Navy Sailor Quotes

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

Dad had this story. A Marine and a Navy guy walk into a bathroom together. They both take a piss, and then sailor goes to the sink. The Marine heads for the door, and the sailor says, "Hey- in the Navy they teach us to wash up after we take a leak." And the Marine turns around and says, "Yeah? Well, in the Marines they teach us not to piss on our hands.

Yamamoto sensed a feeling of culmination about the huge success of the first strike, and the same incisive intuition that guided his brilliant moves at the gaming tables told him what the next move on the bridge of Akagi would be. In (Vice Admiral) Nagumo he knew his man. Nagumo had never been committed to the Pearl Harbor mission. He had not been Yamamoto’s choice to command the Striking Force; his assignment was the decision of the Navy Ministry in Tokyo, based on seniority. While the exultation of the officers and sailors on his staff swirled around him, Yamamoto sat quietly. Finally, he fixed a steely gaze on his chief of staff, and in a low, intense voice: “Admiral Nagumo is going to withdraw.

First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.

Max himself was sitting on the rug, wearing a sailor suit with elaborate navy ribbons to match his hair, tightly embracing Chairman Meow. “You are my meow friend,” he told the Chairman solemnly, squeezing him. “Meow,” Chairman Meow protested. He’d lived a life of torment since Max learned to walk.

There is a witchery in the sea, its songs and stories, and in the mere sight of a ship, and the sailor's dress, especially to a young mind, which has done more to man navies, and fill merchantmen, than all the pressgangs of Europe.

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.

I’m not studying the heroes who lead navies—and armies—and win wars. I’m studying ordinary people who you wouldn’t expect to be heroic, but who, when there’s a crisis, show extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice. Like Jenna Geidel, who gave her life vaccinating people during the Pandemic. And the fishermen and retired boat owners and weekend sailors who rescued the British Army from Dunkirk. And Wells Crowther, the twenty-four-year-old equities trader who worked in the World Trade Center. When it was hit by terrorists, he could have gotten out, but instead he went back and saved ten people, and died. I’m going to observe six different sets of heroes in six different situations to try to determine what qualities they have in common.

Strength lies not in defence but in attack.

Anxieties,” wrote Alfred Thayer Mahan, “are the test and penalty of greatness.

Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

national navies tend to cooperate better than national armies, partly because sailors are united by a kind of fellowship-of-the-sea born of their shared experience facing violent natural forces.

I take a nap after supper and dream of the U.S. Navy, a ship anchored near a war scene, at an island, but everything is drowsy as two sailors go up the trail with fishing poles and a dog between them to go make love quietly in the hills: the captain and everybody know they're queer and rather than being infuriated however they're all drowsily enchanted by such gentle love... (p. 119)

After the Second World War, San Francisco was the main point of re-entry for sailors returning from the Pacific. Out at sea, many of these sailors had picked up amatory habits that were frowned upon back on dry land. So these sailors stayed in San Francisco . . .

So many men were dead, yet the ship itself continued to live, as if animated by its own force of will.

Like most veterans, they would continue their lives saying that the truest heroes were the men who did not come back.

The story, the history, of Navy men in extremis animates the idea that Americans can do anything when it is necessary and when it counts.

In life, one can choose to go up, down, or standstill. I choose to move up.

Kurita knew that heavenly influences could be counted upon to trump human planning. In war, events seldom cooperate with expectation. Given

The Bane ...where coxswain's dirt and seaman's shirts brushed bawdily upon her chest...

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.

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 than a little nervous. “A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.

Dr. Sacks treats each of his subjects—the amnesic fifty-year-old man who believes himself to be a young sailor in the Navy, the “disembodied” woman whose limbs have become alien to her, and of course the famous man who mistook his wife for a hat—with a deep respect for the unique individual living beneath the disorder. These tales inspire awe and empathy, allowing the reader to enter the uncanny worlds of those with autism, Alzheimer's, Tourette's syndrome, and other unfathomable neurological conditions. “One of the great clinical writers of the 20th century” (The New York Times), Dr. Sacks brings to vivid life some of the most fundamental questions about identity and the human mind.

The navy, I think, who have done so much for us, have at least an equal claim with any other set of men, for all the comforts and all the privileges which any home can give. Sailors work hard enough for their comforts, we must all allow.

For over two weeks, the defenders of Wake Island held off a vastly superior force of Japanese ships and troops, inspiring the whole nation with their plucky spirit and sacrifice. Unfortunately, Navy leaders at Pearl Harbor, struggling to protect what was left of the shattered Pacific Fleet, canceled a relief mission, allowing the island and its defenders to fall without support. Wake damaged the long-standing trust between the Corps and the Navy, a memory that still rankles Marines and shames sailors.

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.

When a ship sinks, the battlefield goes away. Currents move, thermal layers mix, and by the time the surveyors and rescuers arrive, the water that more witness to the slaughter is nowhere to be found. The dead disappear, carried under with their ruined vehicles. No wreckage remains for tacticians to study. There are no corpses for stretcher bearers to spirit away, no remains to shovel, bad, and bury. On the sea there is no place to anchor a memorial flagpole or headstone. It is a vanishing graveyard.

