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7:23
>> Good afternoon, everyone. Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, was supposed to make the opening remarks for today's program, but unfortunately he has been called out of town on business. So on behalf of the Archivist of the United, States, I'd like to welcome you, and all of our friends from C‑SPAN, to the McGowan Theater located in the National Archives building in Washington, DC. I am Doug Swanson Visitor Services Manager for
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the National Archives Museum, as well as the producer for the noontime lecture series. Before we begin today's program, I would like to mention a couple of other programs that will be taking place at this location. Thursday, May 17, at 7 p.m. we will present a panel discussion, Before the Freedom Riders: The fight to integrate Glen Echo Amusement Park. This program will also include clips of a new documentary film Ain't No Back to A Merry‑go‑round,
8:13
which is going to be released in 2019. Then on Tuesday, May 22nd at noon, Donald Rumsfeld will discuss his book, When the Center Held Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American presidency, and offer us a look at the life behind the scenes in the oval office and the administration of Gerald Ford. To find out more about these programs, our exhibits, please visit our website at www.archives.gov/calendar. You will also find some printed materials
8:43
about upcoming events in the theater lobby. Our topic for today is, World War II at Sea: A Global History, by acclaimed Naval historian Craig L. Symonds. It is being brought to you in partnership with our good friends the United States Navy Memorial. To introduce our guest speaker is president and CEO of the Navy Memorial, Rear, Admiral Frank Thorp. (APPLAUSE) >> Thank you Doug, and welcome to the Archives.
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It's truly my honor today to be able to introduce Dr. Craig Symonds, a person who I have known since I came into the Navy service in 1977. And with a long and distinguished career of Naval expertise, being a Naval enthusiast, and expertise about the Navy. Currently Dr. Symonds is the Ernest J. King Distinguished Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College, which is a very proud chair to be in. But more importantly, to me, Professor Symonds
9:56
was a history ‑‑ was a professor of history at the Naval Academy, now professor of history Emeritus. He taught for 30 years, and served as a chair of the history department. I live in Annapolis now, and I try to stay in touch with things that went on at the Naval Academy, and I will tell you the most important thing I can tell you about Dr. Symonds today is not his incredible knowledge and passion for the service and the country, but he has a
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reputation of being a teacher who is much loved by the midshipmen at the Naval Academy. Now I was one for four years, and there are not many professors that get that reputation from a very cynical group of 4,000 young men and women who are the top of their game. And I will tell you that I spoke to several people, and to a person, the glow of the reputation of Dr. Symonds was very clear. I spoke to a couple professors, and one of them described
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Professor Symonds as, the best of colleagues. Not a bad thing to be described as. The best of colleagues. Another professor said, quote: A great lecturer, dynamic, engaging, passionate, challenging and inviting, all at the same time. Another professor described Dr. Symonds as: Highly influential leader in the history department, setting a high bar for everyone in teaching, scholarship and service. As you all know from your program he is the author
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of countless military history books, many of them Navy. I want to touch on them and focus on the awards. I am going to read them fast, because to a guy like me they mean ‑‑ each of them are important, but in total is what is so impressive. He has written: Decision at Sea: Five Naval battles that shaped American History which won the Theodore and Franklin Delano Roosevelt prize. Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy and Civil War,
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which won the Lincoln Prize, the Barondess Prize, the Laney Prize and Lyman Prize and the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award. Other works include, Civil War at Sea, the U.S. Navy and others. And most recent works are on the second world war, most notably The Battle of Midway, which we will commemorate the anniversary here on June 5, and NEPTUNE: The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D‑Day Landings, which won the Barry Prize and Samuel
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Eliot Morison Prize. And Dr. Symonds doesn't always write about the Navy, sadly. (LAUGHTER) >> No, he is quite a historian, having written about the Battle of Gettysburg, as well as General Johnston and others. But Dr. Symonds is really a Navy guy having a significant impact on the men and women who have served in the Navy for the last three or four decades and will serve for decades more. As a matter of fact, his Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy is still in use in the core of Naval
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history class in the Naval Academy today. His impact on the Navy is simply immense, along with all the books and numerous awards, Dr. Symonds also received the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award and the Superior Civilian Servant award, not once, not twice, but three times. And he is a Veteran. He served as a lieutenant in the early '70s. So I have to say, as the CEO of the Navy Memorial, across the street, our mission was to honor, recognize
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and celebrate the men and women of the sea services past, present and future and to inform the public about their service. So today, Dr. Symonds, I would like to task the audience here to join me as we honor, recognize and celebrate you for everything you have done to inform us about the United States Navy. But before I turn over the microphone to you, I have a quick sea story that I think the audience will enjoy. Dr. Symonds is, in fact,
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a true Naval enthusiast, but he is not only a great professor, and an engaging author and a true Naval enthusiast, but he has been played by a character on the silver screen that you may not know about. And he ‑‑ I have to admit, when I talked to him earlier, he didn't want me to tell this story, so I am violating his request. But not bad to be played by none other than Harrison Ford, also known as Jack Ryan. If you recall in the movie, Patriot
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Games, Jack Ryan is giving a lecture on Thucydides, as Dr. Symonds frequently does. The filmmakers, when they came to the Naval Academy, they asked for a professor that Harrison Ford could follow around to give them an idea of what Harrison Ford would do. Now, remember, Harrison Ford had been in the UK, he had been a CIA agent, he was a former naval officer, and as I understand it, the Naval Academy leadership said, you have got to follow Dr. Symonds
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around. So the filmmakers appropriated his office, they appropriated his classroom, and they appropriated his class. Although he denies it, I think we have seen his face in that movie. So, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Symonds' newest book, and what he is here to talk about today, is World War II at Sea: A Global History. It is my honor, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce to you today Dr. Craig Symonds. (APPLAUSE)
15:37
>>Well nobody can live up to that introduction for crying out loud. Thank you very much, I appreciate it. I am going to tell a quick story as well about just how incendiary this book is. You need to know this because I spoke this morning over at the treasury institute on I Street in Washington, and there are a number of copies of the books, three boxes full I understand, had them sent down to the Institute for distribution to their audience, and when they arrived.
