Cutler

Thomas J. Cutler is a retired lieutenant commander and former gunner’s mate second class who served in patrol craft, cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft carriers. His varied assignments included an in-country Vietnam tour, small-craft command, and nine years at the U.S. Naval Academy, where he served as Executive Assistant to the Chairman of the Seamanship & Navigation Department and Associate Chairman of the History Department. Winner of the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Naval Literature, the U.S. Naval Institute Press Author of the Year, and the Commodore Dudley W. Knox Naval History Lifetime Achievement Award, his published works include The Battle of Leyte Gulf and Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal & Riverine Warfare in Vietnam

Articles by Thomas Cutler

Jim and Taimi Leavelle at Pearl Harbor, the site of Jim’s first brush with history in 1941. Two decades later, as a detective with the Dallas Police Department, he would be witness to another momentous event in the nation’s history.

Jim Leavelle—Fate Knocks Twice

By Lieutenant Commander Thomas Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
February 2025
When Jim Leavelle left the destroyer USS Hammann (DD-412) in spring 1941 and reported to his new assignment, he expected a quiet tour of duty...
Civilians laden with their earthly possessions flee their homes and make for the landing beaches to be transported from the Communist-bombed Dachen Islands to Formosa (Taiwan) by the U.S. Seventh Fleet, 7 February 1955. Right: Chinese Nationalist soldiers load ammo aboard the USS Ford County (LST-772) as evacuation operations continue.

Crisis in the Taiwan Strait

By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
December 2024
It was the opening round of a struggle that continues to this day—and may yet end in superpower conflict. Here is how it all started.
Admiral Evans and President Theodore Roosevelt on board Roosevelt’s yacht, the Mayflower. On Evans’ death in 1912, Roosevelt proclaimed the Navy had never had a man “who more thoroughly and joyously welcomed a fight.”

Fighting Bob Evans

By Lieutenant Commander Thomas Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
August 2024
“Even the American Navy, fertile though it has been in gallant fighting men, has never had any man who more thoroughly and joyously welcomed a fight.”
The American Frigate Chesapeake. NHHC

Growing Pains for the U.S. Navy: The War of 1812

By Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S. Navy (Retired)
April 2024
Just 30 years after the official end of the American Revolution, the British and the Americans again went to war—and this time the stakes were not about independence, but national ...

Books by Thomas Cutler