2. Calculated Risk and Critical Intelligence: Setting the Stage for Midway AUTHOR: Professor Craig Symonds BOOK TITLE: Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay Following the Pearl Harbor attack, Nimitz was urged by King to "Attack,
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🗓️ 12 October 2025
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Summary
2. Calculated Risk and Critical Intelligence: Setting the Stage for Midway
AUTHOR: Professor Craig Symonds
BOOK TITLE: Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay
Following the Pearl Harbor attack, Nimitz was urged by King to "Attack, attack, attack," despite inadequate resources. Nimitz applied his concept of calculated risk, developed at the Naval War College, assessing the benefit to be derived against the risk assumed. Nimitz viewed the Doolittle Raid as a "public relations stunt," but chose not to fight the scheme, even though it used 50% of his offensive carrier capability. Crucial to Nimitz's success was intelligence derived from Japanese radio traffic by Lieutenant Commander Joseph Rochefort's cryptanalysis group, relayed by Eddie Layton. Nimitz deployed forces for the Battle of the Coral Sea (the first battle where ships never sighted each other). For Midway, Nimitz replaced the ill Admiral Halsey with the quiet, non-aviator Raymond Spruance. Nimitz later temporarily relieved aviator Marc Mitscher for disguising a misstep in an after-action report.
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| 0:30.8 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Bachelor with Professor Craig Simons, Emeritus Professor of History from the US Naval Academy. His new book is Nimitz at War, command leadership |
| 0:35.6 | from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay. This is a book that |
| 0:40.0 | can be used by current officers in the U.S. Navy and retired and future to understand the |
| 0:46.1 | relationships between the men who were given a task without adequate resources to restart the |
| 0:53.8 | United States Navy in the Pacific after the Pearl Harbor attack. |
| 0:57.8 | Immediately, Ernest King, the Comanche, says, attack, attack, attack. |
| 1:02.3 | He wants to get out there and punch. |
| 1:05.0 | Nimitz doesn't have much of a fleet now. |
| 1:07.0 | The battleships who had been regarded as the strength of all navies, the gun club, |
| 1:12.7 | are either a four of the number very badly damaged or sunk, including the Arizona, |
| 1:18.0 | four are badly damaged. |
| 1:19.6 | So he has aircraft carriers. |
| 1:21.7 | What is it that King wants him to do? |
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