Archie Kelley was born in the Naval gun factory in Washington, D.C. [Annotator's Note: Washington Navy Yard in Southeast Washington, D.C.] in 1918. His father was the superintendent of Naval gunnery. Kelley was later on the West Virginia [Annotator's Note: USS West Virginia (BB-48)] and was very proud of the fact that the giant, 16 inch guns [Annotator's Note: 16 inch, 50 caliber naval gun] had his father's initials on the breeches. In 1918, he had an African-American "amma" who took care of him as a baby. He was the third son. His eldest sister Clare became like a second mother. Clare lived to be 101 years old. Of three brothers, his eldest did not take school seriously and did not pass the entrance exam [Annotator's Note: to the US Navy]. Later on he became a test pilot and flew the very first jet plane in the United States in 1941. The second brother was the smartest but was legally blind. He became a doctor from Harvard Medical School [Annotator's Note: of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts] and ended up joining Kelley on duty and was on the second landing at Iwo Jima [Annotator's Note: Battle of Iwo Jima, 19 February to 26 March 1945; Iwo Jima, Japan]. Kelley knew at an early age that his father would expect him to step into his footsteps and go to the Naval Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland]. With the military academies, you need political pull to get an appointment. He passed the entrance exam in high school around 1935. He was in Seattle [Annotator's Note: Seattle, Washington], and he joined a fraternity at the University of Washington. One of his fraternity mates was too old to go to the Naval Academy but had already received an appointment from Senator Homer Bone [Annotator's Note: Homer Truett Bone, American attorney and politician]. Kelley got on the phone, discussed the age issue, and was appointed by him in early 1937. He still did not know if he would get in as he had to take another physical exam. He rode the train to Baltimore [Annotator's Note: Baltimore, Maryland] and took a bus to Annapolis. Having been raised in the North, he was not familiar with the prejudice problem in those days which was heavy in Annapolis. It was the Deep South as far as discrimination against black [Annotator's Note: African-American] people goes. When he got on the bus, he noticed there were white people in the front and black people in the back, but there was big empty seat at the very back. He had a big suitcase and went down there to sit. The white and black people both looked at him with furious glares. He had no idea why they were all antagonistic. He had violated protocols but knew no better at the time.

Archie Kelley arrived at Annapolis [Annotator's Note: United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland] and had to have a physical examination. There were four Navy doctors there and one said he was not qualified because he did not have a uvula [Annotator's Note: fleshy extension at the back of the soft palate which hangs above the throat]. In Bremerton, Washington, a Navy doctor had accidentally snagged his while removing his tonsils. After all this trouble, he realized he had to do something fast. Kelley said a Navy doctor did it to him. They then decided he was qualified. After the physical, there was a formal swearing in ceremony. There was a very handsome young black [Annotator's Note: African-American] man there. This was 1937. It would not be until 1950 at Selma [Annotator's Note: Selma Alabama] when white young people would march with black people [Annotator's Note: Selma to Montgomery marches; three marches held in 1965 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama]. This was one of the very first breaks in the discrimination against blacks in the United States. They felt very sympathetic with this young black man because the upper class men had already started to take care of this "gross problem of a black at the Naval Academy." Historically, the first three superintendents of the Naval Academy were slave holders. Kelley and his classmates were very empathetic with him. The following day before the sun came up, the black man was taken out into the middle of the Severin River. He was stripped of his clothes and lashed to a buoy. He was left there all night. They later took him off and he resigned the following morning. That horrible discrimination by the Naval Academy caused Kelley and his wife to set up a sizable donation in his name to the Southern Poverty Law Center [Annotator's Note: American nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation] who has essentially wiped out the Ku Klux Klan [Annotator's Note: American white supremacist terrorist and hate group].

