Naval War College Review Volume 55 Article 17 Number 3 Summer

2002 200,000 Miles aboard the Christopher Bell

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Recommended Citation Bell, Christopher (2002) "200,000 Miles aboard the Destroyer," Naval War College Review: Vol. 55 : No. 3 , Article 17. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol55/iss3/17

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off. Johnston received 4,700 pounds of incoming ordnance within the space of one minute. It wrecked half of her ma- Robinson, C. Snelling, 200,000 Miles aboard the De- chinery, yet she continued at 17 knots. stroyer Cotten. Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, . . . After accumulating damage for two 2000. 320pp. $35 and a half hours, she wallowed so help- As a midshipman in the 1960s, I discov- lessly that her crew couldn’t even prop- ered J. Bryan’s , the classic erly scuttle her; they simply opened her World War II nonfiction “diary” of life watertight doors and let her flood.” aboard the USS Yorktown (CV 10) in Worth says of the American diesel-driven 1945. It remains a great source of insight Cannon-class destroyer escorts that they into the everyday lives of the men of Task “rolled as badly as the Evarts type,” an Force 58 at the height of the Pacific War. earlier class of destroyer escort that he As a junior officer in , I sought reports was prone to “lurid” rolls. The out similar nonfiction work describing Navy, according to Worth, considered life aboard “tin cans” during the war, but the Cannons the least successful of its I found only two books, both novels. Not several destroyer escort classes. I did not until Robinson’s 200,000 Miles aboard the know the Navy’s official opinion on Destroyer Cotten have I read anything as those , but having a little experi- good as J. Bryan’s book. ence in one of them, I found it an easy This book comprises Robinson’s recol- opinion to share. lections, bolstered by deck logs and his Discussing briefly another class in which archive of letters to his parents, of his I sailed, the 173-foot American subma- experience as a junior officer in Cotten rine chasers, Worth reports accurately (DD 669). As such, it is an amalgam of that they were “wet forward and gener- specific details, his immediate apprecia- ally uncomfortable in heavy seas.” In- tions, and his present-day reflections on deed, in a head sea of any magnitude, the men he served with, the events of solid water often swept over the pilot- those years, and the itself. house. With the sea on the beam the Ensign Robinson was commissioned via ship proved a deep roller. Still, these lit- the Naval Reserve Officers Training tle ships “proved seaworthy enough,” Corps at Harvard University in late and, Worth adds, “the navy viewed spring 1943. He was assigned to the them as a success.” This also is an easy precommissioning crew of Cotten, which opinion to share. was then under construction at the Fed- With a substantial library of good books eral Shipyard in Kearny, New Jersey. on the fighting ships of the last century Cotten was a “war emergency” Fletcher- and a half, I am glad to add Richard class unit, with built-in modifications Worth’s Fleets of World War II to my based on the wartime experience of ear- collection. lier sister ships. Laid down on 8 February

FRANK UHLIG, JR. 1943, the ship was launched and com- Naval War College missioned in just 165 days. Ensign Rob- inson began his service on Cotten as the typical junior officer, with a bewildering series of assignments while the ship was

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fitting out in Kearny. Ultimately, he was nothing except gross tonnage and the oc- assigned as assistant first lieutenant with casional floating mine. a battle station at “Sky 2,” directing 40 Robinson ends the book with an epilogue mm antiaircraft guns. that tells of Cotten’s service. Cotten was quickly dispatched to the Pa- He also includes appendices that discuss cific Fleet and began its combat career as the characteristics of the Fletcher-class part of Operation GALVANIC, the No- destroyers and the Cotten’s awards, as vember 1943 invasion of Tarawa and well as a glossary. Makin. The ship screened the escort car- There is a minor error in one photo cap- riers and performed antisubmarine war- tion, and the maps could have been fare patrols. better, but these are minor quibbles. The While Robinson provides some historical book’s greatest strength is Robinson’s framework to the ship’s operations, the recollections of his experiences in Cotten, strength of the book is the insight it pro- providing an evocative and accurate de- vides into the daily life of a destroyer piction of a valuable part of a great naval wardroom during this extraordinary campaign. While the book is not quite time. As the war progressed, Cotten the “DD version” of Bryan’s classic, it is was assigned to Destroyer Squadron 50 well worth reading, particularly by de- and participated in the great Central Pa- stroyer veterans. cific campaign, continuing from Tarawa WILLIAM COOPER all the way to Okinawa. The ship per- Chula Vista, California formed all the classic destroyer duties, such as screening the fast carriers and steaming with the battle line, at the same time coping with weather, overdue main-

tenance, and, of course, an implacable Moretz, Joseph. The and the Capital and terrifying enemy. Robinson’s de- Ship in the Interwar Period: An Operational Perspec- scriptions of depth-charging con- tive. London: Frank Cass, 2002. 292pp. $57.50 tacts and engaging low-level The Royal Navy is often held up as an ex- bombers reaffirm the adage about war ample of a that being “hours of boredom and seconds of failed to innovate in peacetime. Its critics terror.” maintain that naval officers spent the Robinson learned about the insularity of interwar years preparing to refight the destroyer life, and he describes it well. He Battle of Jutland when they should have depicts how the world seemed to collapse been thinking about the new operational into the restricted horizons of the ward- challenges presented by aircraft carriers room and watch teams, and recalls viv- and U-boats. At the root of the problem, idly his quest to qualify as a fleet officer these critics argue, was an increasingly ir- of the deck. He evokes some of the exhil- rational devotion to the (a aration of high-speed destroyer term that encompasses both the battle- shiphandling in fleet operations, at a ship and the battle ). In recent time when destroyer divisions maneu- years, however, historians have chal- vered at a standard distance of five hun- lenged the image of an intellectually dred yards and were constrained by stilted and hopelessly reactionary officer corps. The Royal Navy and the Capital

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