Book summary “Faith of my fathers”: summary

Introduction

You often search for enduring moral standards in a world that frequently compromises on character. You want to know what sustains individuals when they face extreme physical and mental trials. This book explores how generations of a military family forged an unyielding code of honor, duty, and service to a cause greater than self-interest.

Enduring tests of character reveals that true honor comes from serving a cause greater than self-interest and keeping faith with your comrades.

The author traces this martial tradition from early naval warfare through rigorous academy training and into the brutal prison camps of Vietnam. You will discover how discipline, leadership, and solidarity sustain human dignity under impossible pressures.

The following questions guide this exploration:

• How does a powerful family legacy shape your personal sense of duty?
• What role do military discipline and academy traditions play in forging resilience?
• How do you maintain your integrity and honor when facing captivity and torture?
• What does true loyalty to your comrades demand of you in times of crisis?

1. Family Heritage and Martial Tradition

The McCain and Young families share an ancient, deeply ingrained martial tradition marked by Scottish roots, service in virtually every American war, and an unbroken line of men who wore the uniform. You discover an exclusive code of honor passed down through generations. Descendants fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and for the Confederacy in the Civil War. Later generations transitioned to service in the restored United States military.

A deeply ingrained martial tradition and generations of naval service shape an exclusive code of honor and duty.

Hugh McCain settled his family in Caswell County, North Carolina, building Lenox Castle. Ancestors like John Young served on George Washington's staff. Major General Henry Pinckney McCain organized the World War I draft. William Alexander McCain moved to the Carroll County plantation in 1848. John Sidney McCain married Elizabeth Young in 1877.

Family Roots

Character of Slew McCain

Admiral John S. McCain Senior combined fierce operational effectiveness with eccentric individualism, superstition, and a notorious disregard for conventional naval regulations. Known as Slew to his peers and Popeye the sailor man to his sailors, the gaunt admiral weighed 140 pounds during the war. He smoked Bull Durham cigarettes rolled with one hand, walked in his stocking feet, and wore a crushed, ratty green combat cap as a superstitious good-luck talisman. Admiral Halsey once had to fish the admiral's false teeth out of a shirt pocket after McCain absentmindedly left them behind on a bureau before a trip to Guadalcanal.

Despite his gruff exterior and colorful profanity, Admiral McCain maintained a profound, personal devotion to his men, particularly the young aviators under his command. He routinely debriefed pilots returning from strikes to learn from their insights. Commanders must inform their decisions with the assessments of those executing them. He took the loss of any pilot as a deeply personal tragedy. Cecil King served under his command in 1936 at the Panama naval air station. Eight years later, McCain spotted King in New Guinea and jokingly called him out.

Admiral McCain earned his wings late in life, demonstrating stubborn determination to master naval aviation despite lacking natural skill as a pilot. Complying with a Navy regulation requiring carrier skippers to learn to fly, he completed flight school at age fifty-two. The superintendent of training at Pensacola reported that McCain cracked up five airplanes in the last two weeks of his training. You see the same stubborn resilience appear twenty-three years later when the author learned to fly at Pensacola.

A devastating encounter with a typhoon near the end of World War II resulted in a court of inquiry that ultimately cost Admiral McCain his command just weeks before the war ended. A court of inquiry found that the fleet's disastrous encounter with the storm was partly attributable to a twenty-minute delay by McCain in relaying course instructions to Admiral J. J. Clark. Four carriers were damaged, one hundred and forty-two aircraft were lost, and six men were swept overboard and drowned during the June typhoon off Okinawa while serving with Task Force 38 and the Third Fleet.

Following the Japanese surrender, father and son held a final private reunion in Tokyo Bay before the grandfather returned home and died suddenly of exhaustion. After attending the surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri, Admiral McCain met privately with his submarine-commander son aboard the USS Proteus before departing for California. The author's father was thirty-four years old at the time. Four days after arriving home to a celebration in Coronado, California, he collapsed and died of a fatal heart attack at age sixty-one. Physicians attributed his death to complete combat fatigue after commanding the fast carrier task force.

2. Naval Warfare and Innovation

Aggressive operational leadership and tactical innovations at sea are vital to maintaining Allied supremacy during intense Pacific campaigns.

Pacific Operations

The grueling Guadalcanal campaign was vital to maintaining Allied control in the South Pacific despite severe initial losses and logistical hardships. You saw intense sea and land battles leave Marines stranded with half their supplies while Japanese forces continuously reinforced their positions. Allied leaders pressed forward because the captured Henderson Field was essential for bombers.

