History of United States Naval Operations in World War II

History of United States Naval Operations in World War II

Original cover of the first book in the series, "The Battle of the Atlantic"
Author	Samuel Eliot Morison
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Non-fiction
Publisher	Little, Brown and Company
Published	1947–62
Media type	Print

The History of United States Naval Operations in World War II is a 15-volume account of the United States Navy in World War II, written by Samuel Eliot Morison and published by Little, Brown and Company between 1947 and 1962.

Background

Immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Morison, already convinced of the value of personal involvement as a result of sailing experience while writing his biography of Christopher Columbus, wrote to President Roosevelt suggesting the preparation of an official history of the Navy in the war, and volunteering for the task. Both President Roosevelt and the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox agreed, and in May 1942 Morison was commissioned as a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve, and assigned a staff of assistants, with permission to go anywhere and to see all official records. Morison's reputation as a knowledgeable sailor (based on his analysis in the biography of Christopher Columbus) preceded him, and he was welcomed on a number of ships, eleven of them in all by the end of the war.^[1]

The result was a normal historical work, not a prescribed official history. Limitations of the History of U.S. Naval Operations are mostly due to its shortened period of publication. Some material, especially related to codebreaking, was still classified, and later in-depth research into particular occurrences in the war did clarify points that had been passed over rather lightly. Some rewriting was incorporated in the later printings of this series. This History of U.S. Naval Operations also intentionally avoided a certain amount of analysis, for instance deferring to other works for the causes of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor. The intended audience for the work, to quote from the preface, was "the general reader rather than the professional sailor."

Contents

The volumes:

1. The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939 – May 1943
2. Operations in North African Waters, October 1942 – June 1943
3. The Rising Sun in the Pacific, 1931 – April 1942
4. Coral Sea, Midway, and Submarine Actions, May 1942 – August 1942
5. The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942 – February 1943
6. Breaking the Bismarcks Barrier, July 22, 1942 – May 1, 1944
7. Aleutians, Gilberts, and Marshalls, June 1942 – April 1944
8. New Guinea and the Marianas, March 1944 – August 1944
9. Sicily – Salerno – Anzio, January 1943 – June 1944
10. The Atlantic Battle Won, May 1943 – May 1945
11. The Invasion of France and Germany, 1944–1945
12. Leyte, June 1944 – January 1945
13. The Liberation of the Philippines: Luzon, Mindanao, the Visayas, 1944–1945
14. Victory in the Pacific, 1945
15. Supplement and General Index

An abridgement of the fifteen-volume work entitled The Two-Ocean War; A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War was written by Morison and published in 1963.^[2]

Documentary

This History of U.S. Naval Operations also played an indirect role in the history of television. One of Morison's research assistants in the project, Henry Salomon, was inspired to create an ambitious documentary TV series on U.S. Navy and Marine Corps warfare in World War II. Several years after the war, the National Broadcasting Company TV network bought Salomon's idea, which eventually became the TV series, Victory at Sea. The success of this TV series played a major role in establishing the historic documentary as a viable television genre.

References