Book Review - Dark Waters, Starry Skies
The Guadalcanal-Solomons Campaign, March– October 1943
by Jeffrey R Cox
Osprey Publishing, 2023, 528 pp.
Hardback ISBN 9781472849892
EBook PDF ISBN 9781472849854
EPub & Mobi ISBN 9781472849885
Reviewed by: Felicity Petrie
Dark Waters, Starry Skies is the fourth in a series of books by lawyer and historian Jeffrey R Cox that follows the Second World War Pacific campaign. This volume specifically covers the Guadalcanal campaign over the period March to October 1943, when the Allies began to turn the tide against the Japanese armed forces and started to compel their retreat back up the island chain.
Primarily structured chronologically over the subject period, this volume outlines ship movements and capabilities, air raid plane types, numbers and compositions, troop movements, bomb quantities and explosive weight counts, and many other topics in extensive detail. This content is complemented by commentary about the frequently quirky (if not outright deleterious) personalities and their actions on both sides—including their curious and often counterproductive decisions. The book also sheds light on the surprising twists and turns experienced by both sides from what might be called the ‘fog and friction of war’: weather, equipment breakdowns, illness, miscalculations or sheer bad luck.
Cox does not hold back with his droll, pointed character assessments, and tends towards sarcasm in his post analysis of events and key decisions. In some places, this approach offers a welcome break from the pages of statistics, facts and quotas. In other areas, however, it is overdone, jarring against the highly analytical tone of the majority of the text. Jarring too are some of the mixed metaphors and attempts at humorous colloquialisms that can come across as unnecessary at best, and culturally insensitive at worst (the repetition of the phrase ‘the Katana of Damocles’ comes to mind as one example).
Highly detailed and deeply researched, in many places this book reads like an official history. Indeed, the book generates hundreds of potential case studies for military and strategic studies researchers and historians to explore more deeply (supported by a generous bibliography). Despite the level of detail, there remains plenty of scope for the reader to draw their own conclusions from the actions and decisions recounted in the text. While this approach may be especially appealing for a military audience, this is not a textbook on military strategy. Cox recounts events as they happened, but is light on the deeper analysis of their implications and lessons. Had he looked more deeply into some topics (such as the impacts of Japanese tactics to disrupt sleep and induce fear in Allied forces newly arrived to the battleground), it would have added richness to the text and opened the book up to a wider audience. Perhaps these conclusions are assumed knowledge for the reader, or it may be a case of limited space in an already substantial book (470 pages plus notes and bibliography). Repetition is often used for emphasis, but the success of this approach varies within the text.
One point raised quite starkly is the very real limitations of replacing capabilities lost in battle, particularly at this point of the Pacific War and this far from the Japanese and Allied home bases. Ships and aircraft were spread thinly across a large area of land and sea. Air raids conducted with a few (sometimes only one or two) aircraft, and sea battles between three or four ships per side, were the norm for most of the events recounted in the book. These ‘skirmishes’ occurred almost continually between the more widely known battles that the book also discusses, and which are more usually the focus of military histories covering this campaign. Attrition meant there were no vast armadas of ships or seemingly endless flights of aircraft to send into battle, and the loss of one or two platforms in action resulted in a significant tipping of the scales. The innovation that sprang from this lack of resources is treated in a matter-of-fact way by the author, again without a detailed analysis of the implications then or now. Cox covers some case studies in depth (such as destroyers running troops to shore when transports were in short supply or too easily defeated, changes in flying and bombing techniques, and land warfare conduct that deviated from the accepted doctrinal norms). He nevertheless leaves plenty of room for analysis by the reader.
Within the pages of tactical detail, the book covers some particularly significant events. These include the shooting down of Admiral Yamamoto’s plane and how the combination of the US codebreaking ‘magic’ and the Admiral’s affinity for timeliness combined to deliver his downfall. There is also some discussion around whether this was a strategic victory or defeat—Yamamoto was recognised as a ‘cool head’ among the Japanese hierarchy, and may have been a stabilising influence that benefited the Allies.
The text is bookended by events on the ship Akikaze. It opens with a war crime involving the slaughter and dumping at sea of Bishop Joseph Lörks and a substantial number of civilians by Japanese armed forces. It ends with a reprise of this event, and how it came to pass almost unnoticed in the history of the Second World War. Between the opening and closing chapters, the structure follows the timeline of the Guadalcanal campaign, with each chapter broadly following a group of related events leading to a climactic point.
A clear lesson from this book is the significant contribution of integrated capabilities and their interdependencies in the littoral domain. Troops need to be moved by sea to achieve significant numbers and appropriate equipment and logistics support. Ships are vulnerable to air attack from land and sea, and to attack from other seagoing warships and submarines. So, troop transports need air support and defensive ships. Land-based air power requires bases to operate from, and bases need troops and supplies to be defended. Communications and decision-making (or problems therein) are a common theme throughout the book, within and across all forces on both sides. Like the other books written by Cox, Dark Waters, Starry Skies distinguishes itself in the level of detail explored. And while many of the historical events have been covered in other military histories, Cox takes a uniquely broad but time-bound narrative approach instead of focusing on a single campaign or domain.
If you like your dense, highly detailed military history with a sizeable side dish of snark, this may be just the book for you. Dark Waters, Starry Skies offers much to the military professional, especially those interested in how lessons of the past might be used to shape decisions for the future in terms of littoral combat and integration of forces. This is a lengthy but comprehensive book relevant to military audiences and those interested in the history of the Second World War Pacific campaign and littoral combat. When read along with the other books by Cox, it offers a highly detailed account spanning the tactical to the strategic, and across all domains.