The 1st Marine Division landed on August 7, 1942, securing Henderson Field before suffering a devastating naval defeat at the Battle of Savo Island. That engagement left 1270 men killed in the Battle of Savo Island and 16000 Marines left stranded with reduced rations. Later, 1000 Japanese troops landed on August 18 and were destroyed two days later.

As Chief of the Bureau of Naval Aeronautics, McCain Sr. aggressively procured aircraft and personnel to build the world's greatest naval air force. Recognizing that severe shortages during the early Pacific campaign had exhausted pilots, he pushed for two crews for every plane and accelerated the production of reliable aircraft. He declared his intent to secure enough planes and pilots, acting with relentless energy in the Navy building.

McCain Sr. demonstrated exceptional tactical daring by risking his entire task group to rescue and tow crippled cruisers during the operations leading to the Battle of Leyte Gulf. When enemy torpedoes disabled the cruisers Canberra and Houston, he ordered other ships to take them in tow and used his task group as a protective screen despite relentless air attacks. Task Group 38.1 protected the crippled division through days of aerial assaults while maintaining strikes on Formosa, destroying 520 Japanese planes over two days on Formosa while towing the crippled ships at top speeds of two to three knots.

Naval Innovations

To counter kamikaze suicide attacks, McCain Sr. and John Thach devised tactical innovations that neutralized enemy airpower over Luzon. The strategy involved maintaining a continuous 24-hour air umbrella over enemy airfields, reducing dive-bombers in favor of versatile fighters, and deploying radar picket destroyers far from the main force. During operations in Luzon and Saigon, the Big Blue Blanket successfully prevented enemy planes from taking off to attack invasion convoys, destroying over two hundred Japanese planes in a few days and sixty-nine enemy ships destroyed or damaged in a single day at Saigon.

Tactical adjustments required strict adherence to operational steps:

• Form a 24-hour air umbrella over enemy airfields
• Reduce the number of dive-bombers by half and double the number of fighters fitted with bombs
• Dispatch picket destroyers to patrol sixty miles from the flanks with their own patrol aircraft
• Order returning strike planes to circle designated pickets for identification

3. The Code of the Officer

A naval officer's honor requires strict adherence to a code of conduct that forbids lying, stealing, cheating, or shirking duty, and places ultimate responsibility for subordinates upon the commander. An officer must accept the consequences of their actions without shifting blame, never put men in jeopardy for unauthorized purposes, and protect their subordinates' reputations.

An officer must accept ultimate responsibility for subordinates and maintain strict adherence to ethical conduct and operational discipline.

Lieutenant Thomas Massie involved enlisted men in a vigilante murder to avenge his wife, representing a grave breach of an officer's duty to his subordinates. Prewar Navy life in Hawaii was governed by rigid social etiquette, formal routines, and strict visiting protocols among officers and their families. Newly arrived officers and their wives called on resident officers within fifteen-minute visits, leaving specific cards in receiving trays.

• Call on families of fellow officers on Wednesdays and Saturdays between four and six o'clock.
• Husband lays two calling cards on the receiving tray, and wife offers a single card for her hostess.
• Return the visit within ten days at the couple's home.
• Call on the commanding officer first, followed by the executive officer.

Submarine Service

While submarine officers and crews heavily indulged in alcohol during shore leaves, they maintained an inviolate rule never to drink aboard ship during combat operations. Submarine officers on leave at Midway tore up an officers' club and stole vehicles in an intoxicated spree, but maintained strict sobriety during patrols. During Operation Torch, the USS Gunnel served as a secret reconnaissance, photography, and infrared beacon ship for the American invasion of North Africa. The USS Gunnel departed New London on October 18 and guided the invasion fleet off Fedala, French Morocco, before being attacked by friendly aircraft and chased by U-boats.

Ethics and Leadership

Effective submarine commanders built intense loyalty by maintaining detailed personal knowledge of every officer and enlisted man under their command. Captain John McCain knew the first names, marital status, children, and backgrounds of all 8 officers and 72 enlisted men aboard the USS Gunnel. Submarine depth-charging involved intense psychological and physical stress, requiring specialized evasion tactics and prolonged silent running. The crew of the Gunnel spent eighteen hours submerged with auxiliary engines turned off, facing foul air, 120-degree heat, and 100 percent humidity while dodging Japanese destroyers.

