BOOKS Zumwalt: The Life & Times of Admiral Zumwalt
Zumwalt: the Life and Times of Admiral Elmo Russell "Bud" Zumwalt, Jr.
came out in 2012. As CNO, he retired from the Navy in 1974. He died in 2002.
Other Books on the Zumwalt Family:
The author's account of Zumwalt's life and times is saddled with criticisms that he wrote a too-positive view of the subject's career and impact on the nature of the Navy. That is debatable. What is less debatable is that Zumwalt (and his peers) cleared a path to modernizing the Navy when the Navy was so locked into a self-defeating model of how to recruit, train, and reward its key people.
Zumwalt knew what worked and what didn't work aboard the ships he served on during and just after WW2. He knew what his sailors wanted and needed and had no chance to earn, no matter how skillful and motivated they were. He was educated in the day to day realities of what his sailors thought and how they felt about the Navy. He never lost this strong bond of kinship with them.
Most of the many innovations he came to champion as CNO from 1970-'74 took shape from his experience at sea interacting with sailors on those ships.
Bud Zumwalt was a ferociously loving and loyal husband and father who carried into the life-and-death world of military command those exact same virtues. He had no "intellectual" fear in looking with open eyes at the situations on board ships of the blue-water and brown-water Navy. Zumwalt knew that each ship of the fleet epitomized the truths that dominated Navy culture at the time.
He had nothing but disdain for Navy leaders who were not leaders but bullies and never ceased to try to lessen or neuter the damage they did. But as candid as he was with no inclination to flinch, Zumwalt was a master of misdirection and finesse when dealing with those in the White House who opposed his views on what the defense of America didn't have and so desperately needed.
That Nixon ultimately would decide not
to accept core (and fateful) aspects of Henry Kissinger's advice was surely (in part) due to CNO Zumwalt's skills.
The Navy of today is beset by some of the same fundamental problems as back 50 years ago. Bud Zumwalt and peers sought to divest the Navy of a reinforcing matrix of "esprit-killing" actions, regulations, and habits. What Zumwalt and peers did not
foresee is how introducing so many good and right things would be a prelude to introducing so many bad and wrong things. Yet, here we are.
No doubt there are military leaders now who are imbued with the same values as Bud Zumwalt. But such men and women tend to have been faced early in their careers with proxies of the social and political Left quite willing to destroy them if they refused to cave in, shut up, go along to get along, and become lap-dogs (with stars) who roll over and bark on cue. No way to foresee that.
Sane Americans will gladly trade any failings of Admiral Zumwalt for the success he mapped out and led. The Navy was given a chance to rejuvenate itself.
