27. The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and Going from CO to CEO with William Toti

Brock Briggs  0:00  

Hello and welcome to the Scuttlebutt podcast. Today, I'm speaking with a very distinguished guest, William Toti. William or Bill, after a brief stint of enlisted time, attended the Naval Academy and graduated in 1979. He was nominated for the astronaut program, was in the Pentagon on 9/11, was the commanding officer of the USS Indianapolis submarine and held several executive positions at defense companies after his time in. Perhaps one of the most notable of the achievements is his contribution to World War ll history. 

The original USS Indianapolis, a Portland class heavy cruiser, was one of the most famous ships throughout our war on the Pacific. The Indy participated in at least 10 distinct battles during World War ll, carried the atomic bomb to Tinian, which later ended the war and shortly thereafter was sunk after being torpedoed by a Japanese submarine. Bill shares the full story here today but the captain of the Indy at that time, Charles McVay was court martialed for “hazarding” his ship. 

Fast forward to the year 2000, Charles McVay was exonerated for the sinking of the ship, due in large part to Bill's analysis of the ship and torpedoes at that time proved no action McVay took could have spared the ship. It's an absolutely incredible story. And Bill's contribution to this historical event is difficult to measure. The impact on the survivors' lives is even more notable. There are multiple documentaries available to watch on this story, and I'd highly recommend watching them. 

In preparation for this conversation, I watched the USS Indianapolis: The legacy 2015 documentary which is available for free online. It does a great job of encapsulating this historic event that you've probably never heard. We go on after our conversation about the Indy to talk about Bill's time in industry. After spending time in the corporate world, Bill noticed and felt a large gap in the understanding veterans have of what it takes to be successful after the service. 

He authored the book, From CO to CEO: A Practical Guide for Transitioning from Military to Industry Leadership. He has some great thoughts on having better understanding of expectations as veterans, and how to help control your own personal narrative. I'm so grateful for Bill coming on and sharing his knowledge. If you're a student of military history or even history in general, there's a lot of lessons to take from this conversation. Please enjoy this conversation with Bill Toti.

Brock Briggs  3:06  

Bill, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. I was telling you just before we started recording here how much I've been looking forward to this conversation. Mr. Toti, I feel like that that's how I should be addressing you. Your life and career has like an unbelievably long list of accomplishments. You graduated the Naval Academy in 1979. If I have my notes right here, you're nominated for an astronaut mission. Is that?

William Toti  3:34  

Well, for the astronaut program. Yeah, it was. 

Brock Briggs

The astronaut program

William Toti 

It was my life's ambition. And I was nominated by the Navy and filled the eye exam. And so they kicked me out.

Brock Briggs  3:44  

God had other plans. He said that we’re gonna tweak that eyesight just a little bit. You've held several executive positions at large defense contractors. And I can't even get through the list here. There's so many. One of the more notable achievements and I think that you would agree to this as well is you assisted in the exoneration of Charles McVay in the US Indianapolis sinking. All of those combined, how would you sum up your life and career up until now?

William Toti  4:24  

I've had more excitement than I probably deserved or, you know, would have wanted. In many ways, I would say that there was no plan, right? I think that I went to the Naval Academy because I wanted to be an astronaut. And back in those days, you had to be a pilot to be an astronaut in the 70s. When I finally did get nominated, it was after the creative Mission Specialist aspect of the astronaut program for space shuttle, and, you know, so I was gonna be a backseater on the space shuttle. That was the plan anyway and didn't quite do that. 

So I ended up staying in submarines for my entire Navy career of 26 years, commanded USS Indianapolis. It’s a Los Angeles class, fast attack submarine, and then was commodore of Submarine Squadron 3 and on the Navy side, now just get, I wish I could tell you that I had a plan. I was gonna stand for this number of years and then transition out and towards the end, I started generating a plan. 

But over the course of my 26 year Navy career, it was just like, “Okay, I'll do one more tour. I'll do one more tour.” It was one of those things where you say, “Well, I'll keep doing it until I stop having fun.” And there stop enjoying the jobs, I'll say it that way. I don't wanna make it sound like it was a joy ride the entire time. Because you were in the Navy. You know, it's not always a joy ride. 

Brock Briggs  5:53  

It’s absolutely true.

William Toti  5:55  

So I did that. I stayed in until I said, “Wait a minute, if I don't transition fairly soon, I'm gonna be too old to have a meaningful second career in industry.” I was in my mid 40s at that point. And so I made the decision to jump to industry when I did, so that I could have a viable second career and 15 years in industry culminating in a CEO position. So it's been a great career. And a lot of exciting times and one very bad day on 9/11. But I don't know how to summarize the career because I don't wanna pretend that there was a grand strategic plan, there was not.

Brock Briggs  6:37  

I think that that's the right way to put it. So many discussions around people's life and career in the military is often pitched as a binary decision of oh, are you gonna do 20? Are you gonna make it a career rather than a constant evaluation? Of, you know, am I still having a good time? Do I have a better option? Like, are there higher demands of my personal and professional time? What would you, I guess, put it another way, is that the advice that you would give to somebody that's maybe considering? We'll probably get into some transition stuff later, but is that kind of some on the surface level advice you would give to somebody that's?

William Toti  7:24  

Honestly, I never planned to make the Navy a career. In fact, when you graduate from the academy, you gotta put in five years on active duty to pay back the Navy for your education you got at the academy. And our motto, graduated in 79, 1879, right? Our motto was out the door in 84, right? So I planned to get out of the Navy 1984. In fact, I applied to medical school was accepted and was on my way out the door in 84, when this astronaut thing opened up again for me. And because the Mission Specialist Program began, so I thought, well, I'll go to graduate school for Mission Specialist for astronautics for space program. 

And after I get a master's degree in that, then I'll apply. And that's what I did. So I stayed in the Navy for graduate school, then applied for the Navy at the astronaut program, was nominated, failed out. So I ended up, you know, having to pay back for the graduate program at that point, because, you know, they gave me a master's degree. And that brought me past, I'd say the 10 year point. And then I got a really interesting job, where I was ordered to the Pentagon, working for General Colin Powell on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Joint Staff. 

And that was the first job I had in the military where I said, “Holy cow, this is really intriguing.” It was during Desert Storm, if you remember that. And I was in the National Military Command Center standing watch, as we were going to war. And, you know, from an intellectual stimulating standpoint of planning, a campaign combat campaign in Iraq, it was, you know, I don't wanna say enjoying it from a fun standpoint. 

But it was extremely stimulating intellectually. And that's when I said, Well, maybe this can be rewarding in a way that I had not anticipated. And that caused me to stay in and once you get past 13, 14 years, and you keep screening, right? So I screened for it so and I screened for command, and I screened for Commodore for Major Command, right? Those little things, carrots that they dangle in front of you, keep you in for the next tour and the next one. Pretty soon, it's 26 years and just say, “Holy cow that went fast.” And that's the way it went for me.

Brock Briggs  9:49  

They say time flies when you're having fun. That sounds like that must have been true for you. What was, I'm not sure what the right word is here. But what it was the feeling in the atmosphere like in the Pentagon at that time, used, called an intellectually stimulating. Can you kind of unpack that a little bit? What does that mean? Just challenging or thinking like large scale? Because that's I mean, you went to school for Physics, if I'm not mistaken.

William Toti  10:22  

Yeah. We've had nothing to do with the Physics education. But right before I reported the Joint Staff, I went to what was then called the Armed Forces Staff College, now called the Joint Forces Staff College where I learned operational campaign planning, how to build time, phase force, deployment directives and things like that. So you learned operational art. And, you know, you study, you know, war college classes on like how Gettysburg campaign evolved. 

So you state you learn how to do battle planning. And then you find yourself thrust in the middle of what turned out to be very short ground war. Just a few days, really, and, you know. But you're in the middle of that, we're just talking about developing options for how we might fight the war. And I was in the room. I was a fly on the wall. I was like, nobody, but I was in the room to witness a couple of grand arguments between two guys who are no longer alive now. General Schwarzkopf and General Powell, regarding whether we are gonna continue to go up to Baghdad or not.

And it's kind of you realized that you're here in the middle of this storm, in an incredible moment of history. And you've got a front row seat to history. And that is not something I could have done, or would have done, or anybody could do really in industry, right? So you realize that being in the military, during times like that give you a unique perspective on how history is evolving. And that was fascinating to me.

Brock Briggs  12:14  

How did those conversations develop? And how did your feelings and kind of understanding about the war during that time? And then can you maybe talk about how you maybe feel now kind of within the last year we pulled out of Afghanistan and kind of been fighting this 20 year war? Were we discussing the same things back then?

William Toti  12:39  

So yeah, in many ways, I would say that in the Gulf War, because I was always obviously also an active duty post 9/11. In the Gulf War, General Powell was very disciplined and defining exit strategy, right? We're going to war. But we're not gonna find ourselves in the same kind of quagmire. We find ourselves in Vietnam. So we're going to articulate specific objectives. And when we meet those objectives, we've declared victory, and we're done. And we leave. And so in Vietnam, of course, the objectives kept changing. 

And so we were there. Seven years seemed like a long time at the time. But, as you said, Afghanistan 20 years, the objectives kept changing. So it was, in many ways heartbreaking to me that we didn't exercise more discipline in why we were in Afghanistan, and what it would mean, what the criteria would be for us to leave. Some people openly argued that while we're still in Germany and Japan, right? And so maybe we need to be in Afghanistan for the next 50 years. And so there was a contingent that would make those arguments, but not really say why that's true. We're in Germany to stabilize the Russian threat. We have been throughout the Cold War. And people don't wanna say this. 

But we were in Japan at least for the first 50 years to kind of calm China because of what Japan did to China during World War ll. And by having, you know, China didn't see in those days as a threat. And so by having us in Japan, we kind of guaranteed China that Japan will not ever emerge as a renewed threat to China. That's no longer true in 2022 of course. We're trying to do CSS. That's another matter. But nobody could say in Afghanistan why that needed to be the case. 

