Sea Control - Sea Control 402- How Fall 1949 Shaped the Cold War with Dr. John Curatola

Episode Date: January 8, 2023

Links1. Autumn of Our Discontent: Fall 1949 and the Crises in American National Security, by John M. Curatola, U.S. Naval Institute Press, 2022.2. "US Atomic War Plans, 1945-1950," with John Curatola, CSPAN, May 3, 2016.3. "The True Origins of the Cold War," with John Curatola, From Balloons to Drones, September 3, 2022.4. John Curatola biography page at the National World War II Museum.

Hello, and welcome to the Sea Control Podcast. I'm Nathan Miller. Today, your host, Dr. Edward Salo, talks to Dr. John Curatola, the military historian at the Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War and Democracy. In his recent book, Dr. Curatola examines events in the fall of 1949 that changed the American view of national security and shaped how the U.S. military operated during the Cold War. Jonathan Selling edited and produced today's episode. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters. Whether you're in South Korea, Egypt, Singapore, France, New York, India, or the Caribbean, chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you.

You can find a full listing of local chapters and contact information on our website, simsec.org. So if you're interested, please reach out. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec podcast network, The Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. And with that, Kimber's Men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome to Sea Control. Today we are talking to Dr. John Curatola, the author of Autumn of Our Discontent,

Fall 1949 and the Crises in American National Security that was recently published by the Naval Institute Press. Dr. Kuratoa is the military historian for the Center for War and Democracy at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, and he's a former professor of military history at the U.S. Army School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In addition, he's a retired Marine Corps officer with 22 years of service, and he had earned a doctorate from the University of Kansas. So welcome to Sea Control, Dr. Coricola. Thank you. I'm glad to be here today. And first, in addition to what I just said, can you tell us a little about yourself and

your current position? Yeah, sure. I'm kind of an odd duck. I'm a Marine officer who used to work for the Army who studies the Air Force. So if you want to talk about jointness, I guess I'm the epitome of it in terms of military service. Yeah, I was a Marine officer. I was a logistician by trade, quite frankly. And after doing it for a while, I decided I wanted to do something else as much as I love being a Marine and working with Marines. And I've always had a passion for World War II and especially world war ii aviation and so i wrote my doctorate on the evolution of from precision bombing to nuclear applications in the short span of about 20 years how the air force goes for or the united

states i should say goes from this idea of precision to wholesale nuclear application and that really kind of got me going on down this history road in the study of air power as a as a formal study and then i taught at uh military history to army officers at fort leavenworth uh for about 15 years i was did a little bit in uniform teaching them amphibiosity and how to work and play well with marines uh which was fun it was a good time and then uh spent the past few years not only teaching military history but also campaign planning How to put together campaign plans, how to integrate interagency, interservice considerations, not to mention cultural dynamics, you know, of a given environment. And then this past summer, the Institute down here had an opening for a military historian and I was fortunate enough to be picked up and I have not regretted the decision.

And every day here is a wonderful day. As a matter of fact, I spent the morning climbing all over Sherman Tank. So it's kind of the benefits of working here. That's pretty awesome. Yeah, it's a wonderful museum. What brought you to the topic specifically, and why 1949? Yeah, it's a great question. During my research, it struck me that there was this confluence of events that occurred.

as I was, you know, looking through, say, the revolt of the admirals in 19.9, and we'll talk more about this, I realized, oh, that happened in October 1949. And then I realized, well, we sniffed out Joe 1, the Soviet atomic bomb, in the beginning of September 1949. And then I realized, oh, Mao officially declares the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949. And then I realize that there's this uh uh inter-service food fight between the air force and the navy that goes on it starts much earlier but it really comes to a head in october 1940 so i just it struck me that there's this confluence of social political and military issues going on in this one season you know basically a 90-day period if you if i'm going to bracket it um and i just kind

