The Nimitz We Need Now

Review by Bill Doughty––

Historian Ian Toll calls Clyde Symonds’s new book “The greatest biography yet written about the greatest admiral in American history.” The book is “Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay” (Oxford University Press, 2022).

This book compiles well-known Nimitz information during the war in the Pacific and spices the narrative with new flavors: what Nimitz was saying to colleagues, writing in letters to family, and doing in his limited spare time with friends in Hawaii during the war. Symonds seems to get into the mind of the great admiral “behind those cool blue eyes, impassive expression, and enigmatic demeanor.”

Nimitz was serious but did not take himself too seriously. He was known for storytelling, and he enjoyed 

a good ribald joke, which Symonds relays in “Nimitz at War.” Readers will smile at Nimitz’s hotel joke, what he said to his daughter about praying in church, how he joked about his missing half ring finger, and how he labeled his toilet paper at his Makalapa home.

This biography is bracketed almost entirely to the war years, starting with Nimitz’s arrival to a devastated Pearl Harbor. It’s divided into four parts: Taking Command, The South Pacific, The Central Pacific Drive, and Dénouement. Using excellent sources, including contemporaneous correspondence and messages, oral histories, and especially the Nimitz Graybook, Symonds takes readers to Nimitz’s side during battles and campaigns in the Marshall Islands, Coral Sea, Midway, Guadalcanal, Aleutians, Philippine Sea, Saipan, Leyte Gulf, Okinawa, and more.

Marines at Betio during Battle of Tarawa

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 had high regard for the Sailors and Marines he sent in harm’s way, including the heroic Marines who assaulted Betio and the fearless Marines who stormed Iwo Jima. Nimitz famously reported, “Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

The lives of Sailors, Marines, and Soldiers lost in combat weighed heavily on him, yet he was able to “compartmentalize” thanks to words of wisdom from his grandfather: “never to worry about things that were beyond his control.”

We read about Nimitz’s love for hiking and long walks, swimming in the ocean, playing horseshoes, and shooting at a pistol range at Makalapa.

Toll may be right that this is the best Nimitz biography considering the depth of the analysis, the plethora of photos, and the 15 fantastic maps and charts by Jeffrey L. Ward. What makes this book extra special is the way Symonds weaves relationships between Nimitz and other contemporary leaders: How E.J. King underestimated Nimitz, how Spruance and Halsey could be as different as ice and fire yet still be friends, and how MacArthur could be so obstinate and belligerent but still fail to steamroll Nimitz and the Navy despite continual efforts to challenge command authority.

Nimitz was in firm control of strategy during the U.S. Navy’s advancement across the Pacific. We see how he trusted and was supported by Spruance, Lockwood, Layton, Mitscher and others –– and how he met the challenges of dealing with Towers, Holland “Mad” Smith, Halsey, and especially MacArthur.

When Nimitz received his fifth star as Fleet Admiral he wanted Spruance to also receive a fifth star, but Washington instead awarded it to Halsey, whose brash and bombastic style caught the media’s attention much more so than Spruance’s quiet, diplomatic, and cerebral way. Symonds makes the case that Spruance deserves his more respected place in history.

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.

Relocating Americans of Japanese Ancestry (AJAs) to concentration camps.

Still, Nimitz resisted persecution of Americans of Japanese ancestry (AJAs).

At the outset of the war, Secretary of War Henry Stimson and Army General John DeWitt pushed for relocation of AJAs.

DeWitt “instituted a program that eventually relocated some 120,000 Japanese Americans from California and other western states, miles inland.

In March of 1942 FDR approved a recommendation to remove 158,000 AJAs from Hawaii as well.

Although some relocation camps were set up in Hawaii, Nimitz thought the idea of removing AJAs from Hawaii was “neither necessary nor desirable.” Symonds writes: “It was not out of an enlightened concern for the civil rights of Japanese Americans; he simply recognized the practical limitations of such a policy.” Nimitz realized AJAs played a critical role in the local Hawaii economy.

Symonds shows how Nimitz dealt with many respected high-profile visitors, first in Hawaii and later in Guam. One of the guests who visited Pearl Harbor was first-lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who also toured Bora Bora, Aitutaki, Tutuila, and even Guadalcanal, helping raise the morale of fighting men there.

