Thinking Habits - Stephen Covey

By Bill Doughty

Stephen Covey died this week, leaving a legacy of helping people. The Navy recognized Covey's themes of ethics, leadership and good habits by choosing his "Seven Habits of Effective Leadership" as a key title in the Navy Professional Reading Program.

It was the first book to be reviewed here at Navy Reads in 2009.

He bonded with the Navy because he could see -- aboard the submarine USS Santa Fe or applied aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln -- how the Navy recognized the difference between leadership and management.

In good times or bad, Covey's insights can be applied to help individuals or families.  His principle-centered leadership theories are used by schools interested in furthering science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by developing good leadership techniques and habits.

No doubt Covey, who helped people after Columbine, would be trying to help Aurora, Colorado in the wake of the tragic shooting at the showing of Batman "The Dark Knight Rises" this week.

A fitting tribute to Covey was aired by National Public Radio the day he died, well before the tragedy in Aurora.

NPR's story shows how Covey will be remembered:

Covey's ideas have also been embraced by more than 800 schools worldwide. The first was A.B. Combs Elementary School in Raleigh, N.C. Following the Columbine shootings, the school was looking for a way to improve its environment and performance.
"Our children are making better decisions [and] we're seeing a huge decline in discipline [problems]," says Muriel Summers, the school's principal.
Summers says the school also saw an increase in test scores and more engaged families, since it also taught Covey's 7 Habits to the students' parents.
"It's pretty amazing what is happening," she says.
Her words would most likely be music to Covey's ears. He loved inspiring and working with young children and had more than 50 grandchildren of his own. His publicist said Monday that she thinks Covey would most want to be remembered for being a good family man.

Reading Stephen Covey -- thinking about values, ethics, good habits and leadership -- may be the best way of honoring his memory and legacy and remembering what's really important.

Stephen Covey on the meaning of life: "Live, love, laugh, leave a legacy."

Among the victims of the tragedy in Aurora were at least two people with direct ties to the Navy,  Petty Officer Third Class John T. Larimer and Navy veteran Jonathan T. Blunk; Air Force Sgt. Jesse Childress; and former Airman Rebecca Wingo.

According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta:

“I know that many are struggling to understand why these innocent lives were taken from us, and how such a tragedy could occur in this country. Even as we try to make sense of this evil act, we are also moved to learn more about the actions of men and women like SSgt. Childress, who threw himself in front of his friend in the movie theater to shield her from the gunman. His selflessness saved her life, at the cost of his own.
“These acts of heroism and sacrifice are the essence of what military service is about -- putting your life on the line to defend those who are part of the American family.
“Let us all honor the victims of this tragedy by committing ourselves to the hard work and sacrifice of protecting this country. Bravery, courage, and dedication are the hallmarks of our men and women in uniform -- our heroes..."

How would Covey have wanted us to honor the victims of the shooting in Aurora?  How would he have wanted us to analyze the root cause and take action?

Thomas Friedman: Tribal Politics, Roots of Conflict

Review by Bill Doughty

The most shocking thing about Thomas Friedman’s “From Beirut to Jerusalem”  -- a book on the Navy Professional Reading Program list -- is that there is no discussion of oil, energy or a flattened earth.

His 1989 book, written more than a decade before 9/11, focuses instead on the history, religion and politics at the heart of the Middle East conflict.

Friedman provides a clear history of “invented” nations, countries of landless bedouins, heroic zealots and refugees of tribal conflicts and wars put in place by Great Britain, France and Italy for the remains of the Ottoman Empire.

Punctuated with terror, tragedy and bizarre taxi rides, Friedman gives typical first-person insights as he witnesses a kidnapping, experiences the bombing of his apartment building and sees the aftermath of massacres in Lebanon and Syria.

His chapter “Hama Rules” resonates 23 years after it was published, untangling the roots of hate, distrust and conflict.  Friedman describes Stalinist cruelty in Syria and violence involving the Muslim Brotherhood and the Assad government.

To understand the conflict in the Middle East, he writes, people must understand the three Hama Rules:  tribal politics, authoritarianism and the modern nation state.

In tribal politics there is no democracy, no free-thinking, no mediation, no compromise.  Revenge equals justice.  A refusal by fundamentalists and extremists to compromise brings continuing conflict.

“So much of the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been the history of the wrong men in the wrong place,” writes Friedman.

