Site uses cookies to provide basic functionality.

OK
Search Quotes tags
Query
Tags
Author
1 2 ▲ ▼
Link Quote Stars Tags Author
c40e0b4 Anxieties," wrote Alfred Thayer Mahan, "are the test and penalty of greatness." -- James D. Hornfischer
37e0c9d It has been written that so much of life is preparation, so much is routine, and so much is retrospect that the purest essence of anyone's genius contracts itself to a precious few hours. routine preparation genius James D Hornfischer
49cdbb5 Captain Copeland picked up the intercom mike and addressed the Roberts's crew. That he was speaking for himself struck Ens. Jack Moore as unusual and urgent. Normally seaman Jack Roberts was the public address voice of his namesake warship. His southern drawl was all but unintelligible to anyone not acquainted with Dixie's rhythms and diphthongs. But the skipper's diction was as crisp as a litigator's. He was talking fast and sounding more .. James D. Hornfischer
76fc6a5 ESCORT CARRIERS HAD MANY nicknames, only a few tinged with anything resembling affection: jeep carriers, Woolworth flattops, Kaiser coffins, one-torpedo ships. Wags in the fleet deadpanned that the acronym CVE stood for the escort carrier's three most salient characteristics: combustible, vulnerable, expendable. That most everyone seemed to get the joke--laughing in that grim, nervous way--was probably the surest sign that it was rooted in .. James D. Hornfischer
2068a44 The portly Italian chief never talked much. Though he had played the royal baby at the crossing-the-line ceremony, he was the oldest man on the ship at forty-three and had little in common with boys twenty and more years his junior. Serafini was an immigrant from the Old Country whose Navy service dated to World War I. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he had left a well-paying job in the Philadelphia Navy Yard and reenlisted despite both exc.. James D. Hornfischer
be4b287 The previous day, December 6, Sprague had upbraided his crew for their sloppy performance during an intensive series of drills. He broke with his nature and let them have it. Gathering his officers in the Tangier's wardroom, Sprague said, "We're not prepared. We can't trust the Japanese. How do you know the Japanese won't attack tomorrow?" The next morning the Combined Fleet struck." James D. Hornfischer
26f8d63 Oldendorf's fleet would hold its position astride the northern end of the strait and devour Nishimura's column like a log thrust into the business end of a U.S. Navy wood chipper. James D. Hornfischer
de7fca2 I have to tell you, Major, if we don't get these bombs and stop this Jap fleet, they're gonna come in here and bomb the hell out of this place and maybe recapture it. Then their planes will be dropping these bombs on you. I've gotta have these bombs, sir, or we'll have a disaster on our hands.' Lupo asked who the major's superior was. The Army officer mentioned a colonel who stationed out toward the front. 'He's out fighting a war, and I'm .. James D. Hornfischer
759fff0 By any measure the mathematics of the engagement were preposterously against them. The Yamato displaced nearly seventy thousand tons. She alone matched almost exactly in weight all thirteen ships of Taffy 3. Each of her three main gun turrets weighed more than an entire Fletcher-class destroyer. James D. Hornfischer
4df548d Archer kept his course toward the battleship. He opened his bomb bay doors for show, hoping to persuade the dreadnought to veer from its course. Then, as he began to pull up over the ship, Archer rolled his Avenger over on its back and took his .38-caliber service revolver from its holster. Running on anger born of pain and not a little adrenaline, he squeezed the trigger repeatedly, sending six rounds into the dark superstructure of the ba.. James D. Hornfischer
45d5437 To give advice to a tyrant was to suggest his fallibility and offer oneself as a scapegoat should things go wrong. James D. Hornfischer
2692d14 As Marine Corps aviator Samuel Hynes would observe, "They go to war because it's impossible not to. Because a current is established in society, so swift, flowing toward war, that every young man who steps into it is carried downstream." -- James D. Hornfischer
5b88df2 As Marine Corps aviator Samuel Hynes would observe, "They go to war because it's impossible not to. Because a current is established in society, so swift, flowing toward war, that every young man who steps into it is carried downstream." James D. Hornfischer
bf8a4d2 Criticism of basic concepts in the Imperial Navy would have impugned the top-level admirals, and brought instant dismissal of the critic," Hara wrote." James D. Hornfischer
