James D. Hornfischer > Quotes

“Captain Copeland picked up the intercom mike and addressed the Roberts’s crew. That he was speaking for himself struck Ens. Jack Moore as unusual and urgent. Normally seaman Jack Roberts was the public address voice of his namesake warship. His southern drawl was all but unintelligible to anyone not acquainted with Dixie’s rhythms and diphthongs. But the skipper’s diction was as crisp as a litigator’s. He was talking fast and sounding more than a little nervous. “A large Japanese fleet has been contacted. They are fifteen miles away and headed in our direction. They are believed to have four battleships, eight cruisers, and a number of destroyers. “This will be a fight against overwhelming odds from which survival cannot be expected. We will do what damage we can.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“It has been written that so much of life is preparation, so much is routine, and so much is retrospect that the purest essence of anyone's genius contracts itself to a precious few hours.”
― James D Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Anxieties,” wrote Alfred Thayer Mahan, “are the test and penalty of greatness.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“The only thing worse than a bad idea that gets implemented is a good one that is never broached.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945

“When a ship sinks, the battlefield goes away. Currents move, thermal layers mix, and by the time the surveyors and rescuers arrive, the water that more witness to the slaughter is nowhere to be found. The dead disappear, carried under with their ruined vehicles. No wreckage remains for tacticians to study. There are no corpses for stretcher bearers to spirit away, no remains to shovel, bad, and bury. On the sea there is no place to anchor a memorial flagpole or headstone. It is a vanishing graveyard.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Naval combat offered nowhere to run, no foxholes to dive into. You had no way to know whether the next round would fall ahead of you, behind you, to the left or right, or come burning straight in, right down Lucifer’s pike. No degree of personal cleverness could fuse or deflect a shell bound in a particular sailor’s direction. Against a faster, more powerful opponent, a sailor had neither the hope to vanquish him nor the possibility to flee. The Roberts had no way out but through this enemy cruiser. There thus remained only the duty to engage it. No one shirked from that duty.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“...the experience of battle forever divides those who talk of nothing else but its prospect from those who talk of everything else but its memory.”
― James D. Hornfischer

“By any measure the mathematics of the engagement were preposterously against them. The Yamato displaced nearly seventy thousand tons. She alone matched almost exactly in weight all thirteen ships of Taffy 3. Each of her three main gun turrets weighed more than an entire Fletcher-class destroyer.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“The story, the history, of Navy men in extremis animates the idea that Americans can do anything when it is necessary and when it counts.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Kurita knew that heavenly influences could be counted upon to trump human planning. In war, events seldom cooperate with expectation. Given”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“I have to tell you, Major, if we don't get these bombs and stop this Jap fleet, they're gonna come in here and bomb the hell out of this place and maybe recapture it. Then their planes will be dropping these bombs on you. I've gotta have these bombs, sir, or we'll have a disaster on our hands.' Lupo asked who the major's superior was.

The Army officer mentioned a colonel who stationed out toward the front. 'He's out fighting a war, and I'm not going to bother him."

'Well," Lupo said, "that's just too bad." The pilot pulled out his service revolver and pointed it at the major. Then Lupo handed the pistol to his radioman, Earl Gifford, instructing the flabbergasted aircrewman to hold the Army officer at bay. Lupo climbed into the cockpit of his plane and hailed the Fanshaw Bay on the radio. His fellow pilots from VC-68 and other Taffy 3 squadrons were already inbound”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“He believed that the quality of experience one has as a member of any team depends on the caliber and motivation of the people one serves with.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945

“The sudden silence was the first thing many survivors of the Hoel, the Gambier Bay, the Samuel B. Roberts, and the Johnston noticed after their ships had been smashed and swallowed. To many, the quiet was unwelcome. The noise of battle--the roar of machinery, the shrieks and blasts of shells incoming and outbound, the shouts and screams of their buddies--had anesthetized fear. Now the noise lifted like a curtain, unveiling the hidden inner vistas of their grief and shock. When their ships sank, their duties went down with them.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“The portly Italian chief never talked much. Though he had played the royal baby at the crossing-the-line ceremony, he was the oldest man on the ship at forty-three and had little in common with boys twenty and more years his junior. Serafini was an immigrant from the Old Country whose Navy service dated to World War I. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, he had left a well-paying job in the Philadelphia Navy Yard and reenlisted despite both exceeding the age limit and his status as father of two. Serafini felt that he owed a debt of gratitude to the United States.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Oldendorf’s fleet would hold its position astride the northern end of the strait and devour Nishimura’s column like a log thrust into the business end of a U.S. Navy wood chipper.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“So many men were dead, yet the ship itself continued to live, as if animated by its own force of will.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“When they get in trouble, they send for the sons-of-bitches”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Fleet at Flood Tide: America at Total War in the Pacific, 1944-1945

