World War II at Sea: A Global History

Aug 10, 2023

World War II at Sea: A Global History

Craig L. Symonds ranks among the country’s finest naval historians. World War II at Sea is his crowning achievement, a narrative of the entire war and all of its belligerents, on all of the world’s oceans and seas between 1939 and 1945. A book signing follows the program.

Content

443.419 -> >> Good afternoon, everyone. Archivist of the United States, David Ferriero, was supposed

448.12 -> to make the opening remarks for today's program, but unfortunately he has been called out of

452.18 -> town on business. So on behalf of the Archivist of the United, States, I'd like to welcome

457.02 -> you, and all of our friends from C‑SPAN, to the McGowan Theater located in the National

461.9 -> Archives building in Washington, DC. I am Doug Swanson Visitor Services Manager for

466.58 -> the National Archives Museum, as well as the producer for the noontime lecture series.

472.24 -> Before we begin today's program, I would like to mention a couple of other programs that

475.59 -> will be taking place at this location. Thursday, May 17, at 7 p.m. we will present a panel

481.84 -> discussion, Before the Freedom Riders: The fight to integrate Glen Echo Amusement Park.

487.24 -> This program will also include clips of a new documentary film Ain't No Back to A Merry‑go‑round,

493.65 -> which is going to be released in 2019. Then on Tuesday, May 22nd at noon, Donald Rumsfeld

499.5 -> will discuss his book, When the Center Held Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American

504.96 -> presidency, and offer us a look at the life behind the scenes in the oval office and the

510.271 -> administration of Gerald Ford. To find out more about these programs, our exhibits, please

516.69 -> visit our website at www.archives.gov/calendar. You will also find some printed materials

523.459 -> about upcoming events in the theater lobby. Our topic for today is, World War II at Sea:

528.48 -> A Global History, by acclaimed Naval historian Craig L. Symonds. It is being brought to you

534.52 -> in partnership with our good friends the United States Navy Memorial. To introduce our guest speaker

540.51 -> is president and CEO of the Navy Memorial, Rear, Admiral Frank Thorp.

549.57 -> (APPLAUSE) >> Thank you Doug, and welcome to the Archives.

557.37 -> It's truly my honor today to be able to introduce Dr. Craig Symonds, a person who I have known

564.73 -> since I came into the Navy service in 1977. And with a long and distinguished career of

574.99 -> Naval expertise, being a Naval enthusiast, and expertise about the Navy. Currently Dr. Symonds

582.49 -> is the Ernest J. King Distinguished Professor of Maritime History at the Naval War College,

587.91 -> which is a very proud chair to be in. But more importantly, to me, Professor Symonds

596.54 -> was a history ‑‑ was a professor of history at the Naval Academy, now professor of history

601.649 -> Emeritus. He taught for 30 years, and served as a chair of the history department. I live

609.01 -> in Annapolis now, and I try to stay in touch with things that went on at the Naval Academy,

612.98 -> and I will tell you the most important thing I can tell you about Dr. Symonds today is

616.54 -> not his incredible knowledge and passion for the service and the country, but he has a

622.56 -> reputation of being a teacher who is much loved by the midshipmen at the Naval Academy.

629.06 -> Now I was one for four years, and there are not many professors that get that reputation

635.5 -> from a very cynical group of 4,000 young men and women who are the top of their game. And

642.649 -> I will tell you that I spoke to several people, and to a person, the glow of the reputation

649.66 -> of Dr. Symonds was very clear. I spoke to a couple professors, and one of them described

656.64 -> Professor Symonds as, the best of colleagues. Not a bad thing to be described as. The best

664.64 -> of colleagues. Another professor said, quote: A great lecturer, dynamic, engaging, passionate,

672.98 -> challenging and inviting, all at the same time. Another professor described Dr. Symonds

679.61 -> as: Highly influential leader in the history department, setting a high bar for everyone

685.69 -> in teaching, scholarship and service. As you all know from your program he is the author

692.71 -> of countless military history books, many of them Navy. I want to touch on them and

700.87 -> focus on the awards. I am going to read them fast, because to a guy like me they mean ‑‑

705.44 -> each of them are important, but in total is what is so impressive. He has written: Decision

711.441 -> at Sea: Five Naval battles that shaped American History which won the Theodore and Franklin

716.01 -> Delano Roosevelt prize. Lincoln and His Admirals: Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy and Civil War,

722.86 -> which won the Lincoln Prize, the Barondess Prize, the Laney Prize and Lyman Prize and

727.68 -> the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award. Other works include, Civil War at Sea, the

733.39 -> U.S. Navy and others. And most recent works are on the second world war, most notably

737.449 -> The Battle of Midway, which we will commemorate the anniversary here on June 5, and NEPTUNE:

743.08 -> The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D‑Day Landings, which won the Barry Prize and Samuel

747.679 -> Eliot Morison Prize. And Dr. Symonds doesn't always write about the Navy, sadly.

755.3 -> (LAUGHTER) >> No, he is quite a historian, having written

760.01 -> about the Battle of Gettysburg, as well as General Johnston and others. But Dr. Symonds

765.33 -> is really a Navy guy having a significant impact on the men and women who have served

770.699 -> in the Navy for the last three or four decades and will serve for decades more. As a matter

775.74 -> of fact, his Historical Atlas of the U.S. Navy is still in use in the core of Naval

781.12 -> history class in the Naval Academy today. His impact on the Navy is simply immense,

787.18 -> along with all the books and numerous awards, Dr. Symonds also received the Navy Meritorious

793.23 -> Civilian Service Award and the Superior Civilian Servant award, not once, not twice, but three

800.56 -> times. And he is a Veteran. He served as a lieutenant in the early '70s. So I have to

806.99 -> say, as the CEO of the Navy Memorial, across the street, our mission was to honor, recognize

812.401 -> and celebrate the men and women of the sea services past, present and future and to inform

817.43 -> the public about their service. So today, Dr. Symonds, I would like to task the audience

823.949 -> here to join me as we honor, recognize and celebrate you for everything you have done

827.91 -> to inform us about the United States Navy. But before I turn over the microphone to you,

835.689 -> I have a quick sea story that I think the audience will enjoy. Dr. Symonds is, in fact,

841.72 -> a true Naval enthusiast, but he is not only a great professor, and an engaging author

847.179 -> and a true Naval enthusiast, but he has been played by a character on the silver screen

855.189 -> that you may not know about. And he ‑‑ I have to admit, when I talked to him earlier,

859.42 -> he didn't want me to tell this story, so I am violating his request. But not bad to be played