Archie Kelley had done very well in high school and had no academic problems at all [Annotator's Note: while attending the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland]. The discipline was not hard for him. Having a Naval officer father helped. There is a social pressure on the plebes [Annotator's Note: nickname for first year United States Naval Academy cadets] making them feel they are the lowest creatures on earth. The second year feels superior, and each successive year increases the personal sense of power. Then you go onboard a battleship in Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii] like he did, and you are right back on the bottom. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Kelley what he felt when Germany invaded Poland in 1939.] It was very confusing. In 1940, thanks to Lindbergh [Annotator's Note: Charles Augustus Lindbergh, American aviator], there was a strong group of people who wanted to join Germany instead of Great Britain in any upcoming war. Kelley ran into this at a bookstore. Each summer they had one month of leave [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time]. He was dating a girl in Minnesota. At the bookstore, several students wanted him to sign a pledge that he would not join the military and not help the United States go to war with Germany. The Scandinavian population in the Northern States were quite on the side of Germany. The young officers would try to imitate the German caps by cutting out the wire in them so the caps would come down over their ears. Kelley and his class were put on an accelerated pace because things were heating up. A destroyer in the Atlantic had been hit by a torpedo a few months before Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Lend-lease [Annotator's Note: Lend-Lease Policy, officially An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States 1941 to 1945] was already in effect. The United States was already helping Great Britain. The political pressure between Franklin Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] and Winston Churchill [Annotator's Note: Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill; Prime Minister, United Kingdom, 1940 to 1945] was for the United States to help as much as they could without Germany declaring war on the United States. He and the other cadets all knew they were being trained for combat and took it very seriously. He graduated 7 February. In Schenectady [Annotator's Note: Schenectady, New York], the people of Marquette, Wisconsin had decided to honor the United States Navy by building a giant ship out of snow. It took about six months to build a copy of the cruiser Milwaukee [Annotator's Note: the USS Milwaukee (CL-5)]. Kelley's father had been the commander of that cruiser and had been ordered to start up the Naval ROTC [Annotator's Note: Reserve Officer Training Corps] in Wisconsin. His father was there and was asked to officiate the selection of Miss Wisconsin. His father had the Navy make him an aide, so he escorted Miss Wisconsin at affairs that involved riding around in horse-drawn sleds. Most of the girls were speaking Swedish. 1939 was the year the American song "Hail, Hail, the Gang's All Here" was out [Annotator's Note: American popular song]. They were singing that in Swedish and he learned it. Three years ago [Annotator's Note: from the time of this interview], a sailor who had been on his father's last ship, the West Point [Annotator's Note: USS West Point (AP-23)], a troopship that had been declared sunk six times by Tokyo Rose [Annotator's Note: nickname for all female, English-speaking radio broadcasters of Japanese propaganda during World War 2], and had seen both Kelley and his father with Miss Wisconsin, called him to tell him that Miss Wisconsin was still alive. He called her. She had married a Navy pilot and their conversation led to a lot of articles in the newspaper about their finding each other after 70 years.

Archie Kelley went to Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii after graduating from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland], which was popular among his classmates. Only those near the top of the class were allowed to go. The first 15 people in the class were the Honor Graduates and he was one. On the trip to Pearl Harbor, they were given luxurious staterooms and the other classmates were on bunks below decks. It was spoiled because their buddies came up anyway and took over. Kelley's father's first captain on the battleship California [Annotator's Note: the USS California (BB-44)] had a daughter named Rosemary that Kelley played with when they were young, after her father died and her mother brought her to Annapolis. She and Kelley started dating in Hawaii. They had no intention of marrying and could not. Midshipmen cannot marry for two years after graduating. Rosemary, as an admiral's daughter, knew many girls who had gone to school at Punahou [Annotator's Note: private, co-educational, college preparatory school, Honolulu, Hawaii]. The same school that President Obama's [Annotator's Note: Barack Hussein Obama, 44th president of the United States, 2009-2017] mother paid for him to attend. At the time of his arrival, these women were students at the University of Hawaii [Annotator's Note: University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu, Hawaii, now part of the University of Hawai'i System]. There was starting to be a big buildup of military personnel. Normally in peacetime, the West Virginia [Annotator's Note: the USS West Virginia (BB-48)] that he was assigned to, would have had about 1,500 men. They had over 2,000. There were many readiness activities going on. The ships were kept full of fuel as were the food stores. The big error made, was thinking that because Japan was 7,000 miles away, the probability of attack was low. They did have several training maneuvers during the summer of 1941 that were about having a Japanese attack.