Beirut Barracks bombing, visible from miles away. USMC photo.

One of the toughest parts of the book to read is the description of the suicide bombing of the Marine Corps’ four-story Beirut Battalion Landing Team headquarters on Oct. 23, 1983 in what became known as the Beirut Barracks bombing.  Friedman was ten miles away and was shaken awake by the explosion.  He conducted interviews with Marines who lost 241 of their comrades, examining the causes and effects of the attack, one of countless suicide attacks by extremists.

Friedman warned us of 9/11 in 1989 through the words of an ambassador to Lebanon:

“In the wake of the Marine bombing, the Italian ambassador to Lebanon, Franco Lucioli Ottieri remarked to me, ‘You know how they say people are always fighting the last war? Well, you Americans have been preparing yourselves for the confrontation on the Eastern front ... But you are deplorably unprepared for the war in the Third World.  You are like a big elephant.  If you are up against another elephant, you are fine.  But if you are fighting a snake, you have real problems.  Your whole mentality and puritanical nature hold you back.  Lebanon was full of snakes.’”

He writes of American can-do optimism in the face of tribal politics from Beirut to Jerusalem, Syria to Iran -- and, by extension, Iraq to Afghanistan, describing an arrogance of power.  

Friedman’s book was published the same year that Osama bin Laden and his new al Qaeda party claimed victory over the Soviets in Afghanistan and turned his attention to other secular non-muslim enemies, including the United States.  A year later Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, threatening Saudi Arabia.

Never one to lay out the problem without offering a solution, Friedman recommends the region shake off complacency and tribal politics and accept the realities of a changed world.

"The stunning success of the developing countries such as Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Thailand has demonstrated to Israelis and Arabs the benefits of getting their economic houses in order.  Some of these benefits are very new ... Those countries that provide attractive investment climates are rewarded; those that don’t are left as roadkill on the global investment highway.  The role of governments around the world today is increasingly to dress up their countries with better airports, better legal and financial systems, better-trained workers, better roads and bridges, in order to attract private global capital ... It is markets, not governments, that must now provide the financial payoffs for peace.”

In 1989 Friedman explained the origins of Middle East conflict and warned of a need to move from the past to the future, understanding global interconnectivity and the need for cooperation.

Today, in his most recent books, Thomas Friedman warns us -- and tries to shock us -- about the realities of a future without fossil fuels, often unwilling to embrace the inevitability of change, a world he describes as “hot, flat and crowded.”  

This is the fourth Friedman book reviewed on Navy Reads.

A memorial at Camp LeJeune, NC, to Marines killed in Beirut. Photo by LCpl. Adam Johnston 

RIMPAC, Sustainability and ... Philadelphia?

by Bill Doughty

Australia's HMAS Perth arrives at Pearl Harbor for RIMPAC 2012.

The Navy’s Rim of the Pacific exercise started this weekend -- with more than 20 nations, 46 ships and submarines and 25,000 service members converging in and around Hawaii to train together, learn from each other and build cooperative relationships to preserve peace.

It’s the first RIMPAC with non-U.S. officers in charge of major components (Australia for maritime; Canada for air).  It’s the first to feature humanitarian assistance/disaster relief training as part of the exercise.  And, RIMPAC 2012 will include the first demonstration of green fleet technologies on a massive scale, with U.S. surface ships and carrier-based aircraft using biofuels and other energy-saving and sustainability initiatives.

The theme this year is “Capable, Adaptive, Partners.”

RIMPAC is the world’s largest maritime exercise and involves nations as diverse as Russia, Chile, India, France, Singapore, Mexico, Japan, United States and the Republic of Korea.  So, what does it have to do with one of the nation’s smallest “schools” in Philadelphia?

At the Sustainability Workshop, located at Philadelphia’s Navy Yard, urban high school seniors learn by doing hands-on real-world projects, with the world as their classroom.  While not affiliated directly with the U.S. Navy, the Sustainability Workshop shares some of the same values, including developing capable, adaptive partnerships.  Participants work together to apply innovative critical thinking as members of a team.

The school is the brainchild of engineer/teacher Simon Hauger, who was featured today on Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s “The Next List” on CNN.  Hauger's philosophy of teaching involves incentivizing learning; the incentives are the students’ own sense of accomplishment, project achievement and a feeling of community they achieve by working together.  School work reinforces the students' natural idealism and desire to work hard.

