Puttering in the Study

Midway

Parker and I went to see Midway today, and really enjoyed it.  It was technically stunning - the Enterprise and its dive bombers were flawlessly executed, and for that matter I never saw any hardware (except the sinking Lexington) that wasn't technically correct as far as I knew.  That doesn't mean the camouflage on the ships and aircraft was always correct - the movie starts on December 7, and neither Enterprise, the dive bombers or the ships at Pearl Harbor are in the correct camo for that period - but it's close enough. (There's also one overhead shot of the B-25s over Tokyo where they - inexplicably - have 1943 markings - but it's still far and away the most period-accurate WW II naval combat movie I've ever seen).

Beginning with the Pearl Harbor scenes, though, it becomes clear that this is a dramatization of the action, not a strict retelling.  At Pearl Harbor the events of the attack are sequenced differently, and the ships are arranged a little differently around the harbor, but the action sequence is good, and unlike Pearl Harbor it's consistent.  It's essentially CGI or sets that match the historical ships in CGI, so I have no real complaints. You don't have the Missouri and a bunch of mothballed 1970's destroyers getting blown up.

Along these lines, the action scenes are dramatized as well. I don't think Roi or Namur had scenic mountains, carrier task forces didn't steam at 300 yard intervals, and the Lexington wasn't a Yorktown class ship.  I understand how for dramatic reasons Halsey's Enterprise does make it to the Coral Sea to join Yorktown, but too late to do anything but watch Lexington sink. And it is borderline adorable to have Yorktown and Enterprise watching Lexington sinking at the previously noted 300 yard spacing that looks just like three cows standing together in a meadow.  But - again - they used the same Yorktown class carrier for the sinking Lexington.  Bizarre.

Woody Harrelson does very, very well as Admiral Nimitz, and Etsushi Toyokawa does likewise as Yamamoto. In fact, the whole cast is good, and while I've heard others have issues with the script, neither the script itself nor the dialogue bothered me. Patrick Wilson is also really good as Nimitz' intelligence officer Edwin Layton.

The best thing about the movie to me was the constant parade of historically correct easter eggs that were used to propel the story along. It sounds like terrible writing to have Layton telling Nimitz the exact date, time and bearing of the Japanese attack, and Nimitz then complimenting him later for being "5 minutes, 5 miles and 5 degrees off" - but it's almost word for word what Rochefort and Nimitz actually said.  And Bruno Gaido saving the day at the Marshalls and getting the plane he was in cut in half by a Japanese bomber that nearly misses, and then he comes back later in the movie to play an important role is just over the top screenwriting - but that's exactly what happened. Gene Lindsay getting banged up landing his TBD, Wade McCluskey getting switched to dive bombers - all this stuff is in there. The way the "AF is short on water" story is told is original and funny.  Again, much of the story is dramatized - Halsey put himself in the hospital, but it plays better to have Nimitz have to order him off under protest.  Hirohito being hustled off to his bunker during the Doolittle Raid was a terrific touch.

The accuracy extends to the technical details of the attacks on Kaga and Akagi.  McCluskey mistakenly leads his squadron and almost all of Best's down on a single target, and misses - and so do others before the bombs start hitting home.  Then the most critical attack of the battle is portrayed pretty accurately. Best, accompanied by only his two wingmen, went after the Akagi, but were forced to attack from abeam, meaning they had hit to the ship from the side.  They're shown flying through massive AA fire when Best told us at a seminar in 1992 that there wasn't a gun on him during his run (see comments re: dramatization above) but the actual effects of the attack are shown accurately. His two wingmen both barely miss the ship (one jams the ship's rudder, which would later make salvage even less likely), but Best drops his amidships - and actually at the worst possible point where his bomb not only could damage the ship with its explosion and the secondary explosions - he also fatally damaged the water main system and because he hit around the elevator, the damage extended to both the hangars.  One bomb - one ship.

Oh, and then he came back four hours later and scored a hit on Hiryu as well.  Perhaps not in as dramatic fashion as the movie displays, where he lands his SBD on the Hiryu, engages Admiral Yamaguchi in hand to hand combat, and then takes off again, dropping his bomb through the hinomaru in the forward flight deck on his way off, but still.  (I am only exaggerating slightly).

It's a great war movie, and it's a great and largely accurate retelling of the first six months of the Pacific war - one where the Enterprise is depicted flawlessly (okay, other than not having Ms 1 camo on Dec. 7/8).  And they gave us Midway pins at the movie theater. What more could you ask for?  Oh yeah, a historically accurate Lexington. But other than that, not much.

