It is with deep regret I inform you of the passing of President James Earl “Jimmy” Carter Jr. on 29 December 2024 at age 100. President Carter entered the U.S. Naval Academy in July 1943 and graduated with distinction in June 1946 with the wartime-accelerated class of 1947. He served as a surface line officer before transferring to submarine duty and being selected as one of the first officers in the Navy’s nuclear power program. He resigned his commission in October 1953 upon the death of his father and the need to attend to his family’s peanut farm. He subsequently went on to serve as the 39th President of the United States, from 1977–81. He was the fifth consecutive President to have prior Navy service, although the only one to graduate from the U.S. Naval Academy. He established the “Carter Doctrine” in 1980, declaring that the U.S. has vital interests in the Persian Gulf and would use force to defend them if necessary.
As Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro noted, “President Carter exemplifies not only service to nation but embodiment of the very highest ideals of our nation—his life is an inspiration to all of us to expand our own conceptions of what it means to serve, what it means to make a difference.”
Naval Service:
Jimmy Carter was born in Plains, Georgia, on 1 October 1924 to Lillian Gordy and James Earl Carter. Carter grew up in a rural atmosphere and attended public schools. Although a Navy career was an unusual aspiration for someone from that part of Georgia, he was influenced at a very young age by his uncle, Tom Gordy, an enlisted Navy radioman. (Tom Gordy would be captured by the Japanese at the start of World War II on Guam and would survive as a prisoner of war.) Jimmy became interested in the U.S. Naval Academy and decided he wanted to go there before he was in the first grade. In grammar school, he read books about the Navy and Annapolis. Without revealing his age, he wrote to the Naval Academy and obtained the catalog with entrance requirements, and then studied accordingly. He graduated from Plains High School in 1941.
Jimmy was not selected on his first attempt to enter the Naval Academy, so he studied for a year at Georgia Southwestern College in Americus, Georgia. He received an appointment from Congressman Stephen Pace in 1942 for admission in 1943. He then attended the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Naval Reserve Officers training program to study mathematics in order to prepare for the Naval Academy entrance exams. He entered the Naval Academy in June 1943 with the Class of 1947. Due to the need for officers to man the vastly expanded fleet during World War II, the normal four-year program was accelerated to three years, so Midshipman Carter graduated in June of 1946.
While at the Naval Academy, Midshipman Carter studied to become an expert at ship and aircraft recognition. He learned to fly (under supervision) an OS2U two-seat scout seaplane. His first summer cruise was aboard the battleship New York (BB-34), steaming in the Atlantic between Norfolk and the Caribbean, where he manned a 40-mm anti-aircraft gun during alerts. At one point the New York maneuvered radically to avoid a submarine contact and one of the elderly ship’s four propellers broke a blade. He was also disturbed when another midshipman accidently dropped a kapok lifejacket into the water, and it sank. Midshipman Carter was again at sea in the summer of 1945 when the atomic bombs were dropped and World War II ended. He marveled that he had never even heard so much as a rumor regarding the existence of this weapon; he and his classmates had all expected to be involved in what was anticipated to be a very bloody invasion of Japan.
The Lucky Bag (Naval Academy yearbook) entry for Jimmy Carter, written as they are by another midshipman, is revealing. It says, “Studies never bothered Jimmy. In fact, the only times he opened his books were when his classmates desired help on problems. This lack of study did not, however, prevent him from standing in the upper part of his class. Jimmy’s many friends will remember him for his cheerful disposition and his ability to see the humorous side of any situation.”
Midshipman Carter was also one of the few midshipmen who befriended and supported fellow midshipman Wesley Brown, the first Black graduate of the Naval Academy.
Midshipman Carter graduated 59th in a class of 820 (with distinction) and received an ensign’s commission in June 1946.
