The Admirals

by Walter R. Borneman

  Thus, when the United States finally entered the war and Mayo had indeed become commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet, King was right at his side, supervising the required buildup of men and ships and completing the transition from coal- to oil-fired propulsion plants. But King’s most valuable experience may have come when he and Mayo sailed for Europe in August 1917 and confronted the issue of how the Americans might best work together with their new British allies.

  Admiral Sims was already in Great Britain rushing destroyers into service and implementing the convoy system. For a time, Sims feared that Mayo might assume direct tactical command in Europe and push him aside. But instead Mayo, with King in tow, embarked on a round of diplomatic visits both in Great Britain and on the continent. During these visits, King formed his first impressions of the British general staff and its rather ponderous, ritualistic way of doing business over elaborate lunches and dinners—both floated with ample spirits. The no-nonsense King was not particularly impressed, and this early exposure would color his later reactions when he was a key participant at Allied planning conferences during World War II.

  Mayo and King, who by now was a commander and serving as Mayo’s deputy chief of staff, also spent their share of time as guests of the Royal Navy. Its battleships and cruisers were still impressive, but they hadn’t seen action against the German navy since the Battle of Jutland in 1916, when neither side had been willing to risk the all-out, Nelson-like tactics that may have been the price of complete victory. Despite some 250 ships on both sides, the direct dreadnought-to-dreadnought clash to the death never occurred. The survivors in the German fleet were quickly spirited away to safe ports for the duration, and Great Britain, while it lost more ships and sailors, retained control of the North Sea and the integrity of its German blockade. But there were many critics on the British side who were certain that the Admiralty had parried here and there during the action and lost the chance to annihilate the Germans in another Tsushima.12

  So the Royal Navy now paraded its battle fleet in routine North Sea maneuvers while Mayo and King had plenty of time to ponder the lost opportunity of Jutland and the future of such fleet-to-fleet encounters. With submarines a threat, and on one occasion King came under enemy fire from aircraft, it was clear that naval warfare was changing. King was a willing pupil under Mayo’s tutelage, and he continued to advocate the ongoing study of strategy and evolving tactics for all naval officers so that they would be prepared for these changes.

  As always, King could be brash, arrogant, argumentative, and even hostile to juniors and superiors who failed to measure up to his way of thinking. His volcanic temper with his own subordinates became legendary, and King also bristled and frequently argued with any criticisms that came his way from senior officers.

  Admiral Mayo seems to have been one of the few officers in the entire navy whom King truly respected and admired. By King’s own admission, Mayo’s influence on his career “was more decisive than that of any other officer that he had encountered.” This may well have been because Mayo came to refine and espouse the management principles that King himself had proposed some years before in his prizewinning essay on shipboard management.

  According to King, the lesson he learned from Mayo that most influenced his later career was “a proper realization of ‘decentralization of authority’ and the ‘initiative of the subordinate.’ ” To Mayo, this meant “passing down the chain of command the handling of all details to the lowest link in the chain which could properly handle them,” while keeping in hand matters of policy and strategic importance.

  Reminiscing about Mayo on the admiral’s eightieth birthday some twenty years later, King, by then himself an admiral, recalled that Mayo “had an exceptionally open mind, he was always willing to hear all sides of a situation and to discuss any matter of moment.” But while Mayo trusted his subordinates, he also required of them “due performance of their proper responsibilities.”

  There was never any doubt, King continued, that Mayo was always the commander in chief. He alone was in charge. King may well have been describing the goals to which he aspired in his own commands, but only time would tell whether he was truly able to emulate his mentor or simply pick and choose from among his attributes.13

  By and large, World War I for the U.S. Navy proved a very focused and linear affair. The line ran across the North Atlantic between the East Coast and Great Britain and became a conduit of men, materiel, and provisions to both Britain and France, as well as to Russia. Thus, the navy’s role became primarily one of convoy duty and antisubmarine warfare, just as Admiral Sims had urged. The proud U.S. battleships steamed about and one division was temporarily assigned to assist the British fleet, but there was no great clash for the American fleet reminiscent of Dewey at Manila Bay or Togo at Tsushima.

  The Americans, however, also decided to dispatch a submarine flotilla to Great Britain. Consequently, the order went out in August 1917 to Chester Nimitz, now a lieutenant commander, to report as engineering aide to Captain Samuel S. Robison, the commander of Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet. Robison appreciated Nimitz’s mechanical abilities, but this staff assignment also exposed Nimitz to a wider view of the navy’s command structure. It got him out of the engineering room and started up the ladder of command.

  The deployment of U.S. submarines to Europe during World War I was of little military importance, but it gave Robison and Nimitz a close-up opportunity to study the tactics and engineering of both British and German boats. Interestingly enough, in this early period of submarine warfare, the countermeasure that had the highest percentage of effective kills against enemy submarines was opposing submarines. Three hundred Allied destroyers and sub chasers deployed exclusively to hunt U-boats sank forty-one, but an average force at sea of thirty-five Allied subs accounted for eighteen German sinkings.