According to Hauger, students read more because they want to read more:

“Maybe the most fascinating aspect of this work is that the academic skills follow,” Hauger said.  “Most of our students will tell you that they have done more reading and writing this school year than they had done in their entire high school career. Many will tell you they have done real science for the first time, and some will even tell you that they finally understand why math is useful.”

Students learn and apply STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics).  For example, over the past year they installed and then activated a solar rig, worked on a car to try to achieve 100 miles per gallon, and tested their own hypotheses for increasing energy efficiency initiatives for city buildings. 

Teacher and Sustainability Workshop co-founder Michael Clapper.

Teachers are more like facilitators and coaches than traditional instructors or disciplinarians.   Co-founder Michael Clapper is one of the teachers who helps them interact with private companies and government agencies.   

"We went to Urban Outfitters one day," recalls Clapper.  “...Then the next day we're at the Navy hearing about their power cell approach. We walk in and they say, 'We're so looking forward to interfacing with you today.' "

The program has a side effect of pointing students in a positive direction toward common goals.

Globally or locally, RIMPAC and the "Sustainability Workshop” showcase cool ideas:  a willingness to work together cooperatively to prevent conflict and a commitment to achieve greater sustainability and conserve resources.

Tom Hanks, Navy SEALs and 'A Captain's Duty'

Review by Bill Doughty

Tom Hanks is Richard Phillips, formerly the civilian captain of MV Maersk-Alabama.  A movie about Captain Phillips and his rescue by the Navy is being produced now in Norfolk, Virginia.

Meantime we have the book.

“A Captain’s Duty: Somali Pirates, Navy SEALs, and Dangerous Days at Sea” by Richard Phillips, with Stephan Talty, published in 2010, presents the harrowing story of the rescue of the merchant mariner from the hands and guns of pirates at sea.

Phillips recounts his ordeal but also gives a fascinating look at life as a civilian sailor, showing us what its like in big container ships moving cargo on the world’s oceans, comparing ports like Subic Bay (Philippines), Chongjin (North Korea) and Monrovia (Liberia).

Some of the prose will read like poetry to men and women who go to sea:

“When you’re a sailor, you return to an ancient rhythm.  The sun tells you when to get up and when to go to bed.  It bookends your day with these incredible sunrises and sunsets.  I couldn’t wait to get out on the water.  this is why you go to sea, I thought, as I looked out over my ship.  I knew that every day on the water would be different.  It always is.  The sea would never look the same, its color changing from a granite black to vivid blue to an almost transparent green...”

“A Captain’s Duty” is reminiscent of “Lone Survivor” by Marcus Luttrell, about Lt. Michael Murphy and the Navy SEALs’ Operation Red Wings -- similar stage-setting, biographical background, and mix of the sacred and the profane.

Sacrificing his own safety and risking his life, Phillips negotiated with the pirates to take him rather than members of his crew.  How and why that came about is its own cat-and-mouse story in the book.

Throughout the retelling, Phillips brings in themes of leadership, duty and service.  He showed the strength of improvisation and trusting instincts while resisting fear in the face of threats, beatings and loaded AK-47s.

“The real obstacle wasn’t the Somalis, I told myself.  It was fear.  Every time I pushed through it, I found that I could persevere.  This isn’t over until you say it’s over, I said to myself.  I’m not going to give up.  I will outlast these guys.”

Tension builds, but there is real humor, believable dialog and splashes of philosophy as Phillips references Jack Kerouac, Winston Churchill and Mark Twain.

USS Bainbridge Sailors are thanked by Phillips. (Photo by MC3 David Danals)

He sees the irony of being rescued by the USS Bainbridge (DDG 96), named after the Navy captain who was captured by Barbary pirates in the Tripolitan War (and who went on to command the USS Constitution in the War of 1812).

Phillips speaks with gratitude about meeting with the Sailors who rescued him and with President Obama who gave the go-ahead for the rescue.   Obama, who invited Phillips and his wife Andrea to the Oval Office in May 2009, said, “I share the country’s admiration for the bravery of Captain Phillips and his selfless concern for his crew.  His courage is a model for all Americans.”  

Phillips’s biggest sense of gratitude, understandably, is for the Navy SEALs who saved him.