At the end of the war, Nimitz took a statesmanlike stance in ordering his officers enlisted Sailors and Marines to utter no more insults or epithets and to treat the defeated people of Japan with dignity: “Neither familiarity and open forgiveness nor abuse and vituperation should be permitted,” he ordered. 

Nimitz ended his career as Chief of Naval Operations, working for prickly Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal. As CNO, Nimitz successfully fought for Navy independence during efforts to downsize and consolidate the military services after the war. “As strong a champion as he was of joint service and joint command, he fought hard to prevent the Navy from being subsumed altogether … His calm, non-confrontational manner acted as a balm to the fierce and sometimes better inter-service rivalries concerning unification, budgets, and national policy.”

Nimitz’s priorities, plans, and abilities –– especially his skill in dealing with challenging colleagues, subordinates, and senior leaders –– were the mark of brilliance. Though Ian Toll calls “Nimitz at War” a biography, Symonds claims it’s not:

“This is not a biography of Chester Nimitz. It is, instead, a close examination of his leadership during his three and a half years directing World War II in the Pacific Theater when his actions and decisions guided the course of the war and helped determine its outcome, the legacy of which we still live with today. In many ways, it is remarkable that he assumed such a role. National trauma –– social, political, economic, and military –– produces a cultural tension that can challenge democratic norms. In such circumstances, the loudest, most aggressive voices often assume leadership roles. During World War II, military and naval leaders such as Admiral Ernest J. King, General Douglas MacArthur, Admiral “Bull” Halsey, and General George Patton all rose to prominence. All were talented and competent. All were also larger-than-life figures whose temperament, stubbornness, self-assurance, and impatience characterized their leadership. They were, and are, polarizing figures.

“Nimitz, like Generals George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower, exemplified another leadership style, a quieter one that depended on intelligent listening, humility, and patience. Nimitz did not shrink from hard decisions –– he was, at critical moments, as bold as any commander in the war. Yet he believed that ultimate success depended on accommodation as well as determination, on humility as well as aggressiveness, on nurturing available human resources as well as asserting his authority. Rather than impose orders, he elicited solutions; he sought achievement, not attention. He unified. His was a quiet, calm, yet firm hand on the tiller during an existential crisis, and his leadership style reinforced rather than challenged democratic norms. It is a leadership template more relevant than ever.”

Symonds says his “focus and purpose” is to “re-create and evaluate” what Nimitz experienced and achieved in the 1,341 days of the war in the Pacific as he “commanded, directed, and supervised the largest naval force ever assembled in the largest naval war ever fought.”

As a result of his excellent presentation, Symonds also succeeds in profiling the type of leader we need not only in the Navy, but also for the United States itself: indeed, “a leadership template more relevant than ever.”

‘General Naval Tactics: Theory and Practice’

Review by Bill Doughty

Warfighting occurs in a multidimensional, multi-domain universe –– a matrix of possibilities, challenges, and surprises, more art than science. Success in the maritime battle space depends on balancing three components of “the art of war at sea.”

“Naval tactics is one of three components of that art; the other two are naval/maritime strategy and operational art.” The components are interdependent and reliant –– most importantly –– on the human factor. That’s the revelation in Milan Vego’s “General Naval Tactics: Theory and Practice” (Naval Institute Press, 2020), an indispensable book for any commander or naval officer whose goal is to be a senior leader of leaders.

This book presents a nuts and bolts discussion of objectives, methods, and elements of tactics as well as design, leadership, targets, and other vital considerations.

But throughout the discussion, Vego emphasizes the importance of incorporating theory and an understanding of people together with hardware and tactics. “Experience shows that a naval officer is far better prepared to apply tactical doctrine and to use it creatively.” That means having an appreciation of psychology, philosophy, history, and epistemology. “The most common error is an over emphasis on the importance of matériel in naval warfare,” Vego writes, adding that over-reliance on untested technology and mere pockets of information can be dangerous, too.

Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, right, speaks to Sailors after the Cyber Foundry ribbon cutting Feb. 18, 2020. The Cyber Foundry is a development site for some of the U.S. Navy’s cyber-warfare capabilities by combining a modern physical environment, trained and experienced personnel, industry-leading processes and updated technology resources to enable the rapid development of offensive cyber capabilities. (Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class William Sykes)

Information itself can a weapon. This month, in fact, we learned of cyber attacks reportedly by Russia against the United States. Vego outlines how tactical information warfare is conducted in the cyber warfighting domain and how electronic warfare, psychological operations and operational security are part of tactical protection in information warfare.