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They arrived without insufficient specificity in terms of their intended audience. It was a general address rather than a specific individual listed on the address label. So, this being a government institution well guarded with the usual screeners at the door, these three packages arrived, looking very suspicious. And so ‑‑ I am not making this up, this absolutely happened. And so they were sequestered and surrounded by C4 and blown to smithereens.
16:48
(LAUGHTER) >> Now I have had bad reviews before. (LAUGHTER) >> But never one quite like that. I appreciate your being here today on a beautiful day outside, giving that up to listen to me talk about World War II. I want to begin by making perhaps a challenging statement, that World War II was the most gruesome, traumatic, transformative event in all of human history. It literally changed the world. And for many Americans of my generation and perhaps yours as well,
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it became the template of what we think of as war itself. That assumption I put to you is not correct. In fact, of all of the wars fought in the world history, World War II was virtually unique. It had a very specific beginning. It was fought by mobilizing almost the entire population of the countries that were involved. The foe was unrelievedly evil, I know there is and effort
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by propaganda ministers in every conflict to paint your foe as an evil enemy, but in this particular case it was absolutely the truth. And it ended with what FDR famously called, unconditional surrender. For the generation who lived it or remembers it there is a tendency to measure other wars by that standard, by that template. And Because war since then lacked the clarity and decisiveness of World War II, it led to frustration and public unrest. In fact, however, World War II
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was not the template of war, it's the only war that meets all of those conditions. Now, I am going to talk this afternoon about the Naval side of that war. Which was quite literally a global conflict. I am trying to cover all of it in a single book or in a single talk is somewhat challenging and a little bit humbling as well, that said, I will give it my best shot. For Americans, World War II began on December 7, 1941. For the British, French, Germans
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and especially the Polish, it began two years earlier on September 1st, 1939. For the Japanese and Chinese it began two years before that on July 7th, 1937. And in my book I try to honor all of these participants, my goal was to write about World War II at sea. All of it. Including those theaters Americans do not pay much attention to as a rule the Indian Ocean, the Bering Sea, the Mediterranean until 1943. The most famous book about the war at sea is this
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one and rightly so. In 1941, Samuel Elliott Morrison was a professor of history at Harvard University with half a dozen very good books under his belt, including a classic biography of Christopher Columbus. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor he asked the President for commission as a Naval officer to go to sea. Travel with the Navy and record that war for posterity as it was happening. He saw a lot of action as a lieutenant commander
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and later as a reserve Rear Admiral, so that it's possible to refer to him as Professor Morrison and Admiral Morrison. He saw a lot of action, he was on the cruiser Brooklyn during the invasion of North Africa, he was on several aircraft carriers during several of the iconic battles in the Pacific. He watched the landings at Okinawa. He also had other officers that sent him information, eyewitness accounts, from other sources. He
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put together after the war in the early 1950, he is a 15‑Volume history of World War II at sea, which he supervised as general editor. Because some readers were daunted by taking on a 15 volume work he later on authored a one volume version‑‑ which is the one here (indicating). Don't get me wrong, I am here to flog my book not Morrison's, so let me explain how mine is different. Note the title of Morrison's book. He said it was a two‑ocean war, Atlantic, much of the confrontation
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between the transatlantic convoys and Hitler's wolf pack of U‑boats, and the Pacific where the action was marked by the gigantic carrier battles and the amphibious operations from Guadalcanal to Okinawa. It was excellent account of the U.S. Navy in two oceans. But a total of 72 nations were belligerents in the second world war. Either voluntarily or in many cases involuntarily a dozen of those had substantial Navies, Navies important enough to have impact
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on the trajectory and arguably even the outcome of the war the U.S. Navies was the largest, it was not the only one. Not only that, but in addition, Naval war was fought not in two oceans but at least six, plus of course the Mediterranean, Caribbean and other important bodies of water that explains the subtitle of my book, which is a global history. I wanted to deal with those theaters of war where American vessels seldom appeared, as Franklin Roosevelt said
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in the first of his famous fireside chats, the oceans of the world for this war constituted one gigantic battlefield. I also explore a bit about the culture and background and circumstances of those other participants in the war to illuminate their motives and objectives. All of these Navies mattered in no small part because they all shared a common resource base. Especially for shipping. When national leaders had to construct a policy to fight this war, they
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had to take the entire globe into consideration. Since committing resources to one theater necessarily meant not committing those resources to another theater. Here is a slide I will let you wonder about for a moment. I put this up of the so‑called butterfly effect. You probably heard of this butterfly in one part of the world flapping its wings have impact, small as it is, over the large face of the globe, changes circumstances in such a way
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that it might help spawn a typhoon in the other part of the world. But it's indisputable committing ships resources and manpower to one theater meant not committing them to a theater elsewhere. So that the global Naval war between 1939 and 1945, and especially after the United States entered the war in 1941, illustrates this particular phenomenon. In 1942, in particular, there were demands for allied resources everywhere in the Atlantic