Archie Kelley realized he was a raw ensign [Annotator's Note: lowest rank of commissioned officer in the US Navy and Coast Guard] and was less schooled than he thought [Annotator's Note: after being assigned to the USS West Virginia (BB-48)]. The ships had training courses for that. He was rotated once per month to a different department of the ship. Before the summer was over [Annotator's Note: the summer of 1941], he had duty with nearly every department. He went to antiaircraft gunnery school and learned how to fire the five inch 25 caliber guns [Annotator's Note: five inch, 25 caliber naval gun]. None of the men had wristwatches back then and their concept of time was horrible as they went by ship's bells which could be up to an hour off. The times associated with Pearl Harbor have come from the Japanese who had good, accurate clocks in their aircraft. The four different groups that attacked, had two different approaches to Pearl depending on the awareness of the Americans. The lead Japanese officer of the four groups gave a signal as he approached. If the island was alert and ready for them, he was to drop two flares. He dropped one flare which indicated that they had been taken by surprise. Each group continued on their present course. He had not noticed any response and assumed they had not seen the first flare. He dropped another and then the aircraft thought it was the two-flare signal. That led to a break-up in the formations that became a break for the Americans. Meanwhile, Rosemary, his future fiancée, and her mother were sleeping. They noticed aircraft flying over them and thought it was a drill and went back to sleep. Shortly thereafter, she heard a big explosion. It was a neighbor's house that had been hit by a five inch gun [Annotator's Note: five inch, 38 caliber naval gun] from Pearl Harbor. The guns were hitting homes 16 miles away. A woman was killed as were 50 to 60 civilians throughout the attack. Antiaircraft guns have shells and propellant behind them packed like a big bullet. As the gunner pulls the cartridge out, they stick in a fuse pot. An analog computer set the time fuse on the range of the aircraft. In the excitement of Pearl Harbor, none of that was done and the shells would go off if they hit the ground or a house. That accounted for a lot of civilian casualties in Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii]. That was a consequence of the surprise attack. Having had a warning would have made a difference and was a big reason they did not knock down many Japanese aircraft. They [Annotator's Note: the Japanese] were not as successful as they could have been though. The torpedo bombers were the ones who sunk the battleships. There were 40 of them, but only 14 were successful in hitting the ships. They were unopposed so they should have been able to hit more than 14 out of 40.

On that Saturday [Annotator's Note: 6 December 1941], Archie Kelley's uncle Bruce [Annotator's Note: US Navy Commander Bruce Draper Kelley was a senior watch officer assigned the USS Arizona (BB-39)] and his aunt Betty were in the islands and invited a number of officers from the Arizona as well as Kelley to their place to have dinner and play poker [Annotator's Note: a playing card game]. At midnight, Kelley excused himself and headed back to Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. His uncle Bruce said he was going to do the same with the Arizona but apparently changed his mind. Kelley went back and went to bed. The following morning about seven-forty he started getting dressed. [Annotator's Note: There is a tape break and Kelley begins mid-sentence.] Kelley's duty was junior officer of the deck. He was awakened by the command who he was about to relieve, with "away, fire and rescue party", which meant their ship had seen the need by another ship or troops who needed help. They were seeing early drops of bombs on Ford Island [Annotator's Note: part of the Pearl Harbor base] which was only 200 feet away. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer stops Kelley. There is a tape break, and he begins again mid-sentence.] They still did not realize that war had started [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Thirty seconds later, command saw the Japanese aircraft and then announced, "general stations, man your battle stations, this is no shit." That word [Annotator's Note: shit] has been left out of the history books but it was the most important word he could have used. All summer long they had had so many drills, they were no longer using the word "drill". He had to say "no shit" to get the men's attention. It would not have been effective if he had not said that. Kelley had already started out of bed and was putting on his white uniform. He did not put on his shoes or cap but strapped on his .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol]. He still has it. He was stopped recently by a Scottsdale [Annotator's Note: Scottsdale, Arizona] police officer [Annotator's Note: at the time of this interview]. The officer asked him if he had a gun in his car. The officer was a gun nut, and it was prize gun for him to look at [Annotator's Note: Kelley's .45 from Pearl Harbor]. [Annotator's Note: Kelley returns to the battle.] Kelley was on his way to his battle station and said to himself that this is what he was training for at the Naval Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland]. He had to go down three decks to the very bottom of the ship where the first lieutenant and damage control officer is stationed. Kelley was under training with him at that time. Another assistant was on liberty [Annotator's Note: an authorized absence for a short period of time] in Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii]. The boatswain's mate did not show up but was supposed to announce "set condition zed" which meant close all watertight doors and hatches. This would keep the ship from rolling over. No one gave that command on the Oklahoma [Annotator's Note: the USS Oklahoma (BB-37)] and that is why she rolled over, which killed 400 men more than would have otherwise. Kelley's boss later wrote that Kelley was responsible for establishing watertight integrity before the final action. He was the only one there. One torpedo had hit the ship while he was running down there. The second torpedo hit minutes after he made the announcement.

