Torpedo Boats Research Articles

Manning the Torpedo Boats: How Gendered Insecurities Shaped Naval War in the United States and Britain, 1860-1900.

Applying a gendered lens to the torpedo boat's adoption (ca. 1860-1900) in the United States and Britain, this article explores the cultural dynamics of military innovation. In the nineteenth century, armored or "ironclad" warships disrupted the ideals of elite "naval manhood": an emphasis inherited from preindustrial officers on physical bravery, seamanship, and endurance. In response, a group of Anglo-American officials, artists, and authors repurposed the torpedo boat to prop up masculine heroism under threat from technical shifts. Ironically, it was a radical technology that preserved old values. This nostalgic effort explains how, in under a generation, the torpedo morphed from an "unchivalrous" weapon into an attractive investment. By refashioning cultural representations of the torpedo boat, advocates both insulated elite "naval manhood" from industrialization and upended modern naval force structures. The adoption of the torpedo boat was as much a gendered reaction to the ironclad revolution as a tactical calculation.

Taking the “modern system” to sea: The past and future of naval power in industrial war

This article applies Stephen Biddle’s “modern system” to naval war in the industrial era, c. 1860–1918. Biddle doubts his model’s transferability beyond continental/land warfare. A historical perspective suggests otherwise. Beginning in the 1860 s, navies—even earlier than armies—confronted industrial firepower and adapted accordingly. Submarines, torpedo boats, cruisers and eventually aircraft all relied on the “modern system” principles of cover and concealment, maneuver and combined arms to survive and perform useful missions. Today, concepts like “distributed lethality” have precedents in a “maritime modern system”—one undercurrent in naval history that is increasingly relevant.

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War

The Battle of the Taku Forts in the Late Qing Dynasty from the Perspective of Engineering History

During the westernization movement, the Taku Forts formed a modern coastal defense fortress system with a coastal defense battery, the Haikou fleet as the support, telegraph communication as the engineering communication method, and railway transportation as the carrier. In this paper, the Taku Forts’ management, construction, weapons, and army are described from the perspective of engineering history. Before the battle of the Taku Forts between China and the West, North China had formed a defensive system with the newly formed Wuwei Army as its guerrilla division, Huai Army and Lian Army as the defensive forces, and the old Eight Banners and Green Battalion as the local security forces. The invaders first occupied Tanggu Fort, captured the North fort,crossed the Hai river, and then attacked the South Fort. However, the rebuilt Beiyang Navy’s existing ships and torpedo boats abandoned it at the time of the fort’s death, leading to its helplessness and eventual dismantling.During the crisis in China, the Qing armies’ ship and gun technology was the smallest gap between China and the western armies in all modern wars. The reasons for the failure of those wars were as follows: the disadvantage of the national system and defense strategy and the mingling of other social reasons with it.

The Contribution of the Western Siberia Workers and Employees Movement to Weapons and Military Technical Equipment Building for the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War

The article considers the patriotic movement of the workers, employees and of the whole population of Western Siberia to raise funds to build more military technical equipment for the Red Army. They worked voluntarily on Sundays, overproduced at plants and contributed all their earnings and personal savings, nonferrous metals and things to building aircraft, armored vehicles, ships and submarines, Katyusha rocket launchers, armored trains and other weapons and military technical equipment. One of the peculiarities of the Western Siberia workers and employees activities was their raising funds to build military technical equipment which was manufactured in the region. Thus, aircraft were manufactured in Novosibirsk and Omsk, armored vehicles in Omsk and Altay Territory, torpedo boats at Tyumen shipyard etc. According to the incomplete data, the biggest contribution to military technical equipment building was made by the workers of Novosibirsk Region (232,931,448 rubles); Kemerovo Region (266,120,000 rubles); Altay Territory (165,742,767 rubles). It was registered that on 28 February 1943, the inhabitants of Omsk raised 48,584,042 rubles to build military technical equipment. The exception is Katyusha rocket launchers which were manufactured in Ural Territory and ammunition for them was made in Western Siberia, and submarines.

