Grave of a Dozen Schemes: British Naval Planning and the War Against Japan, 1943-1945

by H.P. Willmott

In late 1943 as the prospect of victory over Germany became discernible, the British high command's attention turned toward the Pacific. At issue was Great Britain's role in what would be the final stage of the Japanese war. Given conflicting strategic considerations, the lack of facilities, supplies, and men, and a navy unfamiliar with large-scale carrier operations, the search for a national strategy against the Japanese was to take a full year. Within the British high command, a bitter debate raged between a prime minister intent upon an Indian Ocean-based amphibious strategy and the service chiefs who recognized that an Upper Burma commitment was unavoidable and saw that the employment of a carrier force in the central Pacific was highly desirable.
With this book a noted British naval and military historian follows the debate, tracing the way that policy was shaped as much by the unfolding of events as by deliberate calculations. Drawing on British Cabinet, service, and planning papers, H. P. Willmott examines a process and issues that remain relevant today - the formulation of national policy, its joint-service application and reconstitution, and the confusion of political and military arguments at the highest levels of policy-making. In addition, he examines the decisions that were made against the record of achievement in 1944-1945.

316 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Hedley Paul Willmott (H.P. Willmott) was a widely published military historian, author, former Senior Lecturer at the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He has written extensively on modern naval and military history.
He had retired and lived till his death in Surrey, England.

(source: http://www.goodreads.com/author/edit/... & http://www.potomacbooksinc.com/Books/...)

Reviews

[Terry · Rating 3 out of 5]

A strange book. Apparently most of it is based on a PhD dissertation. That part is way into the weeds with lots of excess detail and generally hard to follow. The other parts of the book, covering British operations in the Indian and Pacific Oceans is much more readable, but could actually use more details.