“ESCORT CARRIERS HAD MANY nicknames, only a few tinged with anything resembling affection: jeep carriers, Woolworth flattops, Kaiser coffins, one-torpedo ships. Wags in the fleet deadpanned that the acronym CVE stood for the escort carrier’s three most salient characteristics: combustible, vulnerable, expendable. That most everyone seemed to get the joke—laughing in that grim, nervous way—was probably the surest sign that it was rooted in truth.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Archer kept his course toward the battleship. He opened his bomb bay doors for show, hoping to persuade the dreadnought to veer from its course. Then, as he began to pull up over the ship, Archer rolled his Avenger over on its back and took his .38-caliber service revolver from its holster. Running on anger born of pain and not a little adrenaline, he squeezed the trigger repeatedly, sending six rounds into the dark superstructure of the battleship.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Like most veterans, they would continue their lives saying that the truest heroes were the men who did not come back.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“The previous day, December 6, Sprague had upbraided his crew for their sloppy performance during an intensive series of drills. He broke with his nature and let them have it. Gathering his officers in the Tangier's wardroom, Sprague said, “We're not prepared. We can't trust the Japanese. How do you know the Japanese won't attack tomorrow?” The next morning the Combined Fleet struck.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“As Herman Wouk wrote in War and Remembrance, ‘The vision of Sprague’s three destroyers--the Johnston, the Hoel, and the Hermann--charging out of the smoke and the rain straight toward the main batteries of Kurita’s battleships and cruisers, can endure as a picture of the way Americans fight when they don’t have superiority. Our schoolchildren should know about that incident, and our enemies should ponder it.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Legend, tradition, history can drive a commitment to excellence that raises people and has them perform at a level above anything they ever dreamed they could do. And it makes all of us realize the potential that everybody has who serves for you and goes to sea on ships.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Though distrust of the Japanese was widespread in the Navy, Sprague was among the first to appreciate exactly what the Japanese might do. In June 1928 the Lexington participated in a mock surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“it was probably more dangerous to remain aboard the fuel- and explosive-laden jeep carrier than to take off and glide-bomb a Japanese capital ship. As Leonard Moser, a plane captain on the Fanshaw Bay, was changing a carburetor on a VC-68 aircraft, half a dozen pilots hovered nearby, coveting a chance to climb into that cockpit and get their tails off the ship. The aviation machinist’s mate finished the job, then climbed up into the cockpit. “What are you doing?” one of the pilots asked. “I’m going to check this damn engine out,” Moser said, “and then go find a hole to hide in.” The pilot said that he would do his own engine check this time, thank you very much. Moser stepped aside. “He got in, started it up, and took off with a cold motor. My helper didn’t even have all of the cowling on. That pilot was glad to leave.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Paul Henry Carr of Checotah, Oklahoma, proud member of the Future Farmers of America, football and baseball letterman, brother to eight sisters, only son of Thomas and Minnie Mae Carr, died there on the deck of his battered, broken warship.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“The experience helped Copeland see a certain egalitarian nobility to his crew and officers. ‘On that raft we were just forty-nine very wretched human beings, entirely dependent upon ourselves and one another in an effort to sustain life. Under those conditions it made no difference to us whether a man’s parents had been rich or poor; whether he was Catholic, Protestant, or Jew; whether his skin was black, brown, or white; or whether his ancestry was English, Spanish, Italian, or something else.’ During their second day at sea, the oil mostly dissolved and washed away from their skin, revealing those things that Copeland no longer felt mattered anymore.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“Wildcats could carry a light bomb load too. Their pilots, however, found to their dismay that the bombs could be difficult to drop: a pilot had not only to pull the bomb release but also to jerk the plane’s rudder back and forth, shaking the plane in midflight to dislodge the bombs from their notoriously sticky mountings.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“The close-up encounter with the enemy was like a throwback to another era, when sailing ships grappled and boarded one another. Even gunnery had once been conducted at such close range, yardarm to yardarm, that one ship’s men could hear the other’s shouts, prayers, songs, and pleas. The killing was more personal, but there also existed the possibility of surrender, capture, and mercy. By the middle of the twentieth century the reach of new weapons had made combat a cold, long-distance business. Warships didn’t surrender to one another any longer. Commanders were insulated from their counterparts in closed bridges, communicating by secret codes and radio frequencies. Sea warfare became thoroughly depersonalized.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour

“The victory at Leyte Gulf was the product of Allied planning, savvy, and panache, to be sure. But only Samar showed the world something else: how Americans handle having their backs pushed to the wall.”
― James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors: The Extraordinary World War II Story of the U.S. Navy's Finest Hour