865.47 -> by none other than Harrison Ford, also known as Jack Ryan. If you recall in the movie, Patriot

873.56 -> Games, Jack Ryan is giving a lecture on Thucydides, as Dr. Symonds frequently does. The filmmakers,

882.98 -> when they came to the Naval Academy, they asked for a professor that Harrison Ford could

887.54 -> follow around to give them an idea of what Harrison Ford would do. Now, remember, Harrison

893.1 -> Ford had been in the UK, he had been a CIA agent, he was a former naval officer, and

899.82 -> as I understand it, the Naval Academy leadership said, you have got to follow Dr. Symonds

904.19 -> around. So the filmmakers appropriated his office, they appropriated his classroom, and

910.519 -> they appropriated his class. Although he denies it, I think we have seen his face in that

916.44 -> movie. So, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Symonds' newest book, and what he is here to talk about

922.44 -> today, is World War II at Sea: A Global History. It is my honor, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce

929.22 -> to you today Dr. Craig Symonds. (APPLAUSE)

937.56 -> >>Well nobody can live up to that introduction for crying out loud. Thank you very much,

945.45 -> I appreciate it. I am going to tell a quick story as well about just how incendiary this book is. You need

953.74 -> to know this because I spoke this morning over at the treasury institute on I Street

960.459 -> in Washington, and there are a number of copies of the books, three boxes full I understand,

965.97 -> had them sent down to the Institute for distribution to their audience, and when they arrived.

973.43 -> They arrived without insufficient specificity in terms of their intended audience. It was

979.829 -> a general address rather than a specific individual listed on the address label. So,

985.939 -> this being a government institution well guarded with the usual screeners at the door, these

992.209 -> three packages arrived, looking very suspicious. And so ‑‑ I am not making this up, this

999.31 -> absolutely happened. And so they were sequestered and surrounded by C4 and blown to smithereens.

1008.44 -> (LAUGHTER) >> Now I have had bad reviews before.

1012.48 -> (LAUGHTER) >> But never one quite like that. I appreciate

1017.7 -> your being here today on a beautiful day outside, giving that up to listen to me talk about

1022.589 -> World War II. I want to begin by making perhaps a challenging statement, that World War II

1030.159 -> was the most gruesome, traumatic, transformative event in all of human history. It literally

1039.87 -> changed the world. And for many Americans of my generation and perhaps yours as well,

1045.91 -> it became the template of what we think of as war itself. That assumption I put to you

1053.159 -> is not correct. In fact, of all of the wars fought in the world history, World War II

1058.4 -> was virtually unique. It had a very specific beginning. It was fought by mobilizing almost the entire

1068.06 -> population of the countries that were involved. The foe was unrelievedly evil, I know there is and effort

1075.391 -> by propaganda ministers in every conflict to paint your foe as an evil enemy, but in this particular case it was absolutely

1084.21 -> the truth. And it ended with what FDR famously called, unconditional surrender. For the generation

1092.1 -> who lived it or remembers it there is a tendency to measure other wars by that standard, by that template. And Because war since then lacked the clarity

1102.8 -> and decisiveness of World War II, it led to frustration and public unrest. In fact, however, World War II

1108.78 -> was not the template of war, it's the only war that meets all of those conditions. Now,

1114.37 -> I am going to talk this afternoon about the Naval side of that war. Which was quite literally

1120.669 -> a global conflict. I am trying to cover all of it in a single book or in a single talk

1127.149 -> is somewhat challenging and a little bit humbling as well, that said, I will give it my best

1131.74 -> shot. For Americans, World War II began on December 7, 1941. For the British, French, Germans

1141.6 -> and especially the Polish, it began two years earlier on September 1st, 1939. For the Japanese

1150.19 -> and Chinese it began two years before that on July 7th, 1937. And in my book I try to honor all

1159.23 -> of these participants, my goal was to write about World War II at sea. All of it. Including

1167.861 -> those theaters Americans do not pay much attention to as a rule the Indian Ocean, the Bering

1175.909 -> Sea, the Mediterranean until 1943. The most famous book about the war at sea is this

1182.169 -> one and rightly so. In 1941, Samuel Elliott Morrison was a professor of history at Harvard

1190.5 -> University with half a dozen very good books under his belt, including a classic biography

1195.94 -> of Christopher Columbus. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor he asked the President

1203.149 -> for commission as a Naval officer to go to sea. Travel with the Navy and record that

1209.89 -> war for posterity as it was happening. He saw a lot of action as a lieutenant commander

1219.09 -> and later as a reserve Rear Admiral, so that it's possible to refer to him as Professor

1224.56 -> Morrison and Admiral Morrison. He saw a lot of action, he was on the cruiser Brooklyn during the invasion of North Africa, he was on several aircraft carriers

1236.36 -> during several of the iconic battles in the Pacific. He watched the landings at Okinawa. He also

1243.149 -> had other officers that sent him information, eyewitness accounts, from other sources. He

1248.461 -> put together after the war in the early 1950, he is a 15‑Volume history of World War II

1254.75 -> at sea, which he supervised as general editor. Because some readers were daunted by taking on a 15 volume work he later on

1264.4 -> authored a one volume version‑‑ which is the one here (indicating). Don't get me wrong,

1270.8 -> I am here to flog my book not Morrison's, so let me explain how mine is different. Note

1277.051 -> the title of Morrison's book. He said it was a two‑ocean war, Atlantic, much of the confrontation

1285.28 -> between the transatlantic convoys and Hitler's wolf pack of U‑boats, and the Pacific where

1294.45 -> the action was marked by the gigantic carrier battles and the amphibious operations from Guadalcanal to Okinawa. It was excellent

1302.75 -> account of the U.S. Navy in two oceans. But a total of 72 nations were belligerents in the second world war. Either voluntarily or in many

1314.24 -> cases involuntarily a dozen of those had substantial Navies, Navies important enough to have impact

1321.85 -> on the trajectory and arguably even the outcome of the war the U.S. Navies was the largest,

1328.87 -> it was not the only one. Not only that, but in addition, Naval war was fought not in two

1334.12 -> oceans but at least six, plus of course the Mediterranean, Caribbean and other important

1341.6 -> bodies of water that explains the subtitle of my book, which is a global history. I wanted

1351.32 -> to deal with those theaters of war where American vessels seldom appeared, as Franklin Roosevelt said

1357.76 -> in the first of his famous fireside chats, the oceans of the world for this war constituted one gigantic battlefield.

