Bluejacket Admiral: The Navy Career of Chick Hayward

(Hardcover)-Vice Adm. John T. "Chick" Hayward's long and colorful career spanned the decades from naval aviation's infancy to the dawn of the jet age. He was one of those rare people who was eminently successful yet humanly colorful, a high school dropout who became a nuclear physicist. The story of his role in the development of the atomic bomb and his interaction with the other Los Alamos scientists is justification enough for a biography, but Hayward's contributions to the twentieth-century U.S. Navy go significantly beyond that period. Hayward saw combat in World War II and participated in the Korean War and Cuban missile crisis, and helped make many of the decisions that shaped the present-day navy. From his service as an enlisted man to his rise to a flag officer, Hayward experienced life as a "powder monkey" on a battleship, a president of the Naval War College, a founder of the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory, a key player in getting nuclear weapons to sea, and an early developer of cruise missiles. An avid supporter of naval aviation, he amassed more pilot hours than any other flag officer and was one of the navy's first jet-qualified pilots. Hayward's longtime friend C.W. Borklund developed this autobiography from the admiral's 300-page diary. It captures the spirit as well as the facts of Hayward's history-making career, focusing on his involvement in events that had a major impact on politics, military policies, and plans. Highly personalized and sometimes opinionated, the memoir provides a great deal of insight and food for thought about today's navy.