The Admirals

by Walter R. Borneman

  This period of uncertainty between the Battle of the Coral Sea and the looming confrontation at Midway established the modus operandi between the two commanders that would last for the duration of the war. King might well have ordered Nimitz to do this or that, or countermanded his move of Halsey. Instead, King finally embraced Admiral Henry T. Mayo’s manner of trusting one’s subordinates closer to the action. For years, King had preached the doctrine of the “initiative of the subordinate,” and now he seemed finally able to practice it, even though he remained dubious of the risks of fighting one pitched battle for Midway.

  It helped, of course, that King had his hands full with global strategy, including negotiating with his American and Allied chiefs of staff and implementing the North Atlantic campaigns. But in the case of Nimitz—despite having some ongoing reservations about him being too lenient on his subordinates—King adopted a “command by consensus” approach. He offered advice; he wanted to know what Nimitz was doing; but he generally avoided direct orders. Nimitz for his part reciprocated by respecting King’s judgment, keeping him adequately informed, and not unnecessarily opposing his views just for the sake of opposition.

  Still, just before the Battle of Midway, chafing over the loss of Lexington, King could not refrain from ordering Nimitz to be sure “to employ strong attrition tactics and not repeat not allow our forces to accept such decisive action as would be likely to incur heavy losses in our carriers and cruisers.”39

  When Enterprise docked at Pearl Harbor on May 26, Halsey made the trip to the CINCPAC office at the sub base. Nimitz couldn’t believe his eyes. His star carrier commander had lost twenty pounds, looked like he hadn’t slept in two weeks—which was almost true—and had the most hideous rash Nimitz had ever seen. No matter what the cause of his skin eruption, fifty-nine-year-old Bill Halsey had just spent an almost uninterrupted six months on the bridge of the Enterprise since sailing for Wake Island at the end of November 1941. He was exhausted.

  Still, Halsey protested the inevitable order to report to the hospital. The doctor proved as adamant as he was in return. “Sir,” he told Halsey, “where your health is concerned, I am the one who gives the orders.”40

  But Halsey had one last request of Nimitz. When Nimitz asked him for recommendations as to who should now command Task Force 16 as it rushed back to sea, Halsey did not hesitate and offered only one name: Raymond Spruance. Nimitz gave no indication of his thoughts, but King was about to appoint Spruance Nimitz’s chief of staff. Clearly, steady Spruance was highly thought of.

  So Task Force 16, with Spruance in command aboard Enterprise and accompanied by Hornet, departed Pearl Harbor on May 28. Nimitz sent Spruance off with instructions that what King called “calculated risk” govern his movements. Nimitz told Spruance that he was to interpret that to mean “the avoidance of exposure of your force to attack by superior enemy forces without good prospect of inflicting, as a result of such exposure, greater damage to the enemy.”41

  Two days later, after a frenzied three-day effort to make the carrier as battle ready as possible, Yorktown and its Task Force 17 followed, still flying Frank Jack Fletcher’s flag. Fletcher would assume overall tactical command when the two forces joined up at a point Nimitz had optimistically named Point Luck.

  King still had his doubts about Fletcher, but Nimitz had spent a couple of hours with him after Yorktown’s arrival from the Coral Sea and come away convinced of both his competence and his courage. “Dear King,” Nimitz wrote as Fletcher sailed, “What appeared to be a lack of aggressiveness” on Fletcher’s part has been “cleared up to my entire satisfaction… [and] I hope… you will agree with me that Fletcher did a fine job and exercised superior judgment in his recent cruise to the Coral Sea.”42

  As the American carriers moved to rendezvous northeast of Midway, the Japanese fleet was indeed intent on capturing the island as a likely jumping-off point for a planned invasion of Hawaii later that year. In its sights, too, were islands in Alaska’s Aleutian chain, as a means of pushing its outer defensive line forward as far as possible. But paramount in Admiral Yamamoto’s mind was to finish the task that had eluded Nagumo at Pearl Harbor: he had to sink the bulk of the American fleet in one grand battle and encourage peace negotiations before American shipyards could send new carriers to the Pacific. To that end, Yamamoto sailed personally in the 863-foot, 73,000-ton mammoth battleship Yamato with a battle force that trailed the four carriers of the strike force.

