Prize Winner: Win without Fighting
By Lieutenant David A. Adams, USN
The U.S. armed forces have become enamored of the mythical concept of decisive force—at the expense of contemplating how best to wield military power for lasting political advantage. The services must adopt a naval approach to joint strategy, one that emphasizes presence—here, the carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) relieves the George Washington (CVN-73) in the Indian Ocean—and patience.
On 6 August 1945, Colonel Paul Tibbetts Jr. piloted the B-29 bomber Enola Gay from the Pacific atoll of Tinian to the main island of Japan, where the bombardier dropped "Little Boy," a ten-foot-long, nine-thousand-pound device, from an altitude of thirty-two thousand feet. Exploding six hundred yards above Hiroshima, the bomb flattened four square miles of cityscape, killing more than one hundred thousand Japanese and disfiguring thousands more. 1
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Lieutenant Commander Adams is executive officer of the USS Honolulu (SSN-718) and a frequent contributor to Proceedings.
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