After World War II, all Academy graduates had to serve two years on surface ships (except those going into the Marine Corps) before applying for submarine or aviation duty. Assignment selection was based on drawing lots; Midshipman Carter’s name was drawn almost last, giving him almost last choice. As a result, he was assigned to the Norfolk-based Wyoming (E-AG 17, ex-BB-32), an elderly battleship commissioned in 1912 and relegated to duties as a training ship by 1930 (however, due to gunnery training duties, Wyoming actually fired more ammunition than any U.S. ship during World War II).
By the end of the war, Wyoming had been converted to an experimental test platform for electronics and gunnery, with prototypes of radar, fire control, communications, navigation, and gunnery equipment. Ensign Carter was assigned as the radar and combat information center officer. The purpose of the ship was to use lessons learned from the kamikaze attacks off Okinawa during World War II to develop improved antiaircraft warfare capability. According to Ensign Carter’s account, he “learned to repair electronic equipment, to conduct photographic analysis of gunnery using 35mm motion-picture cameras, and to assess statistically the performance of radar, guns, gyroscopic compasses, and navigation equipment.”
Ensign Carter described his time aboard Wyoming as such: “the work was interesting but the duty was terrible.” This had mostly to do with the very poor material condition of an undermanned and overworked ship (only two-thirds of a normal crew) and resulting poor morale among the crew. The Wyoming was also deemed to be “unsafe” and was not permitted alongside the piers in Norfolk, having to anchor on the far side of the harbor. Liberty was by ferry only, and relatively rare, resulting in little time spent with his new bride Rosalynn.
Wyoming was decommissioned in July 1947. Ensign Carter and much of Wyoming’s crew transferred to the somewhat less old former battleship Mississippi (E-AG 128, ex-BB 41), which was being converted to an experimental test ship. (During service as a battleship, Mississippi had a reputation as the fastest-firing battleship in the fleet, but it had suffered two major accidental turret explosions, both in turret No. 2, one in 1924 that killed 48 men and one in 1943 that killed 43 men.) Mississippi would subsequently be the test platform for the launch of the RIM 2 Terrier surface-to-air missile system. Carter served as the training and education officer aboard Mississippi.
Ensign Carter applied and was selected for submarine duty. He reported to the Naval Submarine Base New London, Connecticut, in June 1948. Carter would later say, “I always found the submarine force to be exciting and challenging, and the next five years proved to be one of the most interesting and enjoyable periods of my life.” Upon graduating in December 1948, Ensign Carter left Rosalynn and his son in Plains with his parents and transferred to Pearl Harbor to join diesel submarine Pomfret (SS-391), which deployed two days later on 4 January 1949 to the Far East.
During Pomfret’s trans-Pacific transit, the submarine was on the surface at night in a severe storm when Ensign Carter was washed off the bridge by a large wave. Fortunately, he landed on top of the 5-inch gun about 30 feet aft of the conning tower and was able to maintain his grip on the gun barrel to avoid being washed overboard and lost at sea. The submarine was unable to communicate due to the storm and at one point was reported as possibly lost by Pacific Fleet headquarters, to the consternation of the wives of Pomfret’s crew in Pearl Harbor. Ensign Carter considered it lucky that Rosalynn was still in Plains and did not get this disturbing word.
For the next month, Pomfret operated along the coast of China between Hong Kong and Tsingtao observing and reporting activity as the Chinese Communists closed in on the last Nationalist strongholds during the Chinese Civil War. Pomfret also operated in the Yellow Sea, serving as a practice target for U.S. and British surface ships, while running target drills on them as well. The situation ashore was so tense that at one point a jeep with Pomfret’s commanding officer was fired on by Nationalist soldiers, with a bullet piercing the roof.
Ensign Carter earned his qualification as a submarine officer in February 1949. While on Pomfret he served variously as communications officer, sonar officer, electronics officer, gunnery officer, and supply officer. On 9 March, he served as the approach officer for a simulated torpedo firing at target ships and scored a “hit.” After returning from the China deployment on 25 March, Pomfret operated out of Pearl Harbor for a year and a half before transferring to San Diego. He was promoted to lieutenant (junior grade) on 5 June 1949. (The seemingly slow promotion was due to early graduation from the Naval Academy and not due to performance.)
