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1988 Nominating Committee
The Board of Control has appointed the following Nominating Committee for the 1988 election of Naval Institute officers and directors:
Chairman: Vice Admiral Joseph Metcalf HI, U. S. Navy Member: Rear Admiral John S.
Disher, U. S. Navy Member: Captain William D. Hahn, U. S. Navy
Recorder: Lieutenant Commander Rusty Acree, U. S. Navy Regarding eligibility, Article VIII, Section 2, of the Constitution and ByLaws provides that “Only Regular Members and Regular Life Members of the Institute who are regular officers on the active list of the U. S. Navy, Marine
Corps, and Coast Guard shall be eligible for election to the offices of President, Vice President, and Director of the Naval Institute.”
The Nominating Committee will present its slate of nominees to the Board of Control in September. The Constitution and By-Laws, Article VIII, Section 1, also provides that “Additional nominations may be made by members so desiring, provided that requests therefor shall be signed by twenty-five (25) Regular Members in good standing.” Nominations should be mailed to the Executive Director, U. S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD 21402, to arrive prior to 1 September 1987.
of the Grumman Albatross and Martin Marlin, as well as flying boats manufactured in Britain, Canada, Italy, Japan, France, and the Soviet Union. With more than 200 photographs and a special section on the future of this intriguing type of aircraft, the book is an important addition to the Naval Institute Press’s extensive collection of aviation titles, including such other new books as Lockheed Aircraft since 1913 and Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War by Rene J. Francillon, DeHavilland Aircraft since 1909 by A. J- Jackson, and the phenomenally successful Fighter Combat by Robert L. Shaw. In October yet another book will be added to our aviation list: Modern Combat Aircraft Design by Klaus Hiinecke.
The five warriors on the stage had an unusual backdrop: a huge American flag with thick stripes of rich red and pure white, and a star-spangled rectangle of deep blue that could be measured in square yards. At the Naval Air Station theater in Pensacola, Florida, the scene reminded one of the panelists—Admiral Wes McDonald, U. S. Navy (Retired)—of the motion picture Patton.
With Admiral McDonald, who served as a task group commander in the final stages of the Vietnam War, were two other retired naval leaders from that war: Admiral Thomas Moorer, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), and Admiral M. F. Weisner, who was Commander Seventh Fleet at the end of the war. They were joined by Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn, who commanded Attack Squadron 146 and is currently the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air Warfare. All had been invited by the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation and the Naval Institute to participate in the 8 May morning session devoted to lessons learned in the air war over Vietnam. Captain Stuart Fitrell, U. S. Navy, a veteran of more than 200 combat missions in Vietnam and currently a member of the Naval Institute’s Board of Control, served as moderator.
Admiral Moorer spoke forcefully in an Alabama accent: “No man in his right mind would conduct a war like the Vietnam War. ... I didn’t feel that I learned anything; I already knew what not to do, and that’s what we were doing.” He said that when he discovered that he was going to become chairman of the JCS he went to see General Earl Wheeler, the incumbent, and found him in a depressed mood because none of the recommendations of the JCS had been followed. The general told Moorer: “You’ll never survive.”
Admiral Moorer did survive, of course, and after observing and participating in decision-making at the highest levels concluded that, with our system of government, “it’s very, very difficult to fight a war.” He described the intense interplay among the Congress, the White House, and the media, which frequently adversely affected military decisions. “We . . . were ordered on occasion to delay an operation until after the Sunday papers in the United States went to press” because of their higher circulation, “or to commence an operation on Monday, after Time and Newsweek went to press. ...” Moorer was highly critical of the media: “They are a force in this country, to the point where I think it’s almost dangerous, and they do not appear to be interested in the security of the United States. I am convinced that many in the media do not want the Federal government to function.”
