Reviewed by David Hobbs
Stan Fisher is an assistant professor of naval and American history at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis. He has a PhD from Maryland University and is a past recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Naval History Scholarship. Before earning these qualifications he gained a commission in the USN as a pilot through the Reserve Officer Training Corps and flew Seahawk helicopters, accumulating over 2,500 flying hours in his log book before retiring with the rank of commander.
He qualified as a test pilot, weapons and tactics instructor in addition to an appointment as a squadron maintenance officer. Sustaining the Carrier War is the latest in a series of edited books entitled Studies in Naval History and Sea Power published by the US Naval Institute which examines a range of international naval topics.
The subject matter of this book is important and it deserves its place in the series of studies. The Publisher’s statement on the rear cover says that this is ‘the first comprehensive study on the importance of aircraft maintenance and the aircraft technician in the age of the aircraft carrier’ and that ‘it provides the missing link to our understanding of great power conflict at sea’. The subject matter has, therefore, the potential to explore and explain the fundamental importance of aircraft maintenance in the operations carried out in the Pacific but in my opinion it falls short of doing so as effectively as possible. The author seems to have assumed that every reader would have a detailed knowledge of aircraft engineering practice in the USN prior to 1941 together with the rank structures and trade qualifications of those who carried it out.
I was one of those who did not and felt that greater clarity would have been achieved if Fisher had defined USN aircraft maintenance and repair practice from the outset together with a description of rank structures and responsibilities. To what extent were commissioned officers and chief petty officers involved? What was the balance between planned and unplanned maintenance? What scope was there for accident or battle-damage repair? The reader has to piece together scraps of information in the early chapters to gain an understanding and a description of a typical pre-1941 squadron would have been an invaluable guide which would have made it easier to follow the post-1941 changes that are described in later chapters.
The work of the greatly expanded technical schools is made more difficult to understand than it need be by the lack of a detailed description of what constituted aircraft maintenance rather than other aviation-related skills. For example aerographer/meteorologist and photography training are included in the list of subjects that enlisted men were taught on page 79 and intelligence, fighter direction and gunnery are included in the list for officers on page 80. I was left with more questions than answers about maintenance policy regarding embarked squadrons; aircraft and component lives and how new aircraft were received and despatched to the fleet. Who were the reserves that were called up in 1941? Were they time-expired enlisted men recalled to service; under what terms had they been retained and what was their skill background? Did they have their own sets of tools or did they have to be issued with them? Did aviation trade skills always match an enlisted man’s rank? Some statements left me wondering about the importance Fisher had obviously given them. What special property did herringbone twill coveralls have for instance? What was an ACORN Unit, a question that raises the point that the book desperately needs a glossary to help the reader decipher those acronyms quickly.
Perhaps the most disappointing element within the text is the comparison of USN technical training with the Women’s Royal Naval Service, WRNS, on page 103. Quite why Fisher chose only to compare the WRNS air mechanic categories with the USN is unclear. The USN was not the only navy to operate fast carrier task forces against the Japanese in the Pacific, the RN had ten carriers ready for operations against the Japanese mainland in August 1945. Furthermore the British carrier Victorious had been lent to the US Pacific Fleet in 1943 and had, for several weeks embarked and operated USN F-4F Wildcat squadrons. During the same period an RN TBF Avenger squadron had operated from Saratoga. The RN had its own air engineering organisation that differed from the that of the USN, something the author hints at in his comparison with the WRNS. The RN was surely the most obvious fleet to compare USN practice with and something must have been learnt from the different air engineering techniques that worked alongside each other during this period? In 1944 Saratoga was lent to the British East Indies Fleet based on Ceylon; did her report of proceedings draw out any interesting comparisons with British air engineering practice? During 1945 the British Pacific Fleet, BPF, operated effectively as a task force under US Pacific Fleet control and every carrier had USN liaison officers embarked who wrote carefully-considered reports. Surely this wealth of material offers more valuable insight into comparative air engineering doctrine than the brief description of WRNS skill categories.
There are other lost opportunities to compare the USN with RN air engineering practice since the Admiralty kept the USN informed of developments from 1939 onwards; British wartime experience is known to have influenced USN policies and later American experience certainly influenced the British. Fisher describes the Carrier Aircraft Support Units, CASU, established by the USN on Pacific islands from 1944 but makes no mention of the comparable RN Mobile Operational Air Base, MONAB, organisation. An RN forward aircraft supply pool even shared an airfield with an equivalent USN organisation on Pityilu Island within the Admiralty Group. Maybe the author just wanted to retain his focus within the USN but then why mention the WRNS air engineering branch structure at all? The bibliography’s list of secondary sources includes the seminal American and British Aircraft Carrier development 1919-1941 by Friedman, Hone and Mandeles. This title clearly failed to stimulate Fisher to make comparisons that would have given his book greater depth. In several places the author hints at the different way in which Japanese carrier aircraft were supported and maintained. This would have been another rich area for comparison. What did the USN know about Japanese standards and practises between 1941 and 1945?
To be fair, Fisher’s arguments do coalesce in the later chapters and the description of carrier maintenance task after page 128 gives some feeling of the subject matter that had been lacking earlier. He emphasises the point, several times on some pages, that aircraft maintenance was a critical aspect of fast carrier operation in the Pacific War and remains so to this day.
Despite its disappointing lack of comparisons and an early lack of clarity that prevented the book from reaching its full potential, this book can be said to add a new element to the historiography of carrier operations in World war Two. Fisher admits in paragraph three on page 212 that ‘further historical work in the field of naval aviation maintenance is needed’ but he has identified that need and demonstrated that this is a field that deserves to be the subject of greater analysis. So, too, do the related subjects of logistics, battle damage replacement, attrition replacement and the whole strategic policy regarding aircraft support and repair at sea. Whilst it has its imperfections, especially the lost opportunity to compare US and British solutions to similar basic problems of providing carriers with sufficient serviceable aircraft, this book does stimulate thought and open up a new field of study and I thank Stan Fisher for that. With those observations in mind, I am happy give it a limited recommendation.