Lieutenant (j.g.) Carter detached from Pomfret on 1 February 1951. He was then assigned as the engineering officer on the pre-commissioning detail for K-1 (SSK-1). K-1, the first postwar submarine built, was under construction by Electric Boat Division, General Dynamics Corporation, in Connecticut. For several months, Lieutenant (j.g.) Carter was the only Navy person on the sub as it was being built. The K-1 (later renamed Barracuda) was designed to be extremely quiet, with the mission of hunting submerged submarines while being submerged herself. After K-1’s commissioning on 10 November 1951, Lieutenant (j.g.) Carter served as engineering officer and electronic repair officer before becoming executive officer. During this tour, he qualified for submarine command. His “command thesis” described a new technique for determining the distance to a target ship using information derived from passive listening equipment only. During one torpedo test-firing, a boat trying to recover the torpedo was struck by the torpedo and had to be beached to prevent sinking; this was K-1’s only “kill.” Carter described submarine duty as “tough, dangerous and demanding. Yet we submariners liked the service, enjoyed the physical and personal closeness, and were proud of the high standards and professional demands made on us.”
As soon as Lieutenant (j.g.) Carter learned of the Navy’s nascent nuclear power program, he applied for what he considered “the finest Navy billet available to any officer of my rank—the development of the first atomic submarines.” A key step to being selected was an interview with then-Captain Hyman Rickover. Carter’s description of the interview in his autobiography is as follows:
“It was the first time I met (Admiral) Rickover, and we sat in a large room by ourselves for more than two hours, and he let me choose any subject I wished to discuss. Very carefully, I chose those about which I knew the most at the time—current events, seamanship, music, literature, naval tactics, electronics, gunnery—and he began to ask me questions of increasing difficulty. In each instance he soon proved I knew relatively little about the subject I had chosen.
He always looked right into my eyes, and he never smiled. I was saturated with cold sweat.
Finally, he asked me a question, and I thought I could redeem myself. He said, “How did you stand in your class at the Naval Academy?” Since I had completed my sophomore year at Georgia Tech before entering Annapolis as a plebe, I had done very well, and I swelled my chest with pride and answered, “Sir, I stood fifty-ninth in a class of 820!” I sat back waiting for the congratulations—which never came. Instead, the question: “Did you do your best?” I started to say, “Yes, Sir,” but I remembered who this was, and recalled several times at the Academy when I could have learned more about our allies, our enemies, weapons, strategy and so forth. I was just human. I finally gulped and said, “No, sir, I didn’t always do my best.”
He looked at me for a long time, and then turned around his chair to end the interview. He asked one final question, which I have never been able to forget—or to answer. He said, “Why not?” I sat there for awhile, shaken, and then slowly left the room.”
Carter would later say that besides his parents (and Rosalynn), Admiral Rickover was the most influential person in his life, and it was his inability to answer Rickover’s question that would serve as the drive and motivation for all that followed and to always do his best (and would also be the genesis of the title of Carter’s 1975 book as he commenced a run for the Presidency, Why Not the Best?)
Despite the interview, Lieutenant (j.g.) Carter was selected for the Navy nuclear power program, detaching from K-1 on October 1952 (after having been promoted to lieutenant in June 1952). Lieutenant Carter then reported for duty at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission’s Reactor Development Division in Schenectady, New York. During period from 3 November 1952 to 1 March 1953, he served on temporary duty with the Naval Reactors Branch, U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, Washington, DC, to assist “in the design and development of nuclear propulsion plants for naval vessels.” During this period, Carter made multiple visits to the Hanford Works in Washington State where plutonium was made and to Idaho where the Nautilus prototype reactor was being built. He also assisted construction of a prototype nuclear reactor (liquid metal cooled) at Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory in New York.