of tripped on it and when you think about you know war in its larger context you know political military and social these things were all coming to a confluence here uh crossroads in the fall of 1949 so that's what really kind of drew me uh to this topic was just kind of the disparate realization that these things were all happening simultaneously and that takes us to you know the beginning of it, you start the book with the U.S. are getting the atomic bomb and how the U.S. detected it. How much of a surprise was this event in the U.S.? Yeah, it's a great question. As late as July in 1949, the U.S. Air Force says the Russians are three years away. We know that the atomic monopoly is finite, you know, in the late 1940s. We're well aware the

russians are going to eventually get this thing this is the question of of when um and the best estimates are you know are 1952 1953 uh and so when joe won uh is uh tested and works you know uh in august of 1949 it's a surprise uh that the russians have had done it that quickly and why it's a surprise is largely because the soviet union as most people know was a very compartmentalized very secret society and what you have with the soviet atomic program is an even more compartmentalized and secret operation within a larger secret society and we think about how quiet manhattan was and how everybody was compartmentalized within an open society united States. You could imagine it was much harder to detect within the Soviet Union. And in the late

1940s, we don't have overflight over the Soviet Union, don't have satellite technology. And all of these things are going on in the interior of the Soviet Union, which is, of course, 11 time zones. It's a huge country. And so how do you find out what's going on internally? And that's something we don't have eyes on. This is before the CIA and all those kinds of activities really go on. So we look at, at the time, it was a surprise. But when you look back on it historically, well, no wonder why we didn't know, given the way the Soviets had compartmentalized this and kept this a rather secret effort within a larger secretive society. In the first chapter, you also mentioned the fear that USSR was preparing either an atomic or biological strike on the U.S.

And I had never heard about the biological threat being talked about at this time. Can you speak on that for a moment? Well, it was this idea that the threat was there, not that they had the capability. Of course, they had the capability with an atomic strike. The problem is that there's this threat. Will they do this? The Russians are nefarious. And again, that's the mindset I'm putting trying to put a context on it that uh you know they're they're deliberately expansionistic if you look at you know canon and his ideas of containment and so that the russians are definitely going to do whatever they need to do to expand their control and so and not that they had the capability but there was the fear of it that was uh what was more right there was more

fear than there is actual capability we overplay what the soviets can and can't do uh during this time and other times um but so what was happening kind of in the summer of 49 domestically and internationally to start this ball rolling lots of yeah a great question lots of things um first of all the air force and the navy have been going at it since the interwar years um you talk about use of air power naval air power as opposed to land-based air power um and this really starts you know in the interwar years over the fights over roles and missions and more importantly budget where do you want to put your money do you want to put it in carriers or do you want to put it in land-based aviation and this food fight this inter-service food fight begins you

know during the depression when obviously defense dollars are scarce and you don't want to spend a lot of money on defense then the war comes and of course there's plenty of money to go around to develop carriers and b-17s and b-29s and land-based aircraft but then after the war with the advent of atomic weapons what does future war look like this is a question a lot of people are asking and the common uh thought is everything will be air-centric and nuclear-centric and the air force obviously believing that it had a central role for good reasons they dropped the the two atomic weapons but the navy now says wait a minute we have a role to play here we have advanced forward base uh carriers that can deliver atomic weapons or have the possibility to deliver

atomic weapons and so they're afraid of being short-changing this atomic mission and again in the post-war years, Harry Truman is trying to balance the national budget. He's trying to return back to a peacetime economy. And so he doesn't want to spend a lot of money on the military. But by the same token, the militaries are trying to revamp, reorganize, and plan for future war. And so you have, again, a re-engaged food fight between the Air Force and the Navy. And one of the rule of lightning rods for this is the Planned Aircraft Care, or USS United States. This is going to be the Navy's new premier naval aviation platform. Well, when the new Secretary of Defense, Lewis Johnson, takes over from James Forrestal, who, you know, obviously was mentally ill,