  In all, Yamamoto deployed 162 ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, practically its entire fighting force, in support of the Midway operation. (No wonder Rochefort reported things suddenly quiet around Port Moresby.) But an exceedingly complicated battle array, and perhaps a measure of overconfidence, may have gotten the better of him. There was the strike force of the veteran Pearl Harbor carriers—Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu—once again led by Admiral Nagumo. There was a Midway occupation force of five thousand men in twelve transports protected by battleships and cruisers. There was Yamamoto’s main force of battleships and cruisers. And finally, there was a northern force of two light carriers, cruisers, and transports, sailing toward Alaska to bomb Dutch Harbor and occupy Adak, Attu, and Kiska. (If there is any doubt about Fletcher’s contribution at Coral Sea, that battle cost the Imperial Japanese Navy the potential use of three more carriers at Midway—the damaged Shokaku and Zuikaku and the sunken Shoho.)

  Yamamoto initially planned to attack Dutch Harbor and Midway simultaneously on June 3 in a double-fisted punch designed to lure the American fleet into one pitched battle and annihilate it whether it steamed north to rescue the Aleutians or west to support Midway. But as Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown lurked patiently near Point Luck, Nimitz refused to respond to the attack on the Aleutians on June 3 and instead remained focused on Midway after the Japanese attack on that island had fallen behind a day. The next morning, his patience was rewarded.43

  When the sun set in the Central Pacific on June 4, 1942, Yorktown was crippled for good, but the 4 Japanese carriers that had celebrated the attack on Pearl Harbor just six months before, 257 of their planes, and 121 of Japan’s most skilled combat pilots, along with thousands of men, were sunk or sinking.44 Stunned at having lost four carriers and his air superiority, Yamamoto turned his main battle force around and sailed for Japan, with no more territory to show for the operation than the occupation of two mostly uninhabited islands in the Aleutians. Midway would remain in American hands. Spruance grumbled that Hornet’s planes should have put Hiryu out of action before it launched the crippling blow against Yorktown, but ultimately the Japanese offensive momentum that had been blunted at Coral Sea had been stopped at Midway.

  The Battle of Midway was, as historian Walter Lord characterized it, an “incredible victory” for the United States. Captain Hideo Hiraide, chief of the naval press section at Imperial Japanese Headquarters, put a different spin on the entire outcome. “The enormous success in the Aleutians,” he reported to the Japanese people, “had been made possible by the diversion at Midway.”45

  “The Battle of Midway,” King later wrote, “was the first decisive defeat suffered by the Japanese Navy in 350 years. Furthermore, it put an end to the long period of Japanese offensive action, and restored the balance of naval power in the Pacific.”46 Nimitz, at the time, remained focused on the long-term goal: “Vengeance,” he said on June 6, 1942, “will not be complete until Japanese sea power is reduced to impotence.” But he couldn’t help injecting a little pun. “Perhaps,” he added, “we will be forgiven if we claim that we are about midway to that objective.”47

  Fletcher and Spruance had proved to be a good team. Patient, even tempered, and both willing to trust Nimitz’s intelligence reports, they managed to be in the right place at the right time. “Your courage to accept the intelligence that led up to that operation,” Spruance readily acknowledged to Nimitz, “and your prompt decision and action to throw all available forces [Enterprise, Hornet, and Yorktown] into it were all that preve
nted a serious disaster for us.”48

  Spruance, whom Fletcher released to operate independently with Task Force 16 after Yorktown’s condition worsened, was equally laudatory of Fletcher’s role and the flag staff on the Enterprise that Spruance had inherited from Halsey. “This letter has been much longer than I had expected it to be,” Spruance wrote in his after-action report to Nimitz, “but I cannot close it without expressing my admiration for the part that Fletcher in the YORKTOWN played in this campaign.” He and Fletcher had had “a fine and smoothly working co-ordination between the two Task Forces,” Spruance reported, and “Halsey’s splendid staff have made my job easy.”49

