The military career of L. Ron Hubbard saw the future founder of Scientology serving in the United States Armed Forces as a member of the US Navy between 1941 and 1950, the Navy Reserve. He saw active service between 1941 and 1945, during World War II, as a naval lieutenant (junior grade) and later as a lieutenant. After the war he was mustered out of active service and resigned his commission in 1950.

As with many other aspects of L. Ron Hubbard's life, accounts of his military career are much disputed. His account of his military service later formed a major element of his public persona, as depicted by his Scientologist followers. The Church of Scientology presents Hubbard as a "much-decorated war hero who commanded a corvette and during hostilities was crippled and wounded". According to Scientology publications, he served as a "Commodore of Corvette squadrons" in "all five theaters of World War II" and was awarded "twenty-one medals and palms" for his service. He was "severely wounded and was taken crippled and blinded" to a military hospital, where he "worked his way back to fitness, strength and full perception in less than two years, using only what he knew and could determine about Man and his relationship to the universe."

However, his official Navy service records indicate that "his military performance was, at times, substandard", that he was only awarded a handful of campaign medals and that he was never injured or wounded in combat and was never awarded a Purple Heart. Most of his military service was spent ashore in the continental United States on administrative or training duties. He briefly commanded two small anti-submarine vessels, and , in coastal waters off Massachusetts, Oregon and California in 1942 and 1943 respectively. He was removed from command of both vessels and rated by his superiors as being unsuitable for independent duties and "lacking in the essential qualities of judgment, leadership and cooperation". Although Hubbard asserted that he had attacked and crippled or sunk two Japanese submarines off Oregon while in command of USS PC-815, his claim was rejected by the commander of the Northwest Sea Frontier after a subsequent investigation. He was hospitalized for the last seven months of his active service, not with injuries but with an acute duodenal ulcer.

The Church of Scientology rejects the official record and insists that Hubbard had a second set of records that the U.S. Navy has concealed. According to the Church's chief spokesman, 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."

Montana Army National Guard and US Marine Corps Reserve

Hubbard's first military service was with the Montana Army National Guard, which he joined at the age of 16 in October 1927 while still at school, falsely stating that his age was 18. Enlisting at the State Armory in his home town of Helena, Montana, he served as a private in the Headquarters Company of 163rd Infantry. In May 1930, at the age of 19, he joined the Marine Corps Reserve 20th Regiment, a training unit connected with George Washington University, where he was a student from 1930 to 1932.

Hubbard attributed his service in the regiment to his need for "a little recreation. Life was dull. Fellow came up to me and he says, 'The Marine Reserves are organizing a twentieth regiment. Why don't you come down?'" He made the dubious claim of being rapidly promoted to the rank of First Sergeant; Hubbard later explained his unusually rapid promotion as being due to his unit being newly formed and his superiors being unable to "find anyone else who could drill".Hubbard, L. Ron. Research and Discovery Series, volume 7, pg. 98, as cited in He stated that he was rated 'excellent' for military efficiency, obedience and sobriety. On October 22, 1931, Hubbard received an honorable discharge along with the annotation "not to be re-enlisted".

World War II

Australia

Hubbard joined the United States Navy during the summer of 1941, a few months before the United States entered the Second World War. He applied in March 1941 and was commissioned as a lieutenant, junior grade in the Naval Reserve on July 19, 1941. Hubbard was called to active duty in November. He specifically volunteered for "Special Service (intelligence duties)", an assignation recorded on his commission papers. He spent only a brief time in this nominal role with the Office of Naval Intelligence. After four months working in public relations and at the US Hydrographic Office, he spent three weeks at the Third Naval District in New York training for the role of intelligence officer.

Hubbard's training was curtailed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and on December 18 he was sent to the Philippines via Australia. He was put ashore in Brisbane in January 1942 when his ship was re-routed. In 1963, Hubbard told Australian journalists that he had been "the only anti-aircraft battery in Australia in 1941–42... There was me and a Thompson submachine gun... I was a mail officer and I was replaced, I think, by a Captain, a couple of commanders and about 15 junior officers."Hubbard, "An interview granted to the Australian Press on January 10th 1963 at Saint Hill Manor ... by L. Ron Hubbard." Hubbard Communications Office, 1963. Quoted in