Black seamen - or "Black Jacks" as African sailors were known - enjoyed a refreshing world of liberty and equality. Even if they were generally regulated to jobs such as cooks, servants, and muscians and endured thier fellow seamen's racism, they were still freemen in the Royal Navy. One famous black sailor wrote, "I liked this little ship very much. I now became the captian's steward, in which I was very happy; for I was extremely well treated by all on board, and I had the leisure to improve myself in reading and writing.

On the cusp of a smashing victory, a commander must keep his nerve or fail altogether.

His dad asked Bud what the decorations meant. All the Samuel B. Roberts survivor could say in reply was they meant that he had not dishonored his mother.

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.

But he and his compatriots would soon assess the cost of Taffy 3’s audacious resistance, the effectiveness of which no tactician could ever have foreseen and no statistician could have measured.

The key to being a successful skipper is to see the ship through the eyes of the crew. Only then can you find out what’s really wrong and, in so doing, help the sailors empower themselves to fix it.

The victory at Leyte Gulf was the product of Allied planning, savvy, and panache, to be sure. But only Samar showed the world something else: how Americans handle having their backs pushed to the wall.

Though distrust of the Japanese was widespread in the Navy, Sprague was among the first to appreciate exactly what the Japanese might do. In June 1928 the Lexington participated in a mock surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

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 truth.

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 battleship.

Paul Henry Carr of Checotah, Oklahoma, proud member of the Future Farmers of America, football and baseball letterman, brother to eight sisters, only son of Thomas and Minnie Mae Carr, died there on the deck of his battered, broken warship.

The sudden silence was the first thing many survivors of the Hoel, the Gambier Bay, the Samuel B. Roberts, and the Johnston noticed after their ships had been smashed and swallowed. To many, the quiet was unwelcome. The noise of battle--the roar of machinery, the shrieks and blasts of shells incoming and outbound, the shouts and screams of their buddies--had anesthetized fear. Now the noise lifted like a curtain, unveiling the hidden inner vistas of their grief and shock. When their ships sank, their duties went down with them.

Legend, tradition, history can drive a commitment to excellence that raises people and has them perform at a level above anything they ever dreamed they could do. And it makes all of us realize the potential that everybody has who serves for you and goes to sea on ships.

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 exceeding the age limit and his status as father of two. Serafini felt that he owed a debt of gratitude to the United States.

In combat you have to leave the wounded behind whether they are men or ships and go on your way and fight. Nevertheless, it was something that made every man on our topside feel the same as I did, and it bothered us to leave those men at the mercy of the Japs, but there was no other choice.

That meant attending Officer Candidate School (OCS) at Naval Station Newport, Rhode Island, where the Navy turned civilian candidates and enlisted sailors into butter-bar ensigns in a matter of weeks—expertise in folding underwear and T-shirts somehow qualifying one to lead men into battle.

Naval combat offered nowhere to run, no foxholes to dive into. You had no way to know whether the next round would fall ahead of you, behind you, to the left or right, or come burning straight in, right down Lucifer’s pike. No degree of personal cleverness could fuse or deflect a shell bound in a particular sailor’s direction. Against a faster, more powerful opponent, a sailor had neither the hope to vanquish him nor the possibility to flee. The Roberts had no way out but through this enemy cruiser. There thus remained only the duty to engage it. No one shirked from that duty.

As I'm smiling but fearing for the worse, he asks if I was in the Navy. "NO. THIS IS JUST MY HALLOWEEN COSTUME." "WELL, I WAS... FOR NEARLY TWENTY YEARS." I don't know whether he wants me to apologize for impersonating a sailor, thank him for his service, or stop drooling as I melt into his eyes

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.

Mortality rates among the crews of vessels employed in the African slave trade were comparable to those of the slaves themselves. It was not unusual for 40 percent of the crew to perish during a single voyage, most from tropical diseases against which they had no resistance. About half the sailors pressed into the Royal Navy died at sea.

National defense: the truth about sailors. Are sailors' pants tight to begin with or do the sailors have them altered to increase their allure? The Navy it seems has always realized the importance of well-fitting trousers. Plus most of the guys also get them tailored, especially overseas, where the tailor know how to emphasize male sexuality.

Among his innovations was the Liberty ship, a cargo vessel that could be mass-produced virtually like an oceangoing Model T. Using a breakthrough welding technique, submerged arc welding, that could stitch steel plate with molten rivets up to twenty times faster than existing methods, Kaiser’s shipbuilders produced a Liberty ship in an average of only forty-two days.

We stole the eagle from the Air Force, the anchor from the Navy, and the rope from the Army. On the seventh day when God rested, we overran the perimeter and stole the globe—we’ve been running the show ever since. We live like soldiers, talk like sailors, and slap the hell out of both of them at the same time. Fighter by day, lover by night, drunkard by choice, and a United States Marine by an act of God.

As Herman Wouk wrote in War and Remembrance, ‘The vision of Sprague’s three destroyers--the Johnston, the Hoel, and the Hermann--charging out of the smoke and the rain straight toward the main batteries of Kurita’s battleships and cruisers, can endure as a picture of the way Americans fight when they don’t have superiority. Our schoolchildren should know about that incident, and our enemies should ponder it.

