strategies and battle tactics developed during the six-month long battle of guadalcanal. he argues it helps the u.s. win the war. this 45 minute talk is part of the daylong symposium on the battle of guadalcanal hosted by the national world war ii museum in new orleans. >> let me call back into session our symposium on guadalcanal. i have brought you under the auspices of the study of war and democracy. our next speaker i am pleased to introduce to you, trent hone is one of the leading authorities on navy tactics and doctrine. he is the winner of awards from the u.s. naval war college and naval history at heritage command. his latest book which i have read recently and was impressed by, "learning war: the evolution of fighting doctrine in the u.s. navy, 1898-1945."

it reminds us of something important. what happens today is often dependent on things that happened yesterday or happened over the course of many yesterdays. they are used to formulate doctrine and ideas for generations. learning war was reviewed in the new york times review of books by tom ricks. a rights for the washington post and has for many years. the real hero of hone's book is not an individual but a large complex organization, the american navy, that grew from second-rate status to become the world's premier maritime force. here to tell us that story and parse the lessons learned, trent hone. [applause]

trent: thank you for that excellent introduction and thank you, jeremy, and all of our hosts for being here today. i am pleased to give you some of the insights from the book, "learning war" and to help place guadalcanal in context. i want to place it in context in terms of what happens next, where does the navy go based on lessons that it gathers from the fighting? and how does that relate to the rest of the pacific wars? frome fighting continues 1943 through 1945. that is what i will be trying to do here. "have titled this adaptation an l of -- evolution." the navy does a good job at gathering lessons. there are a number of challenges

that are faced at guadalcanal, and i'm going to help you understand how those lead to better outcomes in the future. one of the most important things is the idea guadalcanal is a crucial opportunity which frank told us how it is in terms of the world stage in august 1942. the axis powers have had a series of victories, and it is important admiral king recognizes the importance of trying to figure out how to put the japanese on their heels. the victory at midway created opportunity. the initiative in the pacific hangs in the balance. the force which acts decisively will seize that and the pace of -- and control the pace of the fighting going forward. king recognizes this. king also recognizes something else. because he has been immersed in

the navy's approach to fighting for decades. he started off as a service officer, worked under william sims in the atlantic fleet world war i, moved on to command submarines and became an aviator. he had experience in all the ways in which the navy can fight. he knows the navy can learn and adapt lessons and has confidence it can do it faster than the japanese. the second opportunity is not just to seizizizizizitiative but come to grips with the enemy, learn how they fight and put into practice the ability of american naval officers to learn more rapidly. king has confidence in they can do this because of a deliberate learning system created in decades prior, the decades between world wars, 1919 to 1939.

the united states navy created a learning mechanism. it was constructed and comes from the mind of the second chief of naval operations, admiral robert kunst. he put into place what he called a planning cycle. this was an annual regimen, a war planning with the chief office, an analysis at the naval war college and exercises in the fleet. you have heard about the largest and most famous of these. what is generally done when we think about fleet problems is we think of exercises and how they went on. what i want you to understand is this is part of a network, a system of learning. the navy was going through these not just for practice or develop routines but to better understand how a naval war in the pacific might be fought and explore the challenges they faced.

frank highlighted the fact that steaming directly across the pacific and confronting the japanese early in the pacific war was discarded by 1933. that is true. it is one of the things that comes out of these exercises and the learning system many other things come out as well. if you have studied the fleet problems or have read the analysis, you understand they formant and become a hotbed for learning how to operate carriers. naval aviation is born in the fleet problems and develops a high level of expertise over that time, not matching what the japanese achieved, but not far behind. what often is ignored or not paid as much attention to is the fact that the u.s. navy's surface tactics and doctrine were also getting better through

this time. one of the things that is core to it is the fact that subordinate commanders are asked to devise new approaches and mechanisms. there is a lack of a standardized, universal approach. we heard earlier about joseph mason reeves who helped it become much more effective, turned it from an experiment to an actual operational weapon. those lessons were factored in to the operations of lexington and saratoga and later on the carriers yorktown and enterprise which spent so much time fighting in early 1942. three specific heuristics emerge over the course of this time. that is a bit of a complicated

word. it means a pattern of decision-making. it is an approach you have taken before you are practiced in and do it without really thinking about it. subconsciously this is how you go about these routines. three formed the core of the navy's approach to fighting in the run-up of world war ii. the first is to act aggressively. he had and coined the idea of observe, orient, decide, act. but the navy officers well understood that in combat, if you could get inside an enemy's decision cycle, you could keep them off balance and create new opportunities. this was something that tried to do. the regular part of how they approached fighting. one way was to attack first. attacking effectively first, this is a term from wayne hughes.

