time that were doing some unusual things with those remarkable vessels when world war ii broke out. but he was definitely the one who stood above all the rest in the way he innovated the use of the submarine in warfare. prior to world war ii, the submarine was in most cases a defensive weapon. it was designed to protect harbors and shoreline. they were called fleet boats, the submarines were, because they were designed to also accompany a fleet of other vessels and to be able to protect them from attack, the ability to submerge or go chase attackers. but in most cases they with respect even fast enough -- they weren't even fast enough to stay up with the fleet. they couldn't do a real good job of that. at the same time, not only was the equipment limited, but the methods of fighting submarine warfare were completely different. the theory was that you stayed hidden. if you had a perfect shot, you took it because of the limited number of to have piots you could carry. -- torpedoes you

could carry. once you fired you ducked and ran as fast as you could which wasn't very fast, about eight or nine knots once they submerged, only about 20 knots on the surface. so the stealth was the main thing. so submarine skippers were pretty much taught that's the way to conduct warfare. well, the afternoon after pearl harbor when president roosevelt made that famous speech, he immediately issuerded for the first time in history the declaration that we were in unrestricted warfare with the empire of japan. instantly, that changed the thought process of how we fought a war. luckily, we had two things going for us. even though we weren't totally convinced there was going to be a war in the pacific; we still had some far-thinking folks in the navy who had begun development of a new class of submarine, one that could go farther, dive deep, carry more torpedo, and oddly enough, have more crew comfort.

a lot of people think of the german u-boats, and those were an extraordinarily effective fighting machine. but the new class of submarines that were on the drawing board in the 1930s were far superior even to the u-boat. the first was the gato class. the gato class, again, could dive deeper, go farther, had much more firepower than anything that had come along. the one thing we didn't have in december of 1941 was submarine skippers who could fight the kind of war that we needed to fight against the japanese in the pacific. it's not their fault. they had been taught a whole different way to run those submarines. but once that unrestricted warfare was declared, thankfully, we had some officers who stepped to the fore front and adapted those submarines and were able to take that remarkable equipment and use it very effectively when the war broke out. i like to joke and say most of them had matinee idol names;

creed burlingame, milk milligan. it sounds like movie matinee sort of heros. and then here comes mush morton. dudley mush morton. not only was he a character, but he instinctively knew how to take that new class of submarine and use it to its best effect in world war ii. that's who dudley was. dudley, like a lot of submariners, was born far, far from saltwater. most of his young years were spent in kentucky. his father was in the coal mining business. but his dad sent him down to miami because he and his teenage son or his teenage brother were very rambunctious fellows in high school, and his mother was ill and was not able to handle those two teenage boys. so he went to live with his aunt and uncle in miami. it's fortunate that the aunt and uncle were very well off and very politically connected. they were able to get dudley

into the naval academy after he spent some time in a prep school. he did not have an especially distinguished career at the naval academy. he was a good athlete, he was a world class wrestler and also a football player, though wrestling was really where he excelled. but he tended to rub his instructors and commanding officers the wrong way because he thought on his open. he had a very active and creative mind. he didn't necessarily take his studies seriously. he much preferred to be in a little skiff out on the chesapeake bay. he loved to sail, and that means he was, obviously, cut out to be in the navy but not necessarily submarines. after he graduated, he wail went to the -- he actually went to the west coast and was aboard a destroyer but eventually decided he wanted to be a submarine captain. a lot of people chose submarine command for a number of reasons. one, typically, the command of a

vessel is the most rapid way to advance in the navy and eventually become an admiral. a lot of people enjoy the smaller crew and being able to know each crew member and each crew member's capabilities without having six or seven hundred men that have to know. they typically know where their crew is from, who their parents are, how good they are when they have the dive or surface or fire torpedoes. so for that reason a lot of people preferred submarine command. of course, when he went into submarines and those people in that era went into submarines in the early '30s, they did not know necessarily they would begin the kind of war they eventually would begin. once he got into submarines, again, he did not have an especially colorful career. he was just a very typical submarine skipper and very old equipment, the old s-boats which were not very effective. when the war broke out, he was actually the skipper of one of

