Mark Stille, Italian Destroyers of World War II by Robert L. Shoop

Reviews 121 planes, as the inadequacy of British models made the use of American carrier aircraft in the region essential for success.This put the Royal Navy in direct competition with the United States Navy for available production, however, which constrained operations until the spring of 1944.The test of the reconstituted Eastern Fleet came that April.With the assistance of an American carrier, the fleet attacked military and industrial targets at Sabang and Surabaya in the Dutch East Indies.Intended as diversions, their impact on the war was minimal given the ongoing degradation of the Japanese air and naval forces further east.Nevertheless, the strikes provided valuable experience for the newly trained personnel, preparing them for their subsequent employment in the final campaigns against Japan as part of the British Pacific Fleet.In his introduction, Stephenson states that his goal with this book is to provide a narrative history of the Eastern Fleet.He makes no claims to advance any radical thesis, and his work relies exclusively upon published sources and the secondary literature familiar to specialists in the field.Yet this undersells his success in describing a major factor in the eclipse of British naval power in the twentieth century.While his digressions into such tangential topics as espionage activities in Goa can distract from this, the book overall serves as a good introduction to British naval operations that are far too often given scant coverage in general accounts of the naval history of the Second World War

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