i borrowed the term from him. the navy at the time didn't use this term but they would have understood it well. there was a question after the last presentation. why did they scout with sbd's, a relatively slow plane? it is because it can carry a bomb load. the whole idea was to have a scout to bomber to fly with a bomb loads to attack immediately because at that time in carrier warfare if you get in the first hit, you were going to win. this manifested in a series of other ways when it came to surface combats. in daylight the united states developing aized fire control solution, very specific computer called a ford range that would track the motions of the target, project -- predict when the target would be when michelle's woodland.

it would allow them to open fire at long range. and often fired to liberally using salvo fire. at night, the situation was different. at night, as soon as you could see something it was within , range. you are in threat of being knocked out quickly. so the pattern for night battle practice was to open fire immediately at an estimated range based on how far your eyes could see that night. and then allow fire control solution to be determined afterwards once you noted the fall of shot. ships to the united states navy become experienced with this. we have had questions about radar. radar brings in a new dimension because the assumption was at night you would have to spot. you would have to keep your eye on the target. you would have to move the shells onto it. radar gives you a range. those officers who were familiar with fire control radar, those

used off guadalcanal, thought we don't need to spot anymore. we will get the radar range and we will just shoot. we won't have to shoot salvos anymore. jim hart fisher talked about partial salvos. what they used on guadalcanal wasn't partial salvos, it is a continuous fire. put as many shells in the air as you can, hit the target as rapidly as you can. what this means, we have got a has 15 sixelena that inch guns with firing cycle between six and 10 seconds, you really are firing continuously. all of the splashes from those shells are on the radar scope and secure the target. this is why in later battles, further up the solomons chain,

what typically happens is the first japanese ship that presents a large radar target gets overwhelmed, and then the united states navy mrs. -- misses everything else. the third aspect that is important is this idea of decision-making, there is recognition that there will be fleeting opportunities. momentary chances to take an action to put the enemy off balance or to act aggressively. to take advantage of those opportunities, we have to decentralize control. we must seize opportunities. this turns a little bit as well. it is not just about how officers behave in battle but how do we develop the ways of fighting. if you go through and look at the published trial manuals that exist before world war ii, you will see a lot of information. if you are looking for specifics

about how we will fight and approach cruisers and destroyers, you will be relatively disappointed. because a lot of detail is generic. it provides general guidance. individual squadron and division commanders were expected to come up with their own detailed plans based on circumstances at the moment and unique capabilities of their command. before the war they did this. it was good. -- it worked pretty well. they developed new approaches. but what it meant was there was a lot of variability. different divisions and squadrons came up with using -- with the different ways of using their ships together. different ways of approaching battle, different plans and doctrines, tactics. in some circumstances this can work pretty well. but when your forces are no longer cohesive, when your squadrons get broken up, it can become problematic.

there was a lot of variability in terms of how navy ships, particularly for small actions, were going to approach the fighting. what this has led, it created the impression the united states navy didn't have a battle doctrine particularly for small detached actions with cruisers and destroyers. if you look at it from a high level, was there a printed manual that instructed everybody how to go about this, then you are right. there wasn't. but there was an assumption they would work it out and provide it to their supporters. that difference created misunderstanding which i have tried to correct. against this, a backdrop of which all this doctrine develops, the war will culminate in a decisive fleet action. and we need to prepare for that.

a great deal of tactical exercises are oriented in that way. you will notice i talked about aggressive action, i didn't talk about torpedoes. there is a reason. most of the destroyer torpedo practices assumed destroyers are going to be making an attack if they are attacking at night on screened enemy disposition. it is protected by cruisers and destroyers. the destroyers are instructed to use torpedoes on heavy ships, carriers, battleships. whatever they happen to be. to get there, what do you have to do? practices assumed destroyers ary through. torpedoes are too valuable to waste on enemy cruisers or destroyers, so you use guns. this creates certain assumptions in the minds of destroyer and

cruiser captains and also leads to the fact that on american destroyers of this time, when you fire the torpedoes, the impulse that launches them creates a spark. it illuminates. so the destroyer torpedo our thought to be a weapon of stealth. they decide to use guns. this is the situation. admiral king decides the heuristic of acting aggressively needs to be employed at the operational level. we need to seize the initiative, take the offensive and sees the e the anchorage in the airfield and island of guadalcanal.