those old s-boats that had spent time in the caribbean and helped protect the canal zone against any possible german activity if war should break out. he, when the war did start, he was off the east coast and had one encounter with a german u-boat, and he did fire one torpedo at that u-boat. he knew it was not going to hit anything because it's hard for one submarine to sink another submarine because you not only have this and this, but you also have this and this to have to think about it. he did what most skippers would have done and fired the to torp, he dived and went away. he was actually reprimanded for that by his commanding officer who recommended that morton be sent to some other branch of the navy and not remain a submarine captain because he turned and ran from that u-boat. i don't know if morton took that to heart or if it just made him mad, but i think from that point on he wanted to prove that he had what it took to be a

submarine skipper. he didn't get run out of submarine service at that time. he ended up, actually, in pearl harbor as a prospective commanding officer of a submarine. they gave him command of an old, old boat called the dolphin. when he first walked on the boat, he announced to the crew, anybody listening, that this was a death trap. there is no way i'm going to take this thing to war. he went back to his squadron commander and refused to go outen on that submarine it was in such bad shape. well, the commander said, okay, you're finished with submarines, told the yeoman to draw up the paperwork and get morton to the surface navy as quickly as he could. um, morton went in to plead his case to the squadron commander's commander. he walks in, he shakes the man's happened. the man said -- the commander says, you know, seems like i remember you at annapolis. with respect you a yes -- weren't you a wrestler? didn't i see you play football?

yep, they sat down and talked about football and wrestling. the submarine commander later said any man with a handshake like that can command my submarines. so morton once again dodged the bullet and stayed in the submarine navy. i mentioned, too, in a period of time when he was stationed on the west coast, he was actually on the destroyer in the early 1930s in los angeles, san pedro, california, he spent a lot of time with hollywood folks. they loved him because he was a convivial individual, he told great stories -- most of them not true, but he told great stories, and he was very, very popular in hollywood when he was stationed there. that's going to come back later on. after dodging that other big bullet and staying in submarines, morton was assigned as prospective commanding officer on the uss wahoo. the pco or prospective

commanding offer, means you take a ride on a patrol with an experienced submarine skipper, and you kind of learn the ropes from him. um, and then you come back, and you get command of your own vessel. in this case, there was a lot of collusion among the crew on the wahoo to get their current skipper replaced, and that collusion led to mush morton being assigned to the wahoo as the pco. he was actually aboard for wahoo's second patrol. on the first patrol, the skipper -- at that time was very typical of the ones that were commanding submarines at the beginning of the war. he had fired some shots, but he, as they had been taught, dove and went away as quickly as thee could. he didn't follow up to try to attack again. in the opinion of the executive officer, he had actually avoided contact with a lot of potential

targets that were ripe for sinking. and he strongly suspected that the man was not cut out to be a submarine captain. that executive officer was a gentleman named dick o cain. he sank more ships than anybody else. he went to his squadron commander and recommended mush morton or for the pco crews. he observed the other captain, he saw what was going on, and he started politicking once they got to australia at the end of the patrol to take over wahoo, and that's what happened. i think it's important to note that the commissioning skipper on wahoo who took it on that first patrol and who rubbed the xo the wrong way and who was not very effective as a submarine commander, he went on to serve in the surface navy, did some heroic things and helped to win

the war. and that happened with a lot of those sub skippers that just weren't cut out to be sub skippers. and i think we owe them their due. they were just, i like to say they showed up for a gunfight with a knife. they just with respect prepared for that kind of -- they just weren't prepared for that kind of war. morton went on to lead the wahoo on her third patrol. that became the most spectacular world war ii submarine patrol. they sank an entire -- [inaudible] they were due to be out for about five weeks. they were out of torpedoes in three weeks. morton used the deck guns. most submarine skip ors didn't use the deck countries. they were primarily designed in the beginning, if you got caught on the surface, you could use the guns on the deck. morton would blaze right in to a convoy with the big guns going and shoot. they actually sank an entire convoy by themselves during that patrol.

