Russell Sydnor Crenshaw, Jr.

Very well written account of operating a destroyer in the Solomon Islands from the later part of 1942 onwards. The author is an Academy grad who basically commissioned into WW2. He served as gunnery officer and XO. His accounts are clear and thorough. The walk through the vessel by divisions is helpful to understand how a destroyer functions at sea and in port. There is what I assume is reconstructed dialogue, which given the long decades that intervened are likely more useful for tone than detail, no disrespect to the author’s memory. His battle descriptions do a credible job of conveying the confusion and difficulty in creating a picture of what is happening in the moment. Highly recommended.… (mere)

It's a little hard to know what to make of this book, as it's more than a history and less than a memoir. I suppose that the best way to describe it is as being a portrait of the USS Maury when the author came of age as a naval officer, in the context of the broken-back war conditions that existed in late 1942 to the middle of 1943 in the Solomons campaign. As such, there is a lot of interesting detail, though one would have still enjoyed learning more about the author. Crenshaw's main concern in the end is to grimace at the memories of how inadequate testing and over-confidence in regards to weaponry (the destroyerman's perspective on the great torpedo scandal) made a waste of so many men and ships.… (mere)