H R Swardson

Execution by Idiots H R Swardson

Herman Wouk famously called the World War II Navy "a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots." Whatever the sneer in it, his statement was true. In America all you had to work with were idiots and to get victory out of them you had to be a genius. The Navy started in 1939 with 160,000 men. It had to have 3,300,000 men and women, a total reached in 1945. In 1940, when the draft began, those who would make up the difference were civilians - fully American individuals, accustomed to their freedom, innocent of military organization, half of them inlanders who had never seen an ocean. In the business of war they were babies. And the war they were entering was a war of unprecedented complication and high technology. Standing, pre-trained armies, as in Europe, immediately had a great advantage over them. Populations accustomed to obeying warriors, as in Japan, had an advantage. Any nation with a strong military tradition had an advantage. America, lacking these advantages, could make up for them in just one way, through good schooling. And quick learning. In this book I try to give readers an idea of how it went. My method is to insert fictional characters, as representative types, into historical situations. Ensign Peterson and his shipmates are representative types. The USS Hannafee is representative of an attack transport. The ships around her are (with a few exceptions) real. All commanders and their dilemmas are real, though some of their thoughts have been inferred. Operations (but not training or special operations) are real; individual responses are imagined by the author, out of experience and inference. LCDR R. C. Steere, Admiral Hewitt's weather officer, is real. The narrator and commentator is an invented World War II veteran of broad experience who has studied the history of the War. He is speaking mainly to his grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Commentary in italics comes from a more distant observer with academic training.