Russian Imperialism and Naval Power: Military Strategy and the Build-Up to the Russo-Japanese War by Nicholas Papastratagakis (review)

Reviewed by: Russian Imperialism and Naval Power: Military Strategy and the Build-Up to the Russo-Japanese War by Nicholas Papastratagakis Paul Dunscomb Russian Imperialism and Naval Power: Military Strategy and the Build-Up to the Russo-Japanese War. By Nicholas Papastratagakis. London: I. B. Tauris, 2011. 352 pp. $95.00 (cloth). Given its significance for East Asia the haul of new scholarship generated by the centennial of the Russo-Japanese War could only be described as disappointing. Perhaps this is not surprising as Russians find little to celebrate, and even Japanese view the event, a national triumph paving the way for later tragedy, with ambivalence. Yet even in English the production of new works was quite meager and generally confined to edited collections.1 Nicholas Papastratagakis’s Russian Imperialism and Naval Power: Military Strategy and the Build-Up to the Russo-Japanese War does help add a previously hidden element to this historiography but is really more at home, and more useful, in discussing the effects of the evolution of late nineteenth-century imperialism and the rise of “navalism” during the 1890s on Russia as a whole. Russia’s place as both an imperial and naval power at the turn of the twentieth century was unique and presented Russian strategists with many pressing and often mutually reinforcing problems. One of the most helpful contributions of Papastratagakis’s work is to contextualize Russia’s experience within the transformation of Western imperialism from the more informal commercial variety predominant through the mid nineteenth century, at which the British particularly excelled, and the more frenetic militarized scramble for overseas colonies and territories which characterized late nineteenth-century “industrial imperialism,” at which Britain was no slouch but was hard pressed by the efforts of Germany, France, Russia, and others including the United States and Japan. In the 1890s the object of this new imperialism was increasingly East Asia, particularly Qing China. This change was accompanied by the rise of a new instrument of and symbol for imperial success: a blue water navy. The works of Alfred Thayer Mahan especially helped to articulate the need for and to stimulate interest in the possession of a large fleet of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers as the primary means to either protect one’s communications between metropole and colonies or to break the connections of rival powers by destroying their battle fleet thereby securing “command of the seas.” While not universally accepted, especially by those [End Page 1010] emphasizing defensive measures against fleets such as torpedo boats, minefields, and (eventually) submarines while long-ranging cruisers attacked the enemy’s merchant shipping, Mahan’s ideas were eagerly taken up by those who saw the possession of a battle fleet as the ultimate expression of imperial power, notably Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany but also his cousin, Nicholas II, tsar of Russia. Despite the fact that Russia was first and foremost a land power, the tsar’s fondness for the navy was a principal factor allowing it to take advantage of the new environment. But, as Papastratagakis notes, the Russian navy faced several challenges in its quest to become a useful agent of Russian imperialism. These challenges fell into three major categories—the geographic, the political, and the organizational—which made the overall task of deciding upon and pursuing a strategic vision exceedingly difficult. The geographic challenge was that the vast territory of imperial Russia encompassed three potential theaters of action, the Baltic, the Black Sea, and the Pacific, which were totally unconnected from each other and where forces deployed were incapable of providing mutual support. While the proximity of St. Petersburg and Russia’s western frontiers made the Baltic the most important theater strategically, the difficulties involved in building a fleet that could stand against Great Britain or imperial Germany was daunting. Russia’s Pacific frontier was distant, with poor communications links to the heartland (at least until the Trans-Siberian Railway was completed) and suffered inadequate bases (Vladivostok froze for several months) with poor support and repair facilities. Worst of all was that the Black Sea was, since Russian warships could leave only with permission from Turkey (unlikely to be forthcoming), essentially a landlocked lake. Politically the...

Peter John James Wren

Peter John James Wren did not have a distinguished academic career at St Francis Xavier College, Liverpool, spending much of his time in the headmaster’s study. Aged 16 years he...

Beyond the Boundaries of Interference: Ramón Gómez de la Serna and the Radio Revolution

