David F. Winkler – författare

The attack on Pearl Harbor shocked the nation. With the declaration of war, lines formed outside of recruiting stations as Americans desired to don the uniform and go after the Japanese aggressors. With Margaret Mitchell serving as the ship’s sponsor, Atlanta’s Christmas Eve commissioning in December 1941, served as a rallying point for a country weary of bad news overseas. Some of those new recruits who signed on to fight the Axis after December 7, would find their way to Atlanta’s quarterdeck. For the capital of the Peachtree State, the ship was not only a source of civic pride, but a reason for many young men to join the Navy with the promise of assignment. The Mighty A will be the first book to tell their collective story.Prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent loss of the British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales off Malaysia, the U.S. Navy’s leadership discovered that the surface fleet was highly vulnerable to air attack, thanks to the introduction of drone aircraft that could simulate attacks on its warships. The Navy’s gunners simply did not have the coordinated firepower to knock them down. Hence the development of 1.1 inch, 20 mm, and 5 inch 38 caliber guns married with fire-control radar technology that could rapidly expend ordnance against incoming aircraft. The result of this vulnerability recognition is a new class of warship led by USS Atlanta. Unfortunately, not all of the Navy’s sea commanders will have a full appreciation of the light cruiser designed mission. Lieutenant Commander Mustin terms these tactically inept officers as “Jugheads.”This story reinforces the notion that American military officers during this era are unafraid of taking their own initiatives without the permission of superiors in combating the enemy. Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky typifies this breed of independent thinkers, who played a hunch to follow the wake of a speeding Japanese destroyer at the Battle of Midway with his bomber squadron that led him and his compatriots to the Japanese carriers.The narrative also covers a part of the war that even the U.S. Navy overlooks. In elevating the Battle of Midway anniversary to join the Navy’s Birthday as an official annual Navy commemoration in 1998, the Chief of Naval Operations Jay Johnson unintentionally slighted the importance of subsequent actions in the southwest Pacific. The Guadalcanal campaign has been a narrative long owned by the Marine Corps who complain they were abandoned by the Navy to forage for themselves against a determined Japanese foe. This storyline has served to build up the lore and enhance the reputation of the Corps. However, not to denigrate the Marines' struggle ashore, the battle for Guadalcanal was predominantly naval. The Navy’s casualties during the six-month campaign were triple that of the Marine Corps.

Free to patrol the skies and surface of the high seas under international law, U.S. and Soviet naval and air forces made daily direct contact during the Cold War. Often confrontational and occasionally violent, air-to-air contacts alone killed more than one hundred Soviet and American aviators during the Truman and Eisenhower years. Diplomacy to curtail the hostility produced mixed results. In the 1960s, the Soviet navy challenged U.S. naval dominance worldwide and collisions and charges of harassment became common. In 1972, the two nations signed an Incidents at Sea Agreement (INCSEA) that established navy-to-navy channels to resolve issues. This agreement, still in effect between the U.S. and Russia, is the focus of David Winkler’s study.Here Winkler argues that Soviet and American naval officers, sharing bonds inherent in seamen, were able to put ideology aside and speak frankly. Working together, they limited incidents that have had unfortunate consequences. The process they established served as a model for similar accords between other maritime nations. With the emergence of China has a maritime power, elements of the US-Russia accord were adopted to assure peaceful interactions between American and Chinese naval forces. Drawing on previously unavailable State Department files, declassified Navy policy papers, discussions with former top officials, interviews with individuals who were involved in incidents, Winkler details the U.S.-Soviet naval relationship through the end of the Cold War and beyond. Since the publication of Cold War at Sea: High Seas Confrontation between the United States and Soviet Union by the Naval Institute Press in 2000, confrontations at sea still occur, but efforts continue to limit their frequency and impact on international relations. In this volume, Winkler expands the narrative to bring the story to the present, detailing occasional U.S.-Russia naval force interactions such as the April 2016 Russian aircraft “buzzings” of the USS Donald Cook in the Baltic. He also details China’s efforts to militarize the South China Sea, claim sovereignty over waters within their economic exclusion zone (EEZ), and the U.S. Navy’s continuing efforts to counter these challenges to the freedom of navigation. Overall, because of the regimens put in place, incidents at sea have become a rarity. While those who negotiated these regimens deserve recognition, it is the seaman and aviators who operate on the world’s oceans who deserve the ultimate acclaim for their professionalism in assuring that the agreed upon protocols were implemented.