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against the U‑boats in the Pacific to slow down the Japanese and the arctic to bring supplies to the Soviet Union Red Army bearing the brunt of the war against the German ground machine in the Mediterranean where the British were attempting to hold together the sea line of communication between Gibraltar and Suez Indian Ocean where a Japanese Naval strike force the same one that had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 attacked the British Naval forces in Cylon
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and India and essentially drove them out of the sea of the bay of Bengal. All of those flapping butterfly wings meant strategic decision‑makers couldn't do a single line of approach, they had to parcel out scarce assets here and there, hoping the world didn't collapse on them entirely. They did try to address these conflicts one at a time. This man is Harold Stark, who you can see had the curious nickname of Betty. He came by the nickname when he was a Plebe
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at the Naval Academy. In those days, less so now, I don't know if you had one at the Naval Academy, but the traditional in the 20s, 30s, in particular the upper class would give a nickname to the Plebes when they came in it stuck with them for life. When I was a flight lieutenant, I would help draft letters, and I would begin Dear Admiral Jones, and I would bring them in to sign he would cross out the salutations and write in Dear Stinky. (LAUGHTER) >> I wondered how Stinky got his nickname.
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We know how Stark got his nickname. He was standing in formation one day as a plebe when an upperclassman noticed his name tag on his uniform. Stark he said. Are you related to General John Stark? To which midshipman 4th class Stark answered, I don't know who General John Stark is, sir. That was not the right answer. So the upperclassman informed him that Stark was a hero of the American revolution who prior to the Battle of Bennington, had told his men that he will win today or Betty Stark will
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be a widow. And he ordered midshipman Stark to shout out that phrase every time he encountered an upperclassman throughout his Plebe year, virtually everyone called him Betty. (LAUGHTER) >> This is a letter I stuck in here for fun. This is a letter from the Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Stark in 1941, can you read the salutation? Dear Betty. That's not the punch line. The punch line is that General Stark's wife was named Molly. But be that
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as it may, Stark was Chief of Naval Operations, became Chief of Naval Operations on the first of August 1939, exactly one month before German troops crossed the Polish border to inaugurate World War II. His principal contribution to the allied strategy in the war was a memo he wrote in November of 1940 after France capitulated and the British were driven off the beaches at Dunkirk, it was, the recent film suggests, the darkest hour. It looked very much like
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the Germans were going to win the war, the United States would be isolated in the western hemisphere. Given that, Stark laid out in a memo four options for American grand strategy we could he said defend the western hemisphere, this was the goal of the isolationists, who made up the vast majority of the American public. They had had it, with international wars, they thought WW I was a mistake, we don't want to get into another one let's hunker down and stay
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where we are. We could focus on a possible war with Japan, this had been the Navy's primary interest since about 1911 for 40 years really the United States had focused on the defeat of Japan as a most likely foe in the future, or, third, we could try to fight against both foes at the same time. You don't want to fight a two‑front war if you can avoid it. Or option D, we could reorient our strategy program entirely and focus instead on
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the defeat of Germany first. That fourth option, plan D, or plan dog in Navy lingo, was the one that Franklin Roosevelt accepted. Germany, Roosevelt believed, was by far the most dangerous foe not because of the perverse ideology, the position it held in Europe after the fall of France in 1940, but because of its economy. The gross domestic product in Germany 1940 was greater of that of France and Britain combined and six times bigger than that of Japan. So, this
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is the real enemy in Roosevelt's mind it was essential to American national interest to defeat Germany, first make sure Britain could survive so it could be the launch of the eventual invasion of Europe and the suppression of Germany should it come to war. Most historians have followed suit, Germany first. Treating the war as two connected but separate conflicts, a chapter on a war in Europe and then a chapter
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on the war in the Pacific. A two‑ocean war. That, however, is not the way it was fought. When American and British admirals and generals met as they did several times to hammer out allied strategy for the war. They paid lip service to the concept of defeating Germany first. The pressures were simultaneous in 1942, as I suggested the Anglo American allies were like a boy standing in the shadow of a dam that was cracking and breaking in 12 or 13
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place at the same time and trying to shut off the leaks and keep the dam collapsing on top of them. In addition to being a war fought by a dozen Navies in six oceans, it was also a war that took place everywhere simultaneously. Let me try to demonstrate this by offering a few examples. In August of 1942, fairly early in the war still, a single reinforced U.S. marine division splashed ashore on island virtually no Americans heard of called
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Guadalcanal, the tail end of the Solomon Island chain where the blue arrow is located, in the Southern Pacific. That in itself is a violation of the Germany first principle but Ernest King who by now replaced Stark as the American Chief of Naval Operations, argued this isn't really going on the offensive in the Pacific. Because Australian coast watchers had reported that the Japanese were building
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an airstrip on Guadalcanal, if they completed the air strip it would allow them to interrupt the line of communications between Hawaii and Australia. If that happened, we would be in desperate straits. This is not an offensive, King insisted a defensive measure to keep them from breaking our secure lines, not entirely a bogus argument. King knew it was would be the camel's nose under the tent.