RAMON Gomez de la Serna was a trailblazer Spain's early radio industry. From the moment the fledgling radio stations Radio Barcelona and Radio Iberica began sporadically broadcasting 1924, he was captivated by radio technology and its epitome of all things modern. He was simply awestruck at how a mechanical device simply called aparato could effectively collapse the spatiotemporal order and fold the listener into a discursive community thriving thousands of miles away. In 1925, he began his involvement with Madrid's innovative Union Radio that King Alfonso XIII and Primo de Rivera inaugurated personally, but it was not until 1930 that the radio station granted him the ability to broadcast from the intimacy of his apartment (Diaz 120). As far as we know, he was the first vanguardista Spain to have a radio emitter at his immediate disposal. An ardent believer radio's democratizing potential, he broadcast a miscellany of daily reports that consisted nothing less than rendering intelligible the dynamism of urban experience: Un dia relatare el extremo de la obra excepcional sobre la misma marcha de los acontecimientos ... otro dia el gran hombre que muera a la medianoche tendra su necrologia inmediata con lirismo de primera oracion sobre su cadaver ... otro dia radiare la conversacion sin aire de entrevista que la casualidad me lleva a sostener ... Mi voz sera como la voz de la intimidad y de la conciencia, dando los ultimos alcances del mundo, para lo que lanzare los mas urgentes ?que pasa? por mi telefono. (Ventin Pereira 195) From what we know about Gomez de la Serna's involvement with radio before his exile to Argentina 1936, there is no doubt that he regarded the technology as a liberating medium. In his own words: Para mi la radio es el mayor teatro del espiritu que se conoce (Automoribundia 504). There is, however, another side to his technophilia that bears telling, particularly as it concerns his novella !Hay que matar el Morse! of 1925 and his contributions to the avant-garde radio journal Ondas between 1927 and 1932. It must be noted that Ondas was the literary wing of Union Radio and one of the foremost publications Spain on the exploding field of radio communication. As such, [e]n Ondas se dan cita casi todos los escritores que formaron parte del movimiento vanguardista espanol. La radio, como invento revolucionario, es en la revista donde encuentra su alter ego que le da replica en cuanto a modernidad se refiere (Blanco Carpintero 254-255). Gomez de la Serna's novella and contributions Ondas provide the basis for a more nuanced understanding of his affinity with radio technology. While they clearly evidence his passion for radio, they also clarify that he was quite exasperated with its technical shortcomings to the point of believing they could threaten the promise of the newly-formed radio community. What makes these writings so revealing is that they not only bear witness to the potentially devastating setbacks that beleaguered radio's early development (the seemingly insoluble problem of interference), but also give voice to the period's fundamental anxieties with communications integrity a world of fast-paced technological progress. Since the early Enlightenment, technological progress has frequently been regarded as that expansive teleological driving force propelling civilization in a desirable direction, to use J. B. Bury's well-known words (2). While narratives of progress have always retained a privileged status within modernizing societies, it is also true that at least since the time Rousseau conceived of le bon sauvage, they have also engendered more systematic counter-narratives that have registered the many ills unleashed by man's technological evolution. While Gomez de la Serna was a champion of progress and technological innovation his youth--between 1909 and 1919 he was an advocate of Marinetti's mechanized aesthetic of progress which great locomotives, twisting tunnels, armored cars, torpedo boats, monoplanes, and racing cars improved our lot by freeing us from the cultural burdens of the past--his views on the matter began to shift the 1920s (qtd. …

The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak (review)