  There is no question that both sides in World War I learned the growing importance of the submarine. Certainly, the Germans saw how close they had come to choking off Great Britain. The Allies belatedly embraced countermeasures and convoy tactics that would be ready at the outbreak of the next conflict. In the final analysis, of course, the greatest naval lesson of the war may have been to prove once again Alfred Thayer Mahan’s thesis of the importance of sea power—however evolving—on history. It would be even more essential to the defense or conquest of nations in future struggles.14

  Some would call the recent conflict “the war to end all wars,” but for the American navy, World War I was only a dress rehearsal for a much deadlier and far-reaching conflict two decades later. When that conflict came, the submarines and aircraft that had come of age during World War I would become strategic weapons far outclassing the heftiest of battleships. And the four sailors who traced their bonds to their years at the U.S. Naval Academy would be catapulted into positions of leadership and responsibility the likes of which they could not have imagined during their days at Annapolis.

  PART II

  SHIPS

  1918–1941

  It is, in my opinion, time now to get the Fleet ready for sea, to make an agreement with the British Navy for joint action, and to inform the Japanese that we expect to protect our Nationals.

  —ADMIRAL WILLIAM D. LEAHY, Chief of Naval Operations, 1937

  Two Vought O2U-2 Corsair biplanes of Marine Scouting Squadron 14 fly by the Saratoga (CV-3) while preparing to land, circa 1930. (Naval History and Heritage Command, NH94899)

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Battleships

  The race to build bigger, faster, and more powerful battleships—particularly between Great Britain and Germany—had fueled the competition that had erupted into global war. Now, in its aftermath, battleships were still the queens of the seas, but their supremacy, which Theodore Roosevelt had trumpeted with the Great White Fleet, had been called into question.

  Of the foursome who would sit atop the U.S. Navy twenty years later, it was the senior member, William D. Leahy, who clung to the power of battleships the lon
gest. In part, this was because Leahy was the oldest of the quartet and his Naval Academy indoctrination in these ships had been honed by the Oregon’s rush around Cape Horn and subsequent Spanish-American War victories. It may also have been that of the four, Leahy saw the least direct action during World War I—not for lack of trying—and hence had less exposure to the emerging power of submarines and aircraft.

  In 1916, Leahy was ordered to take the Dolphin to the Caribbean. For a year, he shuttled among its islands, monitoring a revolution in Haiti, assisting in the U.S. acquisition of the Virgin Islands from Denmark, and keeping tabs on suspected German raiders. By the time he was recalled and assigned to the Nevada as its executive officer, the battleship was bound not for the wartime North Atlantic, but for an extended overhaul in dry dock.

  Leahy pleaded with his superiors to get him into the action, and he was finally allowed to make one crossing of the Atlantic as captain of the transport Princess Matoika—a former German liner. He returned to Great Britain and France a second time in July 1918 to observe naval gunnery before reporting to Washington as director of gunnery and engineering exercises. Leahy’s gunnery expertise—now extending over a twenty-year career—was well recognized, and it reinforced his views as a proponent of battleships. And battleships, despite the growing awareness of submarines and airpower, were still very much on the minds of the U.S. naval command, especially when it came to the question of what would happen to defeated Germany’s fleet.1

  In the armistice terms ending hostilities, the Allies demanded the immediate surrender of a sizable portion of the German fleet. Ten battleships, six battle cruisers, and six light cruisers that Germany had dared not risk after the Battle of Jutland were unceremoniously steamed to the sprawling British naval base at Scapa Flow on the northern tip of Scotland. There they dropped anchor and waited. Germany also turned over fifty destroyers and all its submarines to the British.

  The Germans considered these ships temporary hostages to ensure their good behavior until a peace treaty could be negotiated. In fact, Great Britain and France had no intention of ever releasing the ships, a point brought home when the subsequent Treaty of Versailles mandated that the German navy also deliver an additional eight battleships, eight light cruisers, forty-two destroyers, and a bevy of torpedo boats. Henceforth, according to the Versailles terms, Germany was to float no more than six aging predreadnoughts, six light cruisers, and a dozen each of destroyers and torpedo boats. For all practical purposes, the German navy would cease to exist.

  This rankled Germany to its core, but nowhere did the terms fall more heavily than on the captains of the German ships anchored in Scapa Flow. Had this outcome been foreseen, they might well have chosen initially to fight their way into Scapa Flow with all guns blazing. Now their only real recourse was to deprive the Allies of their ships.

  At 11:15 a.m. on June 21, 1919, while the majority of the British fleet was out of the harbor on maneuvers, a prearranged signal fluttered up the mast of the light cruiser Emden. “Paragraph eleven, confirm,” it read innocuously, but every captain in the impounded German fleet knew that this was the order to open all sea cocks and scuttle their ships. Before the remaining British ships on station could intervene, the German vessels settled into the deep waters of Scapa Flow and, save for a grim collection of masts, vanished from sight. Four hundred thousand tons of naval might went down without a fight.

  At first, there was a good deal of Allied outrage at this clandestine maneuver. They had clearly been deprived of the spoils of war. But on closer examination, some in Allied councils held that the Germans had actually done them a favor. Dividing the captured vessels among the victors would likely have led to considerable bickering, and even if the United States and Great Britain had gotten the lion’s share, assimilating four or five additional battleships with different armaments and machinery into their fleets would have been problematic and promised nothing but continuing headaches.