Archie Kelley thought much more time was going by than really was [Annotator's Note: onboard the now-torpedoed USS West Virginia (BB-48) during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. He realizes now that they were being hit very rapidly. They had gotten hit by seven [Annotator's Note: Japanese torpedoes] about a minute apart. Sealing all the hatches allowed them to counter-flood. One side of the ship had enormous damage along one side in roughly 40 compartments. Theoretically one third of the crew could have been ashore. Except for the officers, the men did not have enough money to spend the night ashore and would come back. Most of the sailors were on board. Many of the officers were onshore. Their wives could come in the summers, and they had rental homes, like his uncle [Annotator's Note: a senior watch officer on the USS Arizona (BB-39)]. Kelley knew that after the torpedoes hit, they had to counterflood. His job was to read the inclinometer that measures the tilt of the ship. It went to 19 degrees which is horrendous. He gave the readings to his boss who was counterflooding. It slowly started coming back and they knew they were actually sinking the ship. His boss, J.S. Harper [Annotator's Note: US Navy Lieutenant Commander John S. Harper], was trying to save as many compartments as he could, and Kelley said they should flood all available. He then gave a command over the sound-powered phone. In those days, the ships had enormous numbers of lead-acid batteries of the type used in cars. The compartment with the batteries flooded and shorted out the batteries. The ship had none of its normal communications. They had a sound-powered telephone which was experimental. They do not need any electricity and use the energy in the voice. No one on the ship other than damage control knew they had this. They had never needed it. It automatically came on and the phones were on. The people on the bridge did not know they were working. A young officer, after noticing the ship was righting, said he would go down to damage control and start to counterflood. The people who were on the phone were repair parties of 60 men already counterflooding. The Oklahoma [Annotator's Note: the USS Oklahoma (BB-37)] went over in eight minutes. They actually sank their ship to the bottom of Pearl Harbor. In this case that was only 20 feet, so all of the superstructure was still out of the water. At this time, Kelley thought they were all dead because the deck above him was flooded. He had closed the watertight door near him. They were massive, steel doors with levers to tighten them. The officers and men from the main battery compartment escaped and came into Kelley's. They had 40 men in his compartment at that point. One was his roommate Vic Delano [Annotator's Note: US Navy Captain Victor Delano], a cousin of Franklin Delano Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States], whose father was in the Naval Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland] class of 1907. Kelley's father was in the class of 1910. Three men tried come in and the compartment started flooding rapidly. Kelley's boss saw Kelley closing the door with men screaming for their lives on the other side. Kelley carried the thought of sacrificing those men for 60 years until he read a report written by his boss that he himself had made the decision to close the door. He had sent a request for a repair party to get the men, but they could not because the deck above was flooded. Years later Kelley found out the same thing had happened on a submarine. That made Kelley feel a little better after all those years. The loss of these men is the primary emotion of terror for Kelley at Pearl Harbor. Later on, they found their bodies and Kelley did not want to look.