“One of the key requirements for effective tactical IW is timely, accurate, and relevant intelligence. Among other things, intelligence support of IW analyzes the enemy C2 [command and control] process and determines enemy IW capabilities. Intelligence supports IW through the collection, evaluation, analysis, and integration of all available information concerning the enemy’s capabilities. Capabilities to collect, evaluate, analyze, and transmit intelligence information have increased exponentially with the development of surveillance sensors, computers, and communications. The overall effectiveness of intelligence support is heavily dependent on all-source, accurate, timely, and relevant intelligence.”

Leaders must also understand the limitations of machines of war and test new technologies under realistic battlefield conditions. Tactical wargaming is indispensable training, according to Vego. An important part of the decision-making matrix is logistics and other forms of command support, including maintenance, defense, and security, among other concerns for any planner or commander. Vego defines and describes various kinds of replenishment.

He presents pros and cons of centralized and decentralized command structures and explains the importance of good communication in C2 and the chain of command. “C2 is not a system or command structure, as often erroneously believed, but the process of planning, preparing, directing, and controlling ones forces in both peacetime and in combat.”

Here again, in senior commanders’ choice of command structures, is the importance of the human factor and finding balance in risk awareness not avoidance.

“Risk avoidance results in over-centralization of C2 and undue interference of the higher commanders in the authority and responsibility of their subordinate commanders. The higher commanders issue overly detailed orders to subordinates to ensure that no mistakes are made. Subordinate commanders quickly realize the dangers of acting on their own initiative. The result is lack of initiative and waiting on orders instead of making quick and independent decisions in the case of a sudden change in the situation.”

Vego presents dozens of examples from history, including surprising ones such as the Battle of the Saintes (1782), Battle of Lissa (1886), and Turko-Greek War (1897).

Crew members aboard USS White Plains (CVE-66) observe Imperial Japanese Navy attack other ships of carrier division 25 in the Battle off Samar, Oct. 25, 1944.

Most of his examples naturally come from the War in the Pacific (1941-1945) and include presentations of strategy, tactics, and operations during the battles of Leyte Gulf, Midway, Savo Island, and Samar, among others, where bold decisions were made by strong leaders.

Good leaders with high intelligence, humility and ethics Vego cites include Adm. Chester Nimitz, Adm. Raymond Spruance, and Royal Navy Admiral of the Fleet Andrew Cunningham (1883-1963), pictured at right. They were “trustworthy and trusting” with strong work ethics and wisdom, able to make good and righteous decisions in wartime.

“Decision-making is more art than science. Sound decision-making requires that a naval tactical commander possesses accurate, relevant, and timely information on all aspects of the tactical, and sometimes even some elements of the operational, situation. As time-space relationships continue to compress and the volume of information expands exponentially, making a sound decision will become progressively more difficult. The naval tactical commander’s ability to ‘see’ the battlefield will be greatly improved, but so will the enemy’s ability to frustrate friendly forces’ plans and actions. New information technologies will reduce, perhaps dramatically, uncertainties regarding the location, composition, movements, and these technologies will penetrate the thick veil surrounding the enemies intentions and the unquantifiable elements of the enemy’s situation any better than in the past.”

“Making sound decision requires quick thinking, focus on the essentials, logical reasoning, common sense, and good judgment.” Naval commanders need selfless courage, agility, creativity and foresight as well as the ability to communicate effectively. “Effective communications has an importance far beyond the mere exchange of information. It builds trust, cooperation, and mutual understanding.”

A five-country multinational fleet, during Operation Enduring Freedom in the Oman Sea. In five descending columns, from the top left to the bottom right: MM Maestrale (F 570); FS De Grasse (D 612), USS John C. Stennis (CVN 74); FS Charles De Gaulle (R 91), FS Surcouf (F 711); USS Port Royal (CG-73), HMS Ocean (L 12), USS John F. Kennedy (CV 67), HNLMS Van Amstel (F 831); and MM Durand de la Penne (D 560).

Vego writes, “Any military objective should be balanced (harmonized) with he corresponding factors of space, time, and force.”