“I’ll be grateful for what the SEALs did for me until the day I die.  And these days I can’t go to a ball game and listen to the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’ without choking up.  When other Americans risk their lives to rescue you, that anthem becomes more than a song.  It becomes everything you feel for your country. The bond we all have with one another that is so often invisible, so often demeaned...”

“A Captain’s Duty” gives us a unique civilian seaman’s perspective on the importance of the Navy to the world’s shipping.  Readers can look forward to how Tom Hanks will bring the story to life.

Paul Greengrass (United 93, The Bourne Ultimatum) is directing the film from a screenplay by Billy Ray, according to media reports, and the movie is due for a March 2013 release.

Hear from Tom Hanks in a previous Navy Reads post, "Faith, Fear and Tom Hanks."

Ray Bradbury: ‘Everything is Love’

by Bill Doughty

Ray Bradbury, who passed away earlier this month, may have discovered the  meaning of life: “witness and celebrate” and love life with a passion.

“There’s no use having a universe, is there?  There’s no use having a billion stars.  There’s no use having a planet Earth, if there isn’t someone here to see it.  You are the audience.  You’re here to witness and celebrate,” he said in Point Loma in 2001.

“Love is the answer to everything. It's the only reason to do anything,” he also said.

Bradbury, unable to join the military due to poor eyesight, used his eyes to read books, his mind to balance wonder with insight, and his fingers to create new worlds.  His science fiction, fantasy and horror stories were popular with soldiers and sailors in World War II, helping them escape, imagine and reflect for a few hours.

Ray Bradbury was inspired by Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne.  In the wake of the depression his family moved from Illinois to Arizona and eventually to California.  After high school he was self-educated, believing in the power of libraries and books.  

“I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it's better than college.  People should educate themselves -- you can get a complete education for no money.  At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I'd written a thousand stories.”

In Los Angeles he was mentored by Leigh Brackett and literally looked over Robert Heinlein’s shoulder as Heinlein wrote.  

The Navy Professional Reading Program includes some works of fiction, including one by Robert Heinlein, “Starship Troopers.”  Heinlein, Bradbury and Isaac Asimov are considered excellent gateway authors for young readers who discover literature through science fiction and fantasy.

Bradbury’s “Illustrated Man,” “Martian Chronicles” and “Fahrenheit 451” are revered as masterworks.  In honor of Bradbury, Apollo 15 astronauts named a crater on the moon after the Bradbury’s novel “Dandelion Wine.”

“Fahrenheit 451,” published in 1953, is seen as a classic in dystopian fiction, along with George Orwell’s “1984,” published in 1949, and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” published in 1932.  Modern dystopian tales (that may stand the test of time) are Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” (1985), Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” (2006) and Suzanne Collins’s “The Hunger Games” (2008).

“Fahrenheit 451” continues to be a top seller.  The book celebrates books, the freedom to read and the need for a diversity of ideas.

“There are worse crimes than burning books.  One of them is not reading them,” said Bradbury.  “You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture.  Just get people to stop reading them.”

Through books we can see the world and understand what it means to be alive -- important thoughts for Father’s Day.

On his view of the meaning of life, according to Sam Weller, author of “The Bradbury Chronicles,” “His mantra to his very last breath was ‘do what you love and love what you.‘  He believed that love was the rocket fuel ... that propelled his career.  He always said that ‘everything is love.’”

Battle of Midway Really a Turning Point?

by Bill Doughty

Capt. Tameichi Hara, author of “Japanese Destoyer Captain,” says a series of mistakes by senior leaders in the Imperial Japanese Navy -- including ignorance or misuse of intelligence reports -- brought about catastrophic failures after the Battle of Midway (the first week of June, 1942), and especially as the war moved across the Pacific to Truk and Guadalcanal.

Hara writes with great candor about Admirals Nagumo, Yamamoto, Nagano, Ijuin, and others in his book, subtitled, “Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal, Midway -- The Great Naval Battles as Seen Through Japanese Eyes.”

“The Midway Battle is termed the point at which the tide of the Pacific War turned in favor of the United States.  Nagumo suffered a crushing defeat at Midway, to be sure, but that did not mean the entire collapse of the Navy.  Yamamoto’s Combined Fleet was intact, and Japan still had at least four carriers to match those of the U.S. Navy.

What really spelled the downfall of the Imperial Navy, in my estimation, was the series of strategic and tactical blunders by Yamamoto after Midway...”