In Destroyers at War Adm. James L. Holloway III, the twentieth Chief of Naval Operations, recalls his early life and service on destroyers during the final campaigns of the Pacific War in World War II. As the assistant gunnery officer in USS Ringgold (DD 500) and the gun boss on USS Bennion (DD 665), he took part in shore bombardment and anti-air radar picket missions during the assaults on Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, and Leyte. He provides detailed explanations of how gunnery systems worked on small combatants as well as gripping accounts of combat events, including the climactic battle of Surigao Strait—the last battleship-vs-battleship clash in history—where a Bennion torpedo scored a fatal blow against the Japanese battleship Yamashiro. This book also explores the relationship between Holloway and his father, James L. Holloway Jr.—the only father-son combination to serve on active duty as four-star admirals—and highlights the senior Holloway’s career as his son worked his way through the ranks. Holloway will be one of the last members of the Greatest Generation to publish a firsthand account of World War II.

In Destroyers at War Adm. James L. Holloway III, the twentieth Chief of Naval Operations, recalls his early life and service on destroyers during the final campaigns of the Pacific War in World War II. As the assistant gunnery officer in USS Ringgold (DD 500) and the gun boss on USS Bennion (DD 665), he took part in shore bombardment and anti-air radar picket missions during the assaults on Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, and Leyte. He provides detailed explanations of how gunnery systems worked on small combatants as well as gripping accounts of combat events, including the climactic battle of Surigao Strait—the last battleship-vs-battleship clash in history—where a Bennion torpedo scored a fatal blow against the Japanese battleship Yamashiro.  This book also explores the relationship between Holloway and his father, James L. Holloway Jr.—the only father-son combination to serve on active duty as four-star admirals—and highlights the senior Holloway’s career as his son worked his way through the ranks. Holloway will be one of the last members of the Greatest Generation to publish a firsthand account of World War II.

America’s First Aircraft Carrier tells the remarkable story of the USS Langley. The narrative provides an in-depth discussion of the ship’s origins as the collier USS Jupiter, which was built with a “first of” propulsion system that has been adapted for use in present-day Ford-class carriers. Author David F. Winkler considers the post–World War I debate for procuring carriers, the decision to convert Jupiter, and the identification of constructor Clayton Simmers as the father of the American aircraft carrier. The evolution of the Langley as an experimental ship was tied to the introduction of new doctrine for the United States. Promoting an independent naval air arm against Brig. Gen. Billy Mitchell’s vision of an independent air force, the U.S. Navy saw Langley as an operational aircraft carrier that would change the way the Navy fought wars at sea. While the story of Langley is that of the origins of naval air combat, it is also a record of the vessel’s service in World War II until the ship’s final posting to the Asiatic Fleet, where she met her demise on February 27, 1942, off the southern coast of Java.          Many of the U.S. Navy’s pioneering naval aviators are closely associated with this ship, including Kenneth Whiting, John H. Towers, Godfrey DeCourcelles Chevalier, Virgil C. Griffith, Mel Pride, Patrick N. L. Bellinger, Joseph M. Reeves, Gerald Bogan, Aubrey Fitch, Felix Stump, Ernest J. King, Warren G. Child, Dan Gallery, and Frank D. Wagner. A number of these individuals would go on to play critical roles during World War II. Langley’s story is their story.      Aircraft carriers remain the centerpiece of American sea power projection. America’s First Aircraft Carrier provides the context on how CV 1, the “Covered Wagon,” and carrier development and utilization came to be.

Tribute to a Generation highlights the unappreciated yet pivotal role Ambassador F. Haydn Williams played in making the World War II Memorial in Washington what it is today. As a naval officer sent into Japan to repatriate Maj. Pappy Boyington and other POWs at the end of World War II, Williams became a rising star in the Eisenhower and Kennedy Administrations. He worked on behalf of the CIA to start a trans-Pacific think-tank, transforming it to a non-profit leader in Asian affairs, and served as an ambassador appointed to negotiate the status of Micronesia. Williams saw the recognition of the Greatest Generation as a final mission in life and leaned on a good friend, former Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Bill Crowe, to get an appointment to the American Battle Monuments Commission. Diplomat and taskmaster, Williams assembled a talented small group to select the site, complete the design, and work with award-winning architect Friedrich St. Florian and sculptor Ray Kaskey with the aid of such luminaries as Senator Bob Dole, FedEx Chair Fred Smith and actor Tom Hanks to overcome strong opposition to completing the memorial.