1368.28 -> I also explore a bit about the culture and background and circumstances of those other

1375.52 -> participants in the war to illuminate their motives and objectives. All of these Navies

1382.14 -> mattered in no small part because they all shared a common resource base. Especially

1388.69 -> for shipping. When national leaders had to construct a policy to fight this war, they

1394.16 -> had to take the entire globe into consideration. Since committing resources to one theater

1400.149 -> necessarily meant not committing those resources to another theater. Here is a slide I will

1408.23 -> let you wonder about for a moment. I put this up of the so‑called butterfly effect. You

1414.57 -> probably heard of this butterfly in one part of the world flapping its wings have impact,

1422.7 -> small as it is, over the large face of the globe, changes circumstances in such a way

1428.98 -> that it might help spawn a typhoon in the other part of the world. But it's indisputable

1438.46 -> committing ships resources and manpower to one theater meant not committing them to a

1444.371 -> theater elsewhere. So that the global Naval war between 1939 and 1945, and especially

1451.94 -> after the United States entered the war in 1941, illustrates this particular phenomenon.

1459.169 -> In 1942, in particular, there were demands for allied resources everywhere in the Atlantic

1465.35 -> against the U‑boats in the Pacific to slow down the Japanese and the arctic to bring

1469.78 -> supplies to the Soviet Union Red Army bearing the brunt of the war against the German ground

1476.33 -> machine in the Mediterranean where the British were attempting to hold together the sea line

1482 -> of communication between Gibraltar and Suez Indian Ocean where a Japanese Naval strike force the same

1490.629 -> one that had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941 attacked the British Naval forces in Cylon

1498.13 -> and India and essentially drove them out of the sea of the bay of Bengal. All of those flapping butterfly wings

1507.82 -> meant strategic decision‑makers couldn't do a single line of approach, they had to

1512.96 -> parcel out scarce assets here and there, hoping the world didn't collapse on them entirely.

1522.04 -> They did try to address these conflicts one at a time. This man is Harold Stark, who you

1530.39 -> can see had the curious nickname of Betty. He came by the nickname when he was a Plebe

1537.79 -> at the Naval Academy. In those days, less so now, I don't know if you had one at the Naval Academy, but the traditional

1545.73 -> in the 20s, 30s, in particular the upper class would give a nickname to the Plebes when they

1550.55 -> came in it stuck with them for life. When I was a flight lieutenant, I would help draft

1559.24 -> letters, and I would begin Dear Admiral Jones, and I would bring them in to sign he would

1566.03 -> cross out the salutations and write in Dear Stinky.

1571.03 -> (LAUGHTER) >> I wondered how Stinky got his nickname.

1575.66 -> We know how Stark got his nickname. He was standing in formation one day as a plebe when an upperclassman noticed his name tag on his uniform.

1583.74 -> Stark he said. Are you related to General John Stark? To which midshipman 4th class Stark answered, I don't know

1593.59 -> who General John Stark is, sir. That was not the right answer. So the upperclassman informed him that Stark was a hero of the American

1602.631 -> revolution who prior to the Battle of Bennington, had told his men that he will win today or Betty Stark will

1609.32 -> be a widow. And he ordered midshipman Stark to shout out that phrase every time

1614.94 -> he encountered an upperclassman throughout his Plebe year, virtually everyone called him Betty.

1624.31 -> (LAUGHTER) >> This is a letter I stuck in here for fun. This is a letter from the

1629.73 -> Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Stark in 1941, can you read the salutation?

1638.929 -> Dear Betty. That's not the punch line. The punch line is that General Stark's wife was named Molly. But be that

1652.36 -> as it may, Stark was Chief of Naval Operations, became Chief of Naval Operations on the first

1658.11 -> of August 1939, exactly one month before German troops crossed the Polish border to inaugurate

1666.28 -> World War II. His principal contribution to the allied strategy in the war was a memo he wrote

1672.5 -> in November of 1940 after France capitulated and the British were driven off the beaches at

1679.3 -> Dunkirk, it was, the recent film suggests, the darkest hour. It looked very much like

1687.29 -> the Germans were going to win the war, the United States would be isolated in the western

1692.359 -> hemisphere. Given that, Stark laid out in a memo four options for American grand strategy

1698.909 -> we could he said defend the western hemisphere, this was the goal of the isolationists, who made up the vast majority of the American public.

1706.879 -> They had had it, with international wars, they thought WW I was a mistake, we don't want to get into another one let's hunker down and stay

1714.54 -> where we are. We could focus on a possible war with Japan, this had been the Navy's primary

1721.19 -> interest since about 1911 for 40 years really the United States had focused on the defeat of Japan as a most

1731.45 -> likely foe in the future, or, third, we could try to fight against both foes at the same time.

1737.96 -> You don't want to fight a two‑front war if you can avoid it. Or option D, we could reorient our strategy program entirely and focus instead on

1750.55 -> the defeat of Germany first. That fourth option, plan D, or plan dog in Navy lingo, was the

1759.31 -> one that Franklin Roosevelt accepted. Germany, Roosevelt believed, was by far the most dangerous foe not because

1769.341 -> of the perverse ideology, the position it held in Europe after the fall of France in

1776.409 -> 1940, but because of its economy. The gross domestic product in Germany 1940 was greater

1783.24 -> of that of France and Britain combined and six times bigger than that of Japan. So, this

1790.54 -> is the real enemy in Roosevelt's mind it was essential to American national interest to

1795.76 -> defeat Germany, first make sure Britain could survive so it could be the launch of the eventual invasion of Europe and the suppression of Germany

1806.18 -> should it come to war. Most historians have followed suit, Germany first. Treating the

1815.9 -> war as two connected but separate conflicts, a chapter on a war in Europe and then a chapter

1823.45 -> on the war in the Pacific. A two‑ocean war. That, however, is not the way it was fought.

1831.74 -> When American and British admirals and generals met as they did several times to hammer out allied

1838.26 -> strategy for the war. They paid lip service to the concept of defeating Germany first.

