Dorie Miller –– Looking Back

by Bill Doughty––

In the wake of news that the U.S. Navy is considering renaming the upcoming aircraft carrier CVN-81 from "USS Doris 'Dorie' Miller" to "USS Donald J. Trump," we looked back at our previous Navy Reads posts mentioning Miller, his heroism at Pearl Harbor, and his ongoing legacy.

Here are excerpts from those posts:

Courage of a King and a Miller –– JANUARY 20, 2020

In a review of Barbara Darling-Smith's "Courage" (University of Notre Dame Press, 2002), we focused on one of the Navy’s core values and necessary virtues. For example:

Dorie Miller showed “The virtues of an enlisted Sailor who assessed danger in the attack on Pearl Harbor and took matters into his own hands aboard USS West Virginia (BB 48). His heroism is remembered today as the Navy names a future aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller (CVN 81). Doris ‘Dorie’ Miller was killed at sea during World War II.”

His courageous virtues lived on to inspire others.

“After the war, Dorie Miller was a key influence to Americans who showed courage during the fight for Civil Rights Movement, a movement led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Examples of courage are not restricted to the battlefield.”

PEARL HARBOR (Jan. 20, 2020) The Honorable Eddie Bernice-Johnson, United States representative from the 30th district of Texas, left, speaks at the unveiling of the new Ford-class aircraft carrier USS Doris Miller (CVN 81) at a Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration event on Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam as Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas B. Modly look on. This will be the second ship named in honor of Miller, and the first aircraft carrier ever named for an African American and an enlisted Sailor. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication 2nd Class Justin R. Pacheco)

A Groundbreaking 'Double Victory' – NMAAHC –– FEBRUARY 12, 2020

Six years ago we reviewed NMAAHC founding director Lonnie Bunch III’s, "A Fool's Errand: Creating the National Museum of African American History and Culture in the Age of Bush, Obama, and Trump" (Smithsonian Books, 2019).

(U.S. Navy photo by Arif Patani)

The museum opened during President Trump’s first term with an exhibit featuring Dorie Miller’s heroism in WWII.

In his book Bunch “conveys humility about what the museum can mean for all Americans.”

"Museums alone cannot ease the tensions that come from the debates surrounding the fluidity of national identity in the twenty-first century," he writes. 

"... But museums can contribute to understanding by creating spaces where debates are spirited but reasoned. Where contemporary challenges are addressed through contextualization and education. Since its opening, NMAAHC has become a site where rational healing and reconciliation are possible.”

During a tour of the museum in 2017 with Director Bunch, President Trump paused at an exhibit showing the Dutch role in the transatlantic slave trade; Trump said to Bunch, “You know, they love me in the Netherlands.”

Visitors view an exhibit about the legacy of Mess Attendant Doris “Dorie” Miller at the Smithsonian NMAAHC, Nov. 1, 2016. Adm. Nimitz presented Miller with the Navy Cross for his extraordinary courage during the Dec. 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. (U.S. Navy photo by Arif Patani)

Andrew Young ‘An Easy Burden’ –– OCTOBER 17, 2025

We started our post about Andrew Young with this: “He was a lieutenant to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In fact, he was by his side not only in life but also at King’s death at the hands of an assassin.”

Young lived a life of service, and he was deeply devoted to human rights.

He credited the military for its role historically to promote civil rights.

“Andrew Young shows how the American civil rights movement arose largely as a result of World War II and the resultant Marshall Plan. The military provided proof and a blueprint for the success of diversity, inclusion, meritocracy, and equality."

Young writes about former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass and the struggle to “redeem the soul of America.” He shows how Dorie Miller and other black heroes inspired change. Young writes:

“That soul we saw less in America's actions than in its ideals: freedom, equality, justice. While we endured segregation, we knew that America had shed the blood of hundreds of thousands of its sons and daughters in a war that ended slavery. We knew that America had risen up out of the depths of a Great Depression to defeat fascism. We had cheered the exploits of Dorie Miller and the Tuskegee Airmen and other colored soldiers who refused to let racial segregation prevent them from offering their lives for freedom and for America, and we were inspired by their example. Dorie Miller was told he could only be a cook's helper, but he dared to believe he could shoot down enemy aircraft [at Pearl Harbor]. The Tuskegee Airmen dared to believe black men could fly. 

We were thought to be naive, but in truth we were visionary. We dared to believe that America could be healed of the gangrene of racism. We saw America as we could become, not just as we were.”

Andrew Young celebrates black history with First Army, Fort Gillem, Georgia, in 2009 (Gayle Johnson, Public Affairs Office)

Stavridis on Crucial Crucible of Decision –– NOVEMBER 1, 2022

Four years ago, we reviewed one of our favorite authors, and one of his books of inspiration for warfighters.

