by John Frank Gamboa, Captain, U.S. Navy (Ret.)

¡El Capitán! The Making of an American Naval Officer, is a remembrance my midshipman life at the U.S. Naval Academy and my service in the Navy’s naval surface warfare profession. A brief family sketch provides an ethnic and cultural context and my Mexican-immigrant parents’ pursuit of the American Dream in Owens Valley, California, where my six siblings and I were born and raised. The book portrays how I overcame educational, financial, ethnic and cultural barriers to enter the academy in July 1954, graduate in June 1958 and was commissioned a Navy Line Ensign. It describes my professional development of leadership, seamanship, surface warfare, technical and management skills in ranks from ensign to captain while serving in shipboard billets ranging from division officer to commanding officer and then squadron commander. The setting is primarily at sea—over 17 years of operational service during the Cold War aboard destroyers, a cruiser and six amphibious ships with extended forward deployments in the Sixth Fleet operating in the Mediterranean Sea, Indian Ocean and the Persian Gulf, and in the Pacific Ocean Far East with the Seventh Fleet. My sea command focus was amphibious warfare. The memoir highlights my performance as the first Mexican-American naval surface warfare officer in the history of the U.S. Navy to command a major warship as a commander, another major warship as a captain and a squadron of seven amphibious warships as a captain. The epilogue includes a synthesis of what worked for me as a successful warship captain—my values, beliefs and lessons learned. John McCain, one of my three Naval Academy roommates, provided a foreword.

Email: frank.gamboa@cox.net www.frankgamboa.com
Publisher: Fortis Publishing, 2011

Ordering Info: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and can be ordered on line at book website www.frankgamboa.com