Captain Jack “Dusty” Kleiss retirement photo, 1962; Kleiss with wife Jean, 1942 (Images provided by Jack Kleiss/Hampton Roads Naval Museum/Laura Orr) Captain Jack “Dusty” Kleiss, USN (Ret.), a VS-6 Dive Bombing pilot that served during the battle of Midway, passed away last week at the age of 100 at his residence in Texas. The Kansas
By James Goldrick, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD (2015) Reviewed by Phillip G. Pattee. Ph.D. James Goldrick, the author of several books and articles on topics of naval and defense interest, including naval history, is a retired Rear Admiral in the Royal Australian Navy. In 1984, as a Lieutenant, Goldrick published his first book, The
By Adam Makos, Ballantine Books, New York, NY (2015) Reviewed by Rear Adm. Arthur N. “Bud” Langston, U.S. Navy (Retired) Devotion is the account of an incredibly selfless heroic attempt by Lt. (JG) Tom Hudner to rescue Ens. Jesse Brown after his Corsair was hit by small arms fire forcing him to make a crash
By George E. Melton, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2015) Reviewed by Alan Harris Bath, Ph.D. On 3 July 1940, at the direction of Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill and the British War Cabinet, the Royal Navy bombarded a major portion of the French Fleet then in port at Mers-el Kebir in French North Africa.
By Andrew A. Jampoler, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2015) Reviewed by John Grady Having spent a great deal of time reading accounts and logbooks from the voyages of Thomas ap Catesby Jones, John “Mad Jack” Percival, John Downes, William Bolton Finch, Charles Wilkes, et al., of American encounters in the Pacific, in Asia, in
By Peter Dye, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2015) Reviewed Larry A. Grant “In war we must expect a casualty list of 100% every three months in men and material and must be prepared to replace all our pilots, observers and machines at this rate….” Brig. Gen. Robert Brooke-Popham “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals
By Michael M. Greenburg, University Press of New England, Lebanon, NH (2014) Reviewed by Rear Adm. James D. Cossey, USN (Ret.) The Court-Martial of Paul Revere is a ‘three-fer’ book: a biography of Paul Revere, the story of the American Revolution and the early struggles of the Republic, and a detailed account of the 1779
By John Clancy, Casemate Publishers, Oxford, UK (2015) Reviewed by Michael F. Solecki Naval activities in the Indian Ocean during World War II are rarely talked about in U.S. historical circles as it was primarily a British theater. In 1942 when the war broke out, Ceylon (modern day Sri-Lanka) was home base to the British
By Geoffrey L. Rossano and Thomas Wildenberg, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2015) Reviewed by David F. Winkler, Ph.D. With the centennial of America’s entry into World War I just over a year away, the Naval Institute Press could not have timed the publication of this book any better. It’s understood that World War I
By Norman Polmar and Edward Whitman, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2015) Reviewed by Robert P. Largess In a page-long “Perspective” prefacing this unusual book, the authors express the reason for its writing: “Since the early decades of the last century, several hundred non-fiction books have been written about submarines and submarine warfare.” This substantial
By Michael Sturma, Annapolis, MD, Naval Institute Press (2015) Reviewed by Charles Bogart This book is a joy to read. The author, using a variety of primary sources, has compiled a social and administrative history of the U.S. Navy’s World War II submarine base at Fremantle, Australia. With the loss in December 1941 of the
By Deborah Lake, Pen and Sword Military, Barnsley, UK (2015) Reviewed by Joseph Moretz, Ph.D. In a struggle of global proportions, minor acts at times achieve a resonance not measured by the ledger of gains and losses or the scale of their actual decisiveness. The Arab Revolt during the First World War may be cited
Edited by Thomas J. Cutler, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, MD (2015) Reviewed by Michael F. Solecki In 1839, the federal government established the first formal non-private naval school in Philadelphia called the “Naval Asylum,” a somewhat daunting name by today’s grammatical vernacular. The school, the actual forerunner of the U.S. Naval Academy, was an academic
By J. Barto Arnold III and Robert W. Glover, Denbigh Shipwreck Project Publication, Institute of Nautical Archaeology, College Station, TX (2015) Reviewed by Mark Lardas In May 1865, a month after Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia, the blockade runner Denbigh ran aground attempting to enter Galveston Harbor, and was subsequently destroyed by Union
