Roosevelt’s affinity for the Navy was reflected in his choice of aides. His naval aide, Captain McCrae, was an experienced surface ship commander in line for one of the big new Iowa-class battleships in production. McCrae regularly attended staff meetings with King and Knox, and he was an efficient conduit of information between the White House and Main Navy.
FDR’s military aide, Major General Edwin “Pa” Watson, was his poker-playing buddy, fishing-trip companion, gatekeeper, and all-around Man Friday. A merry knight of the round table with a talent for letting people down easy, Pa Watson was long on personality, jokes, and cologne, but thin on strategic insight or military information.
FDR didn’t care. He trusted Marshall on Army matters, so he didn’t need a true military aide. He probably didn’t need a naval aide, either. “You know, Betty,” he once told Admiral Stark, “I don’t know much about the Army. I sort of have to take what General Marshall tells me, but I do know a lot about the Navy.”8
Often Roosevelt’s meddling in the Navy’s business was harmless. He defended his prerogative to name commissioned vessels, and after one ceremony he sent Knox a note of complaint:
Will you tell the Navy Band that I don’t like the way they play the Star Spangled banner—it should not have a lot of frills in it?
F.D.R.9
Other instances were more serious. In May 1942, King submitted to Knox a one-page list of ships he wanted for that year and the next. The list, totaling nearly 1.7 billion tons of displacement, summarized the tools King believed he needed to win the war at sea.
King refused to clear his official requests with the White House in advance. But, in an unusual display of caution, he told Knox, “It is considered advisable that Presidential authority be obtained for initiating legislation for this combatant ship building program.” Knox agreed.10
“I wish you and Admiral King would talk with me about this proposed new building program,” a mildly irritated Roosevelt wrote Knox when he saw the list. “I should like especially to talk over the desirability of building 45,000 ton aircraft carriers, and the possibility of cutting the size of 27,000 ton aircraft carriers by four or five thousand tons and putting the saved tonnage into aircraft carriers of approximately twelve to fourteen thousand tons. . . . Also, I should like to discuss the relative advantages of 13,600 ton heavy cruisers vs. the 11,000 ton heavy cruisers.”11
Roosevelt’s fixation on heavy cruisers, light carriers, and small, sometimes useless specialty craft would dislocate King’s sea strategy, just as his snap decisions on bombers and tanks disrupted Marshall’s land strategy. He told himself he would not meddle in naval tactics, but he made friendly suggestions that came awfully close. Like an angler who knows a good fishing spot, he advised Admiral King to seek out U-boats around Sierra Leone, and in February he told King that a recent raid by the Italian Navy was “damned good,” adding, “I wish you would turn loose your most imaginative people in War Plans to tell me how you think the Italian Navy can be effectively immobilized by some tactics similar to or as daring as those used by the Italians. I can’t believe that we must always use the classical offensive against an enemy who seems never to have heard of it.”12
As meddler-in-chief, FDR indulged a penchant for approving projects that walked in through back channels. Shortly after King signed his memorandum asking for specific ships, Henry J. Kaiser, an industrial mogul with no experience in shipbuilding, approached the Navy’s Bureau of Ships with an offer to construct escort aircraft carriers. When the guardians at the bureau politely showed Kaiser the door, he went to Roosevelt.
Soon King, under direct order from the president, grudgingly accepted Kaiser’s proposal. “Kaiser had the craziest ideas about machinery,” King recalled. “I didn’t agree with the damned things, but FDR decided.”