And so we, it did become a quagmire. But rather than just saying, “Okay, we're done pulling out,” which is what we did in Vietnam, by the way, in 1975. We just left, right? We didn't articulate why we were leaving other than we're tired, we're going home, we're picking up our toys and going home. We did the same thing in Afghanistan in a very unceremonious way that I think people who criticized the way we left or right to criticize it. 

But it all started with the failure to define strategic objectives that we're trying to accomplish in Afghanistan. And because we never defined those objectives, we could never say that we met them. So 20 years go by and you say, what are we still doing here? And nobody could really answer the question.

Brock Briggs  15:55  

You talked about your time learning operational strategy and sitting in on some of those really high value, high impact conversations in the Pentagon during that time. What did you take from there, that you maybe influenced your leadership style when you went on to be the CO of the USS Indianapolis?

William Toti  16:17  

You know, as CO of Indianapolis, obviously, before 9/11. The, you know, one of the things I learned early on, you know, at studying, you know, deck plate leaders the way I did. You know, I was a student of history, World War ll. I still am. And, you know, studied very successful leaders, even guys like Colin Powell that I worked for as a Lieutenant Commander, right? Was that, you know, these are successful leaders or people that aren't afraid to get their hands dirty, to jump in the middle of it. I'll go back to me again, I'm not sure. 

I told you this, but I was enlisted before I went to the academy. Again, I wanted to be an astronaut in high school. And I'd applied for the Air Force Academy, got an appointment, and then had the opportunity to meet John Glenn, when he was campaigning for senator in Ohio. I was growing up in a town outside of Youngstown, Ohio. And when, you know, I joined his campaign. I was 16. I was too young to vote. But what I really did was put signs in yards, you know, vote for Glenn kind of signs. And so I got to meet him once. And not really realizing how young and naive I was when I met him. I said, “Hey, Mr. Glenn, I wanna be an astronaut just like you. And I've applied for the Air Force Academy.” 

Well, he teased me about that, right? He said, what the heck? Don't you know anything about me? I was a Marine. Why are you going to the Air Force Academy? The best pilots in the Marine Corps and the Navy and you know, landing line carriers and things like that. And I said, oh, why didn’t and I'm thinking this. I didn't say to him, but I didn't apply to the Naval Academy. So what am I gonna do now? And so I had a year to kill out of high school because I couldn't apply until the next year. 

And so I said, well, to improve my chances of getting into the Naval Academy, I'll prove to them how serious I am. I’ll enlist. So I enlisted in the Navy is out of high school and navy nuke submarine or writing electronic technician. And, you know, naively believed that okay, I'll have to do is apply to Naval Academy, not realizing how improbable it would be to get two appointments to two different academies in two consecutive years. I stupidly believed beyond, naively enlisted for six years. 

And then, you know, I was going to ETA School, Senior Chief was around ETA school. I kept telling them, well, I'm not gonna be here long, because I'm going to the Naval Academy next year, and he would laugh at me. And when I did get accepted, you know, he wasn't laughing anymore. And it was like, of course, I'm too young, naive and stupid to realize how lucky I was that my plan actually worked. But he said, I'm gonna have you, you're never gonna forget what it's like to be an enlisted man. 

So you leave the academy in three months. I'm pulling you out of ETA school. I'm not gonna waste a seat on you, since you're never gonna be ETA in the fleet, electronics technician fleet. And for the next three months, you're in charge of cleaning heads. So for three months, I cleaned toilets. And he says, “You know, I never want you to forget what it's like when somebody has absolute control over your life. Like you may have Sunday as an officer.” And so that's what I did for three months. I cleaned toilets and I never forgot that lesson. I still remember his name, Senior Chief Newcity. It's like, you know, there's certain lessons in life you never forget. But you know, that one stuck with me. 

And so as a young officer, I was never afraid to jump in. And, you know, my auxilary men and we're repairing a hydraulic accumulator. I was down there with them, you know, helping to repair the hydraulic accumulator, you know, and so on and so forth. And I tried to be that kind of leader throughout my Navy career. I had worked and I worked with some really bad leaders, by the way, during my Navy career. And again, I learned as many lessons from the bad leaders as I did from the good ones, and I tried to simulate those. So I would say my leadership style evolved over the course of my Navy career, and probably continues to evolve today.

Brock Briggs  21:00  

I think that that's what they really mean by that whole concept of deck plate leadership that will like probably when you first said that it kind of like sent shivers up my spine, not in the good way. Because everybody, you know, enlisted folks on ships or whatever are kind of sick of hearing that because it's, you know, something that's preached, but not something that's seen. And it's interesting that you would jump in there and do that because I think that that's what should be done. 

You know, you're leading people and you lead by example. You may not be in there with your elbows up to in grease every day. But being willing to do that kind of stuff is is so inspiring for an a junior enlisted person, and that plays out if you look at maybe it's just the scuttlebutt, but scuttlebutt of people on the boats talking about former enlisted officers. There's a respect there that is given that I think non prior enlisted officers just don't have and might never get to be honest.

William Toti  22:13  

Yeah, and I don't. I can't claim that I have a great deal of enlisted experience. I wasn't in the fleet. I didn't, you know, suffer mightily at the hands 

Brock Briggs  22:21  

3 months of cleaning heads is pretty bad.

William Toti  22:24  

I was enlisted for, I think, just under a year from, you know. So before I started at the academy, but it was, you know, yeah, Senior Chief Newcity’s lessons stuck with me.

Brock Briggs  22:37  

That's fantastic. I want to transition into your time as the CO of the USS Indianapolis. Leading up to this conversation, I've done quite a bit of research, reading and watching films and documentaries about the famous USS Indianapolis sinking in 1945, beginning of the year, I believe. I want to hear the story from you though. 

And I'd love if you would kind of give our listeners a breakdown and run through of what actually happened. You've done extensive research on the matter. And like I said, ended up leading to the exoneration of the captain that was court martialed for the sinking. I would love to hear the story from your perspective and your learnings. How you got tied into it. And where we stand today,

William Toti  23:33  

It started when I was a plebe at the academy. So when you're a plebe at the academy, you do these things called chow halls, chow calls, sorry. And so, chow call is something that leads up to do stand up and scream out at the top of the lungs, various bits of trivia before you go to meals right into inform the upperclassmen of, you know, various nonsense, it's just really, it's a memorization drill is what it ends up being. 

One of the easy things about chow calls during my plebe year, one of the things we used to have to yell out was, what movies were playing in town. And so this is before the multiplex was invented. And so there were two or three theaters in town. You only had to memorize two or three movies. Now there'd be 18, right? So they don't do it anymore. That bit they don't do it anymore. But for my entire plebe summer this movie was playing in town called Jaws. So it was easy to remember, because it never changed. At the Playhouse, at the Circle Theater was Jaws, right? So you, it was easy to remember for the chow.

At the end of plebe summer when you're allowed out for your first liberty, of course, you've been yelling out about this movie Jaws for the entire plebe summer. And so you say, I wanna see this movie. And in the movie Jaws, there's this character named Quint, who he gives this monologue towards the end of the movie where he talks about the USS Indianapolis and how it sunk. And how we spent days in the water, fighting sharks and all of that. And so, it was a great movie. I enjoyed it. And in plebe year, you have this class called the history of sea power. 

And my professor was a man by the name of EB Potter, who wrote the textbook, The History of Sea Power that we're using, with Admiral Nimitz. Incredible, right? And so anybody would know he would know. So, Monday morning after we saw this movie, Jaws out in the theater, go to history CPR class and say, “Hey, Professor Potter. In the movie Jaws, they talked about this World War ll cruiser Indianapolis. Is that a true story?” And he said, “Well, it's World War ll. We're gonna cover that second semester. We're doing the Peloponnesian War, whatever it was. Let's talk about that later. No, no, no, we wanna know. Is that a true story? Yes, it's a true story. That's all he would give us, right? 

And so second semester. So I learned about the Indianapolis from that movie first. But then later, when I was commissioned and reported to Pearl Harbor to report to my first boat, USS Omaha. USS Indianapolis submarine had been commissioned, and was going on its first deployment. And it was intriguing to me that I could serve on submarine USS Indianapolis. So I asked across deck from the Omaha even though I'd already I just come back from deployment on Omaha. And even though I was a newlywed, I was just married. I asked across deck on the Indianapolis because they need experienced watch officers. 

And so my detail will let me do it. So I reported to Indianapolis first as a junior officer, spent almost two years on Indy as a junior officer. And then I was ordered back after serving as chief engineer on USS Buffalo. I was ordered back to be a navigator operations officer on Indianapolis. And then I was ordered back a third time after I was EXO on USS Florida, to be a SEAL of USS Indianapolis. So I served three times on that ship, the Indianapolis. And I don't know if anybody else has ever done that before, and it’s a great ship. But by the time I was ordered on board, as the captain I knew that ship inside out, right? And so nobody could fool me on, you know

Brock Briggs  27:34  

You knew all the hiding spots and everything.

William Toti  27:37  

I did. Yeah, my signatures from my time as damage control assistant as a junior officer as navigator, we're all over that ship, right? And so over a decade's worth of experiences if probably 15 years on that ship. So at the end of my command tour, the Navy decides they're gonna decommission my submarine, 15 years, 18 years into its life, halfway through its life, right? As cold war had ended. 

You know, peace was breaking out over the world. We would never need submarines again. I mean, that was kind of a philosophy during the Clinton years. Funny how that didn't work out. We're not really good at predicting the future. And you know what we wouldn't give now to have all those submarines back. But anyway, we're gonna save a little bit of money. And it's ended up costing us a lot more money to replace the submarines that we could have kept. That's another story. 

So we are going about to decommission the submarine. On our last deployment, we did a wreath laying at the site of the sinking of the cruiser. And I picked up, started a new kind of pen pal communication scheme with the World War ll cruiser survivors. Because you know, at the time, there were something around 150 of them still alive out of the 316 that survived the sinking. And so I would write reports to the survivors of the cruiser periodically, we were going on our last deployment. 

The ship hadn't lit the world on fire during my prior tours on board. You know, we never want a Unit Commendation. We never won the Battle E. We never won, you know, in its entirety 16 years of existence when I took command. And the good news was, we did set the world on fire during my command, that was great crew. We did some incredible, highly classified missions that earned us a navy Unit Commendation and the Battle E and some fleet Award for Best Submarine and all kinds of things like that, right? 