Every naval officer can benefit from this book and its advice about balancing multidimensional, multi-domain, nonbinary leadership –– more wisdom than information, more art than science.

Hubris, Hiroshima / Memorial Day, Midway

Review by Bill Doughty

During the Cold War U.S. Presidents from Eisenhower to Nixon claimed that the United States had to fight Communism because of the Domino Theory, a principle that said if a country (say, Vietnam) fell to the Communists, other Asian nations would topple, including eventually even Japan and India.

President Obama's visit to Vietnam and Japan this week was a tangible display of American's rebalance to Indo-Asia-Pacific and, some would say, a repudiation of the Domino Theory as it applies to the spread of Communism.

But what if the theory is accurate for some of those nations in a different context.

In Alistair Horne's "Hubris: The Tragedy of War in the Twentieth Century" (HarperCollins, 2015), the venerated historian challenges readers to think of the cause and effect and consequences of unbridled pride – as war begets war.

Perhaps we can see the dominoes not as countries but as battles and wars themselves, one leading to another: Sino-Japanese War, Russo-Japanese War, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. The dominoes are toppled by a type of human behavior identified and named by Aristotle in ancient Greece: hubris.

Horne begins his flowing, connected history in Japan more than a century ago. The U.S. Navy and Commodore Matthew C. Perry opened the country to Western influence and trade in 1853. Drawn to emulate modern nations, the Emperor Meiji committed his people to curiosity, learning and growth.

"A new, compulsory education scheme would create fifty-four thousand primary schools – or one for roughly every six hundred inhabitants; this would eventually lead to the Japanese becoming the most highly literate people in Asia. Within one generation, Japan subjected itself to an astonishing industrial revolution, one designed to catch up with two centuries of Western progress. The mantra for Japanese industry and learning became henceforth, unashamedly, and in general successfully, 'copy, improve, and innovate.'"

Togo

An expansionist Japan, modeling England and other imperialist powers, set its sights on Manchuria and took on the Russian Empire, even though, "As of the turn of the century, tsarist Russia was both the largest and the most aggressively imperialist nation on the globe."

Victory by imperialist Japan, Horne argues, led to hubris and more war.

Horne takes us with Admiral Heihachiro Togo aboard the flagship of Japan's Combined Fleet, Mikasa – last of the pre-Dreadnought-era battleships (now a museum at Yokosuka's Peace Park adjacent to the U.S. naval base).

Using geography, personalities, strategies and tactics, Horne contextualizes history. Readers go with the coal-burning Russian fleet into the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and Cam Rahn Bay in 1905. From Port Arthur and Tsushima readers are taken into North Korea, back into Manchuria and down to Vietnam, still at the beginning of the 20th century.

President Theodore "T.R." Roosevelt, author of "The Naval War of 1812" and father of the "Great White Fleet," played a pivotal role in bringing about, through the Portsmouth Treaty in New Hampshire, what would be temporary peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

In Horne's view, the First World War "began, and was caused by, various sublime practitioners of hubris in conflict with one another." He purposefully refocuses on the Pacific.

When Togo retired from official duties in 1926 he admonished his nation to remember an ancient Japanese saying, "Tighten your helmet strip in the hour of victory." His contemporary, General Maresuke Nogi, committed ritual suicide, seppuku, to atone for his shame at the death of so many Japanese troops in Manchuria. 

Togo's life and Nogi's death further glorified and galvanized a "suicidally dangerous mythology" of a "divine Japan."

Horne writes, "The myth of Japanese invincibility, which had grown up around him, would lie at the heart of the spiraling new militarism."

American codebreakers in Pearl Harbor help turn the tide at Midway.

The Battle of Nomonhan (also known as Khalkhin Gol) in 1939 became a far-reaching domino as General Georgy Zhukov, hardened on the Mongolian battlefield, returned to successfully defend Moscow from Hitler's invading force in December 1941. "As one who would mete out the punishment prescribed by hubris, Zhukov ... would then go on, through the triumph of Stalingrad, to inflict the ultimate destruction of the Führer's evil dreams in the ruins of Berlin."

Meanwhile, hubris led Imperial Japan to move toward Southeast Asia and Indochina for oil and other raw materials, leading to international condemnation, U.S.sanctions and war. Within six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor and other U.S. bases on Oahu, Admiral Chester Nimitz and planners in Hawaii launched an ambush against Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto and the Japanese fleet at Midway.