Published by the U.S. Naval Institute Press, the book is a classic and no-holds-barred memoir by the so-called unsinkable Captain.  It is a reprint, originally published in Japan in 1961, of his account of events, battles and life at sea from the early 1900s till after the war.

The book includes a first-person account of the sinking of John F. Kennedy’s PT-109, although there was no awareness at the time of that event’s signficance.

Not as comprehensive or technical as another Japanese perspective on the Battle of Midway, “Shattered Sword,” by Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully, “Japanese Destroyer Captain” nevertheless offers in-depth and invaluable context to plans, battles and consequences of war.

Loyal to his mentor and friend Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, who led the attack on Pearl Harbor but who was defeated at Midway, Hara also writes poignantly about Nagumo’s bushido-like suicide in the face of surrender at the Battle of Saipan, July 6, 1944.  

According to Hara, Yamamoto deserves the blame for key Japanese naval defeats.  Hara calls some of the strategies and plans by Imperial Japan’s military “stupid blunders.”  Writing about mistakes at Guadalcanal, Hara says, “the real blame must rest with Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto who held his Combined Fleet in home waters.”

Pearl Harbor’s Combat Intelligence Unit Station Hypo’s then-Ensign, now retired Rear Adm. Donald “Mac” Showers, said the biggest mistake by Imperial Japan, was that “senior officers, including Admiral Nagumo, in many cases ignored intelligence.  They thought they could outwit us.”

Yamamoto's death. (USAF painting.)

Operational intelligence literally proved to be the death of Yamamoto.  U.S. military intelligence -- codebreakers, analysts and linguists -- pinpointed  his location, and his plane was shot down April 18, 1943.

As to whether the Battle of Midway was a turning point in the war -- and in world history, as Showers contends, the reader can imagine “what if.”

What if Imperial Japan had succeeded in winning a toehold at Midway, a foot wedged in the door to a corridor to Oahu?  The Combined Fleet had failed to deliver a knockout punch six months earlier, but their sights were still set on the islands.  Hawaii could have been the next to fall, to serve as Imperial Japan’s own “gateway” -- eastward to California.

The United States Navy indeed turned the tide at Midway.

“There would not have been a victory at Guadalcanal without victory at Midway. The Battle of Midway was the turning point,” Showers said at Pearl Harbor this past weekend (see the following Navy Reads post for his in-depth perspective.)

A sacred tea ceremony aboard USS Arizona Memorial for peace July 19, 2011.
(U.S. Navy photo by MC2(SW) Mark Logico)

Perhaps the most important legacy of the Battle of Midway and the outcome of World War II is that today, more than seventy years after the start of the war, the United States now has a strong ally and friend in former enemy Japan, cooperating together, committed to freedom and peace.

Midway Perspective from “Mac” Showers

by Bill Doughty

Rear Adm. (ret.) Donald “Mac” Showers spoke yesterday at Pearl Harbor.  An ensign at Station Hypo with Rochefort, Layton, Holmes and Dyer, he worked with “dozens of the Navy’s finest cryptographers and linguists,” part of the intelligence team that intercepted, interpreted and confirmed Imperial Japanese Navy’s secret plan to attack Midway Atoll 70 years ago this week.

"Mac" Showers was an ensign at Station Hypo in 1942. 

Like most other veterans of his generation, Showers is extremely humble.

“I was sent to Pearl Harbor in February 1941 as a naval investigator.  I didn’t know the first thing about investigations,” he said.  An open billet needed to be filled with Lt. Cmdr. Joe Rochefort’s Combat Intelligence Unit team at Station Hypo, so Showers was reassigned.

“I was introduced for the first time to radio intelligence.  It began a 42-year career in intelligence,” he said. “At Station Hypo we had the ability to read and understand the context of Japanese messages.  We provided communications intelligence to guide operations.”

Admiral Nimitz relied on the information and context provided by codebreakers and analysts at Station Hypo and other Navy intelligence units, including Fleet Radio Unit Melbourne in Australia, Showers explained.

Mac Showers said, “It was the birth of Operational Intelligence -- get it to the commander in time to succeed in battle.”

After a distinguished career in the Navy, Showers continued in public service with the Central Intelligence Agency, but Station Hypo was a seminal, pivotal place and time -- not just for him but also for the nation.  In his foreward to Elliott Carlson’s “Joe Rochefort’s War” he writes:

“My experiences during that early and critical period of the war are clearly the most memorable of my forty-two years of service to the intelligence arms of the Navy and the Federal government.”