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If you started out in Guadalcanal, that inital division would have to be supported they would have to be reinforced until it would suck resources, supplies and manpower into its vortex, which is exactly what happened. And there was another complication, to return to this map for a minute. You could see the Pacific theater is divided into two command areas by that blue line on the map. The reason
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the Americans did this, was partly strategic, it's enormous battlefield, logistically supplying all of it through one command is awkward. Mainly it's political. Franklin Roosevelt knew he had to give a command to Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was MacArthur, the President did not want to give him command of the entire Pacific nor did he want to give him control of the U.S. Navy. So, like King Solomon he cut the baby in half, MacArthur got command in the southwest Pacific or Sou
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Wes Pac which contained continent of Australia, The Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra. As far as MacArthur was concerned the object whole campaign, the Philippines islands, everything else, all of that blue space outside of the southwest Pacific, the Pacific ocean area this was to be under the command of Chester Nimitz, there on the left, in the staged photograph. This too of course is a violation of a strategic
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principle, don't divide your command in the face of an enemy. MacArthur complained about it constantly,even suggested that Franklin Roosevelt had deliberately limited his command to a regional theater because Roosevelt feared MacArthur would win the war and come back and run for president in 1944 and replace Roosevelt in the White House. Evidence suggested he did consider exactly that plan. But the decision stood, and so when the marines went assure on Guadalcanal
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to begin a six‑month campaign in the tropical jungles of the island, United States confronted not two fronts in Atlantic and Pacific, but three having divided the Pacific into two commands now fighting a three‑front war. The Americans landing on Guadalcanal was officialy called Operation Watchtower, but so scarce were allied resources in 1942 almost everybody involved with it called it something else. They called it Operation Shoestring. And it very nearly fell apart the
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very next day. On the evening of August 8th, Japanese surface force came down from Rabaul, through what was called the slot, in those parallel lines of islands that characterize the Solomon Island chain to attack allied war ships, Australian and American protecting the landing beach at Guadalcanal. The result was the most lopsided American defeat at sea since Pearl Harbor or ever including Pearl Harbor. Four allied cruisers went to the bottom, the Japanese escaped utterly unscathed. It
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led to a lot of hand wringing and finger pointing in the United States. It could have been worse. After their victory, instead of continuing on to the landing site to sink the American transport ships off the beach, the Japanese headed back to their base at Rabaul satisfied with what they had accomplished. Had they attacked those transports or continued on past victory to defeat them they would
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have undercut the Guadalcanal operation, but allied operations worldwide because a shortage of shipping was the key bottleneck in allied planning in 1942. Operation Shoestring, remember? Now, with those butterfly wings flapping in the Pacific, let me zoom literally halfwayaround the world to another island, this one in the Mediterranean, far less known to American audiences than Guadalcanal, Malta was a crucial British outpost smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea,
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its location made it essential to the British sea lines of communication east to west Gibraltar to Suez and Axis communications north to south Italy into North Africa. Because it provided protection for British convoys and was a thorn in the side to Axis convoys from its principal harbor, the allies, quite naturally, tried to takeit out. They did so from the air. Here is the statistic somewhat astonishing more bombs were dropped on Valletta on the island of
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Malta in April of 1942 then all of the bombs dropped on London throughout the blitz in World War II. They hammered that place. By mid summer it was in such extremis rations for the population had been reduced to six ounces of food per person per week. The spit fires were virtually out of gas. The governor of the island not identified London, if he didn't get a supply convoy in the next week, he would have to capitulate.
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So, they put together, the British put together a convoy from Glasgow, consisting of 14 transports and one absolutely essential oil tanker, the ship that had been the Ohio. It was a Texas oil company Texaco tanker that showed up in Glasgow with a load of aviation fuel, exactly what the Spitfires needed. And Churchill cabled Roosevelt personally to beg it be turned over to the Royal Navy for this operation. Roosevelt agreed. The American crew went out the British
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Merchant Marine crew came on board. And the Ohio joined the convoy to the south An argument is made, well I guess I am going to make it now, that the Ohio was the single most important ship afloat in the world in August of 1942. If that cargo of aviation fuel didn't make it to Malta the Spitfires would be grounded and the island would fall, the axis would control the Mediterranean, that would be the end of that theater. Dubbed Operation Pedestal, the convoy
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set out the first week of August, the same week the marines went ashore in Guadalcanal halfway around the world. They had the largest escort of any convoy during the entire war. Two battleships, four aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 32 destroyers, all to protect 14 transports and a tanker. The escort force for the operation was bigger than either of the operational forces that fought one another at Midway in June of 1942. It's a testimony
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to not only the importance of Malta, but the scarcity and value of transport shipping to the allies in 1942.The convoy entered the Mediterranean on August 10th and over the next six days it was attacked literally every one of those days. Aircraft from Sardinia surface ships from Italy, German U‑boats, the force lost two carriers, four cruisers several destroyers and 9 of the 14
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transports. (Far worse than allied losses off Guadalcanal in the Pacific, but four of the transports and critically the tanker Ohio remained afloat, though barely. The Ohio was bombed repeatedly and torpedoed as well. We have a photograph the moment of torpedo struck the Ohio, several near misses by German bombers buckled her hull plate. One bomber shot down by AA fire crashed into a superstructure and pieces of it hung there like a discordant Christmas
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ornament straddling the bridge. Not long after another bomb penetrated the Ohio's deck and exploded in the engine room, without power now low in the water, taking on water rapidly, the Ohio appeared doomed. To keep her afloat two British destroyers lashed themselves port and starboard to hold her afloat and push her along at about 3 knots. More bombers arrived, one hit her mid ship and broke her back. The destroyers kept her afloat. With
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the decks awash, the back broken, no steering, engine or compass, pieces of a German bomber hanging in her superstructure, she stayed afloat long enough to make it into the harbor where cheering crowds lined the waterfront and a band played Rule Britannia. Malta remained in British hands the rest of the war. My point is telling you this story, not only because it's a cool story, one that few Americans know about, but demonstrates in a dramatic way how global this war was.