"In terms of the history of naval warfare, June 4, 1942, was a stunning vindication of the pioneers' belief in the carrier and its aircraft as the future queen of the oceans. Midway saw the eclipse of the mighty Dreadnought class as the capital ship of navies; both the super-battleships Musashi and Yamato would be sunk by carrier planes, having scarcely fired a shot from their gigantic guns. From Midway on, the line would run directly to Hiroshima in 1945 – and beyond that to the establishment of the United States as the world's naval superpower."

Nimitz inspects the damage after the Battle of Midway.

Nimitz is profiled as combining "the attributes of both boldness and caution" "who listened to his advisors, delegated authority and was immune to panic." Nimitz trusted his codebreakers and other intelligence personnel. And he respected the chain of command, including civilian oversight of the military. He stands in sharp contrast to "The American Caesar," Gen. Douglas MacArthur, who "preferred his own counsel" as a "vainglorious ... actor and egoist," according to Horne. 

Truman's MacArthur was Lincoln's McClelland. When the two met for the first time it was on MacArthur's terms and was "a true dialog of the deaf," one eventually leading to MacArthur's open defiance, hubris, and more toppling of prideful dominoes.

"Few acts of hubris in the twentieth century were punished more savagely or more swiftly than MacArthur's, after that remarkable triumph at Inchon went so catastrophically to his head. Thrusting on to the Yalu in pursuit of total victory was a huge risk, which proved to be a frontier too far, a risk that was unjustified, the costs to world equilibrium unwarranted. Its consequences were legion, casting long shadows beyond the actual conflict of the Korean War. Korea was the first war fought by the United States that did not end in a clear-cut American victory. As far as it had involved a United Nations commitment, this proved an experience unlikely to be repeated. When it came to the Vietnam War in the 1960s, the British prime minister Harold Wilson swiftly made it clear that British troops were not going to help out this time. Rather, and similar to President Johnson in 1968, as a consequence of the unpopularity that the war, and specifically the sacking of MacArthur had brought him, Truman declined to run for the White House again. He would be succeeded by another great Second Word War warlord, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. 

"Henceforth, at least until Iraq and Afghanistan came along, the United States would confine itself to waging wars with limited objectives only. As the First Gulf War of 1991 would demonstrate, its leaders would pay fastidious attention to not transgressing national borders. There would be no pursuit of the Iraqi Republican Guard over the Kuwaiti border. Probably the unyielding ferocity with which the Korean War was waged led to a hardening and a prolongation of the Cold War; to a worsening of the split with China, which would not begin to heal until the Nixon-Kissinger initiative of the early 1970s; and to a consolidation of Maoism and all its attendant evils. the spectacle of a modern Western army fleeing before Mao's cotton-clad divisions was not likely to be forgotten in East Asia, no more than had been that of the destruction of tsarist forces in 1905 Manchuria. in the eyes of much of the world, it was Korea 1951 that made a great power of Mao's China."

Horne says it remains a question as to whether a more satisfying outcome could have been achieved leading to a "peacefully reunited Korea, if MacArthur had stopped on the Thirty-Eighth Parallel."

The author takes us into Vietnam via France and writes of the "incredible heroism" of the French and Foreign Legion at Dien Bien Phu in the mid 1950s, noting the defeat at the siege there "cost France not only Indo-China but the rest of its empire as well." He contends, "The imbalance left behind in Vietnam was to lead directly to the American intervention."

Horne's book ends on the cusp of U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but he brings up other examples of domino hubris in his epilogue, including "various Middle Eastern flareups" such as the Yom Kippur War in 1973.

Can the human condition of vainglorious pride be recognized and controlled without more dominoes toppling?

"If hubris is part of the human condition – deep-seated, lingering, pervasive, and potentially lethal – what can we do to avoid it? If, as these chapters have shown, it is not just our leaders who ignore history and their own experience, we might conclude that we all have something to learn."

Battleship Mikasa Museum in the Peace Park next to Fleet Activities Yokosuka.