well, when they got back to pearl harbor, the navy knew we needed some good news. they made sure that the whole world knew about wahoo. it was on the front page of all the newspapers, all the news magazines, newsreels in theaters everywhere were talking about wahoo and its swashbuckling skipper, mush morton. morton spent some time with the hollywood folks and renewed some acquaintances there, and that'll come back a little later too. second patrol was just about as spectacular. they did some amazing things. on that first patrol they were ordered to pass a little island that had a harbor. they couldn't even find it on the charts that the navy had issued. they had to use an atlas that one of the crew members had brought in australia for his son, they were able to project it on the raw and draw in the right stuff so they knew they were in the right area. the orders were to drive by and reconnoiter the area and see if there was activity there. to mush morton, reconnoiter

means sail right into that harbor, so shallow that they could actually feel the swell against the reef. they were close enough to the beach, they could count the coconuts on the palm trees. they see a destroyer coming their way. mush morton executes the first successful down-the-throat shot to shoot the narrow profile of a destroyer, it's almost impossible because there's only a narrow range where you can actually shoot, otherwise the to torpedo won't arm, or it'll go too far, and you'll miss it completely. plus, it's a very narrow target. they sank this destroyer inside this harbor, and it's quite a dramatic scene. that just led to the lore. this all continued, but it's important to note that we were having a lot of problems with our torpedoes at that time. they simply wouldn't explode, they wouldn't run true. one of the higher ranking members of the submarine command was an ordnance engineer who had designed those torpedoes, so he

was reluctant to admit there was any problem with them. mush morton was not reluctant to anytime there was a problem with them. -- admit there was a problem with them. he even went to charles lockwood, the commander submarine specific, and pitched a fit in his office about the situation with the torpedoes. after that he called his wife, mush morton did, and said you've married a failure, they're going to kick me out of navy. and he honestly felt at that point even though charles lockwood was a big fan and he was the most famous submarine skipper in the world, he was convinced they were going to run him out of the navy because of all of his complaining about the torpedoes. turns out that was the impetus, one of the things that pushed the navy to go ahead and do something about the torpedoes. and they did get better after that. he ended up with a total of five patrols in only ten months. he was one of, again, one of the most prolific skippers in the navy in sinking a large number of vessels despite the problems they were having.

but wahoo was lost on the last patrol with all hands. and until 2005 we with respect even sure -- we weren't even sure where wahoo was. we knew she was off the northern coast of japan, but thanks to some of mush morton's relatives, thanks to the author clive cussler and to the navy and even to russia and some russian petroleum exploration craft, they eventually located the wreck. they took enough pictures to convince the navy that it really was wahoo, and now they've had several memorial services there. it's a great relief to the family of the men who were lost to be able to point to a particular place and say that's where the submarine went down. to that point, wahoo was still listed as missing in action. for all the family members knew, the crew could have been captured, they could have died in concentration camps,

prisoners of war camp, they department know what happened. but the men who found wahoo who were able to research actually talked to some of the pilots who fired on wahoo the day she was sunk. they pieced together the story. morton was fighting to the end, as was his nature. he was unable to dive deep enough to avoid bombs that the planes were dropping, and she was sank, she sank there just off hokkaido. it's also important to note that the people who were searching for her established a memorial there not to wahoo only, but to wahoo, to all the people who lost their lives at the hand of wahoo, and they called it a peace memorial. this is to honor the people who fought on both sides and who died in action, not just the american submarine. and it's a beautiful memorial overlooking that stretch of water where wahoo actually went down. >> what prompted you to write

