Interlude II. Admirals

Intro & Preface & Contents

Previous: Interlude I. The Barbarian Kings

I may have already said that the military history I know best is the Pacific War phase of WW2. I started studying that at 14 and have never stopped. Along the way I’ve read (and own) the excellent Naval Institute Press biographies of the three most important American admirals of that war: Nimitz, Spruance, and Halsey. (King is probably as important but he only managed things back in Washington. Lockwood would be next on the list, but at a slightly lower level along with McCain, Mitscher, and Kinkaid.)

That these three officers were so good at performing their particular jobs, and that they started the war as friends and were able to work so smoothly together, is one of the most remarkable things about this remarkable war.

Both Spruance and Halsey had served, briefly, under Nimitz before the war, and they were all aware of each other’s abilities. Spruance was serving under Halsey when Pearl Harbor was attacked, but Spruance and Halsy had been most unlikely friends for much of their careers. Spruance was the intellectual with a slight build and a weak stomach (he was never able to overcome his tendency to sea sickness); Halsey was the ex-fullback who the Navy sent to the Army War College because he got on well with (the even less intellectual) Army officers. Nimitz was the Golden Boy, mentored by a leading admiral of the inter-war years, who received several assignments to transport President Roosevelt by ships under his command. It is believed that Roosevelt played a role in Nimitz’s selection over many senior admirals to command the Pacific Theater following Pearl Harbor.

Spruance only got his shot as Task Force commander for The Battle of Midway because Halsey was ill and recommended him (then his cruiser screen commander) for the job. In On War, Clausewitz argues that a successful commander has to have an intuitive understanding of what’s happening on the battlefield and of what he needs to do next. Clausewitz believed that a good commander probably wasn’t that bright (an analytical mind would be thwarted by the “fog” of battle -- you never have all the information you need to make a decision while some of what you think you know is probably wrong) but that the commander should be lucky. Clausewitz would not have bet on Spruance, who was no gambler, in a battlefield situation, but he would have been wrong. Time and again Spruance, uncannily made just the right move... even when he subsequently second guessed himself. (Most of the U.S. Navy, including Spruance, thought he had been too cautious at the Battle of the Philippine Sea and had let the vital Japanese aircraft carriers escape. King tried to reassure him that he had done exactly what the war effort required by acting cautiously and preserving his ships. It wasn’t until after the war that it was discovered that the escaped carriers were an imaginary threat since the loss of almost all of the Japanese naval aviators, in what was commonly known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot, had rendered them impotent.)

Following the Battle of Midway, Spruance alternated between serving as Chief of Staff to Nimitz and as Fleet Commander. Either role would have made him one of the key figures of the American victory, that he excelled in both positions is simply amazing.

Prior to Pearl Harbor, Nimitz had been in Washington in charge of personnel decisions for the Navy. He was a "people person" and this position required that he become familiar with virtually everyone of importance in the pre-war Navy. He used this knowledge of the character of the people under his command to great advantage throughout the war. In Halsey, Nimitz had a valuable but problematic chess piece on his board. Halsey was brash and bold and the men loved him. In 1942 he successfully lead his Task Force in raids that were risky and fairly pointless, but they rebuilt the morale of the Fleet after Pearl Harbor. When things got desperate at Guadalcanal, Nimitz dispatched Haley as theater commander. This was a genius move for two reasons: Besides fighting the Japanese, the biggest problem for the U.S.N in the Southwest Pacific was working with the U.S. Army (MacArthur), Halsey excelled in this department. The other reason takes a little more explaining.

Officers in most armies are encouraged not to fraternize with the men. It is easy to see in this a class bias, but there is something even darker -- though more logical -- at work. In battle there are occasions when men or units must be sacrificed for the greater good. The best example I know of this is the case of the 1st Minnesota regiment on the 2nd day of the Battle of Gettysburg. With many of Union General Meade's men still marching towards Gettysburg, some portions of the Union line were thinly held. At a crucial moment in the battle, a Confederate attack was approaching an almost undefended portion of that line. The general in charge ordered the 1st Minnesota regiment to charge the attacking force with bayonets. The regiment was destroyed (82% casualties), but they bought enough time (really just minutes) for additional reserves to arrive and thus ended the threat to the Union position. 