He was a good kid and a good destroyerman for the same reason: he was always looking out for someone else. At one point LeClerq had had the presence of mind to train his forty-millimeter mount on a spread of torpedoes bubbling toward Sprague’s carriers. Johnny LeClerq was the very picture of wholesome blond American innocence, considerate of the enlisted men, devoted to the Navy, and meticulous in his duties.

There are many who predict that China is the next challenger to the United States, not Russia. I don’t agree with that view for three reasons. First, when you look at a map of China closely, you see that it is really a very isolated country physically. With Siberia in the north, the Himalayas and jungles to the south, and most of China’s population in the eastern part of the country, the Chinese aren’t going to easily expand. Second, China has not been a major naval power for centuries, and building a navy requires a long time not only to build ships but to create well-trained and experienced sailors. Third, there is a deeper reason for not worrying about China. China is inherently unstable. Whenever it opens its borders to the outside world, the coastal region becomes prosperous, but the vast majority of Chinese in the interior remain impoverished.

Earl ‘Blue’ Archer, the Kalinin Bay VC-3 Avenger pilot who suffered a serious back injury amid the brambles of flak over Kurita’s fleet, went home and kept quiet about his infirmity. He soon realized that he had a choice to make: he could take an eighty or ninety percent disability benefit from Uncle Sam and begin a life of inactivity, or he could take three or four aspirin twice a day and continue flying planes in the naval reserve.

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 not going to bother him." 'Well," Lupo said, "that's just too bad." The pilot pulled out his service revolver and pointed it at the major. Then Lupo handed the pistol to his radioman, Earl Gifford, instructing the flabbergasted aircrewman to hold the Army officer at bay. Lupo climbed into the cockpit of his plane and hailed the Fanshaw Bay on the radio. His fellow pilots from VC-68 and other Taffy 3 squadrons were already inbound

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

It was a black and hooded head; and hanging there in the midst of so intense a calm, it seemed the Sphynx’s in the desert. “Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed- while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

Man, attracted by the treasure that the victory over the whale might afford him, has troubled the peace of their immense solitary abodes, violated their refuges, sacrificed all those which the icy, unapproachable polar deserts could not screen from his blow; and the war he has had made on them has been especially cruel because he has seen that it is large catches that make his commerce prosperous, his industry vital, his sailors numerous, his navigators daring, his pilots experienced, his navies strong and his power great. Thus it is that these giants among giants have fallen beneath his arms; and because his genius is immortal and his science now imperishable, because he has been able to multiply without limit the imaginings of his mind, they will not cease to be the victims of his interest until they have ceased to exist. In vain do they flee before him; his art will transport him to the ends of the earth; they find no sanctuary except in nothingness.

That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed—while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

Tesla's 1895 incident have any bearing on persistent rumors that the alleged "Philadelphia Experiment" may have been possible due to contributions from Tesla?  These allegations have come from people such as Al Bielek who said that Tesla helped design the electrical equipment used on the U.S.S. Eldridge. Bielek states that Tesla became concerned that his equipment would once again warp time and space and have dire consequences for the sailors onboard. However, the Navy ignored Tesla's objections and continued on with their experiments.

Who can blame the poor lad for not advertising his rather unique name? Especially when his mother’s maiden name is Jewel Diamond Sunrise and his grandmother’s is Dawn Moonbeam Sunrise. Dawn Sunrise, such a pretty name. And it is true that your mother was almost named Red Sky Sunrise, but your grandfather said he would divorce her mother if she didn’t change it. He was in the navy and thought that it was a bad omen. Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning, you know. And Max’s grandmother didn’t tell anyone that she considered calling her daughter Sunset Sunrise. Catchy isn’t it?

No matter how overmatched the Americans were at Samar, no matter how dashing their screening ships were in intercepting the superior force during the critical first ninety minutes of the unlikely battle, the strength of the U.S. forces that Kurita confronted was more formidable than many analysts have allowed. It does nothing to diminish the valor of the tin can sailors aboard Taffy 3’s destroyers and destroyer escorts, or of the gallant aviators and airedales who flew on that day, to say that Kurita’s ultimate victory was by no means assured, and that withdrawing in the face of continuous and savage air assault was perhaps the prudent thing to do.

The experience helped Copeland see a certain egalitarian nobility to his crew and officers. ‘On that raft we were just forty-nine very wretched human beings, entirely dependent upon ourselves and one another in an effort to sustain life. Under those conditions it made no difference to us whether a man’s parents had been rich or poor; whether he was Catholic, Protestant, or Jew; whether his skin was black, brown, or white; or whether his ancestry was English, Spanish, Italian, or something else.’ During their second day at sea, the oil mostly dissolved and washed away from their skin, revealing those things that Copeland no longer felt mattered anymore.

He looked like a homeless convalescent in his light blue T-shirt that had known better days, his navy-blue seaman’s jacket with the black leather buttons, purchased at some second-hand clothing store in a Baltic port, and the rebellious, grayying locks of his unconquerable hair escaping at the sides of his black sailor’s cap. His slightly protruding eyes had the wary look of a man who has seen more than humans are permitted to see, and he carried his eternal duffel bag, with two changes of clothing as threadbare as those he was wearing, a few talismans, each a reservoir of memories of indelible sentiments or miraculous rescues from unspeakable dangers, and the three or four books that always accompanied him.