1844.71 -> The pressures were simultaneous in 1942, as I suggested the Anglo American allies were

1851.23 -> like a boy standing in the shadow of a dam that was cracking and breaking in 12 or 13

1857.27 -> place at the same time and trying to shut off the leaks and keep the dam collapsing

1862.83 -> on top of them. In addition to being a war fought by a dozen Navies in six oceans, it

1871.169 -> was also a war that took place everywhere simultaneously. Let me try to demonstrate

1878.369 -> this by offering a few examples. In August of 1942, fairly early in the war still, a

1887.14 -> single reinforced U.S. marine division splashed ashore on island virtually no Americans heard of called

1894.2 -> Guadalcanal, the tail end of the Solomon Island chain where the blue arrow is located, in the Southern Pacific. That in itself is

1903.56 -> a violation of the Germany first principle but Ernest King who by now replaced Stark as

1911.1 -> the American Chief of Naval Operations, argued this isn't really going on the offensive in

1917.349 -> the Pacific. Because Australian coast watchers had reported that the Japanese were building

1923.98 -> an airstrip on Guadalcanal, if they completed the air strip it would allow them to interrupt the line of communications

1930.86 -> between Hawaii and Australia. If that happened, we would be in desperate straits. This is

1937.399 -> not an offensive, King insisted a defensive measure to keep them from breaking our secure

1943.89 -> lines, not entirely a bogus argument. King knew it was would be the camel's nose under the tent.

1954.29 -> If you started out in Guadalcanal, that inital division would have to be supported they would have to be reinforced until it would suck

1964.06 -> resources, supplies and manpower into its vortex, which is exactly what happened.

1971.34 -> And there was another complication, to return to this map for a minute. You could see the

1978.31 -> Pacific theater is divided into two command areas by that blue line on the map. The reason

1985.649 -> the Americans did this, was partly strategic, it's enormous battlefield, logistically supplying all of

1994.82 -> it through one command is awkward. Mainly it's political. Franklin Roosevelt knew he

2000.71 -> had to give a command to Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur was MacArthur, the President did

2010.79 -> not want to give him command of the entire Pacific nor did he want to give him control of the U.S. Navy. So,

2017.95 -> like King Solomon he cut the baby in half, MacArthur got command in the southwest Pacific or Sou

2026.169 -> Wes Pac which contained continent of Australia, The Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra. As far as MacArthur

2038.7 -> was concerned the object whole campaign, the Philippines islands, everything else, all of that blue

2044.46 -> space outside of the southwest Pacific, the Pacific ocean area this was to be under the

2050.33 -> command of Chester Nimitz, there on the left, in the staged photograph. This too of course is a violation of a strategic

2060.929 -> principle, don't divide your command in the face of an enemy. MacArthur complained about it

2065.99 -> constantly,even suggested that Franklin Roosevelt had deliberately limited his command to a regional theater

2074.8 -> because Roosevelt feared MacArthur would win the war and come back and run for president in 1944

2080.85 -> and replace Roosevelt in the White House. Evidence suggested he did consider exactly

2086.78 -> that plan. But the decision stood, and so when the marines went assure on Guadalcanal

2093.369 -> to begin a six‑month campaign in the tropical jungles of the island, United States confronted

2099.97 -> not two fronts in Atlantic and Pacific, but three having divided the Pacific into two

2106.66 -> commands now fighting a three‑front war. The Americans landing on Guadalcanal was officialy called

2114.099 -> Operation Watchtower, but so scarce were allied resources in 1942 almost everybody involved with it

2122.44 -> called it something else. They called it Operation Shoestring. And it very nearly fell apart the

2129.51 -> very next day. On the evening of August 8th, Japanese surface force came down from Rabaul,

2138.9 -> through what was called the slot, in those parallel lines of islands that characterize the Solomon

2144.599 -> Island chain to attack allied war ships, Australian and American protecting the landing beach

2153.16 -> at Guadalcanal. The result was the most lopsided American defeat at sea since Pearl Harbor or ever including

2163.819 -> Pearl Harbor. Four allied cruisers went to the bottom, the Japanese escaped utterly unscathed. It

2172.02 -> led to a lot of hand wringing and finger pointing in the United States. It could have been

2177.09 -> worse. After their victory, instead of continuing on to the landing site to sink the American transport ships off the beach,

2183.01 -> the Japanese headed back to their base at Rabaul satisfied with what they had accomplished.

2190.349 -> Had they attacked those transports or continued on past victory to defeat them they would

2196.53 -> have undercut the Guadalcanal operation, but allied operations worldwide because a shortage of shipping was the key

2205.65 -> bottleneck in allied planning in 1942. Operation Shoestring, remember? Now, with those butterfly

2214.91 -> wings flapping in the Pacific, let me zoom literally halfwayaround the world to another

2220.8 -> island, this one in the Mediterranean, far less known to American audiences than Guadalcanal,

2227.349 -> Malta was a crucial British outpost smack dab in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea,

2237.19 -> its location made it essential to the British sea lines of communication east to west Gibraltar

2246.609 -> to Suez and Axis communications north to south Italy into North Africa. Because it

2254.78 -> provided protection for British convoys and was a thorn in the side to Axis convoys

2261.44 -> from its principal harbor, the allies, quite naturally, tried to takeit out. They did so from the air. Here is

2273.27 -> the statistic somewhat astonishing more bombs were dropped on Valletta on the island of

2280.33 -> Malta in April of 1942 then all of the bombs dropped on London throughout the blitz in

2286.76 -> World War II. They hammered that place. By mid summer it was in such extremis rations

2298.45 -> for the population had been reduced to six ounces of food per person per week. The spit

2307.92 -> fires were virtually out of gas. The governor of the island not identified London, if he

2314.67 -> didn't get a supply convoy in the next week, he would have to capitulate.

2318.74 -> So, they put together, the British put together a convoy from Glasgow, consisting of 14 transports

2329.339 -> and one absolutely essential oil tanker, the ship that had been the Ohio. It was a Texas

2337.43 -> oil company Texaco tanker that showed up in Glasgow with a load of aviation fuel, exactly

2345.829 -> what the Spitfires needed. And Churchill cabled Roosevelt personally to beg it be turned over

2352.17 -> to the Royal Navy for this operation. Roosevelt agreed. The American crew went out the British

2358.41 -> Merchant Marine crew came on board. And the Ohio joined the convoy to the south An argument is made, well I guess I am going to make it

2366.74 -> now, that the Ohio was the single most important ship afloat in the world in August of 1942.

2373.78 -> If that cargo of aviation fuel didn't make it to Malta the Spitfires would be grounded and the island would fall, the axis would control

2381.97 -> the Mediterranean, that would be the end of that theater. Dubbed Operation Pedestal, the convoy

2391.579 -> set out the first week of August, the same week the marines went ashore in Guadalcanal

2398.53 -> halfway around the world. They had the largest escort of any convoy during the entire war.

