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Aw! <3

Like, what books I'd recommend, or just....stuff to do underway that would be in the self-improvement area? The big two that jump out as underway activities are always "save money, and work out."

What platform are you floating on?

So the first thing I do with all my proteges is I hand them the grading sheet for Sailor of the Year/Quarter and a blank evaluation, and I ask them to grade themselves. Not everyone wants to be, or needs to be, Sailor of the Year or a 5.0 sailor, but if that's the standard the Navy has set as "the best," then at least we have a guideline of what we should be working toward, right?

One thing that was pretty big at my last command was the Military Outstanding Volunteer Service Medal. Instruction here. One thing that is a really easy way to gain community service hours while underway is to make blankets for the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society's "Budgeting For Baby" class. You can crochet (that's incredibly easy, I promise) or you can google one of the thousand DIY no-sew blanket tutorials. If you belong to a Bluejacket Association or Enlisted Association or whatever, you may be able to get them to fund the cost of buying the material...or even ask the FCPOA if they'll give $50 to the cause. You can head over to Jo-Ann's or Fabric.com and check out their discount sections too. NMCRS offers 30 hours per blanket. Taking an hour out of your Holiday Routine for the entire float.....most of the DIY no-sew blankets only take an hour or two to make, sooooo. Collect those hours. Add in a COMREL or two, and there's no reason you can't end a float with over a hundred hours of community service. This is particularly great if you have a friend or two to make blankets with you....snag one of the TVs on the messdecks and watch a movie while you crochet. You can also contact a local homeless shelter and see if they need hats and crochet hats for them. Obviously not a good suggestion if you're stuck underway on a submarine with no space, but if you're surface side--good to go.

Books I'd suggest, well, hm, this could get out of control pretty fast, but off the top of my head:

• Personality Plus by Florence Littauer or her work specific version
  
  
• Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg
  
  
• It's Your Ship by Capt Abrashoff
  
  
• Starship Troopers
  
  
• Ender's Game (Ender and Starship are obviously straight scifi but there are some really awesome leadership principles/concepts/ideas that are worth mulling over. They've both been on past CNO's recommended reading lists too....and they're just fun to read.)
  
  
• For money, while, like, 99% of his stuff is "Duh!" I can't discount the practical steps he outlines, so Dave Ramsey's books, particularly Financial Peace is worth reading. His whole book is basically the wiki in r/personalfinance, but if you're wondering how to get your finances straight I recommend picking up this book. Just, in general. Good basic information and a starting point. Not saying you need it, but "saving money" just happens underway by virtue being trapped out on the ocean =)
  
  
• Leaders Eat Last

I'm not really looking for heroic stories. They're great tho. Actually, if you want to read something awesome, check out Beyond Glory: Medal of Honor Heroes in Their Own Words. It's unreal hearing the stories from MOH winners.

Anyway, I'm looking for stories of ethical successes. Times when life or limb wasn't necessarily on the line. Rather, there was someone doing something for the mere fact that it was correct.

>we have high quality talent retained in our ranks.


HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Fuck no.

People have even written best selling books about the military retaining the shit talent.

https://www.amazon.com/Bleeding-Talent-Military-Mismanages-Revolution/dp/0230391273

True story:

I once worked with an ensign that walked into a space and asked everyone "how do you tell what state your car is registered in?"

That same ensign once got into a screaming match with the CSC/TAO because they couldn't identify a track the ensign was "LOOKING RIGHT FUCKING AT AT BEARING 272". That ensign was in fact looking at the sunrise.

That individual is now a department head.

http://www.amazon.com/Red-November-Inside-U-S--Soviet-Submarine/dp/0061806773/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1344085323&sr=8-3&keywords=red+november

Fascinating book that talks about this in detail, as well as some of the other Soviet submarines that were patrolling around Cuba.

here's a great book on the whole Philippines thing.

http://www.amazon.com/Escape-From-Davao-Forgotten-Pacific/dp/0451234103/ref=pd_sim_b_17

Probably the best record of daily life in the Civil War navy is the book The Monitor Chronicles. While it revolves around a very special ship, the almost-weekly letters of Engineer Yeoman George Geer to his wife provide the best-surviving example of the daily gripes of a Union sailor on the blockade.

Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation.

https://www.amazon.com/Revolt-Admirals-Fight-Aviation-1945-1950/dp/0160420946

edited to add:
Out of print. I'm sure there is another book on the subject that is still available, but that one was the first one that came up in a quick search.

Link for the lazy

https://www.amazon.com/Drift-Unmooring-American-Military-Power/dp/0307460991#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1466976202009

Can't recommend this one enough.

>Or any naval warfare for that matter. Any recommendations?

Broadsides is a really good book for the late 18th-early 19th century. It really illustrates Nelson's chase and a few of the big battles of the period, and it goes into a lot of the technical and lifestyle aspects of the ships.

Sea Wolf: The Daring Exploits of Navy Legend John D. Bulkeley

A Glimpse of Hell : The Explosion on the U. S. S. Iowa & Its Cover-Up

The Arnheiter Affair

There was a novel entitled "The Last Ship," but IIRC it was a cruiser and a nuclear war, not a pandemic.

Edit: Here it is. I was wrong, it was a DDG in the book, too.

SEALs began as amphibious scouts used in advance of amphibious operations. The debacle at Tarawa is a good example of the need for that. Combat divers who would scout enemy beaches, who eventually learned underwater demolition to destroy obstacles on the beach. Then they applied that toward being sneaky and conducting raids. 20 years later the Navy found itself in irregular wars in littoral environments, and took the amphibious commando-esque force it already had and applied it toward that mission, so we had Underwater Demolition Teams and SEA, Air, and Land Teams. By the 80s we needed more of the new skillset and less of the old one so the UDTs became SEAL teams. And the SEALs continued to train for whatever missions the country throws them at. In the 2000s they were doorkickers who could occasionally swim. Now "the water's coming back" and there's more focus on reconnaissance.

Not disagreeing with you; continuing the discussion.

I think you would enjoy the book Underdogs: The Making of the Modern Marine Corps. It's 300-something pages but it's a quick read. He argues WW2 was the turning point in the development of the Marine Corps. Although I think you're right to say WW1 (Marines operating as a second land Army.... in France not even allowed to wear their own uniforms but the Army's) was a significant event in Marine Corps history and definitely relevant now after Iraq and Afghanistan.

There's been a lot of educated articles and lectures over the last few years trying to get at what the Marine Corps is now and what type of force it should try to be. Between WW1 and WW2 it identified itself as a force skilled in amphibious operations, because it thought the Pacific would be the next war, and that turned right --but the last time we did an amphibious invasion was Korea. Should it be a "small wars" force, fighting counterinsurgency in Latin America like the 20s? One article I read (that I can't find anymore) argued it should be a small, elite raiding force, a lot like what you just described. Everything comes around again, I suppose.

Literally everyone in this thread should go read Kill Decision.

It's a sci-tech action thriller by a relatively new author who writes in the vein of Ludlum and Clancy - the book takes place in a scary potential near-future of autonomous drone swarm attacks occuring in the US, the shadow organizations who control them, and the spec-ops team trying to stop them.
This video is straight out of its pages, including that hellish noise and local-to-macro communication - it's frightening.