Take Charge and Move out: the Founding Fathers of Tacamo

TACAMO, an unusual moniker meaning 'Take Charge and Move Out', is the Navy's well-known and respected leg of the nation's national strategic communications, a key element of the US nuclear deterrence posture. But TACAMO has not always been so recognized. For the junior officers in the early days of the 1960s and 1970s, TACAMO was a career-killing backwater, likely to put an end to their careers before they even got started. But in the 1970s, inspired by their commanding officer Bill Coyne, a handful of junior officers made the leap of faith to take a second tour in TACAMO, betting their careers that they could bring this community into existence. This is the story of eleven of those 'True Believers', told in their own words, how each came to make that leap of faith to bring the TACAMO community into existence against all odds, moulding it into what it is today. Out of this pioneering cadre came eleven future commanding officers and three commodores of a Wing yet twenty years in the future. And the 'True Believers' went on beyond TACAMO to make major contributions to all aspects of national strategic communications, some at the level of the White House.

This is their story.