a9b866b Even Admiral Raymond Spruance, Nimitz's chief of staff and widely considered one of the Navy's most capacious minds, had taken lumps for what some critics deemed his excessive caution in the Battle of Midway. The experience soured him on second-guessing: "I have always hesitated to sit in judgment of the responsible man on the spot, unless it was obvious to me at the time he was making a grave error in judgment. Even in that case I wanted t.. James D. Hornfischer
763ced2 The awareness that one was in the presence of such an insurgent came at a pheromonal level. He didn't have to be brash or intimidating. If he had the right qualities, they carried through the air around him despite his quietude. Some men were fiery and motivational, leading with a barely restrained recklessness and a demeanor of perpetually fresh anger. Others were intellectual warriors, brains in circuit with the matrix in space where vect.. James D. Hornfischer
d02e896 Having tasted defeat, the Navy was starting to come back to appreciating the unpolished strengths of the Georgia farm boys who found themselves under gentle persecution on board Commander Wylie's Fletcher. A rebel yell and a blast of powder. That and a little planning and technical proficiency would carry the day. James D. Hornfischer
e7a2123 Greater cause for insomnia lay in not knowing the proficiency of one's crew. Admiral Ghormley had been hampered by this uncertainty. He didn't know what his ships and commanders were capable of. He hadn't spent time with them, or among them; hadn't been physically present to assess critical variables, from their intangible esprit to the physical soundness of their machinery. He was candid about this. "I did not know, from actual contact, th.. James D. Hornfischer
b18125e War is unlike life," he said. "It's a denial of everything you learn life is. And that's why when you get finished with it, you see that it offers no lessons that can't be better learned in civilian life. You are exposed to horrors you would sooner forget. A disconnect needs to be made to get yourself cleansed." His children were after him for thirty-five years to talk about it. "I refused. I said 'Read it in the history books. I can't do i.. James D. Hornfischer
9f2c2d5 Distinctions were being drawn between officers who were battle-minded and those whose savage instincts were reserved for advancing their own careers. Qualities that got you ahead in peacetime were yielding to skills equally ageless, but prized only in desperate times: a glint in the eye, a forward-leaning, balls-of-the-feet bearing, a constitutional aspect of professionalized aggression. James D. Hornfischer
c631777 Lee knew that the key to victory lay not only in terms of engineering or mathematics, but in a crew's ability to adjust psychologically to the unexpected. James D. Hornfischer
08da15a Lieutenant Pat McEntee in the Atlanta witnessed it: a Wildcat closing fast on a Betty from behind. The fighter was evidently out of ammunition, for its driver resorted to an unusual tactic. Down came his landing gear. Down went his airspeed. It looked to McEntee as if he was trying "to set his ship down on the bomber's broad back. And he did--again and again, and again, with sledgehammer impact. He literally was pounding the enemy into the .. James D. Hornfischer
10cc500 sluice gate. Then they opened the door and opened the hatch James D. Hornfischer
6da6404 The pressures of command were clearly weighing on him. He had insufficient authority, but he was no longer sure he wanted more of it. James D. Hornfischer
7855140 When transports carrying survivors of the Battle of Savo Island finally returned home, the men were sent to quarantine, removed from public circulation. They had stories to tell that Admiral King would be quite happy not to see in the newspapers. Some five hundred survivors of the Astoria, Vincennes, and Quincy were held under virtual house arrest in a barracks that had been constructed on Treasure Island for the 1939 World's Fair. Marines .. James D. Hornfischer
741ab9c Ten days before the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, a plan circulated briefly, never to be executed, providing for the creation of a "surface attack group" under Fletcher's cruiser boss, Rear Admiral Carleton H. Wright, drawing the battleship North Carolina, the heavy cruisers Minneapolis, San Francisco, New Orleans, Portland, and Salt Lake City, the Atlanta, and four destroyers into a single fighting force should the Japanese fleet come wi.. James D. Hornfischer
c85bff2 Halsey was neither a genius nor even a working scholar in any academic or technical field, but he had a quality of brilliance that may have been even more important in a combat capacity. He was, it was said, "brilliant in common sense." He knew that battles and wars were won not principally with well-drafted paperwork or subtle diplomacy or high materials and engineering ratings aboard ship, but by something quite simple and direct: placing.. James D. Hornfischer