2407.19 -> Two battleships, four aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and 32 destroyers, all to protect

2416.32 -> 14 transports and a tanker. The escort force for the operation was bigger than either of

2424.319 -> the operational forces that fought one another at Midway in June of 1942. It's a testimony

2432.589 -> to not only the importance of Malta, but the scarcity and value of transport shipping to

2440.119 -> the allies in 1942.The convoy entered the Mediterranean on August 10th and over the next six days it was attacked

2449.349 -> literally every one of those days. Aircraft from Sardinia surface ships from Italy, German

2455.329 -> U‑boats, the force lost two carriers, four cruisers several destroyers and 9 of the 14

2467.27 -> transports. (Far worse than allied losses off Guadalcanal in the Pacific, but four of the transports and critically the tanker Ohio remained afloat,

2479.619 -> though barely. The Ohio was bombed repeatedly and torpedoed as well. We have a photograph

2487.42 -> the moment of torpedo struck the Ohio, several near misses by German bombers buckled her hull plate. One bomber shot down by AA fire

2497.8 -> crashed into a superstructure and pieces of it hung there like a discordant Christmas

2505.249 -> ornament straddling the bridge. Not long after another bomb penetrated the Ohio's deck and exploded in the engine room, without power now low

2516.23 -> in the water, taking on water rapidly, the Ohio appeared doomed. To keep her afloat two British destroyers

2524.319 -> lashed themselves port and starboard to hold her afloat and push her along at about 3 knots. More bombers

2534.69 -> arrived, one hit her mid ship and broke her back. The destroyers kept her afloat. With

2545.43 -> the decks awash, the back broken, no steering, engine or compass, pieces of a German bomber

2552.08 -> hanging in her superstructure, she stayed afloat long enough to make it into the harbor where cheering crowds lined

2560.559 -> the waterfront and a band played Rule Britannia. Malta remained in British hands the rest of

2568.999 -> the war. My point is telling you this story, not only because it's a cool story, one that

2576.599 -> few Americans know about, but demonstrates in a dramatic way how global this war was.

2584.49 -> The war did not proceed separately in the Atlantic and Pacific or the Mediterranean,

2589.46 -> for that matter. It took place everywhere and all at once. And, again, underscores just

2595.91 -> how precarious the allied shipping was in that difficult summer of 1942. The 18 transports

2604.96 -> at Guadalcanal, the Japanese missed the 14 involved in Operation Pedestal formed a pool

2612.93 -> of shipping resources so limited that it restricted what the allies could do. This particular

2620.68 -> problem would gradually go away, especially because of American shipbuilding capability.

2629.779 -> This is most evidence in the battle of the Atlantic between German U‑boats and allied convoys.

2637.46 -> You can see in this chart, how the number of ships built by the allies and mostly by

2643.73 -> the United States over 90% by the United States. The columns in red grew exponentially through

2650.13 -> 1942 and 1943, while the numbers of ships sunk by German U-boats, the columns in black declined in those

2657.749 -> same years. So, new technology, better escorts, better protocols in the convoys allowed us

2665.269 -> to fend out the U‑boats, but it was shipbuilding in the United States that really allowed

2671.98 -> the allies to get ahead of this issue. We out‑built them. We built ships faster than

2679.539 -> the submarines could sink them. There is a particularly dramatic illustration, I like

2686.91 -> the photograph, it's a building way the Bethlehem shipyard in Baltimore, April 1943. April of

2695.799 -> '43 is when the acceleration of American shipbuilding really takes off. They are setting up the

2702.98 -> wooden framing for the keel of a new liberty ship, a transport ship I call your attention

2709.23 -> to the head gear. What would OSHA have to say about men wearing fedoras instead of hard

2717.109 -> hats in the workplace? (LAUGHTER)

2719.91 -> >> Here are some other images of the same ship. This is day one we are looking at. Here is

2724.31 -> day two, a lot of progress in one day. Three shifts, 24 hours a day, that's one reason

2731.431 -> why. Here is day 6. Day 10. Day 14. Day 24. Ready for launch. And there she goes. The

2744.2 -> very next day, men would lay the keel of another liberty ship, in December 1942 the production of new shipping

2753.44 -> in American shipyards surpassed a million dead weight tons for the first time and it

2759.76 -> went up from there. After that it didn't matter how many ships those U‑boats sunk in the

2767.06 -> North Atlantic, it mattered to the men on the ships, the supplies it carried. It would

2771.859 -> not avail the Germans of their strategic goal which is cut the vital lifeline to Britain. They couldn't

2780.089 -> get ahead of American production. With this dramatic infusion of maritime assets, the allies

2786.809 -> went on the initiative in 1943 and never let go of it. Here is another example of how World War II

2795.66 -> at sea was a global phenomenon. Just as most of you have heard of Guadalcanal, I suspect

2802.22 -> all of you have heard of D‑Day. Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks had a lot to do with the fact

2810.46 -> that a new generation of Americans had been introduced to the horrors of Omaha Beach and

2815.839 -> the D‑Day landings. But the naval armada that carried Tom Hanks and his men to the beach provided naval gunfire support and most importantly

2826.769 -> not only carried them to the beach but reinforced and resupplied and the armada necessary to

2833.609 -> do that was unprecedented in size. Counting armed landing craft those ships numbered over

2841.069 -> 6,000 hulls. And they had to operate for months. The invasion of Nazi occupied Europe did not assist consist of

2850.3 -> a rush on the beach on June 6, 1944, a total of 132,000 allied soldiers went ashore that day,

2862.049 -> 132,000 men are not going to drive to Paris and Berlin, eventually tens hundreds of millions

2872.499 -> would come ashore, almost all of them and their supplies and their equipment and the

2877.73 -> tanks and the Jeeps and the planes and the trucks and the fuel that kept them moving

2882.019 -> all came by sea. All that had to cross the English channel in ships.

2892.15 -> By and large a lot of it came in a particular kind of ship that was known as the landing

2898.96 -> ship tank, or LST. Sailors, by the way, who served on board these awkward vessels claim

2908.34 -> LST actually stood for large slow target. They were, indeed, large. Their commodious hold could accommodate 20 Sherman tanks‑‑, 30 2.5 ton trucks,

2921.98 -> the famous deuce and a half, fully loaded. 40 Jeeps another 30 Jeeps or artillery pieces on the weather deck since ground combat in World War II clearly meant the

2935.41 -> use of armor and tanks, without the LST, it's hard to see how the allied could have mounted an

2941.97 -> invasion of Europe at all, they were big. They were also slow. They had official top

2948.82 -> speed of 10 knots, and given critical importance to the invasion they were prime targets, the sailors weren't

2958.45 -> wrong. The most important thing about the LSTs, they could steam right up on to the beach.