In Hiroshima this week Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, in translated remarks, said:

"Last year, at the 70th anniversary of the end of war, I visited the United States and made a speech as Prime Minister of Japan at a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.  That war deprived many American youngsters of their dreams and futures. Reflecting upon such harsh history, I offered my eternal condolences to all the American souls that were lost during World War II. I expressed gratitude and respect for all the people in both Japan and the United States who have been committed to reconciliation for the past 70 years. Seventy years later, enemies who fought each other so fiercely have become friends, bonded in spirit, and have become allies, bound in trust and friendship, deep between us. The Japan-U.S. alliance, which came into the world this way, has to be an alliance of hope for the world..."

President Obama asks all of us to think about the deep roots of war and peace, common humanity and shared hopes for the future. The Commander In Chief concluded his remarks in Hiroshima this way: 

"The world was forever changed here.  But today, the children of this city will go through their day in peace. What a precious thing that is. It is worth protecting, and then extending to every child. That is the future we can choose -– a future in which Hiroshima and Nagasaki are known not as the dawn of atomic warfare, but as the start of our own moral awakening."



Obama hugs Hiroshima survivor Shigeaki Mori this week. Mori was 8 when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Aug. 6, 1945, leading to the end of the Pacific War.

Tin Can Sailor Ben Bradlee Remembered

by Bill Doughty

Lt. j.g. Bradlee, courtesy USNI

Long before he became the legendary executive editor of the Washington Post, Ben Bradlee was in his early twenties in World War II, where he served as a Command Information Center officer aboard USS Philip (DD 498) in the Pacific. He deployed from Pearl Harbor in 1942 through 1944, and was involved in landings in the Solomons and Marianas, then as an expert advisor/trainer in CIC sent aboard 19 destroyers in and around the Philippines, Okinawa and near mainland Japan.

Bradlee, who died last week at 93, said in his 1995 autobiography, "A Good Life," that his experience in "the Tin Can Navy" aboard USS Philip were "certainly the most important two years of my life, then and maybe now."

He admits to enjoying his experience in the war in a chapter titled "Navy":

"My regular non-battle job involved communications, the care and feeding of the machines which provided raw information to the ship, and of the men who operated and maintained those machines. This responsibility was more educating than Harvard, more exciting, more meaningful than anything I'd ever done. This is why I had such a wonderful time in the war. I just plain loved it. Loved the excitement, even if it was only getting from Point A to Point B; loved the camaraderie, even if the odd asshole reared his ugly head every so often. For years I was embarrassed to admit all this, given the horrors and sadness visited upon so many during the years I was thriving. But news of those horrors was so removed in time and distance. No newspapers, no radio even, except Tokyo Rose, and of course there were none of television's stimulating jolts. I found that I liked making decisions. I liked sizing up men and picking the ones who could best do the job. Most of all I liked the responsibility, the knowledge that people were counting on me, that I wouldn't let them down."

He describes life on a destroyer as "intimate, noisy, informal, boring, exciting, dangerous, arduous, crowded, scary, and boring again."

"Three hundred and thirty men jammed into a 2,100-ton ship shaped like a steel greyhound. Long (380 feet), or longer than a football field. Narrow (32 feet, about as wide as an 18-wheel truck is long). And fast (36 knots, or 40 miles an hour). In a heavy sea, a destroyer can easily role as much as 90 degrees – 45 degrees to either side. Handles were welded to bulkheads everywhere, to be grabbed during heavy rolls. And the decks bristled with a variety of offensive weapons. Five 5-inch guns, roughly equivalent to 105mm howitzers. Eight torpedoes, in two four-torpedo mounds amidships. A pair of four twin 40mm anti-aircraft guns, plus another eight 20mm AA guns. And a dozen depth charges in racks along either side of the stern."

In "A Good Life" Bradlee considers himself lucky for surviving polio after being temporarily paralyzed after an epidemic hit his high school. He writes about his good fortune to serve and survive in the Pacific during the war and of his later success in business and life.

The Navy empowered and educated him as a leader at a very young age: "Each day of my naval life I had been learning perhaps the most important lesson of my life: You can't do any better than surround yourself with the best people you can find, and then listen to them. And I had done that."

He describes working "under the overall command of the flashy, charismatic Admiral William Halsey, or the brilliant, self-effacing Admiral Raymond Spruance, the admirals who taught our generation the art of 'calculated risk.' (We all preferred Spruance)," Bradlee writes.

