Wylie first saw service on USS Augusta under Captains James O. Richardson, Royal E. Ingersoll, and Chester W. Nimitz.

For his improvised integration of radar, gunnery, and torpedo control during these two actions, Wylie received a Silver Star.

After six months, he was assigned to a newly formed Combat Information Center school at Pearl Harbor, where he led a team in writing the first CIC Handbook for Destroyers, Pacific Fleet.

Wylie later placed USS Ault into commission as commanding officer and completed his World War II service with a group tasked with countering kamikaze attacks during the planned invasion of Japan.

While serving as Admiral John S. McCain Jr.’s deputy, he helped oversee the official investigation into the 1967 USS Liberty incident.

He confessed years later in an oral history interview with the Naval War College that he believed the attack to be intentional: “That was deliberate.

[4] While commanding USS Arneb in 1953, J.C. Wylie began writing Military Strategy, A Theory of Power Control.

Wylie uses insurgencies and the U.S. Navy's submarine campaign against Japan in World War II as examples of cumulative strategies.