In a 35-year career in the U.S. Navy, Carroll rose to rear admiral — and became known for his strong stance on global nuclear disarmament. In 1996, 16 years after he retired from the Navy, he joined 61 other generals and admirals from 17 countries in a public call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Carroll once said that during the Cold War, “I frequently stood nuclear alert watch on aircraft carriers. For a period of time my assigned target was an industrial complex and transportation hub in a major city in Eastern Europe…. My bomb alone would have resulted in the death of an estimated 600,000 human beings. Multiply that by 40 or 50 times and you can understand what two carriers alone would have done.”
That realization convinced him that humanity must step away from nuclear weapons, as they are “worthless for any rational military purpose,” since “fought with nuclear weapons, the war destroys whatever the objective might have been.” Adm. Carroll died Feb. 19 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, after suffering a heart attack. He was 79.