Review: A Blue Water Navy
| DOI | 10.1177/002070200806300123 |
| Published date | 01 March 2008 |
| Author | Shawn Cafferky |
| Date | 01 March 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Review |
| Reviews |
| 236 | International Journal | Winter 2007-08 |
A BLUE WATER NAVY
The Official Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second
World War, 1943-1945. Volume II, Part 2
W.A.B. Douglas, Roger Sarty, Michael Whitby, with Robert H. Caldwell,
William Johnston and William G.P. Rawling
St. Catharines: Vanwell Publishing, 2007. 650pp, $60.00 cloth (ISBN
1-55125-069-4)
For three-and-a-half grueling years, from 1939 to 1942, the primary role of
the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) was shepherding convoys across the
Atlantic Ocean. It was an important role but not one that senior Canadian
naval authorities relished. The long-cherished dream of building a “bal-
anced” fleet dominated thinking at naval service headquarters. After three
years of rapid and uneven expansion, that dream came to fruition and the
RCN began to participate in a far wider range of operations, from fleet
destroyer and escort carrier actions to dispatching one of its newly acquired
cruisers to the Pacific theatre in 1945. In addition, the Navy performed a
myriad of other tasks ranging from amphibious operations in the
Mediterranean to minesweeping both at home and overseas, as well as tak-
ing part in the D-Day landings in Normandy. And the inshore campaign
waged against modern German U-boats late in the war required new tac-
tics, equipment, and skills. The scope of Canadian operations in the final
two-and-a-half years of the war was extraordinary, especially when one con-
siders that the navy consisted of some 11 ships and 2,700 personnel in
1939. The story of how and why the RCN took on these new roles is the sub-
ject of this long-anticipated operational history.
Work on the two-volume history began in 1987 when a team of naval
historians was assembled under Roger Sarty, then senior naval historian at
the directorate of history, Department of National Defence. Twenty years
later, this volume and its companion—
No Higher Purpose: The Official
Operational History of the Royal Canadian Navy in the Second World War,
1939-1943
, Volume II, Part 1, Vanwell, 2002—are the results of their
painstaking work. Until now, the operational history of the Canadian navy
in the period 1943-45 has not been examined to any great extent. This vol-
ume redresses that imbalance in the scholarship.
The research is exhaustive and, equally important, the synthesis of the
many themes and disparate operations is impressive. The book is divided
into two main sections. The first section, comprising six chapters, deals
with the consolidation of planning and naval operations, and examines
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