he's looking to establish himself within what we call the beltway today within dc as as a power broker and by having to control the new established department of defense and get costs uh reduced and defense spending down uh to uh kind of bolster his uh ambitions he has presidential ambitions he cuts the USS United States off the budget without even consulting the Navy and this doesn't sit well with the Secretary of the Navy or the Chief of Naval Operations and as a result naval aviation feels like it's being slighted not only by the Department of the Navy or by the civilian leadership of the Navy but also by the DOD establishment as a whole they feel like naval they're being ganged up on by both the air force and the army and that they're always going to lose

in terms of roles and missions so as a result there's a couple of enterprising gentlemen who decide to take matters into their own hands and collect as many rumors and innuendos that there are regarding the procurement of the air force's b-36 And they put out what's called the anonymous letter or anonymous document. And it's a listing of approximately 50 rumors about irregularities in the Air Force procurement. And this starts the intramural food fight on Capitol Hill. Now it's been raised outside of the Department of Defense, and there's an investigation initiated within the halls of Congress. So now it's a national issue within the government, not just one within the Department of Defense. And this kind of sets up the revolt of the admirals and where we're going to get to in October of 1949. At the same time, as you just discussed, we sniff out Joe 1, you know, in August, early September of 1949, and that's summer.

And so you throw that event on top of the fact that the Army and the Navy are already going at it. And at the same time, in July of 1945, Harry Truman is asking if we need to take a look at the nuclear stockpile. Is it big enough? Does it need to be revamped? He learned in 1947 that he actually had no nuclear bombs in his stockpile. And the quote is, we didn't even have a stockpile. We didn't even have a stock. We had bombs that were in pieces, but they had to be assembled. And they took like three days to assemble.

And once they were assembled, they had a shelf life of like a week. Then it had to be disassembled again and put back together. Okay, well, he doesn't learn about this until 1947. And, of course, we had shut down much of the Manhattan Project. A lot of those gentlemen that were part of it, the long hairs, the civilian scientists, went back home. back to academia and so the nuclear enterprise in the post-war years is a is a shadow of itself from the heydays of manhattan and so you have this question of hey do we need to review the nuclear programs in the summer of 1949 so these things are stacked on top of each other

And they're all concurrent in the summer. And, of course, this this sets off also with the demise of the Kuomintang and the success of success of Mao and the Red Army in China. And there's this threat about encroaching global monolithic communism as we are, quote unquote, losing China. And so when the China White Paper comes out on 1 August 1949, it's a way for the administration to explain why China is turning communist. And China turns communist because of its own reasons. There's nothing the Americans can do about it. However, politically, it doesn't play well, and the Democrats are soft on communism. So, again, you have an international event, you know, that has domestic implications with regarding views on national security. That takes us to the autumn. And, you know, you've been discussing the U.S. has lost its atomic monopoly. China's fallen. The impasse on strategy between the services. And we have the introduction of thermonuclear devices, all occurring, you know, basically in the same season. So how did the U.S. face these crises?

Yeah, great question. The idea of thermonuclear weapons actually goes back to Manhattan. We have fission and we have fusion. I am not a physicist. I do not pretend to understand all the processes that go in them. I just understand their implications. But this idea of fusion with the hydrogen weapon, it's well understood that this is a possibility. We might be able to do this and have bombs that are of incredible yield.

Fission theoretically is limited to something less than a megaton of possible nuclear power, explosive power. But with fusion, it's conceivable to be unlimited. And this is a possibility, they realize, as late 1944, early 1945, that fusion might be something that we could do. And in 1946, there's actually a conference at Los Alamos to address this as an academic discussion, not necessarily as a weapon, but as a scientific endeavor.

and it's put on the back shelf during manhattan but it becomes an academic discussion subsequent to the war but at this 1946 conference there is a gentleman in the audience or a participant in the conference itself by the name of klaus fuchs now we do know the history now years ago that Klaus Fuchs was indeed one of the, if not the, primary provider of the Russians and some of the best information about building an atomic device. Yes, there's others, but he is really the one who provides them with the real blueprint because he has ideas. He understands the entire device, not just the lenses or not just parts of it, but the entire mechanism. Well, he's there in 1946. And so when the Russians explode their device, the question is, if they're this far ahead, i.e. three years with fission, where are they with fusion? and there's a couple of scientists who are concerned about this and they they take this

