DAVID V. GOLIATH POST MORTEM

 

The Valley of Elah, c. 1012 B.C.  

 

In a deceptively pastoral setting about twenty miles west-southwest of present-day Jerusalem, two opposing armies squared off.  King Saul’s Israelites faced an imposing force of Philistines.  

 

Israelites and Philistines were historic enemies owing to territorial and philosophical disputes. 

 

The Philistine army included giant warriors from the Gaza region.  The most prominent was called Goliath, minimally reckoned at more than seven feet—an immensely frightening figure, huge for the era.  Scripture says that Goliath stalked forward morning and evening for forty days, berating the Israelites for their reluctance to send forth a champion in single combat.

"Why do you come out and line up for battle?  Am I not a Philistine, and are you not the servants of Saul? Choose a man and have him come down to me. If he is able to fight and kill me, we will become your subjects; but if I overcome him and kill him, you will become our subjects and serve us.” 

 

Then the Philistine said, “This day I defy the armies of Israel! Give me a man and let us fight each other.”

 

As the Book of Samuel added, “On hearing the Philistine’s words, Saul and all the Israelites were dismayed and terrified.”  They recognized that Goliath had been “a man of war since his youth.”

 

At the end of the forty days a youthful shepherd named David overheard the challenge while delivering supplies to his older brothers.  The Book of Numbers specifies that Israeli men entered the army at age twenty, so David likely was between sixteen and nineteen.

 

When no Israelite soldiers offered to serve as Saul’s champion, David presented himself.  In 1 Samuel 17:36 he said to the king, "Your servant has struck down both lions and bears, and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, for he has defied the armies of the living God." 

 

The passage makes two references to lack of circumcision, by inference denigrating the Philistine practice.  Subsequently, to earn Saul’s daughter in marriage, David and his merry band delivered 200 Philistine foreskins as a down payment.

 

Lacking options, the king and court wanted to fit the shepherd with helmet and armor, but David declined.  In modern parlance he would have said, “I’ve got this.”

 

David’s offer was reluctantly accepted, and he calmly walked forth, armed with his shepherd’s sling, seeking five suitable stones.  

 

So…how big were David and Goliath?

 

Archaeologists have long determined that early Bronze Age males typically stood five feet, five inches.  So that’s a reasonable assumption for David.

 

As for Goliath, we default to the oft-cited Biblical measure.  The Samuel author pegs him at six cubits and a span.  Typically, a cubit was measured from the elbow to tip of the middle finger although sometimes it stopped at the wrist or the palm. Egyptian measures seem fairly consistent at 20 to 21 inches.  Greek and Roman sources indicate an 18-inch cubit.  Jewish sources range from 17.5 to 21.5 inches.  

 

A span usually measured the width of the fingers or palm, just about 3 inches.

 

Therefore, Goliath’s height seems between exactly 9 feet and about 10 feet 9 inches.

 

Current medical data shows that seven-foot-tall men weigh 225 to 275 pounds, mostly being skinny.  However, basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal is 7 feet 1 inch and 325 pounds but has said he peaked at 415 playing weight.  At 325 that’s 46 pounds per foot, but 415 equals 60 pounds per foot.  So at an intermediate 9 feet 10 inches, Goliath’s median weight was about 450 pounds but he could have been well over 500.  

 

Goliath usually was accompanied by a shield bearer while carrying his own weapons: a large sword and a honking big spear with a head weighing fifteen pounds.  It would have been deadly as a thrusting or projectile weapon.

 

Nowthen: what about the sling?

 

A sling was not a slingshot with elastic tension, which dated from the 19th century.  

 

Slings were common weapons in the ancient world, and slingers often were fielded in groups to provide volley “fire” at extended distances.  A sling might measure 35 to 40 inches of braided cord with a cloth or leather cup or “pocket” in the middle.  The projectile—a rock—fit in the cup, held there by inertia when the slinger twirled the weapon.  