seize the anchorage in the airfield and island of guadalcanal. the japanese as expected come back very quickly. the battle of savo island. the key lessons learned in the moment in the battle of savo island, two things reinforced by prewar experience and also observations. the primary challenge is surprise. the japanese did so well because they surprised us. the other is we were afraid of opening fire for fear of hitting our own ships. friendly fire was real danger. it had been a danger not just at savo island but every nocturnal exercise the navy employed and that i have come across. there was a risk of ships shooting at each other when they tried to rejoin operations at night. so he creates a very compact linear formation. a number of researchers said it is logically derivative from the work they did prewar. it is a linear battle formation

in microcosm. that is what scott was doing. i disagree. what he is trying to do is address these challenges, surprise and friendly fire, concentrate the force. that will prevent friendly fire. he makes it a linear formation because he wants to prevent surprise. he wants to attack in either direction right away immediately. he calls it a doubleheader formation to reflect that. he wins that victory. unfortunately, it doesn't prevent friendly fire. the destroyers farenthold and duncan were hit by u.s. cruisers. but it works well enough. a month later in november, we have been given a powerful description of the challenges the rear admiral faced. he noted it was difficult for

callahan to keep track of what was going on. this is true but if you go through and reconstruct information callahan has and look at the various orders the -- he issues, it is clear that is one thing overarching in his mind. that is that he has to act aggressively. he has to get close. as soon as we get that she gets -- as he gets information from helena about the bearing of the japanese formation, he goes towards it. he does this a couple of times. and then before the shooting starts he orders the van destroyers and rear destroyers to course through the japanese formation and after the shooting starts he maneuvers the san francisco to bring her as close as possible to the japanese flagship in order to disrupt the cohesion of the japanese formation and dachshund -- and prevent the bombardment. in these actions you can see a

clear demonstration of the heuristics the japanese navy developed before the war. rear admiral lee puts all of them together. he experiments with the new formation. it is an ad hoc formation. the destroyers he has are the ones that happen to have enough fuel. he pushes them ahead. he uses them deliberately as a screen to ensure the japanese light forces can be kept at a distance from his battleships. he uses guns to prevent japanese from just force against him. he uses them to keep them off balance. once the japanese searchlights comes on, he becomes certain the target that his fire control crew has been tracking is not the south dakota and instead a japanese ship. he allows his control team to open fire with some of the most accurate fire ever seen in combat.

the japanese ship is wrapped in -- wrecked in a few short minutes. but he is not done. lee continues to act aggressively. we heard about how the dauntlesses spent time destroying transports. one of the reasons that had as -- they had as much time as they did is because lee, after sinking one of them, ghost north -- heads northwest, he knows japanese transports are coming from that direction. he wants to force them to turn around and does this with the battleship washington. the transports slow their progress. the aviators have more time. the decisive moment that guadalcanal turn on the key heuristics the u.s. navy developed before the war. there is a lot of learning that goes on in theater between scott, callahan and their peers that informs the battles. and the next one, the navy by

that time has abandoned the idea of starting with a linear formation that is concentrated. now they are sent forth. the cruisers are intended to hang back and use gunfire so there can be simultaneous destroyer torpedo and cruiser gunfire attack. that is the way admiral kincaid planned it. admiral right does not execute it that way. it doesn't work well, but it serves as a model for future battles as the united states navy advances up the slot. in addition to the learning in the theater, there is learning at a higher level in the pacific fleet. there are two key problems that come out of the fighting of guadalcanal. the first of these is that ship captains and formation to make -- formation commanders can't make sense of the information

available. there is information from radars, there is the tbs radio and all of this information coming in. it is difficult to understand, analyze and act on all of it in a timely manner. captains are overwhelmed. the other problem is prewar approach assumed and relied on the idea these squadrons and divisions would be cohesive. you would train with the other destroyers in your company and develop tactics that suited your capabilities and dispositions and take those into battle under the pressures of the war. these organizations breakdown. destroyers are thrown into combat in a very ad hoc way. there is no time to develop cohesion and no time to put an effective doctrine or plan in place.

