Charles Koburger - Böcker

The first and only scholarly book in English about the French Navy during the reign of the Vichy government, The Cyrano Fleet is a revisionist study presenting the French version of the events of 1940 through 1942. Captain Koburger's use of French sources has allowed him to put forth evidence that contradicts and often corrects our understanding of this complex period of French maritime history. In particular, he attacks the Anglo-American conception of the Vichy navy as `fascist'. His findings shed new light on the often strained relations between NATO and the French armed forces. This carefully researched book will interest students and scholars of twentieth century history, political science, foreign affairs, and military studies.It is now half a century since the Allies--the Grand Alliance of the Second World War--managed one way or another to destroy France's Navy. This Navy had been first an important ally, then a neutral force, and finally the instrument of its own destruction. It is now about time that we re-examined the record, and finally took steps to set it straight? So writes Captain Koburger in the introduction to The Cyrano Fleet, a book that, all these years later, sets the record straight about the Vichy French Navy.

Steel Ships, Iron Crosses, and Refugees documents the German navy's role in the Baltic, including the final epic amphibious lift in the Baltic and the world's two largest maritime disasters. The small German Navy and Merchant Marines evacuated over 2,000,000 refugees, wounded, and troops by sea, without adequate air support and while under Russian fire. During the evacuation, the torpedoing of Wilhelm Gustaloff and GOYA alone resulted in the loss of 12,000 lives. The magnitude of the loss is overwhelming when compared to Titanic (1,500 dead) and Lusitania (1,200 dead). Yet at the end, one out of every 20 West Germans was free because of this effort. Focusing our attention on a little known chapter of modern naval history, this study demonstrates the critical role of sea power and the interrelationship of navy and merchant marine. It also repeats an oft-forgotten lesson on the special characteristics of inshore waters and warfare.Few people know of the Baltic Naval Campaign (1939-1945), which culminated in the tremendous rescue operation that evacuated over 2,000,000 people ahead of the advancing Red Army. The Germans suffered the two largest maritime disasters on record. The already battered German navy was almost totally destroyed during this last campaign. Suggesting that a knowledge of this great humanitarian effort might balance our historical perspective, this volume also reinforces many basic truths concerning the importance and use of sea power.

According to Charles W. Koburger, Jr., the naval world has been turned upside down and the United States is not prepared for it. Most naval thought has been written for large blue water ships isolated on the open sea. But low-intensity conflicts--insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, terrorism, regional hostilities--smolder and flare around the world. Naval war is now frequently fought in narrow landbound seas where everything and everybody is involved. Modern technology, with its increased firepower, has given smaller ships, and thereby smaller navies, an impact far out of proportion to their size, particularly in these narrow seas. Koburger's thesis: the growing importance of both narrow seas and lesser navies has caused a major shift in the balance of sea power. His conclusion: the United States must develop tactics and weapons that will win wars in the narrow seas.Narrow Seas, Small Navies, and Fat Merchantmen examines the impact of these small navies on the ships, planes, and tactics of big navies. Presenting a clear image of these lesser navies, Koburger also provides definitions of common naval concepts in nontechnical terms. Divided into three parts this volume first looks at small navies, then describes their characteristic operations, and concludes by outlining implications of this naval revolution for United States' maritime strategy. Past naval failures in the narrow seas serve to highlight the politico-military value of Koburger's study. It will be of great use to military tacticians, naval strategists, and students of modern military strategy.

This narrative history of the French Navy in Indochina from 1945 to 1954 draws on recently published French language sources, as well as English sources, to create a detailed, highly readable account of the critical first ten years of the 30-year war in the maritime crossroads of Southeast Asia. Captain Charles W. Koburger, Jr. examines the specific naval organization, equipment, and skills demanded by coastal and riverine warfare, focusing on the unique French-developed naval infantry assault divisions called, in a convenient French acronym, dinassauts. The French development of such river assault groups, their successful performance, whether on coastal patrol, river patrol, or river assault--and a review of some of their tactics, techniques, and battles, compose the bulk of the book. The authoritative text is complemented by maps of the area, photographs of naval craft used in the campaigns, and tables pertaining to battles and military organization. Appendixes survey Indochinese geography and weather as well as ships and craft.Early chapters narrate the historical situation in French Indochina in August and September 1945, emphasizing the naval picture. The heart of the book, covering the periods 1946-50, 1951, and 1952, holds the story of the dinassauts' early development and their later expanded operations as well as the naval strategies employed. The final chapters trace the last years of the French in Indochina, describing the culmination of dinassaut organization and highlighting their last operations necessitated by the communist victory in China, and made possible by U.S. aid. The French Navy in Indochina addresses historians, naval officers, diplomats, government officials, and war gamers, but informed general readers will find it an entertaining and useful read as well.

