I was stunned to learn tonight that one of my favorite historians, James Hornfischer, has passed away. Way too young.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/t...hresults_pos1&page=1

The Tin Can Sailors of World War II
James Hornfischer, the historian who chronicled these naval heroes, dies at 55.
By Andrew Odell
Updated June 14, 2021 6:41 pm ET

James D. Hornfischer, a historian of the U.S. Navy, died June 2 at 55. The costs borne by Navy sailors in World War II seldom receive prime billing in history courses, but amid so much fresh attention on the Pacific, more Americans should thumb through Hornfischer’s work about the Navy’s “finest hour,” off the coast of Samar on an October morning in 1944.

Hornfischer’s “The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors” (2004) is dedicated to about two hours of action in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, mostly on “tin cans,” the Navy term of endearment for destroyers. The scene on Oct. 25 was grim. Adm. Bill Halsey and his carriers were lured away by a decoy, and the 13 ships of “Taffy 3” were exposed to the largest force of surface combatants the Japanese navy had ever assembled. The Navy’s tin cans, as Hornfischer said in a 2004 speech, “fought in broad daylight at point-blank range against Japanese battleships 35 to 60 times their size.”

Hornfischer’s work isn’t a recitation of ship movements; it is about “the machinists, and the snipes in the engine rooms, and the gunners and the men in the handling rooms.” Best known is Ernest Evans, the Oklahoma-born captain of the USS Johnston. The Johnston, without waiting for orders, charged across miles of open sea, under withering fire, to fire a torpedo salvo and cripple the heavy cruiser Kumano.

The ship would have been “entitled to call it a day,” as Hornfischer said in another speech, in 2014, but Evans had “a different understanding of his duty” and turned the heavily damaged Johnston back to engage Japanese ships with gunfire. His spirit: “Our lives don’t matter,” but the enemy “will not catch the carriers whose protection is our duty.”

Commanding the destroyer escort USS Samuel B. Roberts was reservist Lt. Cmdr. Bob Copeland, called away from his career as a lawyer. (Vermont Royster, editor of these pages from 1958 through 1971, interrupted his reporting career to command a tin can in the Pacific.) Copeland charged his diminutive ship into the fight, at great cost. Hornfischer tells of 18-year-old Seaman Second Class Jackson McCaskill, who, after a shell hit a boiler, calmly worked to secure the hot steam while his feet were burned to the bone.

Both the Johnston and the Roberts would sink. Copeland remembered seeing Evans, clothes blown off and short two fingers. Evans “turned a little and waved his hand.” Sailors spent days on rafts fighting off sharks drawn to the bloody mess. “On that raft,” Copeland said, “we were just 49 very wretched human beings,” and “it made no difference to us whether a man’s parents had been rich or poor” or whether someone was “black, brown or white.”

Evans posthumously became the first Native American in the Navy to win the Medal of Honor. Earlier this year, the Johnston was discovered in the Philippine Sea, 21,000 feet down, her hull still bearing the ship’s number in white paint: 557.

It’s no secret that interest in military service has been on the decline. But maybe more would be tempted if they encountered Hornfischer’s account of, as he put it, “how Americans handle having their backs pushed to the wall.”

Lt. Odell is a Navy pilot.

Both he & his work were brilliant. Fair winds & following seas James. Rest easy

Thanks, I just ordered it from my public library.

Here's his obituary, much too young and a great advocate in shining the light on the often overlooked Pacific naval war. While the efforts and sacrifices made in the Atlantic should be commended, they pale in comparison to the actions in the Pacific.

One of his best books and a favorite of mine is Neptune's Inferno: The U.S.Navy at Guadalcanal. While Midway was hugely pivotal, Guadalcanal was THE crucible for the Navy.

His book, which I read as a recommendation here, is absolutely FANTASTIC. An excellent read up there with other military battle authors like Shaara and Ambrose.

The obituary is a must-read. What a man! I would have gladly sung German Christmas carols with him!

The obituary notes that he has three books coming out posthumously, one done in conjunction with his son. A life well-lived.

I read the obit and was surprised that I grew up about 15 miles away from him during that time although he was about 12 years younger.
The Tin Can Sailors was an interesting and well researched book on a often ignored subject. I would say I mostly enjoyed it but it could have used a little editing to shorten it up in a few places.
Too bad that there is very little coverage of that part of the war anymore or understanding of many of the lessons.

Well, crud. I read several of his books:

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

This book should be required reading. It is the best book on the Battle off Samar I've ever read (and I am a WWII history major)

Ship of Ghosts: The Story of the USS Houston, FDR's Legendary Lost Cruiser and the Epic Saga of Her Survivors

Now, THIS topic is under-reported, IMO. I've read quite a bit about Samar just in the past couple months. The story of the Houston is a lot more obscure, yet is a great story of great men.

Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal

This is another good one. Guadalcanal was the REAL 'turning point' in the Pacific War; not Midway. Midway was a crushing defeat for Japan, but up to the 'canal, Japan still had a lot of experienced airmen, they had numerical superiority to the US in ships, and a significant qualitive superiority in ships, weapons, and training/experience). Guadalcanal was a meat-grinder attrition campaign which broke the back of Japan's power. From then on, the US was on the offensive and Japan on the defensive. The 'canal was the beginning of the end for Japan.

The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945

This was another great read, covering the final year of the Pacific war.



I hope his son has James' talent - I would very much like to read more of James' books.

RIP, sir. You will live forever in the work you have left behind. People will be reading "Last Stand" for centuries. . .

Have Neptune's Inferno now on Kindle; then downloaded on Audible so I can do my chores while listening. Keeps the wife happier than seeing me sitting around reading while she spruces up the house for company arriving tomorrow.

I've now finished Hornfischer's Neptune's Inferno and The Fleet at Flood Tide.
Both are excellent. As far as drama is concerned, neither can top The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors; but both provide marvelous combination of strategic analysis with intense personal stories that are excellent in helping us understand what our sailors, Marines, and soldiers went through fighting their way across the Pacific. Neptune's Inferno is about the Guadalcanal and Marshall Islands invasion, then the bloody fight to keep the Japanese from retaking Guadalcanal and Henderson Field. The toll on our ships and their crews was horrendous.

The Fleet at Flood Tide takes us from the invasion of Saipan and the conquest of the Marianas to MacArthur's "messianic" role in running occupied Japan. There are many characters, from pilots to frogmen to the crew of the Enola Gay, but the focus is on Spruance, whom Hornfischer considers the Indispensable Man in the victories of the Central Pacific theater. There is discussion about the morality of the use of atomic bombs; Hornfischer's telling is that the two bombs changed the mind of the one man who could end the war, Hirohito. In my opinion his discussion of this issue is excellent, and does not suffer from the 20-20 hindsight error of so many contemporary and recent commenters.

I look forward to seeing the book that Hornfischer Senior wrote with his son before his death. He died much too young, but I'm grateful we have these magnificent books which one could wish were mandatory reading in schools--hell, in the military now.

quote:

the Battle of Leyte Gulf

a long time ago in a different lifetime I had a college professor who was a retired navy captain and he was asked a question about what ship he was on at Iwo Jima and he said he was actually on the beach there because he had had his ship shot out from under him at the gulf of Leyte......

That is very bad news. Rest In Peace Mr. Hornfischer. America lost a wonderful historian.

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors is on my book case. Calling it excellent doesn’t do the work justice.

I need to get one of his other works in the next 3 weeks so I can have it for a vacation book. Eventually I need to read all his works.