  On the other hand, the Germans could not be allowed to retain such a potent force—the country may well have been defeated, but the largely unscathed navy certainly had not been. Sinking the German fleet solved both these problems, and the fact that the Germans had done it themselves made it all the more palatable.2

  With the disposition of the German fleet a nonissue, the remaining naval powers pondered what would happen next. For a short time, it appeared that the United States might lead a naval rearmament race for which neither Great Britain nor Japan had much appetite—the former because it was financially exhausted by the just-ended war and the latter because it wanted nothing more at this point than to consolidate its control over former German mandates in the Marianas, Caroline, and Marshall Islands. As a nominal member of the Allied powers, Japan had acquired these islands, minus Guam (in the Marianas), under the Treaty of Versailles.

  But instead, when Republican Warren Harding’s isolationist administration came to power in 1920, it engineered an almost complete turnaround in foreign policy. These Republicans blocked Woodrow Wilson’s dream of a League of Nations, but not without having very decided views of their own as to how the postwar world should look.

  Harding’s secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, soon issued a call for a disarmament conference among the World War I victors: the United States, Great Britain, Japan, France, and Italy. (The sixth power that had been considered a World War I ally was Russia, but it was deep in the throes of civil war, and its navy had yet to recover from Tsushima.)

  Of these, Japan proved the most reluctant participant. It was no secret that there had been friction between Japan and the United States even before the Russo-Japanese War. But Japan could neither afford an arms race with the United States nor risk losing its hard-won status as a first-rate power should it decline to attend. Consequently, representatives of these five countries met in Washington on November 12, 1921, to craft a new world order based on limited naval might.

  Laying the entire American disarmament proposal on the table at the start, Hughes suggested limiting future capital ship construction and scrapping certain existing vessels, to result in a 5:5:3 ratio among the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. The eventual aim was to stabilize the world’s navies at a total tonnage of 500,000 tons each for the United States and Great Britain; 300,000 tons for Japan; and 175,000 tons each for France and Italy. Among the key provisions, all signatories would honor a ten-year moratorium on building capital ships; total aircraft carrier tonnages would be limited by similar ratios; and no capital ships would exceed 35,000 tons or carry armaments larger than 16-inch guns.

  When the treaty was completed, its fine print provided a number of exceptions. The British were allowed to complete the 45,000-ton battleship Hood, which for nearly two decades was the largest warship afloat. Japan could complete the 43,000-ton Mutsu, in return. The principal U.S. exception allowed for the completion of the 33,000-ton aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga, even though they were over the prescribed 27,000-ton carrier limit.

  Significantly, an American proposal to extend the 5:5:3 ratio from battleships down to cruisers and lesser vessels failed because both Great Britain and Japan were well ahead of the United States in existing cruisers. Likewise, Great Britain’s distaste for the horrors wrought by German submarines prompted it to attempt to limit their use against merchant ships, but France refused to ratify the provision.

  That left the nonfortification clause of the proposed treaty, which was aimed squarely at the broad reaches of the Pacific. Beyond what Japan might do in its home islands and the United States in Hawaii, the signatories agreed not to fortify bases on their island possessions, including such American linchpins as Wake, Guam, and, most important of all, the Philippines.

  The U.S. Navy high command was furious about this decision. Just because the United States had not done much to fortify these territories in the quarter century since their acquisition in the Spanish-American War, it did not mean that the navy was willing to abrogate all pretense of their defense.
Hughes and his supporters in Congress assumed that it was worth the risk, however, if it kept Japan from fortifying its newly acquired islands. A few years later, of course, Japan would do exactly that without regard for the Washington treaty.

  So the Five-Power Naval Limitation Treaty was signed, and pacifists around the world hailed it as the start of a millennium of peace. But a closer look showed its disquieting downside. Although Great Britain, after two centuries of maritime supremacy, finally agreed to naval parity with the United States, future friction between these two countries seemed unlikely. The far bigger concern was how Japan’s actions might affect both British and American interests from Hong Kong to Manila, not to mention Australia and even India.

  These concerns were well known and freely discussed. As early as 1917, Frederick McCormick published The Menace of Japan, and the same year as the Washington Conference, Walter B. Pitkin’s book asked, Must We Fight Japan? Ironically, Franklin D. Roosevelt was one of those voicing optimism about future relations with Japan. “Shall We Trust Japan?” Roosevelt asked rhetorically in a magazine article. Citing Japan’s willingness to join the Washington Conference and noting that there was “enough commercial room” in the Pacific “for both Japan and us well into the indefinite future,” Roosevelt answered his question in the affirmative.3

  But with the benefit of hindsight, it can be argued that what the Washington Conference really did was tie the hands of the U.S. Navy for more than a decade and provide Japan with a closer ratio to American might than it would have enjoyed had the Americans embarked on a major naval buildup or, at the very least, not limited new ship construction. That was not, however, the domestic sentiment of the times, and Theodore Roosevelt no doubt rolled over in his grave at these limits on “his” navy.