The USS West Virginia (BB-48) was raised from the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Archie Kelley was there during part of that. [Annotator's Note: Kelley returns to the story he began in the clip titles "The West Virginia Torpedoed" of this interview. When the story begins, he is in the bottom of the ship sealing and flooding compartments after it was torpedoed during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941.] During this time, Kelley's roommate, Vic Delano [Annotator's Note: US Navy Captain Victor Delano], was on the other side and realized there was an escape hatch. Vic was hollering to Kelley's boss [Annotator's Note: US Navy Lieutenant Commander John S. Harper] and asking to go topside. They all went up to the conning tower which is heavily armored and in front of the bridge. Traditionally in sea warfare, the first people killed on a ship are the people on the bridge. Delano and 40 men went up and Harper told Kelley to go up. Harper stayed to ensure the compartments had been counterflooded and then went up. Delano hollered down and said to tell Harper he was now in command of the ship. The executive officer had jumped over the side and the captain had been hit by shrapnel from explosions on the Tennessee [Annotator's Note: the USS Tennessee (BB-43)]. The captain died on the bridge. In his agony, he ordered "abandon ship." Harper countermanded those orders. When Kelley got topside, Delano, he, and Harper were the only officers topside. The other officers had gone over to Ford Island. Some men were considered heroes for diving overboard and swimming to Ford Island. Any 13-year-old could have done that. There were lots of stories at Pearl Harbor about heroism like that. There was nothing heroic about it. Kelley found out later as a helicopter test pilot that the difference in actions taken is in the training. The people who were not trained were panic-stricken and jumped over the side. Almost every officer and enlisted man on the West Virginia wound up on Ford Island within 30 minutes of the first attack. There were very few who stayed with the ship. The executive officer was responsible for it. Early in the attack, he gave the command to abandon ship. Kelley realized that the most terrifying thing to him was the deck was filled with water above him and there was no way to get out. He had a job to do and that helped. He was convinced this was the end of his life. He did not know about the escape hatch in the ceiling to the conning tower. Once he got up on the ship, he had no thought of leaving. His boss told him and Vic to go fight fires. While fighting the fire, Kelley saw that the Arizona [Annotator's Note: the USS Arizona (BB-39)] was in flames. He said to himself, "goodbye Uncle Bruce" because he was the duty officer [Annotator's Note: Kelley's uncle, US Navy Commander Bruce Draper Kelley, was the watch officer on the Arizona]. At two o'clock, his boss gave the order to abandon ship. The hospital Solace [Annotator's Note: the USS Solace (AH-5)] had a motor whaler cruising and picking up survivors. He was picked up. He had no shoes and was covered in blood and oil but was okay. The officers at the landing were in their best Sunday clothes. Admiral Kimmel's [Annotator's Note: US Navy Rear Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel] supply officer saw Kelley and told him to go lock his .45 [Annotator's Note: .45 caliber M1911 semi-automatic pistol] in the officers' club and stay there until he came back. He did not want anyone else in there. He told him to shower, put on clean clothes and eat. In an interview with North Carolina [Annotator's Note: unable to identify what he means by North Carolina], Kelley brought up an interesting concept about your behavior when you think you are going to die, and you see something in front of you like great food and booze. Those people did not use the story in their interview. There is one reason that there is so much rape that goes on in combat. They are young men who think they are going to die, and it transforms the individual and their morals. This is responsible for the horrors of war.

Archie Kelley [Annotator's Note: assigned to the USS West Virginia (BB-48)] was never questioned about Pearl Harbor after the attack [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. Everybody on the island [Annotator's Note: Oahu, Hawaii] was concerned because the islands need ships to provide food, gasoline, tires, and more. Nobody knew if the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese] were going to come in and land on the island. The first two weeks were terror for everybody who lived there. Kelley was there for several months. At first, he was assigned with five other ensigns to a Top Secret telephone and teletype circuit with the codebreakers. His job was to stand four hour watches and take hundreds of messages from the codebreakers and pass them along to the duty officer. After about a month of that, the executive officer reassigned Kelley to be the navigator officer. He thought it was odd to be the navigator of a sunken ship. There is a phrase about war that says, "the first casualty of war is the truth." The American public was lied to horribly on the day after Pearl Harbor. They were told the only battleship lost was the Utah [Annotator's Note: the USS Utah (BB-31)], which was old and obsolete. They were also told the US Navy was chasing the Japanese. Everyone in Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii] thought they would be called out any minute to repel a Japanese landing force on Oahu. Rapidly, barbed wire and landing blocks were put along Waikiki Beach. They could not see why the Japanese would not follow up with a second attack. That was a big mistake by the Japanese. The Japanese said that too in the years after the war. Kelley got an apartment on Waikiki. Back when he was at the officer's club, he was provided clean clothes and got a shower [Annotator's Note: Kelly had been aboard the USS West Virginia (BB-48) when it was torpedoed]. The only thing he had left that identified him as an officer was his class ring. Kelley was with his ship another month or two. During that time, he was working hard every day to salvage sensitive ordnance equipment. They flushed the main engines with fresh water followed by tectyl [Annotator's Note: Tectyl 511-M, water displacing, oil-based corrosion preventive compound]. That saved and preserved the main engines and most of the ordnance equipment.

