Hello and welcome to episode 104 of the Unauthorized history of the Pacific War podcast.

My name is Seth Peridon, historian and deputy director of the Mississippi Armed Forces Museum here at Camp Shelby.

And with me, as always, is my esteemed co-host, retired Navy captain Bill Toadie,

former skipper of the Fast Attack Submarine U.S.S. Indianapolis,

Commodore of Submarine Squadron 3 in Pearl Harbor, and many other postings.

Aside from Bill and I, we have a special guest today, and I will let Captain Tody introduce our guest and our topic for today.

Thanks, Seth. Today we're going to unpack the story of Admiral Chester Nimitz, who I believe to be the key leader for the

Allied victory in the Pacific Theater of Operations. And help us tell this story, we are honored

to have a distinguished visitor, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, or SACUR, retired

Admiral James Stavridis. Now, I've known Admiral Stavritus since we were both midshipman at Annapolis.

I was a lowly plebe, and he was brigade operations officer. Decades later, I worked for Admiral

Stavritus on the Navy staff in an organization called Deepwater the months immediately following

9-11. Deep Blue operated very similar to Nimitz's own wartime planning

cell in Pearl Harbor. Admiral Stavridis is the perfect guest for us today, having written

a chapter about Nimitz in his 2019 book, Sailing True North. Admiral, thank you for joining

us here today. My pleasure to be with both of you. And

I always begin when I talk about Nimitz with my first class cruise at Annapolis, which was on board

the then brand new aircraft carrier, the Nimitz.

And in preparation for going down for that cruise, and you'll appreciate this bill,

I was in a debate about whether to go nuclear power or not.

I knew I wanted to be a surface officer, but in those days, you could make a pretty strong case

about the coming preeminence of nuclear power in the Surface Navy. The thought was that we would

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