So we went out in style, but I wrote to the survivors and said, “Look, you guys never got to decommission your ship because it was sunk. And so I'm told we're gonna have to decommission the submarine. I'd like you to come and take part in the decommissioning ceremony.” So I asked them to, you know, we couldn't pay for it. But I asked them to come to Hawaii. And at one point, it would stand with my crew during the decommissioning ceremony, and these guys were youngest of more than their 70s at this point in time, right. So you can imagine a bunch of 70 something year olds standing with my crew of 21 average age, right? 

But almost 30 of them did it. They showed up. And so it was wonderful. And they got to help me decommission my ship. And we kind of combined the cruise for the decommissioning ceremony of the cruiser on the submarine. And, you know, it was one of those poignant moments where you realize this is really important for you what we're doing right now, and it's a good thing that we're doing. So it was at the ceremony at the reception following decommissioning ceremony, two of the survivors came up to me, guy by the name of Paul Murphy and a guy by the name of Glen Morgan. And they poked me in the chest, right? Because I'm in my dress whites, right? 

And they said, Bill, you know, we've been trying to get our captain exonerated since 1960. Since our very first reunion, because he was court martialed. We could talk about the life of the cruiser next, but their point was, we have not been successful to date and but you're a captain of a submarine. We were sunk by submarine. Maybe you can contribute something and we think you owe it. I was the 10th and final commanding officer of the submarine. Their Captain McVay was the 10th and final commanding officer of the cruiser. We think you owe it to Captain McVay to help clear his name. So that's how they kind of hoodwinked me, the old word would be shanghaied me, you know, drafted me into the exoneration plan. And maybe we should talk a moment about the cruiser.

Brock Briggs  32:15  

Yeah, that's I do want to hear kind of the story of the cruiser from your perspective, but what a lot of strange seemingly coincidences about like the numbers, and what a cool opportunity to honor former sailors for probably what was likely a very emotional event for them.

William Toti  32:38  

It was, you know, it was poignant in a bunch of ways. But let me tell you a funny story, as well, because I owe it to posterity to let this story be known. So we're in the reception following the decommissioning ceremony. And the senior enlisted person on submarines called the chief of the boat, or cob for short. And so my cob comes up to me and pulls me aside, Captain, we've got a problem. And you think, oh, somebody's seven years old, somebody passed out from heat. You know, it wasn't that hot in Hawaii that day, but this was in February. 

And, you know, I can only imagine bad things. And I said, “Okay, what's going on, cob?” And he said, “They're stealing the plates.” And I said, What? They're stealing the plates. Who are the survivors? What are you talking about? They're down in the cruise mess. And they're stealing the plates. And I said, you gotta be kidding. Okay, I'll take care of this. And so, you know, I take tours. I allowed them to take tours on the submarine after. They can’t go into the hinge room but anywhere else, and I met crew members taking them around the ship. And apparently they connived, you know to steal the plates, all of our plates at USS Indianapolis. This isn't 697 on.

Brock Briggs  34:05  

We're talking like dinnerware, right? Like 

William Toti  

Exactly, yeah. Yeah. 

Brock Briggs 

Not like any type of metal plates. 

William Toti  

No, no, no.

Brock Briggs 

Not chips or anything like it’s actual dinner plates.

William Toti  34:15  

So I go down, I climbed down into the ship again, I'm in full whites, right? Full dose whites. And you know, I think I took my sword off before I climbed back down. But anyway and so I go down there and they're there on the cruise mess with this, you know, sly grin on their face. And guys, what the heck are you doing here? I heard, you can't steal my plates. And one of the guys we got in Glen Morgan the one who buttonholed me and told me that I needed to help McVay. He's got this, “Why bill? I don't know what you're talking about.” 

And of course, inside his shirt, I see the round outline of a plate that itself down in his shirt, right? So he's 70 something year old thieves that have been let loose on my submarine and, you know, taking anything that they could take without, you know, getting put in jail for it. And so I let them in, they took them off. And so back in 2005, jump forward now, that would be seven years later, I'd started going to their reunions every year, starting in 1999. And in 2005, they declared that I would be named an honorary survivor. 

And at the ceremony at the reunion, survivors reunion, they presented me with a plate. You know, that was the first time they admitted that they actually stolen. So I didn't confront them in 1998. And I just let them get away with it. And they made light of it by presenting me with the only way I have a plate from my ship does that I was given one by a survivor who stole it. But you know, these are the kinds of guys they were, they went through decades of misery. You know, many of them became alcoholics after they were sunk. And again, we gotta go back until the story to understand why. 

But once they started having reunions in 1960, that began the process of healing. And it's a really important lesson for people suffering from PTSD today, PTS today. It really took them getting together on a regular basis and sharing stories and sharing the pain that they had been going through in the decades following the sinking for them to start healing. And by the time, I met them in 98. Many are more fully recovered, and, you know, back to their old, devious sailor ways that you may know something about.

Brock Briggs  36:56  

I have no idea what you're talking about. 

William Toti 

Exactly

Brock Briggs 

Yeah, that's some really interesting commentary on the healing process, and especially coming from a generation of people who, you know, stuff their problems. They’re very stoic, put all their problems down. And I think that we see remnants of that throughout a lot of senior military, how we handle stuff today, either. 

William Toti 

That’s true.

Brock Briggs 

And they really highlighted that I had mentioned this at the beginning. But as part of my research process, I'd watched the USS Indianapolis: The legacy 2015 documentary. And they, in the interviews talked a lot about how getting back together with their crew. The other survivors was pivotal in the healing process for them. Because this was such a catastrophic event 

William Toti 

It was

Brock Briggs

So many magnitudes. I would love people can go and read all about the story all over the place. But I would love to hear your version from your study and working with them, your version of what happened to the cruiser, the USS Indianapolis.

William Toti  38:17  

The interesting thing about the story is that we continue to learn things even this late, right? So the best book is the one that came up the latest, right? It's always true. And that is the 1990, sorry, 2018 I think or 2019 book entitled, Indianapolis: The Worst Sea Disaster in US Naval History and the Fifty-Year Fight to Exonerate an Innocent Man written by Sara Vladic, VLADIC and Lynn Vincent. And the reason that's the best is because they discovered things in the National Archives over the course of their research, while they're writing that book that I don't think anybody had put together before. 

And, you know, I helped them interpret what they discovered, but I didn't do any of the discovery myself. The cruiser was, you know, it was commissioned in 1932. It was what was called a treaty cruiser. And the Washington Naval Treaty of 1920 limited the size of naval combatants among the signatory countries. So, because none of the countries involved wanted to get into another arms race and have to build, you know, the great white fleet again and spend a whole bunch of national capital so what they said was, ships greater than 10,000 tons in displacement, there would be a limit on the number of ships you could build greater than 10,000 tons displacement.

So Indianapolis was one of those that was under 10,000 tons. In order to keep it under 10,000 tons, it had limited armor. And we're talking when I say armor, its armor plating on the sides of the ship to protect against, you know, guns, rounds and torpedoes. And that limit of armor would become pivotal in its future because, you know, didn't anticipate World War ll when they signed the Washington Naval Arms Treaty of 1920. So, commissioned in 1932. For a period of time, President Roosevelt, we're talking about Franklin Roosevelt, used it as his ship of state to travel anywhere he wanted to go. 

If internationally, you would travel on the Indianapolis so it was a pretty important ship. During World War ll, it became Admiral Raymond Spruance’s flagship for the Fifth Fleet. And so even in World War ll is pivotal. It was present at 10 major battles during the war. I mean, it’s just pretty much anything you could think of anytime the fifth spoons and the Fifth Fleet was present, Indianapolis was there. And when Halsey and the Third Fleet was running the show, Indianapolis was back in Pearl Harbor, planning for the next battle, whatever it was. So it was pivotal in a bunch of different battles during the war. 

During the battle, the day before the landing began on the Battle of Okinawa, for example, it was struck by a kamikaze. Nine sailors died. I think it was 17 that were wounded. It was at significant flooding in the engine room, you know, could only run on one or two of the four engines. It only took heroic action from the crew to keep it from sinking. So they, you know, fought hard to keep that ship from being a complete loss. But it had to go back to Merritt Island to be repaired. So it traveled all the way across the Pacific with I think, a 15 degree list, which is pretty substantial. 

If you've been on a ship with a list like that, and so they happen to be in their island at the end of the repair period, when the Hiroshima atomic bomb needed to be transported to Tinian. And they were essentially a vessel of opportunity to transport the Hiroshima bomb. So the Hiroshima bomb was put on and they were told to steam across the Pacific. They weren't told what SPIG package was that they had on board. But they were told that the faster you get across the Pacific, the quicker the war ends. So they streamed across the Pacific at flank speed. And you know stopping only in Pearl Harbor to refuel and got to Tinian delivered the package, didn't know what it was.

When they were in Merritt Island during that repair period, they were a third of the crew turned over. New sailors gone on board. These sailors had never been to sea before. So they're getting underway on this flank speed run across the Pacific, with a third of their group untrained. And so Captain McVay, Charles Butler McVay, who was the commanding officer knew he needed to get this group trained. 

And so his objective was to get to Leyte as quickly as possible after they dropped their package off at Tinian. Because there's training squadron in Leyte or target aircraft, target ships, things like that. And they could practice. He did what he could, as he was running across the Pacific, but you can't do a lot of training when you're running a flank speed, right? So, you know, his objective was it was routed from Guam to Leyte. And on the 30th of July, just after midnight. A submarine Japanese, Submarine I-58 fired to spread six torpedoes, hit them with two torpedoes and sunk the ship. 

And you know, they went in the water with about 879 sailors surviving the sinking. So over 300 sailors were killed by the torpedoes or the fires and or went down with the ship in the water. You know, when they were finally rescued, they said who did you see in the water? You know, name people that you recognize or number of people in your group and things like that. So they were able to do a tally to determine that 879 men got into the water and so but after they were not reported missing through a bunch of screw ups on the Navy's part. And so they were left to float out there in the water for almost for just over four days and nights. On the fifth day, they were finally rescued. 

