Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy

Fall From Glory: The Men Who Sank the U.S. Navy by Gregory L. Vistica, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995, pp. 447.

Reviewed by Robert C. Whitten, Commander, U.S. Naval Reserve-Retired and Research Scientist, NASA-Retired

The U.S. Navy has fallen on hard times. Part of the decline has been caused by drastic reductions in defense appropriations, but most of it has resulted from a series of self-inflicted wounds including the suicide of its top officer, Admiral Jeremy "Mike" Boorda. How did this situation come to strike the Navy? Vistica attempts to fathom the reasons by focusing on two themes: the alleged folly of John Lehman's 600 ship fleet and corruption among the admirals. His attempt is severely constrained by this preconceived approach and marred by "advocacy journalism" and the baggage of a (partisan) political agenda. Moreover, much of the research was sloppy, leading to confusion of ship names, people's names, medals, etc. and the omission for whatever reason of an agregious error by a U.S. naval unit that nearly led to the destruction of an allied ship. Evidently haste, perhaps a desire to get it out well before the 1996 election, was a major driving force in the publication.

Before delving into the recent history of the Navy it is worthwhile to look at its present state. The Navy, like the other services (except the Coast Guard) is looking for a mission. Also like the other services, its morale is weaker than it was ten years ago; however, the Navy is unique in this respect because the morale of a critical branch, its aviators, is much lower. The ships, it is true, are in superb condition, partly because of former Secretary of the Navy John Lehman's goal of a 600 ship fleet, and partly because of a well-run Ship Systems Command.

Vistica challenges the whole idea of a strong U.S. fleet as a deterrent to an adventurous Soviet leadership intent on subduing this nation on the high seas. He begins with a citation of a retired naval officer, Robert Herrick, who, the author claims, proved that far from being a threat to the U.S., the Soviet fleet was strictly defensive in nature. Apparently, he read Herrick selectively, for the latter's 1989 book (Soviet Naval Theory and Practice: Gorshkov'sInheritance) published by an "obscure publishing house" ( the U.S. Naval Institute Press -- of that, more later), demonstrated that Soviet naval doctrine alternated between "Mahanist" (offensive) and coast defense, depending on the economic condition of the Soviet Union and the whims of Stalin prior to 1953, and on the availability of resources later. Khrushchev tried to reign in the Soviet armed forces but was forced from office partly as a result. Following Brezhnev's consolidation of power, he gave Admiral Sergei G. Gorshkov, Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Navy, nearly everything he asked for. Indeed, current estimates of the defense fraction of the Soviet Gross Domestic Product range from a low of 25 percent to as much as 1/3. This range is significant because it is an indicator of the stress placed upon Soviet society by the demands of the armed forces. In any case, the statement that the Navy was entirely defensive flies in the face of Soviet military philosophy which was always based on the offensive, mainly for purposes of intimidation.

The author implies that the strength of the U.S. Navy in 1981 was more than adequate and needed little if any additional funding. Nothing could be further from the truth. Magazines were nearly empty, equipment was failing for want of maintenance, and skilled personnel were leaving in droves.

Indeed, ships could not get underway because of the aforesaid problems. Moreover, the shipbuilding program of the 1970's was inadequate to maintain even a 300 ship Navy. When Reagan entered office he set a high priority on remedying the situation and, as we now know, bringing the Soviet Union to its knees. Enter John Lehman, appointed by Ronald Reagan to be the Secretary of the Navy at age 38.

The new Secretary did not get along at all with the-then Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward. Despite the mutual dislike, however, Lehman was not shy about taking over ideas from the Hayward team, in particular the beginnings of the "Maritime Strategy" for attacking the flanks of the Soviet homeland in case of war. As fully developed, this doctrine called for conventional assaults by carrier aircraft in the Soviet Northern Fleet and its supporting installations on the Kola Peninsula. That it would it have worked in practice was most unlikely -- in the event of war the Soviets would have almost certainly "gone nuclear" and all the destruction of a nuclear exchange would have overtaken it. However, there is little doubt that it played a role (one among many) in the Soviet decision to try to reform the Communist system. In this respect, and assuming that one applauds the collapse of the Soviet Empire, it was something of a success, albeit indirectly and in a limited way.

Lehman began his stewardship by attempting to place his own people in key billets among the flag officers, "the admiralty," as Vistica quaintly puts it. He enjoyed considerable success, especially by backing Admiral James A. "Ace" Lyons first as Commander, Second Fleet (Atlantic) and later as Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet. Lyons, a surface officer, was an agressive man with an air of bombast (at least that was my own impression of the man on the two occasions when I met him). Despite his pomposity and crudity, Lyons seems to have been a war fighter. Indeed, Vistica was aghast as the two well-planned and executed maneuvers of first the Second Fleet off the coast of northern Norway and later the Third Fleet (Pacific) off the coast of Kamchatka. Both exercises caught the Soviets by surpise and elicited strong complaints from them. Vistica puts the exercises down as mindless provocations, but were they? They seem to have had the desired effect.