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The war did not proceed separately in the Atlantic and Pacific or the Mediterranean, for that matter. It took place everywhere and all at once. And, again, underscores just how precarious the allied shipping was in that difficult summer of 1942. The 18 transports at Guadalcanal, the Japanese missed the 14 involved in Operation Pedestal formed a pool of shipping resources so limited that it restricted what the allies could do. This particular
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problem would gradually go away, especially because of American shipbuilding capability. This is most evidence in the battle of the Atlantic between German U‑boats and allied convoys. You can see in this chart, how the number of ships built by the allies and mostly by the United States over 90% by the United States. The columns in red grew exponentially through 1942 and 1943, while the numbers of ships sunk by German U-boats, the columns in black declined in those
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same years. So, new technology, better escorts, better protocols in the convoys allowed us to fend out the U‑boats, but it was shipbuilding in the United States that really allowed the allies to get ahead of this issue. We out‑built them. We built ships faster than the submarines could sink them. There is a particularly dramatic illustration, I like the photograph, it's a building way the Bethlehem shipyard in Baltimore, April 1943. April of
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'43 is when the acceleration of American shipbuilding really takes off. They are setting up the wooden framing for the keel of a new liberty ship, a transport ship I call your attention to the head gear. What would OSHA have to say about men wearing fedoras instead of hard hats in the workplace? (LAUGHTER) >> Here are some other images of the same ship. This is day one we are looking at. Here is day two, a lot of progress in one day. Three shifts, 24 hours a day, that's one reason
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why. Here is day 6. Day 10. Day 14. Day 24. Ready for launch. And there she goes. The very next day, men would lay the keel of another liberty ship, in December 1942 the production of new shipping in American shipyards surpassed a million dead weight tons for the first time and it went up from there. After that it didn't matter how many ships those U‑boats sunk in the North Atlantic, it mattered to the men on the ships, the supplies it carried. It would
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not avail the Germans of their strategic goal which is cut the vital lifeline to Britain. They couldn't get ahead of American production. With this dramatic infusion of maritime assets, the allies went on the initiative in 1943 and never let go of it. Here is another example of how World War II at sea was a global phenomenon. Just as most of you have heard of Guadalcanal, I suspect all of you have heard of D‑Day. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks had a lot to do with the fact
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that a new generation of Americans had been introduced to the horrors of Omaha Beach and the D‑Day landings. But the naval armada that carried Tom Hanks and his men to the beach provided naval gunfire support and most importantly not only carried them to the beach but reinforced and resupplied and the armada necessary to do that was unprecedented in size. Counting armed landing craft those ships numbered over
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6,000 hulls. And they had to operate for months. The invasion of Nazi occupied Europe did not assist consist of a rush on the beach on June 6, 1944, a total of 132,000 allied soldiers went ashore that day, 132,000 men are not going to drive to Paris and Berlin, eventually tens hundreds of millions would come ashore, almost all of them and their supplies and their equipment and the tanks and the Jeeps and the planes and the trucks and the fuel that kept them moving
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all came by sea. All that had to cross the English channel in ships. By and large a lot of it came in a particular kind of ship that was known as the landing ship tank, or LST. Sailors, by the way, who served on board these awkward vessels claim LST actually stood for large slow target. They were, indeed, large. Their commodious hold could accommodate 20 Sherman tanks‑‑, 30 2.5 ton trucks,
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the famous deuce and a half, fully loaded. 40 Jeeps another 30 Jeeps or artillery pieces on the weather deck since ground combat in World War II clearly meant the use of armor and tanks, without the LST, it's hard to see how the allied could have mounted an invasion of Europe at all, they were big. They were also slow. They had official top speed of 10 knots, and given critical importance to the invasion they were prime targets, the sailors weren't
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wrong. The most important thing about the LSTs, they could steam right up on to the beach. Notice the seams right in front of the anchor, on the bow of this, they are covered doors, they could open up and the tanks, trucks, Jeeps, artillery pieces could drive right out in the sand. The problem was in the spring of 1944, the allies did not have enough of them. There were several reasons for this. First, though the American industrial production was awesome, even unprecedented, it was not
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infinite. Priorities had to be set. Setting those priorities the allies had to address the most immediate need the boy putting his finger in the dike, in 1942 that meant producing Liberty ships and escort ships necessary to protect them as the crossed the Atlantic. Late in 1943, with the U‑boat threat not suppressed but at least manageable. Only then did the allies switch construction priority from escorts and transports to LSTs.
