WWII at Sea
Channel: U.S. Naval Institute
Date: 2023-01-05

This discussion was recorded on 1 December 2022 at the Jack C. Taylor Conference.

Moderator: Craig Symonds Professor of History Emeritus at the United States Naval Academy, where he taught for thirty years and served as Department Chair.  From 2017 to 2020 he was the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History at the U.S. Naval War College.  He is the author of seventeen books, and winner of the Lincoln Prize, the Roosevelt Prize, the Morison Prize, the Barondess Prize and the Dudley Knox Medal for Lifetime Achievement.    

Panelists:

Thomas J. Cutler has been serving the U.S. Navy in various capacities for more than fifty years, including an in-country combat tour in Viet Nam and sea duty in cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and patrol craft. A former faculty member in both the Seamanship & Navigation and History Departments at the U.S. Naval Academy, he currently holds the U.S. Naval Institute’s Gordon England Chair of Professional Naval Literature and is a Fleet Professor of Strategy and Policy with the Naval War College. He is the author of many articles and books, including A Sailor’s History of the U.S. Navy; The Battle of Leyte Gulf; Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam; and The Battle of Leyte Gulf at 75: A Retrospective.   

Trent Hone, an authority on the U.S. Navy of the early twentieth century and a leader in the application of complex science to organizational design. Mr. Hone regularly writes and speaks about leadership, organizational learning, and naval history. His most recent book is Mastering the Art of Command: Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and Victory in the Pacific.    

Paul Stillwell, an independent historian and retired naval officer. He worked for thirty years at the U.S. Naval Institute as an oral historian and editor of Naval History magazine. He is the author or editor of a dozen books, including four on battleships and an award-winning volume on the Navy's first African American officers, The Golden Thirteen. His most recent book is Battleship Commander: The Life of Vice Admiral Willis A. Lee Jr., which received the John Lyman Book Award.