Moorer told about an early morning summons from President Richard Nixon. The night before, Moorer had helped write a new Cambodian policy. Nixon confronted Moorer and Henry Kissinger in the Rose Garden. The President was furious about an article on the front page of the New York Times that contained a verbatim transcript of the new policy that had been transmitted by top-secret, eyes-only message to the charge in Phnom Penh only hours before. Moorer had never seen the President so angry. Nixon shook his finger at Kissinger: “Don’t you ever send another State Department message on the State Department circuits!”
In response to a question from a young naval aviator, Admiral Moorer stated emphatically that the United States could have won the war earlier and without difficulty “if we’d done the same thing to Hanoi in 1965 that we did in 1972.” He pointed out that “what we did was to let the same number of people in two counties in one state—that’s Orange and Los Angeles counties—destroy the image of our country, make us lose over 50,000 of our finest young men, and spend billions . . . and we could have polished those clowns off in six months.”
Admiral Weisner minced no words either: “I think we knew how to fight the war. I think we knew how to win the war, had we not been micromanaged from . . . Washington.” He said that the North Vietnamese took advantage of the numerous cease-fires “to restock, rebuild, resupply, and repair their transportation network.” The restrictive rules of engagement that the U. S. forces were obliged to follow blunted their troops’ effectiveness: “Once you pay the price to get into a target area, you want to go in and stomp around and do some damage. . . . But we weren’t permitted to go back the second or third time,” after the Vietnamese had expended most or all of their ammunition.
Weisner believed that communications was a big problem because the high frequency system was unreliable. Later in the war overclassification of messages impeded communications. For example, on the Seventh Fleet staff the number of top-secret special-category messages increased from 250 in all of 1970 to 4500 in the first six months of 1972.
Admiral Weisner maintained that if there is one lesson our nation’s leadership should learn from the Vietnam War, it is this: “Don’t enter a conflict unless you’ve got the will to win.”
Admiral McDonald, who led the first naval air strike on North Vietnam in 1964, agreed that this was the most important lesson of the war. McDonald observed that in spite of the many frustrations endured by those fighting the naval air war, “across the board, morale was high.” He believed that the wives at home did a great deal to keep morale up even though they lived in an environment of criticism. McDonald paid tribute to enlisted men as well: “We can fly the airplanes, and we can deliver the weapons, but there isn’t anything moving in the Navy today without those white hats [who] really are the basis of our Navy.”
Admiral Dunn described his perspective of the war as that of an XO and CO of an attack squadron. To show how a lesson was learned, Dunn explained that the Navy found out in Vietnam that the established tactic of going in low and popping up with a weapon-laden A-4 didn’t work well because its slow speed in the climb made it vulnerable to many kinds of arms. So a new tactic emerged: going in high—high enough to evade most antiaircraft fire and avoid surface-to-air missiles. The larger lesson is that “you must be flexible, you must plan for, and you must train and practice a variety of delivery methods, a variety of navigation methods, using a variety of weapons.”
Elaborating on a point made by Admiral Weisner, Dunn said that during two cruises he and his pilots were frustrated at only once being allowed to employ the practice of “rollback,” which is launching strikes again and again at a target until its defenders run out of ammunition. Rollback was used against Vinh, where “the first few strikes in took their share of AAA and SAMs fired at them; but by the end of the day ... we could get into the racetrack pattern and do what we wanted. We must remember that lesson.”
Dunn concluded by saying that any lessons learned should not be taken as pure gospel because the Vietnam War was special in many ways. For example, “We didn’t have to worry about control of the air over the Gulf of Tonkin . . • we didn’t have to defend the carriers or defend ourselves. That’s not so today. As we prepare to go and carry out the missions of the Navy in naval aviation . . . our principal effort is to control the air over the sea and over the land controlled by sea power. ...”
The speaker at a luncheon for seminar participants and attendees was Rear Admiral Edward Hogan, Chief of Legislative Affairs for the U. S. Navy. Using slides, Hogan showed how the Navy has achieved recent success in representing its programs to the Congress despite a tough budgetary climate. At that evening’s banquet the keynote speaker was Admiral Dunn, who reported on the high state of readiness of naval aviation today and the excellent morale of its men and women.
