(Two members of Nagato’s original crew. All Photos USN courtesy Lyle Hansen). Lieutenant Commander Ed Gilfillen confessed to being a little disoriented by the way the Japanese ran their ships of war. He said that: “The design of USN ships were shot through with definite principles, all born of experience and most have the force […]

I like the internal contradictions of this holiday. It is just like the military itself: Vets go to work in the civilian and government sector as contractors while civilian government workers get the day off to honor them. Oh well, goes with the territory. I am a little shaken this morning. I was going to […]

Nagato’s appearance had been altered from her usual configuration when Ed Gilfillen first saw her. He said that camouflage was the key to try to distract the American pilots. To render her less conspicuous, the tops of her mainmast and stack had been cut off and plywood structures erected on her decks. Rust blended in […]

I never got a chance to meet Edward Smith Gilfillen. He died in 1979, and I have a suspicion I know what it was that got him. I have no pictures of him, nor of his family, nor even his rank. I suspect he was a Lieutenant Commander, tall and dark, of Welsh decent. I […]

I was going to introduce you to Edward Smith Gilfillen, last XO of the Nagato, this morning but I got wildly sidetracked by an extraordinarily vivid dream I had in the second sleep of the night, deep in the inky darkness of the country. I was back in Yokosuka. I swear, it was a full-on […]

(RADM Donald “Mac” Showers is flanked by a pair of Socotras in the Hoyer Foyer at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Suitland, MD, on the occasion of Mac’s donation of the battle flag of the IJN Battleship Nagato in 2012. The Foyer is so named irreverently in honor of the former House majority Leader […]

It is sometimes said that the Department of War never lost one, and the Department of Defense never won a conflict. There is some room to quibble, since at the time we considered the first Gulf War to be a victory, since it liberated Kuwait from Saddam. All I can say is that the last […]

“The Nagato was the biggest battleship ever built. It could stand off and blow anything in the US Navy out of the water. We were scared witless of it, of its sudden appearance in the sea lanes, and we searched unceasingly for it’s whereabouts. The astonishing secret is in here- if you can read it.” […]

I got up early to take care of the first of a longer list of tasks that stretched out across the day. One of them was what I have been threatening you with for a few days, an account of the last cruise of the IJN battleship Nagato. I wasn’t feeling that good about getting […]

(Contemporary cartoon of ABLE ARCHER. Image courtesy of The Straight Dope). It is one of those strange exercise names, vaguely martial but not particularly threatening. There is much discussion about names attached to actual combat operations- no one would like to die for something with a silly name. Hence things like “EAGLE CLAW” (Iran) or […]