Midway was a “history-changing battle,” writes Showers, who believes Rochefort was the individual most influential in cracking the code and providing the intelligence needed to win the battle.

Themistocles

“That puts him in lofty company, with men like Themistocles at Salamis, Admiral de Grasse in the Chesapeake Bay, and Colonel Joshua Chamberlain at Little Round Top.  But Rochefort stands out even among that noble company; for he achieved his triumph without even firing a shot or even coming within sight of the enemy.”

I spoke with Admiral Showers about Carlson’s book, Symond’s “The Battle of Midway,” and Layton’s “And I Was There.”  Showers also recommends “Combined Fleet Decoded” by John Prados.

“Joe Rochefort’s War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway” was reviewed on Navy Reads last month on Rochefort’s birthday.

Memorial Day “Prometheus”

(Memorial Day began as “Decoration Day” after the Civil War, a war successfully fought and ended by Commander-in-Chief President Abraham Lincoln.  As a young man, Lincoln was an avid reader of Shakespeare, the Bible and Lord Byron.  This poem, “Prometheus,” was first published in 1816, when Lincoln was only 7 years old.  It weaves themes of mythology, mortality and heroism. -- Bill Doughty)

by George Gordon (Lord) Byron (1788-1824)

TITAN! to whose immortal eyes
The sufferings of mortality,
Seen in their sad reality,
Were not as things that gods despise;
What was thy pity's recompense?
A silent suffering, and intense;
The rock, the vulture, and the chain,
All that the proud can feel of pain,
The agony they do not show,
The suffocating sense of woe,
Which speaks but in its loneliness,
And then is jealous lest the sky
Should have a listener, nor will sigh
Until its voice is echoless.
 
Titan! to thee the strife was given
Between the suffering and the will,
Which torture where they cannot kill;
And the inexorable Heaven,
And the deaf tyranny of Fate,
The ruling principle of Hate,
Which for its pleasure doth create
The things it may annihilate,
Refus'd thee even the boon to die:
The wretched gift Eternity
Was thine--and thou hast borne it well.
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee
Was but the menace which flung back
On him the torments of thy rack;
The fate thou didst so well foresee,
But would not to appease him tell;
And in thy Silence was his Sentence,
And in his Soul a vain repentance,
And evil dread so ill dissembled,
That in his hand the lightnings trembled.
 
Thy Godlike crime was to be kind,
To render with thy precepts less
The sum of human wretchedness,
And strengthen Man with his own mind;
But baffled as thou wert from high,
Still in thy patient energy,
In the endurance, and repulse
Of thine impenetrable Spirit,
Which Earth and Heaven could not convulse,
A mighty lesson we inherit:
Thou art a symbol and a sign
To Mortals of their fate and force;
Like thee, Man is in part divine,
A troubled stream from a pure source;
And Man in portions can foresee
His own funereal destiny;
His wretchedness, and his resistance,
And his sad unallied existence:
To which his Spirit may oppose
Itself--and equal to all woes,
And a firm will, and a deep sense,
Which even in torture can descry
Its own concenter'd recompense,
Triumphant where it dares defy,
And making Death a Victory.

James D. Hornfischer's Five Navy Reads

(Author James D. Hornfischer sent us five picks, all focusing on “Warfighting First,” the first tenet of CNO Adm. Greenert’s “Sailing Directions.”  The author of  Ship of Ghosts and The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, as well as Neptune's Inferno, Hornfischer, who was involved “one way or another” in helping these books get published, is a recipient of the Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature. -- Bill Doughty)

by James D. Hornfischer

The following books may be of interest to your readers:

“Enterprise: America's Fightingest Ship and the Men Who Helped Win World War II” by Barrett Tillman.

As the nuclear-powered USS Enterprise CVN-65 prepares for deactivation and decommissioning, naval aviation historian Barrett Tillman opens the book anew on the ship's legendary World War II forebear: the seventh carrier Enterprise, whose crew fought her from Pearl Harbor to Okinawa, earning twenty battle stars along the way. If a single ship can tell the story of the Pacific War, the old CV-6 was that ship. Tillman tells the story better than anyone.

“Battleground Pacific: A Marine Rifleman's Combat Odyssey in K/3/5” by Sterling Mace with Nick Allen.