 

Some slings had a finger loop for the strong hand; others tied the end to the wrist but in either case the shooter held the loose end in the same hand.  Slinging was something like playing the violin—everyone knows the basics but develops his own technique.  

 

Experts could generate useful velocity with a few spins, then let fly.  Some slingers are faster off the mark than others, using only one spin while others use three or four.  

 

Spinning the sling overhead, or with an arm extended to the side, or “pitching” overhand from behind all seem to work equally well.  

 

Internet videos demonstrate some astonishing accuracy with slings against precision targets, near to far.  

 

At which point things became extremely difficult.

 

Contrary to slingshots, slings had no reference for aiming.  The slinger needed exceptional hand-eye coordination based on extensive experience to judge weight, distance, and velocity.  As a shepherd, David was highly competent in striking predators around his sheep.  The distances would have varied considerably—how far was it from one side of the flock to the other where a bear or lion appeared?  Scripture tells us that David was an accomplished slinger, able to place a rock on the predator with enough velocity to send it scampering off.

 

Saul granted David permission to fight, and the shepherd departed with his staff and sling.  He stopped at the nearby stream and selected five smooth stones, which he placed in his pouch.  They would have been of a size and weight for ballistic consistency.   Depending on specifics, likely the stones would attain between 160 and 250 feet per second.

 

When David confronted Goliath, they exchanged comments, which says something about the distance between them.  Even allowing for a giant’s booming voice, he had to hear the responses of the boy before him.

 

Then there’s the language thing, and the Bible ignores the subject.  Almost nothing is known about the Philistine tongue, other than it was part of the Canaanite family. On the other hand, David likely spoke early Hebrew and possibly Aramaic.  

         

Since the combatants had no mutually intelligible language, we have to wonder about veracity of the Samuel passage.  Which, according to scholars, likely was written in about the seventh century BC.  

 

In any case, the distance could have varied between fifteen and twenty paces—maybe forty feet. 

 

David’s target was small: the exposed area between the giant’s eyebrows up to the base of his bronze helmet.  Allowing for Goliath’s size, call it four inches.

 

Supremely confident, David swirled the sling and let fly.  

 

David’s first shot was decisive.  He did not need to strike a fatal blow, but the impact velocity of that stone knocked the Philistine champion to the ground, apparently senseless.  Thus incapacitated, he could not prevent the shepherd from drawing his large sword and decapitating the giant.  If Goliath stood 9-feet-10, and we extrapolate 450 and 580 pounds, when David raised the grisly trophy it might have weighed 40 to 45 pounds. 

 

Then the Jews drove the enemy back to Gath.

 

And eventually David inherited a kingdom.

REMEMBERING LEYTE GULF: A SECOND TIME

This month's offering reprises my original Leyte Gulf blog entry from October 2019.  I have left the 75th anniversary text intact but I want to acknowledge the 80th anniversary this month.

A quick sidebar: 

In the course of researching and writing Pacific Theater topics since the 1970s, I was fortunate to know a variety of Leyte Gulf veterans.  They included survivors of the escort carrier Gambier Bay (CVE-60), who invited me to accompany them on a 1977 Philippines reunion cruise.  That was a unique opportunity, intended as basis for a book but which produced one of my favorite articles, cited here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Gambier_Bay

The Gambier Bay crew included retired Captain Ed Huxtable, skipper of the ship's composite squadron, an inspiring leader and fellow Arizonan.  

Other Leyte Gulf veterans were Captain David McCampbell, the Navy's leading fighter ace who wrote the foreword for my 1979 F6F Hellcat book. And later Texas Governor John Connolly, the USS Essex (CV-9) fighter director who gave Dave and his wingman "the vector of vectors" to the all-time record interception of Japanese aircraft.

So let's set back the clock--and the calendar--to the October 2019 blog:

==

This month marks the 75th anniversary of the greatest naval battle of World War II.  From October 23 to 26, 1944, the U.S. and Imperial Japanese navies clashed in Philippine waters.  The context was General Douglas MacArthur’s promised Return to the islands when he had fled the unstoppable Japanese in early 1942.  Subsequently the Joint Chiefs in Washington decided to merge the Central Pacific and Southwest Pacific offensives in the Philippines rather than Formosa (now Taiwan), thus setting huge forces in motion.

