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Rating: 
Summary: Good insight into history
Review:
Former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman has written a very good book here. Having been involved in the publication of seven books myself (three of my own), I understand the frustrations encountered in the editing process, especially the small publishers' deficiencies in that regard. Many do no editing at all. One might expect a better effort from Touchstone Press. However, the minor discrepancies in this book did not disturb me as much as some others who have reviewed it. I found enough truth and insight in it to make it a valuable addition to my library.
Lehman was born in 1942, fourteen years after me, but he has a very good grasp on the historical Navy. He was Secretary of the Navy from 1981-'87. I was especially interested in his comments on the era between the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the Vietnamese struggle; the clash between the civilians (politicians) who are constitutionally in charge of the Navy, and are usually neither trained nor equipped to formulate military strategy but rarely realize it, and the professional military minds who have experienced battle, studied strategy and tactics in War College and from their colleagues, and who are, unfortunately for all of us, dictated to by the former. Sometimes, as with Korea and Vietnam, notably, with disastrous results.
Lehman particularly describes, without rancor or emotion, the role that Harry S. Truman had in devastatingly disemboweling our Navy after WWII--a time when I was a career man in the Navy and effected by his decisions--and his basic dislike for the naval service. In the First War, he had been a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army, and resented the Admirals and the Navy. Lehman also describes the role that Truman and the politicians around him had in destroying James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy and later the first Secretary of Defense--eventually leading to his mental breakdown and suicide.
I was not disturbed, personally, when he fired Douglas MacArthur, whom I served under while he was de-facto Emperor of Japan and whom I considered to be a walking, talking ego, as did most others who served in Japan and Korea under him at the time. His Inchon landing escapade--usually noted as a brilliant tactic by historians and a sycophantic press because it succeeded--was pure luck. There can be no question about that, and his decision to hit the other side of Korea at Wonsan was an unnecessary strategic disaster, which is also not subject to question, as Lehman notes, since that location was taken overland before the amphibious landing could take place through the harbor minefield, where we lost two of three minesweepers in the process of trying to clear the 3,000 mines there.
Truman had an immense ego, unmatched, unfortunately, by accompanying mental vigor, and his attention to foreign policy and his knowledge of strategy was sporadic. MacArthur, who was also ego-centric, irritated him by being late to a meeting in the Pacific, and his insistence that we hit the communists where they were hurting us--north of the Yalu. However, his failure to believe his own intelligence officers who told him the Chinese were in Korea, was another major disaster. Truman's hesitation to let him cross the Yalu was due to his fear that we would anger the USSR.
They were already supplying the Chinese with MiG-15s and the pilots to fly them. Like, when you are in a fistfight, you don't want to hit your opponent too hard, or you'll make him mad.
I am no idle reader concerning this period. I came home in a stretcher on a hospital plane with a bunch of First Marines from the "Frozen Chosin," who had been fighting in 40 below weather against an entire Chinese army. Most of them were due for amputations from severe frostbite.
Had it not been for Forrestal's early grasp of the situation vis a vis the USSR, and his struggle to keep an effective naval service, we'd have been in deeper trouble than we were at the time. Truman wanted to completely decommission the entire Marine Corps, and but for Forrestal's efforts, he would probably have succeeded. In those days, they thought that the atom bomb was all we needed.
It was much the same in Vietnam, where the personal approval of Lyndon Johnson, was required before Navy pilots could hit a secondary target if for any reason they could not attack their primary target. The infamous "Rules of Engagement" in Vietnam, as well as Korea, cost us dearly and delighted our enemies who had no such restraints. The eagerness of politicians to cover their own political gluteus maximi has cost the lives of thousands of our warriors.
Our warriors never lost a battle, but--we lost the war in Vietnam. Go figure!
All of the above are detailed in this book. The personal political strife between politicians and our battle-trained warriors is, seemingly, never ending. Constitutionally, the politicians are entitled to lead, but by nature they are rarely qualified for the task.