  Subsequent naval historians would downplay, or even overlook completely, Frank Jack Fletcher’s role at Midway. This may have been the result of Spruance’s later prominence and success in the Central Pacific, but it also clearly had something to do with King’s propensity “for writing off a subordinate at the first suspicion of irresolution or timidity.” Deserved or not, King thought Fletcher guilty of both prior to and during the Battle of the Coral Sea and never forgave him.

  Raymond Spruance, Fletcher’s clear subordinate at Midway until Fletcher turned him loose, thought differently. “It was tough luck that the Yorktown had to stand those two attacks,” Spruance wrote Fletcher within a week of the battle. “If it had not been for what you did and took with the Yorktown,” Spruance continued, “I am firmly convinced that we would have been badly defeated and the Japs would be holding Midway today.” No matter their future destinies and appraisals, Spruance retained his appreciation for Fletcher’s role and bristled at histories that denied Fletcher proper credit.50

  This begs the question of what might have happened had Bill Halsey been in tactical command at Midway instead of itching in a hospital bed. Would he have been as patient? Would he have driven west after sinking the Japanese carriers and encountered Yamamoto’s main force, likely in a night surface battle, instead of safely retiring eastward as Spruance had done? Might he have achieved the exact success of Spruance and Fletcher?

  Others would debate these points, but the one man who would replay Halsey’s failure to be at Midway the most was Halsey himself. He had arrived too late at Coral Sea and been sidelined at Midway. Missing these two key battles would have a strong influence on his actions two and a half years hence off the Philippines. Midway was, in Halsey’s words, “the crucial carrier duel of the war,” and not being a part of it was “the most grievous disappointment in my career.”51

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Deciding the Course

  While Bill Halsey sat out a round and fought severe dermatitis, other battles were raging over the conduct of the war. How was command of a global war effort to be divided up on land and sea? Should President Roosevelt appoint one supreme military chief? And despite the commitment to Germany First with America’s British and Russian allies, how would this play out in practice against the pressing needs in the Pacific?

  Admiral King had laid out his preferred strategy in a memo to General Marshall several weeks before King became CNO and COMINCH. He had remained adamant at every turn about his initial charge to Nimitz to maintain the Hawaii/West Coast–Australia sea-lanes at all costs. Just how, Marshall now asked, did King propose to accomplish this?

  In but one example of the communications between army and navy this early in the war, Marshall’s request took a week to travel from his office, then in the Munitions Building, to King’s office in the adjacent Navy Department Building less than two blocks away. It finally arrived just one day before the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS)—still only Marshall, King, and Arnold—was to hold only its third meeting since the Arcadia Conference six weeks before. But in characteristic fashion, King did not hesitate or plead for more time. Instead, he dictated a reply, approved a final draft, and had copies distributed at the JCS meeting the next day.

  “The general scheme or concept of operations,” King wrote, “is not only to protect the lines of communications with Australia but, in so doing, to set up ‘strong points’ from which a step-by-step general advance can be made through the New Hebrides, Solomons, and the Bismarck Archipelago.” Marshall immediately seized on the words “general advance.” The Japanese were rushing toward Australia, Churchill was bemoaning the fall of Singapore as akin to the end of Western civilization, and both Roosevelt and Churchill had just agreed to a Germany First strategy. How could King even consider a “general advance” in the Pacific?