Since HBO aired the miniseries The Pacific there's been an explosion of excellent memoirs by World War II-era Marines. Mr. Mace, who enlisted in 1942, served as a rifleman in Company K, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marines, fighting at Peleliu and Okinawa. You haven't seen the war clearly until you've seen it through his unsentimental eyes.

“Outlaw Platoon: Heroes, Renegades, Infidels, and the Brotherhood of War in Afghanistan” by Sean Parnell with John Bruning.

The story of this much-decorated 10th Mountain Division platoon during their 14-month deployment to eastern Afghanistan in 2006 is very relevant to Navy readers at a time when our NSW operators, corpsmen, EOD techs, pilots and many others are deeply involved in the war against terrorism in that forsaken place. Parnell's platoon took 80 percent casualties fighting formidably talented enemy light infantry, and his book brings you right into their desperate situation.

“Neptune's Inferno: The U.S. Navy at Guadalcanal” by James D. Hornfischer.

If you serve in our surface-warfare fleet and marvel at the fighting spirit of the best warfighters around you, you might want to know where that spirit came from. At Guadalcanal, in seven major naval actions from August to November of 1942, our peacetime black-shoe fleet transformed itself into a world-beater. You will not soon forget the stories of men like Rear Admirals Norman Scott, Daniel Callaghan, or Willis Lee -- or countless bluejackets who helped seize Imperial Japan's crown as masters of nighttime surface warfare.

“Service: A Navy SEAL at War” by Marcus Luttrell.

The "Lone Survivor" returns with a powerfully drawn story of modern warfare and the brotherhood of all those who serve. The book follows the legendary SEAL back to war after Operation Redwing -- this time to Ramadi, Iraq, as SEAL Team 5 takes on Al Qaeda and other insurgents in the most violent city in the Middle East. Marcus gives tribute to all the warfighters who helped his teammates get the upper hand in 2006, before the "Surge."

(Special thanks to Jim Hornfischer! Look for more surprising recommendations on Navy Reads in the months ahead. Navy Reads will also have more to say about the bicentennial of the War or 1812 and the 70th anniversary of Battle of Midway.  “Joe Rochefort’s War” by Eliott Carlson, published by USNI, follows...)

Happy Birthday Joe Rochefort - Midway Legacy

by Bill Doughty

Today is the 112th anniversary of the birth of Joseph John Rochefort.  Tomorrow, May 13, 2012, is the 70th anniversary of Rochefort’s discovery of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s plan to attack Midway Atoll.

The Battle of Midway altered the course of World War II and saved Hawaii, Australia and perhaps the West Coast of the United States from further attacks by Japan.

With a reporter’s skills, Elliott Carlson shows the influence of one man on the outcome of Midway in “Joe Rochefort’s War: The Odyssey of the Codebreaker Who Outwitted Yamamoto at Midway.”

Carlson employs dogged research, personal interviews, presentation of facts and a resistance to speculate.  Thanks to his access to Rochefort’s family members and Navy archives he is able to paint a picture of the complicated man and the political intrigue that marked his naval career.

Rochefort is revealed as a “restless maverick” -- caustic, acerbic, sarcastic.  But he was also gifted with extraordinary memory, able to solve puzzles and synthesize complex shifting information.

These abilities proved indispensable in the Pacific War.  Rochefort implemented actionable intelligence in an independent, decentralized setting at Pearl Harbor’s Station Hypo -- predicting the future for Adm. Nimitz and Adm. King and allowing them to develop strategies to defeat the enemy.

Rochefort, the youngest of seven children, was born May 12, 1900 to Irish immigrant parents.  To put things into historical context: his father, Frank, was born in Dublin 160 years ago (1852), only forty years after the War of 1812 and nine years before the American Civil War.  One hundred years ago (1912), the Rochefort family moved from Dayton, Ohio to Los Angeles, where Joe would be recruited into the Navy.

With no college or even a high school diploma, Joe Rochefort joined the Navy in 1918.  His science and math abilities propelled him to the rank of ensign, and he served on training ships, tankers, a mine sweeper, and a destroyer.  He served aboard the cruisers USS New Orleans and USS Indianapolis, as he was recruited into the intelligence field, and on several battleships, including USS Maryland, USS California, USS Pennsylvania and USS Arizona.