The contrast is seen in the so-called "Desert War", where George Bush, who had been a combat naval aviator, had the wisdom to turn his military people loose to do their job without interference. We enjoyed fewer casualties there than in any other war in history. His big mistake was to intercede and stop our victorious army before the job was completed, for political reasons. Now, we will probably have to finish the job without the, at least nominal, help of our "allies," again having to amass the troops, ships, tanks, materiel and supply lines which were all in place in 1990. And, as in Vietnam, there is a vocal contingent of Americans who are protesting military action and favoring appeasement, as before the Second World War and during Vietnam, making our avowed enemy very happy.
Joe Pierre, USN (Ret)
author of Handguns and Freedom...Their Care and Maintenance
Rating: 
Summary: Mistakes ruined this book for me.
Review: For non-military historians especially, Lehman provides an excellent briefing on the history of the U.S. Navy in terms of its "heroic men, great ships, and epic battles." I realize that there are already in print definitive biographies of many of the naval heroes (e.g. John Paul Jones, David Farragut, and Chester W. Nimitz) as well as definitive studies of various great ships and epic battles. For those who wish to consult such sources, most of them are included in a substantial Bibliography and they are grouped appropriately. Lehman's purpose in this volume is to focus on the evolution of a stirring as well as colorful naval tradition which extends from the Revolutionary War through the end of the Cold War. When concluding his Introduction, he observes: "the greatest victories of the naval tradition have not been the wars recounted here but the wars that were never fought because American seapower was so strong that to challenge it would be foolhardy. If we let it, the strength of that tradition will continue to underwrite peace in our land."
Obviously, even the strongest seapower could not have prevented events which occurred on September 11th but such seapower will always have an important role to play worldwide whenever human freedom must be defended or obtained. For me, a non-military historian, the greatest pleasure of this book was derived from learning about people and events of which I was previously unaware. For example, Samuel Leech (a 14-year old "powder monkey" aboard the H.M.S. frigate Macedonian) and his compelling account of his ship's defeat in battle by the frigate United States under the command of Stephen Decatur, Jr. during the War of 1812. For many readers, perhaps, Lehman provides about as much information about U.S. naval history as they may ever need or want. Other readers will be motivated to learn more about specific "heroic men, great ships, and epic battles." I am within the second group. Lehman is to be congratulated on a unique achievement: He has brought significant portions of American military history to life and done so with passion as well as erudition.
Rating:
Summary: Winner of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award
Review: From the Publisher: ON SEAS OF GLORY is the winner of the 2003 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature from the Naval Order of the United States.
Rating: 
Summary: A loving look at the early American Navy.
Review: John Lehman was a highly motivated, restless, Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan. He took an active role in formulating strategy, much to the discomfort of some serving uniformed officers. This book by him focuses on the early American Navy, its battles, history, and development. It further looks at Lehman's controversial "forward strategy" during the Reagan Administration. Some reviewers have pointed out errors in the text which perhaps may be attributed to bad editing or faulty research, and I will leave these criticisms to others since I probably don't know enough about it. What I will say is that this book is a very good read, and is plainly a labor of love by a man who plainly loves the US Navy and takes great pride in both his role as SecNav and the service of earlier members of his family. The Navy has often been an instrument of American destiny, and that is what this book is about. Most readers will probably forgive the mistakes and appreciate Lehman's presentation of the Navy to the general public.
Rating:
Summary: A loving look at the early American Navy.
Review: John Lehman was a highly motivated, restless, Secretary of the Navy under President Reagan. He took an active role in formulating strategy, much to the discomfort of some serving uniformed officers. This book by him focuses on the early American Navy, its battles, history, and development. It further looks at Lehman's controversial "forward strategy" during the Reagan Administration. Some reviewers have pointed out errors in the text which perhaps may be attributed to bad editing or faulty research, and I will leave these criticisms to others since I probably don't know enough about it. What I will say is that this book is a very good read, and is plainly a labor of love by a man who plainly loves the US Navy and takes great pride in both his role as SecNav and the service of earlier members of his family. The Navy has often been an instrument of American destiny, and that is what this book is about. Most readers will probably forgive the mistakes and appreciate Lehman's presentation of the Navy to the general public.
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