• Never lie, steal, or cheat.
• Keep your word whatever the cost.
• Do not shirk duties no matter how difficult or dangerous.
• Admit mistakes openly and accept sanctions without complaint.
• Never confer responsibilities or put men in jeopardy for unrequired purposes.
• Wander through ship compartments daily to greet and joke with subordinates.
• Have coffee with men and keep up to date on details of their lives back home.
• Know what scares and angers the crew to better support them.
• Bend legs when hearing depth charge detonators to absorb deck plate impact and avoid fractures.
• Flood submarine with water during deep dives to remain heavy at greater depths.
• Turn off all auxiliary engines and run silent to minimize sonar detection.
• Rest in bunks when not needed at battle stations to consume less oxygen in foul air.

4. Formative Years and Academy Discipline

Rigorous military discipline and service academy standards test personal fitness for combat command and forge essential resilience.

When John McCain was not quite two years old and held his breath in rage until blacking out, a Navy physician prescribed dropping him fully clothed into a cold bathtub whenever a tantrum occurred to shock him out of the behavior. Whenever McCain worked himself into a rage, his mother shouted to his father to get the water, and he would find himself gasping in a tub of icy-cold water until he gained control. This immersion therapy left him with a meek disposition for the next ten years.

Constantly moving from base to base prevents long-term attachments, causing children to make the most of relationships while they last, making friendships make up in intensity for what they lack in length. McCain frequently arrived at new schools, went to great lengths to make friends, and was soon transplanted to a new town without seeing those friends again. Episcopal High School drew from a wealthy, predominantly Southern aristocracy where students had their futures mapped out, contrasting with McCain's rootless military background. McCain attended Episcopal High School as a member of the Class of '54, where he was the only student anticipating a career in the armed forces.

Mr. Ravenel, an English department head and former tank corps officer under Patton, allowed students to reason through disciplinary matters themselves, granting confidence and earning deep respect. When a junior varsity football player broke training rules without signing an honor pledge and confessed freely, McCain successfully argued for leniency after seeing Ravenel nod. Fifty-three years was the age when Mr. Ravenel died of a heart attack.

Annapolis Traditions

The purpose of plebe year is to determine whether a candidate is fit for the sole profession of combat command, using upperclassmen as agents of stress to discover inaptitude quickly. One-quarter of the plebes who entered the Academy with McCain left by graduation, unable to cope with the pressures and hazing. Forty years is the time passed since McCain's graduation from the Naval Academy.

According to John Paul Jones's maxim issued to plebes in Reef Points, an officer must be a gentleman of liberal education, distinguish error from malice, and be perfectly esteemed to be well obeyed. McCain and every other plebe were required to quickly memorize John Paul Jones's Qualifications of the Naval Officer from the book Reef Points. You must follow these principles:

• Keep constantly before oneself the truth that to be well obeyed, one must be perfectly esteemed.
• Distinguish error from malice, thoughtlessness from incompetency, and well-meant shortcoming from stupid blunder.

Upperclassmen used severe methods like modified brooms to punish plebes who failed to memorize trivia, testing their physical and mental endurance under extreme stress. Rear Admiral Kemp Tolley described how his roommate used a stiffened broom to hit McCain's father repeatedly, while the elder McCain stoically demanded another hit. Twenty-seven years marked the time gap between the father's plebe year and John McCain's.

5. Surviving the Naval Academy

Rules and Rebellions

Navigates intense institutional pressure by relying on internal solidarity and learning to sustain self-respect through service to a greater cause.

You often face strict company officers trying to prove their own command protocols. Rebellious midshipmen target these officials by defying minor Academy rules.

McCain and his friends formed a clique called the Bad Bunch to defy minor Academy rules. Captain Ben Hart, their company officer, used small infractions to severely punish McCain and keep his grease grade at the absolute bottom. McCain and his roommates formed the Bad Bunch and frequently snuck out over Academy walls to drink beer, which drove Captain Hart crazy and earned McCain extra duty marching miles for minor issues.

Midshipmen rely on internal solidarity and strict codes of silence to protect each other from administrative discipline for contraband. When caught with unauthorized items, they use traditional lottery methods to determine who takes the demerits.

• Ten dollars pitched in by each owner for the television.
• Thirty demerits and seven days' confinement penalty for the unauthorized television.

McCain and nine other midshipmen bought a black-and-white television and hid it in a crawl space. They used a shake-around method to decide that Henry Vargo would confess ownership when Captain Hart discovered it.

Graduation and Lessons

Exceptional mentors in the Navy use high-pressure instruction and demanding tasks to instill confidence and mastery in young midshipmen. Lieutenant Commander Eugene Ferrell pushed McCain hard on the bridge of the USS Hunt. This rigorous approach taught McCain the craft of ship handling and inspired him momentarily to consider a surface Navy career.