concern to select members of the atomic energy commission uh to the joint committee on atomic energy uh and to various members within the department of defense and saying that there's a real concern that the russians if they're this far ahead on fission maybe they're ahead of this on fusion. They're not, but we don't know that in October of 1949. And so that is kind of on a backdrop with everything else that is going on. So to go back to the Air Force and Navy fluke fight, the dirt sheet or the anonymous document investigation goes in August of 1949, And what's found out that everything on it is wrong. It's a lie in that it's it's it's it's basically a doctor document that has no basis in fact. And so as a result, the Navy comes away with egg on its face that they wanted this investigation, but they couldn't defend the points that were made.

And the Air Force comes out smelling like a rose. Well, go back to the real reason why the Navy had that thing made. The Navy didn't do it. There were individuals in the Navy. So you have to be careful with when I say the Navy, because they didn't sponsor it. And so please don't confuse me, confuse that. And so the Navy loses again, which only makes other naval aviators more incensed. Now they've lost again. They've lost their carrier. And now we found out that this argument about Air Force malfeasance regarding B-36 production is also problematic. So what happens is in September of 1949, there's a naval aviator who, again, takes matters into his own hands, and he has called his own press conference, which is kind of odd, named John Cromlin. They call Bomber and John, who's a well-respected naval aviator from the Second World War, and he says that the U.S. Navy is being nibbled to death by the Department of Defense. and he does this on his own. Well, obviously officers, serving officers don't have that luxury of speaking for the Navy as an individual. He gets put in hack and told to be quiet and he's removed from the joint office. But he doesn't really think that he's had the effect he wanted

to raise the plight of naval aviation. During that same time, there are some fleet admirals who write letters to the chief of naval operations, Admiral Lewis Denfeld, who expressed their concern over naval aviation. And they send this letter to the chief of naval operations and to the secretary of the Navy, of which they both endorsed the letter. They mark it classified or confidential because they don't want it going out into the public. Well, John Cromlin gets a copy of the letter. And in order to raise concern over naval aviation, he takes that letter over to the Washington press office, where he gives it to a number of members of the press. And the very next day, the headlines are exactly what he had expected, that naval morale is shot to pieces,

that naval aviation is in a bad way. And as a result, the second set of investigations regarding naval aviation and the B-36, the Air Force procurement of the B-36, continue until October 1949. So you have some individuals within naval aviation taking matters into their own hands. And what's intriguing about October 1949, this is a full-on public battle between the Air Force and the Navy over the validity of the B-36 as an airplane, its usefulness, atomic bombs and their morality and their use, and the viability of naval aviation in future warfare. And so this goes on very publicly in a congressional inquiry for about two weeks. And it's going pretty well for the Navy until the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff steps up to the microphone for his testimony.

And it's Omar Bradley. And Omar Bradley not only lambasted the Navy, he actually has a rather personal swipe at Admiral Lewis Denfeld's combat record. He doesn't have one. And so he takes a swipe at that. And as a result, the Navy's argument kind of falls apart. But what's interesting about it is that Louis Denfeld, Chief of Naval Operations, testified in support of his naval brethren. This goes against the grain of the Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson, who's pro-Air Force. That's what's intriguing here. And Lewis Johnson, as a result, fires the chief of naval operations, Lewis Denfeld, for doing what he was supposed to do and articulate his opinions and concerns regarding naval aviation. So he gets fired. Congress doesn't do anything regarding the B-36 or the food fight between the USS United States.