2964.38 -> Notice the seams right in front of the anchor, on the bow of this, they are covered doors, they could open up and

2973.67 -> the tanks, trucks, Jeeps, artillery pieces could drive right out in the sand. The problem was in the

2982.16 -> spring of 1944, the allies did not have enough of them. There were several reasons for this.

2989.339 -> First, though the American industrial production was awesome, even unprecedented, it was not

2996.17 -> infinite. Priorities had to be set. Setting those priorities the allies had to address

3004.369 -> the most immediate need the boy putting his finger in the dike, in 1942 that meant producing Liberty ships and escort ships necessary to

3014.07 -> protect them as the crossed the Atlantic. Late in 1943, with the U‑boat threat not suppressed but at least manageable.

3026.099 -> Only then did the allies switch construction priority from escorts and transports to LSTs.

3034.499 -> Changing a shipyard from building liberty ships to building LSTs is not throwing a switch.

3041.249 -> There are 30,000 component parts that go into the making of an LST. The entire supply chain

3047.93 -> had to be reoriented to make that possible. By spring of 1944 it was evident Eisenhower,

3055.67 -> the Supreme Allied commander of the invasion force, I love this particular photograph of him talking to the

3061.21 -> soldiers. It is duplicated by the montage of photos at the entrance of this theater.

3068.22 -> Eisenhower was not going to have enough of them‑‑ he wrote the joint chiefs in Washington to say. He needed 271 more

3077.79 -> landing craft, including 47 of the essential and scarce LSTs. He wrote George Marshall,

3085.989 -> without the LSTs, if you had to make the landing with those he had in hand and those currently

3093.02 -> in the construction pipeline, if you add it up, and you assume 90% effectiveness capability,

3100 -> which is kind of unrealistic even then the troops on the beach, and I quote him here:

3105.92 -> Will have no, repeat, no LSTs reaching the beaches after the morning of D‑Day plus

3112.68 -> one until the morning of D‑Day plus 4. In other words, the troops on the beach would

3118.64 -> have no supply reinforcement, God forbid the ability to extricate themselves for three

3126.08 -> days on the beach. Unacceptable. So D‑Day was postponed. Originally scheduled for May

3134.45 -> 1, it was moved to June 5. Eventually it would happen on June 6. As Ike put it in another

3141.66 -> message to Marshall, one extra month in landing cost production including the LSTs should

3148.619 -> help a lot. Even then it was near-run thing. Churchill recognized where the bottleneck was. Everything

3156.94 -> turned on the landing craft, he wrote, which held our strategy in a tight ligature. All

3164.37 -> plans were in a straight jacket. And yet, that same week that allied soldiers came to

3173.539 -> shore in Normandy, eleven thousand miles away in the middle of the Pacific ocean an American invasion force nearly as large as D‑Day Armada, including

3184.321 -> 84 of the scarce LSTs was heading to the island of Saipan in the Marianas. The fact the Anglo Americans could mount

3195.06 -> two enormous invasion armadas on opposite sides of the world at the same time shows, first, how the American industrial dynamo changed the

3209.68 -> calculus of war from 1942 to 1944. 1942 when the loss of a dozen transports in Pedestal or the salvation of 18 of them off of Guadalcanal of might have made

3221.44 -> a difference in the war, now it's 1944, when we had thousands of ships to mount two operations

3227.839 -> at the same time. But second, it illustrates dramatically how the Naval war was global

3233.93 -> simultaneous and interconnected. Ike would have salivated over those 84 LSTs. He could have gone

3242.16 -> in May after all but they were in the Pacific. Instead of Germany first, instead of fighting one war at a time,

3251.46 -> the allies by 1944 were so strong they could fight in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Mediterranean

3259.119 -> and Arctic and the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean all at the same time. In short, the second

3269.049 -> world was a global war involved a dozen national Navies which contested the seas, six oceans,

3278.349 -> everywhere except Antarctica . While fully acknowledging all wars, including this one, are eventually

3285.68 -> won by boots on the ground. In constructing this book I gained enormous appreciation for

3292.039 -> how much the course of that war was charted and steered by maritime events. Now, you may

3300.289 -> have noticed that in this rather lengthy talk, I have not mentioned Bismark, Midway, the

3306.569 -> Philippine sea, laity gulf, Iwo Jima, a lot of topics to talk about. Maybe we can

3315.309 -> talk about that in the Q and A period which begins right now. Thank you very much.

3322.58 -> (APPLAUSE) >> Okay. Who is first?

3327.08 -> >> Folks, if you have a question, you need to come to the microphones in the aisle.

3336.34 -> >> Yes, sir. >> Thank you sir, very interesting. Appreciate

3339.96 -> it before reading the book. Can you talk about production from the perspective prior to the

3345.079 -> U.S. entering the war, liberty ships or other ship quantities being shipped to the British

3351.619 -> forces and other forces in the world and how that was distributed across a global perspective?

3356.95 -> >> Yes I can. I mean, it's almost an American tradition that we enter wars under prepared.

3363.359 -> And then gin up dramatically during the war to overwhelm the enemy with our productivity. That's a fair template. But I think President Roosevelt

3375.739 -> saw this coming. It was clear he saw it coming in the 1930s, keeping an eye on Japan, trying

3381.24 -> to fend off Japan while he supplied Britain, not only lend lease, which we all know about and the deal where by we gave British 50 World War I destroyers in exchange

3392.619 -> for 99‑year leases for Caribbean bases. In all of those ways Roosevelt could see that the United States

3400.64 -> was likely to become involved. He could see shipping was going to be crucial. And he created

3405.89 -> what he called a limited national emergency in 1939, before Pearl Harbor. He appointed

3414.7 -> Emery Scott Land, a retired admiral, to take charge of the war shipping administration

3421.309 -> to ramp up the number of ships built. The United States never built more than a million tons

3426.089 -> of shipping in its history in a year. He told Land he wanted 7 million tons. This is before

3434.52 -> the war. Then he wanted 13 million tons after the war. George C. Marshall said, that's not

3440.96 -> going to be enough if you expect us to launch this invasion of occupied France we need more

3446.039 -> than that. He told him he needed 15 million tons of shipping in 1943. That number was

3453.759 -> so huge he was almost called a laughing stock. It was true even before the war, I think Roosevelt

3462.64 -> was something of a visionary to see that shipping ‑‑ not just war ships, not just the ships authorized

3468.609 -> by the two ocean Navy act passed unanimously, 316 to nothing congress in 1940. I challenge

3477.819 -> you to think of a bill that would pass congress unanimously today. Those ships would be the

3485.729 -> ones that came online in 1943 and formed the heart of the invasions for D‑Day and Saipan in addition

3492.68 -> to that the transport shipping that Roosevelt thought would be necessary to carry out a

3498.349 -> global war. Even before the war began, he began laying the groundwork for that. That

3505.42 -> required, of course, the acquisition of new shipping yards and building ways and other

3510.33 -> things down the line. Thank you. Who is next? >> Hello. My question is: In all of your research

3518.529 -> in the vast scale and you got all of the principle countries the Navies, were there any ‑‑

3525.489 -> when you are doing research head scratching, why the Hell you guys did what you just did?

