Hard Charger!: The Story of the USS Biddle (DLG-34)

Product Description
Hard Charger! is a comprehensive history of the USS Biddle (DLG/CG-34) as told by the officers and men who served aboard her.
Co-author
RADM Tom Marfiak suggests that “It is a first hand account of what life was like aboard a front line missile cruiser in the middle of the Cold War. The combat sequences have not been equaled anywhere—and the story is by the people who lived them. The book tells the story of a ship from start to finish, a story mirrored by many others, but distinguished in this case by her performance in combat. A ship is just a hull, without her crew. Here is the opportunity to see into who they were, and what they meant to each other and the ship, and so to the Navy and the nation. The tradition continues.”

Bernie Ditter, writing in Tin Can Sailors, stated, “In this reviewers opinion the real story is the transformation of the surface ships of war from guns to missiles and so far into the information age that the gunner’s mates from the past have almost become anachronistic.”

Captain Maylon T Scott, Biddle’s first commanding officer, wrote, “
Hard Charger! very accurately depicts how Biddle’s plank owners, through hard work, determination and dedication, set the high standards that sustained her for almost 27 years and were recognized throughout the Fleet as the standards to emulate. Many of Biddle’s policies and operational procedures related to combat readiness and response were new at the time but now are official doctrine in the Fleet today.”

About the Author
James Treadway, a Biddle plank owner and USS Biddle Association Vice President and Historian, witnessed Biddle’s construction, commissioning and shakedown and was aboard Biddle during her first two combat deployments to the Gulf of Tonkin.
RADM
Tom Marfiak, a U.S. Naval Academy graduate, past Biddle Engineering Officer and U.S. Naval Institute CEO and Publisher, commanded the USS Kitty Hawk Aircraft Carrier Battle Group and the AEGIS cruiser USS Bunker Hill (CG-52) during Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm. He writes from more than 40 years experience in the U.S. Navy.

CAPT David L. Boslaugh spent most of his 30-year Navy career in research and development and project management assignments as a naval engineering duty officer. His five-year assignment in the Naval Tactical Data System Project Office uniquely qualifies him to explain the events that led to the development of Biddle’s Naval Tactical Data System.