They don't require that the ship be built, and they don't curtail B-36 procurement. But what it does do, it raises the issues over national security. Where should the U.S. go given future threats, given a Soviet atomic bomb, given a red China? and so there's a lot of handling going on as to how do we best man train equip for national defense so those are the kind of things that are going on in the summer and in fall in 1949 which takes us to the winter when everything kind of comes ahead and it comes to a head now one of the thing that occurs uh that i haven't talked about yet was before james forestall was removed as a secretary of defense for mental health reasons he established what was called the

weapons system evaluation group and forestall you know for all of his mental anguish he's going through at this time sees that there's a problem going on here we have uh various departments Air Force, Navy, and Army all fighting over roles and missions, but we don't have anybody really refereeing what's truth and doing detailed analysis. And he establishes what's called the Weapons System Evaluation Group, or the WSEG. And their first task is to review the new American war plan or atomic war plan in terms of its execution. Will it really work? Can we do this? Is it feasible? And will it reach ultimate American objectives? And so this work of the Weapon System Evaluation Group is occurring during the fall of 1949.

So while all these things are going on and all these questions are being raised, the Weapon System Evaluation Group, which is supposed to be composed of impartial military experts and civilian experts to distill down their evaluations of the current war plan. Well, everybody's waiting for the Weapon System Evaluation Group to come out with its results, and it does so, the preliminary results come out in January, early January 1950, of which Harry Truman is briefed on. And, unfortunately, for those people looking for definitive answers, it doesn't give any. It basically says, yes, we will hurt the Soviet Union, yes, we will cripple them, but we're not necessarily going to win a war with them if we drop atomic weapons and rely on that as our national defense posture. And to kind of add to the ambiguity of the report, when Harry Truman is given the report, he's sitting next to Lewis Johnson.

And Lewis Johnson turns to Harry Truman. He said, see, I told you they'd say the B-36 was a good airplane. And Harry Truman's response is, no, damn it, it says the direct opposite. And so you have two of our national leaders who can't even agree on the results. But the point here is that there's still this ambiguity. Where do we need to put our military eggs? in terms of investment. And this is all occurring, of course, with the debate over thermonuclear weapons. That debate is starting in October 1949, and it's going to continue on

into January 1950. And it isn't until the end of January 1950 when what's called the Z Committee, which is composed of Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and a couple of other staffers, come to the conclusion that, yeah, we need to look into thermonuclear weapons. We can't afford not to have them if the Russians have them. And so when they take their response to Harry Truman, included in their recommendation is a wholesale review of American national security. It's the second requirement in this position paper they give to Harry. That becomes the basis for NSC 68. That becomes the genesis for this wholesale review and the realization that the United States now needs to have not only a nuclear

capability but a large standing army or a large standing military i should say and the defense budget from 1949 will go from paltry 13 14 billion dollars to almost 50 billion dollars in one fiscal year and since that time the united states has always maintained a large capable standing military it's gone up in size and we we know that but it's become a staple of american foreign policy yeah and that's um when i teach military history you know it's always especially to the rotc cadets it's getting them to understand that that's not the traditional american military is a large standing military it's most of the time we're going to war with something that's i won't say inadequate but yet ill-prepared for what we can use what we're capable of producing and and

that and as you well know you know americans haven't up until this up to that point you know large-standing military and especially in the revolutionary war are a threat to a young democracy they're expensive you know so why would i want to keep one around you know we'll build it up during the civil war we'll build it up in the first world war we'll build up in the second world war but but we'll tear it back down again for a lot of good reasons. But, you know, America, as you well know, America comes out of the Second World War, a global economic and military power, and it has to have the resources to fulfill that role. Right. And so many other, well, the United Kingdom, France,

all the other normal pre-war powers are just devastated. devastated. And there's only one nation on the Allied side, besides the Soviets, that's capable of doing, you know, that kind of thing. So I like what you said at the end of the book about 1949 still resonating in the American experience. Can you elaborate on that? Yeah, because it's such a crossroads of international and domestic events, that it leads to you know the genesis of nsc 68 of which it's drafted in the spring of 1950 but doesn't really get acted upon until of course the korean war and that kind of cinches the deal that yeah the communists are indeed bent on global expansion of course we know that north korea is

its own dynamic we'll leave that alone but if you're an american in the 1950s you're going Oh, yeah, the Russians are bent on that. And so we have to build a large military. That's just a requirement now. And I think what happens is Americans get used to it. Americans expect it. And it's not seen as an anathema to the national experience that it was prior to the Second World War. And we see Vietnam, you see, you know, the Cold War and this requirement to maintain and have a large, expensive military as a staple of the American experience subsequent to 1950. and i think it also kind of resonates when with eisenhower he talks about the military industrial complex you know he sees this happening during the 1950s with this change in in the american perspective about standing militaries and the money that's going into them and the size of them And I think what we see is the military now growing invisibility with the American public. We accept it now.