this book? >> i had written several books about world war ii history, and i was kind of moving away from that for a while and had some other ideas for books i wanted to do. but i was in jacksonville, florida, on business and had several hours before my flight was scheduled to leave, so i ran up to st. mary's, georgia. in st. mary's there is one of the most wonderful submarine museums in the whole world. it's a tiny little place. it's, but it has, you could build a submarine out of the stuff they have in there. if you go upstairs, they've got a lot of out-of-print books. back before the internet, they had taken the trouble to type up and reproduce the reports from every single world war ii patrol. you can open the big books and read. morton, by the way, when he wrote in those patrol reports, it was like poetry. the guy could have been a great novelist because he had a colorful way of writing, and i

stole a lot of that in this book. i pulled up a book about world war ii skippers and how influential morton and a few others had been and how they were able to win the war. people don't realize that at no time in world war ii was the submarine force any more than 2% of the total naval forces in the south pacific. and yet submarines sapg over 50% -- sank over 50% of the enemy shipping that was sunk in world war ii. we lost 3200 men, we lost 52 submarines in that war. submariners also had the highest casualty rate of any branch of the service. we think about the marines who are extremely brave men, and we think about the loss of life. almost 25% of the submariners who went to war in the pacific died in those submarines. but in thumbing through that, in reading about mush morton, i, well, i've got find his biography somewhere. i've got to find out more about this man because he's one of those fascinating characters that just, i love to read about.

i couldn't find anything. dick o cain did a very good book called the wake of the wahoo, but it's much more about wahoo and her crew. the yeoman on the wahoo who was almost on that last patrol, he literally was taken off the dock at midway, and he watched wahoo sail away, he wrote a very good book about the enlisted man's point of view, but it was other ships and, again, mush morton was an important part, but not a biography. i wanted to find out more about what made the man real, what made him the way he was. just a great story, and i'm a sucker for a great story. >> visit booktv.org to watch any of the programs you see here online. type the author or book title in the search bar on the upper left side of the page and click search. you can also share anything you see on booktv.org easily by clicking share on the upper left side of the page and selecting the format.

booktv streams live online for 48 hours every weekend with top nonfiction books and authors. booktv.org. >> and now more from booktv's cities tour. this weekend we visit birmingham, alabama. coming up next, an interview with the author of "while the world watched: a birmingham bombing survivor comes of age during the civil rights movement." >> what i remember when the bomb exploded, what i remember thinking not really that it was a bomb. i, the first thought that i had was maybe that it was thunder or something. the sound made me think of thunder. but as quickly as i thought that, the windows came crashing in. and i heard someone inside the church say, "hit the floor." and when i fell on the floor, i could tell after a few seconds,

i could hear feet. i could tell that people were getting up, running out. so my first thought was for those two younger brothers that i had brought with me. i knew that before i could leave or go to safety, i would need to figure out where they were. and so i went outside and searched downstairs and upstairs and was never able to find my brothers there at the church. we would find them later in a different part of the community. september 15th started as a very routine day. it was sunday morning, i was trying to coax my sister into getting her hair combed, and finally my mother said, just leave her here, i'll bring her later with me. so my two younger brothers, alan and wendell, left with me. my oldest brother dropped us off at church, and we arrived about, right about 9:30. and after putting them in their classes, i went upstairs to the

church office to gather my, um, my equipment i guess i could call it. but i was responsible for taking attendance, and i was responsible for recording the financial giving for the day and then creating a summary report that i would give later. so i did this, collected all of these reports, passed them out, then i sat in my sunday school class for a while. and generally about 9:15 i would get up, collect those reports and create the summary. on this particular sunday, we were very excited. all of the young people were excited because it was youth sunday. that just meant that we were in charge of everything. we sang, we gave the devotion, we did the ushering, we did everything. so we were excited about that. as i started up the shares to complete those reports, i passed the bathroom where my friends were. and i spoke to them, and can they were combing hair and

talking, and just everybody excited in their own way about different things. but i didn't linger there because of the report, and as i started up the steps when i reached the top, the phone was ringing in the church office. in those days the church office was right behind the sanctuary. so when i reached the church office and heard the phone ring, i went in and answered it. mrs. shorter, whom i worked under, was not there and, um, the caller, male caller on the other end said three minutes. and as quickly as he said that, he hung up. so i still had my items in my arms, my materials in my arm, and i just turned and walked out into the sanctuary and only because we counted it, i know that i took about 15 steps before the bomb exploded. >> what was the last thing that you had said to them before you left them in the bathroom? >> see you later. when i passed the bathroom, last thing i said, "see you later.