Author Carlson shows how Rochefort was haunted by the attack on Pearl Harbor, Dec. 7, 1941.  Rochefort felt a sense of guilt for not being able to predict the attack.  But Pearl Harbor motivated him, as it did for the rest of the nation.

Rochefort redoubled his efforts to crack the JN-25(b) code, analyze radio transmissions and track the Imperial Japanese Navy.  Carlson provides just enough information about the art of codebreaking -- in an era of nascent computing and related technology -- to show how daunting the task was for Rochefort’s team: 50,000 possible meanings of 33,333 5-digit codes with an indeterminate, shifting beginning.

Despite the challenges, Rochefort correctly predicted the location of the Imperial Fleet in the western Pacific as early as January 1942.  He gave Nimitz information that proved correct in the Battle of the Coral Sea, setting the stage for Midway.

“Gains registered in cryptanalysis and codebreaking permitted Rochefort to practically look over Yamamoto’s shoulder as he moved his forces around the Pacific,” Carlson writes.

On May 13, 1942, Rochefort decrypted information that the IJN was focusing on areas near Midway and the Aleutians.  Rochefort analyzed the information and made a case for an impending attack on Midway, suspected as being “AF” in the Japanese code.  He presented his analysis on sheets of paper on plywood and wooden sawhorses; PowerPoint would not be available for decades.

With help from former submariner, engineer and University of Hawaii faculty member Jasper Holmes, who knew Midway’s infrastructure, Rochefort devised a ruse so the Japanese would reveal their plans.  Nimitz approved the plan, and a fake message was issued that Midway was running short of fresh water.  The IJN then sent out their own message about the water shortage in code, thus confirming that “AF,” “Affirm Fox,” was indeed Midway.

Scene on board USS Yorktown (CV-5) during Battle of Midway. (Navy photo) 

Nimitz carried out his own subterfuge, directing fake carrier transmissions in the Coral Sea and a bombing of Tulagi by PBYs that fooled the Japanese into thinking that U.S. aircraft carriers were still on location.

With intelligence, guts and luck the United States Navy defeated the Imperial Japanese Navy at Midway.

Carlson writes: “Eventually the Battle of Midway would be compared with Trafalgar, Jutland, and other major campaigns at sea that turned the tide of history.  The battle transformed the conflict between the United States and Japan.  Many agonizing years of combat loomed ahead, but after Midway the United States would remain on the offensive.  ‘Midway was the crucial battle of the Pacific War, the engagement that made everything else possible,’ Nimitz said after the war.”

Rochefort’s contributions continued despite political intrigue and infighting within the intelligence community and a resistance to innovation and free-thinking by some leaders and colleagues.

Rochefort tracked Japanese action in Guadalcanal, acoustic mines, oil supplies and access to sea lanes and even the Japanese view of the situation in Germany late in the war.  He had other challenging assignments, as well, including working on floating drydocks, but he soon retired on Jan. 1, 1947 at the rank of captain and at 46 years old, returning to the Navy briefly during the Korean War.

The attack of Dec. 7, 1941 brings inevitable comparisons to Sept. 11, 2001, and, though he does not make the comparisons himself, several jump out in Carlson’s book.  Among the biggest: a lack of imagination in predicting the attack and a failure for agencies to share information, what Carlson quotes as “fatal defects in the Army-Navy relationship.”

Interservice rivalry continued to challenge Rochefort when the Army’s 7th Air Force doubted Hypo’s information analysis and resisted the evidence that Midway would be a target in June 1942.

Another 9/11 comparison comes after the war when consipiracy theories abounded.  Groups targeted FDR, accusing former President Roosevelt of knowing about the attack on Oahu and allowing it to happen in order to push the country into WWII.

Carlson shows the lack of evidence for the conspiracy theories and gives credit to Rochefort for resisting political and peer pressure to fix blame.

Author Elliot Carlson speaks at the National WWII Museum.

Time and perspective, combined with evidence and good sources, are a strong combination, and Carlson wields a deft pen in describing the life and impact of Joe Rochefort and his role in winning the Battle of Midway.

The book is made even better with the inclusion of photos, including rare family pictures.  Among the more fascinating are photos of a young Rochefort in Tokyo, 1929-32, where he studied Japanese and gained an understanding of the culture.

“Joe Rochefort’s War” is a tour de force and a top ten read for the history of the Battle of Midway.