“Admiral James Stavridis (USN, Ret.) offers key lessons for Sailors and Marines in ‘To Risk It All: Nine Conflicts and the Crucible of Decision’ (Penguin Press, 2022). Most of the stories will be familiar to readers of Stavridis or his recommended reading list

Our main focus the time was on Captain Brett Crozier, the heroic Navy Captain who was scapegoated for failures to address the dangers of COVID, early in the pandemic.

Stavridis’s book also explores weighty decisions made by Capt. John Paul Jones, Lt. Stephen Decatur, Rear Adm. David Farragut, Commodore George Dewey, Cook Third Class Doris “Dorie” Miller, Adm. William “Bull” Halsey, Lt. Cdr. Lloyd M. Bucher, Rear Adm. Michelle Howard, and Cdr. Ernest Evans.

“Each story methodically evaluates the circumstances, personnel, and ramifications of decisions made in moments of often extreme stress, with lives on the line, and when there appears to be no perfect response.”

Stavridis writes with his usual panache and passion. His book is accessible to any deckplate Sailor or rifleman Marine, who will be inspired by the courage and grit of Dorie Miller at Pearl Harbor. 

Frederick Douglass Speaks to Us in 2023: Part 4, Unity –– FEBRUARY 24, 2023

A “statesman” is defined as “a wise, skilled, and respected political leader who guides a government and works for the public good instead of seeking personal power.”

Frederick Douglass, an unofficial advisor to President Abraham Lincoln, was himself one of our nation's greatest statesmen.

In “Douglass: Speeches & Writings” by Frederick Douglass (edited by David W. Blight, Library of America, 2022), the statesman examines American ideals, leaders, and the reality of caste over the concept of “race.”

In our Navy Reads post we mention the future USS Doris Miller (CVN 81) –– the first aircraft carrier named for an enlisted Sailor and the first named for an African American –– is expected to be launched “90 years after Miller’s heroic action at Pearl Harbor.”

We write, “Two hundred years prior to CVN 81’s expected launch, Frederick Douglass was still enslaved in Maryland but would soon escape in 1838 to the North in a sailor’s uniform.”

The Nimitz We Need Now –– MAY 14, 2023

We always admire the works of Clyde Symonds, author of “Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay” (Oxford University Press, 2022).

In this great biography, “We get a gripping recounting of the intelligence preparations, training challenges, command tensions, and communications frustrations in the early 1940s. We read about Nimitz’s quiet 'anxiety' in the lead-up to the Battle of Midway, for example, where Nimitz decided to trust Rochefort’s intelligence and ambush the then-powerful Imperial Japanese Navy. ‘It is difficult in hindsight to appreciation the boldness of that decision,’ Symonds writes."

Nimitz was the right leader at the right time. He was able to do good planning, build trust with people, and care for and about the Sailors and Marines he sent into harm’s way.

“Of course, like all humans, Nimitz was not a perfect person. Symonds calls the Texas hill country admiral ‘a product of his time and his culture’ in that he avoided African American service members (with the notable exception of Messman Doris ‘Dorie’ Miller, to whom Nimitz presented the Navy Cross for December 7 heroism). In 1943 there were no black officers in the Navy. And Nimitz also wanted no part in having women service members on his staff, disallowing WAVES from serving in the Pacific.”

Nimitz hailed from Fredericksburg, Texas. Miller was born in Waco, Texas, and enlisted in the Navy in Dallas in 1939. Nimitz presented his fellow Texan with the Navy Cross in 1942.

Miller receives the Navy Cross from Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, at an awards ceremony held on the flight deck of USS Enterprise (CV-6) at Pearl Harbor, 27 May 1942. The medal was awarded for heroism on board USS West Virginia (BB-48) during the Pearl Harbor Attack, 7 December 1941. (U.S. Navy)

Yesterday, the Waco FOX News affiliate FOX-44 reported on the public backlash against stripping Miller’s name from CVN-81 and replacing it with Trump’s name. “U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, a retired Navy captain [and Navy fighter pilot and astronaut], said Miller’s name should remain on the aircraft carrier and argued that his actions at Pearl Harbor warrant the honor,” FOX-44 reported.

In a social media post, Kelly wrote that Miller's Pearl Harbor bravery is legendary and argued the ship "shouldn't be renamed at all, let alone for Donald Trump, who has denigrated servicemembers like Dorie Miller who have paid the ultimate price.” During the Vietnam War, Trump famously avoided the draft and military service with five deferments, including one for bone spurs.

The Navy has not yet made a final decision about renaming the Gerald Ford Class aircraft carrier (CVN-81).