In many cases, King or Knox detailed senior officers to figure out ways to kill Roosevelt’s more harebrained schemes, and those men became quite good at smothering his larks with paper. But every now and then, Roosevelt’s restless mind would come back to threaten King’s barony of the sea.13
•
As disasters poured in from the Far East in the winter and spring of 1942, Congress raised a storm over the American command structure. Defeats in the Philippines, Wake, Guam, the Java Sea, and elsewhere seemed to point to a failure at the top, and the mushy Rooseveltian structure became the focal point of blame. By March 1942, seven bills to restructure the Army, Navy, and Air Force command were floating about congressional calendars, and every committee chairman, it seemed, had his own ideas about how to run the war. Wendell Willkie delivered a speech in Boston calling for an overlord of all armed forces, a sort of “secretary of defense.” The name he put forward was Douglas MacArthur.14
With Admiral Stark’s exit from Washington, General Marshall moved up as the top man of the Joint Chiefs. He held the same four-star rank as Admiral King, but because he was made Army chief of staff in September 1939, he was technically senior to King. “He used that, all right,” King said later, “but I had no kick about that.”15
What King did have a kick about was the Navy’s isolation among the chiefs. When Stark was in the club, it made sense to let Marshall bring in General Arnold, so each service would have two votes. With Betty gone, the Navy could be outvoted by the Army and Army Air Forces at Marshall’s direction.
To level the playing field, King suggested bringing in a Marine general. Marshall, like MacArthur before him, saw the Marines as a threat to the Army’s preeminent role as the nation’s land force, and supposedly remarked once, “I’m going to see that the Marines never win another war.” King’s suggestion went nowhere.16
Marshall, an admirer of clean lines of command, at first believed a single head of the Army and Navy should lead a “Joint Staff.” King violently opposed the notion, as he knew who wanted to become that single head. “I feel quite sure that Marshall, right from the beginning, thought he was going to manage everything,” King said later. “If he had had his way there would have been no Joint Chiefs of Staff.”17
Marshall, like King, was no MacArthur. He harbored no inner ambition to become the republic’s man on horseback. Constitutionally, the president filled that role, even though no president had actually directed military operations since George Washington rode out to put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Marshall felt the president would best be served by retaining himself and King as military advisers, instead of creating a “super-general” to rule over all chiefs.
The problem, as Marshall saw it, was not too much ambition by the military, but too little guidance from the civilians, meaning Roosevelt. The Joint Chiefs needed to know what the president was thinking, and for that they could not depend on Roosevelt. Notoriously secretive, Roosevelt would not let Marshall’s senior staffers take notes during their meetings. Pa Watson, the Army’s official window to the White House, was chronically unfocused, and depending on who happened to be hanging around the White House, on a given day presidential orders to the Joint Chiefs might go out through Stimson or Hopkins or McCrae, or some friendly senator or random messenger. Or they might not go out at all.
Roosevelt’s nonchalance gave the tightly regimented Marshall fits. Used to following meticulously drafted orders, Marshall was bothered that the man he served sent his instructions as they popped into his head. He complained to former senator James Byrnes: “After Cabinet meetings, Mr. Stimson invariably makes some pencil notes and dictates a memorandum which is circulated over here, with relation to any matters that may concern the War Department. Possibly Mr. Knox does the same thing in the Navy Department. However, we have had cases where their impressions varied as to just what the President desired.”18
To Marshall, the service heads needed a “chief of the joint general staff,” to facilitate the flow of information between the White House and the military professionals, and looking across the Atlantic to Vichy France, Marshall found the perfect ca
ndidate. In February, he asked Roosevelt to tap Admiral William D. Leahy, U.S. ambassador to Vichy, as the senior commander among the American service chiefs.
