[1] On December 7, 1941, he was serving as the assistant to Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, the Director of Naval Communications.

Following the reorganization of naval communications in February 1942 and the departure of Noyes, Redman succeeded him as DNC until September 1942.

Redman then went to the South Pacific to command the USS Phoenix until returning as DNC in an unusual second tour, from April 1943 to August 1945.

Rear Admiral Joseph R. Redman died on September 7, 1968, and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

[4] Redman's intelligence failures for the Battle of Midway, which included failure to identify the Japanese objectives and the date of their operation, are described in the memoirs of Rear Admiral Edwin Layton, who was Admiral Nimitz' intelligence chief throughout the Pacific War [5]