And so they spent five days in the water. And they were discovered through an incredible stroke of luck. A Ventura airplane and not a submarine airplane just happened to be flying over. And just happened to be in the right place. And just happened to have a problem with its trailing wire, high frequency antenna that caused the pilot of the airplane to go back out and look down to fix the floating or the trailing wire antenna. Looking down at the water, he saw an oil slick, thought it might be a submarine ran up to the cockpit, dive the airplane to see, look for that submarine that he thought might be down there and sees heads bobbing in the water. 

It was serendipity. It was no plan, just amazing coincidence. And then of course, he radios in that there's people in the water. And imagine this is halfway between 600 miles between the Marianas and Leyte. So this is 300 miles from land. And he just happens to be in the right spot at the right time to see these guys. Otherwise, none of them would survive. And so

Brock Briggs  46:31  

300 miles is like, I mean probably doesn't sound like a lot when you're thinking about a driving distance. But when you're out in the middle of the ocean, and you know, you can see whatever the horizon is, I wanna say is 19 Miles is something that you can see on a perfectly clear day. Like, that's the horizon. It’s unbelievably large distance between anything.

William Toti  46:56  

Yeah. So the radios in, a PBY shows up, lands on the water. By the way, that's not the first time that happened. That also happened when the USS Juno sunk. But a whole bunch of ships show up, including well, one of the first ones was the USS Cecil Doyle. Captain of that ship was Lieutenant Commander Graham Claytor, who later became Secretary of the Navy and signed by commission as it turns out, right? And so, you know, they rescued 316 survivors. 

By the way, for years, the survivors kept saying the correct number was 370. And so you'll hear even I made the mistake of believing the survivors on that number. Turns out one guy got off the ship in Pearl Harbor and luckiest crew member in USS Indianapolis history. And so he wasn't on board when the ship sank. But the ship's manifest was never updated when he got off the ship in Pearl Harbor. 

And it was only because he was still alive two-three years afterwards, wasn't part of the crew when it sank. They were able to reconstruct just a couple of years ago, put to bed the 317 number. The correct number is 360 not 370. So for decades, I would say that the survivors claimed that it was 370 and they were wrong. But anyway, after they were recovered, the Navy decided to court martial the captain, Charles McVay because he wasn't zigzagging at the moment that torpedo struck him. And he was convicted for housing his vessel by not zigzagging in 1945, December 1945. 

So they sunk in July 1945. They were rescued on August 3rd 1945. And he was court martialed in December. And that stuck in the craw of the survivors for decades, right? They always felt like the Navy was blaming them for being sunk. And the Navy kept saying, “Oh, no, no, we're not blaming. We know it was an act of war. We're not blaming you. We're only blaming the captain because he wasn't zigzagging.” And so when they recruited me into the effort to exonerate McVay 1998, so they’ve been trying since 1960. By the way, McVay committed suicide in 1968. Okay, so in 1998, they recruited me into their exoneration plot. 

The only thing I could do that had not been done before, as people had been making arguments for decades, that it was his right to decide to not zigzag, which is true, right? But any captain can get just because it’s your right to do something, if something bad happens when you're doing it, any captain is gonna be held accountable for that bad thing, right? So the fact that it was his prerogative to zigzag or not doesn't protect him from punishment for an outcome when he's not zigzagging, right? So that was the bit of trivia, not trivias of naval law that the survivors failed to understand. They kept saying he had the right to zigzag at his discretion. It doesn't matter. That's the problem.

Brock Briggs  50:40  

Can we talk about, sorry to interrupt you. But you explain I'm assuming that zigzagging is like kind of a defensive maneuver while operating a ship. What does that mean? Why was that the right thing to do in this circumstance? What was the problem? And like, how did that evolve with how he chose to maneuver the ship?

William Toti  51:05  

Yeah. As a submariner, right? As a submarine captain, I can tell you that zigzagging is a defense of desperation. It's something you do when you can't do the things that work. Okay, so zigzagging is completely ineffective. So what the reason people invented the tactic is if, in the old days when submarines would fire one or two torpedoes, you don't fire that, it's just like you're playing hockey. When you're trying to go after the puck, you don't skate to where the puck is. You skate to where the puck will be, right? And so you have to kind of anticipate where the puck will be and you skate to that point. If you're flying one or two torpedoes, you don't fire the torpedo at where the ship is. You fire where the ship will be. 

Now, if the ship maneuvers after you fired it, then it's going to be in a different spot than the spot you thought it would be when you fired the torpedo. And you're gonna miss. Okay, so far, so good. The problem is, and so ships, excuse me. So surface ships were instructed when they believed there was a threat of a submarine to zigzag in order to mess up the fire control calculation that the submarine was doing, had done before they fire the torpedo. The problem with that is, every ship in the planet started zigzagging. Alright. 

And so submariners aren't stupid. You don't keep doing what you were doing when it's ineffective. You modify the tactic. And so in World War ll, the tactics were modified by both us and the Japanese, so that we wouldn't fire just one torpedo. We would fire a spread of six torpedoes. And that spread of torpedoes postulates every conceivable zig the target ship can make and anticipates the zig so that at least one of those six torpedoes will hit it. 

So nearly every ship that was and we struck millions of tons of shipping during World War ll, we Americans, right? And the Japanese sunk several many of our ships as well. And nearly every one of those ships that was sunk was zigzagging. So the point is that the zigzagging tactic doesn't work most of the time when the attacking ship fires a spread of torpedoes. You're gonna ask a question. I'll let you ask.

Brock Briggs  54:05  

Yeah, I was just gonna ask if there was something that they mentioned in the documentary that the circumstances of this attack may have been made worse by the fact that they were not in anticipation of a submarine attack. They just mentioned that they were supposed to be escorted by, they had no capabilities on this specific ship of underwater radar at the time, at least that's what they said. 

William Toti

That’s right. Yeah.

Brock Briggs 

It's only airborne. I guess how would they have known that? They were in the threat of an attack. And then could you kind of describe for us, non submarine folks here. I'm an aviation guy. So how is there an estimation about how far they were when they fired the six torpedoes and how long? Is it expected that, you know, are they half a mile away? And you know, it takes two minutes to get there? Or what is the time of impact from launch for a circumstance like this?

William Toti  55:11  

Yeah, so just rough numbers. I'm rounding these now, right? The submarine was around 1200, just over half nautical mile in range when they fired the salvo. And these just think about these torpedoes run at 50 miles an hour. So you can kind of, they're pretty fast, right? And so,

Brock Briggs  55:33  

But that's half a nautical mile that's right on top of them.

William Toti  55:36  

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's, but in those days, these were dumb torpedoes. They weren't acoustic homing torpedoes. So you had to be pretty close to improve your chance of getting a hit. By the way, the best defense against torpedoes like that is actually speed. If you can run fast, the torpedo is likely to run out of fuel because at 50 miles an hour, the torpedo consumes fuel at a very high rate. The torpedo is likely to run out of fuel before it catches you. So going fast is a better defense than zigzag. 

And it's interesting, they didn't prosecute and evade for not going fast. They prosecute him for not zigzagging and going fast would have been a better defense. But anyway, just to close that zigzag issue out. The only contribution I was able to make, as a submariner, was I was able to model the attack in my torpedo computer on my submarine. And you know, even though we have modern torpedoes, you can actually turn the acoustics off of the modern torpedoes and make them one like old dumb world war ll torpedoes. 

And so my computer could be programmed to simulate acoustic mode off, it's called straight running dumb torpedoes with a salvo. So what I was able to, of course, they couldn't do in 1945 because they didn't have computers. They couldn't do this in McVay's defense in 1945, which would allow him to have been exonerated in 1945. What I was able to do in 1998-1999, was prove that even if the admin’s zigzaggy, he would have been struck by at least one torpedo. So he didn't hazard his vessel by not zigzagging. Therefore, he was indeed innocent. Okay, so that was the one bit of contribution I was able to make in 1999 that I think was contributory towards his exoneration in 2000. 

Now to answer your question about, yes, it's true that the Indianapolis had no submarine detection or submarine attack equipment. Destroyers have that, right? Not cruisers and destroyers at sonars are in depth charges and cruisers didn't. But McVay in response to were you were escorted up to that concern, you said. No, I ran all over the Pacific on an escort and I was Spruance’s flagship. Every time we need to reposition during any battle, we weren't escorted. So no, it wasn't the first time and it didn't concern me. As the survivors kept making a big deal of the fact that they weren't escorted. 

And they ignore my testimony that it didn't bother him and didn't demand an escort. He asked if one was available when he was told no, no big deal. I've done this 100 times, right? Without an escort so I'm not concerned by that. As far as the submarine threat goes, the job that McVay had prior to taking command of Indianapolis, he was a head of intelligence for the combined Chiefs of Staff. Combined Chiefs of Staff was the United States, United Kingdom, Joint Chiefs of Staff together. Both the United States, United Kingdom had broken the code to the Japanese naval code. So we were literally reading the Japanese mail. 

My opinion is McVay knew this, when he had that position as head of intelligence for the combined Chiefs of Staff. So when he went to become captain of Indianapolis, he no longer had need to know. So he was no longer able to read the Japanese mail like he would have done as head of intelligence for the combined Chiefs of Staff. But he also knew that we, the Navy, were reading the Japanese mail. And we, the Navy knew where all the submarines were because we got their orders. 

We were able to break the code and read their operational orders. And so when the people in Guam told him that there was no submarine threat, he believed that because he knew that we knew where the submarines were. So now he can't. It was top secret that we were reading the Japanese massive traffic, right? And so he can't say to his crew, well, you don't need to zigzag because we know what the submarines are. And they told me there's no on our route.

William Toti  1:00:23  

But so he zigzags anyway, until it's too dark. And you say, well, why didn't you just continue to zigzag? Well, you know what, he just ran across the Pacific Ocean at flank speed. That puts a lot of wear and tear. Anybody who knows anything about machinery knows, you know, that puts a lot of wear and tear on your machines. You wanna give your machines a break and do maintenance on them when you can. And you can't do that if you're running across from Guam to Leyte at flank speed again. 

