The Great Naval Battle of Ottawa by David Zimmerman

158 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE provide employment at sea. The Aegis radar system, the recondi­ tioned Iowa, and the Exxon Valdez are all cited as innovations and/or engineering triumphs, without a hint of the disasters about to overtake them. The authors unconsciously paint the U.S. Navy as similar to the continental navies in the age of British maritime supremacy; a “fleet in being” full of fine ships but having little chance of seeing action aside from the army-support operations that Mahan scorned. The decline of commercial construction has turned shipbuilding into a government monopoly, and budgetary battles are fought with sound and fury, but nuclear weapons—like the Royal Navy of old—have made real naval conflict an unthinkable disaster. Rodrigo Garcia y Robertson Dr. Garcia y Robertson earned his doctorate in the history of science and technology from UCLA and is currently working on a book about the relationship of naval weaponry to disarmament in the 19th and 20th centuries. In addition to publications in the history of science and technology he has written science fiction and historical fantasy, and his work has been selected for The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Writers ofthe Future. The Great Naval Battle of Ottawa. By David Zimmerman. Toronto; University of Toronto Press, 1989. Pp. xiv + 209; illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Can$24.95. The Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) played a major role in the Battle of the Atlantic, but in contrast to the navies of Britain and the United States, suffered from deficiencies in advanced equipment such as radar that severely weakened the performance of Canadian convoy escorts. To understand the causes of this naval technological failure, David Zimmerman has examined the relationship between Canadian politicians, naval officers, and scientists. The Great Naval Battle of Ottawa is an account of politics, bureaucracy, science, industry, and war. According to Zimmerman, at the start of hostilities the RCN suffered from three major weaknesses insofar as the supply of advanced naval weaponry was concerned: almost complete reliance on Britain for equipment, technical training, and scientific expertise; a small naval bureaucracy whose prewar organization and methods of operation were totally unsuited to deal with the problems that were to be raised by wartime expansion; and naval leadership that was largely ignorant of science in general and of the importance of radar in particular. Serious difficulties might have been avoided in spite of these shortcomings had the RCN been placed under the direct command of the British Admiralty as recommended by the chief of the Canadian Naval Staff. Instead, at the insistence of the Canadian TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 159 cabinet, the RCN was kept formally independent though pledged to “full cooperation.” This action gave the Dominion government a measure of control over the deployment of its warships, but appar­ ently at the cost of isolating the RCN from the Royal Navy’s logistical apparatus, which meant that the supplying of all manner of equip­ ment became a Canadian affair. To make up for the lack of a permanent staffof scientists within the RCN, the Naval Staff in November 1940 farmed out the task of looking after naval scientific requirements to the National Research Council (NRC). Before the war this body had developed strong relations with the army and air force, as well as carried out projects that were intended to improve Canadian civilian science and industry. The NRC, however, was ill suited to serve as the scientific and advising arm of the RCN. Its director, C. J. Mackenzie, was responsible for the administration of several major departments and not particularly interested in naval warfare; as a consequence he had neither the time nor the inclination to deal with the special requirements of the navy. Mackenzie, moreover, concentrated the research resources of his organization in the national capital (Ottawa) region at the expense of developing facilities on the Atlantic seaboard that were needed to carry out work for the RCN. Research Enterprises Limited (REL), a wartime-created Crown corporation under the authority of the NRC that was charged with the task of designing and producing Canadian naval radar, was plagued by management difficulties and disputes between its leadership and that of

Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Battle · Economic history · Garcia · Government (linguistics) · History of technology · Humanities · Management · Naval warfare · Navy · Operations research · Political science · Engineering · History · Law · Polar Research and Ecology