Lehman's legacy to the Navy is a mixed bag. Despite using threats of contract cancellation, he never succeeded in solving the aircraft development and procurement problem that had its roots in the early to mid-1970's. After threateningto cancel the short range MacDonnell Douglas F/A-18 (fleet air defense fighter and light attack bomber), he backed down. The A-12 program which was intended to provide the fleet with a high performance medium range stealth bomber proved to be a complete fiasco with billions of dollars in public funds wasted. Vistica's discussion of the A12 fiasco is disappointing; one must turn elsewhere (e.g., retired Air Force Colonel James Burton's The Pentagon Wars [U.S. Naval Institute, 1993]) for an adequate, if brief, treatment of what actually occurred. But perhaps the worst aspect of Lehman's reign on the Navy's quarterdeck was his unwillingness to suppress the rowdiness and lewd behavior of the Navy's aviators. In fact, he encouraged it.

Naval aviators have always been an arrogant group, but it was only with the "sexual revolution" of the 1960's that their behavior became a real liability to the Navy. While destruction of hotel property, drunkenness and sexual orgies at their "Tailhook" conventions became an annual ritual, everyday behavior at their of ficers' clubs seems to have been no better. The 1991 Tailhook Convention in Las Vegas brought the matter to a head when one of the women, herself a willing participant in most of the action, charged the Navy with condoning sexual harrassment. A disgruntled Navy commander took the trouble to inform the author and "the cat was out of the bag." The aftermath of the ill-fated convention has seen the legislative barring of women from combat repealed and the assignment of women to forward-deployed combat ships with considerably less than success. The recent record of female sailors could have been predicted from the experience of the crew of USS Acadia (aka "Love Boat"), a destroyer tender. While deployed in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, some 38 females became pregnant, a "failure of leadership" according to Vistica. However, the calls of mother nature, perhaps coupled with a desire to escape an undesirable duty assignment seems much more reasonable and consistent with the recent experience with female troops in Bosnia.

Vistica makes much of the "failure of leadership," especially his indictment of "the admiralty." Certainly much of the senior leadership is open to criticism, principally the aviator flag officers who are responsible for permitting "Tailhook" to take place at all, the failure of the A-12 program, and the impending failure of carrier aviation. However, he lumps all of the admirals together with no distinction of the records of submarine and surface flag officers. In fact, the tendency of the admirals to "circle the wagons" whenever confronted with a public relationsproblem is symptomatic of all elites as described by Vilfredo Pareto a century ago. Such a tendency can be seen in the other armed forces and indeed, in other agencies (e.g., the FBI's cover-up of the WACO distaster and "Filegate") as well as the judiciary, business and academia. With respect to the "Tailhook" investigations, the author implies that the failure to obtain criminal convictions was caused by Navy laxity. He conveniently ignores the efforts by the Department of Defense Inspector General to bring the culprits to justice through actions that violated constitutional protections and treated truth with contempt.

As in the case of the A-12, Vistica alludes to to the turret explosion in the battleship USS Iowa but never seriously develops the dereliction of Navy brass. Turret explosions seem to have occurred about every fifty years, the last in USS Mississippi in 1944. However, Vistica's primary interest in this instance seems to lay in discrediting reactivation of the battleships (which the marines love because of their firepower on landing beaches), not leadership failure. He also inevitably brings up the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by USS Vincennes in 1988. Fair enough, but incredibly he misses the near destruction of the Turkish destroyer Mauvenet and the killing of her commanding officer and four crewmen by a missile accidentally fired by the carrier USS Saratoga on October 1, 1992 during operations in the Adriatic. The Vincennes incident involved a decision which the commanding officer had to make regarding a perceived threat within a few seconds whereas there was no threat at all in the case of Saratoga! Yet Vistica missed it entirely.

My criticism would not be complete without mentioning Vistica's annoying habit of putting words in the mouths of his characters. Neither he nor his protagonists could know at the time of writing exactly what was said on a given occasion (unless the conversation was, highly improbably, recorded). The authors of other books about recent events that I have reviewed (Burton's The Pentagon Wars and Gordon and Traynor's The Generals' War) did not find it necessary to use this style and I cannot understand what Vistica hoped to gain from it except perhaps "padding" for his book. An additional irritation stems from his use of innuendo, e.g. citing the U.S. Naval Institute Press as "obscure" (it is one of the most prestigious military presses in the world) and its parent, the U.S. Naval Institute, as "quasi-government"whereas it is as independent of the dominant elite as any other professional society with which I am familiar (e.g., the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the American Physical Society).

The U.S. Navy, while not sunk," is certainly open to severe criticism. Unfortunately, Vistica, a reporter first for the San Diego Union-Tribune and later for newsweek with at best a very limited understanding of the issues, was not the person to do it and it remains to be written.

Copyright Dr. George Kourvetaris Summer 1997
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