So you slope. When you zigzag, in order to make a certain speed across that Philippine Sea, you've gotta run 24 knots to make 70 knots speed of advance. If you run straight, you can run at 70 knots, that significantly reduces the wear and tear. And remember, he believed that we were going to be invading Japan. And his ship was going to be the Fifth Fleet flagship for the invasion of Japan. So he needed to train his crew and take care of his equipment and engines. 

And so that's why he would have slowed down and stopped zigzagging at night, which is what he did. When the moon was hidden behind clouds, they stopped zigzagging. And unfortunately, the moon peeked out behind the cloud at exactly the wrong moment for the I-58 to see him. And he wasn't zigzagging and the rest is history. He was convicted for not zigzagging.

Brock Briggs  1:01:55  

Well, and some basic math might even say too that I think that they cited in the documentary that flank speed was around 30 nautical miles per hour.

William Toti  1:02:06  

Correct. That's right. 

Brock Briggs  1:02:09  

If you're doing that, that's full speed, and the submarine is half a mile away, and shooting torpedoes that can go 50 miles an hour, there's literally no way that you can outrun that, even if you had known.

William Toti  1:02:23  

That's true, but the torpedoes have limited fuel. And that actually, the range that they can go is not great, right? So and the fast, so they're gonna run out of fuel, you can go 30 knots. And the torpedo may go 50 miles an hour, but it's gonna run out of fuel after a few couple of minutes, right? And so you just, it's the old joke about I don't have to outrun the bear, I just have to run you, right? 

So you just have to outrun the torpedo. If it had infinite fuel, it would catch you. But again, the point is that the modeling show that I did show that there was no way. Even with zigzagging at 24 knots, there was no way that they were not going to get hit by at least one torpedo. And once the ship gets hit by one torpedo, it's gonna be slowed down. And then all you have to do is reload, hit it a second time and you're gonna sync it. 

So it was not going once the Indianapolis and the I-58 appeared in the same spot of the ocean at the same moment in time, any reasonably competent skipper of a submarine is gonna get at least, it's gonna sink that ship. And Mochitsura Hashimoto, the CO of the I-58 was a reasonably competent skipper.

Brock Briggs  1:03:49  

I have a comment about him here in just a moment and his role in the court martialing and whatnot. One more question about just the story. They waited out in the water for close to five days. What was the problem? How did nobody find them? Aren't ships, they're supposed to be reported when they come into port and let you know let the harbor know. How was it not known that they were missing?

William Toti  1:04:20  

Well, this is even more egregious screw up than failure to zigzag because, you know that ship was routed from Guam to Leyte. There's a dividing line halfway down the Philippine Sea where you basically transfer from one Maritime Command. one Naval Command to another Naval Command. But there's a message that hands off the ship from the commander Marianas to the commander Philippines, will say it that way, right? And so that message went out and when the ship so the guys in the Philippines in Leyte, knew when the ship was supposed to arrive. They knew that it didn't arrive. And they didn't do anything about it. 

They just presumed that its orders had been changed. And didn't tell anybody. Hey, didn't check. Hey, Indianapolis is supposed to be here. They're not here. Did something change? And so that resulted because remember I said 879 crew members went into water through and 16 survived. So 879 minus 316, that number of deaths occurred because of the delay in rescue. And that delay in rescue was 100% the fault of those guys in Leyte who didn't really do anything, when Indianapolis failed to report. 

And so yeah, so basically, nobody got punished. And I say, nobody got punished. Some letters of reprimand were put in service records and then removed, so they got kind of slapped on the wrist and then unpunished for the people that died in the water and McVay got punished for, McVay ended up being the only one who was court martialed and his court martial stuck. So when the Navy court martialed McVay, the families of all of those people lost now remember, there's 1100 crew members on this ship, 316 survived. So all those families 1100 minus 316, from their perspective, the Navy has blamed McVay for the death of their loved ones, because they court martialed him. 

So who are they to, you know, claim otherwise? So if the Navy blamed him, every one of those families of the lost at sea blamed him too. And for years, until his death until suicide, he would get hate mail from family members of these, you know, crew members who died at sea, 879 crew members who died at sea. And in my opinion, that's what caused him to kind of the PTS he was experiencing himself from the sinking. And the guilt that goes along with the sinking. I was captain. I lost my ship. I lost 879 crew members was amplified by all these letters from family members until he committed suicide. And so it was a horrible, horrible story from beginning to end. And again, the only one who got punished for anything was McVay. And this is why I felt I had to get involved in helping with the exoneration.

Brock Briggs  1:07:59  

I can't even imagine the mental burden that he must have felt or something like this, not even considering people mailing him and like berating him probably oftentimes very publicly for something that, you know as history would show, was not his fault. One thing that I thought was extremely interesting and kind of in my mind shined a bad light on the Navy and maybe we can talk about the military judicial system, NJP court martial process in general. 

But they actually brought Captain Hashimoto, the captain of the submarine that sunk him to his court martial. After the fact

William Toti

To testify against him.

Brock Briggs 

To testify against him, that is unbelievable to me. Somebody we would have considered an enemy six months before to come and convict somebody. That is just so wrong, in my mind.

William Toti  1:09:02  

It's never happened before or since. It was extremely wrong. By the way, Americans realized how long it was. Editorials popped up in newspapers all over the country, can't believe how egregiously stupid this is. What's wrong with you, Navy? That you bring the enemy in to testify against one of our heroes. So editorial writers all over the country were on McVay's side, and it didn't stop the Navy from doing this really, really stupid thing. 

But the stupidity continued for 50 years on the Navy's part. When the exoneration finally happened, I was working for the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, the number two Admiral in the Navy, right? And he was called to testify in front of the Senate on McVay’s exoneration, and I was working for him and he knew I knew the story. Intimately, he knew that I had been the captain of the submarine Indianapolis. He knew that I was involved in getting the exoneration passed and all that. I had taken the side, the exoneration hadn't happened yet. I had taken the side of exonerating, you know, exonerating McVay. 

And again, my strong opinion, this is one of the things that really upset me, pissed me off about the Navy was you know, we talked about being a learning organization. Okay, let's just be a learning organization. Let's go back. And let's ask ourselves has anything in the course of the last 50 years 1945, so let's say 2000 it'd be 55 years, right? Has anything changed in our ability to analyze the situation to cause us to revisit our position, the one we took in 1945? And one of the things that changed was my analysis, right? The proving that would have mattered whether he's exonerated or not, they couldn't have done that in 1945. 

The Navy could have said, “You know what, Toti is right here. This, we can now analytically derive the fact that it's exactly one of help, therefore, he, we shouldn't have convicted. So that was issue number one. Issue number two, before you take an action, you've gotta ask yourself what the intended desired outcome would be. And in 1945, the Navy never articulated what the desired outcome would be. They didn't say we're gonna court martial him because we intend to achieve this objective. We're gonna teach captains that they've got to blindly follow orders, of course, they would never say that because that's not what they want. 

So what was the objective they were trying to pursue in seeking the court martial? There wasn't any. Okay. And in 2000, we knew that. Actually, when I crafted my boss's testimony for the Senate hearing, I focused on that point, right? With the benefit of hindsight, it's clear that justice was not served by seeking this court martial and there was no benefit, right? So I thought there was a pretty reasonable stance we could take in not opposing the exoneration. 

And in fact, that weekend before the hearing, my boss called me at home to tell me that he wasn't going to be able to prevent present that testimony that I prepared for, and that he was gonna take a hard line. And the third thing was truth. For 55 years, the Navy had said that McVay wasn’t court martialed for sinking a ship. He was court martialed for not following tactical guidelines, right? And hazarding the ship. Well, it turns out the prosecutor in McVay's trial, a court martial, his son was still alive and living in Arlington, Virginia, just outside of DC, Alexandria, Arlington. 

And it turns out, the son still had his dad's notes from the prosecution of McVay. And I was connected with his son. And I asked if I could see his notes. And he said, “Sure, come on by the house. And you can look at my dad's notes from the court martial.” And plain as day in his dad's notes, was the fact that we're prosecuting McVay for the sinking of a ship. So the Navy had been lying to the public for 55 years. 

And so for all three reasons. Reason number one, there was no logical, rational, intended outcome to come from the court martial. Reason number two modern analysis, was able to prove that court martial was not or that zigzagging was not effective. Therefore, he didn't hazard the ship. Reason number three, that stated reason for doing the court martial in the first place that the Navy presented to the public was a lie. And for all three reasons, the Navy in 2000 should have backed down. And when they didn't, it made me mad. 

This is my navy. I've been in the Navy for 24 years, at that point, don't know, and I'm at less than that actually, right? I'd been in the Navy for 20 years at that point. And I loved the Navy. And the fact that they were still doing this made me mad. And so what I ended up doing was kind of slipping notes to the Senate staff secretly. You know, working against my own boss sadly, right? It was probably career limiting. But it was the right thing to do. And then of course, there's just, no I don't wanna take credit for the exoneration because there were a lot of people involved in it. 

I mean, the guy that brought it to the public's attention in the first place, was a 13 year old boy by the name of Hunter Scott. That's what got the hearings set up to begin with, right? This is all this public focus that Hunter Scott had been bringing to the fact that there was a 13 year old boy, aggressively waging this fight to exonerate a World War ll captain. That was a big story. And that put in the public's, you know, mind. It brought it to attention, including the Congress, right? Wouldn't have been in front of Congress had Hunter Scott not done, we did it. 

But the problem was the survivors and Hunter were all using the same kind of worn out arguments that have been used for 55 years that hadn't moved the Navy that were actually technically ineffective, because any captain can be held responsible for any failure on any given day. And the only way to get that overturned is to prove that it actually wasn't a failure. So the only thing that really could move the needle was this torpedo analysis that I had done. 

So they brought it to the attention of the public into the Congress. And the analysis I've done proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he wasn't guilty. And so it's combination of those factors that resulted in the exoneration, I think, remove any one of those elements, and it wouldn't have happened, but I'm glad that it did. 