Oddly enough, the Battle of Leyte Gulf had little to do with Leyte Gulf, but it was the dominant feature of the campaign.  The scale could only be imagined today: 236 American and about 80 Japanese warships plus U.S. torpedo boats and submarines while both fleets deployed significant support vessels such as tankers and provision ships.  The Americans brought about 1,500 tailhook aircraft aboard 34 fleet and escort carriers while the Japanese Navy had approximately 300 planes in four carriers and ashore.

The U.S. Third Fleet was led by Admiral William F. Halsey, the jut-jawed seadog who had been at war against Japan since December 7, 1941.  His carrier commander in Task Force 38 was Vice Admiral Marc Mitscher, a pioneer aviator who relied heavily upon his excellent staff.  The amphibious force was led by Seventh Fleet’s Admiral Thomas Kinkaid.

Leyte Gulf has been told and retold dozens of times, and requires little expansion here.  The Imperial Navy deployed three units: two powerful surface forces transiting the islands from west to east, and a minimal carrier force well to the north, which was bound to draw attention of the aggressive “Bull” Halsey.

Leading four Japanese carriers was Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, who had clashed with Mitscher off the Marianas in June.  “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” all but destroyed Tokyo’s carefully hoarded supply of trained carrier aircrews, leaving Ozawa with a small crop of rookies.

Historians still argue whether Leyte Gulf was a carrier battle.  The previous five, dating from Coral Sea in May 1942, all involved mutual exchange of carrier air strikes.  They resulted in loss of three U.S. flattops (plus one to a submarine) and nine Japanese—totaling fewer than the fast carriers Mitscher owned in October 44.  While a few of Ozawa’s planes flew within range of TF-38, none accomplished anything significant.

The battle began with U.S. submarines stalking Japan’s surface forces west of the Philippines on the 23rd.  Events peaked the next day with continuous air strikes that sank the battleship Musashi—one of the two biggest ships afloat—but otherwise did little to deter Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, who continued toward his goal of attacking U.S. shipping in Leyte Gulf.  His passage through San Bernardino Strait was reported by U.S. night owls but was ignored by Halsey and Mitscher with disastrous results the next day.

Meanwhile, Japanese land-based aircraft sank USS Princeton on the 24th, the first American fast carrier lost since October 1942.

Hours later, Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura’s southern force was annihilated in the last major surface action of all time, a nocturnal slugfest in the Battle of Surigao Strait.  Outnumbered about six to one, he lost his life and his command, only one destroyer surviving.  

Partly due to unnecessarily complex communications, Halsey assumed that his battleships, Task Force 34, were guarding the Leyte side of San Bernardino Strait.  With word of Ozawa’s flattops to the north, he took TF-38 to destroy Ozawa, leaving Kinkaid’s amphibious command vulnerable to surface ships.  The only American force in the way was “Taffy Three,” six small carriers with their escorting destroyers.  During the Battle Off Samar, the immensely outgunned “small boys” fought back with guns, torpedoes, and whatever aircraft could be launched.  Other escort-carrier planes added to the effort, forcing Kurita to disengage.  

Throughout the day the U.S. Navy lost two escort carriers (one to the first kamikaze mission) and three destroyers.  

Halsey’s aviators and “black shoe” surface warriors sank all four of Ozawa’s carriers, but by then his flattops were almost empty shells.  The execution continued into the 26th, raising the toll to 28 Japanese warships.  The Imperial Navy never recovered.

MacArthur’s forces largely secured the Philippines in April 1945, providing another advanced fleet base for the Pacific Fleet.  

Late that year the U.S. Navy owned 6,000 ships including 90 aircraft carriers of all types.  It was two-thirds more than 12 months before and over three times the figure in 1941.  More than 3,000,000 men and women wore navy uniforms.

