The Admirals

by Walter R. Borneman

  Scarcely had this decision been made when a major Japanese force of carriers, battleships, and cruisers attempted another end run around the eastern Solomons, similar to the one that Fletcher’s carriers had met and repulsed two months before. Patched-up Enterprise, back on station in the South Pacific, moved with Hornet to intercept. Rear Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid was in command of the combined Enterprise and Hornet task forces, and Halsey exhorted him, “Strike—Repeat—Strike.”

  A PBY Catalina from Espíritu Santo found the Japanese fleet just before dawn, but a mix-up in radio communications delayed the news at Kinkaid’s carriers for a full two hours, giving the Japanese a head start in attacking the Americans. Enterprise came away damaged, but Hornet took the brunt of the blows, and Kinkaid was forced to order the ship sunk. Halsey never forgave him—neither did a host of naval aviators.

  The general feeling was that in directing control of both Hornet and Enterprise, Kinkaid, a battleship admiral, had allowed the combat air patrol (CAP) being flown by Enterprise for both carriers to drift away from Hornet. Halsey simply thought that Kinkaid had not been aggressive enough in launching preemptive attacks. But Halsey also came under subsequent criticism for having pushed his carriers too far north, near the limit of Allied land-based air support, instead of keeping them south of Guadalcanal and focusing on its defense. In any event, this action was part of the growing pains of multiple-carrier operations. It was the last time a non-aviator commanded a carrier task force, but equally important, it put Halsey and Kinkaid on less-than-friendly terms.29

  Tactically, the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands was a Japanese victory, but improved American antiaircraft batteries and fighter pilots took such a heavy toll on Japanese carrier-based planes that all three Japanese carriers, among them the heavily damaged light carrier Zuiho, were forced to return to Japan for more planes and pilots. Japan could not match the ever-increasing supply of both warplanes and pilots beginning to flow from the United States.

  The fight for Guadalcanal was far from over, but at least Japanese carriers would no longer play a role. After being on the SOPAC job two weeks, Halsey sent an eight-page, single-spaced “Dear Chester” letter to Nimitz. It was full of information and analysis, but short on complaining—exactly as Nimitz had hoped. “I have been fairly well occupied,” Halsey told Nimitz, and “as a consequence, this is one of the first opportunities I have had to write.

  “As you may well imagine,” Halsey continued, “I was completely taken aback when I received your orders on my arrival here. I took over a strange job with a strange staff and I had to begin throwing punches almost immediately.” First, there was the issue of a proper headquarters ashore. “The so-called Fighting French,” as Halsey called them, were still playing “a Ring around the Rosey,” but he intended to have all headquarters elements of the various commands moved into one building ashore within the week, because “as you must have seen, while here, it is perfectly impossible, to carry on efficiently on this ship [the Argonne].”

  Nor did Halsey intend to waste precious time sending ships back to Pearl Harbor for repairs. “It will be my utmost endeavor,” Halsey assured Nimitz, “to patch up what we have and go with them… This may mean operating the Enterprise with a slightly reduced complement of planes and under difficulties, but under the present circumstances, a half a loaf is better than none.”

  And “Fighting Bill,” as at least one newspaper report had already labeled him, was determined to keep that half loaf intact. Maintaining battleships and carriers continuously at sea in submarine-infested waters was a mistake—a deadly mistake, Halsey might have said, remembering Wasp caught sailing the same support area. “On every occasion so far our intelligence has given us two or more days notice of impending attack. At present it is my intention to hold heavy ships out of the area and to depend on these reports for bringing them in when the necessity arises.” In pencil in the margin of Halsey’s letter, Nimitz wrote, “I agree,” and initialed the comment “CWN.”

  But how was this son of a sailor getting on with the army? The army, Halsey wrote, was “the biggest and best thing… They have made available to us various mechanics, electricians and welders, and I would like to see it widely advertised that the Army is helping us here. I have never seen anything like the spirit there is in this neck of the woods.” This time, Nimitz’s initialed margin note called for a letter to King quoting the appropriate text.

