Take Charge and Move out: the Founding Fathers of Tacamo: True Believers and the Rise of Navy Strategic Communications

TACAMO, a Navy unit, was once seen as a career-killing backwater, but a handful of junior officers took a leap of faith in the 1970s to bring it into existence, becoming future commanding officers and making major contributions to national strategic communications.

Format: Hardback
Length: 248 pages
Publication date: 15 April 2022
Publisher: Casemate Publishers

TACAMO, an acronym for Take Charge and Move Out, is the Navy's well-known and respected leg of the nation's national strategic communications, a crucial component of the US nuclear deterrence posture. However, TACAMO's early days were not always celebrated. For junior officers in the 1960s and 1970s, TACAMO was seen as a career-killing backwater, potentially ending their careers before they even began. However, in the 1970s, a group of junior officers, inspired by their commanding officer Bill Coyne, took a leap of faith and decided to take a second tour in TACAMO, betting their careers on the possibility of creating this community. This is the story of eleven of these "True Believers," told in their own words, about how each made the decision to bring the TACAMO community into existence against all odds, shaping it into what it is today. These eleven individuals went on to become eleven future commanding officers and three commodores of a Wing, twenty years in the future. Beyond TACAMO, the "True Believers" made significant contributions to all aspects of national strategic communications, even at the level of the White House. This is their story.

Dimension: 228 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781636241548