Midway, Dick Best and Me

A very pleasant surprise about the new Midway movie is that the Enterprise's Bombing 6 skipper Dick Best is the lead. I met Mr. Best at a Nimitz (now Pacific War) Museum symposium in 1992, and for reasons that now escape me, I had packed up a framed R.S. Smith print of his run on the Akagi that my parents had given me for graduation in a pillow case and brought it with me, along with a few books for signatures.

At the time I honestly didn't realize his significance in the battle - I just recognized he was one of the Enterprise dive bomber pilots Walter Lord had written about.

After listening to his portion of the panel discussion I realized I should probably see if he'd sign my print. Oh boy, did he. When he handed it back to me, it said:

          Dick Best

C.O. Bombing Six

U.S.S. Enterprise

Midway, 4 June 42

As the seminar was about three months after I finished law school, I was still in the habit of taking copious notes, and in light of the movie, I thought a few might be worth putting here:

On Dive Bombing

He said he's often asked what it's like to be a dive bomber pilot. "It's like a rollercoaster," he said. "You come in at 20,000 feet, go 'over the top' and stand on your rudder pedals. At 3,500 adjust and drop at 2,500 - pull out at 1,000." He said the bump going over the top was the 'old hat' part of the dive. "The excitement is what you can do at the bottom."

Doolittle Raid

Left (I think he was referring to) on April 12 on Enterprise with a fast fleet oiler and were on heading of 335 degrees - a direct course to Tokyo, and they worried for two days. Launched at dawn (probably referring to a patrol he flew) and saw Hornet. But he said he couldn't make out her deck load - there were a lot of engines and jumble and deck tractors. He said he was envious of Doolittle that he got the "first shot at Japan."

Midway

Left for Midway on May 28 with Task Force 16. The next day Spruance met with them and laid out the plan. He said the details were incredible - they had divisions by numbers, and names of the carriers and battleships. he said he asked what if they were wrong and the Japanese did something different - was told "well, we just hope they won't." He wasn't told how they knew. (Alvin Kernan said the code breaking was common knowledge on Enterprise during the battle - if it was, Best didn't mention it during the panel).

On June 3 heard about the attack on the Aleutians - I wrote two quotes here which may be something he said or something he recounted someone else saying - "We're going to show them a surprise this time," and "behind the garden gate with a bat."

He remembers VB was back in the landing wires because were heavier, and was airborne by the time he reached the island. VS launched first - he noted the torpedo bombers apparently went first (as well). (This is garbled account and incomplete of who launched when, but I won't take time right now to complete the launch sequence using other sources - this is just what he recounted. And it's possible I wrote VS when I should have written VF).

His account of the attack is just about exactly as the movie relates except he said something about "never a gun on him." That might mean he was never hit, but I think it was that he was never fired on. He remembered seeing a Zero go through his gunsight as he dove - there were planes launching from the stern, and his bomb hit "in planes warming up." He described the flight deck as red-orange with a bright red ball, and later described the attack on the Hiryu as well - said his dive was steeper and his rear seat man said they got a hit. Said he's often asked how he recalls the details of the missions so well, and said it's easy because it was the last day he flew a plane, due to the caustic soda incident.

I can't help but think he'd have been a bit indignant at being portrayed as a cowboy who got promoted by Halsey, because he'd been a squadron leader for a while. But he'd have liked the way they redid the final bomb drop on Hiryu. Actually he probably would have just smiled and refrained from actually grumbling about how that wasn't the way it happened, and how several got hits.

 

 

Dauntless: The Battle of Midway

Dauntless: The Battle of Midway is a “mockbuster” - a low budget film that’s intended to capitalize on the publicity surrounding a blockbuster movie by a large studio.  Even the trailer indicated that the special effects were not quite ready for the big screen, but since I’d go to Des Moines to see a community theater production about the drama involved in loading torpedoes, of course I was going to get the Blu-ray, which is the only release this howler will ever have.

The set consisted of three rooms, two aircraft fuselages, a pool and the ocean, and the speaking cast was 13 people.  (I counted both).  Astonishingly, most - maybe all - of the movie was filmed in the director’s back yard using green screen, and the extras show the director and three buddies building the SBD fuselage. I thought it looked pretty good until Parker noticed something that was pretty obviously a 2 x 4 cross-section.  Everything else - and I mean everything - was special effects.  Picture Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.  It’s like that.