During the first-class cruise to Rio de Janeiro, Lieutenant Commander Ferrell let McCain take the conn to bring the USS Hunt alongside the admiral's flagship at high speed. There were nine days in port for liberty in Rio, and the parallel parking ship maneuver approached sixty miles an hour in car speed equivalence.

Accumulating too many demerits placed a midshipman on the verge of immediate expulsion. A single severe room inspection charge could instantly push a student past the threshold of bilging out.

• 125 demerits allowed in the last year before bilging out.
• Fifth from the bottom class standing at graduation.

McCain received seventy-five demerits for a room in gross disorder during a surprise inspection. This nearly triggered his expulsion before his punishment was reduced. You spend four years at the Academy learning to serve something greater than individual self-interest, preparing your character for future crises four decades later.

6. Vietnam Combat and Air Operations

Naval aviators face extreme operational hazards and frustrating civilian restrictions while executing precision strikes against heavily defended targets.

Unmarried naval aviators often engaged in wild off-duty revelry, creating a social divide between bachelors and married officers. McCain spent his free time at bars like Trader John's in Pensacola, driving a Corvette, and dating exotic dancers, while married ensigns lived off base with less disposable income and more conservative lifestyles. McCain once brought his date Marie, known as the Flame of Florida, to an uninvited visit at a married friend's home, where she calmly cleaned her fingernails with a switchblade.

The military trained pilots for survival behind enemy lines through rigorous escape and evasion exercises. Volunteering for escape and evasion courses, McCain was dropped into the Black Forest with only flight suits and C rations to trek to a safe area while hunted by soldiers and reported by local civilians for a reward. McCain and an Air Force friend successfully evaded capture for five days during an Army exercise in Bavaria, Germany, before being picked up at a Special Forces inn.

Naval aviators were rapidly mobilized for potential combat during the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. Returning to home port aboard the USS Enterprise, squadrons were abruptly ordered back to sea under the guise of evading a hurricane, only to discover President Kennedy's announcement of the Soviet missiles. The USS Enterprise sailed at full speed under nuclear power as the first U.S. carrier to reach waters off Cuba, where pilots spent five tense days anticipating their first combat missions.

Isolated and austere military assignments drove pilots to invent elaborate and famous social clubs to pass the time. While stationed as a flight instructor in Meridian, Mississippi, officers transformed a malodorous base lagoon into a satirical yacht club with formal titles and weekend bacchanals. McCain served as vice commodore and later commodore of the Key Fess Yacht Club, which hosted massive weekend parties and launched an aluminum dinghy named the Fighting Lady.

Carrier Disasters

A catastrophic aircraft carrier fire exposed the extreme hazards of naval flight operations and cost many lives. Stray electrical voltage accidentally fired a Zuni missile from an F-4 Phantom across the flight deck of the USS Forrestal, hitting McCain's plane and triggering a massive chain-reaction explosion of burning fuel and bombs. Two hundred gallons of fuel spilled across the deck before 134 men died or ended up dying, with more than twenty planes destroyed in the blaze. McCain escaped his burning plane by crawling onto the refueling probe and jumping into the fire, while crewmen and chiefs like Gerald Farrier gave their lives trying to fight the flames.

Rolling Thunder

Pilots experienced profound frustration with restrictive civilian leadership and repeated bombing of insignificant targets during Operation Rolling Thunder. Squadrons flying off the USS Oriskany suffered immense casualties under strict Washington target lists that prohibited hitting strategic threats like surface-to-air missile sites unless fired upon first. Thirty-eight pilots were killed or captured on the Oriskany as sixty planes were lost, including twenty-nine A-4s, while 150 tons of ordnance a day were dropped. McCain and his fellow pilots were ecstatic when bombing campaigns were finally escalated despite mounting losses because they felt they were finally helping to win the war.

The introduction of smart weapons allowed precision strikes on heavily defended military targets while minimizing civilian casualties. Commander Bryan Compton successfully petitioned for Walleye smart bombs to target a thermal power plant in Hanoi that had previously been off-limits due to its dense population surroundings. Compton led a daring daytime raid with six A-4s through heavy antiaircraft fire and surface-to-air missiles, successfully hitting the power plant and returning later to photograph the damage, earning a Navy Cross. Five of the six A-4s hit their target during the operation after searching at two thousand feet altitude during search passes.

Hanoi possessed the most formidable air defense network in modern warfare, utilizing extensive radar-guided surface-to-air missiles and flak. Pilots relied on electronic countermeasure devices and audio warning tones to track incoming missile locks, often having to drop bombs and pull up steeply before executing evasive maneuvers. During an Alpha Strike on the Hanoi thermal power plant, twenty-two missiles were fired at the formation, and just as McCain released his bombs at 3,500 feet, a surface-to-air missile blew his right wing off. The strike forced pilots to navigate three concentric rings of SAMs, diving from nine thousand feet altitude on an inbound turn before releasing ordnance.

