Military buzzwords come and go, but much of the art of war, or rather, the art of preparing for war, remains the same. One ubiquitous term being tossed about currently is “transformation,” a state of military evolution under the direction of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Mere mention of the word elicits various responses—“shock and awe” from its disciples; glazed-over groans from those who contend at least some of it is simply not new. In fact, one need turn back only a century to find soon-to-be-famous “transformers” touting technological innovations in warfare and politicians searching for any means to sell the importance of sea power to a skeptical populace.
With that in mind, this issue features a special section dealing with military transformation at the turn of the 20th century. First, a U.S. Naval Academy history professor and a recent graduate team to recount the slightly sordid saga of the reincarnation of John Paul Jones as a national hero and his falsely attributed “Qualifications of a Naval Officer”—a move calculated to win support for President Theodore Roosevelt's military transformation plan. Next, in a skillfully written encapsulation of scholarship on the subject, a military intelligence liaison officer takes us across the Atlantic to Britain, where Winston Churchill and Jackie Fisher were championing a transformation of their own. And finally, military strategist retired Navy Captain Wayne Hughes pays homage to one of the top U.S. naval transformers of the early 1900s, Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske.
Each of these pieces sets the stage for something the U.S. Naval Institute, Naval History's parent organization, has rarely done: an entire seminar devoted to naval history cohosted with the Naval Historical Center, the Naval Historical Foundation, the Marine Corps History and Museums Division, the Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, the Naval Order of the United States, and the CNA Corporation Center for Strategic Studies. For details on this event, see the ad on the facing page.
As we were making final preparations for this issue, we had a bit of a scoop fall into our editorial laps. Long-time Naval History contributor Bill Bleyer, a reporter for Newsday, told us about a new painting by popular Civil War artist Mort Künstler, a rendering of the final embarkation of the crew of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley. As Bleyer tells it, this painting will be different from any previous artwork on the subject, because the artist used recent forensic analysis of remains recovered from the submarine in re-creating physical features of the crewmen and the scene of their fateful last mission. A photo supplied graciously by Künstler of himself with the nearly finished painting accompanies the article.
Finally, we end something of an era in this issue by presenting the last installment in retired Navy Commander Tyrone Martin's popular “Salty Talk” series. On a happy note, Commander Martin will continue to contribute articles and book reviews to these pages, and we are in the process of proposing publication of a collection of his columns to the Naval Institute Press. Stay tuned, “Salty Talk” fans.