You know, it's part and parcel of American society, whereas prior to that, the military was kind of in a corner. You know, it's where you went if you needed a job. You know, it wasn't, you know, a large part of society. And now it is. And now it's gone through with different machinations. Vietnam, we all know, you know, during those very painful years, the reputation that it had. But here we are, you know, 50 years later, and the military is held up as, you know, a beacon of professionalism and this idea that is part and parcel of the American experience now. And that really occurs, I think, with NSC-68. Again, at the end, you were making the statement that the military is always the go-to option since 1949, and you hint that it may take another series of crises to reexamine this paradigm. Do you think that we need to rethink our national military strategy based on, well, the current world that we live in? Yeah, that's a great question, especially. Yeah, it's not a softball.

Yeah, no, it's a great question because given what we're, you know, are we entering a new Cold War, given what we're seeing with, you know, Putin and his venturism in the Ukraine and then, of course, what's going on with China. You know, after the Cold War, you know, I was a serving officer at that time. And there was kind of a groping for, you know, what do we do? You know, what is our, you know, what are our core competencies, you know, as a military? And we did a lot of things, you know, Somalia and Hades and, you know, those kinds of things, you know, Bosnia and whatnot. Nothing large scale, kind of small scale stuff. Of course, nothing small if you're in the middle of a fighting position.

But this idea that what do we really do as a military? And so there was kind of a grasping for that. And then, of course, after 9-11, OEF and OIF come to the forefront. And it gives them military roles and missions. But what you see, it's interesting, given a new global environment that we live in, if there's an emergency, whether it's military or humanitarian, who do you lead with? It's usually somebody wearing a green suit of some way, shape or form, you know, because who has a lot of people, a lot of equipment and a lot of money? the U.S. military. For example, when the military, I was the J4 for tsunami relief in 2005 during the Indian Ocean catastrophe. And what was fascinating was we, the joint task force,

the combined task force that showed up to provide relief to the various countries, we had all the assets. The ambassador, who was, of course, the lead representative for the United states in a given country as he should be but he has no he has no assets and he has a small staff within an embassy the military has all the assets and so what was interesting was we we worked obviously under the ambassador's auspices under his you know direction but he has no assets we have the assets and so it's interesting that you see this dynamic where the u.s military has the capability and the people and the budget, where other elements of the U.S. government aren't necessarily man-trained or equipped that way. So that's what I mean about we tend to lead

now with the military, whether it's an actual combat operation or an influential operation or a humanitarian operation. And there's plenty of other operations subsequent to that where military elements have have been the lead so that that's that's how i refer to that or why i refer to that i mean even going back to the covid response it was you know they turned to the military for yeah all different aspects of it from you know getting the vaccine out to you know helping to develop stuff because yeah distribute distribution and field hospitals and those kinds of things and and that's great uh but i'm just saying we've now changed the dynamic from what predated that to where the military was just kind of on the side.

Now they're part and parcel of American society, which I think is a good thing, but it's different than what preceded it. So shifting focus for a minute, can you tell us a little about your new role as the military historian there at the National World War II Museum? Yeah, I've only been here for about three months, so I'm still learning it. But what we do here, a lot of it is public discourse and also development within the museum itself. We do a lot of outreach, a lot of lectures, web articles, answer a lot of emails that come. People have questions about the war and we serve as such a matter of experts for that.