7. Captivity and Prison Resistance

Imprisonment in Hanoi tests physical and mental endurance, requiring clandestine communication networks and steadfast adherence to the Code of Conduct.

McCain's A-4 jet was hit by a surface-to-air missile at 550 miles per hour, causing him to eject, break multiple bones upon striking the aircraft, and land in Truc Bach Lake where an angry crowd beat and bayoneted him before he was taken to the French-built prison known as the Hanoi Hilton. McCain broke his left arm, his right arm in three places, and his right knee during the ejection, and was subsequently saved from a hostile crowd by an unknown woman who applied bamboo splints. Captors withheld medical treatment to extract military information, leaving him to spend four days vomiting and feverish before camp officers examined his swollen leg. Bud Day and Norris Overly cared for McCain when he arrived emaciated and feverish at the Plantation, with Norris handling his physical care and Bud providing an inspiring example of resilience.

Solitary Confinement

Solitary confinement crushes the spirit and increases hypochondria, requiring strict mental disciplines and memory exercises to maintain sanity. You face immediate despair without human contact and must actively occupy your mind to prevent deterioration.

• Memorize the names of prisoners, guards, and interrogators
• Recite mental lists of squadron members
• Engage in academic disciplines or reconstruct books and movies from memory
• Practice daily physical routines and exercises within cell limits

McCain spent over two years in solitary confinement, struggling against paranoia and hypochondria while trying to memorize names and reconstruct books and movies. Prisoners needed to maintain emotional stability by avoiding false optimism from minor favorable events and refusing to ride an emotional roller coaster. Gastro politicians whose spirits soared over a slightly better meal would sink into despair the next day when no omens appeared.

Prison Communication

Communication among prisoners through clandestine methods is vital for maintaining morale, verifying survival, and preserving military unit cohesion. Ernie Brace spent three years imprisoned in a bamboo cage before reaching Hanoi and initially refused to answer McCain's taps out of fear of entrapment. He eventually used a drinking cup to establish contact, breaking down in tears at the sound of an American voice.

• Use the 'shave and a haircut' rhythm as a signal to communicate, responding with 'two bits' if clear
• Divide the alphabet into five columns of five letters each, dropping the letter K and using key letters A, F, L, Q, and V
• Tap once through five times to indicate the column, pause, then tap one through five times to indicate the exact letter
• Hold enamel drinking cups up to the wall with shirts wrapped around them to speak directly to neighbors

In December 1970, prisoners were transferred to Camp Unity, where numbers eventually exceeded 350. SROs ordered the men to organize into the Fourth Allied POW Wing under the motto Return with Honor, operating as squadrons and flights to maintain military cohesion and defiance. Navy bombardier-navigator Mike Christian used scraps of red and white cloth and a bamboo needle to sew an American flag inside his shirt.

• Take scraps of red and white cloth from family packages.
• Fashion a needle from a piece of bamboo.
• Sew an American flag onto the inside of a blue prisoner shirt.
• Hang the flag on the cell wall every afternoon before eating soup.
• Recite the Pledge of Allegiance together.

Mike Christian grew up poor near Selma, Alabama, didn't wear shoes until he was thirteen, enlisted at seventeen, and was savagely beaten for the flag before returning to sew another one.

10 Key Ideas

1. A deeply ingrained martial tradition and generations of naval service shape an exclusive code of honor and duty.
2. Aggressive operational leadership and tactical innovations at sea are vital to maintaining Allied supremacy during intense Pacific campaigns.
3. An officer must accept ultimate responsibility for subordinates and maintain strict adherence to ethical conduct and operational discipline.
4. Rigorous military discipline and service academy standards test personal fitness for combat command and forge essential resilience.
5. You navigate intense institutional pressure by relying on internal solidarity and learning to sustain self-respect through service to a greater cause.
6. Naval aviators face extreme operational hazards and frustrating civilian restrictions while executing precision strikes against heavily defended targets.
7. Imprisonment in Hanoi tests physical and mental endurance, requiring clandestine communication networks and steadfast adherence to the Code of Conduct.
8. True honor comes from serving a cause greater than self-interest and keeping faith with your comrades.
9. Enduring tests of character reveal that discipline, leadership, and solidarity sustain human dignity under impossible pressures.
10. Generations of a military family forge an unyielding code of honor, duty, and service to God, country, and fellow prisoners.