Hertling’s Dedication to Planning

Review by Bill Doughty

Most career Sailors and military veterans know this phrase: “Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor performance.” The “seven Ps” is a distant cousin of “measure twice and cut once.”

And ongoing planning is more important than just having a plan.

That’s the perspective of Lt. General Mark Hertling, U.S. Army (Retired), author of “If I Don’t Return: A Father’s Wartime Journal” (Ballast Books, 2026).

In planning to deal with his own angst about heading into combat in 1990, Hertling started a journal to his sons, writings he hoped would help them know him even if he were no longer in their lives. In his journal he shares observations, beliefs, lessons, and hopes for his young sons.

“Like so many soldiers, I once hoped I was fighting so that my sons would never have to.”

 He expresses that sentiment in the journal several times.

“That hope, noble as it was back then, proved naive. My sons did go to war. Multiple times. Always in Iraq, save two of those tours for our oldest son, Todd. So did one of our daughters-in-law. And for all practical purposes, while they didn't deploy, my wife and the spouse of our other son went to war too. All of them did so with honor, courage, humility, selfless service, and empathy for both their own soldiers and their enemies. Even knowing that, I offer this same hope once again—this time so that our grandchildren, and others who read this book, find that same grace with this wish:

“May you never face combat. But if you do, or if life ever tests you — whether in war, in family, in leadership, or in moments when character, integrity, values, and personal courage matter most — I hope you'll find strength in these pages. Strength in values. In character. In purpose. In love. In the stories and thoughts of this old soldier who wrote some random thoughts down for his family –– now also for you.”

Throughout this memoir/journal he praises his family, friends, and selfless soldiers he’s known throughout an illustrious career. He has special praise for key senior leaders he worked for as well as command sergeants major who worked for him, SNCO leaders “whose wisdom, loyalty, and fierce dedication helped shape my view of true leadership. They weren't just senior enlisted advisors. They were battle buddies, they were partners in command –– they were friends I could count on, without question,” Hertling writes.

“Many of these military friendships were forged in combat. And that matters. War, in all its chaos and clarity, forces you to strip away the unimportant and rely on the person beside you. You see people not for their rank but for their soul. That crucible of shared danger and absolute dependence creates a bond that outlasts distance, time, and even silence. These are life-bonds-brotherhoods and sisterhoods born of trust under fire. They are evergreen. 

But most people, thankfully, won't need war to discover those kinds of relationships. They find true and trusted friends in the combat of daily life. The crucible doesn't have to be courage shown in combat. 

Sometimes it's just the courage to give of yourself to others-truthfully and with candor-trusting someone else with your thoughts, sharing the parts of your heart that you can only share with a friend.”

He offers gifts of advice throughout the book.

For example…

• It’s OK to cry. “Here’s the deal: Emotion is the full spectrum of what it means to be alive –– and to love others more than yourself.”
• “Self-awareness and empathy aren’t soft skills, they’re core skills.”
• “Be a friend to all by being yourself –– no false airs.”
• “Leadership, like war, is a cumulative endeavor. You don't arrive on the battlefield—or at any new job—with a blank slate. You bring everything with you—the training, the scars, the questions you asked and the ones you were too afraid to. And if you're lucky, you bring the wisdom earned through experience and some of the scar tissue you've endured.”
• Hertling asserts, “Leadership is love in public. It is the steady choice to put people and purpose ahead of ego. It is the discipline of humility and the courage of beliefs. It is the willingness to widen the circle of responsibility until it includes not only ‘your’ people but the ones you once called ‘other.’”
• On what it means to be a man, Hertling writes, “A real man proves his masculinity by being considerate, protective, concerned, and confident –– and by demonstrating it.” [Core values > Testosterone tests.]
• A military career usually affords many moves, including often to foreign cultures, which is a gift in itself: an opportunity to experience diversity in life. “Differences are not threats to be judged –– they are windows into the should of different and unique people.”
• Hertling observes, “Humans are astonishingly diverse yet fundamentally similar.” He notes that Shalom and Salaam mean the same thing: “Peace be unto you.”
• He quotes Mark Twain with this advice: “Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” Travel, Hertling says helps you “begin to appreciate, nuance, complexity, and the truth that your way is not the only way.”

Hertling says self-reflection is the key to personal development. He reflects further on life lessons and the importance of military families’ dedication:

“Looking back across the arc of my tours, as well as the continuous wars we fought at the beginning of the twenty-first century, I'm struck by how much changed—in me, in our army, and in our families. And how much good leadership and caring for each other mattered. Desert Storm taught me how to fight. The time in Baghdad taught me how much I didn't know. The surge taught me how to lead through complexity—how to integrate force with purpose, how to trust partners, how to adapt daily to the terrain of war and the human terrain of recovery. Those conflicts also taught military families a lot. It was the most challenging thing in my life and in the lives of most of the soldiers and family members I know. And it remains the most defining for all of us. All this taught me something about trust about purpose and about the quiet burden of leadership. But I also learned a lot about resilience and the power of families.”