ffe2aa2 Admiral King saw the need to relearn his trade from the ground up. He understood that in the art of war, amateurs talk tactics but professionals talk logistics. James D. Hornfischer
1e48ba0 One winter in Manila in the mid-1930s, Wylie walked into the wardroom of his ship, the heavy cruiser Augusta (Captain Chester W. Nimitz commanding), and encountered a "fist-banging argument" between two of the ship's up-and-coming young officers. At issue was what it took to become skilled at rifle or pistol marksmanship. One officer, Lloyd Mustin, said that only someone born with a special gift could learn to do it well. The other, a marin.. James D. Hornfischer
05f4e57 One thing Scott's tactical instructions didn't adequately clarify was how his destroyer captains would bring their torpedoes to bear. Torpedoes were the killing weapons of naval war, and much easier to aim than guns were. James D. Hornfischer
a401bb0 Still, the unfamiliar power of a new technology was seldom a match for a complacent human mind bent on ignoring it. James D. Hornfischer
6accf83 On his visit to Henderson Field, Hanson Baldwin of The New York Times had sniffed out the latter story, as well as the torpedoing of the North Carolina. Though he itched to file stories, he saw a larger need. American readers certainly deserved to know the truth about Savo. The question was whether it put sailors at risk in the continuing fight. Baldwin wrote a series of stories, including an account of Savo as he had learned it on the beac.. James D. Hornfischer
6b2c404 The leading navies of the world were situated in a challenging period between the age of fighting sail and the age of nuclear propulsion when fuel was consumable and therefore a critical limit on their reach. Once the term steaming replaced sailing in the naval lexicon, the concept of an operating radius took root. "If an enemy lay beyond that radius, the fleet might as well be chained to a post," a maritime historian wrote." James D. Hornfischer
05a31f5 Distance was a cleansing agent for everything. "The pervasive mud, and jungle gloom and tropical sun, when they are not all around you smothering you, can have a haunting beauty at a far remove," wrote an infantryman who would arrive at Guadalcanal later, James Jones. "When you are not straining and gasping to save your life, the act of doing so can seem adventurous and exciting from a distance. The greater the distance, the greater the adv.. James D. Hornfischer
a9cb73d Neither triumphalism, condemnation, nor apology does intellectual or emotional justice to the brute reality of this savage war, the outcome of which could not have been known in the moment. James D. Hornfischer
64040fe The journalist and critic I. F. Stone would call the state of mind that permitted the Pearl Harbor attack "sheer stodgy unimaginative bureaucratic complacency." James D. Hornfischer
33eb5ec When they get in trouble, they send for the sons-of-bitches saipan ww2 James D. Hornfischer
de9289f The way America handled its "first team" differed markedly from Japan's. The Americans brought them home after their inaugural experience under sustained fire and employed them to train the next wave. The Japanese left them on the front to fight until the inevitable happened, and saw their human assets waste away. It was a gilded luxury that the Marine Corps could send home its first fighter ace, the commander of one of the most decorated s.. James D. Hornfischer
92a960e The first thing I told them was to try to do their part in making the ship's company a fighting team. If you can do that, you've got half the battle won. That means that everybody feels a responsibility for everybody else. Everybody has a job to do and his task is to do his job correctly and well. Talk to the shipmates in your division as much as you can, not only to learn your job but to build up a sense of confidence, little by little, th.. James D. Hornfischer
8cfc1f4 Kurita knew that heavenly influences could be counted upon to trump human planning. In war, events seldom cooperate with expectation. Given James D. Hornfischer
413aed8 Wildcats could carry a light bomb load too. Their pilots, however, found to their dismay that the bombs could be difficult to drop: a pilot had not only to pull the bomb release but also to jerk the plane's rudder back and forth, shaking the plane in midflight to dislodge the bombs from their notoriously sticky mountings. James D. Hornfischer
9dc3862 property of the U.S. James D. Hornfischer
b1c084c Inbound now at twenty thousand feet, moving swifly toward the island, came a wave of twin-engine Betty bombers and thirty Zeros, fuel burning fast on half-empty tanks. James D. Hornfischer
2532eb7 The first time the South Dakota's main battery was tested with a full nine-gun broadside, the wave of blast pressure pushed through the passageway where Captain Thomas Gatch was standing, tearing his pants right off him. James D. Hornfischer
1 2 ▲ ▼