While preparing the West Virginia [Annotator's Note: the USS West Virginia (BB-48)] to go into drydock, Archie Kelley had applied to the Navy Department for duty on a new destroyer. It took about two weeks for him to get ordered to the Gansevoort DD-608 [Annotator's Note: USS Gansevoort (DD-608)]. He went to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] and reported aboard while the ship was under construction. His new captain was "Preacher" McFall [Annotator's Note: US Navy Commander Edward Alspaugh McFall] who had been in the same Naval Academy class as Kelley's uncle Bruce [Annotator's Note: US Navy Commander Bruce Draper Kelley]. Kelley was made the gunnery officer. This disappointed McFall. McFall had graduated with the Class of 1925 [Annotator's Note: from the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland] and Kelley was in the Class of 1941. That meant Kelley was much too young to be the second most important officer on the ship. As the war went on, this problem occurred on all ships. There were not enough experienced Academy officers to man them. McFall had not realized that Kelley had attended the five inch gunnery school [Annotator's Note: five inch, 38 caliber naval gun] and was well qualified. They went to San Diego [Annotator's Note: San Diego, California]. His wife joined him there before they were ordered to Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: Pearl Harbor, Hawaii]. They joined Task Force 58 [Annotator's Note: Fast Carrier Task Force assigned to Fifth Fleet] of Admiral Halsey [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey] in Pearl Harbor. The destroyer could do 35 knots, but they would run out of fuel if they went at that speed. The chief engineer decided they could go at 14 knots to save fuel. The first nuclear powered destroyer [Annotator's Note: after the war] would be able to make that trip at 35 knots and only burn a piece of uranium the size of a cocktail cherry. Today, roughly half of the naval ships are now nuclear-powered. They proceeded to Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal Campaign, 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943 at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands] from Pearl Harbor. While the troops were landing, they were firing inland. They bent a propellor on the rocky bottom and they had to take the ship away from the combat area to a repair ship.

Later on [Annotator's Note: in the war] in the atolls on the way to China, the destroyers would go into the lagoons while the transports were outside having their landing craft go through so the destroyers could provide close-in fire support. Archie Kelley and his ship's [Annotator's Note: the USS Gansevoort (DD-608)] first combat was firing on Guadalcanal [Annotator's Note: Guadalcanal Campaign, 7 August 1942 to 9 February 1943 at Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands]. The captain [Annotator's Note: US Navy Commander Edward Alspaugh McFall] got a letter of reprimand for striking the bottom and damaging a propellor. They all wondered why anybody bothered with that. Their worst landing, and the deadliest, was Tarawa [Annotator's Note: Battle of Tarawa, 20 to 23 November 1943 at Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands] where 1,900 Marines were lost in a few hours. There was no one at that time who could spot for them while firing. Later on, the Marines would spot for them. His uncle Bruce [Annotator's Note: US Navy Commander Bruce Draper Kelley] was now the gunnery officer of the New Mexico [Annotator's Note: USS New Mexico (BB-40)]. He and Kelley had met at a bar in Auckland, New Zealand. Bruce was bragging about the guns and said it was stupid for the destroyers to go in the lagoons because the battleships would destroy everything from farther away. As it turned out, the battleships were useless at Tarawa because their trajectories were so flat, they would hit and then skitter on the other side of the island across the water. It sounded like freight trains going across. They later got better accuracy. The shells they were firing were designed to sink battleships and not for ground support. The Japanese had dug 20 foot deep trenches that were covered by coconut tree logs and were very protected from even the five inch guns [Annotator's Note: 5 inch, 38 caliber naval guns] of the destroyers. The Army Air Corps came in at 10,000 feet and dropped bombs but largely missed the atoll. Tarawa was a disaster.

Archie Kelley landed at Abemama [Annotator's Note: Abemama Atoll, Kiribati]. They were told there were Japanese soldiers there. They hadm but were not supposed to use, some secret shells onboard that were for aircraft called "influence shells" [Annotator's Note: proximity fuse, detonates an explosive device according to a predetermined value]. They did not have to hit aircraft directly to explode. It was dark when they arrived and that was the best time to fire. They used the aircraft fuses and shot above the palm trees where the Japanese were sleeping. A young officer went ashore in a rubber boat during the night and spotted for them. After a few minutes of firing, he said it was all done. He came back onboard, and Kelley realized he was a good friend of his. At one atoll, there was a six inch, shore-based Japanese gun. The difference between a six inch gun and a five inch gun is that you cube the dimension. That means a six inch gun is almost twice as dangerous as a five inch gun. Shore-based guns always have an advantage over a ship-based gun due to the motion of the ship. There was an argument among the officers about the tactics to use to fire at the Japanese gun. They decided to go head-on, and they were lucky and clobbered the Japanese gun.

