Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in the Second World War

Reviewed by Jonathan D. Beard*

Paul Kennedy has written a “big idea” book about how and why the Allies won World War II. He has done an excellent job of combining good writing, good use of sources, and good pacing to create a series of narratives that explain why various factors—the Rolls Royce Merlin aircraft engine, the creation of the Seabees, microwave radar—were critical to the Anglo-American and Soviet victories over Nazi Germany and Japan. In each of the five sections of Engineers of Victory: The Problem Solvers Who Turned The Tide in the Second World War, he emphasizes the people, inventions, doctrines and choices that made for success. In some cases, he introduces readers to people and ideas that most readers of military history will not know well, while in others he rehearses arguments about the relative importance of familiar leaders and weapons.

His first section covers the Battle of Atlantic, the immense struggle between British, Canadian and American naval and air forces on one side, and Admiral Doenitz’s U-boats on the other. He chooses to concentrate on the brief period—the first six months of 1943—when the battle flip-flopped from a slaughter of merchant ships to the destruction of the U-boat force. March 1943 was a disastrous month for the Allies, with more than 90 ships lost, but by May Doenitz was forced to withdraw his submarines from the North Atlantic after suffering unendurable losses. Kennedy briefly highlights the battles fought over certain convoys that crossed the ocean during these months, showing first why the U-boats were able to sink so many ships, and then why advances in Allied weapons and strategies suddenly changed the balance of the battle. He emphasizes certain factors:  new escort vessels manned with better trained crews, equipped with better weapons (the Hedgehog mortar) and especially with superior electronics in the shape of high-frequency radio direction-finders and shortwave radar. And, even more important, airpower in the form of both long-range bombers and escort carriers that either stayed with convoys or went hunting for U-boats on their own. Kennedy argues against two other streams of Battle of the North Atlantic history:  he dismisses the idea that American shipyards could have simply won the battle by producing more freighters than the Germans could sink, and he writes that the many books which claim that Bletchley Park’s codebreakers won the battle are serious exaggerations of the impact of intelligence on military success. In the first case, Kennedy is explicitly responding to John Ellis’s Brute Force: Allied Strategy and Tactics in the Second World War.Kennedy mentions Ellis in the introduction, and notes his claims—that Allied superiority in numbers and production simply overwhelmed Germany and Japan—in the text. The endnotes and bibliography make it easy for a reader to follow his arguments and read the books and articles he is responding to.

The second chapter in Engineering Victory is “How to Win Command of the Air,” and it provides a short history of the air war over Europe. It mentions the Luftwaffe and its war with the Soviet Union, but only briefly, while giving somewhat more coverage to the fight against the Japanese in the Pacific. One interesting part of Kennedy’s approach is that he usually goes beyond mere chronicling of events. He briefly recounts the Luftwaffe’s successes in tactical support for the army in the opening months of the war, then its utter failure as a strategic force in the Battle of Britain. Then he shows how the RAF and Americans refused to learn from German failure, and had to endure repeated failures and high casualties before winning the air war over the Reich. The high point of the chapter is the heroes-and-villains saga of the Merlin engine. When British test pilot Ronnie Harker flew the first P-51 to arrive in England, he noted its excellent aerodynamic qualities, and bemoaned its poor powerplant (an American Alison which also powered the P-40 and other fighters.)  Harker then added that if the P-51 were fitted with a Merlin, it would outfly even the Spitfire. How this was done is well told; it is the story of resistance by top American officials, eventually overcome by a few stubborn officers who insisted that Merlin-powered Mustangs were needed. The result was a plane generally considered the best piston-engined fighter of the war, and one able to escort B-17s all the way to Berlin. Once the Americans were bombing the Reich by day, and the British by night, the Germans were in a terrible bind. Hitler, Speer, Goering and the rest of the leadership realized that for both military and political reasons, they had to devote as many fighters and flak guns to stopping Allied bombers as possible. Kennedy shows how this allocation of resources, and especially Luftwaffe losses, helped make the Normandy invasion feasible. He also emphasizes that the Eastern Front, where arguably the Wehrmacht lost the war, was stripped of 88 mm antitank guns and Luftwaffe planes in order to shoot down British and American bombers.