Brock Briggs  1:16:46  

Well, and I can, I don't wanna speak for the survivors. But as somebody who is an admirer and hopeful learner of history, I think that a lot of people owe you a great deal for your contribution to the exoneration. My question to that is gonna be despite the Navy not having the knowledge, the technical expertise that you brought here, you know, when this went to trial again, why did they fight this so hard?

William Toti  1:17:23  

It was the lawyers. And I was in the middle of this. I was arguing with Navy lawyers, who were arguing that the Navy could be held accountable, that people would. There's a liability issue, that if the Navy changed its position in the 90s or whatever, somebody could sue, right? Some family member could sue, and it was stupid. And history is proven. Nobody was interested in litigation. Nobody. 

And I was telling the Navy that 1999, 2000. I know these guys, nobody's talking about suing. It's so let's just, they just want to be told that it wasn't their fault that their ship was sunk, right? Once and for all, they want the Navy to admit that. And that the Navy gives in, well, he was never convicted for having a ship sunk. And of course, that was a lie. Prosecutors' notes proved that that's exactly what the Navy intended to do and they knew that. So, you know, it's just a sad story. 

You know, and I give this talk occasionally, it's titled, you have to do the right thing for your people. And if you don't, it's gonna haunt you for 50 plus years. The Navy did not do the right thing for the crew of Indianapolis and Captain McVay. And it haunted them for 55 years until Congress got involved in correcting it. So do the right thing and save yourself that those 55 years of torment. And so I think that's a really important lesson not for just government agencies, but for companies as well.

Brock Briggs  1:19:07  

That is an important lesson. And I think that there are a lot of interesting parallels to current happenings and issues our modern Navy is facing today. It might be a conversation for another episode, but the fight for image of what's being portrayed and you know, what they are and aren't responsible for. That line is moving, I think. One of my last questions on this is what did you learn about the judicial process that needs to change? What about court martialing? What about this did you learn that needs the light shined on it, so things like this don't happen?

William Toti  1:19:58  

Well, the way court martials are conducted today has changed compared to 1945. Remember that McVay's attorney was a degreed attorney, but not a practicing attorney, okay? So he had a defense counsel that had never done court martials, defense counsel before. That would not happen today. And you know, you can go down the list. The most fundamental thing and I actually talk about this in my book, is that you, is the government is not immune from lying? 

It’s sad to say that, you would think that, well, the government has no personal stake in the outcome. Therefore, their presumption is that they would tell the truth. Well, turns out not to be the case, right? Human beings are human beings, whether they're in industry or government, you know, private world or whatever. And human beings sometimes share the truth to protect themselves. 

And so I think that's one of those things, presumption is if somebody goes to court martial, that there's a good case against them and that the government, you know, is doing this for altruistic reasons. And that may not be true. And that's the thing that I really learned from the 1945 case that I believe is still true today.

Brock Briggs  1:21:34  

That highlights such a difficult problem where we need to believe in our government, like we really, really do, because if we don't, there's gonna be absolute chaos, you know, raining throughout the country. But I think that figuring out where that line is of believing but not unquestioning maybe is the way to put that and then being able to be called on it. 

One of the things you were talking about with me before we started recording, one of the things that as frustrated you going through this process of the Indy, is that the crew members gave media control of the narrative. Will you talk a little bit about that? And maybe talk about if the same thing would happen today.

William Toti  1:22:32  

Yeah, the same thing probably would happen today on steroids. To answer that question, first. The media is much more aggressive at spin today than it was, you know, throughout this long ordeal for the survivors to try to exonerate and tell the story. And what I'm, the thing that I worry about is that you talk to somebody about World War ll cruiser USS Indianapolis, the first thing that comes to mind is sharks, right? That's the way that the public perceives the story. 

And frankly, that started with the movie Jaws that I talked about, right? Because character named Quint in the movie Jaws. It was a shark story because Steven Spielberg leveraged that in the movie, Jaws. And ever since then, if the story of Indianapolis has been told, it's gonna be a shark story. You're gonna see them on Shark Week on the Discovery Channel or something like that, right? So and that's so sad, in my opinion, because this is a ship that went through 10 major battles during World War ll, right? 

A lot of heroism on that ship, struck by a Kamikaze, fought back, kept the ship afloat, delivered the atomic bomb. There's so much heroism that that ship represents, and to reduce it to a story about men trying to fight off sharks in the water. Does the ship and its history and its crew, a great disservice? Because the Indianapolis story is not a story about sharks. The shark aspect is a tabloid aspect. It's the National Enquirer version of the USS Indianapolis story. It's not the true, you know, visceral element of the story. The visceral element of story is one of perseverance, survival and not giving up, right? You know, aggressive heroism. 

And so it's a whole bunch of things. And it's a classic story. In fact, you know, people say, well, that'd be a movie about Indianapolis. Okay, what movie do you wanna make? Do you wanna make a movie about this great fighting ship that was spoons and flagship and got through all these battles? That's a story, right? That's a movie, or do you wanna make a movie about the ship to survive a kamikaze attack? Recovered, delivered the atomic bomb. That's a movie. Or do you wanna make a movie about the submarine, the captain that had never sunk a ship during the entire war? 

And happens to be in the right place at the right time to sink Indianapolis. That's a movie? Or do you wanna make a movie about the heroism and, you know, survival of five days in the water and the miraculous rescue? Or do you wanna make a courtroom drama, right? Every one of these. Or do you wanna make 55 years of struggling to clear their captain’s name? Every one of those is a two hour movie. You can't make a movie about this. You can make a mini series, 10 episode miniseries. But there's too much. 

And if you ever told somebody this story, you didn't know the history. You know, it's almost it was if you wrote a story about this, people wouldn't believe it. It's too much for one storyline. And it's almost like you can't make this stuff up. That's how incredible the story is. And so yeah, it's kind of heartbreaking in many ways that the thing that brought the USS Indianapolis. Most of the survivors didn't talk about the Indianapolis until the movie Jaws came out. They went from 1945 to 1975, when the movie Jaws came out, never discussing the fact that they were on the ship. 

And then suddenly, people started saying, hey, is this story about the, were you in World War ll? Did you ever heard anything about the Indianapolis? Not only did I hear about it, I was on it when it sunk. Yes, true story. That's how they started talking about it. And so that from day one, the short narrative has controlled the story. And it's a shame because there's so much good about that ship, that you should not allow the terror aspect of it to control the narrative.

Brock Briggs  1:27:06  

How do we as individuals, get control of the narrative back?

William Toti  1:27:13  

Refusing to talk about sharks, right? By talking about everything else that that ship went through, and you know, using the court martial and exoneration as a case study in doing the right thing and failure to do the right thing. And how, you know, fate corrected it. I would say fate, how karma corrected this failure to do the right thing. Use whatever, God corrected it. Use whatever motive force you want to use. 

But I mean, there's so many lessons in the story. That short there's no lessons in the sharks. There's only terror, right? And so the only lesson there is that if you don't assertively grab hold of the story and control the narrative, the tabloid aspect of media will take control from you. That's the only essence, not a good.

Brock Briggs  1:28:14  

It certainly isn't. As we're talking about controlling the narrative, you recently released a book called CO to CEO and in the heart of talking to veterans in transition, how do we as veterans help control our narrative?

William Toti  1:28:33  

Yes, that's an important point, right? Because oftentimes, what I found is, you know, in my 15 years in industry, leading to my role as the CEO of Spartan Corporation, the veterans are instructed badly by the military services in how to transition to industry and what aspects of their military career they should focus on. And, you know, a lot of times and I hired hundreds, if not 1000s of veterans in the 15 years I served in industry. And a lot of times what I found was that the guidance that they were given was completely wrong in their transition course. And there are different names for the courses now. 

But then when I went through, it's called Transition Assistance Program or TAP course, Skills Bridge, I think it's called now. But there's one factor remains the same is most of the time that people teaching the course have not succeeded in industry themselves. They’re trainers, instructors, not people who have been there and done it. And I still don't know who writes their lesson plan for them. I've been trying to find that out from the government, from the military, and I have not succeeded. 

It's interesting that when you write a book telling people that what you've learned in your transition courses may not exactly be the correct way to transition. I should not be surprised by the fact that the people that are responsible for the courses that I'm criticizing kind of shut down on you, and don't wanna talk to you, or don't wanna contribute to any of my, you know, arguments that veterans are not being well served. 

But the truth is, veterans are not being well served. There are aspects of your military career that are gonna be invaluable to your future employer. And oftentimes, the employer doesn't even understand what aspects they should look for. And how to and I use the word, retrain the veteran to succeed in industry and as a civilian. But I believe, having been in the industry for 15 years working around other companies, not just mine, but working for five or six different companies in my time, that nearly every company wants to hire veterans for the right reasons. They wanna hire veterans because they know it's the right thing to do. 

And the company both wants to give back, but also believes that doing well will allow them to do good. And doing good will allow them to do well. And that they're gonna get a lot out of veterans, veteran employees, that they would not get out of non veteran employees. But in order to benefit from that, companies need to understand what the veterans are gonna be good at, and what they may need a little reorientation or redirection on. And the book tries to do both things. It tries to tell veterans, these are the things you need to do to succeed in industry in your civilian job. But it also tries to teach companies how to help their veterans succeed in industry. 

And so the book's title is from CO to CEO. But the subtitle is A Practical Guide for Transitioning from Military to Industry Leadership. And that's the underscored part, right? A Practical Guide for Transitioning from Military Industry leadership, there are a lot of, I would say there are several books on the market that purport to give veterans advice on how to succeed in industry, but they're really just hand waving pablum nonsense, right? Things you can get from any leadership book that put it in veteran language. What I tried to do is give you almost step by step instructions for the veteran and for the company that's hiring a veteran on how to make that veteran successful.

Brock Briggs  1:32:55  

You kind of started to touch on it. They're one of the first questions that anytime that there's a book, it's like, who is this for? It sounds like this is for people that maybe are in hiring positions at industry type companies, and also the veterans themselves. Is that right?