Reviewed by: The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak Chalmers Hood The Jeune École: The Strategy of the Weak. By Arne Røksund . Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007. ISBN 978-90-04-15723-1. Appendix. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xviii, 242. $134.00. Jeune École: the only school of western naval strategy outside of the better known Mahan doctrine of world maritime supremacy. The huge fleet, the great battle, the control of the world's seas, said Mahan. But the current author, Admiral Arne Røksund, Commandant of the Norwegian National Defense College, comes from a maritime nation with no hopes of world domination and knows that the sea is not just for the [End Page 253] mightiest. So, he sought inspiration in the ideas coming out of France from the 1880s up to the appearance of the Dreadnought. Jeune École; the young school of the young turks. Jeune École; a navy built around small ships because the national coffers were empty after the Franco-Prussian War. Jeune École; a fleet of small ships perfectly suited for empire building which absorbed French maritime energies for fifty years. Sailors became explorers and trainers of colonial armies in hopes that their overseas regiments would make the difference on the Marne in the next struggle for the mastery of Europe. Jeune École; the perfect experimental doctrine in an era when ships were neither wood nor steel and were propelled neither by sail nor steam but rather were unsuccessful mixtures of all. Jeune École; the doctrine for a lesser maritime power still smarting from Trafalgar, dreaming of a comeback using small torpedo boats and fast commerce raiders. Jeune École; a doctrine which could sell as the most democratic form of national defense in an era when monarchist generals like Boulanger and anti-semitic scandals over Captain Dreyfus tarnished the image of France's armed forces. Jeune École; perfecting torpedoes on surface craft, while awaiting a functional submarine. The Jeune École was all of these things and interested parties could turn to any of the arguments to justify the investment in something other than ships of the line. This book provides the English language reader with the only up-to-date study of this curious development since the appearance of Theodore Ropp's dissertation-turned-book. Røksund has made some significant additions by using primary sources in the French Navy's archives which were closed to Ropp when he did his research in the 1930s. The result is a tight story which begins with the French Navy's surrender of her budget to finance the rebuilding of the Army after 1870 and ends with the emergence of the submarine as the first viable weapon to do what the Jeune École proposed-wage a guerre de course. In places, the footnotes are as important as the text, summarizing internal debates and secret conferences at the French Navy's war college. Admiral Røksund misses the political fight over the annual budgets for the Navy in these very lean years. As some officers admitted years later, there were politically correct speeches to make before revolving door cabinets which would guarantee a budget. Were the Jeune École enthusiasts misguided dreamers or simple pragmatists getting whatever they could? When the Dreadnought appeared and completely altered the concept of naval shipbuilding, the French admirals quickly adapted; but could they build fast enough to match their rivals? It is too bad that The Jeune École; The Strategy of the Weak is sold for a price which only research libraries and big navies can afford. One would hope that parts could be made available in more affordable form. Røksund's Jeune École is a book for the poor as well as the rich. Copyright © 2007 Society for Military History

Une Education Geostrategique: La Pensee Navale Francaise de la Jeune Ecole a 1914 (review)

Reviewed by: Une Éducation Géostratégique: La Pensée Navale Française de la Jeune École à 1914 Chalmers Hood Une Éducation Géostratégique: La Pensée Navale Française de la Jeune École à 1914. By Martin Motte. Paris: Economica, 2004. ISBN 2-7178-4844-4. Maps. Tables. Notes. Annexes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. 816. Euro 70.00. Until a few years ago, French naval writing was a sleepy, sideline affair. Most of it was done either by retired naval officers or by a few civilian historians who taught at the École Navale or worked in the archives at Vincennes. When the old publisher Éditions Maritime disappeared, there was concern that all was lost, but a new house, Economica, filled the void, first in military history and then in a line of naval and maritime studies. Martin Motte's new work is the latest in this series, which includes translations of Paul Kennedy, Sun Tzu, Julian Corbett, Carl von Clausewitz, and Edward Luttwak from the non-French world. Globalization is the theme in this series on maritime thought, edited by Hervé Coutau-Bégarie. While relying mostly on published sources, Motte's title does not do his [End Page 569] work justice. Imagine a book which is one-third Mahan, Corbett, and their critics; one-third French naval history; and one-third French social and political history. The result is a bit like Arthur Marder's Anatomy of British Seapower with a dash of Peter Karsten's Naval Aristocracy and Theodore Zeldin's eclectic France, 1848-1945, vol. 1, Ambition, Love and Politics. The author goes through the already-known problems facing French naval leadership after the Franco-Prussian War: governments totally focused on an Army-first policy against Germany without sufficient money to pay for a modern fleet. Added to this were the chronic divisions between the command and staff establishments in the naval officer corps, each focused on pet projects for restoring French naval power through unrealistic schemes. The absence of uniformed guidance played right into the hands of a Parliament not interested in modernizing the fleet. It took the Dreyfus scandal coupled with the strategic disaster at Fashoda to refocus national attention on the Navy. The outline of this is generally known to readers of Ropp, Earle, and Halpern, but up to now the "why" behind it all has not been fully explored, and this is the core of Martin Motte's 800-page work, derived from his Sorbonne dissertation. We find out, for example, that French naval officers justified fleet modernization on the basis of their own version of the White Man's Burden. We also see that in spite of several reform-minded Ministers of Marine, the admirals resisted innovations taking place in most other countries. We even see a group of young officers, the so-called Jeune École, proposing a navy of torpedo boats to match the French Army of red pants and offensive à l'outrance. To make his point, the author compares naval thinking with that of the nationalist poet and reserve infantry officer, Charles Péguy, who died with his company on the Marne, red pants and all, leading an attack on von Kluck's right flank. We also see how frustration with the entire political process, the embarrassments of the Dreyfus Affair and the seeming impossibility of building a modern fleet attracted right-wing political figure Charles Maurras who believed all might be solved if the Parliament were dissolved and the monarchy restored. In the end, the HMS Dreadnought may have been the most important force in overcoming French factionalism just in the nick of time to assist with the Entente Cordiale, the Anglo-French Naval Accord, and producing a fleet capable of escorting Lyautey's Armée d'Afrique across the Mediterranean in September 1914. Martin Motte doesn't tell us which piece of the equation was most important in French naval developments leading up to the First World War. Instead, he provides the entire menu, letting us prioritize the political, social, and intellectual reasons in this very messy story which mysteriously turned out all right. This is a very interesting account of how a navy and its parent society...

Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War

Retracing the confused pattern of planning for escalation of the Vietnam War, Moise reconstructs the events of the night of August 4, 1964, when the U.S. Navy destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy reported that they were under attack by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Using declassified records and interviews with the participants, Moise demonstrates that there was no North Vietnamese attack; the original report was a genuine mistake.

Claims Settlement Agreements

On December 18, 1980, the Department of State announced that the United States Government had accepted the proposal by the Government of Israel to pay $6 million in three annual installments of $2 million each, beginning on January 15, 1981, as final settlement of U.S. claims arising out of an unprovoked attack upon the Liberty on June 8, 1967, by Israeli aircraft and motor torpedo boats in international waters in the eastern Mediterranean. The attack occurred while the ship was some 20 miles off the Sinai coast during the Six-Day War.

Churchill, Macmillan, and the Reactivation of “Force X”

Harold Macmillan, the future Prime Minister who was Resident Minister and political adviser at Algiers during 1943, devotes a chapter in his autobiographical volume dealing with World War II to the reactivation of the French naval squadron known as “Force X.” Although brief, impressionistic and lacking balance (students would be better advised to consult Sir Llewellyn Woodward's scholarly treatment), his account makes it evident that he had serious differences with Winston Churchill. The explanation he offers is that the Prime Minister resented his warning against the use of “bullying tactics.” Churchill, in his great war history, devotes only a brief paragraph to this curious episode and omits any reference to the important part Macmillan played. But a recent investigation of unpublished correspondence in the Prime Minister's Operational Papers, and of other pertinent materials, casts considerable light on the nature of their disagreement. These sources also provide valuable insights into the Force X problem generally, notably with respect to its linkage by Macmillan with the larger and much more important issue of French political unity. Actually minor in global war perspective, the Force X problem became a symbol of British difficulties in dealing with a defeated and divided France.Force X was the French eastern Mediterranean squadron, commanded by Vice-Admiral René Godfroy, which was blocked in the port of Alexandria by a more powerful British fleet at the time of the Franco-German armistice in June, 1940. It consisted of one battleship, four cruisers, three destroyers, a half-dozen torpedo boats, and one submarine. The Force X commander, although claiming to be an Anglophile, believed that the French government had no option at that critical juncture but to abandon its ally and to accept Hitler's cease-fire terms.

Soviet Sailors in the United States During the War

The war was in its second year. Upon my return to Moscow from the Urals, where I had inspected the building of torpedo boats, I went as usual to report to Admiral L. M. Galler, Deputy Commissar of the Navy, under whose immediate direction I worked.

Experiences of a Multiple Gas Turbine Machinery in Fast Patrol Craft

The Swedish Spica-class torpedo boats have been in service now for some years. The experiences of the craft are reported good and some details are given in this paper of the results with the propulsion gas turbine, the gearing, the controllable pitch propeller, and the generator set gas turbine. Air intake problems in small craft are discussed as well as other problems connected with the multiple shaft installation.

