Hollywood’s version of the 1925 court-martial that convicted General Billy Mitchell of insubordination dramatized an impassioned historical event. The 1955 film advanced the “conventional view” that the Army railroaded Mitchell out of active service—not so much for insolence against the military establishment, represented by Commander John Towers, but for making a remarkable prophesy concerning strategic bombing that threatened the popular strategy of the time.
History’s view of the trial, however, is not so black and white. Historian Clark G. Reynolds’s interpretation of the court- martial hardly follows the popular convention:
“His [Billy Mitchell's] reasoning gave way to a faith in an idea that was years ahead of its time ... his zeal was honest, but his methods were tactless, and he was ignorant of history. Jack Towers was a close student of history and a pioneer of aircraft. Unlike Mitchell, Towers knew the limitations of the airplane of his day ... his zeal was also honest, his methods steady and cool, and he believed in working within the system. ... He survived to prove his weapons, whereas Mitchell did not. So Towers was right.”
Reynolds’s pointed observation helps explain the unique perspective of a historian. As an arbiter of what may be valued as long-term truth, the historian’s responsibility is a dispassioned evaluation of passionate events. It is this kind of subjective explication that Reynolds has studied and developed throughout much of his life.
Reynolds has held many titles during his career, serving as professor, independent scholar, author, consultant, defense analyst, lecturer, and strategic historian. Currently, he is a professor and the chairman of the Department of History at the College of Charleston, South Carolina. Reynolds’s other teaching posts have been at the U. S. Naval Academy, the University of Maine, and the U. S. Merchant Marine Academy, where he served as a professor and head of the Department of Humanities.
His writing is highly acclaimed. The U. S. Naval Institute Proceedings rated his book The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy (McGraw-Hill, 1968) as one of the ten best English-language naval books of the Naval Institute’s first 100 years. It is still the definitive case study of the aircraft carrier as a single weapon system. Reynolds’s latest project is a book on Admiral Towers, whom he considers as one of the major architects of the U. S. victory over Japan in World War II.
In 1978, Reynolds took leave of academia to become the first curator of the Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum on board the carrier Yorktown (CV-10), moored in Charleston harbor. South Carolina. He established the museum’s basic historic exhibits and completed a book about the ship, The Fighting Lady (Pictorial Histories, 1986). But Reynolds found that the museum post “offered no intellectual challenge” and thus welcomed the opportunity to accept the chairmanship at the College of Charleston in 1988.
Doc Reynolds, though, is still heard Sunday evenings over local public radio, broadcasting from the Yorktown. From the former pri-fly (primary flight control), he hosts the jazz show, “Swingtime.”
Reynolds views himself first as a historian and second as a naval historian. According to Reynolds, “Naval history should be no different from civilian history and naval leaders no more sacrosanct than presidents or athletes or philosophers. He demonstrated his unabashed style in The Fast Carriers, which raised a lot of eyebrows in private but did not lead to a written criticism from anyone. In December 1987, Navy Secretary James Webb recognized Reynolds’s expertise, appointing the historian to chair his Advisory Committee on Naval History, a two- year appointment.
Reynolds is a native of southern California. His early years were filled with Navy sea stories passed along by his uncle, F. Robert Reynolds, who served on board the Yorktown with J. J. “Jocko” Clark, the Yorktown's first skipper, and then as Clark’s flag lieutenant. These stories later helped Reynolds ghostwrite Clark’s autobiography, Carrier Admiral (David McKay, 1967).
Denied a career as a naval officer because of color blindness, Reynolds turned to history while an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He completed his doctorate at Duke University in 1964.
Reynolds’s mentor at Duke was Theodore Ropp, whom Reynolds describes as “a genius ... the doyen of military history in the United States then and now.” It was Ropp who revealed to Reynolds an “intellectual revelation”—a way to view history that formed the foundation of Reynolds’s own approach to history, which he characterizes as “a rigorous intellectual discipline.” It is the ability to “shuffle and reshuffle the facts in order to ask new and different questions of the evidence, a discipline that traditionally schooled historians fail to understand.”
Reynolds’s approach to history has also been influenced by his historian of choice, Herbert Rosinski. In Rosinski’s view, says Reynolds, “Power and its balances are shown to be the norm, the key continuum in the total human experience, rather than peace and war. Human history is viewed in a broad sweep.” Such is the approach Reynolds takes in his magnum opus. Command of the Sea: The History and Strategy of Maritime Empires (William Morrow, 1974).
It is this view of history that shapes Reynolds’s approach to academia, reflected in his style of teaching and writing. As the most visible products of that work, he views his students and his books as his most notable accomplishments. Reynolds describes himself as a “meticulous, exhaustive historical researcher who makes firm judgments based on his findings.” He values simple, direct prose designed for the average reader, describing his style as scholarly in a popular vein. Says Reynolds of his writing, “I try to avoid esoteric words, like ‘esoteric,’ in order to guarantee the reader does not stumble along the way.”
Probably one of the most prolific naval historians ever, Reynolds has published seven books, has one more in review, and is the coauthor of four others. He has published 30 feature essays, many of which have been reprinted, and 22 encyclopedic essays, entries, and supplements.
Reynolds’s writing is lean and efficient. His blend of research and pointed commentary permeates his work, often shredding long-standing conventions along the way. For example, in an essay entitled, “The Continental Strategy of Imperial Japan” (see Proceedings, August 1983, page 64), he stated:
“At no time before or during the war did the Imperial Navy desire or attempt sea control of U. S. waters east of the Marshalls. The admirals never envisioned developing a Pearl Harbor of their own beyond the home islands. . . . Japan never entertained the idea of seizing Hawaii or any other U. S. island to be a forward fleet base. Even had Midway Island been taken in 1942, it would have been used only as an airfield to keep Pearl Harbor neutralized. . . . These were all defensive strategic measures. Of course, any idea of a Japanese invasion of the U. S. West Coast was absurd.”
