Neptune's Inferno - James D. Hornfischer

Neptune's Inferno is all about the U.S. Navy's work at Guadalcanal, and that's almost all it's about. The Marines on the island get mentioned occasionally (mostly as spectators to naval battles, or in regards to their frustration with the lack of support they were getting from the Navy), and the airplanes get a little more mention (since they could get directly involved in battles at sea). But this is largely the Navy's show, because Hornfischer focuses on the ship-to-ship battles that took place at night, when planes were not terribly useful.

Hornfischer provides some interesting quotes and observations, from Halsey's idea on how carrier power is a square (2 carriers are 4 times as powerful as 1), to how Admiral Yamamoto hated the idea of captain dying with their ships (since it wasted good officers). The most interesting might have been how all three branches were reliant on each other. You need the Marines to occupy the island, and to protect the airfield. You need the planes to protect themselves, the Marines' base, and the ships from enemy planes. You need the ships to keep the other two resupplied, and to keep the Imperial Navy from bombarding the planes into nothingness at night. The problem is that it takes some time before the Navy starts holding up its end of the bargain.

One thing that comes through clearly in Hornfischer's retelling is how quickly things go awry in a battle, especially at night, with the limited communication equipment of the time. It just about every sustained battle between the two navies, one U.S. ship will get confused and fire on another. The South Dakota suffered a complete electrical failure from the concussion of its own guns. Ships lose track of one another, are too afraid of breaking radio silence to confirm their locations (or report sightings of the enemy), or ignore the technological advantages they have. 'Cause the thing is, the Japanese Navy didn't have radar. They had to rely on seeing their enemy. At night, you would think that would give the navy with radar - and the guns to fire from the limits of its range - the advantage. The U.S. commanders consistently squander this advantage, because most of them are crusty old guys who don't trust this consarn, newfangled radar*. Which is how there end constantly being battles where both groups are within sight of each other, negating the radar advantage, and letting the Japanese utilize their considerable torpedo advantage to great effect. (U.S. torpedoes were a joke, which might be the answer to Hornfischer's question of why the U.S. didn't bring their submarines into the fight as the Japanese did.)

The writing is overdone at times, though that's hardly unusual when it comes to books about World War 2. There's a lot of talk of grand, heroic gestures, and also some chillingly sad moments (usually involving men who had to abandon ship). Hornfischer is surprisingly non-judgmental about some of the more brutal acts committed by servicemen. Machine gunning downed Japanese airmen as they float in the ocean, for example. He doesn't excuse it, doesn't condone, barely comments on it other than to mention it happened and move on. Maybe it's better he didn't get pious on us, and allowed the reader to sort their own feelings. Maybe he felt he couldn't let it pass, but didn't want it to foul up his narrative, so he moved past it as quickly as possible.

On the whole, it's engaging, as I found myself at times shouting at the officers in the book, calling them idiots for not opening fire, and the fact he has sometimes incomplete and contradictory reports can make his descriptions of the battle seem as chaotic as I imagine the thing was.

"Captains were fortunate to find help for their troubles. They were given command of a multitude and saddled with fault for their failings. The bargain they made for their privileged place was the right to be last off the ship if worst came to pass. Burdens grew heavier the higher one ascended in rank. Captains concerned themselves with ships and crews, commodores with squadrons, task force commanders with objectives, and theater commanders with campaigns. The burdens of sailors weighed mostly on the muscles. The weight of leadership was subtler and heavier. It could test the conscience."

* To be fair, Hornfischer points out that in one battle, Dan Callaghan may have chosen to ignore the radar reports because he felt the best chance his cruisers and destroyers had against the battleship Hiei was to get really close, where even its armor couldn't stop their guns. For myself, I'd prefer to keep my much smaller, much less heavily-armored ships out of sight of the battleship that's reliant on visual targeting, but that's me. Maybe that's too cautious. It's unlikely, following that strategy, that they'd have managed to damage the Hiei, but the U.S. might also have taken a lot fewer casualties.