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GRAVE OF A DOZEN SCHEMES: British Naval Planning and the War Against Japan, 1943-1945. By H. P. Wilmott, Annapolis (Maryland): Naval Institute Press. 1996. xviii, 316 pp. (Maps, photographs.) US$36.95, cloth. ISBN 1-5575f916-6.
THIS SORRY TALE is about the complex, attenuated, and inherently unsatisfactory attempt by the British to develop an effective naval strategy in the Pacific in the final year of World War II. It is a story about decision making or more precisely about the lack of the same. It is part of Willmott's genius that he has succeeded in rendering a painstaking reconstruction of the process both readable and worthy of close attention. Indeed, this book should be required reading for students of military affairs, illuminating as it does the interplay between personalities, imperial priorities, bureaucratic cultures, logistics, strategy, and naval imperatives.
The analysis is confined to the period between two Anglo-American grand strategy conferences: Sextant in the...