While guns and bombs in the Pacific were thunderously underlining the formidable fact last week, mimeograph machines in Washington were grinding out the impressive story behind the fact: how the U.S. in four years had become the greatest naval power in the world.
The story was prosaically entitled Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1944, from Navy Secretary Forrestal to the President of the U.S. More than any one thing, the report made this point: America's naval force was built and manned not by Annapolis-trained professionals but by civilian amateurs.
Citizen Forrestal, ex-Wall Street broker, took no...
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