Henry E . Eccles Henry Effingham Eccles ( born in Bayside , New York , on December 31 , 1898 - died May 14 , 1986 in Needham , Massachusetts ) was a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy and a major figure at the Naval War College in Newport , Rhode Island from the late 1940s through the 1970s , as a thinker and writer on naval logistics and military theory . Early life and education . The son of an Episcopal priest , the Reverend George Warrington Eccles , and his wife Lydia Lawrence , he was initially educated privately at home by his parents and later sent to Trinity School in New York City , before enrolling as an undergraduate at Columbia University . After one year at Columbia , he entered the U . S . Naval Academy , graduating with the class of 1922 . Naval career . After his first assignments to battleships , Eccles attended Submarine School and served in two submarines before being ordered to Columbia University , where he earned a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1930 . He commanded two submarines , then served as Engineer and Repair Officer at the Submarine Base at New London , Connecticut ; then served for nearly three years as engineer in the heavy cruiser and two years in the Design Construction Division of the Bureau of Engineering in the Navy Department , Washington , D . C . In 1940 , he was ordered to command the destroyer on the Asiatic Station , based in the Philippines . He was in command when the Japanese simultaneously attacked Pearl Harbor as well as American and British positions in Southeast Asia on December 7 , 1941 . He and his ship participated in the battle of Badung Strait , and shortly after , while assigned to the American - British - Dutch - Australian Command ( ABDA ) , the battle of the Java Sea . Wounded in action , Eccles was later awarded the Navy Cross , the Silver Star , and The Netherlands Order of the Bronze Lion . After recovering from his wounds , Eccles served in the Base Maintenance Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in 1942 - 43 , where he helped to coordinate logistics planning for all advanced bases . After attending the command course at the Naval War College , he was promoted to captain and assigned for the final two years of the war to be the Director of the Advance Base Section , Service Force at the Headquarters of the U . S . Pacific Fleet in Hawaii . In this key position , Eccles coordinated the planning , construction , and support of advance bases in the Central Pacific , a critical aspect of the American island - hopping strategy in the war against Japan . For his service in this capacity , he received the Legion of Merit . Immediately after the conclusion of the war , the Navy Department assigned Eccles to the Joint Operations Review Board , a group of officers from all services assigned to evaluate joint operations during World War II . From that posting , he went on to command the battleship . In 1947 , the President of the Naval War College , then Admiral Raymond A . Spruance , selected Eccles to be the first Chairman of the College ’ s newly established Logistics Department , an area that Spruance and others felt had been neglected in professional naval thinking during the period between the two world wars . While in that position from 1947 to 1951 , Eccles wrote his first book , " Operational Naval Logistics " ( 1950 ) , a manual for the United States Navy that was a pioneering work on the fundamentals of his subject . He left the Naval War College in 1951 with orders to be Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics to the Commander - in - Chief , U . S . Naval Forces , Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean ( CINCNELM ) with headquarters in London and , simultaneously , Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics , to NATO ’ s Commander - in - Chief , Allied Forces Southern Europe ( CINCSOUTH ) , with headquarters in Naples , Italy . Retirement Years . Eccles retired from active duty in the Navy on June 30 , 1952 and was promoted to Rear Admiral on the retired list . Returning to his home in Newport , Rhode Island , he was closely associated with the Naval War College , where he served unofficially as a confidante and advisor to successive presidents of the College as well as an instructor for elective courses on military theory , principles of logistics , and international relations . During this period , he was also a stimulating force for the Naval War College faculty and wrote several major works . When he left Newport in 1985 to enter a retirement home in Needham , Massachusetts , the Naval War College honored him by naming its library in his honor . Henry Eccles died in Needham a year later on May 14 , 1986 .