The close-up encounter with the enemy was like a throwback to another era, when sailing ships grappled and boarded one another. Even gunnery had once been conducted at such close range, yardarm to yardarm, that one ship’s men could hear the other’s shouts, prayers, songs, and pleas. The killing was more personal, but there also existed the possibility of surrender, capture, and mercy. By the middle of the twentieth century the reach of new weapons had made combat a cold, long-distance business. Warships didn’t surrender to one another any longer. Commanders were insulated from their counterparts in closed bridges, communicating by secret codes and radio frequencies. Sea warfare became thoroughly depersonalized.

You’d like a fitting,” he said cheerfully, and I thought with relief that he wasn’t the sort of doctor to ask awkward questions. I had toyed with the idea of telling him I planned to be married to a sailor as soon as his ship docked at the Charlestown Navy Yard, and the reason I didn’t have an engagement ring was because we were too poor, but at the last moment I rejected that appealing story and simply said “Yes.” I climbed up on the examination table, thinking: “I am climbing to freedom, freedom from fear, freedom from marrying the wrong person, like Buddy Willard, just because of sex, freedom from the Florence Crittenden Homes where all the poor girls go who should have been fitted out like me, because what they did, they would do anyway, regardless. . . .

With one final flip the quarter flew high into the air and came down on the mattress with a light bounce. It jumped several inches off the bed, high enough for the instructor to catch it in his hand. Swinging around to face me, the instructor looked me in the eye and nodded. He never said a word. Making my bed correctly was not going to be an opportunity for praise. It was expected of me. It was my first task of the day, and doing it right was important. It demonstrated my discipline. It showed my attention to detail, and at the end of the day it would be a reminder that I had done something well, something to be proud of, no matter how small the task. Throughout my life in the Navy, making my bed was the one constant that I could count on every day. As a young SEAL ensign aboard the USS Grayback, a special operation submarine, I was berthed in sick bay, where the beds were stacked four high. The salty old doctor who ran sick bay insisted that I make my rack every morning. He often remarked that if the beds were not made and the room was not clean, how could the sailors expect the best medical care? As I later found out, this sentiment of cleanliness and order applied to every aspect of military life. Thirty years later, the Twin Towers came down in New York City. The Pentagon was struck, and brave Americans died in an airplane over Pennsylvania. At the time of the attacks, I was recuperating in my home from a serious parachute accident. A hospital bed had been wheeled into my government quarters, and I spent most of the day lying on my back, trying to recover. I wanted out of that bed more than anything else. Like every SEAL I longed to be with my fellow warriors in the fight. When I was finally well enough to lift myself unaided from the bed, the first thing I did was pull the sheets up tight, adjust the pillow, and make sure the hospital bed looked presentable to all those who entered my home. It was my way of showing that I had conquered the injury and was moving forward with my life. Within four weeks of 9/11, I was transferred to the White House, where I spent the next two years in the newly formed Office of Combatting Terrorism. By October 2003, I was in Iraq at our makeshift headquarters on the Baghdad airfield. For the first few months we slept on Army cots. Nevertheless, I would wake every morning, roll up my sleeping bag, place the pillow at the head of the cot, and get ready for the day.

it was probably more dangerous to remain aboard the fuel- and explosive-laden jeep carrier than to take off and glide-bomb a Japanese capital ship. As Leonard Moser, a plane captain on the Fanshaw Bay, was changing a carburetor on a VC-68 aircraft, half a dozen pilots hovered nearby, coveting a chance to climb into that cockpit and get their tails off the ship. The aviation machinist’s mate finished the job, then climbed up into the cockpit. “What are you doing?” one of the pilots asked. “I’m going to check this damn engine out,” Moser said, “and then go find a hole to hide in.” The pilot said that he would do his own engine check this time, thank you very much. Moser stepped aside. “He got in, started it up, and took off with a cold motor. My helper didn’t even have all of the cowling on. That pilot was glad to leave.

And how nationally disgraceful, in every conceivable point of view, is the IVth of our American Articles of War: "If any person in the Navy shall pusillanimously cry for quarter, he shall suffer death." Thus, with death before his face from the foe, and death behind his back from his countrymen, the best valor of a man-of-war's-man can never assume the merit of a noble spontaneousness. In this, as in every other case, the Articles of War hold out no reward for good conduct, but only compel the sailor to fight, like a hired murderer, for his pay, by digging his grave before his eyes if he hesitates. But this Article IV is open to still graver objections. Courage is the most common and vulgar of the virtues; the only one shared with us by the beasts of the field; the one most apt, by excess, to run into viciousness. And since Nature generally takes away with one hand to counterbalance her gifts with the other, excessive animal courage, in many cases, only finds room in a character vacated of loftier things. But in a naval officer, animal courage is exalted to the loftiest merit, and often procures him a distinguished command.

who seemed to lack humility or a sense of awe, than of the faithful. “The fanatical atheists,” he explained in a letter, “are like slaves who are still feeling the weight of their chains which they have thrown off after hard struggle. They are creatures who—in their grudge against traditional religion as the ‘opium of the masses’—cannot hear the music of the spheres.”13 Einstein would later engage in an exchange on this topic with a U.S. Navy ensign he had never met. Was it true, the sailor asked, that Einstein had been converted by a Jesuit priest into believing in God? That was absurd, Einstein replied. He went on to say that he considered the belief in a God who was a fatherlike figure to be the result of “childish analogies.” Would Einstein permit him, the sailor asked, to quote his reply in his debates against his more religious shipmates? Einstein warned him not to oversimplify. “You may call me an agnostic, but I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist whose fervor is mostly due to a painful act of liberation from the fetters of religious indoctrination received in youth,” he explained. “I prefer the attitude of humility corresponding to the weakness of our intellectual understanding of nature and of our own being.