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Changing a shipyard from building liberty ships to building LSTs is not throwing a switch. There are 30,000 component parts that go into the making of an LST. The entire supply chain had to be reoriented to make that possible. By spring of 1944 it was evident Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied commander of the invasion force, I love this particular photograph of him talking to the soldiers. It is duplicated by the montage of photos at the entrance of this theater.
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Eisenhower was not going to have enough of them‑‑ he wrote the joint chiefs in Washington to say. He needed 271 more landing craft, including 47 of the essential and scarce LSTs. He wrote George Marshall, without the LSTs, if you had to make the landing with those he had in hand and those currently in the construction pipeline, if you add it up, and you assume 90% effectiveness capability, which is kind of unrealistic even then the troops on the beach, and I quote him here:
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Will have no, repeat, no LSTs reaching the beaches after the morning of D‑Day plus one until the morning of D‑Day plus 4. In other words, the troops on the beach would have no supply reinforcement, God forbid the ability to extricate themselves for three days on the beach. Unacceptable. So D‑Day was postponed. Originally scheduled for May 1, it was moved to June 5. Eventually it would happen on June 6. As Ike put it in another
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message to Marshall, one extra month in landing cost production including the LSTs should help a lot. Even then it was near-run thing. Churchill recognized where the bottleneck was. Everything turned on the landing craft, he wrote, which held our strategy in a tight ligature. All plans were in a straight jacket. And yet, that same week that allied soldiers came to
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shore in Normandy, eleven thousand miles away in the middle of the Pacific ocean an American invasion force nearly as large as D‑Day Armada, including 84 of the scarce LSTs was heading to the island of Saipan in the Marianas. The fact the Anglo Americans could mount two enormous invasion armadas on opposite sides of the world at the same time shows, first, how the American industrial dynamo changed the
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calculus of war from 1942 to 1944. 1942 when the loss of a dozen transports in Pedestal or the salvation of 18 of them off of Guadalcanal of might have made a difference in the war, now it's 1944, when we had thousands of ships to mount two operations at the same time. But second, it illustrates dramatically how the Naval war was global simultaneous and interconnected. Ike would have salivated over those 84 LSTs. He could have gone
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in May after all but they were in the Pacific. Instead of Germany first, instead of fighting one war at a time, the allies by 1944 were so strong they could fight in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Mediterranean and Arctic and the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean all at the same time. In short, the second world was a global war involved a dozen national Navies which contested the seas, six oceans, everywhere except Antarctica . While fully acknowledging all wars, including this one, are eventually
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won by boots on the ground. In constructing this book I gained enormous appreciation for how much the course of that war was charted and steered by maritime events. Now, you may have noticed that in this rather lengthy talk, I have not mentioned Bismark, Midway, the Philippine sea, laity gulf, Iwo Jima, a lot of topics to talk about. Maybe we can talk about that in the Q and A period which begins right now. Thank you very much. (APPLAUSE) >> Okay. Who is first?
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>> Folks, if you have a question, you need to come to the microphones in the aisle. >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you sir, very interesting. Appreciate it before reading the book. Can you talk about production from the perspective prior to the U.S. entering the war, liberty ships or other ship quantities being shipped to the British forces and other forces in the world and how that was distributed across a global perspective?
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>> Yes I can. I mean, it's almost an American tradition that we enter wars under prepared. And then gin up dramatically during the war to overwhelm the enemy with our productivity. That's a fair template. But I think President Roosevelt saw this coming. It was clear he saw it coming in the 1930s, keeping an eye on Japan, trying to fend off Japan while he supplied Britain, not only lend lease, which we all know about and the deal where by we gave British 50 World War I destroyers in exchange
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for 99‑year leases for Caribbean bases. In all of those ways Roosevelt could see that the United States was likely to become involved. He could see shipping was going to be crucial. And he created what he called a limited national emergency in 1939, before Pearl Harbor. He appointed Emery Scott Land, a retired admiral, to take charge of the war shipping administration to ramp up the number of ships built. The United States never built more than a million tons
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of shipping in its history in a year. He told Land he wanted 7 million tons. This is before the war. Then he wanted 13 million tons after the war. George C. Marshall said, that's not going to be enough if you expect us to launch this invasion of occupied France we need more than that. He told him he needed 15 million tons of shipping in 1943. That number was so huge he was almost called a laughing stock. It was true even before the war, I think Roosevelt
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was something of a visionary to see that shipping ‑‑ not just war ships, not just the ships authorized by the two ocean Navy act passed unanimously, 316 to nothing congress in 1940. I challenge you to think of a bill that would pass congress unanimously today. Those ships would be the ones that came online in 1943 and formed the heart of the invasions for D‑Day and Saipan in addition to that the transport shipping that Roosevelt thought would be necessary to carry out a
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global war. Even before the war began, he began laying the groundwork for that. That required, of course, the acquisition of new shipping yards and building ways and other things down the line. Thank you. Who is next? >> Hello. My question is: In all of your research in the vast scale and you got all of the principle countries the Navies, were there any ‑‑ when you are doing research head scratching, why the Hell you guys did what you just did?
