Battle Stations - Copyright 1946 -

This is a very cool old book I acquired several years ago. It was actually put out by the Navy. It features essays by all the major Navy top brass all the way put to Admiral Ernest King, the head honcho during WWII.

It's mostly a pictoral history of the war with lots of pics of ships, landing ships, landing craft, etc.

One of the most interesting things that a modern reader picks up is that the code breaking accomplishments were still top secret at the time of publication. In the book's story about Midway the American fleet just happened to find itself in an advantageous position northeast of the island. Btw, this essay was written by Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, the actual afloat commander of the pacific fleet for much of the early part of the war.

Did the admirals know the US had broke their code? I guess the ship captains didn't know.

The admirals that were task force commanders knew [ ex. Halsey , Spruance, etc ]. Some of the ship captains would know. Most of the success that the subs had against Japanese shipping was due to code breaking.

The code breakers were only able to figure out a small portion of messages but by correlating with other messages, hunches, etc they could piece together a decent idea of what was happening. Later in the war they got better and were able to put the subs in good spots.

Very interesting RJ, post a pic of the book cover if possible.

Just do a google search on Battle Stations 1946. They are not rare or expensive. I let my ex-Navy cousin borrow mine and he instantly started looking for one of his own