Speak, thou vast and venerable head,” muttered Ahab, “which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world’s foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor’s side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw’st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw’st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed — while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou has seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

Speak, thou vast and venerable head," muttered Ahab, "which, though ungarnished with a beard, yet here and there lookest hoary with mosses; speak, mighty head, and tell us the secret thing that is in thee. Of all divers, thou hast dived the deepest. That head upon which the upper sun now gleams, has moved amid this world's foundations. Where unrecorded names and navies rust, and untold hopes and anchors rot; where in her murderous hold this frigate earth is ballasted with bones of millions of the drowned; there, in that awful water-land, there was thy most familiar home. Thou hast been where bell or diver never went; hast slept by many a sailor's side, where sleepless mothers would give their lives to lay them down. Thou saw'st the locked lovers when leaping from their flaming ship; heart to heart they sank beneath the exulting wave; true to each other, when heaven seemed false to them. Thou saw'st the murdered mate when tossed by pirates from the midnight deck; for hours he fell into the deeper midnight of the insatiate maw; and his murderers still sailed on unharmed— while swift lightnings shivered the neighboring ship that would have borne a righteous husband to outstretched, longing arms. O head! thou hast seen enough to split the planets and make an infidel of Abraham, and not one syllable is thine!

the Cook expedition had another, far less benign result. Cook was not only an experienced seaman and geographer, but also a naval officer. The Royal Society financed a large part of the expedition’s expenses, but the ship itself was provided by the Royal Navy. The navy also seconded eighty-five well-armed sailors and marines, and equipped the ship with artillery, muskets, gunpowder and other weaponry. Much of the information collected by the expedition – particularly the astronomical, geographical, meteorological and anthropological data – was of obvious political and military value. The discovery of an effective treatment for scurvy greatly contributed to British control of the world’s oceans and its ability to send armies to the other side of the world. Cook claimed for Britain many of the islands and lands he ‘discovered’, most notably Australia. The Cook expedition laid the foundation for the British occupation of the south-western Pacific Ocean; for the conquest of Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand; for the settlement of millions of Europeans in the new colonies; and for the extermination of their native cultures and most of their native populations.2 In the century following the Cook expedition, the most fertile lands of Australia and New Zealand were taken from their previous inhabitants by European settlers. The native population dropped by up to 90 per cent and the survivors were subjected to a harsh regime of racial oppression. For the Aborigines of Australia and the Maoris of New Zealand, the Cook expedition was the beginning of a catastrophe from which they have never recovered. An even worse fate befell the natives of Tasmania. Having survived for 10,000 years in splendid isolation, they were completely wiped out, to the last man, woman and child, within a century of Cook’s arrival. European settlers first drove them off the richest parts of the island, and then, coveting even the remaining wilderness, hunted them down and killed them systematically. The few survivors were hounded into an evangelical concentration camp, where well-meaning but not particularly open-minded missionaries tried to indoctrinate them in the ways of the modern world. The Tasmanians were instructed in reading and writing, Christianity and various ‘productive skills’ such as sewing clothes and farming. But they refused to learn. They became ever more melancholic, stopped having children, lost all interest in life, and finally chose the only escape route from the modern world of science and progress – death. Alas,

sheer size, it has no rival. Of the two American fleets involved in the battle, one was comprised of 738 ships and carried an invasion force of approximately 165,000 men in addition to the 50,000 sailors aboard the ships.1 The other American fleet was the most powerful in the world, with a total of 16 aircraft carriers and six of the world’s most powerful battleships. In total, the two fleets brought 235 surface combatants and 1,500 aircraft to the battle. Opposed to this collection of naval might was the Imperial Japanese Navy. Once the most powerful navy in the Pacific, the Imperial Fleet was forced into a desperate fight with all its remaining strength. In total, the Japanese committed 69 ships and some 375 aircraft, most of which were land based.2 Both sides committed so much because the stakes were so high. The Americans planned to invade Leyte Island in the Philippines as a potential first step to occupying the entire archipelago. The Leyte invasion force was larger than the initial American contribution to the assault force at Normandy. If the Philippines could be occupied, Japanese sea lines of communications between the Home Islands and the resource areas in Southeast Asia would be severed, fatally compromising Japan’s ability to continue the war. This demanded that the Japanese respond to the invasion with all of their remaining strength. The ensuing battle was the most complex naval battle of the entire Second World War. Its complexity makes it compelling. Instead of being a single battle as the name implies, it was actually comprised of four major engagements and several lesser actions fought over the span of three days. The characteristics of the battle continue to astound – it contained the largest air-sea battle in history; it included the last carrier and battleship clashes in history; it was the only time that a surface force engaged a carrier force while under air attack; and it featured the first pre-planned use of suicide attacks during the Pacific War. Adding to the drama of this momentous event was the role personalities played in the battle. On the American side were the flamboyant General Douglas MacArthur, the steady Admiral Chester Nimitz, and the impulsive Admiral William Halsey. Overlooked but still key commanders included Vice Admiral Thomas Kinkaid and the brilliant Clifton Sprague, commander of the escort carrier group known as Taffy 3. For the Japanese, the taciturn Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo was placed in command of their most important force. He was charged to execute a plan devised by Admiral Toyoda Soemu, who cared more about presenting the Imperial Navy’s Combined Fleet with an opportunity to die fighting than to produce a plan in the best interests of the nation.

