This is one of those rare U.S. Navy histories that examines the Treaty-era Navy between the world wars. The authors, a father-son team, challenge the reader with the question--what was it about the Treaty-era Navy that set up the Navy for a relatively poor performance at times during the first year of the Pacific War?

The authors tell their story in ten chapters, a conclusion, three appendices, endnotes, a bibliography, and an index. Chapters 1,2,6.7, and 8 discuss the bone and sinew of the Fleet, its weapons systems. The authors go into some detail describing the ships, aircraft, and submarines as they developed during the interwar period. At the heart of this Navy lay its battleship squadrons, and the Hones tak their time in explaining their role, their designs, and their place in the Navy. However, there was more to the Treaty Navy than just battleships, and the authors devote Chapter 6 to naval aviation and Chapter 7 to submarines.

Chapters 3 and 4 are dedicated to the men who crewed the Treaty Navy. Chapter 3 details the world of the enlisted sailor and chief petty officers, how he came to be in the Navy, what he did aboard ship, and how he lived. Chapter 4 does the same for officers while noting that the Treaty Navy was the realm of the Naval Academy graduate, very few officers having come from other commissioning sources.

Chapter 5 covers the tactics of the battle line, the point of all the shipbuilding, fire control research and development, steam engineering and personnel management/training.

Chapter 8 speaks to how the Navy operated administratively during the interwar period. The World War I years caught the Navy in the midst of a major reorganization with the establishment of the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV). Navy leadership spent the Treaty years figuring out the complex relationships between OPNAV, the material Bureaus, and the Office of the Secretary of the Navy. Much was accomplished between the wars, but it took Pearl Harbor and a new CNO, Ernest KIng, to finalize the organization of the World War II Navy.

Chapter 9 dives into the unique position of the United States Marine Corps in the Department of the Navy. Covered in glory from the epic 1918 battles where the Marines acted as elite infantry (to the dismay of the U.S. Army), the Corps realized that the next conflict would involve Japan. A trans-Pacific campaign would involve the seizure and defense of advanced bases to support the Fleet. The Marines used the Treaty era to develop and test their new amphibious doctrine and laid the foundations for the services successful Pacific campaigns.

Chapter 10 is the oddest segment in this book in that it centers on the Navy's fixation on Asia and how it handled the Asiatic experience. The question to be answered is whether the exotic Asian environment had a negative influence on the Navy just when it needed to prepare for war.

To go back to the question that the authors ask at the beginning of the book--how did the Treaty era affect the Navy during that first year of the Pacific War--the authors come to an interesting conclusion: the Navy's own battle efficiency competitions actually had a debilitating effect on the Fleet. To many Navy leaders at different levels of the chain of command all to often "gamed" the competition system to benefit their own organization, be it shipboard division, department, ship, or squadron. The Japanese ended up playing a very different game much better.

Overall this was a good read. I would have arranged the chapters differently to make the story more coherent--Chapters 3, 4, and 5 really should be somewhere else. ( )

This is a book with lively prose that describes some facets of a navy in regard to its society, and the themes and areas of its technology. The Hones do have differing interests and the interplay does add to the depths of their insights. The heart of the book is the world of the sailors, the world of the officers, and the tactics of a battle line engagement. The rest is pretty standard techno-history, and competent. ( )

I really have no complaints with this survey history of the United States Navy between the world wars, and how it coped with the social, political, and technological turbulence of the time; it's the sort of book that one can hand to a person fresh to the topic and they'll have a much greater understanding of the issues and trends. The main point is to take the edge off the accusations that a clique of "big-gun" admirals condemned the service to technological stagnation. Perhaps the biggest absence in the topics covered, which tend more towards issues of hardware then of policy, is that of naval intelligence and espionage. ( )