This is the only current book on maritime Djibouti, and the only one available in English since 1968. It describes the geography, naval history, and present strategic role of this small country, and indicates its possible future. Naval Strategy East of Suez includes previously little-known facts of French covert action in Italian East Africa, 1938-1941; and of Operation Toreador (1956), which served to aid Operation Musketeer. It also turns a spotlight on the Allied blockade of Djibouti in 1940-1942. In a sense, this book is a more readable, and less technical, treatment of what sailors call sailing directions.Djibouti's naval base, 600 miles closer to the Strait of Hormuz than Diego Garcia, is the nearest base to Middle East oil centers likely to be available to France and its allies in the future--facts often ignored or unknown to all but the most specialized of specialists. Koburger believes that the troubles in the Middle East are only beginning. His book offers a background and strategy about an area little known to Anglophones that is of considerable potential usefulness.

The purpose of this book is two-fold. First, it presents in a single place a coherent account of the tumultuous naval events that took place in the Eastern Mediterranean between 1940 and 1945 during World War II. Second, the book aims to demonstrate in an interesting fashion what naval warfare in the narrow seas is really like.Koburger demonstrates that there was a definite Allied strategy in the Eastern Mediterranean during World War II. He delineates that strategy, showing its two halves, and demonstrates the roles of Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey. Koburger contends that the Eastern Mediterranean offers an excellent example of what warfare in the narrow seas is about. He remains convinced that, in the 1990s, the narrow seas are where the wars are going to be. This book will be of interest to policymakers, the military, and military historians.

In the United States there has been a wide divergence of views on the role of France's Navy in World War II. We have tended to remain trapped by wartime half-truths. This book attempts to set the record straight. Koburger's study discusses the history of U.S. dealings with Vichy France, especially in the French Antilles and St. Pierre et Miquelon. It describes and examines TORCH--U.S. landings in French North Africa--and its impact on us; the subsequent establishment of U.S. bases there and elsewhere on French soil; the rebuilding by the U.S. of the French Navy; and the results of our efforts. Koburger concludes that the United States did not do enough with the French, but considering the era and the circumstances, we did the best we could hope to do.

Previous books written about naval warfare in the Baltic from 1939 to 1945 focus only on single navies, while the role of smaller secondary players--the Finnish, Danish or Swedish navies--tends to be ignored. This book looks at the overall picture, with each player receiving his proper due. One of the narrow seas, the Baltic has a set of characteristics and operational problems different from those on any open ocean. It is these challenges that this book seeks to emphasize, challenges which the U.S. Navy will now face.

Koburger argues that the many battles that constituted the campaign for the Solomons were the key to victory in the Pacific for the U.S. Navy—not the battle of the Coral Sea or the Battle of Midway. Segments of the campaign—Guadalcanal, New Georgia, and Bougainville—have been written about extensively. But never before has the entire campaign been put together so lucidly and interpreted so well. The descriptions of the naval battles make for compelling reading. Even in World War II, Koburger argues, the important naval struggles took place in the narrow seas.

As the U.S. Navy enters the twenty-first century, many of the ships, aircraft, weapons, and tactics it employed so successfully during the Cold War will no longer be cost-effective or even effective. Future battlefields will shift the locus of naval action from the high seas into littoral waters, demanding sustained operations in relatively narrow, shallow waters. Naval forces in the twenty-first century must not only meet the traditional requirements of command of the sea—ships, planes, troops, and bases—carrying out forward presence, crisis response, strategic deterrence, and sealift. They must now put these together to obtain the four key operational capabilities of littoral warfare: command, control, intelligence and surveillance, and communication; battlespace dominance; power projection; and force sustainment. The core of the new U.S. strategic concept is power projection, and it envisions naval forces directly leading Army and Air Force elements to influence events ashore, most probably in the Third World. And this navy must be cost effective.

In the Post-Cold War Era, the possibility of large-scale military conflict between the superpowers has been replaced by the probability of a series of minor—and perhaps not so minor—regional ones. Many, if not most of those, will take place within reach of seaborne expeditionary forces. France organized such an expedition at the close of World War II, in 1945-1946, to return to Indochina. This account of that expedition provides a good case study of what such expeditions involve and, moreover, illustrates many politico-military lessons—and warnings—for those like the U.S., who would project power from the sea east of the Suez today.

After Italy's surrender to the Allies in September 1943, German naval forces took control of the entire Aegean, and the resulting guerrilla war in the narrow seas and littoral waters would continue to rage until the general peace. Naval warfare in the narrow seas is different from naval actions on the high seas, requiring different types of ships and craft and different mindsets. In the cramped and narrow inshore waters, which can easily be dominated from the shore, sea mines, shore-based air support, and small submarines play a major role. An analysis of the battle for the Aegean provides a good example of the types of fighting the U.S. Navy might face in a future conflict, now that grande guerre on the high seas has become more and more unlikely.In attempt to assist an embattled Greece, the British Mediterranean Fleet fought the Italians and the Germans in a valiant effort to hold the Aegean. By the time Italy left the war in 1943, the Allies' big battalions and mighty fleets were being transferred to other more pressing campaigns, leaving behind the remaining small craft to take up the fight. Adopting a policy of pinning down those Germans garrisoning the Aegean, the British resorted to the use of raiding and coastal forces, a tactic which would eventually force the Germans from all but their most key positions.