3530.2 -> >> infinite number. >> Can you break it down to individual Navies?

3535.96 -> >> I think Americans tend to overlook, the important role was played by the Dutch. Most Americans say, wait

3544.239 -> a minute, the Dutch had a Navy? Holland, of course the Netherlands, had been overrun by

3550.63 -> the German war machine in 1940 as part of the great sweep westward when France fell

3557.009 -> in the summer of 1940, but the government of France queen Wilhelmina, Churchill used to joke, of all

3565.41 -> of the crowned heads of Europe Queen Wilhelmina was the only man among them.She escaped with her government to carry on a government in exile

3575.359 -> And the Dutch East Indies, the colonies in south of the South China Sea had a pretty significant surface

3583.4 -> force of cruisers and destroyers. Because several nations were fighting against one

3589.64 -> opponent, the allies cobbled together a unified command,knonn as ABDA, Americans, British, Dutch and the

3597.931 -> Australians and put a British general in charge of it. Well, the Naval component of that,

3604.7 -> the ABDA strike force was commanded by Dutch admiral, who fought several critical battles

3611.8 -> against the Japanese. This is not a laugh line, he lost them all, but they were tragic

3617.259 -> desperate attempts to slow down the Japanese juggernaut. I think Americans overlook that.

3624.95 -> I think the role of the Canadian Navy in doing escort duty across the North Atlantic in these

3631.369 -> tiny little flower‑class Corvettes, so small they were less 1,000 tons, they bobbed around in the ocean like corks, you could hardly

3642.579 -> step on board without getting sea sick. But they carried a lot of the burden of the escort

3650.13 -> duty on that convoy. That's unsung work. We remember Midway, and Iwo Jima, the Dutch navy the Canadian escorts and others

3660.059 -> like that, they sometimes don't get the credit they deserve. I try to give them. That's the

3665.249 -> response ‑‑ I am not sure if that's the response to your question, that's what I am

3669.869 -> going with. >> I appreciate your emphasis on the industrial

3674.509 -> might on the United States and the role it played in World War II. I was talking with

3679.901 -> a retired Naval architect, who told me when he was designing ships, such as Enterprise back in

3686.789 -> the 50s and 60s, everything was domestic, all components. By the time he retired, we

3692.249 -> couldn't build it with domestics, we had to build it with imported goods. Does that concern

3698.58 -> you at all? >> It does not. I will explain why. When I

3703.369 -> began this afternoon I said that World War II was transformative. It changed the world.

3710.099 -> One of the ways it changed the world, it made it a global community, economically as well

3715.089 -> as politically. The Bretonwoods conference that did currency balancing, the general agreement on tariffs and

3724.219 -> trade, they are all part of the post‑war accommodation of the allies setting up the

3729.67 -> world for the next many generations, in the hope that there would not be a global conflict

3735.619 -> like the two that had ravaged the 20th Century. Because of that, the world became interconnected.

3742.579 -> It is possible to look at World War II and say could we do that again? Could we ramp up in a crisis from a

3752.359 -> million tons to 15 million tons in just a couple of years. The concern was some of the

3758.78 -> component parts would have to come overseas, doesn't that create uncomfortable dependency?

3764.18 -> It's interdependency, a global dependency. That contributes to the unlikelihood there

3771.92 -> will be global conflagration,involving 72 belligerent nations all at war everyone at war with one another at the same time. It

3781.589 -> does not bother me. I am still confident America has the economic resiliency to meet a crisis when it

3790.91 -> emerges. So I guess I am going to stop with that. I am less concerned than the mere fact

3799.38 -> that many of our weapon systems have goods that are not domestically produced implies

3804.479 -> dependency and a weakness, that I think is not accurate. We are pretty tough. I have ‑‑

3810.53 -> I like to tell this story when I talk to the audience about Navy today, that is if you

3816.53 -> take one of the nuclear powered aircraft carriers, like your friend worked on, and the accompanying

3821.869 -> strike force, usually a couple of guided missile cruisers and frigates, supports ships, tankers

3830.219 -> to feed destroyers under the water as well that strike force has more striking power

3838.539 -> in itself than the entire Navy of any other nation on earth. And we have 10 of them. So,

3847.15 -> we are okay. All right? Yes, sir. >> Yeah, I want to thank you for a very interesting

3853.759 -> talk. I have to say I am not from the United States but the Caribbean, you can figure out ‑‑

3859.049 -> >> If I am glad I mentioned the Caribbean then.

3861.319 -> >> Thank you for that. Two things in the Caribbean I am from the French Caribbean, but during World War II

3871.239 -> there were two islands Aruba and Curaso in the southern part who had (inaudible). From the time I am small,

3883.94 -> I am hearing the stories early on Germans tried to (inaudible) these two places. So,

3892.44 -> maybe you want to talk about that, and maybe talk something more about the Caribbean. The

3897.049 -> second issue would be: Is ‑‑ since World War II we have had ‑‑ we really haven't had

3904.569 -> a great Naval battle, right? I mean Falkland Islands etcetera What would you think coming out of World War II

3915.819 -> was one two or three significant crucial lessons that all of the big Naval powers in the world

3925.28 -> learned from that war, and how do you see that playing out going forward? You know, with

3931.41 -> AI computerization kind of making, who knows, ships eventually drive themselves.