He recalls action in The Slot from Rabaul.

"We worried more about the Japanese torpedoes, fired from ships or submarines. Our torpedoes were nowhere near as good. Rabaul is the island that a young congressman, somehow a lieutenant commander in the Naval Reserve, flew over one night as an observer, and flew back to Washington immediately. Got himself a [Silver] Star for that single flight, as the world would learn later. His name was Lyndon Baines Johnson."

He interacted with heroic Australian and U.S. Marine forward area observers and spotters in CIC, often helping direct barrages of the ship's 5-inch guns. A constant threat were Japanese submarines and ships and, later in the war, Kamikaze attacks. 

Bradlee remembers reading books during the war like James Boswell's, "Life of (Samuel) Johnson," Philip Wylie's "A Generation of Vipers," David L. Cohn's "Love in America," and Gladys Schmitt's "The Gates of Aulis." He also read Time, Newsweek and The New Yorker magazines and other Reader's Digest-sized publications. 

And he referred to the Encyclopedia Britannica in the ship's library when he had to help the Captain explain to the crew what had happened after the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

"Without knowing a thing, we sensed that this event was going to rival December 7, 1941, in importance to all our immediate futures. Was this the first time I wrote in ignorance? Knowing way too little about my subject? Or the last? I wish."

"A Good LIfe" reads like an honest, fearless, open, self-effacing account of the amazing history Bradlee saw and communicated: Vietnam, Watergate, Cold War, violence, CIA and D.C. politics, and of course JFK, a fellow Navy veteran.

The Bradlees were neighbors, "only a few doors away," of Senator and Mrs. John F. Kennedy in Georgetown.

In 1963 Kennedy, Niven and Bradlee shoot skeet as a petty officer assists.

After Kennedy became President they remained friends, though their relationship was complicated, thanks to Bradlee's association with the "Fourth Estate." Bradlee recalls yachting, skeet shooting and swimming with JFK and actor David Niven at Camp David in May, 1963, six months before the president was assassinated in Dallas.

Bradlee shares his deep appreciation of JFK and reflects on the "awful grief" that gripped the nation and that Bradlee tried to express in his elegy/eulogy at the time.

This autobiography, subtitled "Newspapering and Other Adventures," takes us into the newsroom with Woodward and Bernstein, among others. We get Bradlee's perspective on journalism, family and friendship as well as leadership formed in naval service.

(Recommended read: an interview by Fred Schultz with Bradlee from 1995 recently reposted by U.S. Naval Institute from Naval History magazine. Bradlee goes into more detail about his perspective on Halsey and Spruance, Vietnam and the post-Watergate era, with new insights about JFK and PT-109, race relations, the women's equality movement and all-volunteer service, among other topics.)

'God-Awful Luckiest' Battle of Midway

by Bill Doughty

Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz

How did the United States Navy achieve victory at Midway and turn the tide in the Pacific so early in World War II?  An anthology from the Naval Institute Press shows the answer: Sailor ingenuity, science and skill blended with Admiral Nimitz's wisdom and determination -- along with some luck.

Other factors contributed, including miscalculations and overconfidence of Imperial Japan, whose military leaders were set on taking out "Hawaii's sentry," Midway Atoll. But fortune favored many of the U.S. carrier aviators who fatally damaged three enemy carriers, writes John B. Lundstrom in historian Thomas C. Hone's "The Battle of Midway: The Naval Institute Guide to the U.S. Navy's Greatest Victory."  Imperial Japan would lose four carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor and more than 100 of its aviators.

Lundstrom notes, "The actual sequence of events was stranger than anyone could have imagined; as [Rear Adm. Murr] Arnold wrote in 1965, it was 'the most god-awful luckiest coordinated attack.'"

In "The Battle of Midway" editor Hone brings together a gifted roster of writers and leaders including Craig L. Symonds, E.B. Potter, James Schlesinger, Adm. Raymond A. Spruance, Rear Adm. Edwin T. Layton, Elliot Carlson, Mitsuo Fuchida, Masatake Okumiya, Lundstrom and Mark R. Peattie, among others.

Throughout this book of mostly essays written over a span of seven decades, Hone adds context and analysis. In his introduction to Chapter 9, "Prelude to Midway," he explains Imperial Japan's motive for the attack.