When Marshall first mentioned the idea, Roosevelt balked, telling Marshall, “I am my own chief of staff.” Marshall replied that Roosevelt couldn’t possibly devote enough time to the Joint Chiefs with all his other commitments. He bluntly told the president, “You are not Superman.” The Joint Chiefs needed someone to represent the White House, someone who could be trusted not to favor one service over another. The Army, Marshall declared, trusted Admiral Leahy.19
Affable, of medium height, with gray hair and a nose tilting “four degrees left rudder,” Leahy had been chief of naval operations before Stark took over. He was an experienced, likable diplomat and a friend of the president. As a Navy man, he would also be acceptable to Admiral King.20
Except that he wasn’t. While King liked Leahy, and owed some of his position to him, he didn’t want an intermediary dropping anchor between himself and the president. King didn’t think much of Leahy professionally, either, and he saw the droop-jowled ambassador as a yes-man, an old Bureau of Navigation “fixer” who indulged in habits that annoyed King—like working his way to the center of every group publicity photo. To King, Leahy was a man with little bark and less bite, and with the country at war, America needed as much bite as it could get.21
Bill Leahy returned from France a heartbroken man. His wife of thirty-eight years had died in Paris that spring from surgical complications after a hysterectomy, leaving Leahy, like Marshall years before, despondent. FDR ordered him back to Washington, and invited him to lunch on July 7. Having reignited his personal connection with Leahy, FDR’s reservations about creating the new job subsided, and two weeks later he appointed the admiral “Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief.”22
Roosevelt was doing something unprecedented, something that gave his own title of “commander-in-chief” more than just a symbolic sound. But Leahy’s position was symbolic, at least until Roosevelt, Leahy, or someone else came up with an intelligible job description. When newsmen asked whether Leahy would run the general staffs of the Army, Navy, and Air Forces, Roosevelt confessed, “I haven’t got the foggiest idea.” When they pressed him for something more than the foggiest idea, he explained that Leahy’s job would be to do the president’s legwork. Leahy would read, summarize, and index memoranda and such, to save the commander-in-chief time he could devote to other matters.
When journalists asked Roosevelt if the Senate would confirm Leahy’s appointment, FDR shook his head. There would be no Senate confirmation, he said. Leahy was an active-duty naval officer and Roosevelt was the commander-in-chief of the Navy. It was, he said with a shrug, “an order to duty. Just a naval order, that’s all.”23
• • •
By the time Admiral Leahy settled into his new wheelhouse, regular Tuesday meetings of the Joint Chiefs were conducted as formal affairs. They met after a group luncheon, and during the meetings they would refer to each other as “General” or “Admiral,” just as they did around their subordinates.24
Leahy ran the weekly Joint Chiefs meetings like the smooth diplomat he was, providing the oil that doused more than a few sparks in the secret meetings. As the president’s man, he needed less eloquence than Marshall and less stubbornness than King, and he could afford to make his points indirectly, rather than with sixteen-inch broadsides. He sometimes played dumb, reminding everyone that he had never attended the Naval War College.
“Well, George,” he might say after one of Marshall’s lengthy speeches, “I’m just a simple sailor. Would you please back up and start from the beginning and make it simple, just tell me step one, two, and three.”
A naval staffer recalled, “Well, Marshall or Arnold, whoever it was, kept falling for this thing, and they would back up and explain to this ‘simple old sailor.’ And as they did it—which is what Leahy knew damned well would happen—and went through these various steps, they themselves would find out the weakness or misconception or that there was something wrong with it. So he didn’t have to start out by saying: ‘This is a stupid idea and it won’t work.’”25
• • •
Marshall would, on occasion, return to the idea of formalizing the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But Roosevelt was uninterested, for he had all the authority he needed to get whatever he wanted from his chiefs. When Marshall sent him a draft bill establishing the position, seniority, and pay of Joint Chiefs chairman, Roosevelt let the idea suffocate in the overstuffed files of the White House. He and his chiefs had more important things to think about.26
Like Guadalcanal.
TWENTY-FOUR
ALONG THE WATCHTOWER
KING GREW UNSETTLED AS HE LOOKED AHEAD TO OPERATION WATCHTOWER, the invasion of Guadalcanal. Admiral Ghormley probably had enough marines to take Tulagi and Guadalcanal as scheduled on August 7, but once those marines landed, he knew Japanese bombers and warships on Rabaul would counterattack, bombarding and strafing without mercy. Then the real battle would begin.1
King had blustered to Marshall about how the Navy would go it alone if the Army didn’t want to help. But as D-day in the Solomons drew near, he realized the Navy lacked the air strength to fend off the swarms of bombers that would soon be streaming out of Rabaul. Admiral Jack Fletcher, his carrier commander, had three large flattops converging on the islands—Saratoga, Enterprise, and Wasp—but carrier planes were not the kind of force Fletcher could scramble day after day to fight Zeros, Vals and Kates.2
He needed the Army after all.