Today the Navy has about 490 ships and submarines with 438,000 uniformed personnel.  Congress mandates eleven carriers but at this writing only two are deployed. The new USS Ford (CVN-78), an enduring boondoggle, was delivered incomplete and may not deploy for another four or five years.  Her primary aircraft, the F-35C stealth fighter, is perennially troubled, and in fact took over two years just to qualify in carrier landings.  The Lightning II remains in low-rate production until it meets required mileposts for operational capability.

There’s still a great deal of misty-eyed sentimentality about “the greatest generation,” though none of the hundreds of World War II vets I’ve known, met or interviewed bought into Tom Brokaw’s unsupportable assertion.  But one thing seems certain: the aircrews and sailors who fought Leyte Gulf represented the greatest assembly of naval talent and capability of the era.  

MY FAVORITE BOOKS

The title of this month’s blog might be confusing, so I’ll clarify.  When I mention “my favorite books” I do not mean favorites that I have read, though I’ve read several three times or more.  They include Edward P. Stafford’s The Big E; Michael Shaara’s The Killer Angels ; Stephen Coonts’ Flight of Intruder; and Stephen Hunter’s anthology Now Playing at the Valencia.  

When I say “my favorite books,” I mean my favorite books.  At present 46 volumes have my name on the cover, and I’ve contributed to a dozen others with anthologies, dedicated chapters, introductions and whatnot.

Ask authors with more than three books to name their favorite, and you’ll likely  get “The one I’m writing now.”  That’s understandable, as writers bring enthusiasm to each new project, especially if the money is good.

Sidebar: some critics dismiss an author’s new release by saying, “He’s writing for money now.”

Like that’s a bad thing?

You don’t hear people saying, “He’s flying for money now” or “She’s litigating for money now.”

Therefore: consult your dictionary and look up “professional”—as in “professional writer.”

And maybe get back to me.

So, back to My Favorite Books.

Everyone is especially fond of My First Book, if only for sentimental reasons.  Mine was The Dauntless Dive Bomber of World War II, published by Naval Institute Press in 1976, reprinted in 2006.  It grew out of my father’s restoration of the world’s only airworthy Douglas SBD at the time, early to mid 70s.  What an inspiration.  I was blessed to get about eight hours in the gunner’s seat, lending authenticity to the first operational history of the plane that won the Pacific War.

Dauntless Dive Bomber set the pattern for subsequent Naval Institute volumes including the Grumman F4F Wildcat and F6F Hellcat, plus the Vought F4U Corsair and F8U/F-8 Crusader.  Remarkably few authors recognized the gap in operational histories of tailhook aircraft.  All were well received, as readers liked the mixture of narrative emphasis with a leavening of technical development. 

Some books commend themselves because the subjects have been overlooked or warrant updating.  There had never been a single-volume history of Allied air operations over Japan until Whirlwind (Simon & Schuster, 2010).  The Wall Street Journal firewalled its review, sending the book to Amazon’s number 36 overall.  (Thank you, Dan Ford!)

Equally remarkably, apparently nobody had done more than photo coverage of the climax of World War II.  When the Shooting Stopped: August 1945 (Bloomsbury-Osprey, 2022) relied heavily on sources compiled in the previous four decades, as only two of the participants I cited were still living upon publication.

Clash of the Carriers (Caliber, 2005) probably was the first account of the Battle of the Philippine Sea in 21 years.  “The Marianas Turkey Shoot” of June 1944 remains a landmark in Pacific Theater operations, and I benefited from emerging scholarship plus contact with dozens of participants including a senior Japanese pilot.  

In 2012 when Simon & Schuster released Enterprise: America’s Fightingest Ship, there had been no in-depth account since Edward P. Stafford’s landmark 1962 The Big E.  I noted its influence on me at the beginning of this blog, and during my writing process, Commander Stafford agreed that the world needs a Big E book every 50 years.

