Zumwalt revolutionized the Navy

When it came to doing what he saw was the right thing, Adm. Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. lived according to the order given by Adm. David Farragut, a Civil War hero: "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

Zumwalt, who died Jan. 2 from cancer at the age of 79, was the farthest thing from a go-along-to-get-along military officer. Throughout a naval career that started in 1939 when he entered the U.S. Naval Academy and ended in 1974 when he left as the top sailor in the nation, chief of naval operations, Zumwalt was forever the boat-rocker.

He managed to move up the Navy ladder even though he stood up early in his career to Adm. Hyman G. Rickover, the Navy's dictatorial nuclear chief. He argued in midcareer against getting the American military bogged down in Vietnam. Upon arrival in Vietnam, he implemented new tactics that saved lives but ultimately helped kill his own son. Finally, as chief of naval operations, he revolutionized the Navy, bringing in minorities to change the perception that it was, as he put it, "a humorless, tradition-bound, starchy institution owned by and operated for the benefit of white males."

Zumwalt's strong views and follow-through made him one of the tallest lightning rods in the nation's military establishment. Retired admirals thought he was ruining their Navy by coddling its sailors and throwing traditions overboard. "I have a long list of friends and a long list of enemies," Zumwalt said in an interview a few months before his death. "And I'm proud of both lists."

To turn his against-the-grain ideas into official policy, Zumwalt needed the protection of his superiors. He got it at crucial phases in his career. It began with the full backing of Paul H. Nitze, secretary of the Navy from 1963-67, and continued with Gen. Creighton W. Abrams, Vietnam field commander from 1968-72; John H. Chafee, Navy secretary from 1967-72; and Melvin R. Laird, secretary of defense from 1969-73.

Zumwalt wrote in his book On Watch that he and Nitze had vainly argued in 1964 that Vietnam "did not pose an immediate or direct threat to the safety of the United States," and it would be "highly imprudent to embark on an enterprise that might drain a substantial portion of the military strength of the United States at a time when the U.S.S.R. [Union of Soviet Socialist Republics] was furiously building up its own." Between the times Zumwalt issued those warnings in 1964 and he arrived in Vietnam in 1970 as a three-star admiral in command of U.S. naval forces there, the U.S. troop presence had grown from 23,300 to 334,600. Zumwalt, on his own, instituted a number of programs to help the South Vietnamese take over their own defense, and he earned the admiration of Abrams and impressed the visiting Laird.

By the admiral's own reckoning, one of his ideas for reducing U.S. casualties in Vietnam killed his own son, Elmo R. Zumwalt III, who served as a Navy lieutenant there. Adm. Zumwalt ordered the herbicide Agent Orange dropped on trees along riverbanks in the Vietnam delta. The idea was to denude the trees so that enemy riflemen who had been attacking Navy boats could not hide behind the foliage. It worked. U.S. casualties in the brown-water Navy declined. But Zumwalt wrote after the war that Agent Orange gave his son bone-marrow cancer and harmed his grandson, Russell. Lt. Elmo R. Zumwalt III died in 1988 at the age of 42.

In the book that the elder and younger Zumwalts wrote together, My Father, My Son, the admiral wrote: "Knowing what I know now, I still would have ordered the defoliation to achieve the objectives it did. But that does not ease the sorrow I feel for Elmo, or the anguish his illness and Russell's disa- bility give me. It is the first thing I think of when I awake in the morning and the last thing I remember when I go to sleep."

Laird, who shared Zumwalt's enthusiasm for the Vietnamization of the war, urged President Nixon in 1970 to name the then-three-star admiral to succeed Southern traditionalist Adm. Thomas H. Moorer as chief of naval operations. Nixon did so over the objections of Moorer. After his selection, Zumwalt, then 49 and the youngest CNO in history, was shocked to hear a predecessor instruct him on how to drive blacks out of the Navy. This intensified Zumwalt's resolve to attract more minorities to the Navy and promote them to top jobs. In a series of rapid-fire orders to commanders, called Z-grams, Zumwalt launched a frantic effort to change the Navy culture by enticing more blacks and women to enter and stay in the Navy. In 1970, when Zumwalt began his campaign, only 9.5 percent of first-term sailors were re-enlisting. He credited his reforms with reversing a downward trend.

"We are determined that we shall do better," Zumwalt wrote in Z-gram 66, sent out on Dec. 17, 1970. "Ours must be a Navy family that recognizes no artificial barriers of race, color, or religion. There is no black Navy, no white Navy-just one Navy-the United States Navy." Zumwalt said he was most proud of that Z-gram.

President Clinton presented the reformist admiral with the Medal of Freedom-the nation's highest civilian award-in January 1998 for his lifetime of challenging the status quo. Zumwalt maintained his interest in the Navy until his dying day. Asked shortly before his death what the Navy of today needs most, this damn-the-torpedoes admiral an-swered in two words: "more ships."

Zumwalt welcomed women and blacks into the Navy and abandoned outmoded traditions.