200,000 Miles aboard the Destroyer Cotten. (Book Reviews).

Robinson, C. Snelling, 200,000 Miles aboard the Destroyer Gotten. Kent, Ohio: Kent State Univ. Press, 2000. 320pp. $35

As a midshipman in the 1960s, I discovered 3. Bryan's Aircraft Carrier, the classic World War II nonfiction "diary" of life aboard the USS Yorktown (CV 10) in 1945. It remains a great source of insight into the everyday lives of the men of Task Force 58 at the height of the Pacific War. As a junior officer in destroyers, I sought out similar nonfiction work describing life aboard "tin cans" during the war, but I found only two books, both novels. Not until Robinson's 200,000 Miles aboard the Destroyer Cotten have I read anything as good as J. Bryan's book.

This book comprises Robinson's recollections, bolstered by deck logs and his archive of letters to his parents, of his experience as a junior officer in Cotten (DD 669). As such, it is an amalgam of specific details, his immediate appreciations, and his present-day reflections on the men he served with, the events of those years, and the ship itself.

Ensign Robinson was commissioned via the Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps at Harvard University in late spring 1943. He was assigned to the precommissioning crew of Cotten, which was then under construction at the Federal Shipyard in Kearny, New Jersey. Cotten was a "war emergency" Fletcher-class unit, with built-in modifications based on the wartime experience of earlier sister ships. Laid down on 8 February 1943, the ship was launched and commissioned in just 165 days. Ensign Robinson began his service on Cotten as the typical junior officer, with a bewildering series of assignments while the ship was fitting out in Kearny. Ultimately, he was assigned as assistant first lieutenant with a battle station at "Sky 2," directing 40 mm antiaircraft guns.

Cotten was quickly dispatched to the Pacific Fleet and began its combat career as part of Operation GALVANIC, the November 1943 invasion of Tarawa and Makin. The ship screened the escort carriers and performed antisubmarine warfare patrols.

While Robinson provides some historical framework to the ship's operations, the strength of the book is the insight it provides into the daily life of a destroyer wardroom during this extraordinary time. As the war progressed, Cotten was assigned to Destroyer Squadron 50 and participated in the great Central Pacific campaign, continuing from Tarawa all the way to Okinawa. The ship performed all the classic destroyer duties, such as screening the fast carriers and steaming with the battle line, at the same time coping with weather, overdue maintenance, and, of course, an implacable and terrifying enemy. Robinson's descriptions of depth-charging sonar contacts and engaging low-level torpedo bombers reaffirm the adage about war being "hours of boredom and seconds of terror."

Robinson learned about the insularity of destroyer life, and he describes it well. He depicts how the world seemed to collapse into the restricted horizons of the wardroom and watch teams, and recalls vividly his quest to qualify as a fleet officer of the deck. He evokes some of the exhilaration of high-speed destroyer shiphandling in fleet operations, at a time when destroyer divisions maneuvered at a standard distance of five hundred yards and were constrained by nothing except gross tonnage and the occasional floating mine.

Robinson ends the hook with an epilogue that tells of Cotten's Cold War service. He also includes appendices that discuss the characteristics of the Fletcher-class destroyers and the Cotten's awards, as well as a glossary.

There is a minor error in one photo caption, and the maps could have been better, but these are minor quibbles. The book's greatest strength is Robinson's recollections of his experiences in Cotten, providing an evocative and accurate depiction of a valuable part of a great naval campaign. While the book is not quite the "DD version" of Bryan's classic, it is well worth reading, particularly by destroyer veterans.