But we also we have a new pavilion that we're opening up next spring called Liberation Pavilion. And it's the fifth building here for the museum. And it really addresses what was the war all about? What did we learn? And how did this transition into, you know, the Cold War and the world that we have today? And so all that content, we provide the input, you know, the historical input and context for the creative people who make, like, say, all the interactives and how they design, you know, a given display. We provide kind of the factual, contextual information, and they take that information and maybe make it into a movie or make it into a computer animated, you know, display. And so we provide that kind of input as we develop, you know, new displays within the museum itself. There's as information becomes available to us, we find that maybe some of our displays are wrong. Maybe those numbers are wrong or the context is wrong. And so, you know, we provide that kind of subject matter expert to say, yeah, we need to change this or this particular piece of display is not put in its proper context.

So it's really kind of a diverse mission across the board. We also teach classes for Arizona State University. They have an online degree that they offer on the Second World War. And so you'll see us doing a number of missions, not just sitting here writing books or, you know, providing support for the curatorial people here, the curators and the collections people. But a lot of it has to do with education and outreach and trying to get work as a intellectual center and study of the Second World War. well thank you so much um can you tell us some stuff you're currently working on i know um preparing for this i noticed you had some really interesting uh lectures on youtube yeah what i'm i got actually two things in the hopper right now one of them is i'm looking i'm writing a

a treatise on the development of army amphibious capability um you know in the second world war We know as a Marine, we thump our chests and the things that we do in the island hopping campaign, the development of amphibious warfare in the interwar years, you know, with the Eureka boat and then the Higgins boat and those kinds of things that translate into Tarawa and Iwo Jima and Peleliu in those landings. But what most people don't realize is that the United States Army, as late as 1940, is not interested in amphibious warfare, and they have the entire European theater of operations. There aren't a lot of Marines. There are submarines, but there's no huge formations, no divisions of Marines in the European theater. It's largely the Army. And so how does the United States Army, as an organization, who's not even interested in amphibious assault, man, train, equip an amphibious force for Torch, Husky, Anzio, D-Day, the Champagne Campaign? The Army is going to do more amphibious assaults in the Second World War than the Marine Corps. A lot of them are smaller scale, but the fact of the matter is the Army does a lot more. How does the Army develop that?

And as late as 1940, we're not even interested. And so I basically had been working on how the Army and the Navy had to learn to work together. And it was growing pains. And I make the argument that the Torch and Husky and the Mediterranean, you needed those operations before you could do the cross-channel invasion. The services had to learn how to do amphibious assault, not only in terms of doctrine, but down to the individual skill sets for the soldiers and the sailors. And you had to build the ships and build the Higgins boats and all those things that come material solution set. So I've been looking at how the Army does that in the European theater of operations.

and the other thing that I'm it's been a multi-year project in COVID helped shut it down was I'm looking at Kurt LeMay's command philosophies what did he do as a commander during the war you know we all know he's innovative we all know the firebombing we all know what he does after the war with strategic air command and those things those are well known But what does he do when he's running the 305th Bomb Group? What does he do to effectively control the 3rd Air Division? What does he do when he's at 20th Bomber Command, you know, internal to those organizations? And there's a lot that he does to be an effective commander, to utilize his resources.

He has a lot of problems, especially with the B-29 early on. What does he do to solve those problems as a commander? Because I think we tend to kind of gloss over what he does as a unit commander. We look at him strategically and what he does in the big picture, but what does he do down? How does he develop tactics, techniques, and procedures? And he's quite innovative, and that's what I'm looking at. I'm looking at all the missions that have flown by his command, And you see him in almost every post-strike brief, providing comments, making observations, asking some very pointed questions to people who maybe failed to do their job in a given mission.

He only flies about a dozen missions in the Second World War. General officers, general officers don't fly combat. So he only flies about a dozen missions. But his influence with those commands, with his men and his subordinates is what I'm looking at. how does he do that? Well, that sounds like something that we definitely would like to have you back when you finish, because both of those topics sound really interesting. And again, the name of the book, Autumn of Our Discontent, which is Naval Institute Press, available at bookstores, online, and I guess probably the brick and mortar too. And thank

you so much for being here and enjoyed the interview. Thank you. I'd appreciate that anytime. Thank you. Thank you for watching.