Today, such studies are illegal. Medical scientists cannot offer inducements like pardons to persuade prisoners to take part in their studies. Although they can award small cash payments to research subjects, they are forbidden from giving anyone so much money or such tempting favors that their compensations might constitute what ethicists term an inappropriate inducement, an irresistible temptation to join the study. Now, more than eighty years after the 1918 flu, people enter studies for several reasons—to get free medical care, to get an experimental drug that, they hope, might cure them of a disease like cancer or AIDS, or to help further scientific knowledge. In theory at least, study participants are supposed to be true volunteers, taking part in research of their own free will. But in 1918, such ethical arguments were rarely considered. Instead, the justification for a risky study with human beings was that it was better to subject a few to a great danger in order to save the many. Prisoners were thought to be the ideal study subjects. They could offer up their bodies for science and, if they survived, their pardons could be justified because they gave something back to society. The Navy inmates were perfect for another reason. Thirty-nine of them had never had influenza, as far as anyone knew. So they might be uniquely susceptible to the disease. If the doctors wanted to deliberately transmit the 1918 flu, what better subjects? Was influenza really so easily transmitted? the doctors asked. Why did some people get it and others not? Why did it kill the young and healthy? Could the wartime disruptions and movements of troops explain the spread of the flu? If it was as contagious as it seemed, how was it being spread? What kind of microorganism was causing the illness? The normal way to try to answer such questions would be to study the spread of the disease in animals. Give the disease to a few cages of laboratory rats, or perhaps to some white rabbits. Isolate whatever was causing the illness. Show how it spread and test ways to protect animals—and people—against the disease. But influenza, it seemed, was a uniquely human disease. No animal was known to be susceptible to it. Medical researchers felt they had no choice but to study influenza in people. Either the Navy doctors were uncommonly persuasive or the enticement of a pardon was overwhelmingly compelling. For whatever reason, the sixty-two men agreed to be subjects in the medical experiment. And so the study began. First the sailors were transferred to a quarantine station on Gallops Island in Boston Harbor. Then the Navy doctors did their best to give the men the flu. Influenza is a respiratory disease—it is spread from person to person, presumably carried on droplets of mucus sprayed in the air when sick people cough or sneeze, or carried on their hands and spread when the sick touch the healthy. Whatever was causing the flu should be present in mucus taken from the ill. The experiments, then, were straightforward. The Navy doctors collected mucus from men who were desperately ill with the flu, gathering thick viscous secretions from their noses and throats. They sprayed mucus from flu patients into the noses and throats of some men, and dropped it into other men’s eyes. In one attempt, they swabbed mucus from the back of the nose of a man with the flu and then directly swabbed that mucus into the back of a volunteer’s nose.

It’s useful to contrast the missileers’ dysfunctional culture with that of their navy counterparts who work in nuclear submarines. At first glance, the two groups seem roughly similar: Both spend vast amounts of time isolated from the rest of society, both are tasked with memorizing and executing tedious protocols, and both are oriented toward Cold War nuclear deterrence missions whose time has passed. Where they differ, however, is in the density of the belonging cues in their respective environments. Sailors in submarines have close physical proximity, take part in purposeful activity (global patrols that include missions beyond deterrence), and are part of a career pathway that can lead to the highest positions in the navy. Perhaps as a result, the nuclear submarine fleet has thus far mostly avoided the kinds of problems that plague the missileers, and in many cases have developed high-performing cultures.

After the five Sullivan brothers were lost in November 1942, a long-standing misconception developed among the general public that the Navy absolutely forbid brothers from serving together and went to lengths to reassign them to other ships. This was never the case. Rather, a Bureau of Naval Personnel circular two full years after the Sullivan tragedy addressed the “Return to the United States of Sons of War-Depleted Families,” essentially a sole survivor policy. This recognized “the sacrifice and contribution made by a family which has lost two or more sons who were members of the armed forces and has only one surviving, and he is serving in the Navy, Marine Corps, or Coast Guard.” In that case, consideration would be given “to his return to, or retention in, the continental limits of the United States, except when he is engaged in nonhazardous duties overseas.” None of this was automatic, however, and applications for such return or retention to duty within the United States had to be filed by the sailor himself or his immediate family. Out of a sense of service, many men never took advantage of these provisions in the final year of the war.

