Customer Reviews

South Pacific Destroyer: The Battle for the Solomons from Savo Island to the Vella Gulf

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

South Pacific Destroyer is one of the best histories of the Solomon Islands Campaign and Pacific Destroyer Operations I have read. Russell Crenshaw's book starts off with the USS Maury alongside the crippled CA New Orleans moored against Florida Island. He walks us through the living and working compartments of the Maury, from the crews head to the bridge letting us feel the life of each compartment in the ship. By the end of the first 10 pages you have a feel for Destroyer life, and the conversations and concerns of the officers and crew.

From there the author walks us through the tactical situations faced by the Maury and other destroyers, and covers each major and most minor actions in the Guadalcanal Navel Campaign. Cruiser and destroyer movements and actions in each battle are explained from the viewpoint of the participants, so you have a combination of the actions of the battle along with the personal memories. Some books focus more on one or the other, but this one achieves what I thought was a very nice balance.

At the end of the book tables are included that show actual results achieved in the actions (ships hit, with major or minor damage) the contrast between actual damage to the Japanese ships vs. what had been observed is striking! There is also a discussion of the torpedo problems in the US Fleet, and one regarding the effectiveness of some of our guns. Very enlightening.

While much of the detailed tactical information presented here is available elsewhere, combined with the personal and human information contained an outstanding reading experience is provided!

The naval actions around the Solomon Islands were a series of hard-fought actions between two well-matched opponents. The Japanese ability to fight aggressively at night challenged the U.S. Navy. Eventually, increased tactical ability joined with an advantage in radar allowed the Americans to defeat the Japanese, but as Crenshaw shows, it was not easy. The pleasant surprise in this book is the emphasis the author (a former gunnery officer on the USS MAURY) puts on the effectiveness and use of weapons and fire control systems. His narrative flows, and shows the reader the many tasks destroyers were called upon to do. I don't get a real personal feel for Mr. Crenshaw, to me the biggest drawback of an otherwise-admirable work. Good set of maps! Recommended to those appreciating naval history, the Pacific Campaigns in WW2, and destroyers.

In addition to his eye witness knowledge as Gunnery Officer and XO aboard USS MAURY(DD-401), CAPT Crenshaw is apparently an expert in Naval Science. The accurate technical detail excels that normally found in this type of book. "Snipes" and "Techs" will be impressed and entertained. The history is well researched and written with consummate skill, approaching that of John Lundstrom. I just wish he had written more.

This is the best account of destroyer actions in the Solomon Islands I have read; written from an authoritative viewpoint and filled with technical insights that could only have been furnished by someone who was there. If you find Roscoe enthralling but leaving you wishing for more detail, your book has arrived. Thank you, Capt. Crenshaw, for writing it.

I purchased the book hoping that it was a first person account of a Pacific WWII destroyer officer who was involved in much of the action prior to 1944. About 25% of the book is truly that and was exactly what I had hoped for. I really enjoyed his description of the people and organization and functioning of the USS Maurie. This and the physical descriptions of the power plants and related systems are also unique in my reading experience.

The Author,however, also attempts to interleave in the narrative a history of the surface actions in the South Pacicfic theater in 1942-1943. It appears that he liberally summarizes the Morrison hisory "Breaking the Bismark Barrier" without adding much if anything and deleting a lot. The presentation is certainly mechanical. Even the charts are cheap reproductions from the Morrision book.

For some reason the author does not describe his experinces with the destroyer from Pearl Harbor through Midway and etc. This to me would be much more interesting than a repeat of a book I have read several times and a lengthy discussion of the fallacies of the US torpedo program that thousands of authors have already covered ad nauseum. The torpedo problem was,though, a hugely important issue. What the author did add was that prior to the battle at Vella Gulf, he insisted that the Maurie's torpedo depth settings be set to mininum to compensate for faulty controls. This truly may have had a significant effect on the outcome of the battle.

