Stephen R. Taaffe

When I grabbed this book off the "new" shelf at library I wasn't paying that close attention to what I was actually getting, apart from having a fair amount of respect for Taaffe. My expectation was that this was going to be a series of capsule biographies, but Taaffe had more ambitious plans, and provides an in-depth examination of how the USMC stable of flag-grade officers evolved through the course of the war; pretty much warts and all. One thing is for sure, Arch Vandegrift, commander of show more the 1st Marine Division at Guadalcanal, and eventually Commandant of the Marine Corps, was an indispensable man. Despite having embraced amphibious warfare as their mission there was no guarantee that the Marines would become a paragon of achievement had they not made their doctrine work, and Vandegrift was a man who made things work, with as little organizational conflict as could be avoided.

One irony that stands out to me is that the Marine emphasis on speed of execution perhaps came to tell against them as the war progressed, and battles in the Pacific became the case of prolonged sieges, not smash and grab operations to snare a port or an airfield. The more methodical approach of the U.S. Army was probably more appropriate. It is telling that Holland "Howling Mad" Smith, the senior USMC operational commander for much of the war, looked at Iwo Jima and Okinawa as bad deals from the perspective of casualties, even before the battles commenced, but that's why the U.S. Navy liked the Marines; they'd follow orders whether or not it made sense.

Very recommended. show less

Unlike certain books I've read lately, this monograph actually does work like something of a general introduction to a larger event, but Taaffe's main focus is the personal politics of MacArthur's Far East command, and how the toxic elements of MacArthur's command style were a liability in the conduct of the war. Apart from "Dugout Doug," the most problematic characters here are "Johnny" Walker (commander of U.S. Eighth Army) and Ed Almond (commander of U.S. X Corps); hard-driving officers show more of some competence, but arguably not leaders of the first rank.

In particular, Walker probably could not be as forceful as he should have been with MacArthur, because it would seem that he really enjoyed no confidence in any quarter (with the possible exception of U.S. Army Chief of Staff "Lightning Joe" Collins). For all his faults though, Walker is owed a debt of gratitude because it was because of his hard work that U.S. troops in the Far East were even a little bit prepared for the trials to come in 1950.

As for Almond, while he tends to get pilloried for his racism in most accounts, his biggest flaws as a general were unthinking aggression and a thirst for military glory. However, his will to win made him appreciated in the company of U.S. flag-grade commanders who were mostly past their prime.

The range of this book is actually a bit wider than the title suggests, as it does consider Matt Ridgway's period of command after the sacking of MacArthur, but before the long period of stalemate until 1953. This leads to an examination of how the time-serving generals who had happened to be in command when North Korean assault came were replaced. As opposed to the world wars, these men were eased out of command more than being unceremoniously sacked, showing the way to the future command politics of the U.S. military. In the wake of the results of Washington's subsequent wars one can wonder whether this is a good thing. show less

The New Guinea Campaign is almost forgotten. Compared to the European theater, with charismatic generals like Eisenhower and Patton against the Nazi war machine, or the naval actions in the Pacific with the dramatic clash of carriers before USMC amphibious assaults, the Southwest Pacific Theater has receded from view. MacArthur's overbearing personality and Korean War fall from grace probably have something to do with it, along with the lack of focused battles.

Taafe reads the New Guinea show more Campaign as a clash of personalities, primarily between MacArthur and his obsession to liberate the Philippines, and the Navy and Joint Chiefs of Staff. MacArthur saw the theater as a race, to get in a strategic position to attack the Philippines before the Navy could get in position to attack Formosa. He pushed this pressures onto his subsidary commanders, General Kreuger of the Army, General Kenner of the Army Air Force, and Admiral Kinkaid, and the men who would actually do the fighting.

The jungle was as much their enemy as the Japanese. Trackless mountains, malarial swamps, kunai grass infested with typhus carrying mites, beaches that washed away, and warding coral reefs. Logistics in the SWPA was a nightmare, although the Americans had it far better than the Japanese, who lost millions of tons of shipping to submarines.

This book shows brilliant strategic outflanking moves, followed by the hard work of prying the Japanese out of the jungle. By 1944 the Japanese Army lacked the mobility to offer more than tactical resistance. One of MacArthur's greatest failures as a commander was to denigrate everything after the landing as "mopping up", when the Japanese forces no longer defended the waterline, and turning clearings into airbases required weeks of attacking fortified cave complexes.

In this book, the difficulties of terrain and distance rise foremost, while oddly enough from the title, MacArthur recedes. His victory came from a stubborn refuse to let nature stop him.