William Toti  1:33:16  

Yeah, no, I write the book with the audience being in the voice of somebody talking to the veterans, right? So when you read this as a veteran who's beginning the transition process, and I talk about the fact that you need to start taking action 18 months before you get out of the military, you're reading, it's talking to you the transitioning veterans. The companies, obviously, the companies have bigger audience. There's 200,000 veterans a year leaving the military, believe it or not, but there's more, you know, companies that hire veterans than 200,000. 

And the companies that are reading it will read and they'll say, “Well, he's talking to veterans here.” No, but I'm talking to veterans in a way that the companies will understand, right? What they need to do to help the veteran succeed. I've seen too many companies hire veteran, basically throw them into the deep end of the pool, and the veteran struggles. And then the company says, “You know what this isn't working out. Looks like I'm gonna have to let this guy go.” And my point is that it's as much a responsibility of the company to make this relationship successful as it is the veteran. 

And there's no excuse for the company not knowing what the veteran’s going to be good at. And what they're gonna need to be trained. There's no excuse, because it's knowable. And if you're gonna invest in hiring somebody, you would think that you would take the time to figure out what you need to do to make that person successful. But way too many companies don't do that. And so the book is intended for both audiences.

Brock Briggs  1:35:03  

Well, on veterans current foreign military members bring so much to the table in a corporate environment. It's not, that's one of the things that kind of irks me when talking about like hiring and whatnot as being a veteran gets you the extra couple points on your application. And I advocate to people to use that to their advantage.

William Toti  1:35:27  

Maybe only for government jobs, by the way, maybe not for industry jobs. Go ahead.

Brock Briggs  1:35:32  

Okay. I didn't know that. But people should be hiring veterans because they have a unique skill set not to fill a hey, we, you know, we give back or whatever. What do you think about that? Do you think that a lot of people hide under that, oh, look at how many veterans we're hiring? Do they actually care about that? Or is it something to give the appearance?

William Toti  1:35:59  

I think that you’re right. But too many companies look at it in the light of, oh, look at how good we're doing, giving a veteran a job. But nobody tracks well, did that veteran actually succeed and stay with you, right? So they tracked the inflow, but not the outflow. And if the veteran does leave, and there are reasons accompanying, in some ways, veterans can be a risk for the company. Okay. And companies don't think that through before they hire them. They wanna be given credit for the hiring act, but not the success act. They don't track the success aspect. 

And when the veteran fails, or is let go or whatever, or leaves voluntarily, because they're not, coupling isn't made, right? They're not transitioning well. Nobody says, well, why did that? Why are we losing veterans as our employees here? Is there something we should have done that we didn't do? That's a question that is almost always yes. But they didn't know that there was something that they should have done that they didn't do. This expression that I use is from an electrical engineering concept called impedance mismatch. 

You know, it's like, and I use the example, you plug your 120 volt appliance into United Kingdom's 240 volt outlet. There's gonna be a problem. And too many times, when a veteran joins a company, it's exactly like that, right? It's like plugging 120 volt appliance into a 240 volt outlet, and nobody knew nobody took the time to think, wait a minute, there's gonna be an adjustment here. What do we need to do to make this adjustment go? Well, the company acts as if it's the veterans responsibility to make that adjustment go well. And the veteran is misled by the poor training they received in the skills bridge, whatever, and their transition training courses. 

And so they think it's gonna go like, one way. The company thinks is gonna go like another way, and nobody ever closes that gap. And then it results in, you know, a very stressful situation, with the veteran transitioning out of the military and industry into an unknown environment. That's gonna be very stressful, whether or not it's successful, if it's then not successful. And the veteran now needs to worry about income and mortgage and kids school or whatever, right? It makes it worse. 

And the company is culpable in those failures, if they didn't plan the transition correctly. And so it can't just throw it on the veteran and say it was their responsibility. The company is culpable as well, because they could have known what it was gonna take to make the veterans successful. And they didn't take the time and opportunity to learn.

Brock Briggs  1:39:22  

It's an interesting take. I don't hear a lot of people pointing to the companies as needing to take more responsibility for the veterans integration into the business. I'm assuming in your example of the impedance mismatch example that the veteran is the 240 volt.

William Toti  1:39:43  

Sometimes, yeah. Yeah, it’s a great point because, you know, for example, veterans are correct. in patting themselves on the back for the fact that they are put in leadership positions very early in their career, right? You know, I'll take the case of it, you know, first class leading petty officer, or a junior officer. They're in their 20s. And they're put in a very robust leadership position. 

But the skills that they used, the leadership techniques they used, that might have been necessary on active duty are likely not gonna be necessary in industry, right? Or they're gonna have to leverage different leadership skills when they're in industry. And so, you know, that's the 240 volt. They can get in a lot of trouble in their industry jobs using the skills that made them successful in the military, if they don't understand the need to modulate their methods. And that's one of the messages I tried to convey in the book.

Brock Briggs  1:40:54  

I'm getting a lot of other mental images of kind of like, almost a bull in a china shop, so to speak, where you've got somebody that's to survive in the military, you got to, there's a certain amount of energy that you gotta have to be, you know, hanging with the best of them. And I think that that comes across as, or I can imagine comes across as disruptive and a little bit aggressive, and maybe a traditional workplace environment.

William Toti  1:41:24  

Exactly right. And I give an example, in the book, we're very early in my industry career, when I was in a director position, I was assigned to let a once retired one star General go. And, you know, the talking points I was given when it was time to terminate this guy was, you know, HR told me that the problem is he didn't adapt well, that he was a command and control leader. And that confused me because I said, you know, command control is a good thing. 

In the military, you command forces and you control their movement, things like that. He’s gonna be as confused as I am because we think of command and control as a good thing. What do you mean? And she said, he commands his employees, he barks out orders, and expects immediate compliance. So in other words, she was using special command and control to portray something different than we think of it in the military. And it was a very bad thing. It was very directive leadership style that doesn't work with civilians. And I joke with my active duty friends, leadership is hard. 

But it's even harder when you're leading people who can actually quit. And so the example I gave in the book, a thing that you may have to change. And I've seen it happen dozens of times, maybe a hundreds of times, where leadership leaders, people come into industry thinking they succeeded in the military as leaders. Ergo, automatically, they're gonna succeed as a leader in industry, and they fall flat on their face because they don't understand the different environment.

Brock Briggs  1:43:18  

One of the things you highlighted there, I think it's so important is just making sure that you guys are defining your terms the same way. You know, the command and control is being used in two very different contexts there. You mentioned something at the beginning, where you talk about what's actually needed and being told to or what is actually being needed by the veteran in an industry role. And what is being taught are very, they're not aligning. They're not matching. Where is that miscommunication happening? And on what specific topics are people being led astray on that you look to dive into in the book?

William Toti  1:44:03  

I think in their zeal to make the veteran feel good about their potential for success in industry. The courses focus on things that they should feel good about, and don't convey enough of holy cow, there's gonna be a lot of work to do here to succeed in this new environment. And the example I give, I was told when I was transitioning that all your future employer wants from his good leadership. And I wanted to believe that that was true, right? Because I believed that I was a good leader. And so if all they wanted from me is good leadership, boom, instant success, right? But that's not even true in the military. 

If it was true in the military, you could take a bomber Wing Commander from the Air Force and put him in command of a submarine and they would do just fine. And it's ludicrous to even talk like that, right? Even raise the concept. Because we'd know instinctively that you actually need to know something about submarine before you're gonna succeed in command of that submarine, or in any capacity on that submarine, not even command even the lowest level. And so even in the military, good leadership is not a sufficient attribute to allow you to succeed. So why do you think it would be sufficient in industry when it's not? 

So basically, we were beguiled into believing our probability success was higher than it really was. And so what I tell people is when you transition, you need to think about, think of it as you're starting over again, because you are, right? In that new job, you start, you don't know anything about what it's gonna take to succeed. And it doesn't matter if you're an electrician on a ship, and now you're gonna be an electrician in a company. The attributes that it's gonna take to succeed are much more financially driven in that company than they were on ship. 

And so you could be the best electrician, technical electrician in the world. But if you spent five times the bid budget, the budget that was bid on the job, and getting the work done, you're gonna fail. And so there's a lot more that needs to be done to prepare for the industry job, then I think the folks teaching courses want to let the veterans believe.

Brock Briggs  1:46:41  

That money comment is a very funny one. I think that as a junior enlisted person who's spent a lot of time working on expensive electronics, there is literally no concept of what it takes to repair a job at no higher level thinking that's implemented, at least at our level about, hey, is this the right thing in terms of, are we on budget for this piece of equipment

William Toti 

Right

Brock Briggs

And so forth, there's not that level of thought, or it's not even needed, but we're certainly not thinking about it. I think that you really are hitting the nail on the head with something. And I'm kind of having some flashbacks here to my transition course. And probably a lot of the same narratives were echoed. 

But they really try to talk about how the military is a stepping stone, like, it's the stepping stone to this next thing, and people are gonna be beating down the door to like, have you come and work for them. And the reality is, that's just not true. Like, it's you are maybe slightly more competitive because of the things that we've talked about where, hey, corporations that see and like to hire military people, but outside of that, like, you really need to understand why your skills are better suited than the next person, you're still having to compete.

William Toti  1:48:06  

Right. Being a veteran provides significant advantages in certain areas. Number one, you know, you live through the suck. And so, you know, you know how to drive through the suck. And so you can, if you figure out a way to get yourself motivated about your mission in your new job, you're gonna have the fire in the belly that the company is looking for, because you've had to add that in order to get through your military experience. Advantage one, and not everybody trusts me. I hired a lot of people with not veterans, with no fire in the belly that was like, they're here for the paycheck. 

And they don't, we couldn't care less about the mission that we're doing, right? As a company. I've also hired veterans who stink to the mission ended when they left active duty. You know, this isn't defense of the country. This is about making money for my boss and then they lose the fire in the belly. And that doesn't work out for them either, right? You need to understand the mission, the larger perspective and keep that fire in the belly. The second thing, the advantage the veteran has, is they've been put in positions where they have to learn their jobs on active duty quickly. 

And in civilian life, you're gonna have to do the same thing. You're gonna have to learn quickly. And the guy coming out of college or the gal coming out of college, they've had no experience in the real world, right? You have no idea how long that's gonna take for them to get up to speed. Even if they have a degree in mechanical engineering, and their new job is as a mechanical engineer. You have no idea how long it's gonna take them to get up to speed in a production capacity. 

