David S. Nasca, "The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898 to 1945" (Naval Institute Press, 2020)

New Books in American Studies · Nov 4, 2020 · 1h 5m

Amphibious warfare, as outlined by American Rear Admiral James E. Jouett in 1885, was a relatively straightforward affair: to project power from the sea, all one had to do was offload soldiers, animals, equipment, and supplies from their transport vessels and deposit them on the nearest beach. Once on the sand, these ground forces would then form up and fight their way to victory—nothing could be as simple. Jouette, of course, can be forgiven his naïveté; when he articulated these principles of amphibious operations, the United States’s gaze was still firmly directed inward. Policing and…