Another Church of Scientology account describes Hubbard as "Senior Officer Present Ashore in Brisbane, Australia" and asserts that "his duties included counter-intelligence and the organization of relief for beleaguered American forces on Bataan." Hubbard would claim that he had "sent on my own authority, four cargo ships loaded to the gunwales with machine gun ammunition, rifle ammunition and quinine up to MacArthur." Col. Merle-Smith, the US Naval Attaché to Australia, subsequently accused Hubbard of sending blockade-runner Don Isidro "three thousand miles out of her way".Ron The War Hero, Chris Owen Hubbard was ordered back to the United States at the instigation of the Attaché, who cabled Washington to complain about Hubbard:

Hubbard would later recall: "for the next two or three years I'd run into officers, and they would say "Hubbard? Hubbard? Hubbard? Are you the Hubbard that was in Australia?" And I'd say "Yes." And they's say "Oh!" Kind of, you know, horrified, like they didn't know whether they should quite talk to me or not, you know? Terrible man".

Hubbard stated on another occasion that he had been "one of the first officers back from the upper battle areas" and when "Melbourne found out ... there were enough troops in the area so the danger was over, so I went home. I wrote myself some orders and reported back to the US." According to the Church of Scientology, Hubbard was landed on the island of Java "in the closing days of February 1942" to search for "stockpiled weapons and fast, shallow-draft vessels". He was cut off by invading Japanese "and was only able to escape the island after scrambling into a rubber raft and paddling out to meet an Australian destroyer". Another officer's testimony in the later Armstrong cases, based on what Hubbard had told him, was that after Hubbard was wounded in the back by machine gun fire, he and another man sailed a life raft over 700 miles from Java to 75 miles off the coast of West Australia where they were picked up by a British or Australian destroyer. US Navy records do not show Hubbard spent any time on Java, and do not show any evidence of wounds or injuries sustained in combat.

Naval documents presented in court show that Hubbard left the USA on December 8, 1941, arriving in Brisbane via USS President Polk, and was ordered back to the USA in February 1942 via the USS Chaumont. However, the Church of Scientology asserts Hubbard landed in Java in late February 1942 and the raft story followed when Hubbard had "missed the last departing allied aircraft on March 6th".

In a 1956 lecture to Scientologists, Hubbard said:

In another lecture of the same year, Hubbard provided an alternative version of his return to the United States:

Atlantic service: USS YP-422 and after

Hubbard was posted to the Office of the Cable Censor in New York City after returning to the US at the end of March 1942. As the office had recently ceased to be an organ of Naval Intelligence, his status was amended to deck officer. He was also promoted (as part of a batch of other officers of the same grade) on June 15, 1942, to lieutenant, senior grade, the highest rank he was to hold during his active service.

In June 1942 he requested that he be assigned to sea duty in the Caribbean; he was sent instead to the shipyard of George Lawley & Son of Neponset, Massachusetts, where the fishing trawler MV Mist was being converted for military use as a naval yard patrol (YP) vessel. The navy commandeered numerous fishing vessels and redesignated them as YP boats, tasked with defending coastal waters against enemy submarines and delivering food and equipment to military personnel offshore; they were particularly prized for having refrigeration units. The vessel was commissioned as on July 28, 1942, having been refitted as a freighter armed with a 3-inch deck gun and two .30-caliber machine guns. In August, YP-422 put to sea from the Boston Navy Yard to carry out a 27-hour training exercise. In 1954, Hubbard claimed that the crew had been prisoners who had been released to serve about the vessel. "This crew almost starved an officer to death one day... we were going out to test a new weapon... they'd bedded him down in a chain locker! They said that was the only available stateroom — Wet and miserable place."

However, Hubbard fell out with a senior officer at the shipyard and sent a critical memorandum to the Vice-Chief of Naval Operations (VCNO) in Washington, D.C. The Commandant of the Navy Yard responded on September 25, 1942, by informing the VCNO that, in his view, Hubbard was "not temperamentally fitted for independent command" and requesting that Hubbard be removed and ordered to "other duty under immediate supervision of a more senior officer". Hubbard duly lost his command on October 1, 1942, and was ordered to New York, ending his service in the Atlantic.

Various accounts of Hubbard's service in the North Atlantic have been put forward by the Church of Scientology and Hubbard himself. The Church of Scientology states in one publication that Hubbard "took command of an antisubmarine escort vessel with Atlantic convoys". In a 1954 lecture, Hubbard asserted that he had been sent "to Boston in the very early part of the war to take command of a corvette" and had been given a crew made up of convicts from the Portsmouth Naval Prison. Hubbard stated in another lecture that he had been posted aboard "corvettes, North Atlantic. And I went on fighting submarines in the North Atlantic and doing other things and so on. And I finally got a set of orders for the ship. By that time I had the squadron."