"The Midway operation had two central objectives. The first and more limited one was the seizure of Midway as an advance air base to facilitate early detection of enemy carrier forces operating toward the homeland from Hawaii, with the attack on the Aleutians as a diversion ... The second, much broader objective was to draw out what was left of the United States Pacific Fleet so that it could be engaged and destroyed in decisive battle. Were these objectives achieved, the invasion of Hawaii itself would become possible, if not easy."

America's fury against Imperial Japan and commitment to avenge at Midway immediately after the attack on Oahu of December 7, 1941 was fueled by lies: pretended diplomacy in Washington D.C. even after the "Rising Sun's" torpedo bombs exploded in Pearl Harbor. Americans, led by President Roosevelt, called the act illegal, ignoble and infamous.

Eri Hotta's "Japan 1941: Countdown to Infamy," published by Alfred A. Knopf Publisher, describes how the two emissaries, Nomura and Kurusu, were set up by the military government "warmongers" in Japan. The two were returned to Japan in a citizen exchange via Rio de Janeiro in the Atlantic, Mozambique in the Indian Ocean and finally Yokohama in Pacific, arriving August 20, 1942. Hotta writes:

"By then, Japan's preponderance at sea was declining precipitously. The balance of power had been tipped. From June 4 to 7, the Imperial Japanese Navy fought one of the most devastating naval battles in modern history, the Battle of Midway. The same men who planned the Pearl Harbor attack conceived of the Midway strategy, hoping to eliminate the United States from the Pacific once and for all. The operation ended in disaster for Japan. By this time the Japanese military code had been broken by the United States ... The Japanese navy was dragged down from its glorious pinnacle only six months after it had reached it."

Hotta's "Japan 1941" shows how misunderstanding, miscalculations and misinformation not only led Japan into war but also perpetuated the fighting even after defeat was inevitable.

Hone's "The Battle of Midway" opens with Part I, which explores Nagumo's kido butai (air fleet), presents Admiral Yamamoto from a Japanese perspective, and shows why Imperial Japan's carrier pilots were so skilled in the first year of the war with the U.S. Navy; it was because they had already gained experience in the previous decade in China. Part II is titled "Approach to Midway" and includes a brief but powerful piece from Proceedings, "Lest We Forget: Civilian Yard Workers," by Lt. Cmdr. Thomas J. Cutler, USN (ret.). Cutler is author of "Bluejacket's Manual," "A Sailor's History of the U.S. Navy" and numerous other books.

USS Yorktown struggles in vain to survive during the Battle of Midway.

Part III, "The Battle," recounts the battle Kurosawa-like, from different angles and viewpoints including several from an Imperial Japanese perspective. "I Sank the Yorktown at Midway," by Yahachi Tanabe and Joseph D. Harrington, is one provocative title. Parts IV and V deal with the aftermath of the battle, its finale and the official report by Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet. 

Part VI of "The Battle of Midway" explores the personalities, strategies and relationships of the commanders: Nimitz, Spruance, Nagumo, Yamato, Fletcher and Mitscher. Part VII shows how code-breaking helped provide some of the "god-awful luck" that gave U.S. Navy the edge against the enemy fleet. Editor Hone leads with an analysis of the complicated state of affairs with regard to code-breaking, and he includes an excerpt from Elliot Carlson's excellent "Joe Rochefort's War: The Odyssey of the Codebraker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway."

Hone's book concludes with Part VIII "Assessments of the Battle" and appendixes, including the USS Enterprise Action Report and Spruance's Letter to Fletcher of June 8, 1942. 

There are several implied and outright pleas by historians to ensure Midway is understood and commemorated. Since Adm. Jonathan Greenert became CNO, The Battle of Midway has been part of a curriculum for Sailors and has been honored at every command.

The source materials, oral histories, chronologies and analysis in "The Battle of Midway" make this book a compelling overview of the heroic battle while leaving some mysteries, fog-of-war questions, and the impact of luck as still part of the story and lessons of Midway.

Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Adm. Jonathan Greenert, members of the official party and ceremony attendees salute a wreath at the U.S. Navy Memorial placed there in honor of the Battle of Midway Commemoration Day ceremony in Washington, D.C. June 4, 2012, the 70th Anniversary of the decisive Battle of Midway. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Peter D. Lawlor/Released)