Tarawa [Annotator's Note: Battle of Tarawa, 20 to 23 November 1943 at Tarawa Atoll, Gilbert Islands] was a morale destroyer. Morale increased enormously for Archie Kelley and his ship's [Annotator's Note: USS Gansevoort (DD-608)] crew at Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Battle of Kwajalein, 31 January to 3 February 1944 at Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands] where they did very well. They had learned lessons and had good spotters ashore for the gun firing. There were very few Marine casualties. They realized while island hopping that they were getting better. Kelley did a total of six islands. Island hopping was opposed by General MacArthur [Annotator's Note: General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area] who was senior to their Admiral [Annotator's Note: US Navy Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Sr., Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet]. MacArthur wanted to have the fleet support him as he moved up the land mass. The Navy got permission to start island hopping and it was successful. Sailors would sing songs about MacArthur that showed that the Navy hated him. [Annotator's Note: Kelley sings part of one.] Kelley was promoted to the Frazier [Annotator's Note: USS Frazier (DD-607)]. It was sad for him as he had been out at sea a whole year. He had been ordered back to San Francisco [Annotator's Note: San Francisco, California] for an overhaul [Annotator's Note: of the USS Gansevoort (DD-608)] and he was excited. The night before shoving off for that, he was promoted to executive officer on the Frazier. He found out later that there was a lot of religious influence in the Department of the Navy regarding the assignment of officers. A senior officer to Kelley, was sent to Cuba to spend the rest of the war and Kelley replaced him. The Navy, like every organization, has its own internal politics. The Frazier was good duty. He had spent almost three years without seeing his bride. He applied for MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts] and received orders to go as a student in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering in 1944. He got his orders when he was on Kwajalein [Annotator's Note: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands]. In those days, they took Clippers [Annotator's Note: Martin M-130 flying boat owned and operated by Pan American Airways] which were big, beautiful airplanes. His orders came in with secret codes, FAGTRANS meant any old freighter was to be used and FAIRTRANS meant first available aircraft. The yeoman [Annotator's Note: enlisted member who does clerical or administrative work] was his friend and made the orders for the aircraft. Kelley got on a plane to Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii] and then took a Clipper to the United States. The war was over for him. Kelley was on Kwajalein when the war was over as the executive officer on the Frazier. Rickover [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover; nicknamed Father of the Nuclear Navy] later asked Kelley why he went to MIT. Kelley said it seemed the quickest way to get out of the war in the Pacific. Rickover laughed because he had questions that he would ask officers to learn if they were telling the truth. Kelley's answer was a winner. The courses were in Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering. MIT was several levels of intelligence above the Naval Academy [Annotator's Note: United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland] and made him retake his Electrical Engineering courses. MIT made it an entirely different subject. In 1944, nuclear physics was in a primitive stage. Kelley was interested in it and applied. Two weeks later, the atomic bomb [Annotator's Note: called Trinity, code name of the first nuclear test at the Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range, now White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico on 16 July 1945] was detonated, and he got in. He was the very first Naval officer to study nuclear physics. When the first bomb was detonated near Alamogordo, his wife called him, and he did not believe it. It was a surprise even to the students.

Nuclear reactors were very crude things [Annotator's Note: when Archie Kelley started studying nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, or MIT, in 1944]. Enrico Fermi [Annotator's Note: Enrico Fermi, Italian-American physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor] had a Jewish wife and was threatened by Mussolini [Annotator's Note: Italian fascist dictator Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini; also known as il Duce]. Fermi got an excuse to get to the US [Annotator's Note: United States] and designed the very first reactor. It was built in a handball court south of Chicago [Annotator's Note: Chicago, Illinois]. Fermi sent a message to his friends in Italy saying that the reactor worked. Kelley took one of Fermi's courses after joining Rickover [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover; nicknamed Father of the Nuclear Navy], on reactor design. Kelley took it at Oakridge. They were using both uranium and plutonium but mostly uranium. Plutonium was made in the state of Washington. Rickover brought consultants to Washington, D.C. Who gave them excellent ideas for designing the first nuclear submarines. All of the physicists were Jewish and brilliant. They said there were no stupid questions and did not laugh when asked if a nuclear bomb could explode the atmosphere. They calculated the probability and found it to be too small to be concerned about.