Following a partial meltdown of the National Research Experimental reactor at Chalk River, in Ontario, Canada, Lieutenant Carter was directed to lead a 23-person team to assist with the clean up, disassembling the damaged nuclear reactor core. An exact duplicate of the reactor was built to practice each move required because each person could only spend 90 seconds at the hot core location. Although radiation was known to be dangerous, just how dangerous was not yet well known, and Carter received many times the radiation dosage that would be considered safe today.
From 1 March to 8 October 1953, Lieutenant Carter was assigned to lead the team that was training on the liquid metal (sodium) beryllium moderated nuclear reactor that would eventually be the power plant for the second U.S. nuclear submarine, Seawolf (SSN-575), which commenced construction in 1953 and would be commissioned in 1957. Seawolf would be the only U.S. submarine to have this type of reactor. (The first nuclear submarine, Nautilus [SSN-571] and all other U.S. submarines since then have used water as a coolant, and even Seawolf’s liquid metal reactor was replaced within a year after commissioning.)
Lieutenant Carter’s father became ill and died in July 1953. With extreme reluctance, Lieutenant Carter decided to resign his commission after seven years as an officer to attend to the family farm. This was also over the objection of Rosalynn, who apparently preferred the Navy life to a peanut farm in Georgia—but she stuck with Jimmy for 77 years despite that. Lieutenant Carter was honorably discharged on 9 October 1953 at the Third Naval District headquarters in New York City but remained in the Naval Reserve. On 7 December 1961, he transferred to the retired reserve with the rank of lieutenant at his own request.
Presidency:
There will be many accounts of Jimmy Carter’s term as President, so this will focus on his impact on U.S. national defense and the U.S. Navy.
During the 1980 State of the Union address, President Carter enunciated what would become known as the “Carter Doctrine.” His exact words were, “Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf Region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.” This doctrine and the subsequent “Reagan Corollary” have had profound effect on U.S. Navy operations, deployments, and even force structure in the years since. The Carter Doctrine resulted in the significantly enhanced and continuing U.S. Navy presence in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.
The plans fostered by the Carter Doctrine included the activation of the Rapid Deployment Force, which evolved into the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force and eventually the establishment of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM). The establishment of CENTCOM was not especially welcomed by the U.S. Navy, but it has had major impact on U.S. Navy deployments.
In his 1980 State of the Union annual message to Congress, President Carter also stressed the importance of sea power, stating: Seapower is indispensable to our global position—in peace and also in war. Our shipbuilding program will sustain a 550-ship navy in the 1990s and we will continue to build the most capable ships afloat.
The program I have proposed will assure the ability of our Navy to operate in high threat areas, to maintain control of the seas and protect vital lines of communication—both military and economic—and to provide the strong maritime component of our rapid deployment forces. This is essential for operation in remote areas of the world, where we cannot predict far in advance the precise location of trouble, or preposition equipment on land.
Other diplomatic agreements during the Carter administration also had an effect on U.S. Navy operations and force structure. The Camp David Accords, personally brokered by President Carter, and the subsequent peace treaty between Egypt and Israel, have resulted in the Suez Canal remaining open ever since, enhancing the strategic mobility of the U.S. Navy. This peace treaty was one of the most difficult and momentous diplomatic achievements since World War II.
The establishment of formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China by the Carter administration lessened tensions and put a stop to the periodic Taiwan Straits crises that disrupted U.S. Navy force deployments, at least for a while. The Carter administration also finessed a way to maintain “informal” relations with Taiwan.
The signing and ratification of the Torrijos-Carter Treaties (formally known as “The Treaty Concerning the Permanent Neutrality and Operation of the Panama Canal” and “The Panama Canal Treaty,”) recognized Panamanian sovereignty (starting in 1999) while guaranteeing U.S. access and its right to defend the canal against any threat that might interfere with its continued neutral service to ships of all nations. Although heavily criticized, these treaties also possibly forestalled violent disruptions to the canal.
