critical aspect of the American island-hopping strategy in the war against Japan. For his service in this capacity, he received the Legion of Merit. Immediately after the conclusion of the war, the Navy Department assigned Eccles to the Joint Operations Review Board, a group of officers from all services assigned to evaluate joint operations during World War II. From that posting, he went on to command the battleship . In 1947, the President of the Naval War College, then Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, selected Eccles to be the first Chairman of the College’s newly established Logistics Department, an area that Spruance and others felt had been neglected in professional naval thinking during the period between the two world wars. While in that position from 1947 to 1951, Eccles wrote his first book, Operational Naval Logistics (1950), a manual for the United States Navy that was a pioneering work on the fundamentals of his subject. He left the Naval War College in 1951 with orders to be Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics to the Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean (CINCNELM) with headquarters in London and, simultaneously, Assistant Chief of Staff for Logistics, to NATO’s Commander-in-Chief, Allied Forces Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH), with headquarters in Naples, Italy. Retirement Years Eccles retired from active duty in the Navy on June 30, 1952 and was promoted to rear admiral on the retired list. Returning to his home in Newport, Rhode Island, he was closely associated with the Naval War College, where he served unofficially as a confidante and advisor to successive presidents of the College as well as an instructor for elective courses on military theory, principles of logistics, and international relations. During this period, he was also a stimulating force for the Naval War College faculty and wrote several major works. When he left Newport in 1985 to enter a retirement home in Needham, Massachusetts, the Naval War College honored him by naming its library in his honor. Henry Eccles died in Needham a year later on May 14, 1986. Awards Published works Operational Naval Logistics (1950) Logistics in the National Defense (1959, 1981, 1997) Military Concepts and Philosophy (1965) Military Power in a Free Society (1979) References Eveleyn Cherpak, Register of the Henry E. Eccles Papers (Newport: Naval War College, Naval Historical Collection, 1988) External links Oral History by Rear Admiral Henry E. Eccles Reminiscences of Mrs Isabel Eccles