Archie Kelley admired Rickover [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover; nicknamed Father of the Nuclear Navy] very much. He was a tough boss. Rickover sent Kelley to Oak Ridge [Annotator's Note: Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee] where he did very well. The first letter Rickover had Kelley write was with the mathematical parts of his political letters. Rickover had a major problem with a civilian head of the Argonne National Laboratory. The lab was designing the first submarine and not Rickover, so he pulled the political support from Congress to beat down Walter Zinn [Annotator's Note: Walter Henry Zinn, American nuclear physicist]. One of Kelley's classmates was slipped into Zinn as a spy. This was 1949 and Kelley and the others reported to both the Atomic Energy Commission [Annotator's Note: United States Atomic Energy Commission] and the Navy. They were wearing civilian clothes in Washington [Annotator's Note: Washington, D.C.]. The Atomic Energy Commission had more money than the Navy. Kelley's first job was to buy almost a million acres in Idaho [Annotator's Note: Arco, Idaho] for the National Reactor Test Station. It was the same land the Navy had used to develop the influence fuses. Kelley had to get the Commission to pay for it. He did it. The second layer of the job was more important. Rickover had Kelley write a letter explaining why the Navy should design the first nuclear submarine instead of Zinn. Rickover thought the letter was horribly dull. Kelley went back to his desk and older person told him to translate what Rickover said into something positive. Kelley got the bright idea that Zinn did not realize the task of making a reactor to fit into a reasonable size of submarine. Zinn wanted to use breeder reactors that increase the nuclear fuel as it burns. Kelley said that the Navy did not breed aboard ship and Rickover thought that was fantastic. The breeder would have been too large for a submarine. That got Zinn out of the picture.

A submarine was the first nuclear-powered vessel and the Nautilus' [Annotator's Note: USS Nautilus (SSN-571] reactor was the first. Archie Kelley and his colleagues knew it was revolutionary and were worried it would not work. Kelley headed up the prototype of one kind of reactor. Jimmy Carter [Annotator's Note: James Earl Carter, Jr., 39th President of the United States] worked with him on that until his father died and he took over the peanut farm. His reactor used liquid sodium. The Nautilus reactor was large. The Seawolf's [Annotator's Note: USS Seawolf (SSN-575)] reactor was much smaller and had promise but it had high radiation and was never used. The first submarine was commissioned in 1955. Rickover [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover; nicknamed Father of the Nuclear Navy] made land-based prototypes first. The Nautilus was at Arco, Idaho. Westinghouse [Annotator's Note: Westinghouse Electric Corporation] had the contract for building the final design and mockup of the other reactor, also at Arco. Westinghouse had one contract and GE [Annotator's Note: General Electric Company] had the other. Westinghouse cooperated with Rickover. All of the early patents were given to Westinghouse. GE had a hands-off philosophy to that, and Rickover did not like it. Every successful, normal, nuclear reactor today is very similar to the Nautilus reactor. The Japanese reactor that had many problems and nearly exploded hydrogen gas, is a GE reactor [Annotator's Note: at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Japan, 11 March 2011]. Nuclear submarines were now more like destroyers than submarines and Rickover would hire destroyer officers and not submarine officers. That made the submarine people furious. Politically GE made a big mistake in not cooperating with Rickover.

Archie Kelley stayed in the Navy until 1978. There were four officers on Rickover's [Annotator's Note: US Navy Admiral Hyman G. Rickover; nicknamed Father of the Nuclear Navy] staff as well as some civilians from Oakridge [Annotator's Note: Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, Tennessee]. The officers were all MIT [Annotator's Note: Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts] graduates. The Nautilus [Annotator's Note: USS Nautilus (SSN-571] and Seawolf [Annotator's Note: USS Seawolf (SSN-575)] went to sea and were both spectacular. Rickover was worried that if the Seawolf was in New York Harbor [Annotator's Note: New York, New York] and collided with a boat, there would be a highly radioactive cloud above New York City. That would never happen with the Nautilus. There were problems with the boilers leaking. The submarine was operated for two years with ordinary steam radiators. Its sodium reactor was pulled out and sunk at sea several hundred miles outside of New York. GE [Annotator's Note: General Electric Company] then developed the boiling water reactor which was susceptible to fires. In the accident in Japan [Annotator's Note: at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Okuma, Japan, 11 March 2011], the building was destroyed by hydrogen fires. Westinghouse [Annotator's Note: Westinghouse Electric Corporation] triumphed in their work with Rickover. Kelley is worried about saber rattlers like John McCain [Annotator's Note: John Sidney McCain III, US Navy veteran and politician]. If Kelley had a son today, he would send him to Canada and keep him out of the military, particularly if there is to be a World War 3. Kelley thinks the public has no idea how successful the nuclear program has been for the United States Navy. With regard to global warming, the Navy has saved billions of tons of carbon dioxide by using nuclear submarines. They clean the air in the submarines. Nuclear power is the answer to global warming. 82 percent of France's power is nuclear.