admiral chester nimitz at pearl harbor, commander of the pacific fleet, is aware of these challenges. and notices these issues as they come back from action. in november 1942, when the climactic battles are being fought, he takes action on the fact there is an inability of these officers to make sense of the available information. he issues a directive. every ship will create a combat information center. that combat information center will be the clearinghouse for all of the information that is available from radar, whether control, searched, sonars, lookouts. that new organization will synthesize all of that information and provide it to the captain or formation commander. one of the things that is very interesting about this war nimitz issues is he says what we

ought to do, hasn't said anything about how. the variability that existed, the individual that existed in the fleet, nimitz triggers it and says, all you subordinate ships, start experimenting with different approaches and i will identify the best, and we will replicate that once it proves successful. when the action report from the destroyer fletcher, the last ship in callahan flying, comes back and nimitz and his staff recognize what wiley has done to help keep that ship undamaged through the whole battle, they bring him back to pearl harbor to help him work out procedures because what wiley did is he stood between the bridge and radar room and kept an eye on

the sgppi planned indicator display you see on the left. he had headphones in the various ships' weapons systems. he coached weapons on the targets and he gave the commanding officer of the ship a clear sense of where this was relative to other ships in battle. wiley was in essence the navy's first destroyer combat information center in his own action himself. he helped develop sophisticated procedures to make this effective throughout the fleet. what happens in 1943 is these procedures begin to work out. they become more routine and effective. as the navy is changing its approach to blend effective destroyer attacks timed to work with cruiser gunfire, the cic begins to influence how that happens. the japanese are changing at the same time. they have shifted their approach. we have heard a lot about

actions sending cruisers and battleships down the slot toward the guadalcanal to bombard american positions. their focus shifts. they send mostly destroyers. maybe there is a light cruiser at the head of the column. these ships don't fire their guns. at least not right away. they fire very powerful torpedoes. type 93, an extreme range powered by oxygen, doesn't burn air and the united states navy doesn't fully understand the capabilities of these tornadoes until well into 1943. once they do, they shift tactics again. by november 1943 the battles of cape st. george and the bay are clear victories. they transform the approach, they have revolutionized it and the japanese are outpaced. the other challenge, the lack of

cohesive formation, this is a bigger issue. the navy needs and ability to -- an ability to interchange's ships and task forces to respond to the needs of the moment. nimitz contains a board to look at this challenge and understand how to approach this. they were authorized to rewrite the cruising instructions that -- but they exceed that. there is a number of surface warfare officers part of that group and an aviator, captain apollo sioux check. they look at the problem and they decided they are going to extend a playbook that had been developed for the war for major actions, big decisive fleet battles. they extend that to minor actions. what they create is a playbook that any of the ships in the pacific fleet can use to understand how to cooperate and fight together in a battle that

just sort of appears. the ability to deal with ad hoc formations has been addressed. this supports a fundamental change in how the fleet organizes to fight for the offensive. they had a challenge they have never worked out how to deal with. the japanese have dominion over the mandated islands in the central pacific. the marshals, the carolines, the marianas, guam. they have spent years figuring out how to create a defensive network, a web in these islands. we get a taste of what it might have been like to attack them directly at guadalcanal because the japanese are good at shuttling airplanes around to trick the u.s. navy and fight very actively. it would have been much worse than the marianas because they were close to their bases.

very distant from guadalcanal. how can this pacific fleet enter this and fight effectively a fleet based around battle fleets which had real problems with this and going into the teeth of the japanese plans? they must reconfigure and we, -- and becomes a network of carrier task forces. instead of moving into a single area and occupying one objective at a time, it can move into an entire island group. seize decisive points, prevent reinforcements from coming in and leave when the locations had been secured. the pattern that is employed in the gilbert islands 1943 and in the marshals february 1944, so on. the japanese are at a loss because they expect their

defensive network will hold the fleet down long enough to force the decisive battle they want to fight. it doesn't. in desperation they fight the battle of the philippine sea, airfare is diminished and they try again at the battle of whitney gulf where their service fleet is diminished and there is no longer an effective fighting force. the key that i want you to take from this presentation is that the learning system the navy established before the war, which is why vulnerability is very visible at guadalcanal. it helps us understand better how the fighting turned out, particularly surface actions, but it feeds learning at multiple levels. commanders in the theater share ideas and rapidly disseminate

