CINC-HOUSE understands that the Engineering Dept. gets real cranky if it’s literary addiction, er, fuel needs are not kept up to standards. CINC-HOUSE has a standing watch alert for all items required by the Engineering Dept., as CHENG has stated that no hammers or ladders will be unstowed without proper fueling requirements.

My recommendations: “Six Frigates”, by Ian Toll, on the birth of the REAL US Navy, “The Big E”, the terrific wartime story of the first Enterprise (the carrier!), “Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors”, the story of the Battle of Samar, and “On Yankee Station”, the story of US Naval Aviation during the Viet Nam War. I burn back through them once a year just to get different takes and how it relates back to todays Navy. “Six Frigates” is especially good because after you read it, you’ll realize that the Naval aquisition process has been screwed for a long, long time.

In the category of lessons learned the hard way, the tragedy of the Navy’s scrapping of the Big E was not lost on politicians in Raleigh, who rallied to preserve battleship North Carolina, Enterprise’s escort at the battle of Eastern Solomons.

Yeah, hey…I want a full, search friendly and indexed list of all USNI published books (in and out of print). That’s what I want for Xmas…

And a voting option to help get some of those older books republished…Because USNI has published some really great–and now really hard-to-find classics.

FFT (Food Fer Thought)

USNI should examine the feasibility/cost effectiveness of a books-on-demand type system where high speed production of even just one or two soft cover copies of a volume from a scanned manuscript can be produced for a modest cost.

While we all (most of us, anyhow) enjoy the substance (i.e., feel)in our hands and the look of a hardback on our library shelves; the cost for minimum press runs for hardcover books will likely be cumulatively prohibitive. Nobody really wants to hold inventory.

And the old sage about “don’t judge a book by its cover” is indeed true in this case. One is interested in buying the content, and should be happy if it is available, even if the cover and spine are not of the finest, hand tooled, Moroccan leather.

Ultimately, the Google vision of everything, on-line everywhere all of the time may become a reality; but, for now, the publish-on-demand model would seem an appropriate intermediate step that best serves the individuals thirsting for words on paper.

SJS,

I’m about halfway through Stafford’s Big E as we speak. But I must also recommend his other works, Little Ship, Big War, as a good volume for a junior officer, and Subchaser, for a good perspective on littoral combat.

Too slow, Byron!