Ron The War Hero: The True Story of L. Ron Hubbard's Calamitous Military Career

276 Pages·2019·1.83 MB·English

by  Chris Owen

Contents
1. Title Page
2. About Chris Owen
3. Introduction
4. Chapter 1: Scientology’s
Account
5. Chapter 2: The Navy’s Account
6. Chapter 3: Ron the Warrior
7. Chapter 4: Ron the Intelligence
Officer
8. Chapter 5: Ron the Saviour of
Australia
9. Chapter 6: Ron in the Atlantic
0. Chapter 7: Ron the Sub Hunter
1. Chapter 8: Ron’s Battle
2. Chapter 9: The Mystery of the
Missing Submarines
3. Chapter 10: The Coronados
Affair
4. Chapter 11: “Mister Roberts”
and the USS Algol
5. Chapter 12: “Crippled and
Blinded”
6. Chapter 13: Mustering Out
7. Chapter 14: Ron the Veteran
8. Chapter 15: Ron’s Medals
9. Chapter 16: Uncovering the
Truth
20. Chapter 17: Ron the Secret
Agent?
21. Chapter 18: Ron’s War
22. Bibliography
23. Other Books and Articles
24. Index
25. Notes
26. Copyright
RON
THE WAR HERO
The True Story of
L. Ron Hubbard’s
Calamitous Military Career
CHRIS OWEN
SILVERTAIL BOOKS • London
Chris Owen is a British historian and researcher who was appointed
MBE for his work in 2000. Separately to his professional life, he has
written extensively on British military history, the life of L. Ron
Hubbard and Scientology. He became interested in the story of
Hubbard’s war career after reading about it in Russell Miller’s
biography Bare-Faced Messiah. Owen has also advised other
authors on aspects of Hubbard’s life and career.
INTRODUCTION
Pasts Imperfect
Between 1941 and 1945, over sixteen million American men and
women served in the United States Armed Forces. Some went on
after the war to achieve fame in politics, sports and the arts. One
veteran, though, made his mark in another and quite unexpected
way: a few years after demobilizing, Lieutenant Lafayette Ronald
Hubbard, United States Naval Reserve, became the founder and
leader of the controversial Church of Scientology.
Hubbard’s wartime service with the United States Navy was a
pivotal time in his life. Before the war he had dreamed of achieving
greatness, even boasting that he would “smash his name into
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history.” He was now a participant in the biggest conflict in history.
What better opportunity was there for glory?
To Scientologists, L. Ron Hubbard is a much-decorated war hero
and “master mariner” who served his country with distinction. He
commanded warships, fought bravely against the Japanese and
Germans and suffered serious combat injuries. He had a miraculous
recovery through the use of his own revolutionary mental techniques,
which he developed into Dianetics and Scientology. At the war’s end,
he received numerous decorations in recognition of his valor and
accomplishments.
To the US Navy, the Veterans Administration, and those who served
with him, the picture is very different. His naval record shows that he
briefly had command of two small vessels and was removed from
both of them when he made serious errors of leadership. Several of
his superiors were strongly critical of him and considered him
incapable of serving independently without close supervision. He
spent most of his war service ashore, far from any combat zones. He
never saw combat. He was not wounded but instead spent extended
periods being treated for commonplace physical afflictions. He was
awarded only a handful of standard decorations for his war service.
Echoes of Hubbard’s time in the US Navy can be seen throughout
Scientology. He awarded himself the rank of Commodore and
assembled a small fleet of ships in the 1960s, from which he
oversaw the activity of the Church of Scientology for several years.
He established an inner “religious order” of dedicated Scientologists
who even today use quasi-naval ranks and uniforms. And he created
an intelligence service within the Church of Scientology to mimic
Naval Intelligence, serving as a formidable worldwide apparatus for
crushing internal and external threats to Scientology and his own
interests.
Hubbard’s war service also provides the justification for the Church
of Scientology’s existence. Tommy Davis, formerly the Church’s
principal spokesman, has said that if it was true that Hubbard had
not been injured, “the injuries that he handled by the use of Dianetics
procedures were never handled, because they were injuries that
never existed; therefore, Dianetics is based on a lie; therefore,
Scientology is based on a lie. The fact of the matter is that Mr.
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Hubbard was a war hero.”
What, then, is the true story of “Ron the War Hero”? This book
takes a look at the conflicting accounts in order to sift out the grains
of truth. It includes copies of key documents from Hubbard’s service
history and contrasts them with what Hubbard and the Church of
Scientology have claimed.
History, writes the Irish historian T.W. Moody, is “a continuing,
probing, critical search for truth about the past … History of a matter
of facing the facts of the … past, however painful some of them may
be; mythology is a way of refusing to face the historical facts. The
study of history not only enlarges truth about our past, but opens the
mind to the reception of ever new accessions of truth. On the other
hand the obsession with myths, and especially the more destructive
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myths, perpetuates the closed mind.”
The Church of Scientology is rightly critical of erroneous or
conjectural statements made by its critics and spends much time
pointing out their errors. It is only fair that its own statements should
be subjected to the same critical treatment in order to find the truth
about Hubbard’s military career. The story that emerges is not so
heroic but is still remarkable in its own way.
CHAPTER 1
Scientology’s Account
I am the last person to advertise war. I served the US
Government and then the US Navy for several years, was
honorably discharged as an officer and really don’t care to say
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much more about it. – L. Ron Hubbard
According to L. Ron Hubbard and the Church of Scientology, he
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excelled as a machine gunner with the National Guard and served
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with distinction in the US Marine Corps before being commissioned
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into the US Navy, either before the war or alternatively, on its
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outbreak. Just before he joined the Navy, he was responsible for
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the establishment of the US Army Air Force.
He carried out a two thousand mile voyage to Alaska in 1940 on
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behalf of the US Navy and subsequently rewrote the Navy’s
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Hydrographic Office Publications. His work on navigation was so
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far-reaching that the Navy was anxious to enlist him and he was
summoned to Washington, D.C. for a debriefing by Rear Admiral
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Chester Nimitz, later famous for his role in the Pacific.
After the US entered the war, he was ordered to the Philippines,
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which he had known as a youngster and was the first of three
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theaters of the war in which he saw combat and fought with
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distinction. Alternatively, he was posted to the USS Edsall, on
which he was the Gunnery Officer, and landed on the north coast of
Java in the Dutch East Indies on the same day as Japan attacked
Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941). He was cut off near Surabaya by
invading Japanese forces in February 1942. After a gruelling trek
through the jungle to the south coast, he scrambled into a rubber raft
and sailed across the Timor Sea to within a hundred miles of the
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Australian coast before being picked up by a friendly destroyer. He
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used the skills he learned in the Boy Scouts to keep himself alive.