On the Water Impact of Flat and Concaved Plates

Taking pictures of the motion of a water surface at the impact of flat and concaved rectangular plates on the water, we obtained the phenomena which the air was entrapped and compressed between the water surface and plate surface, while blowing out through the contact part of both surfaces. In order to develop the equation of air motion reasonably, we took the energy dissipation due to volume change of entrapped air into consideration, hence, an unknown coefficient was herein introduced. It was suitably determined from measured data by the dropping test already done by one of authors. The aspect ratio of rectangular plate was chosen beyond about three, and plates have one-third or full scale when compared with the plate panels of both destroyers and torpedo boats. We finally obtained the experimental formula of impulsive water pressure covering M/ρl2 from about 2 through 7, which might be considered most useful for practical purpose.To get the elasto-plastic response of concaved rectangular plates, the damping effect due to compressed air was also introduced into the theoretical treatment, and this damping coefficient was approximately determined so as to satisfy the critical damping condition of the plate, such as the case of flat plates. We therefore obtained the experimental formula of the response.Within plate scantlings used in our experiment, if the plate is repeatedly dropped on the water from the same height the induced concavity will finally converge to the certain magnitude. And hence, applying those two formulae obtained above to solve such phenomena, reasonable coincidences concerning concavities after each drop were obtained between the computed results by numerical analysis and measured data.

With the Wandering Regiment: The Diary of Captain Ralph Ely of the Eighth Michigan Infantry , and: Back Home in Oneida: Hermon Clarke and His Letters , and: Dear Belle: Letters from a Cadet & Officer to His Sweetheart, 1858-1865 (review)

308CIVIL WAB HISTOBT seaports. In all of these ports but Galveston, torpedoes were an important part of the defense. The bibliography is adequate but not exhaustive. One wishes that a more diligent search had been made of available manuscript sources. For example, Mr. Perry cites Record Group 109 (War Department Collection of Confederate Records) in the National Archives, but he apparently failed to find or use a very lengthy (over sixty pages) document written by Francis Lee concerning his activities in building torpedo boats. The diary of General George A. Mercer (Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina) sheds some light on the origin of spar torpedoes. The illustrations are excellent particularly the photos taken of various torpedoes in the collection of the West Point Museum. An appendix on Union vessels sunk or damaged by mines is also included. Wtlliam N. Stell, Jr. Mississippi State College for Women With the Wandering Regiment: The Diary of Captain Ralph Ely of the Eighth Michigan Infantry. Edited by George M. Blackburn. (Mount Pleasant: Central Michigan University Press, 1965. Pp. 73.) Back Home in Oneida: Herman Clarke and His Letters. By Harry F. Jackson and Thomas F. OOonnelL (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1965. Pp. ix, 212. $6.00.) Dear Belle: Letters from a Cadet 6- Officer to His Sweetheart, 18581865 . Edited by Catherine S. Crary. (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1965. Pp. xviii, 256. $5.95.) One of the principal dividends of the now-concluded Civil War Centennial was the discovery of a number of unpublished soldiers' reminiscences. Some of the collections unearthed and printed—such as the journals of Colonel Charles S. Wainwright and the letters of General Robert McAllister-wüI stand as reference works for years to come. Others are but pleasant footnotes to the saga of Civil War GI's. These three works under review belong to the latter class. Ralph Ely was a farmer residing near Alma, Michigan, at war's outset In May, 1861, he joined the 8th Michigan Infantry as a captain; he eventually attained the rank of brigadier general Ely's first service was with Thomas W. Sherman's expedition in South Carolina. The farmer-turned-soldier next joined the newly formed Ninth Corps and fought with Bumside at Antietam , Knoxville, and in the final campaigns for Richmond. Unfortunately, the diary inexplicably ends with an April 1, 1864, entry. For the most part, Ely's journal of military service consists of short daily notations that tend to be meaningless and too often are monotonous. Typical of such entries is that for November 15, 1861: "Company on guard at the Fort I remained BOOKREVIEWS309 at camp writing home." Even Ely's summary of Antietam runs to but nine hues. The letters are well-edited, and the annotation is exceptionally good; but the lack of an index seriously restricts the usefulness of a diary that is more a brief travelogue than an incisive commentary on war. Back Home in Oneida is a narrative history based on the seventy-two letters of Hermon Clarke, a central New York farmer who managed to avoid the magnetisms of war for a year. Then, in August 1862, the twenty-fouryear -old Clarke left his region for the first time and journeyed southward with the 117th New York Infantry. After initial duty in the Washington defenses, the regiment participated in the Suffolk, Fort Wagner, Bermuda Hundred, and Petersburg campaigns. Clarke's letters to his family are highly observant treatises on officers, movements, country scenes and people. Of General B. F. ("Beast") Butler, for example, Clarke wrote: "Butler may be a very smart man in some things, but if I have got to fight I want to do it under a man that knows more about war than he does." A basic weakness in this work is its format Authors Jackson and ????nell contributed as much—if not more—text than did Clarke. The book seems undeservedly padded. Needed annotation for many points in Clarke's letters is missing. The publisher also contributed to the shortcomings by omitting an index. In short, Back Home in Oneida may make a good volume for popular consumption, but it lacks the makeup to be a...