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>> infinite number. >> Can you break it down to individual Navies? >> I think Americans tend to overlook, the important role was played by the Dutch. Most Americans say, wait a minute, the Dutch had a Navy? Holland, of course the Netherlands, had been overrun by the German war machine in 1940 as part of the great sweep westward when France fell in the summer of 1940, but the government of France queen Wilhelmina, Churchill used to joke, of all
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of the crowned heads of Europe Queen Wilhelmina was the only man among them.She escaped with her government to carry on a government in exile And the Dutch East Indies, the colonies in south of the South China Sea had a pretty significant surface force of cruisers and destroyers. Because several nations were fighting against one opponent, the allies cobbled together a unified command,knonn as ABDA, Americans, British, Dutch and the
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Australians and put a British general in charge of it. Well, the Naval component of that, the ABDA strike force was commanded by Dutch admiral, who fought several critical battles against the Japanese. This is not a laugh line, he lost them all, but they were tragic desperate attempts to slow down the Japanese juggernaut. I think Americans overlook that. I think the role of the Canadian Navy in doing escort duty across the North Atlantic in these
1:00:31
tiny little flower‑class Corvettes, so small they were less 1,000 tons, they bobbed around in the ocean like corks, you could hardly step on board without getting sea sick. But they carried a lot of the burden of the escort duty on that convoy. That's unsung work. We remember Midway, and Iwo Jima, the Dutch navy the Canadian escorts and others like that, they sometimes don't get the credit they deserve. I try to give them. That's the
1:01:05
response ‑‑ I am not sure if that's the response to your question, that's what I am going with. >> I appreciate your emphasis on the industrial might on the United States and the role it played in World War II. I was talking with a retired Naval architect, who told me when he was designing ships, such as Enterprise back in the 50s and 60s, everything was domestic, all components. By the time he retired, we
1:01:32
couldn't build it with domestics, we had to build it with imported goods. Does that concern you at all? >> It does not. I will explain why. When I began this afternoon I said that World War II was transformative. It changed the world. One of the ways it changed the world, it made it a global community, economically as well as politically. The Bretonwoods conference that did currency balancing, the general agreement on tariffs and
1:02:04
trade, they are all part of the post‑war accommodation of the allies setting up the world for the next many generations, in the hope that there would not be a global conflict like the two that had ravaged the 20th Century. Because of that, the world became interconnected. It is possible to look at World War II and say could we do that again? Could we ramp up in a crisis from a million tons to 15 million tons in just a couple of years. The concern was some of the
1:02:38
component parts would have to come overseas, doesn't that create uncomfortable dependency? It's interdependency, a global dependency. That contributes to the unlikelihood there will be global conflagration,involving 72 belligerent nations all at war everyone at war with one another at the same time. It does not bother me. I am still confident America has the economic resiliency to meet a crisis when it emerges. So I guess I am going to stop with that. I am less concerned than the mere fact
1:03:19
that many of our weapon systems have goods that are not domestically produced implies dependency and a weakness, that I think is not accurate. We are pretty tough. I have ‑‑ I like to tell this story when I talk to the audience about Navy today, that is if you take one of the nuclear powered aircraft carriers, like your friend worked on, and the accompanying strike force, usually a couple of guided missile cruisers and frigates, supports ships, tankers
1:03:50
to feed destroyers under the water as well that strike force has more striking power in itself than the entire Navy of any other nation on earth. And we have 10 of them. So, we are okay. All right? Yes, sir. >> Yeah, I want to thank you for a very interesting talk. I have to say I am not from the United States but the Caribbean, you can figure out ‑‑ >> If I am glad I mentioned the Caribbean then.
1:04:21
>> Thank you for that. Two things in the Caribbean I am from the French Caribbean, but during World War II there were two islands Aruba and Curaso in the southern part who had (inaudible). From the time I am small, I am hearing the stories early on Germans tried to (inaudible) these two places. So, maybe you want to talk about that, and maybe talk something more about the Caribbean. The second issue would be: Is ‑‑ since World War II we have had ‑‑ we really haven't had
1:05:04
a great Naval battle, right? I mean Falkland Islands etcetera What would you think coming out of World War II was one two or three significant crucial lessons that all of the big Naval powers in the world learned from that war, and how do you see that playing out going forward? You know, with AI computerization kind of making, who knows, ships eventually drive themselves. >> Okay. Thank you very much. This book is 800 pages long, I would have to write another
1:05:46
one to answer the question. Let me start with the Caribbean. Aruba and Curacao were not only sources of oil but had refineries, a lot of ships in the North Atlantic convoys that carried fuel, particularly aviation fuel hundred octane aviation fuel across the Atlantic originated at Curacao, including cargo carried by the Ohio in Operation Pedestal. They were important sites and the Germans, of course, knew this. When the United States became
1:06:19
belligerent. Hitler gave permission to the admiral, who passed it down, to release the U‑boats to attack the United States which they had been arguing for. United States had been in violation of the neutral status. Hitler said no, I have to defeat Soviets first, after Pearl Harbor oh, go ahead. The German commander didn't have as many submarines as he would have like to have sent 9 over to the American coast for a while early 1942. There was devastation off the American coast particularly around
1:06:57
Cape Hatteras when the United States finally got the wherewithal to put coastal convoys together, the submarines moved further south to the Caribbean. That became the central front in the U‑boat war against the tanker trade. Not only those who were at Curacao, but those who loaded up In Louisiana and East Texas. There were not the pipelines in place that would carry the oil overland or the railroad or the capability to carry the
1:07:26
oil, almost all of the oil from East Texas, Louisiana, where much of it came around the east coast of the United States in tankers. At that was the target of German U-boats. The Caribbean was for in March and April of 1942. Probably one of the deadliest places on the earth surface for tankers. So that was one. What was the second one. No, there was one before that. There was one. >> (inaudible) >> Yes, the big battles since World War II.
