Henry Effingham Eccles (born in Bayside, New York, on December 31, 1898 - died May 14, 1986 in Needham, Massachusetts) was a Rear Admiral in the United States Navy and a major figure at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island from the late 1940s through the 1970s, as a thinker and writer on naval logistics and military theory. Early life and education The son of an Episcopal priest, the Reverend George Warrington Eccles, and his wife Lydia Lawrence, he was initially educated privately at home by his parents and later sent to Trinity School in New York City, before enrolling as an undergraduate at Columbia University. After one year at Columbia, he entered the U.S. Naval Academy, graduating with the class of 1922. Naval career After his first assignments to battleships, Eccles attended Submarine School and served in two submarines before being ordered to Columbia University, where he earned a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering in 1930. He commanded two submarines, then served as Engineer and Repair Officer at the Submarine Base at New London, Connecticut; then served for nearly three years as engineer in the heavy cruiser and two years in the Design Construction Division of the Bureau of Engineering in the Navy Department, Washington, D.C. In 1940, he was ordered to command the destroyer on the Asiatic Station, based in the Philippines. He was in command when the Japanese simultaneously attacked Pearl Harbor as well as American and British positions in Southeast Asia on December 7, 1941. He and his ship participated in the battle of Badung Strait, and shortly after, while assigned to the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDA), the battle of the Java Sea. Wounded in action, Eccles was later awarded the Navy Cross, the Silver Star, and The Netherlands Order of the Bronze Lion. After recovering from his wounds, Eccles served in the Base Maintenance Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations in 1942-43, where he helped to coordinate logistics planning for all advanced bases. After attending the command course at the Naval War College, he was promoted to captain and assigned for the final two years of the war to be the Director of the Advance Base Section, Service Force at the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet in Hawaii. In this key position, Eccles coordinated the planning, construction, and support of advance bases in the Central Pacific, a