Critique of Choices Under Fire

38 Historically Speaking · March/April 2008 Critique of Choices Under Fire Eric Bergerud Michael Bess begins his disappointing book Choices Under Fire with a familiar story. OnJune 4, 1942 during the Batde of Midway three American officers led their torpedo bomber squadrons on futile attacks against Japanese aircraft carriers. All three air commanders perished along widi most of their men. The attack, according to Bess, drew Japanese fighters low and left the carriers vulnerable to the American dive bomber strike that demolished three of the four Japanese fleet carriers sunk that day. Bess argues that the courage shown by torpedo bomber airmen was beyond training and military loyalty—instead they made a larger "moral choice" and "sacrificed themselves" for higher ideals, presumably because they somehow knew or hoped that their destruction would open the way for American victory. A stirring tale, but not true to either the men or the time. Bess bases his picture of Midway on obsolescent sources, including a piece from novelist Herman Wouk. Had he taken the time to consult more serious works, he would have confronted a very different picture. The American forces were superior in number of aircraft and in radar. U.S. torpedo planes in the Battle of the Coral Sea had done well and suffered no casualties. In die event, as was typical among die airmen on both sides, all evidence indicates that American flyers looked forward to the battle with, if anything, a kind of cockiness. In practice, Midway, like all carrier batdes of 1942, was a madman's night out duringwhich bodi sides committed glaring errors. Far from being a miracle, the result at Midway was well within the range of probabilities given the balance of forces. Naturally, the men aboard die torpedo squadrons realized they flew into danger. But there is no reason to think that they were on a suicide mission. Nor is it at all obvious that the sacrifice of at least the first two torpedo attacks interrupted Japanese defense other than to add to general confusion. More to the point, the real moral choice made by these men was the same as that made by every airman in the U.S. Fleet in mid-1942: diey volunteered to fight in die most violent war of the modern era. Risking life went without question—certain deadi was not part of the bargain. Bess attempts to "offer the reader a vivid tour d'horizon of the war's moral 'hotspots,'" "shed new light on the forces that shaped this epochal conflict, and [come to] fresh conclusions about its far-reaching legacy." Ambitious goals no doubt. To achieve them he relies entirely upon secondary works in English. Notably absent are the official histories. The bibliography is good as far as these things go, but an examination of the notes shows a heavy reliance on Tuskegee airmen at a briefing in Ramitelli, Italy, March 1945. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-DIG-ppmsca-13260]. anthologies, popular histories, and a very select list of historians that look with jaundiced eye on the Allied war effort. One wonders what is the book's intended audience . There is nothing in the book diat could be considered new either in content or interpretation, leaving litde or nothing of interest to serious students of World War II. I think it more likely that Bess is aiming his arguments at those new to the subject. What results is a book—aimed at an audience lacking the background to separate wheat from chaff—by a scholar outside the field of military or diplomatic history relying on thin resources and casting an extremely wide net over very sensitive issues of one of the most thoroughly covered fields in all of historiography. Obviously this cannot be done in depth (it is a "tour d'horizon"), so what is sacrificed is nuance. The work is made thinner by the audior's frequent long tangents into a number of topics that could have been summarized in a paragraph or sentence . The result is a mishmash of simplification and error punctuated by seriously flawed conclusions. Lucky is the autiior whose manuscript doesn't include some silly error. However...