The Germans would head for our navy, but the Brits would go right in under their guns and pull our men out. In London on the next pass, no matter who he was, we would buy the first English sailor we saw a glass of bitters. “Right, mite,” he would

What happened was that all the battleships had been following with precision the directions the officer on deck had given. Each was sailing in a straight line, then, on his command they made a sharp starboard turn. Somehow the Oklahoma fell out of sync with the rest of us, causing the accident. I was asleep in my hammock at the time, roughly between ten and eleven at night, and the collision jolted me awake. It scraped off the port-side blisters—honeycombed metal buffers that had been installed on the outer hull to absorb a hit from a torpedo—and tore a hole in the hull big enough to drive a hay truck through. The major consequence of the mishaps was that we had to spend time in drydock to get patched up, delaying our trip to Bremerton. And so instead of sailing for the West Coast in late November 1941 as scheduled, we would be remaining at Pearl Harbor through December. There’s no moping in the Navy, but the collision certainly put a dent in morale when we got the news, since we were all looking forward to being stateside for Christmas.

Joe George, so I heard, had liberty that Friday night as well and was slated to fight in a “smoker.” Smokers were boxing matches held at the recreation center in Honolulu. If you won, you wouldn’t get money, which was against Navy rules, but you could receive a gift of some sort, such as a watch. You would then turn around and sell the watch, often to the very person who gave it to you. George did that a lot. After the smoker, he celebrated his win by getting drunk, which led to a fight with one of his own shipmates. Well, Shore Patrol came and broke up the fight, then took George to the ship’s brig. The next morning he was escorted to the captain’s mast to face Captain Young. The captain was so angry to see George disgrace his ship again and bring dishonor to his shipmates, he lashed out at him. “I wish I could take you to the forecastle and have all hands kick the shit out of you. But since I can’t, I’m going to give you a summary court-martial.” Joe was immediately put on report and sentenced to become a prisoner at large—PAL, for short—which meant he didn’t have to do time in the brig; he only had to be watched and restricted by the ship’s master-of-arms, who happened to be a friend. And so, on the night of December 6, instead of being locked belowdecks in the brig, he spent it sleeping under the stars in the forecastle.

I stood in a stupor and would have continued to stand there were it not for a breeze that parted the smoke, revealing a sailor from the Vestal. It was Joe George. He had been following orders to cut the lines that tethered his ship to the Arizona so they could head to open waters. Since there was no one on the Arizona to help on our end, he was taking a fire ax and cutting the lines on his. We called to Joe through a seam in the smoke, motioning for him to throw us a monkey’s fist, which was a lightweight heaving line knotted around a metal ball and attached to a thicker rope. It was a long shot, but our desperate idea was that if we could secure a rope between the two ships, then perhaps we could make it to the Vestal. As Joe rummaged for the ball, I looked at my arms. A sheath of skin from each had peeled off and was draping them. I tore off one length of skin and threw it on the floor of the platform. Then the other. The remaining tissue was a webwork of pink and white and red, some of it black, all of it throbbing. But that didn’t matter. My focus narrowed to Joe George and the ball in his hand. He threw it, but it fell short. He gathered up the line and lobbed it again. Short once more. Joe was perhaps the strongest man in the harbor, an All-Navy boxer whom I described earlier as an “ox.” He was the only man with a prayer of getting that line to us—if he couldn’t do it, then it was impossible. The reality started to sink in: we were going to burn alive. Joe collected the rope once more. For a third time, he tossed it with all his strength. It sailed from one wounded ship to another, across flames, smoke, and carnage. I tracked it all the way and caught it in the air, pulling the smaller line until I felt the main rope. I tied the rope to the railing, cinching it tight, and Joe secured his end. The rope stretched seventy feet to span the water below us, which was forty-five feet down, slicked with fuel that had caught fire. Our only hope was to make it to the Vestal, hand over hand across the rope. But the flesh had been burned off all of our hands, and using those raw fingers and palms to get us across the chasm that separated us would be at best excruciating, and most likely impossible.

First, the property loss: •  U.S. Navy aircraft: 31 damaged; 92 destroyed •  U.S. Army Air Corps aircraft: 128 damaged; 77 destroyed • Battleships: 6 damaged; 2 destroyed • Cruisers: 3 damaged • Destroyers: 3 damaged • Auxiliaries: 4 damaged; 1 destroyed

Since 1982, the Navy has allowed survivors from the Arizona to be interred there, along with a full military service. They can either have their ashes scattered over the wreck, or they can have their ashes put in an urn that a Navy diver will place in the barbette of the No. 2 turret.

It’s a shame it has been relegated to a junk heap in the Navy’s backyard. It carries so much history, yet it is cared for so little. December 2016 will likely be my last time to go back. I look forward to reuniting with several Pearl Harbor survivors at the anniversary, especially the other four survivors from the Arizona: Lauren Bruner, ninety-six, from La Mirada, California Lou Conter, ninety-five, from Grass Valley, California Lonnie Cook, ninety-five, from Morris, California Ken Potts, ninety-four, from Provo, Utah

No Catholic in England and Scotland was allowed to buy or inherit land. Exercising the function of a Catholic priest or running a Catholic school were both activities punishable by life imprisonment. Catholics could not receive commissions in the army or navy, or officially be soldiers or sailors. In the same way, Catholics who declared themselves as such could not attend universities, let alone take degrees

During WW2, superstitious sailors in the navies would get a pig and a chicken tattooed on their feet to protect them from drowning.