  But King was emphatic about how he could and would accomplish it. Using marines as the spear point, King intended to seize and occupy strategic positions along the all-important Hawaii–Australia lifeline, not only securing the route to Australia but also establishing staging points from which to strike generally northwest from that line. The army would follow to garrison the acquired strongholds.1

  Three days later, King repeated his plan for Roosevelt, who was trying to find some way to bolster Churchill’s momentary gloom. King reminded FDR that the United States was, almost by default and with British acquiescence, assuming chief responsibility for Pacific operations, the British having been generally driven west of the Malay Peninsula, save Australia and New Zealand. King strongly concurred with Roosevelt’s previously expressed view that with limited resources and an almost unlimited geography over which to fight, the United States should determine “a very few lines of military endeavor and concentrate our efforts on these lines.” Those lines might well change in the future, King said, but they “should be kept at a very few.” (Emphasis in original in both cases.)

  The most important line of the “very few” to be allocated to the Pacific was support for “Australasia”—the continent and its northern approaches—by keeping Samoa, Fiji, and New Caledonia as strongpoints along the Hawaii–Australia lifeline, securing the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu) and Ellice Islands (now Tuvalu) as additional strongpoints, and then driving northwest from there into the Solomons, including an island called Guadalcanal.

  “Such a line of operations will be offensive rather than passive,” King maintained, “and will draw Japanese forces there to oppose it, thus relieving pressure elsewhere, whether in Hawaii, ABDA area [the Southwest Pacific], Alaska, or even India.” This became “an integrated, general plan of operations” that King summarized like this: “Hold Hawaii, Support Australasia, Drive northwestward from New Hebrides.”2

  Roosevelt seized on King’s plan and passed it on to Churchill as a way to encourage him to think that, Singapore aside, all was not lost in the Pacific. Churchill fretted that any American offensive in the Pacific would come at a cost to operations against Germany, but Roosevelt reassured him of the overall commitment to Germany First, even if some resources, particularly American contributions to air operations against Germany during 1942, would inevitably be diverted to the Pacific.

  King’s general operational strategy for offensive operations in the Pacific—as opposed to mere defensive containment—was thus adopted, even though Roosevelt would vacillate on it depending on his audience. “Although it was not at once apparent (perhaps not even to King),” King’s principal biographer wrote with some hyperbole, “King had embarked upon the most important contribution he would make to victory in the Second World War.”3

  King and Marshall’s next task was to divide the vast Pacific into operational areas with some measure of unified command between the army and navy. Since both men were initially much more inclined to send each other memos rather than walk next door and knock, this was easier said than done. And it complicated matters further that one of those watching how big a piece of the pie he would get was Douglas MacArthur.

  Roosevelt’s recall of MacArthur from the Philippines had been premised in part on the need to put him in a larger role—at least that was the perception trumpeted in both the American and Australian press. The general’s “I shall return” remark upon reaching Australia fit the situation, as well as his persona, perfectly. Marshall further supported this image by arrangi
ng for MacArthur to be given the one military award the general truly coveted, the Medal of Honor, so that he might emulate his father, who had won it for his reckless dash up Missionary Ridge almost eighty years before.

  Marshall, of course, had a more practical motive than merely massaging the general’s ego. “I submit the recommendation to you,” Marshall wrote Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, “not only because I am certain that General MacArthur is deserving of the honor, but also because I am certain that this action will meet with popular approval, both within and without the armed forces, and will have a constructive morale value.” Having played a large role in both rescuing and elevating MacArthur, Marshall remained convinced that MacArthur’s “dominating character is needed down there to make the Navy keep up their job in spite of rows which we shall have between them.”4

  But Marshall had also by now had enough exposure to King to know that he had no intention of turning over command of navy ships in the Pacific to MacArthur or anyone else. Nimitz was CINCPAC, and that was that. In fact, far from merely keeping up their job, King had just outlined how the navy would take the lead.

  Yet when Marshall’s war plans chief, Brigadier General Dwight Eisenhower, drew up the army’s Pacific overview, he tentatively assigned the entire Pacific, from the Philippines to Samoa and west of 170° west longitude (decidedly east of New Zealand), to MacArthur. This left the navy idling around Hawaii and the West Coast and implied that MacArthur would command the navy and marine forces that King proposed to deploy in support of his pronounced offensive strategy. King strongly opposed Eisenhower’s division, and Marshall agreed to revisit the map of the Pacific.