I’m not exaggerating, nor am I condemning.  When the live action is combined with the special effects, the result is pretty good.  The lighting is way off, which has a tendency to spoil the effect, but the detail in the CGI is remarkable.  The Enterprise, in particular is - until next month - by far the best screen representation of the ship, and it is quite accurate - although it mixes the ship’s appearance during different periods.  The Hornet is often seen sailing less than a thousand yards beside it, and although the camouflage scheme has the usual error - which I have yet to avoid - of not using Haze Gray above the flight deck, it’s still pretty good.  Until you see that the two carriers sport giant flight deck numbers - a black 6 on Enterprise and a white 8 on Hornet.  

That’s one of the disappointing things about the movie.  Low budget notwithstanding, it gets so much right, both in story and detail, then misses equally accessible details.  The SBDs have the correct markings, but the wrong propellor tips.  The captions accurately identify all the squadrons and events - then a pilot will refer to meeting up with “VB-6”, when I’m pretty sure they always referred to the squadrons as “Bombing 6”.  (At least that’s the caption Dick Best put on my Midway print in 1992 - he signed it “CO Bombing 6 USS Enterprise 4 June 1942” so I assume that’s what it was referred to at the time). And the aircraft are scattered on the deck, rather than in a tight deck pack prior to launch, which I found grating - and inexplicable. How could so much attention to detail go into the effects and then have easy errors like Mk 37 gun directors and a giant flight deck numeral 6 on  an Enterprise that is otherwise almost exactly accurate for June 1942. Literally the only other error I saw was a missing catwalk on the starboard side of the stack - which was a post-Midway change.

It’s also jarring when the dramatic launch of the SBDs from the Enterprise is accompanied by Jupiter from Holst’s The Planets.  The attack on an under detailed but accurate Kaga is accompanied by Mars before the music segues into something broadly similar, but which I didn’t recognize.  Not bad, but ... jarring.  But it is really fun to watch things happen during the flight that match up with the historical record, even when it doesn’t contribute anything to the movie.  

But if you watch it on a small enough screen that the effects don’t distract, it does tell a couple of good stories.  Judd Nelson as Admiral Raymond Spruance spars with C. Thomas Howell as Captain Miles Browning and they replay various generally accurate confrontations, mostly after the 4 June attack.  For example, the “turn the lights on” scene (Spruance did it at Midway two years before Mitscher at Philippine Sea) and the “I’ll do what you pilots want” scenes are accurate as long as you’re not checking precise dialogue. Nelson handles Spruance well, and he provides the narrative for the movie, explaining in a couple of sentences of dialogue what the tiny movie could never have shot (if only because the director’s back yard wasn’t big enough). At this level, the story is spot-on. 

The heart of the movie - which to its credit it makes hard to watch - is the ordeal faced by downed pilots who drifted in the ocean for days, and in some cases weeks waiting for rescue. The movie tells the story of two specific pilots from the Enterprise who ditched after bombing the Kaga, and long after I’ve forgotten the inaccurate effects or bad writing I’ll remember the insight it gives watchers into the special hell that must have been.

In the end, if you dream of seeing an almost perfectly accurate June 1942 Enterprise filmed cinematographically launching its strike on the morning of June 4 - this movie is for you.  But I’ll understand if you want to wait till next month.  I just couldn’t.

 

Revell angled deck Essex - bow "knuckle" & flight deck installation

One of the characteristics of the SCB-125 Essex class carriers was a prominent crease or "knuckle" at the bow which marks where the class' original open bow was plated in from the forecastle deck to the gallery deck. The knuckle disappears where it meets the hurricane bow, which was all-new construction, and this is approximately where the anchor is located.

On the modern carriers there is no crease - it's a smooth curve up to the flight deck - but on the modernized Essex class ships there is a distinct line.

The 1943 Essex model above shows the "lip" at the forecastle deck.  The lower edge is what would become the "knuckle" in the postwar refits.

Unfortunately, when I measured the kit's version of the knuckle - which is really just a bulge - it was significantly below where it needed to be.  The correct location is the upper pencil line, and the kit location was the lower.

So I sanded the existing knuckle down with the Dremel (ignoring the fact that as I've noted previously, the hull is a little wider than it should be here anyway), and glued strips of angled plastic.  That white strip will tell me where the curve changes, and provide a sharp line that will hopefully match that on the real ship.

