9 Quotes by James D. Hornfischer

...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.

When they get in trouble, they send for the sons-of-bitches

Anxieties,” wrote Alfred Thayer Mahan, “are the test and penalty of greatness.

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.

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.

To give advice to a tyrant was to suggest his fallibility and offer oneself as a scapegoat should things go wrong.

When they get in trouble, they send for the sons-of-bitches.

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.

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.