THE WAR AT SEA
SIR.—Mr. Kennedy has certainly been assiduous in studying my maps for clues which might support his opinion. But he overlooks a sentence in my text which belies his statement that I give no evidence that I am aware that during the final phase of the Bismarck operation there were destroyers still screening the fleet. At the bottom of page 407 I wrote, "The Rodney and four destroyers were about 550 miles south-east of the enemy and were ordered to close." Thatwas on May 24th. My text is of course a great compression of a very complicated operation, and my maps 'are equally great simplifications of the original track charts. Both are designed to make the main features , understandable to the lay reader. Inevitably much is omitted, and 1 know very well how, when one reads someone else's account of an operation in which one took part, one seeks references to one's own ship. I do it myself and like Mr. Kennedy am generally disappointed at the space and weight accorded. To criticise the extent to which a text is compressed and maps are simplified is of course perfectly fair criticism; and I appreciate that in his review of my book Mr. Kennedy commends the manner in which I have tried to accomplish those purposes. But I question whether it is fair criticism to accuse a historian of inaccuracy or of ignorance merely because some aspects of an operation are given little space. There is, moreover, a close parallel elsewhere in the same chapter to my treatment of the destroyers which were with the Rodney. The six originally with the Hood and Prince of Wales are never mentioned again after the sinking of the former, and none of their names is ever given. I find it odd that Mr. Kennedy thinks it possible for a reader of an account of the pursuit of the Bismarck to assume from my brief mention of the bomb- ing of the Mashona and Tartar that they had nothing to do with the pursuit. Why should it be mentioned except as part of that story ? Mr. Kennedy's best point is that I should have shown on Map 32 that the Rodney had- with-her the destroyers men- tioned in the text. I am grateful for that suggestion and for having my attention drawn to the misprint on the same map. I will endeavour to have both corrected in the new printing now being prepared.—Yours faith- fully,
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