Oh, and the book could really use better maps. show less

Instructors seeking to provide their charges with useful and relevant material still can find much of proven utility among the events and personalities of the American Civil War (ACW). At times the parallels to the very modern age are disquieting. The ominous rise of new weapons technologies posed much the same anxious concerns to Federal Navy commanders watching C.S.S. Virginia (nee U.S.S. Merrimac) taking ironclad shape in Norfolk as do the latest announcements from Beijing media about the show more threats hypersonic missiles or orbitally-launched kinetic energy weapons pose to U.S. Naval supremacy. New forms of media raise issues of popular support for warfare, be it in the form of Matthew Brady and other photographers’ grisly daguerreotypes of battlefield carnage or body-cam footage live-streamed from the field of combat into world-reaching social media. High-speed communication and transports, telegraphs and railroads, were concerns for 19th Century planners whose responses beneath the beards and brass buttons provide useful case studies for corresponding contemporary concerns.

One too-often forgotten such issue is the vital one of the need for any given senior commander to cooperate smoothly with at times mercurial sovereign civilian leadership. Stephen Taaffe’s fascinating and vital treatment of this exact subject in Commanding Lincoln’s Navy provides ‘all results in’ analysis of that vital and potentially-explosive relationship of much use to military thinkers of the 21st Century.

Gideon Welles, Lincoln’s only Secretary of the Navy, had no naval experience, but as a fiercely loyal cabinet member and a former newspaper editor, he combined a priceless understanding of media realities with a grinding determination to win the war. Taaffe ably chronicles Welles’s maturation as a manager of his human resources and obstacles, looming high among which were the Navy’s ossified seniority system and its tremendously powerful bureaux. Taaffe makes excellent use of Welles’s own assessment of his challenges, lucidly preserved in Welles’s multi-volume Diary, which combines priceless insight into the ‘team of rivals’ and the individuals who Welles felt helped or hindered the war effort and Welles’s efforts to complete and sustain the blockade that eventually strangled the Confederacy.

Taaffe chronicles how Welles had often-undesired input from all motives and all sides on nearly every one of his decisions, whether it was the support or replacement of a particular commander or the employment of a given weapons system or tactic. Welles’s navy was far less tolerant of hesitation or even suspected disloyalty to the Federal cause among his officers than were those initially in charge of the Union’s armies. Lincoln, other cabinet officials and Gustavus Vasa Fox, his competent and assertive Assistant Secretary, all put pressures on Welles in addition to those posed by the ghastly condition of admirals, ships, and Welles’s frantic need to find good replacements for them all in frantic haste. Unsurprisingly, Welles never managed perfection under such strains, but by the end of Taaffe’s narrative one shares Lincoln’s high opinion of Welles’s execution of his office.

Taaffe’s prime emphasis is, aptly, on Welles’s management of his senior commanders, among whom were heroes such as Charles Stewart, proven in battle—fifty-one years previously. Taaffe notes how Welles empowered and supported the best of his proved professionals, but Andrew Foote and even David Glasgow Farragut eventually collapsed under the burdens Welles and the war heaped upon them. Other men such as Samuel F. DuPont and John Dahlgren managed new technologies and their relationship with Welles in ways that ended or greatly hampered their utility to the war effort. Welles considered his drastic reactions necessarily ruthless. Many powerful people did not agree, but Lincoln, with his eye for talent, usually backed Welles.

Such trust was not without vindication. Franklin Buchanan had displayed excellence as a ship commander and the first superintendent of the United States Naval Academy. Welles nonetheless angrily refused to allow Buchanan to rescind his resignation when Buchanan’s belief that his native slave state of Maryland would secede failed in the event. Even modern authorities have faulted Welles’s inflexibility. It is worth noting that Buchanan would later command the Confederacy’s two most powerful ironclads—badly. He would be gravely wounded while watching outside the casemate of Merrimac/Virginia as his gunners burned the stricken U.S.S. Congress—and her wounded—with heated shot. His headlong charge with C.S.S. Tennessee against the Union fleet in Mobile Bay prompted a loyal Southern officer—Farragut—to remark, ‘I didn’t think Old Buck was such a fool.’ Farragut’s monitors, also supported by Welles, remorselessly pounded Tennessee to pieces.

Taaffe’s eminently readable and vivid narrative details dozens of similar stories, not all of them to Welles’s credit, but to the reader’s definite enlightenment. The most central, vital, and useful lesson from this volume is that, in an era when the Obama administration went through no less than seven senior commanders in Afghanistan, the modern leader must take a lesson from Welles and his war on that person’s vital need to manage civilian oversight at least as ably as the demands of the battlefield.

Rob S. Rice
American Military University show less