In the same essay, with respect to the contemporary balance of power at sea, Reynolds compared Soviet sea power to Japan’s World War II naval strategy:
“The Soviet Union is a continental power in every sense of the term— geographic, political, economic, strategic—and yet for the past two decades it has produced a navy of awesome proportions. In looking for possible historical parallels against which to measure Soviet intentions and capabilities at sea, analysts have only to study the example of the Japanese Empire. . . . Historians have tended to regard Imperial Japan as having been a maritime state. Nothing could be further from the truth.”
Readers need not waste effort wading through idle, drifting rhetoric in Reynolds’s work. It just isn’t there. For example, after describing the April 1945 sinking of the Japanese battleship Yamato, then the largest battleship in the world, Reynolds resisted the obvious temptation to wax on for pages about the geopolitical, social, and historic significance of such an event. He instead dusted off any pretext of pretentiousness and set down this final analysis:
“It was ‘The Fighting Lady’s’ finest hour, and the ship’s company showed its appreciation to the torpedo air crews. Eight crewmen were brought into a mess deck where hash was being served for dinner ... the cooks served [them] steak. . . . Then all hands settled down to await an expected night kamikaze attack, and the war went on. But it was over for the Yamato and for the aerial torpedo, as well.” (See “Taps for the Torpecker,” Proceedings, December 1986, pages 55-61.)
Nonetheless, Reynolds takes issue with the notion that facts and clear writing are enough for the average reader to become a judge of history. He explains: “I do not believe the average reader is capable of judging the evidence adequately. He is an amateur who turns to historians to educate him. A well-trained historian must be relentless in uncovering all the pertinent evidence of his subject. Once he has assembled it, he must make sense of it. He is trained to do that. . . find patterns, see options, make judgments. Taking a position, making a conclusion is hardly bias.”
Thus, he describes himself as a “herodotian” after Herodotus, the Grecian philosopher who believed that facts do not speak for themselves, but require interpretation. He admits this approach “clashes with many historians, especially naval historians, who follow the Thucydides approach of writing ‘official’ or straight narrative historical accounts.”
Reynolds’s beliefs thus tend to attract controversy along the way. On one occasion in 1968, while driving the great historian Samuel Eliot Morison to his summer place. Reynolds “tested some ideas on him.” Reynolds’s colleague, Ronald Banks, was also in the car. Morison later commented, “I had a nice talk with Professor Banks, but argued with Reynolds the whole way!”
Amidst Reynolds’s iconoclastic style, there remains an unmistakable sense of the traditional, based upon personal tenets of “excellence, self-discipline, and integrity.” The controversial elements of his character and writing probably result from years of treading between the need to be accepted by his peers and the need to maintain the integrity of history as he sees it, regardless of its impact on the accepted view.
This synthesis of iconoclasm, tradition, and the controversial composes a complex image of Reynolds. He sees two sides to his own personality. In public, he describes himself as gregarious, an avid baseball fan, and music lover. In private, he is “bookish,” areaderand writer who allows humor to “slip into his publications.” Professionally, Reynolds views himself as a thorough scholar, serious about his research and committed to interpreting the evidence. Others may detect a sense of self-assured contentiousness in him, the mention of which makes Reynolds cringe, but not altogether deny.
Reynolds teaches two “pet courses” at the College of Charleston, which, perhaps, reveal the essential elements of his historical perspective. One, “Strategic History of the United States,” comprises his microscopic view of history, as seen through a “telephoto lens.” This course reflects the composite Ropp and Rosinski influence. It relates to Reynolds’s primary goal of educating decision makers about the realities of strategic options, power, and the positive influences over the use of organized force.
Reynolds’s second course, “The Cosmos in History,” views history through a “wide-angle lens” as a grand, cosmological undertaking that, like the ebb and flow of power, is another key continuum in the total human experience. Reynolds fears that the world’s great powers share a tunnel vision that could well destroy the human race. Thus, in Reynolds’s macroscopic approach, history is not merely storytelling, but represents a complete understanding—“a comprehension possible to the race at large.”
Reynolds admits that his interpretation of history is colored by his sense of fair play, integrity, and excellence—values that “enhance the human condition.” He is inspired by individual achievements and the ability to overcome adversity. He holds drugs as the number-one enemy of society; “communism,” he says, “is a poor second as a clear and present danger.” And to the causes of war and suffering, Reynolds attributes “poverty, ignorance, pomposity, and sham—not armies and navies.”
Reynolds finds his position at the college a congenial academic environment in which to expand his professional image beyond that of a naval historian. He aspires to a reputation of a historian who studies not just the “complex and sophisticated” history of oceangoing navies, but something much broader on the total scale of human enterprise. Reynolds, through his courses, is reaching toward the same frontiers as the seafaring nations of history: toward the new ocean of space and the ships of the future that will sail her vast regions.
The consummate academician, Reynolds admonishes his students to do their own work. In the course syllabus of “The Cosmos in History,” he writes: “Comprehension of the cosmos has always been the province of individuals rather than groups, the latter offering false security instead of personal freedom.” Herein lies the final truth: like history, “truth" awaits definition by a master of lessons from the past, shaped by a time yet to come. But that has always been Reynolds’s dominion: the sweep of human power set against the endless panorama of the cosmos.