weapons amongst themselves. the pacific fleet is gathering this information, adapting to the circumstances of the fighting. without the learning mechanisms, the victory in the pacific in world war ii would have been much more challenging and complex and would have come later, further beyond august 1945. there are a number of other things about this that we can weave in, logistics, there are questions about that, and i will finish now and allow you to ask some questions. [applause] >> thank you, trent. if there is questions, please raise. we will start on the ground floor near the back here. >> thank you. another brilliant, articulate

presentation. i don't have a question. i have a comment that in researching a book that i have just completed, i came across the army's, the united states war office publication, fighting on guadalcanal published by united states war office 1943. i will read this opening paragraph. in 1943 the united states war office published a restricted document entitled fighting on guadalcanal with the forward signed by george c. marshall, chief of staff. the purpose of the 69 page booklet was to document the resourcefulness and gallantry of the men in the solomon islands against the fanatical japanese fighting force. from major generals to platoon sergeants, the perspective of the contributors was consistent in its urging to revamp official

prewar by the book training to reflect the harsh realities of jungle fighting to reduce casualties. trent: i feel like i can comment. one of the things that indicates is a difference in how the united states navy and how the united states army approached some of these things. in the navy there is a clear and deliberate sense of leaving room for the emergence and adaptation of new approaches and new techniques. it is clear from records of the time that they feel the united states army does not have the same kind of mindset and i think some of that had to hit home for the united states army through its fighting, both in the south pacific and north africa where some of their assumptions about prewar approaches proved to be flawed. doesn't mean the approaches

of the united states navy didn't prove to be, but there was a deliberate sense we need to allow room to learn. because we will not get it right the first time. >> on the ground floor to the back, your left. >> there is an old saying that goes something like a nation prepares for the next war by preparing to fight the last war or something. it sounds like you don't think that applies to what the navy did in world war ii. what do you think about that? trent: that is a great question. it gives me the opportunity to talk about jutland. which i am sure you know is a massive naval battle fought in the first world war. there has been a good deal of criticism that saying they were trying to refight jutland. if you get into the records if , you look at what an american

naval officers who analyzed jutland soon after it was fought, they use it as an example of in certain circumstances what not to do particularly when it comes to fostering the initiative of subordinate commanders. there is a clear threat at the -- thread at the naval war college by other writers that jutland was not as successful as it could have been because they handcuffed junior commanders with instructions that were too rigid. that was something they sought not to do. we will do the opposite. we will create an environment where people can take the initiative and act on the things they can say. the other piece is it often dovetails with the emphasis the united states navy placed on battleships, the movement of the battle fleet. there is room to be critical there. the thing that is important to recognize is well into the war, the battleship is seen as a

decisive instrument. the plans for the gilbert and the marshals, they all contain an appendix that illustrates what the navy will do if the japanese come out to fight. we will have to consolidate, bring battleships together and duke it out. because if they want to, that is what we have to do. >> we will stay on the ground floor in the center here. >> thank you -- doctor? mister? for an excellent presentation. led tostion that i am ask by your presentation is the effect or the interplay between formation of doctrine and naval intelligence. now what intelligence were we

collecting about the way the japanese intended to fight? and how if at all did the interplay with the creation of interwar doctrine -- because it seems to me if you read a book like -- ok, you are familiar with that. it would have led somebody come if we knew the japanese doctrine to spend a hell of a lot more time worrying about what would happen at night, and what -- was naval intelligence even aware of this? what input did they have to doctrine? like you need to fight the enemy you actually are going to fight, not the one you guessed is going to be out there or your image. trent: there is a lot to unpack here. a few things. it reminds me of a question asked earlier about what intelligence was there related

japanese -- related to japanese night fighting capability. one of the answers is the u.s. navy assumed the japanese would try to fight at night, not a decisive fleet action but the u.s. navy would be subject to attacks that night. japanese tod the come with cruisers and destroyers. they practice this. -- practiced this. they are trying to get american cruisers and destroyers better at fighting at night, better at attacking in formation. not necessarily better at the fighting now. but better at a central pacific major action. there is a sense that they will do it, we will do it. let's make sure we are better at it. what is missed from the intelligence standpoint and it is remarkable no one sauces this out, the japanese have been restricted by the size of their battle fleet by treaty and the cruiser force.

ok, they will have fewer ships. what will that lead them to do? maybe they will make ships that they think are higher-quality somehow. what are those massive torpedo batteries that are on the sides of the cruisers we can see? they knew they were equipped with massive torpedo batteries. there is a failure of imagination to realize that wow, that is a 24 inch torpedo with a massive warhead that can go as far as the battleship gun. that gets lost. i do think -- you mentioned, mirror imaging or you alluded to it, if you didn't say it. there's a lot of that that happens. the japanese will fight more or less how we fight. we've been together at this for -- thinking about this for 20 years. have at it. more or less.