Among nonfiction, Enterprise remains my sentimental favorite.  I had more emotional investment in the subject than with any other book because I knew so many of those men so well for so long.  Pacific War students will recognize the names of Dick Best, Swede Vejtasa, Robin Lindsey, Bill Martin, Jig Dog Ramage, and so many others.

Another odd gap in the literature: the 100th anniversary of the aircraft carrier.   Because British Royal Navy operations began in 1917, I anticipated a centennial volume, hoping that nobody else recognized the opportunity.  And apparently no one did: On Wave and Wing came from Regency History in 2017.

As any World War II historian will tell you, books published as recently as ten years ago could not be written today.  That’s because of attrition among the wartime generation.  My colleagues and I were fortunate to know dozens of veterans from the era—and don’t overlook the civilians—as invaluable sources.  Today, “War Two” historians increasingly  rely on oral histories and secondary sources.

Meanwhile, as the saying goes, Time marches on.  In 2014 Steve Coonts called, suggesting a book about Thanh Hoa Bridge, North Vietnam’s most notorious target.  Fortunately, I’d compiled a reference file in the 80s.  Five years later Da Capo released The Dragon’s Jaw, and none too soon.  Many contributors had waited 50 years to tell their stories, and we benefited from their eagerness.  Again, the story as we’ve told it probably could not be duplicated today.  

I have coauthored memoirs with some extraordinary aviators, starting with Major General Marion Carl, the gold standard of Marine Corps pilots.  Pushing the Envelope (1987) is a straight-forward account of Marion’s exceptional career in combat and flight test.  In the foreword I noted that he described milking cows and aerial combat in the same tone of voice.  

Marion was murdered by a teenaged career criminal in 1998.  The bastard was sentenced to death but the sentence was commuted by a judge who claimed the defendant had inadequate representation, reducing to life without parole.

Another memoir was an anthology with three retired navy captains.  World War II ace Richard “Zeke” Cormier; three-time astronaut Wally Schirra; and carrier skipper Phil Wood combined their overlapping careers in Wildcats to Tomcats.  It was published in 1995 after years of back-and-forthing though Wally wanted to call it A Tale of Three Hookers.

One of my three best friends was the late Commander John Nichols, USN.  He contributed to my F-8 Crusader book, and a few years later he proposed On Yankee Station: The Naval Air War in Vietnam (Naval Institute 1987).  Rather than a chronology, we took a thematic approach with John and others’ comments on carrier operations, strike warfare, the threats, and morale, among others.  Some Navy squadrons took it to Desert Storm as a reality check.

Subsequently we collaborated on a Mideast novel, Warriors (Bantam 1990).  It appeared just in time for Entertainment Tonight to criticize us for “war profiteering,” as if we anticipated Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait by a couple of years.

Anyway, we did profit significantly!

The SBD reappeared in Dauntless: A Novel of Midway and Guadalcanal Bantam 1992).  It’s my favorite full-length fiction, although some friends I respect as aviators and authors prefer the sequel, Hellcats: A Novel of the War in the Pacific.  Fighter pilots especially like the descriptions of aerial combat, down to such esoterica as proper leads at deflection angles.

Possibly the record for a marathon novel was Duel Over Douai, a Great War aero epic written by stages with two unindicted co-conspirators, Commanders R.R. “Boom” Powell and Jack Woodul.  We had fun inserting ourselves in the text, respectively a title Briton, a New Mexico mankiller, and a German Priceline.  It was something like 12 years en route, but the e-book result remains highly satisfying.

Among my other fiction is a trilogy proposed by military novelist Harold Coyle.  The theme is a private military contractor doing Deniable Work at home and abroad.  Pandora’s Legion, Prometheus’ Child, and Vulcan’s Fire were released in 2006-2007.  I enjoyed the varied cast of good guys-gals and some really-really bad guys, though some had mitigating circumstances.  But not everybody survived.

So there’s once-over not-so-easy.  Some of my favorites are out of print, and some publishers have failed.  But I remain grateful to all who contributed in whatever way: topic suggestions, memories, sources, proof-reading, editing, and marketing.

After all, the foregoing is part of “writing for money.”