of" birmingham was a very segregated place during that time. it was, um, a very difficult, dark and difficult place during that time. as a young person probably prior to the age of 14, we did not experience a lot of the difficult days. our parents did such a great job of sheltering us. many of our activities were provided for us right here at the church and in the schools. so that we didn't miss the places that we could not go or the places we were not allowed to go. they provided picnics and swimming parties and contests and just all kinds of activities right here at the church. so we didn't really know to what extent we were missing a lot of things. i think that our participants did not -- our parents did not want us to know that there were a lot of restrictions out beyond

the home parameters. and so for many things they just didn't tell us about it. they sheltered us. when, for example, they opened the first fast food place, the jack's hamburgers, rather than allow us to know that they did not serve black people, rather than have us go to a side window when they did serve them, they just kept us at home, and they always told us that it was about money, that they didn't have the money to do these things. and, um, so in a real way we did not know many of the barriers that existed out there. it was a real gift and a lot -- in a lot of ways not knowing that the barriers were there. there were no imaginary barriers in our minds saying we can't do this because of those people or this person or whatever. we really grew up thinking that we could do anything that we wanted. we could be anyone that we wanted to be. this was stressed a lot in my elementary school and my high school. i guess they felt we would find

out soon enough what things were possible and what things weren't. but they really did a tremendous job of preparing us so that if opportunities came, we would be ready. i think our church, um, was just heartbroken. they were, you know, young, innocent girls. they had not been part of the movement. they had not served in any way with that. and they had their full life ahead of them. they were all very bright, very smart young girls in the school, and in two of the cases they were the only children. denise and cynthia were the only children that their parents had. so the church was really shocked that we had people in our city who were willing not only to kill young children in the name of segregation, but to bomb the house of worship, to maintain

that. and, um, we were away from our church about eight months during the renovation, but we had many members who did not come back. some did not come back because they were afraid, they thought it would happen again or something new would happen. some did not come back just because they thought that the church would continuously be having mass meetings and so forth. i would venture to say we probably had half of the congregation to return after the renovation. so the church reacted very strongly to what happened there. it was a very painful experience. i can tell you that prior to this experience i was just a young girl growing up in a house with four brothers who picked on me a lot, but life was good. i had very loving parents, both my participants were teachers -- parents were teachers, we had a lot of fun at home. after the bombing of the church, a lot of things changed. i

think we all probably became a little more quiet, we became a little more fearful. we had heard these bombs going off for years, but all of a sudden it was very real because we had lost four of our friends. i struggled with it tremendously because i was trying to understand as a child of 14, trying to understand what could make this situation right. if this was all about the color of your skin, what could make it right? what, after all, were we supposed to do about that? we understand that we can't change the parents to whom we're born, our gender, our color. so what were we supposed to do differently? that's what i kept trying to figure out. and, um, it became just a very troubling thought or obsession that i carried around, and i didn't i

didn't understand. and six months after they bombed this church, they bombed a house across the street from where i was growing up. so with that second bomb i became convinced -- i can tell you i was afraid most of the time wherever i was, wherever i was traveling, when i went off to school. i was just convinced that sooner or later i was going to die from one of the bombs that was exploding in the birmingham. so i found myself for many years after that, probably about 20 years, suffering from depression at a time when we didn't call it depression. but it took a long time to sort through the things that had happened here in birmingham and to understand them and to put them in perspective. what made me decide to write the book was just the resurgence of mean spiritedness that i began to see. i really felt that america had reached a crossroad many years after the bombing of the church. i really felt