Good leaders never dismiss the concerns of military families for their service members.

Hertling riffs briefly on President George Washington’s “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation,” seeing the same humor along with some still-timely truths in George’s advice just as we saw in an earlier Navy Reads post.

Included in his sometimes random thoughts are extended discourses on MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) and music appreciation: He loves the Eagles but New Kids on the Block … not so much.

On the serious side, he reflects on the importance of ongoing planning instead of relying just on a plan [some advice that seems very pertinent to whatever “planning” went into the Iran War.]

“What I've learned, and what I hope shows in this reflection, is something even more profound: Sometimes the plans don't matter— but the planning always does. 

There's a story I like that captures this lesson. In the early 1960s, President John F. Kennedy suspected the Soviets were preparing some type of provocation in Berlin. Concerned but unsure of what was coming, he asked the Pentagon to develop a series of potential responses, what the military calls an action-reaction-counteraction series of drills. 

When those potential action-reaction-counteraction plans were complete and briefed to the President, Kennedy—aware of his own limitations as a junior naval officer during WWII –– asked the planners to brief someone with deeper experience in strategic decision-making: former President Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

So, the planners went to Gettysburg. 

In Ike's quiet farmhouse near a battlefield where another kind of crisis had once played out during the Civil War, these senior officers briefed Eisenhower on their assumptions and options. They laid out potential Soviet scenarios: an armored push through the Fulda Gap, economic pressure, nuclear signaling, political propaganda campaigns. 

At the end of the briefing, one of the officers asked, ‘Mr. President, based on what we've told you, what do you think the Soviets are going to do?’ Eisenhower, the Supreme Allied Commander who’d planned D-Day and led Allied forces in WWII, and who had been the president for eight years, paused. Then, he reportedly replied succinctly, ‘I don't really know what they're going to do. But remember—your plans mean nothing, but your planning means everything.’ 

One of the plans the Pentagon officers hadn't considered was that the Soviets would build a wall around Berlin.”

EiOn the need for planning instead of reliance on intelligence and plans, Hertling writes, “(Clausewitz) said that the smart Soldier does not put any faith in the intelligence by staff officers about the progress of the battle because most times it’s just flat wrong!”

Yesterday, Hertling wrote for the Bulwark in response to President Trump’s threat expressed to a FOX News reporter, “If Oman gets in the way, we'll bomb the shit out of them,” Trump said. 

Hertling’s essay of August 18, 2026 is titled, “Who Would Want to Be Friends with America Now,” written in the wake of Trump’s threat to Oman, his directive to cancel Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises with South Korea, his embrace of North Korea’s dictator, and his tariffs against key allies (not to mention his threats to invade Greenland, take over Canada and make the Strait of Hormuz "new American territory").

In part, Hertling writes this about Trump’s vulgar threat to Oman: "The president is threatening to bomb a country that for nearly half a century has quietly provided the United States with military access, logistical support, diplomatic assistance, and something increasingly rare in the Middle East: the ability to communicate with friends as well as enemies. For decades, Oman hasn’t been in the way, it has often been the way.

Hertling warns about a president’s power to destroy alliances. “That destruction rarely occurs with a formal announcement. More often, trust corrodes incrementally. An exercise is canceled. An ally is publicly berated. An adversary is praised. A partner wonders whether Washington will respond to help during a crisis. Another begins looking elsewhere for security or diplomatic support. And America loses a partner, an ally, or a friend.”

Questions:

• Will Congress or the 25th Amendment stop Trump from losing allies and friends?
• Why did Donald Trump say recently that families are not concerned about their Sailors welfare?
• Why did he say the USS Lincoln’s Carrier Strike Group 3 (CSG-3) deployment was “not nearly long enough”?
• Why does Secretary Pete Hegseth say the Navy can remain near the Hormuz Strait “indefinitely”?
• Did Trump and Hegseth plan for destruction of logistics basing in the region?
• Why is Trump praising North Korea’s leader –– a dictator who is helping Russia against Ukraine, who supports Iran, and who once called Trump a “dotard”?

Most importantly, What trust is there in the quality of Trump’s “proper prior planning”?

Black-and-white photo above: Former President Dwight Eisenhower (right) meets with Republican leaders at his farm at Gettysburg. Future president Gerald Ford (a Navy World War II Veteran), who was then the Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, sits far left. (Eisenhower National Historic Site)