I did a little more work on the gallery deck and port sponsons before realizing that it was time for the big step - reattaching the flight deck. I double checked that all the gallery deck sponsons were sanded down properly, and marked the parts that needed plastic cement and the ones that needed super glue (the resin hangar deck needs it where it attaches to plastic).
Next step is the one I've been looking forward to for a long, long time - puttying the bow into the gallery deck - now with an accurate "knuckle" to guide the sanding. The selfie at the top is the current status with two applications of putty (too thick and it won't dry properly) - with the lower (hull) section getting a sanding in between.  The upper (forecastle) part will need a couple more applications before I can start shaping it.

 

 

 

Revell angled deck Essex - gallery deck pt. 2 - gun platforms and sponsons

The Revell angled deck Essex is a little like the AMT Star Trek Enterprise in that I’ve looked at the models hundreds of times more than I have even photos of the real article, so sometimes it’s a surprise that the familiar arrangement of the kit doesn’t match the real ship.

One of the examples of this is the gallery deck platforms for the modernized carriers’ 5” .38 cal. guns.  This became a consideration when I decided that the platforms were far enough off - primarily that they were .04" too low - that I would rebuild them to match the 1966 plans and contemporary photos.

The basic plan was to sand the existing platforms flat and place new correctly elevated and shaped platforms on them, then rebuild the sponsons as needed.  That ended up being a bigger project than I initially anticipated.  (These photos are taken while I'm still sanding and fitting parts together, so the appearance is not final).

Port - forward

The platforms on the port side are original to the ship’s construction during World War II, but there’s a major difference forward.  While the shelf supporting the mounts looked fine at first glance - after all, I’ve been looking at it for 40 years and never noticed anything - when I checked my 1993 photos of the Yorktown I was surprised to realize that the platform doesn’t sit on a shelf at all - it rests on a sponson that’s smoothly faired into the hull. Can’t imagine how I missed that.  

Now the 40mm quad that it once held aft of the 5" mounts was on a shelf, as shown in this February 1, 1943 photo of Essex newly commissioned, and maybe that was the origin of the kit’s configuration, but by 1968 the Essex’ had been removed.  One difference between the kit gun platforms and the real thing was that the former didn’t recess under the flight deck as they should have, so that adds some shadow detail to the model - as shown in this 1968 picture taken during the Apollo 7 recovery operation - precisely the period I am building the ship to.

I built the sponson up using putty, and after cutting out essentially the entire hangar and gallery deck of the kit in this area, I reconstructed it using sheet plastic, and left an opening for the new platform.

Port - aft

The aft platform was correctly shaped, but extended significantly too far out, so I cut the sponson back, sanded the existing platform flat, and added the new platform on top of that.  Kudos to the designers of the original 1957 kit here - after studying a Yorktown photo closely I noticed that the forward edge of the sponson was slanted slightly as a result of the hull being slightly wider here after the SCB-27A conversion.  Sure enough, the kit’s sponson is slightly slanted the same way.

Starboard

The starboard sponson was new to the Essex class ships, but reminiscent of the same platform on the older Yorktown class ships and appears to be the same as the existing port sponson , although the platform somehow extends further from the flight deck, and the recessed area is less.

But in studying the photos it became clear that the sponson extended significantly further back than the model - so I added sheet plastic platform deck and framing and puttied it in. As the existing platform stayed in place it shows how much had to be built up.  I then placed the new platform on top of the old.

More sanding next, and finishing up the hull and getting the platforms glued in place, then I'll prime everything to make sure it's good.  Then it's time to start adding railing to the platforms.

BTW there is also a completely new sponson on the starboard side aft - it's already had railings added and been painted, so it doesn't show up as well as the three new platforms.

When the flight deck is added, there will be yet more extreme puttying and sanding, of almost everything forward of the sponsons, so we're a long way from starting detailing still.  But I thought I'd bring out the 3D printed gun mounts for the overall picture at this stage.

Revell angled deck Essex - gallery deck pt. 1

The whole reason for this resurrection build of the 1957 Revell kit I first built in 1981 was to get the hangar deck walls - which were originally the outer hull of the ship all the way down to the waterline - to line back up with the flight deck. The Revell kit has the hangar wall inset, as shown at right in a picture of this kit as CV-31 before I took it apart to start this build.

As the above photo next to the 1/700 1943 Essex shows, the flight deck is finally aligned (there's now a tab near the stern that holds it in the right position) so that the hangar sides match it exactly.  This alignment will be even better when the flight deck is glued in place, but then obscured when the catwalks are added, but it's rewarding to see it now.