1:08:07
The biggest surface engagement since Laity Gulf took place in the Persian gulf in 1988, April 18, 1988 when the Iranian Navy, the revolutionary guard element of the Iranian Navy sortied against the United States navy two guided missile cruisers and a gun boat were attacked by the Iranian Navy in missile warfare. It's the first confrontation about missile warfare. That is why I bring it up. You think of World War I Naval engagement was big guns,
1:08:38
huge guns fire 2,000‑pound shell 20 miles. World War II the range grows further. Instead of 20 miles you could fire from 200 miles by bombs, torpedoes carried by aircraft launched off an aircraft carrier. In the Persian Gulf in 1988 the dominant form of warfare became missiles fired 500 miles away. Now you can sit in McDill Air Force base with a set of controls and fire a Hell fire missile from a drone at a target 14,000 miles away. The characteristic
1:09:18
change is the distance at which the opponents fight, in the age of sail you had to sail up to 50 yards, 60 yards away you come hull to hull and blast away with smooth iron cannon balls, but gradually over time the range accuracy increased. The big difference between World War I and II was guns from the airplanes, and to now it's electronic and missile warfare increasing the range. There is almost no theater anymore. You can target enemy from the Persian gulf or Mediterranean
1:09:57
Indian Ocean, you don't have to be in the same ocean anymore to target the foe. They are guided overhead and conducted by geosynchronous units and have terrain following capability. It's pretty awesome stuff. So, that's ‑‑ that's the future. That's what midshipmen at the Naval Academy are studying now. They created a knew major at the Naval Academy. The admiral and I talked about selection of a major as a Plebe back in 1977. The newest
1:10:33
major, you want to guess at the Naval Academy? Cyber warfare, you bet. They are popular from what I understand too. Who is next? >> I think this discussion would have been quite different if it was a British admiral talking about the world at war at sea. He would have emphasized heavily the British Navy, the big battles with the German battleships. By the time America actually got more involved in the war, in 1942, a lot of those big battles
1:11:09
had already kind of happened. So, a British admiral would have had a different perspective on the world war at sea just because of how much their Navy was affected by these big German battleships. Of course we heavily bombed them but they ‑‑ they really took a large brunt of the war by the German battleships and they just wanted to make that point. Because ‑‑ >> That's fair. Let's talk about the Royal Navy. For fun I will tease you about there is no British Navy, did you know that there
1:11:49
is a British Army, but's it's the Royal Navy dates back to the English Civil War when the Navy stayed loyal to the King, King Charles, but the Army went to Cromwell. It's the British Army, but Royal Navy. I don't know the excuse of the Royal Air Force. In any case, the Royal Navy plays an important role. We need to give credit where it's due. Three things won this war. The British willingness, ability to hang in there from June of 1940 when France was
1:12:25
defeated they carried the burden of the war until June of 1941 when Hitler stupidly invaded the Soviet Union,for those 12 months Britain is the only ally for those months fighting alone against the Whermacht and the German war machine. We can't forget that. Absent the British, none of this happens. Second, the Red Army. The Red Army spilled its blood on the steppes of Ukraine and Russia profligately, the Americans lost 350,000 killed in this war. That's a terrible loss.
1:13:00
The Russians lost 20 million. Let's not lose sight of that. The third thing I emphasize, American productivity. All these of these affected the outcome. The Royal Navy's role before the United States got into this the key problem is not German battleships, they had two of them the Bismark and the Tirpitz. Bismark got to sea, as we all know it never got back. And never got back because the Royal
1:13:30
Navy chased it down, tracked it down, wounded it and sent it to the bottom. The Tirpitz got to sea but got chased back into port and was bombed into submission by the Royal Air Force. The German battleships, the two big battleships were neutralized by the Royal Navy, no help from the United States. And the British bore the burden of protecting those north Atlantic convoys through that crucial first year of the war. And absent that, all the rest of this is moot. You are absolutely right on that.
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The point worth making. I will argue with you in this respect, if the British Admiral got up here to tak to American audience he would emphasize the role of Americans too when I was teaching at the British Naval Academy I emphasized the British too. >> We are out of time. >> I'm sorry, we are out of time. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. (APPLAUSE)
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