Hat in hand but head held high, King approached Marshall for more air and antiaircraft support from MacArthur. Putting his case to the general forcefully and without blushing, he reminded Marshall that in London, Marshall had told the Combined Chiefs that TORCH, if approved, would require fewer planes than BOLERO would use over the next several months. This would free up as many as seven hundred bombers, which could be put to good use in the Pacific. It was time, King said, for the Army to lend the Navy a hand.3
Marshall mulled over King’s request. He had no personal problem with supporting Ghormley’s Tulagi operation, but the TORCH estimates he had relied upon had been pretty rosy, and it didn’t look like all those bombers would be freed up. Moreover, when he’d told the British that cancellation of ROUNDUP would allow the Americans to divert three bomber groups to the Pacific, he hadn’t figured anyone would actually ask him for those planes.4
He hadn’t figured on Admiral King.
Marshall checked with Hap Arnold. Arnold, keeping one eye fixed on his strategic bomber fleet in Europe, protested to Marshall that TORCH would gobble up every American plane coming off the assembly line. The Army, he warned, could not afford to give the Navy any additional bomber groups.
So the answer was “no.” Marshall would need the Navy’s support for TORCH, ROUNDUP, and MacArthur’s campaign against Rabaul, however, so for the moment, Marshall was unwilling to start a war with the Navy. He decided to wait a while before sending King his reply.5
•
On the morning of August 7, the ramp doors dropped and the U.S. Marines stormed the beaches. Japanese defenders on RINGBOLT—the Allied code name for Tulagi—fought back fiercely once two leatherneck battalions waded ashore.
CACTUS, known to locals as Guadalcanal, seemed an easier catch. Hitting the defenders with complete surprise, eleven thousand devil dogs of the First Marine Division forced their way ashore and secured their principal objective, Lunga Point airfield, within two days.
The Japanese fleet was quick to respond. A squadron from Rabaul slipped through the Solomons “slot” in the early hours of August 9 and caught the Allies by surprise off tiny Savo Island, northwest of Guadalcanal. In a furious night attack, the Imperial Navy sent four Allied cruisers to the bottom, killing more than a thousand sailors in the worst ship-to-ship defeat in U.S. naval
history.
The blow fell just as Admiral Fletcher was withdrawing his carriers to open water, which left Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner’s invasion fleet without air cover. Fearful of another surprise attack, Turner withdrew his transport and supply ships, leaving the marooned leathernecks to deal with Japanese bombardment, counterattacks, and empty bellies.6
•
An officer never knocked on King’s cabin door—not if he knew what was good for him. Aboard Dauntless an unwritten order forbade aides from disturbing the admiral after he turned in for the night. Since there was nothing King could do from his flagship, good news, bad news—anything but an immediate summons from the president—would have to wait until morning.7
The hand that knocked on the door in the wee hours of August 12, a hand belonging to King’s flag secretary, was shaky. But knock it did, and the disheveled admiral murmured as the officer turned on the light.8
“Admiral, you’ve got to see this,” the flag secretary said. “It isn’t good.”9
King read the long-delayed message from Admiral Turner. Allied losses at Savo Island were four cruisers sunk, plus one cruiser and two destroyers damaged. “Heavy casualties,” the report read. Supply and escort ships were pulling out of Guadalcanal. No enemy warships reported sunk.10
“I can’t thank you for bringing me this one,” King said bitterly. He stared at the message in disbelief.
“They must have decoded the dispatch wrong,” he said at last. “Tell them to decode it again.”
The secretary scurried off, and King slumped back on his bed.11
Ernie King prided himself on seeing the picture through the enemy’s eyes, realistically and without the emotion that clouded other men’s vision. But to King, Japan’s strategic mentality was as dark as the Java Sea, and he found himself caught off guard by the ferocity of Japan’s response. He had known a counterattack was likely, a raid almost certain, but the Japanese were throwing far more at Guadalcanal than King thought rational. “While we expected the Japanese to react, we did not expect as violent a reaction as actually came,” said one of King’s confidants later. “The Japs dropped everything they were doing everywhere else, and piled into the Solomons.”12
American Warlords Page 25