Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy by Clark G. Reynolds (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991) is a history of American naval aviation from its earliest days to the dawn of the nuclear age, as seen through the eyes of a premier naval aviator. It recounts the "struggle" of John H. Towers and his fellow airmen not only against the Japanese, but also against the Army and nonaviators within their own service.
Towers entered aviation in 1911; Reynolds's account of these early years is detailed and fascinating. These were difficult and dangerous times, and it is surprising how early naval aviators began resenting and questioning the actions of fellow seamen who did not fly. Surface sailors are depicted as traditional and conservative, closed to new ideas. They are charged with deliberately retarding naval aviation by holding up budgets, promotions, and doctrinal reform. The Army was similarly distrusted. Naval aviators suspected as early as 1914 that Army airmen had designs on their planes, pilots, and missions. Billy Mitchell's attacks on the Navy after 1919 served to confirm these fears.
The bulk of this book deals with Towers's role behind the scenes in Washington and then in Hawaii during World War II. Never holding a combat command, Towers instead played a key role in planning, mobilizing, and administering the Navy at war. Although an important story, it is not a dazzling one. Yet, Towers was important as one of the first and most innovative tactical thinkers regarding carrier operations. Two of his earliest admonitions-that carriers should be employed in task forces rather than singly or as part of a battleship flotilla and that carriers should never venture within range of landbased airpower until air superiority had been attained-were proven accurate early in the war. Moreover, from his position as chief of the Bureau of Naval Aeronautics in Washington, Towers selected those airmen, his protégés, who would command the carriers in combat. Surprisingly, however, this is not a complimentary portrait. Towers emerges as vain, ambitious, overbearing, political, and paranoid. Perhaps the most damning depiction of him concerns his vociferous efforts to block unification of the armed forces after the war. Towers played a leading role in the sorry story of the Navy's attempts to prevent the formation of the Defense Department and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), for fear they would encroach on Navy prerogatives.
Clark Reynolds is a masterful naval historian, his research is prodigious, and his writing style is pleasant. Lacking, however, is a concluding chapter that sums up the man and his impact on American military affairs. Overall, this is an important work about a largely forgotten figure.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the US Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.
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