The situation of the U.S.N. in the Solomon Islands in late 1942 was almost as bleak as this. Even after the aircraft carriers had fought to a bloody stalemate (at the Battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz Islands) with neither navy now capable of mounting powerful air attacks, the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) remained the superior force in almost every respect. As theater commander, it was Halsey’s job to find surface units to throw against the constant Japanese attacks despite the gruesome losses. This he did. Even as the ship yards at Pearl Harbor and around San Francisco Bay filled with battered American warships, he found enough ships to thwart -- or at least blunt -- the Japanese attacks until the great U.S.N. ship building program really hit its stride in 1943. (You would have to go back to the Anglo-Dutch wars in the 18th century to find a naval war with so many battles. This was because both the U.S. and the Japanese navies were modeled on the British Royal Navy.)

And since there’s nothing as dull as an entirely successful story, the final chapters of Halsey’s career add a dash of drama and tragedy to this tale. By 1944, Halsey and Spruance were taking turns commanding what was known as The Big Blue Fleet. When Spruance commanded, it was designated 5th Fleet, and when Halsey commanded it was 3rd Fleet. (And may I say that this periodic swapping of command staffs was one of the most unique and successful innovation of the war. When the Allied army in Sicily was wrapping up that operation, they had to pause to plan the invasion of the Italian peninsula, since the staff had been completely wrapped up in the battles they were fighting in Sicily. When 5th Fleet completed the Mariana's operation, Halsey and his staff stepped in all prepared for the invasion of the Philippines and the Japanese were constantly kept off balance by the speed of the U.S. advance.) 

When Halsey commanded 3rd Fleet at the Battle of Leyte Gulf he was tricked into chasing a bait force and left the landing beaches unprotected as the main IJN fleet approached. As a result, the biggest and most powerful fleet the world had ever seen, largely missed the biggest battle of the war. Controversy about Halsey’s role in this battle soured personal relationships and embittered Halsey. He then, on two occasions, lead 3rd Fleet into the path of typhoons losing more ships than he ever lost in battle. Nimitz was in a position to prevent his being removed from his command, but Halsey's reputation suffered.

While Nimitz, as a ship commander, was famous for remembering the names of all the men who served under him, Spruance was known for not wishing to be disturbed after he turned in at night -- even in the middle of a battle. He had made his decisions, done his job, and he expected the officers under him to do theirs and let him have a good night's sleep. He was disturbed the night following the sinking of the four IJN aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway (by a report from the submarine his officer son served on) and was not pleased. I should stress that this was the first night he had ever been in command of a fighting fleet and still he went right to sleep and was hard to awaken. To me that is as amazing, in its own way, as Marshal Ney's cavalry exploits at Waterloo where he had numerous horses killed beneath him.

After the war it was Nimitz and Spruance who remained close and are now buried together, along with Admirals Lockwood and Turner, (and their wives) in a Navy cemetery near San Francisco. Halsey held aloof from his former colleagues and is buried on the East Coast.

Besides all this, what most impressed me reading the biographies of these three men was the care the U.S.N. took to get the most out of the graduates of the Naval Academy. In part the navy worked to shape and improve its gifted graduate officers so that they would be prepared to lead the nation’s navy. But, the navy also took a surprising amount of care to evaluate these men, and all the others, and to figure how to put these human resources to best use. I can’t help wondering what the world would be like if this was the norm, rather than the exception -- if society took more of an active interest in its young adults.

I remembered another interesting personal quirk of Spruance: If you look at photos taken during the war of top Pacific Theater officers, you can always identify Spruance, even if you don't know what he looks like, by carefully looking at the eagle in the emblem on the officer's hats. During wartime, the eagle is supposed to face the arrows while in peace it faces the olive branches. Spruance, being thrifty, saw no reason to invest in a new hat over something so silly, so he continued to wear his peacetime hat. Here's an example.

I grabbed that image just because it showed the eagles on the hats, but there are a couple things worth mentioning about it. The next admiral in importance, after the ones I mentioned above, would be Admiral Willis Lee on the right. And the ship they are standing on is Spruance's usual Flag Ship, U.S.S. Indianapolis. Five months after this photo was taken she was sunk by the Japanese and became the last major loss suffered by the US Navy in WW2.

Next: Interlude III. Georges Bataille.