Episode 128: Return of the General Board

Of course it is returning ... in the form of a Best of Midrats for this Father's Day Weekend.

Going back to Episode 79, let's ponder.

If you look to the performance of the US Navy in World War II - those ships came in the shipbuilding programs of the 1920s and 1930s. At a time with no computers or modern communication equipment - and working through the naval treaty limitations as well as the Great Depression - we saw incredible innovation and steadily improving ship designs. Why?

A lot of the credit is given to something the Navy had then, but does not have now; The General Board.

What was The General Board, what did it do, and is the Navy today suffering for the lack of one?

Our guest is John T. Kuehn, PhD. Dr Kuehn, a former naval aviator who has completed cruises aboard four different aircraft carriers. He flew reconnaissance missions during the last decade of the Cold War, the First Gulf War and the Balkans.

CDR Kuehn has served on the faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College since July 2000, retiring from the naval service in 2004. He earned a Ph.D. in History from Kansas State University in 2007. He is the author of the Agents of Innovation: The General Board and the Design of the Fleet that Defeated the Japanese Navy, and Eyewitness Pacific Theater with Dennis Giangreco.

He is currently an associate professor of military history at the US Army command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.