I decided to follow up on the early war in the Pacific and picked up South Pacific Destroyer, the tale of the USS Maury in the Solomon Island Campaign (from post the battle of Tassafaronga thru the battle of Vella Gulf). Our writer, CAPT Crenshaw Jr., was the gunnery and later the executive officer of the USS Maury during this time period and provides a very direct and complete look at both the ship he served on and the campaign as a whole (his focus is naval but he does cover the land and air components where they interact with the naval story). Chapters flow around the activities of the USS Maury at a particular point in the campaign and expand into the slightly bigger picture. CAPT Crenshaw covers all of the engagements during this time period, all of the naval engagements having a map at the end of the chapter showing the flow of the battle (for those who've read Two-Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World Waryou'll recognize the maps [I'd hope that map making for naval battles would have improved since the writing of The Two Ocean War]).

Rating wise I'm calling this one a 4 star book. There was so much great potential here, CAPT Crenshaw was giving us an excellent early war perspective and failed to complete this. I say this because we're told about the Battle of Tassafaronga from an after action perspective. As we read more, we learn that CAPT Crenshaw and the USS Maury saw more of the early war than he's showing us (this really would have been great if CAPT Crenshaw told us of his service on the USS Maury during the Coral Sea and Midway campaigns or even if he'd come aboard after those if he'd mentioned his starting point. His writing style is good and would have brought some great information out on things that are a little hard to find; instead, CAPT Crenshaw opens this book for us like a person waking from a bad dream). There are a limited number of pictures; however pictures weren't really required for this story. The maps were misplaced with battle maps at the end of the chapter rather than when the action starts with operational maps in the Appendices (the operational maps were a little weak because it's difficult to find where some of the battles were fought). Acronyms are freely used and defined in the Glossary (I prefer it when they're put in the front of the book or defined for first use). There is a nice Appendices entry for Japanese and American ships lost in the time span this book covers (I wish there'd been another with the hull numbers for the American ships because CAPT Crenshaw provides the hull numbers when we first meet the ships but it's hard to remember them).

This book is a report on the sea battles for the Solomons in support of the Marines and later the Army troops ashore on "cactus", Guadalcanal. This is a great book, because it is an absorbing read; and also because at the end there are details about the strengths and weaknesses of the various weapons both sides used. This is more detailed info than any I have seen before. Also, there are good maps, tables of losses, and other info. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in reading about the Solomons Naval Battles or the general Progress of the war in the Pacific viewed by the crew of a destroyer.

This memoir was a bit uneven. Although it contained some interesting insights into life aboard a destroyer in the Solomons, and some good narrative of his ship's travel much was missing. At times the author gave us much more detail than others - likely due to recollecting events long after they occurred without benefit of a contemporaineous diary. While I appreciate the author's attempt to give us a complete narrative of events, not all of which he participated in, it resulted in a non-linear retelling of the campaign. Since a number of others have covered these events it would have been more valuable to me to have a consistent in depth retelling of events he directly observed.

This is one of the best treatments of life aboard an active, decorated destroyer in the South Pacific, on par with Edward Stafford's review of life aboard a destroyer escort in Little Ship, Big War. I highly recommend them both. The account concludes quite suddenly after an engagement off Vella Lavella, but the title does restrict the account to the campaign for the Solomons. I would be interested in following the Maury in its actions after the Solomons, but the book does not reach to that time period. The last chapter contains an interesting analysis of the navy's failure to diagnose and correct the serious problems with American torpedos that persisted well into the war. While Japanese torpedoes were extremely effective, American torpedoes were duds more often than not.

A real good read,and points out the shortcomings in communication,weapon reliability,and the sheer determination of DD's officers and men to get the job done despite the odds.It makes me as an ex Royal Navy Sailor to realise how we took the systems we had on ships in the sixties that the Tin Can Sailors of WW2 would have had an easier time had they had the same equipment we had.I left the Navy in1986 and have seen massive advances made in ships and systems since then