You do have an idea that that veteran has been in a production type environment, whether it's combat or otherwise, right? It was shipyard or, you know, aviation maintenance or whatever, they've been in a production environment. You do know that they know how to get up to speed in that environment. So that's advantage number two. And, you know, I would say, advantage number three is they know things. They've had life experience. And you know, that a lot of their competitors who are not veterans don't have, and that life experience brings a level of maturity, and gravitas, that a lot of the non veterans just won't have. And companies do look for that. 

So there are a lot of advantages of being a veteran. As long as the company understands that there may be some challenges that the company can help the veteran overcome and help them adjust too, and, you know, there are gonna be some things that aspects that they may think that they know, but they don't really. So for example, I had the subspecialty in the Navy called Financial Management because I worked in the Pentagon. 

And I worked on the Navy's budget. And I was beguiled into believing that that allowed me to know something about financial management. When I got into industry, I quickly realized I knew nothing about financial management as required to succeed in my industry job. So, you know, that was an important lesson for me. Thank God, I learned that lesson quickly. And was able to get trained on industry focused financial management. But I was led to believe by the military and the guy on myself into believing that I had more knowledge than I actually did as a pretend industry. And that was a hurdle that I really needed to overcome to be successful.

Brock Briggs  1:52:07  

You talked about people having the fire in their belly, I really, really liked that term. And that it really gets right at everybody knows what you're saying when you describe that. I'm not sure if you talk about this in the book at all, I have yet to read it. But it's now on my list. And it's coming here very shortly. How do you coach people to find the jobs that give us the fire in the belly? Because there's gonna be opportunities for veterans to go and work at places that don't give us that. And there may not ever be a replacement that gives us the fire that we had while serving. What would you recommend for people that are looking for that?

William Toti  1:52:59  

It's critical that veterans take the long view as the transition industry. So when I say the long view, don't think about what you're doing in the job you take, when you leave, when you get out. Think about what you're gonna be doing 10 to 15 years down the road. And keep fully focused on that. When you get out of the military, if you start immediately looking at the job as a paycheck, you're never gonna progress beyond that job, whatever it is. Because people don't want folks working for them, who are only thinking about the paycheck, right? 

If you think 10 to 15 years down the road, where do I wanna be then. And it helps you keep the right attitude and the job that you're in now. And so that's really the most important bit of advice that I could give. Let's say you're not excited about the job you have now. But it's a stepping stone to get where you wanna be. That should make you excited, right? And that should help you find that fire in the belly. 

Like I have this conversation with my kids today, right they’re in their 30s, my kids. So I'm not loving my job, okay, great. And think about the job you want. And how success in this job is gonna get you there and get excited about that. And that's something I think veterans lose sight of. No, you're not gonna be defending the nation. You might be doing a permutation of that if you're working in a defense company. But let's say you're not, you know, getting a job at Home Depot or whatever. You get it. I got it. If that's the only thing you think you're ever gonna do, okay, then it's a paycheck. But if it's a stepping stone to where you wanna be, you better find that fire.

Brock Briggs  1:55:00  

I don't think that the military teaches that type of thinking. And I think that that's maybe why that is such a struggle to think long term, you're thinking. You know, I met this unit or command for three years or however long it is, if I can just make it through that. And, you know, focus on this advancement exam or whatever that looks like. That type of long term thinking and planning is certainly not something that's discussed as much as it should be. 

I wanna ask why you wrote this book. I think that just from everything that we've talked about today, and there's probably at least two or three other episodes worth of podcasts about other things that have happened in your life and career. You've made it by a lot of different standards. And I know that people don't usually set out to write a book as a financial endeavor. Of we've had a couple people on in past episodes talking about the economics of book writing, and it doesn't seem to be super lucrative. 

William Toti  1:56:10  

Yeah. You're gonna lose money. There's no doubt. 

Brock Briggs 

Why write this book? 

William Toti 

Yeah, well, I spent a year writing it, a year getting it in bookstores, and a whole bunch of money, when I'm never gonna break even, right? 

Brock Briggs 

That’s great. 

William Toti 

Yeah, whoa, sign me up for that. It's because I got tired of telling people the same thing over and over and over again. I had 1000s of veteran employees over the course of my 15 years in industry, 1000s okay? And, you know, not all of them, you know, interfaced with me directly. Some, many of most of them, I would say, were several layers down in the organization. 

But even the ones I hired directly that were direct reports, I kept having the same conversation over and over, and it was Groundhog Day. Okay. And because I would say, I love the fact that you're a veteran. I went for a veteran explicitly for this position. And you should be proud of your service, just like I'm proud of mine. But there are some, you know, hazards here. There's some tripwires you need to be aware of, and then I would outline them for. And you know, it gets really fatiguing to have that conversation for every veteran employee that you're bringing into the company. 

And again, I hired directly hundreds. I had 1000s of employees in the company working for me in various companies, I should say. And there was some people I could have the conversation with, but there's too many, for me to have the conversation with every one of them down four or five layers in the organization. So I looked for a book that made all the points that I wanted to make as there are several books out there, you know, in the marketplace about here's how the Special Forces transition, lessons for transitioning from Special Forces community, you know.

Every SEAL that's ever been accepted to the SEAL community has a podcast and has written a book. And, you know, I look for, you know, there's admirals who have written books, who got their position only based on the fact that they're an admiral, and it's somehow relevant to the 24 year old, whose transition. It is absolutely irrelevant. There's almost nothing that admirals gonna be able to tell that 24 year old because the admiral didn't go through what the 24 year olds gonna have to go through, right? 

And so, you know, I look for every, there's books written by Headhunters, who've never been in the military. There are recruiters who look at the world through the lens of a recruiter, and somebody is trying to place a person or a particular job, who then is probably failed to follow up to find out, was that person actually successful? How long do they last with that company, right? There's all kinds of books out there. None of them from the perspective of somebody who spent a career in uniform followed by a career as a hiring official in industry, right? And so, I looked for a book to save me the trouble of writing one. There wasn't one. 

So I spent nearly two years to get it in bookstores, and I can't tell you how much money I don't wanna. It's embarrassing how much money it costs and I had a publisher distributor, you know. But even from the marketing standpoint alone, it's an expensive proposition to get books, you know, to get the world to know this book is out there. Because today, publishing houses say you gotta have skin in the game, or we're not gonna go down this journey with you. If you're not coughing up the box, because you don't believe it, you must not believe in your product. Therefore, why should we believe in it and invest all this money? 

So, you know, it's kind of a hybrid model that most people use nowadays, where the publisher kicks in some, the distributor kicks in some, and the, you know, author kicks in some, and some buy some, I mean, a lot. And so, you don't do this, because you're gonna make money. I didn't, you know, I did this because it was the right thing to do. I was just tired of saying the same thing over and over again. And hopefully, by getting the book out there, people can benefit from it, which is really what I want.

Brock Briggs  2:00:53  

I think that that's the right mission to go about it. And if nothing else, like I said, maybe it saves you a couple of conversations where people go to ask, you can just say

William Toti 

Read the book

Brock Briggs 

Here's the book, call me if you've got any questions.

William Toti  2:01:07  

Exactly. Yeah. The book has been out a month, right? A month and a half. Are there things that as I'm having conversations about the book, I wish I put in? Sure. Is it 100%? No. But I would say the best book on the market today is 40%. And this one, if I could be so bold as to pat myself on the back, you know, about succeeding in the industry, right? Is 85% better than 40%, right? And so it's not 100%. 

But it's and I've read everyone that I know about it, you know? And I'll tell you, it's the best one out there. From the standpoint of somebody who's been in both seats, the active duty seat and I know what you know, kind of thing, right? And the industry seat, I know what you need to know. And I think that that's the only book in the market that does both.

Brock Briggs  2:02:06  

Well, I look greatly looking forward to reading through the rest of it. I think that if the book is even half as good as the conversation that you've given me today and input on from a veteran perspective, I think it'll be an absolute knockout. So I'm looking forward to reading it. And I probably will be following up with you on some questions 

William Toti

Sure

Brock Briggs

After that happens. Bill, this has been an absolutely fantastic conversation. I am so, so grateful for you reaching out. I want to take a second to have you plug anything that you'd like. Where can people go to find the book? Reach out to you if you want that? Learn more about you? Any USS Indianapolis records or documentaries people should be watching, anything you wanna put out?

William Toti  2:02:58  

Yeah, the first thing. My website is William Toti, spell TOTI, Tango Oscar Tango India, right? Dot com. And so you can go to my website for you know, links to the book and all of that. And the book is out on its ebook. It's hardback ebook and audiobook. So whatever format works for you, it's there. On the World War ll stuff, the Indianapolis and others, there's a eight part documentary that's gonna be released on Fox nation streaming, starting May 29th this month and I'm in all eight episodes. 

So you can get your flow of William Toti, are watching this and but we’re doing an episode on eight different ships. Actually, it's more than eight because we have one episode that covers the four cruisers that were sunk during the battle, Solomon Island IronBottom Sound that we covered Indianapolis is episode one. The Johnston these are all World War ll ships, even one Japanese ship, the Musashi we cover in an episode. And so I really recommend folks, it'll be streaming on demand after May 29th so you can watch it on Fox nation. Veterans get a free year subscription to Fox nation. So no excuse, you don't have to pay to see it. No excuse for not watching it. 

If you're in any way interested in World War ll history, you will love this eight episode documentary because we reveal video footage of the found ship wrecks at the bottom of the ocean, bottom the Pacific as well as analyzing the battles and how they sunk. And so I hope people find it interesting. You know, but I really appreciate your time and attention on the books. You know, I hope that veterans do find value in this book. It's struggle to get the word out so I appreciate you doing this with me, Brock. 

Brock Briggs  2:04:59  

Absolutely. Honestly, thank you for coming on. Thank you on behalf of other Navy veterans in what you're doing to help encourage people and push them in the right space and dare I venture to say thank you on behalf of the Indy crew. Thank you. 

William Toti 

Thank you!