With  the flight deck aligned, the next step is adding the gallery deck around the sides of the flight deck.  I measured the precise height using the FDD plans and cut strips of plastic the appropriate widths, keeping in mind that the flight deck is approximately .06" thick already, generally over a third of the finished height.

The starboard side needed an additional 5" gun gallery aft so after a couple of false starts on the measurements I finally got that built into the hull with a recess in the gallery and flight deck above it. 

Next was the very odd shaped section over the forward hangar deck opening (the white plastic in the photo to the left below).  The photo to the right, taken shortly after the Essex' SCB-27A modernization, showed the shape of the gallery deck, which in most photos is obscured by the catwalk. With this photo as a guide, I was able to locate the right lines on the blueprints and duplicate them in the right scale. Again, it'll be obscured by the catwalk, but it'll be right.

Essex (CV-9) off Japan or Korea - Summer 1952

 

 

Setting the correct elevation for the new 5" gun tub on the starboard side made me realize that the two forward 5" tubs would need to be raised slightly - in fact completely rebuilt - so for a change of pace I moved to the port side and did the corresponding weird forward section, as well as some initial bracing for the angled flight deck sponsons as I start to figure this area out. 

The thing about the gallery deck is that contrary to how almost every Essex carrier model is built, the gallery deck needs to be full height all the way to the hangar deck walls (in most cases it runs all the way across the ship) and not just a flat panel hanging off the side of the flight deck. So once I had the outer face in place I put spacers and a bottom all the way back to the hangar deck - which is why the above photo is from below.  This ended up being a lot easier than I had feared, so when I got a few minutes later in the day I went back and added the same thing for most of the aft starboard side as well.

 

Essex (CVS-9) in Hamburg - 1968

As this (right-side up) photo from the Essex' 1968 visit to Hamburg shows, this area will be covered with a lot of detail once the catwalks and life rafts are in place.

 

Revell angled deck Essex - fantail research

Sunday's project was rebuilding the fantail. I used the kit platforms, and recut them to fit the Essex plans, as well as enclosing the top (gallery) deck. (See photos where it’s still white and gray to see what’s original and what’s added). While I had the flight deck on and aligned I added the structural members supporting the flight deck. Still needs detailing, including railings, but it’s ready for the flight deck back there now.

For comparison, an OOB Wasp from the storage boxes, circa 1977.

I thought I'd pass along a few thoughts on the fantail of the Revell angled deck Essex model that I thought I’d pass along.

I’m working on a resurrection build of an old Revell angled deck Essex into an October 1968 CVS-9, and spent yesterday building the fantail based on plans from FDD and photos, mostly of the Yorktown (CVS-10). A photo of my Essex next to an OOB Wasp shows the original kit configuration. I wanted to share what I learned.
REVELL KIT
First of all, the kit. Revell’s box scale Essex has a single piece for the fantail deck and bulkhead to the hangar bay, as shown in the attached photo, plus two open decks which represent the upper hangar and gallery deck levels. The two decks have built-in railings but no structure on the decks themselves. The upper deck overhangs the lower - more on that in a moment - but the height is correct, meaning that between them they are three decks of equivalent height.
I decided to use as much as I could of these two decks in the rebuild, so I cut off the support posts, sanded them relatively smooth, and replaced the posts with scratch built as needed.
UPPER HANGAR DECK
Surprisingly, with some rounding at the edges the first deck was almost exactly the right size per the plans. But what Revell didn’t have was the shops that were constructed on that deck. They didn’t come all the way out to the edge of the deck, which is about to become important. So I built those per the Essex plans, as shown in the photo.
GALLERY DECK
The Revell kit differs from the original (including the Bennington (CVS-20) on which it was based) in two major ways here. First, the Revell deck overhangs the level below it, rather than coming out the same amount, as the photo of the plans clearly shows. And second, the Revell deck is open to the stern, when the original is enclosed completely by the massive transverse truss that supports the flight deck.
In photos and in person this truss is dominating (I once had a dinner on the fantail of the Lexington in Corpus Christi, and it is not a relaxing location sitting in the shadow of that monster of a truss). and sure looks like it is taller than the deck below and overhangs it - but it doesn’t. As this cross-section shows, it is the same height as the decks below it and extends no farther after than the deck below it. But it appears to because it does overhang the shops built on the deck under it.
And I think this is why the Revell engineers mistakenly thought that it did. Assuming the Bennington had enclosed shops extending only partway to the stern rail, the gallery deck would have overhung them. Now why they didn’t model this piece with a vertical wall, I don’t know.
In the attached builds of this kit, modelers have gone different ways with modeling the stern.
OTHER MODELS
In preparing my build, I’ve looked for other accurized versions of the Revell kit on the Internet and found a couple that have been a big help. For his Yorktown (CV-10) John Higgins chose to keep the Revell configuration of the decks (adding an accurate fantail - note that Essex has a solid rail but Yorktown has 3-bar) but sanded off the kit railings and added photoetch railing. Louis Carabott a lso added an accurate rounded stern to his Hornet (CVS-12) but corrected the kit decks by enclosing the gallery deck at the correct length and adding vertical details.