The next chapter considers why the German blitzkrieg tactics were so successful early in the war, and how the British, Russians, and Americans all learned how to overcome the Wehrmacht’s highly skilled soldiers and innovative use of armor. Readers familiar with the Eastern Front or North Africa will find plenty to agree, or disagree, with here. One interesting section is Kennedy’s take on the famous Soviet T-34 tank. He argues against claims made over the last half-century that it was “the best tank of World War II.”  He shows both how the  original T-34-76 was technically inferior in many respect to its contemporaries, and why the Russians were forced to continue to produce it despite realizing its problems. The original model was not replaced by the far superior T-34-85 until early 1944. Later in the blitzkrieg chapter, Kennedy includes a short section on the Soviet air force, and the airwar over the Eastern Front. He conclusion, in a nutshell:  “it remains difficult to assess the effectiveness of the Red Air Force….”  One of the few complaints I would make about Kennedy’s coverage of the German-Soviet war is that he does not stress the willingness, even eagerness, of Stalin and his generals to suffer massive casualties. Even when the Wehrmacht was virtually destroyed, in the Battle of Berlin, Russian forces were losing far more men per day than their foes. It is true that the Red Army had far better leadership, weapons and tactics in 1945 than in 1941, but it was always willing to sacrifice far more of its men than any other army in World War II.

The chapter called “How to Seize an Enemy-Held Shore” exemplifies Kennedy’s bias toward the war in Europe. It is a history of amphibious warfare in the European Theater of Operations, from the debacle of Dieppe to the triumph in Normandy. It is well done, with an emphasis on the technology. It is also making the argument that Churchill and Roosevelt could not have opened a second front before mid-1944:  until they had learned enough in North Africa and Italy, and weakened the Germans in the air and at sea, it would have been suicidal for the Allies to have landed in France. One aspect of the landings in Europe that Kennedy misses is that of lessons learned elsewhere. The US—essentially the Marines and the Navy, but the Army, too—had accrued considerable experience in landing against well prepared enemies in the Pacific. The invasion of Tarawa, in November 1943, was the Americans’ first serious shock, with heavy losses on D-Day, and many mistakes. But little of this hard-won knowledge was transferred to the Atlantic.

Kennedy does cover the war in the Pacific in his final section, on defeating “the Tyranny of Distance.”  He sees the Pacific campaigns as conquests of space, with the Americans, Australians and British having to learn how to move men, ships, planes and bombs across the ocean, far from their bases, to lay siege to Japan. Here his surprise is an emphasis on the importance of the Seabees, construction units unique in the world’s armed forces. He also devotes several pages to the struggle to make, and then use, the B-29 bomber.

Overall, this is a good book that accomplishes what it sets out to do:  Kennedy introduces his theses, then provides evidence to substantiate them, laced with enough combat narratives to keep the book readable.  Despite the wealth of technical detail, I found only two minor errors:  the Russian Katyusha rockets did not have “multiple warheads,” and the British did not use “acoustic torpedoes” in 1941.  He does indulge in occasional hyperbolic prose, for example describing the Bismarck as a “giant battleship” when it was no larger than the ship it sank, the HMS Hood. He is to be commended for his research.  The bibliography not only lists the right books, and some key journal articles, but also 11 Wikipedia articles. For military history topics Wikipedia often has the best information—constantly updated and edited—to be found anywhere. He relied on it for his section on the Russian T-34 tank, to excellent effect.

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*Jonathan Beard is a freelance journalist, researcher and translator living in New York City.  He has worked for several science magazines, including New Scientist and Science Illustrated, and translated for various publications, including the late World Press Review.  He has written hundreds of book reviews for many publications. His military history reviews are online at the Michigan War Studies Review:  http://www.miwsr.com/default.aspx.