Robert C. Stern > Quotes

“Overall, one gets the impression of a commander who was unsure of himself and consequently inconsistent. In other words, just about the worst kind of commander imaginable, although one blessed with uncanny luck.”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“Nonetheless, it is reasonable to conclude that Fletcher did not lose the Battle of the Coral Sea at the tactical level, despite Morison’s judgment to the contrary, because he was sufficiently cautious most of the time and sufficiently lucky when he was not. Hardly a glamorous way to win a battle, but victory has never been a beauty contest.”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“The Bombing Two Dauntlesses were launched with 12 percent less than maximum fuel, which would have critical impact later in the morning.”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“Readers used to modern solid-state electronic devices must remember that radars, like all WWII-era electronics, were made of wired circuit boards connecting dozens of vacuum tubes. Under the best of circumstances, these tubes had an MTBF (mean time between failure) measured in days, if not hours. To make things worse, physical shock could cause the failure of a tube or loosen one in its socket, requiring every tube to be examined and reseated. The maintenance of these devices in battle required as much luck as skill.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“the MO Operation presented a golden opportunity, the chance to catch half of America’s carrier strength with all of Japan’s.”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“Her awards included not only honors from the US Navy – a Presidential Unit Citation, a Navy Unit Commendation and 20 battle stars for her flag – but also a rare honor from the Royal Navy. She became, when she stopped at Southampton in November 1945, the only non-Royal Navy warship ever awarded an Admiralty Pennant.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“This linkage of goals was one reason why Fletcher and TF17 can rightly be said to have won the Battle of the Coral Sea. The Allied commanders simply had more achievable goals. But also, they made fewer mistakes (or at least got caught making fewer mistakes).”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“The Japanese were aware that there was a tendency among these young men to close their eyes just before the crash, a very human reaction to the situation. They were repeatedly exhorted to keep their eyes open and to continue aiming their aircraft to the last moment. It is impossible to forget that these were very young men on both sides of this story.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“Several of Fletcher’s subordinates thought that the admiral had perhaps lost his composure under the pressure of the last few days.”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“The implication, in the minds of some, was that it certainly appeared that Fletcher wanted to be sure someone else was in change when the fatal blow struck his task force.”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“Burch’s description is a masterpiece of understatement: “As you go up to high altitudes, as you should be able to do, the glass becomes very cold. Then, if you come down through a layer of warm air with any moisture in it at all, the windshield, sight and everything fogs up. It’s like putting a white sheet in front of you and you have to bomb from memory. If you start down, watching anti-aircraft fire, with your sight well fixed, and then hit 8,000 feet and somebody puts a sheet in front of you, you feel sort of bad about it. You try to stick your head out over the side of the cockpit, and aim down the side at the target ship. That’s not very accurate bombing.”
― Robert C. Stern, Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea

“The writers of these reports used typewriters and carbon paper, making the correction of mistakes difficult, and they were often better at fighting their ships than writing reports, so there are a good many misspellings and grammatical errors in these pages.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“To the Japanese, this was not only a reasonable rate of exchange, it was the basis for a sustainable campaign, one that would bring better results than any other available tactic.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“The importance of ships employing these optimum tactics is illustrated by the fact that only 29 percent of the dives on ships using the proper tactics, as defined above, were successful whereas 47 percent of the dives were successful on ships using other than these tactics.14”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat

“The kamikaze pilots had forced the Allies to pay a much higher price than they might have otherwise paid to retake the Philippines, but they did not buy the Emperor or the Japanese one moment of relief from the relentless Allied advance.”
― Robert C. Stern, Fire From the Sky: Surviving the Kamikaze Threat