The Carter administration also negotiated the second Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) Treaty with the Soviet Union in 1979. Although neither the U.S. Senate, nor the Soviets, chose to ratify the treaty, both sides adhered to the negotiated numbers of strategic nuclear weapons, even after the 1985 expiration, a fact that also significantly affected U.S. Navy force structure, particularly regarding ballistic missile submarines and cruise missiles.
The Carter administration also negotiated an agreement with the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance (NATO) to deploy nuclear Pershing II medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) to Germany and ground-launched cruise missiles (GLCMs) to other NATO countries to counter the deployment of Soviet SS-20 mobile nuclear MRBMs, with the caveat that if the Soviets desisted, the deployment would be cancelled. The Soviets deployed the SS-20s anyway, and the Pershings and GLCMs were deployed during the Reagan administration.
As with any President, Carter came under extreme criticism from political opponents. A frequent charge was “Jimmy Carter is weak on defense.” Candidate Carter did, in fact, campaign on a platform of reducing the defense budget (while increasing resources devoted to moving toward energy independence). Nevertheless, Navy budgets under Carter increased, although initially not enough to keep pace with inflation.
The annual Navy budget that President Carter inherited from the previous administration was $36.5 billion. This was raised to $39.5 billion in 1978 and 41.6 billion in 1979. However, the 1980 Navy budget was increased to $47 billion, and the 1981 budget (which the Reagan administration inherited) was $57 billion, with a building program for a 550-ship Navy by the 1990s.
President Carter was not enamored of big-ticket expensive items such as B-1 bombers (which he cancelled) and aircraft carriers (he acquiesced to congressional authorization for Theodore Roosevelt [CVN-71], which had initially been cancelled by the Ford administration and vetoed in 1979 by President Carter before being included in the 1980 budget). Carter was, however, very concerned about how far military pay had fallen behind the civilian sector, and he supported military pay raises of 6.2% for 1978, 5.5% for 1979, 7.0% for 1980 and 11.7% for 1981, and although the 14.3% for 1982 was signed by President Reagan, that is what had been submitted in the Carter budget. Cumulatively, the raises resulted in the greatest increase in military pay since the Civil War, and no pay raise since has even come close (6.6% in 2002).
President Carter also chose Admiral Thomas B. Hayward to be the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) upon Admiral James L. Holloway’s regular retirement in 1978. When President Carter and CNO Hayward assumed their jobs, all the metrics were heading in the wrong direction—recruitment, retention, readiness, morale, and others. These metrics bottomed out during the Carter administration, and when the oiler Canisteo (AO-99) was unable to get underway for lack of a crew, it was headline news. However, by the end of the Carter administration, these metrics were already on the upswing.
During the Carter administration, Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN-69) was commissioned, and Carl Vinson (CVN-70) was launched. The F/A-18 Hornet made its first flight and would become a mainstay of U.S. carrier aviation for decades.
Nine of the first 10 Los Angeles-class nuclear fast attack submarines were commissioned during the Carter administration, seven of them in the last two years of Carter’s term. Moreover, the first three Ohio-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines were launched or laid down during his administration.
The Carter Navy budget invested heavily in the AEGIS radar/weapon systems. The first AEGIS cruiser, Ticonderoga (CG-47), was ordered, and design work commenced for what would be the Arleigh Burke (DDG-51)-class AEGIS destroyers. Some Ticonderoga-class and the Arleigh Burke-class ships continue in service to this day. President Carter also agreed to finish, rather than scrap, the four Kidd-class (upgraded Spruance) destroyers that were being built for the Iranian Navy when the revolution occurred.
