THE NAKED WARRIORS.

By CommanderFrancis Douglas Fane, USNR, and DonMoore '25. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1956. 302 pp. $5.00.

The Naked Warriors opens with what seems like an' exotic description of the brown torso of a play-boy swimmer swishing back and forth in surf pounding on white sands of a Pacific island. Palm trees with jungles behind breathe the perfume of gentle trade winds and tropical vegetation. The play-boy swimmer shivers not with delight but with fear. So do his comrades in nudity, 55 other members of the UDT (Underwater Demolition Team), armed only with knives against Japanese machine guns and mortar shells that cause them all to roll laterally in breakers, their best protection. Yet they bob up, squint, chart enemy positions, slip back deep into the sea, and brief ship intelligence officers with information enabling Americans to blast away and win another island.

This book deals not only with Tarawa Atoll; it takes Navy Frogmen to Sicily, Korea, and Point Barrow. Commander Fane is no arm-chair theoretician dreaming about the hazards below ocean surfaces (currents, reefs, and man-eating fish) or about diseases of blood, lungs, and heart caused by sudden and prolonged immersions; he himself as far back as 1952 under working conditions reached a depth of 250 feet while free diving, a record. This naval officer has been expertly assisted by his Dartmouth civilian co-author Don Moore, who gained his experience from positions on Argosy, CBS television, RKO Radio Pictures, not to mention his contributions to Cosmopolitan, This Week, The AmericanWeekly, and The New Yorker. i

The Naked Warriors will have an immediate appeal to anyone interested in beaches and oceans domestic and foreign, skin diving, and new techniques in war, not to mention naked courage in naked men. One may find consideration of such matters as the Aerojet "Swimming Pod," a device which gives greater efficiency to an underwater swimmer's body by streamlining it; the new Mini Sub, a revolutionary boat which maneuvers under water much like an airplane; and the best kind of gas in aqualungs for divers working on a sunken B-36 sunk in 253 feet of water.

Thirteen well chosen photographs, mostly official Navy, and maps making clear where the Frogmen were engaged in combat operations all over the world make this readable brief book even briefer and more readable.

This is a book for all men — and all women too, except perhaps catlike women with no liking for bodies of water broader and deeper than those found in dishpans.