquestioned and their heirs have tended to follow the same path of shoehorning all navies into the Anglo-American mold. Because information about the training, doctrine, structure, and goals of World War II’s great navies lies buried in specialized works, unavailable in many cases to those who cannot read Japanese, German, Russian, Italian, or French, this bias has been self-perpetuating.
On Seas Contested is an international collaboration by historians fluent in their source languages who examine how each navy was organized, how it trained, how it expected to operate, and how it fought relative to its own unique doctrine and objectives. Each chapter follows a parallel structure, delivering a point-by-point evaluation of one of the war’s seven major fleets to let readers quickly find, cross-reference, and compare information. The result is a valuable reference and a new vision of the naval war. The chapters cover the following topics:
I. Backstory
A. History
B. Mission (includes prewar plans and wartime adjustments)
II. Organization
A. Command Structure
1. Administration (includes appropriations)
2. Personnel (officers/enlisted; includes demographics and training)
3. Intelligence
B. Doctrine
1. Surface Warfare
2. Aviation
3. Antisubmarine
4. Submarine
5. Amphibious Operations
6. Trade Protection
7. Communications
III. Materiel
A. Ships (includes order of battle)
B. Aviation
1. Ship-based
2. Shore-based
C. Weapon systems
1. Gunnery (surface/air, includes fire control and radar)
2. Torpedoes
3. Antisubmarine Warfare
4. Mines
1. Logistics
2. Bases
3. Industry
IV. Recapitulation
A. Wartime Evolution
B. Summary and Assessment
On Seas Contested follows several conventions. Rather than wrestle the metric-measurement navies into the imperial system used by the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy (or vice versa), this work does not adhere to one system or the other; appendix III provides a conversion table. All miles are nautical miles. Non-English terms are used sparingly, and ranks are expressed in English; appendix II gives a comparative table of ranks. The book is lightly footnoted, and a select bibliography lists the more important works consulted by the authors as well as additional references in English on various topics. Readers can access more complete references at the website www.onseascontested.com.
Editors
Vincent P. O’Hara is a naval historian and author of works including Struggle for the Middle Sea: Great Navies at War in the Mediterranean 1940–45 (Naval Institute Press, 2009) and In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942 (Indiana University Press, 2012). W. David Dickson is an authority on naval doctrine, communications, and tactics; he is the author of The Battle of the Philippine Sea (Ian Allen, 1975). Richard Worth is a warship design expert and author of Fleets of World War II (Nimble, 2013), In the Shadow of the Battleship (Nimble, 2008), and Raising the Red Banner (Spellmount, 2008). O’Hara, Dickson, and Worth also edited To Crown the Waves: The Great Navies of the First World War (Naval Institute Press, 2013).
Contributing Authors
Chapter 1, “France: The Marine Nationale,” is authored by John Jordan of Portsmouth, England, editor of the respected annual journal Warship. He is coauthor of French Battleships 1922–1956 (Naval Institute Press, 2009) and French Cruisers 1922–1956 (Naval Institute Press, 2013).
Chapter 2, “Germany: The Kriegsmarine,” is authored by Peter Schenk of Berlin, Germany, author of Invasion of England: The Planning of Operation Sealion (Conway Maritime Press, 1990) and Kampf um die Ägäis: die Kriegsmarine in Griechischen Gewässern 1941–1945 (Mittler, 2000). He was assisted by Karsten Klein, Dr. Axel Niestlé, Dieter Thomaier, and Berndt R. Wenzel. Schenk, Thomaier and Niestlé also contributed the German chapter of To Crown the Waves.
Chapter 3, “Great Britain: The Royal Navy,” is by David Wragg, author of more than twenty books including The Royal Navy Handbook 1939–1945 (Sutton, 2005) and The Fleet Air Arm Handbook 1939–45 (Sutton, 2001).
Chapter 4, “Italy: The Regia Marina,” is a collaboration by Enrico Cernuschi of Pavia, Italy, and Vincent P. O’Hara. Cernuschi is author of twenty books. His Gran Pavese (Mursia, 2011) received the 2012 Marincovich prize in Rome as the best Italian naval book of the year. He and O’Hara co-authored Dark Navy: The Regia Marina and the Armistice of 8 September 1943 (Nimble Books, 2009) and wrote the Italian chapter of To Crown the Waves.
Chapter 5, “Japan: The Teikoku Kaigun,” is by Mark Peattie, premier authority on the Imperial Japanese Navy and author of Kaigun (Naval Institute Press, 1994) and Sunburst: The Rise of Japanese Naval Airpower 1909–1941 (Naval Institute Press, 2002).
Chapter 6, “USA: The United States Navy,” is the work of Trent Hone, expert in the U.S. Navy’s doctrine and tactics, co-author of Battle Line: The United States Navy 1919–1939 (Naval Institute Press, 2006), and author of several articles on the United States Navy’s doctrinal development. He also contributed the U.S. Navy chapter of To Crown the Waves.
Chapter 7, “USSR: The Voenno-morskoi Flot SSSR,” is authored by Stephen McLaughlin, specialist in Soviet warships and author of The Hybrid Warship (Naval Institute Press, 1991), Russian and Soviet Battleships (Naval Institute Press, 2003), and many articles on Russian and Soviet topics. He also contributed the Russian chapter of To Crown the Waves.