The Code of Conduct
“It’s a Little Piece of America”
The Code of Conduct was the subject for discussion in the afternoon session. Moderator Colonel Hays Parks, USMCR, who is chief of international law in the Office of the Judge Advocate General of the Army, explained that the Code of Conduct, promulgated by Executive Order on 17 August 1955, was a direct result of the experiences of the POWs during the Korean War. He said that there has been considerable confusion about the Code since then. Is it a rigid code, or is it a general ethical guide? Is the violation of the Code a criminal offense? Can an individual exist on the Code alone? Four former POWs were ready to provide the answers.
The best known of the panelists, all retired naval officers, was Admiral James B. Stockdale. He was one of the earliest POWs taken during the Vietnam War and the highest ranking naval officer held captive. With his wife, Sybil, he wrote In
Love and War, the story of his experiences as a POW, and Sybil’s efforts to get the best possible treatment for the POWs and to win their release. Also known to many was Captain Dick Stratton, who was a POW from 1967 to 1973 and the subject of a book by Scott Blakely called Prisoner at War. These men were joined by Commander Paul Galanti, who was shot down in 1966 and held captive for seven years, and Captain John W. Thornton, who was taken prisoner by North Korean forces in 1951 and not released until 1953. Thornton is the author of Believed To Be Alive, an account of his captivity in Korea.
Captain Thornton described himself and his fellow POWs as guinea pigs. “We were the first to face the communists in the battle for the minds of men. How I wish we had a code .... we would have had a goal to shoot for.” He said the Code came into being because “the American fighting men who survived the North Koreans’ pounding and clubbing
came home and strongly recommended [it].”
Commander Galanti blamed former Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara for the micromanagement of the Vietnam War and for poor leadership. But Galanti found outstanding leadership in the Hanoi Hilton. ‘‘I spent almost a year in solitary confinement, and there was only a one-week period where I didn’t have contact with at least one American who hung it out with the possibility of really getting hammered trying to communicate with me and keep my spirit up.” Without exception the senior man took charge as prescribed by the Code. “There was no way [the North Vietnamese] were going to get me down when Stockdale and Denton, Mulligan, [and] Bill Lawrence were taking it much worse than we were.” Galanti said that he and his fellow POWs regarded the Code of Conduct as their Constitution. They were also guided by a bylaw devised by Jim Stockdale: BACK US. “We lived by that; we were ready to die for it.”
Captain Stratton excoriated Robert McNamara for testifying during the trial of Army General William Westmoreland that he had known in 1966 that the U. S. could not and would not win the Vietnam War. “Yet [he] sent me over there . . .
I maintain that if he knew that, the only honorable thing to do would be to stand up, be counted, resign, and let somebody in there who felt that [he] could win it or end it.”
How should the Code be read? According to Stratton, you read it like the Ten Commandments. “It’s a goal you strive for, no matter how many times you screw up. The virtue is in trying. . . . ” It’s not like a dogfight between fighter aircraft “where there’s no virtue in anything but the kill.” Stratton held that the basic premise of the Code is simple: be loyal to your shipmates. In his opinion, the best part of the Code is: “If I’m senior, I'll take charge; if I’m junior, I’ll obey.” He maintained that the Code is binding morally and legally because “it’s part of our code of ethics as warriors. And because the Uniform Code of Military Justice has articles that can back it up. . . . ”
Admiral Stockdale, who holds the Medal of Honor, was a charismatic figure who was accorded the highest respect by his fellow panelists. He spoke conversationally, seemingly relaxed; that he felt deeply about what he was saying was evident from the color that frequently filled his face and contrasted sharply with his thick, white hair.
“It’s a little piece of America,” said Stockdale of the Code. What is its core? “If I am senior, I will take charge, and if I’m not, I will back up the boss, and I’ll keep the faith. I’ll bring nobody any harm.” He asserted that the Code fulfills natural, honorable instincts. “It represents the kind of behavior that I would expect from any good American boy: that he will stick with his own and not accept favors from a captor.”
