Nautical Research Journal
detailed look at the life of a particular vessel, in nearly day-to-day history. Winkler’s attention to detail and interesting insights make the ship’s transfer from grainy black-and-white photos to a living, breathing thing, along with the vivid personalities of her crew members. Well-known wartime events are retold in vivid, and sometimes horrifying detail, but what makes his works come alive are the interesting stories that come between the wartime action—colorful glimpses of life aboard a wartime vessel. Winkler follows the entire life of the ship, from conception and design to her fi nal destination… sometimes tragic, glorious, indeed both.
Winkler begins with the political climate of the thirties, and treaties restricting sizes of cruisers of the time, and tonnage and technical concerns of the new Atlanta-class. As weight was crucially important, he touches on the massive amount of aluminum…yes, aluminum…that went into the superstructures of this class. A sobering thought when one considers the eff ect of shell and shrapnel on such a lightly-built structure. T e Atlanta class held many concessions in design, such as the crew having to eat in shiſt s due to the unusually small wardroom.
Atlanta’s launch featured a celebrity, author of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell, as well as a humorous touch—Chester Nimitz’s declining Cola Cola’s invitation to christen the ship with a huge bottle of their namesake product! Aſt er launching, her crew fi lls both the ship, and the book, with numerous colorful anecdotes about life in a soon-to-be commissioned ship. We meet many of the men who will sail her into war, and who, sadly, will not all return.
Atlanta commissions when Japan clearly has, if not the upper hand, at least equal footing with the United States Navy. She joins what could be described as a shoestring operation around the bloody island of Guadalcanal, where the Imperial Japanese Navy’s superiority in night surface combat becomes painfully evident to the Americans. Japanese Long Lance torpedoes claim numerous victims in Iron Bottom Sound, as the Americans discover that they have gotten into a bloody fi stfi ght in a phone booth. Both sides suff er, the attrition continues, and it soon becomes clear that Atlanta’s time is coming.
Her loss is one of the most exciting, yet horrible parts of the book—Winkler makes the horrors of World War II surface combat quite evident. T e eff ect of high-explosive shells inside a ship are not pretty, and they are presented
in stark detail, right down to the only way to identify one major casualty—his Annapolis ring…on a hand that was all that was found of him. T e struggle to save Atlanta is heroic, yet sadly in vain. Following her sinking, Winkler follows her survivors ashore to see their eff orts in the desperate battle for Guadalcanal, despite losing their ship.
T e eventual return of the survivors home, and the building of a new Atlanta: CL 141, a Cleveland-class ship, round the book out, and we learn some of the later lives of survivors, and the memorials to them, their dead comrades, and their dead ship.
T e book will not be terribly useful to ship modelers— it is sparsely illustrated, and I have seen most of the included photographs before, but as a ship’s history, it is excellent reading. It moves fast, and gives great detail. Highly recommended for history readers.
— Rick Cotton Katy, Texas
95
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