Quotes from Ian W. Toll

Blond, silver, black, brown, red hair. Blue, green, brown, black eyes. White, black, skin colors of every variety. I was stunned. I realized then that we'd fought against all the peoples of the world. At the same time, I thought, what a funny country America is, all those different kinds of people fighting in

I want you to be the Admiral Nagumo of my staff. I want your every thought, every instinct as you believe Admiral Nagumo might have them. You are to see the war, their operations, their aims, from the Japanese viewpoint

Hypo had entered a virtuous circle. Nimitz, emboldened by intelligence reports that grew ever more tangible, authorized riskier and more ambitious carrier raids into Japanese waters.

A bedrock tenet of communications intelligence was that the enemy must always be encouraged to "feel safe," and never given cause to suspect that his radio transmissions were less than impenetrable.

would likely bring them into the

Shattered Sword

Rear Admiral J. S. McCain, an officer who had earned his wings at age fifty-one, was named commander of air forces in the South Pacific.

Mahan's dictum that good men and bad ships make a better navy than bad men and good ships was always near Nimitz's thoughts.

Admiral Nimitz never raised his voice and I never heard him curse during the many years I served with him," wrote Lamar.

But he did not lack the ruthlessness required of all military commanders in wartime.

The stricken vessel started getting deeper in the water, slowly going down, as if she too were reluctant to give up the battle. With her colors proudly flying and the last signal flags, reading 'I am abandoning ship,' still waving at the yardarm, she went under on an even keel, like the lady she always was.

Truman's diary entry of July 25 remains an inexplicable curiosity. Perhaps he felt sudden qualms, and soothed them with therapeutic delusions. He might have sensed that future historians and biographers were reading over his shoulder, and hoped to be commended as a man of delicate conscience. If so, the entry was a feckless gesture, serving only to leave the impression that the diary was not a faithful record of Truman's inner thoughts.

The day's action was far from finished—there were more strikes to be flown, and there was the constant danger that Japanese planes not yet destroyed on the ground would find the Enterprise and pounce on her.

Japan had donated $ 246,000 in disaster relief for the stricken city, exceeding the combined relief pledges of every other nation in the world. When a prominent Japanese seismologist arrived from Tokyo to lend his expertise to the rebuilding effort, he was waylaid in the streets and beaten by a mob.

Halsey was known as an aggressive, emotional, risk-taking warrior who loved nothing more than to attack.

These young pilots acted as if they were playing football," Admiral Halsey later said. "They'd fight like the devil, then take a short time-out, and get back into the fight again.

He would not be deterred by subtle arguments of strategy and tactics—he would simply throw everything he had at the enemy and slug it out until the issue was decided.

The court and jury convened in the mess hall, two decks below the flight deck. A "Grand Inquisitor" interrogated the pollywogs with the help of "scribes" and "kibitzers." The accused were asked preposterous and insulting questions, and no matter how they answered, they were likely to be held in "contempt of court.

A very smart man I once knew said that anticipation was sixty percent of life

An officer who testified that he had served in naval intelligence was convicted of perjury, on the grounds that no such thing had ever existed. Rookie pilots were required to spend the day in fur-lined winter flight suits with helmets and gloves, scanning the horizon for icebergs using "binoculars" fashioned from a pair of Coke bottles.

They must have skill in handling the ships, skill in tactics, skill in strategy . . . the dogged ability to bear punishment, the power and desire to inflict it, the daring, the resolution, the willingness to take risks and incur responsibilities which have been possessed by the great captains of all ages, and without which no man can ever hope to stand in the front rank of fighting men.

King, Dean. Harbors and High Seas: An Atlas and Geographical Guide to the Complete Aubrey-Maturin Novels of Patrick O'Brian. New York: Owl Books, 2000.

A chagrined Yamamoto remarked that the raid "provides a regrettable graphic illustration of the saying that a bungling attack is better than the most skillful defense.

Admiral Cochrane's nephew, Thomas Cochrane, was the famed fighting captain whose Mediterranean cruises in the HMS Speedy would be the inspiration for Patrick O'Brian's novel Master and Commander (1970).