Take Charge and Move Out: The Founding Fathers of TACAMO: True Believers and the Rise of Navy Strategic Communications

Finalist, 2023 RADM Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Naval Literature

The US Navy’s “Take Charge and Move Out” (TACAMO) mission provides essential airborne communications to the US nuclear deterrence forces. Today it is a thriving community, respected by the Navy and the US strategic defense forces.

But it wasn’t always so. Despite the enormous importance of the mission, for the first decade of their existence, the TACAMO squadrons did not provide a viable career path for officers, instead bein...