Like most of the special operations community, their physical training centered on useful strength, cardiovascular endurance, and durability, which, as both of them were pushing age forty, was increasingly important. Looking like a steroid-fueled bodybuilder was not part of the equation and was a liability in terms of both physical performance and blending into civilian populations. Their workouts pulled elements from various coaches and training programs, including CrossFit, Gym Jones, and StrongFirst. The idea wasn’t to be able to compete with endurance athletes, power lifters, or alpinists, but to achieve a broad-based level of fitness that would allow them to perform well in each of those areas. After a series of warm-up exercises that most would consider a serious workout, they completed the strength and endurance Hero WOD “Murph,” named in honor of Navy SEAL Lieutenant Mike Murphy. Wearing their body armor, they started with one hundred burpees followed by four one-hundred-yard buddy carries. Then it was right into a two-mile run, one hundred pull-ups, two hundred push-ups, three hundred air squats, followed by another two-mile run. Both men powered through, thinking of the scores of soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines who didn’t make it home.

That’s how we’ll stay alive, throw back the enemy, and animate the courage and best traditions of the Navy. Those, if we’re lucky, will flow into us and give us strength, illuminate the great and good parts of honor, and connect us to the American sailors who came before us. When you fight on the sea as they did, you’ll bring them back alive inside you, a rare and joyous thing that makes the world seem close to just.

It also causes the navy to defer bridge upgrades and installations of vital equipment. Cruisers and destroyers throughout the Western Pacific had different bridge layouts, control stations, radars, and other sensors. The report noted that sailors from one ship couldn’t expect to cross to another ship of the same class and find familiar equipment or layouts. Following report recommendations, Davidson sought to improve basic seamanship skills, deploy common bridge and equipment sets across the Pacific Fleet, and start a new Japan-based waterfront unit to assess ships and crews to make sure both were ready for deployment. The changes would start with the region and expand fleet- and navy-wide to revamp training and readiness across the board.

In World War 2, submarine captains were told the U.S. had cracked the Japanese Navy codes, while surface vessel captains were not. Why? Because there were never any captured sailors from submarines.

The solitary chess game Rick is playing when the camera first focuses on him in Casablanca was a real game Bogart was playing by mail with Irving Kovner of Brooklyn. Bogart would play chess with anyone at any time, and, when he was making Casablanca he was also doing his patriotic duty by playing a number of mail games with sailors in the U.S. Navy. Whatever the quality of his game, Bogart loved chess. "I enjoy chess because there's no luck to it," he told Ezra Goodman.

So I went back into the bar and had the barman make me an ice-cold gimlet with the good stuff—the 57 percent Plymouth Navy Strength gin they give the sailors in nuclear submarines—just to help the four weaker ones I’d already drunk at La Voile d’Or to take the strain.

When it was all said and done at Guadalcanal, three sailors would die at sea for every infantryman who fell ashore.

A particular sailor kept landing on my board. I noticed his arms first—a skull tattoo with demon eyes. “It’s called Psycho Eyes,” he said. “My Navy nickname. We all have one.” He laughed and moved his knight.

Navy cathouses were easy to spot. They had the longest lines to get in. Even more so during Friday or Saturday afternoons and evenings—at the height of liberty. Often, their lines stretched down an entire block.

Every cathouse downtown was a clean establishment, checked by Navy doctors once every two weeks. The girls were all attractive. Mostly from the States. That made visiting a cathouse a little more like being home, despite being in the middle of the Pacific.” For added security, every cathouse had a bouncer. Usually Hawaiian. Always size Triple-X. Their main job, beside the one implied by their title, was to sit or stand by the door and let sailors and Marines in as others left.

With influence and pressure from the Navy, the cathouses—with relatively pleasant surroundings—were hospitable places to visit. Each was usually run by an attractive Madam or Manager, “…many of whom I used to stop by and have coffee with,” said Lauren. “Most of my shore patrol calls involved putting down an argument between a girl and her customer. Or I’d be called in to break up a fight between two sailors who happened to fall in love with the same girl.

One morning two of the surviving crew members on the Nevada, Lt. Lawrence Gray and CPO Daniel Folsom, came aboard and opened a compartment test cap which allowed the poisonous gas to escape into an unventilated access trunk space. They were overcome by the gas and died almost immediately. Four other crew members came to their aid. They, too, were poisoned but managed to survive the dose of toxic gas. Although the Japanese planes were long since gone, the aftermath of their vicious attack was still killing American sailors.

There’s just one thing that upset me… even today. When civilians learn my Navy rank was ‘Fire Control,’ they immediately think of me as a fireman, who’d put out fires on the ship.” “Always have to explain the Navy term, Fire Control, means I was on a crew, as highly trained as a fireman… but with a different set of skills. In Fire Control, we helped manage the armament of the ship, by determining firing solutions to be used against the enemy.

Any Navy man—enlisted or officer—sent to a Captain’s Mast, often held on the ship’s forecastle “…was in deep trouble.” Not as hard on a sailor as court-martial, but it could be serious enough to get up to 30 days in the galley, confinement to quarters, loss of pay, extra duties, reduction of grade/rank, or other punishments handed out by the CO or XO.