>> to your right on the ground floor. >> thank you for an excellent presentation. we have all read that in the american air force, after a certain number of missions, pilots were rotated back to the united states, to teach the latest tactics to younger pilots. what happened in this regard to navy captains and commanders? trent: there is a similar -- not always necessarily being rotated back, but there is a deliberate choice to take naval officers, oftentimes aviators, back to begin to impart lessons. this happens with service ships and carrier officers as well. and then also rotating them to different positions. the person who leads the

destroyers to victory, he becomes the chief of staff to the commander of the task force in the 38th. there is a delivered ability to rotate some of this knowledge around not necessarily back to the states, but also to create a web of networked information within the force that is doing the fighting. >> we will stay to the far right here. >> probably on the same lines. i really appreciate the innovation of new thoughts and processes and policies, particularly in the cic. and eventually, given -- giving everyone the opportunity to develop their own way, but eventually they had to get into standard operating procedure. how is that turned around, formulated and disseminated, the fleet is disparate around the pacific and atlantic. maybe some of the officers are going back and forth.

how is that disseminated to get a cohesion, to getting the groups and squadrons together? trent: excellent question. with regard to the cic, what happens is, more specific and sophisticated procedures are developed in 1943. there are courses that are establish out a radar school in pearl harbor. ships, when they come in for a refit or when they're coming out from the coast to join the fleet, a lot of the cic crews -- they started with the idea of training the officers there and they will bring it back to the ships and be a trainer. that is what they tried at first. it is not successful. it doesn't lead to the standardization that you are

there and they will bring it back to the ships and be a trainer. standardization that you are highlighting that will be essential in dealing with a series of kamikazes. what they do, is bring the ship in, we will get the cic crew and, -- in, and we will train them as a unit. they will go out and be more capable and effective. one of the things that happens over 1943, 1944, 1945, there is more investment and how to standardize these approaches and training. side effect is that there is now less experimentation. there is less exploration of new opportunities. it wins the war, but it does not position the fleet as well post war to continue this approach. >> we have time for one more question. i promise that the first question from the panel will be from jim to you. [laughter] >> was the concept of the task force not possible until the advent of the essex class carrier?

trent: i assume you mean the cap -- the large carrier task force. several different pieces here. there are task forces for the -- before the war starts. but they are similar to some of the organizational parameters that have already existed. the battle force and scouting force, and other elements of it. you can create a task force. the modern task force we think of with a set of carriers, either too large and a light, or some reconfiguration of that. it doesn't become possible until there are enough carriers to do that. the other thing that mitigates against it is, throughout 1942, there is some question about what the best configuration for carriers is. remember, the prewar concept of carrier warfare, you have to hit the bag -- the bad guy first. you have to attack. once you hit that, we will win. there are two ways to win or to

dashboard two ways to prevent from being damaged. one is to hit the other guy first, and the others to not be found. there's a lot of emphasis on, even when you carriers together, as at coral sea and midway, making sure that the carers are -- carriers are significantly distant, so if they strike, it can only get one of them. it doesn't get them both. that mitigates against it. what you have to have is an ability to not have just enough carriers to make it work, but you need to have the sense of how well we have a combat air patrol that is effective and can shoot down incoming strikes? that begins to develop through combat experience over the course of 1943 in preparation for the pacific central offensive. >> thank you, trent. [applause] announcer: american history tv is live next saturday, march 16

from historic ford's theatre and a daylong, d.c. with abraham lincoln symposium. speakers include lincoln scholars, david blight and michael burling game. on lincoln's relationship with frederick douglass, and his actions as president-elect before his first inauguration. our live coverage begins at 9:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span3. announcer: each week american artifacts takes you to museums and historic places to learn about american history. up next u.s. army medical department museum director takes us behind the scenes to see some of his favorite items. he shows us models of a civil war era ambulance train, a doll made by pow nurses and a dummy used to train army medical professionals. george: i would like to with welcome you to the united states medical museum here at fort sam houston, texas. you're probably looking around saying it doesn't look like a museum. in fact this is a part of every museum, the pa t