INTELLIGENCE IN THE FLEET

Naval Engineers JournalVolume 75, Issue 1 p. 61-64 INTELLIGENCE IN THE FLEET CAPTAIN DONALD F. SEAMAN USN, CAPTAIN DONALD F. SEAMAN USN THE AUTHOR was commissioned in the Navy in 1942. He was assigned to Indoctrination and Instructors school for the next five months. Following that he was attached to the Motor Torpedo Boats as a Task Group and Squadron Intelligence Officer of the New Guinea and Philippines areas.Search for more papers by this author CAPTAIN DONALD F. SEAMAN USN, CAPTAIN DONALD F. SEAMAN USN THE AUTHOR was commissioned in the Navy in 1942. He was assigned to Indoctrination and Instructors school for the next five months. Following that he was attached to the Motor Torpedo Boats as a Task Group and Squadron Intelligence Officer of the New Guinea and Philippines areas.Search for more papers by this author First published: February 1963 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-3584.1963.tb04660.x In 1945 he attended the Advanced Naval Intelligence School in New York, following which he remained at the school on the instructing staff. Next he was stationed with the Organized Reserve as Zone Commander for Intelligence in the 13th Naval District. He then left the Organized Reserve in 1950 to join the Staff Amphibious Group 3 and Task Force 90 in Korea where he served Operational Intelligence duties until 1953. From 1953 to 1956 he was stationed in Washington, D. C., on the instructing staff of Naval Intelligence School. From January 1956 to February 1958 he served on the staff of CINCPAC and CINCPACFLT in duties of Operational Intelligence. He served as Director of Current Intelligence on the staff of Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic, then as Assistant Distinct Intelligence Officer, 5th Naval District Headquarters before returning to Washington and the present duties as Assistant for Automation Coordination in the Office of Naval Intelligence. In 1944 Captain Seaman received the Navy Cross Medal for the rescue of a downed naval aviator in Halmahara and the Bronze Star Medal for Intelligence operations in enemy territory. In 1951 he received a Commendation Ribbon with a Combat V for Operational Intelligence activity in Korea. AboutPDF ToolsExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume75, Issue1February 1963Pages 61-64 RelatedInformation

Noise and hearing conditions on board Norwegian motor torpedo boats and submarines.

The technical development of the motor torpedo boat and the submarine has created considerable acousto-auditory problems which, particularly during and after the Second World War, have gained increasing actuality.With the modern diesel engine and the highly developed petrol motor the noise problem has presented itself as a medical problem also in the Navy, at the same time as the development of the electroacoustic equipment makes great demands on the hearing of the men who have to operate this apparatus.

The Lesson of Port Arthur

T HE origin of the Russo-Japanese War of I904-05 can undoubtedly be traced to the part played by Russia in the settlement between China and Japan following their war of I89495. Prior to that time Japan had not been considered a country of sufficient military strength to deserve much attention. However, in I894 the Russian military attache in Japan, Colonel Vogak, reported: Now I have no doubt whatsoever that in Japan we have a neighbor deserving full attention on our part. ... I would not be surprised if within ten or fifteen years the Japanese army will become a first class one.... Having won a war against China, it will have no other objective than to measure its strength against a European country, and because of the very nature of the situation in the Far East, this country can only be Russia or England. It is significant that realizing her inability to fight England and Russia simultaneously, Japan, through her special envoy, Marquis Ito, tried to establish an understanding with Russia. Failing in this, in I 902 Japan signed a defensive alliance with England, and shortly afterwards Russian representatives in Japan and Korea indicated their awareness of the gathering danger. Although as early as 1900, a number of defensive measures were outlined and approved in Russia, including that of establishing a powerful naval force, many of these measures were never put into effect, partly because some of the highest officials felt that the greater the Russian efforts for military preparedness, the greater would become those of the possible enemy. As a result, only half-measures were taken for a long period of time and all out preparations for a possible war were only begun in January 1904. On the night of January 26, 1904, although there had been no declaration of war, a division of Japanese torpedo boats made a surprise attack upon the Russian fleet anchored in the outer harbor of Port Arthur.