I would never have known about this battle were it not for the account in Samuel Elliot Morison's The Two Ocean War. It wasn't a battle that mattered much, in the grand scheme of thing, but it was interesting, because it was one of the few naval battles that didn't matter much. The fate of Guadalcanal, or Australia, or the whole Free World, didn't depend on the outcome. And that mean that few have paid it much attention.

And so it's nice to have this history. It does a much better job of putting the battle in context than does Morison. It's not just that the account is longer. There is a much greater depth here.

I'll give you an example: Morison, in his whole book, never really distinguishes types of cruisers other than "heavy" and "light." This is a valid distinction, but it's insufficient. The American light cruiser at the Komandorski Islands, the Richmond, was a member of the Omaha class. These were "light" cruisers in the sense that their guns were not heavy enough to make them heavy cruisers -- but they preceded true light cruisers. They were a World War I design, with old guns, mostly not in turrets, tinclad sides, and terrible engineering. An Omaha class ship had no more business facing a more modern light cruiser like the Cleveland class than she had facing a battleship. Similarly, the Salt Lake City was old -- not as old, not as bad, but still, primitive by heavy cruiser standards. The Americans had a very fragile fleet off the Komandorskis -- and yet they still survived, because of guts and (especially) good damage control. And that, too, is much clearer from this book than other histories.

Do I know that everything told in this book is true? No. But it makes much better sense than Morison's, the only other account I've read that is more than a few words long. And it's fairly easy to read, too.

The one thing it largely lacks is Japanese perspective. We don't even get that same sort of information about the Japanese ships that we do for the American; we can see the technical specifications, but we aren't told that the Japanese heavy cruisers were a bit funky, and the light cruisers were very light indeed, and almost as antique as Richmond. We get genuine perspective on the American side; all we have from the Japanese is battle reports, and not many of those. So this can hardly be called the last word on the battle. But it is a useful summary that, I suspect, will never be replaced. ( )

This is a careful reconstruction of a small battle with little real influence on WWII in the Pacific. The airpower involved was only used for reconnaissance, and it was an American Victory against odds. The failure of Japanese nerve is somewhat similar to the action off Samar during the Luzon landings. The author also has material interesting to those involved in the world of Naval Wargaming. ( )