George Bush's TBF Avenger "Barbara III" - 1/72 Academy

Another recent finish was the a 1/72 TBF Avenger finished as George Bush's final TBF, the Barbara III. 

My tail markings are not wrong - the aircraft shown below behind Bush and his crew was the Barbara II, which had a dark panel behind the aircraft number on the tail.

The kit is the 1/72 Academy, which seems to be a modified version of the even older Frog kit.  It is (mostly) of the British version, the Tarpon, and the further I got into it the more I realized this wasn't going to make a very good model.  Nor were the decals very good - the national insignia were a royal blue.  And don't get me started on how the flat finish coat went on like snow.

In the end, I decided to just finish this one as best I could as practice for airbrushing a three-color paint scheme, and look for a better kit to use the Barbara II decals - and better national insignia - on later.

Guadalcanal: Decision at Sea - the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal, November 13-15, 1942 - Eric Hammel

This is the third of Hammerl's three books of the Guadalcanal campaign.  I had read The Carrier Battles, but not Starvation Island, and thought this might explain the surface actions a little better.  Did it ever.

The book began by patiently explaining that in the first year of the Pacific War, U.S. ships had both a poorly prepared cadre of combat leaders based on prewar caution, and widely varying fits with respect to fire control, radar, and training on both.  Some ships relied on manual firing of their guns, some had various systems to more accurately direct their fire, and some had the brand-new "radar" units, some of which could aid in firing accurately, especially at night, and some of which could aid in locating enemy vessels in the first place.  Importantly, some commanders did not yet understand that it could do that.

This explains the two nights of battles covered in the book.  In the first, a poorly organized and led line of U.S. ships was heavily damaged by a Japanese formation, despite having the tools on various ships to do much better.  The second battle a couple of nights later saw a more evenly matched engagement, where the U.S. flagship, the battleship Washington made effective use of its radar-controlled fire to destroy the Japanese battleship Kirishima.

The emphasis on the various radars had a distinct effect on my next modeling project, in which I updated an old Matchbox destroyer USS Fletcher (DD-445) which was tail-end Charlie the first of the two nights.  But it had both fire control radar, SC air search radar and - crucially - the new SG surface-search radar.  So unlike the two flagship cruisers where the admirals sat, it could - and did - accurately locate the enemy.  So I scratchbuilt a new mast to carry carefully fabricated photoetched versions of all three.

How Carriers Fought: Carrier Operations in WWII - Lars Celander

Now this was an unusual book.  It dealt with the nuts and bolts of how aircraft carriers operate - from what happens in the cockpit to how aircraft and the ships that carry them actually work, to the battles they fought in.  The book concludes with an analysis of various carrier design and combat tactics which I found very interesting. 

Carriers tend to be approached either as historical objects or as tools used in significant historical actions.  Some books deal with them from a design perspectives, but few deal with carrier tactics, much less analyze why the tactics were what they were, and whether they, the the ships' design, should have been otherwise.  

Celander's book also discusses postwar developments to a certain extent, explaining how carriers developed postwar and why, and - I especially liked this part - why they would not have developed as they did had the wartime need for "deck-load" strikes persisted.  It never occurred to me that angled decks only made sense if a carrier is constantly rotating aircraft, and would have been highly problematic had carriers still been launching massive strikes as was usually the case in naval combat. Celnader's book doesn't get into this, but had that need remained we might have seen carrier design divide into "rotating" air operations carriers, as we have now, with a few "battle" carriers which are designed to launch and land large numbers of aircraft in a short period of time, while protected by "rotating" carriers.  WW II task forces did that by sometimes having certain carriers assigned to provide CAP (combat air patrol) while others launched strikes, but that isn't how modern air operations work.

All in all, a very interesting book.