3939.17 -> >> Okay. Thank you very much. This book is 800 pages long, I would have to write another

3946.109 -> one to answer the question. Let me start with the Caribbean. Aruba and Curacao were

3953.42 -> not only sources of oil but had refineries, a lot of ships in the North Atlantic convoys that carried fuel, particularly aviation

3962.17 -> fuel hundred octane aviation fuel across the Atlantic originated at Curacao, including cargo carried by the

3972.271 -> Ohio in Operation Pedestal. They were important sites and the Germans, of course, knew this. When the United States became

3979.7 -> belligerent. Hitler gave permission to the admiral, who passed it down, to release the

3988.2 -> U‑boats to attack the United States which they had been arguing for. United States

3992.66 -> had been in violation of the neutral status. Hitler said no, I have to defeat Soviets first,

4001.99 -> after Pearl Harbor oh, go ahead. The German commander didn't have as many submarines as he would have like to have sent 9 over to the American

4011.59 -> coast for a while early 1942. There was devastation off the American coast particularly around

4017.55 -> Cape Hatteras when the United States finally got the wherewithal to put coastal convoys together, the submarines moved further south to the Caribbean.

4028.56 -> That became the central front in the U‑boat war against the tanker trade. Not only those who were at Curacao, but those who loaded up In

4037.68 -> Louisiana and East Texas. There were not the pipelines in place that would carry the oil overland or the railroad or the capability to carry the

4046.309 -> oil, almost all of the oil from East Texas, Louisiana, where much of it came around the

4052.059 -> east coast of the United States in tankers. At that was the target of German U-boats. The Caribbean was for in March and April of

4061.7 -> 1942. Probably one of the deadliest places on the earth surface for tankers. So that

4070.96 -> was one. What was the second one. No, there was one before that. There was one.

4082.82 -> >> (inaudible) >> Yes, the big battles since World War II.

4087.609 -> The biggest surface engagement since Laity Gulf took place in the Persian gulf in 1988, April

4095.089 -> 18, 1988 when the Iranian Navy, the revolutionary guard element of the Iranian Navy sortied against the United States navy two guided missile

4105.42 -> cruisers and a gun boat were attacked by the Iranian Navy in missile warfare. It's the

4111.68 -> first confrontation about missile warfare. That is why I bring it up. You think of World War I Naval engagement was big guns,

4118.69 -> huge guns fire 2,000‑pound shell 20 miles. World War II the range grows further. Instead

4127.54 -> of 20 miles you could fire from 200 miles by bombs, torpedoes carried by aircraft launched off an aircraft carrier. In the Persian Gulf in 1988

4139.45 -> the dominant form of warfare became missiles fired 500 miles away. Now you can sit in McDill Air

4147.93 -> Force base with a set of controls and fire a Hell fire missile from a drone at a target 14,000 miles away. The characteristic

4158.5 -> change is the distance at which the opponents fight, in the age of sail you had to sail up to 50 yards, 60

4169.95 -> yards away you come hull to hull and blast away with smooth iron cannon balls, but gradually over time

4177.92 -> the range accuracy increased. The big difference between World War I and II was guns from the

4183.29 -> airplanes, and to now it's electronic and missile warfare increasing the range. There

4191.09 -> is almost no theater anymore. You can target enemy from the Persian gulf or Mediterranean

4197.48 -> Indian Ocean, you don't have to be in the same ocean anymore to target the foe. They

4203.57 -> are guided overhead and conducted by geosynchronous units and have terrain following capability.

4213.1 -> It's pretty awesome stuff. So, that's ‑‑ that's the future. That's what midshipmen

4217.96 -> at the Naval Academy are studying now. They created a knew major at the Naval Academy.

4223.3 -> The admiral and I talked about selection of a major as a Plebe back in 1977. The newest

4233.16 -> major, you want to guess at the Naval Academy? Cyber warfare, you bet. They are popular from

4242.39 -> what I understand too. Who is next? >> I think this discussion would have been

4249.63 -> quite different if it was a British admiral talking about the world at war at sea. He

4254.59 -> would have emphasized heavily the British Navy, the big battles with the German battleships.

4262.54 -> By the time America actually got more involved in the war, in 1942, a lot of those big battles

4269.04 -> had already kind of happened. So, a British admiral would have had a different perspective

4275.739 -> on the world war at sea just because of how much their Navy was affected by these big

4284.61 -> German battleships. Of course we heavily bombed them but they ‑‑ they really took a large

4293.44 -> brunt of the war by the German battleships and they just wanted to make that point. Because

4301.381 -> ‑‑ >> That's fair. Let's talk about the Royal

4304.219 -> Navy. For fun I will tease you about there is no British Navy, did you know that there

4309.36 -> is a British Army, but's it's the Royal Navy dates back to the English Civil War when the

4317.25 -> Navy stayed loyal to the King, King Charles, but the Army went to Cromwell. It's the British

4323.219 -> Army, but Royal Navy. I don't know the excuse of the Royal Air Force. In any case, the Royal

4331.51 -> Navy plays an important role. We need to give credit where it's due. Three things won this

4337.48 -> war. The British willingness, ability to hang in there from June of 1940 when France was

4345.52 -> defeated they carried the burden of the war until June of 1941 when Hitler stupidly invaded

4351.94 -> the Soviet Union,for those 12 months Britain is the only ally for those months fighting alone against the

4359.45 -> Whermacht and the German war machine. We can't forget that. Absent the British, none

4365.2 -> of this happens. Second, the Red Army. The Red Army spilled its blood on the steppes of

4371.82 -> Ukraine and Russia profligately, the Americans lost 350,000 killed in this war. That's a terrible loss.

4380.07 -> The Russians lost 20 million. Let's not lose sight of that. The third thing I emphasize,

4387.65 -> American productivity. All these of these affected the outcome. The Royal Navy's role

4396.08 -> before the United States got into this the key problem is not German battleships, they had two of them the Bismark and the Tirpitz.

4401.92 -> Bismark got to sea, as we all know it never got back. And never got back because the Royal

4410.3 -> Navy chased it down, tracked it down, wounded it and sent it to the bottom. The Tirpitz got to sea but got chased back into

4419.61 -> port and was bombed into submission by the Royal Air Force. The German battleships, the two

4426.82 -> big battleships were neutralized by the Royal Navy, no help from the United States. And the British bore the burden of protecting

4437.33 -> those north Atlantic convoys through that crucial first year of the war. And absent that, all the rest of this is moot. You are absolutely right on that.

4444.48 -> The point worth making. I will argue with you in this respect, if the British Admiral got up here to tak

4449.04 -> to American audience he would emphasize the role of Americans too when I was teaching

4455.239 -> at the British Naval Academy I emphasized the British too.

4459.65 -> >> We are out of time. >> I'm sorry, we are out of time. Thank you

4465.29 -> very much. I appreciate it. (APPLAUSE)

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rp0eZJp8GYw