Retired Navy Capt. William Toti, career submariner and former advisor to Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg, is filling in as the Navy’s No. 2 civilian.
As of May 1, Toti is performing the duties of the under secretary of the Navy after Hung Cao took on the role of acting secretary following John Phelan’s ousting in late April.
“He has my full trust and authority to drive change, increase efficiency, and accelerate decisions—so we can deliver warfighting capability, support our sailors and Marines forward, and defend our nation every day,” Cao said in a statement posted Friday across several social media accounts.
Toti’s 26-year Navy career includes “tours as commander of Fleet Antisubmarine Warfare Command Norfolk, as commodore of Submarine Squadron 3, and as commanding officer of the nuclear fast attack submarine USS Indianapolis (SSN-697),” according to his biography.
Back on shore, Toti served for almost a decade at the Pentagon, including tours as special assistant to the Vice Chief of Naval Operations, as Navy representative to the Joint Requirements Oversight Council and as deputy director of the Navy War Plans Cell, Deep Blue.
In addition to his decades-long military and subsequent contracting roles in Washington, D.C., Toti, the last captain of a nuclear attack submarine USS Indianapolis, helped lead the charge to exonerate Charles McVay, captain of the World War II heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, which has the unpleasant distinction of being known as the worst naval disaster in U.S. history.
Toti told Military Times in a previous interview that he “saw an injustice and I committed myself to correcting it.”
Using a torpedo fire control computer prior his submarine’s decommissioning, Toti programmed torpedo and intercept courses to demonstrate “that failure to zigzag didn’t hazard the ship.”
“So, what I did was run how to do this manually, as many runs of the Indianapolis’ course, with as many zigs as possible against Hashimoto’s firing solution,” he said. “I just did run after run. I stopped counting after 90 of these, and in every case, at least one of Hashimoto’s torpedoes hit.
“These Navy JAG officers kept arguing that if that single torpedo didn’t sink the ship, Hashimoto would have gone home. I said, ‘You don’t understand the way this works. That first torpedo blew the bow off the ship. They were going to get sunk regardless.’ That’s what the data proves. They couldn’t do that in 1945 but we can do it now.”
Claire Barrett is an editor and military history correspondent for Military Times. She is also a World War II researcher with an unparalleled affinity for Sir Winston Churchill and Michigan football.
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