A number of advances were not public at the time, such as a shift within the Department of Defense toward a countervailing nuclear deterrent strategy, to give more options besides Mutual Assured Destruction where both sides just incinerated each other’s cities. The purpose of the strategy was to hold at risk, with precise targeting, Soviet nuclear installations, and to show that even if the Soviets attempted a precision nuclear strike it would still be a loser—for both sides. To execute this strategy required precision targeting of our own, which led to acceleration of deployment and backfitting of the Trident missile system on older ballistic missile submarines and acceleration of the development of the Trident D-5 submarine-launched ballistic missile that would have the necessary accuracy for a true countervailing strategy.
Also within the Carter defense budget were major increased investments in stealth technology for aircraft and ships, as well as for modern digital technology and precision-guided weapons—the first Tomahawk cruise missile prototype tests occurred during this administration, a weapon system that has been used by the United States many times in the years since.
Two major international watershed events during the Carter administration were the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan (which resulted in the Carter Doctrine) and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Perhaps President Carter’s biggest mistake was going against his own judgement and acquiescing to entreaties to allow the deposed shah of Iran into the United States for medical treatment, which led directly to the takeover of the U.S. embassy in Tehran by Iranian “students,” resulting in 53 U.S. diplomatic personnel being held hostage (52 of them for ultimately 444 days).
President Carter would come under intense criticism for the failure of Operation Eagle Claw, an attempt to rescue the hostages, criticism that CNO Admiral Hayward said was unjustified. A critical part of the mission were eight RH-53D helicopters launched from the carrier Nimitz (CVN-68) in the North Arabian Gulf. One of the helicopters made an emergency landing due to a possible cracked rotor blade and was abandoned. Another encountered a severe sandstorm and aborted due to disabled electrical systems and no instruments. Of the six helicopters that arrived at the Desert One rendezvous point, one had a malfunctioning secondary hydraulic system. A minimum of six helicopters had been established as the pre-planned abort threshold. When the on-scene commander recommended mission abort, President Carter concurred. In brown-out conditions, one of the helicopters subsequently collided with an EC-130, and eight U.S. servicemen (five from the Air Force and three from the Marine Corps) and one Iranian civilian died in the resulting explosion and fire. The five mostly intact helicopters and nine bodies were left behind. The mission was considered a debacle.
As commander in chief, Carter took responsibility for the failure, which would have a severe negative effect on his subsequent Presidential campaign, along with the refusal of the Iranians to release the hostages (until minutes after the change of administrations) as well as the continuing high unemployment and high inflation. Nevertheless, President Carter made a point of flying out to Nimitz as the carrier was returning to port from the particularly arduous deployment. He deliberately timed his visit so it would not interfere with the homecoming with loved ones at Pier 12 in Norfolk. He told the crew of Nimitz, “I am absolutely convinced that your presence there . . . has been a major factor in protecting the lives of the 53 American hostages who are still held, because the clear knowledge of American military strength is the surest guarantee that when your presence was felt, stability prevailed and the hostages were indeed protected in their lives.”
A case can be made that President Carter’s vocal emphasis on human rights was a significant factor in the end of the Warsaw Pact and then of the Soviet Union.
Following his term in office, President Carter continued supporting human rights and other humanitarian causes. His post-presidency is beyond the scope of this note, but the list of his awards and recognition goes on for many pages. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for “his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
The third and final Seawolf-class nuclear fast attack submarine was christened the Jimmy Carter by sponsor First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 2004 and subsequently commissioned as USS Jimmy Carter in 2005. In a fitting tribute to President Carter’s unique attributes, Jimmy Carter has unique modifications to conduct missions of great importance to U.S. national security.
On 17 February 2023, the former Maury Hall at the U.S. Naval Academy was renamed in honor of former president Carter. The hall’s new mission is to serve as the academic center for political science, language, and humanities majors.
I’ll leave the last word to Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro:
“What he—with Mrs. Carter always by his side—has accomplished in the four decades since their time in the White House is truly remarkable—his actions around the globe have made an incredible difference—simply put, he has made the world a better place.”