Admiral Stockdale has encountered misunderstanding of the Code in high places. Some years ago he wrote a letter, published in Newsweek, in which he criticized Ambassador Averell Harriman for his policy of keeping from the American people what the POWs were enduring in North Vietnam. Stockdale recalled that he probably said in this letter that he had “six or eight dead friends for [Harriman’s] statesmanship.” He said that a few months after the letter was published, he received a long letter from William Bundy, who had worked for Harriman during the Johnson administration. Bundy felt that Stockdale was misguided in taking exception to what his former boss was up to. According to.Stockdale, Bundy said, “We were afraid to put anything in the newspapers that would offend the North Vietnamese for fear that they would cease giving amnesty to those few prisoners that were able to come out, and we wanted to get more data so that we could back up what intelligence we had.” Bundy went on to say, “The reason we didn’t do what you so arrogantly demand is because we hoped that there would be some more of these people [who] would receive the benevolent, humane treatment of the North Vietnamese.” But Stockdale and his fellow POWs had devoted their lives to following the Code of Conduct and not accepting favors from the enemy. They had, in fact, tried to shut off the supply of POWs who did. With frustration in his voice, Stockdale said, “That’s a disconnect. . . . There are more.”
Stockdale told of a senior military officer who in 1968 made a false confession to help secure the release of the Pueblo crew, and was complimented for this by the President. “You know, I was sitting in a prison with almost everybody in leg irons for refusal to make false confessions. I’m not giving you sorehead stuff, but there is such a disconnect when you talk about what this code entails.”
The admiral referred to a recent article in Parade magazine about the movie Hanoi Hilton, in which the author said,
“The vast majority of Americans while in prison followed the Code of Conduct, which precludes giving more than one’s name, rank, serial number, and date of birth. Only after being tortured did they ‘break’ and allow themselves to say more.” The Code does not prohibit a POW from talking with his guards and interrogators. Some POWs who had conversed with their captors did not understand this and were filled with guilt, sometimes with tragic consequences. Stockdale said that for many POWs “fear and guilt are the pincer movement that really takes the heart out of you in a political prison.” Torture and isolation act as accelerators.
Colonel Parks quoted from a JCS memorandum drafted to answer the question: Does the Code of Conduct apply to milt' tary personnel being held in Tehran? Yes. “All U. S. military are subject to being taken hostage under circumstances short of war. In such situations, the conduct of military personnel will be guided by the Code of Conduct.” The memorandum went on to provide a succinct, general description of the Code: The Code of Conduct is a moral standard toward which the U. S. fighting man should strive. Its spirit and intent embody the basic values of the military profession— patriotism, loyalty, obedience, and deep moral conviction.
The Code’s goal, survival with self-respect and honor, is universal and eternal. . . . It is not a means for judgment, nor a vehicle for enforcement, but serves as a guide to help the U. S. fighting man survive captivity with honor and dignity.
It had not been a day marked by intense debate and sharp disagreements among panelists holding opposing views.
Rather, it had been a day for naval leaders and heroes of the Korean and Vietnam wars to say what they did and what they believe in, then as now. Certainly there were those in the audience who wondered how to pay homage to a man held prisoner and tortured by the North Koreans more than three decades ago—a man who lived by the spirit of the Code of Conduct before it was written. Surely no one who had heard the former POWs in Vietnam tell how they had kept the faith and consecrated their little piece of America failed to feel stirrings of pride and respect and awe. These men, who spoke before a great American flag that under the lights seemed to glow of its own accord, fairly glowed themselves with honor and valor given to a war that was hardly worthy of them, and to another almost forgotten. —T. F. Epley
A transcript of the seminar is available for $10.00 by writing to the USNI Membership Department or by calling (301) 268-6110 in Maryland or 1-800-233-USNI from other states-