  Wrapping up with a paragraph that would have done an FDR fireside chat proud, Halsey assured Nimitz that while “we are in need of everything we can get,” such a reminder was “not offered in complaint or as an excuse but just to keep the pot boiling.” The men around him were “superb,” Halsey concluded, and “not in the least downhearted or upset by our difficulties, but obsessed with one idea only, to kill the yellow bastards and we shall do it.” Alongside which Nimitz scrawled in the margin, “This is the spirit desired.”30

  And it would take more of that spirit, because despite having turned their carriers around after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, the Japanese were still making a major effort to capture Guadalcanal. Halsey learned of their latest thrust on November 10 and sent Kinkaid hurrying north with Task Force 16—two battleships, one heavy cruiser, one light cruiser, and eight destroyers grouped around the partially repaired Enterprise.

  But before Kinkaid could get within range, Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner ordered Rear Admiral Daniel J. Callaghan and Rear Admiral Norman Scott to lead five cruisers and eight destroyers against the advancing Japanese in order once again to save the beachhead and Henderson Field. Callaghan and Scott paid for the effort with their lives, but by November 14–15, Kinkaid’s battleships and planes flying from both Henderson Field and Enterprise had inflicted heavy losses among the Japanese convoy and its escorts.31

  Although American cruisers would take one more beating, again at the western end of Ironbottom Sound from Japanese torpedoes at the Battle of Tassafaronga at the end of November, this marked the end of Japanese attempts to capture Guadalcanal. King’s strategy of taking the offensive to protect the West Coast–Australia sea-lanes and build a stronghold from which to start the drive toward Japan had worked after a frightful cost—twelve hundred American marines lay dead on Guadalcanal, and upwards of four thousand American sailors rested beneath the surrounding seas.32 But the tide had been turned. In recognition of his “can-do” leadership and the mounting forces under his command, Bill Halsey was promoted to the four stars of full admiral, joining Leahy, King, Nimitz, Stark, and the Atlantic Fleet’s Royal Ingersoll in that rank.

  The promotion and his success in the Solomons put Halsey on the cover of Time, although the magazine was quick to point out that the painting depicting Halsey with only three stars had been commissioned before his promotion. This was the American public’s first really good look at Bill Halsey, who had a “pugnacious” nose, “aggressive” eyes, and eyebrows “as impressive and busy-looking as a couple of task forces.” It is important to note that no one had as yet called him “Bull.” Instead, the article reiterated Halsey’s mantra: “Hit Hard, Hit Fast, Hit Often.”

  Nimitz’s own comments in the cover article did much to cement Halsey’s image with Time’s readers. “Halsey’s conduct of his present command leaves nothing to be desired,” Time quoted Nimitz. “He is professionally competent and militarily aggressive without being reckless or foolhardy [and] he has that rare combination of intellectual capacity and military audacity and can calculate to a cat’s whisker the risk involved…” His nomination to admiral by the president, Nimitz concluded, was a reward “he richly deserves.”33

  Four-star insignia were nonexistent in the supply-short South Pacific, but two rear admiral two-star insignia were quickly welded together. Halsey removed his vice admiral’s stars, handed them to an aide, and reportedly said, “Send one of these to Mrs. Scott and the other to Mrs. Callaghan. Tell them it was their husbands’ bravery that got me my new ones.”34

  In a lengthy lett
er to Nimitz that same month, Halsey stressed “a crying need for boats of all kinds,” including “some of the laid up boats in Pearl.” Nimitz’s margin note was again to the point: “Send them,” he ordered. A tank farm was under construction on Guadalcanal, and once it was completed, Halsey expected “to be able to blast hell out of the Japs in the Shortland [western Solomons] area and later on at Rabaul.” Signing himself, “As ever, cheerfully yours, Bill H.,” Halsey reiterated that his command was “not in the least downhearted” and “as you may rightly interpret, my growls and grouches are the privileges of an old sailorman.”35

  But Halsey had more requirements to wage war than just men and ships. In the same letter to Nimitz, Halsey wrote, “Please tell Raymond [Spruance] to discontinue personal shipments to me. We have made other arrangements here. In the meantime, I am deeply appreciative for what he has done.”

  And just what was that? In addition to now serving as Nimitz’s chief of staff and housemate, Spruance had also had the job of keeping Halsey supplied with alcoholic refreshment in the first weeks after he was dispatched to the South Pacific. Henceforth, another Halsey buddy, Rear Admiral C. W. Crosse, in the Service Force of the Pacific Fleet, would handle that task. “A little preliminary dope so that you won’t get nervous,” Crosse told Halsey in a “Dear Bill” letter. “I have your verbal directive (threat) via Mason, namely ten cases of scotch and five cases of bourbon monthly. Can do.”

  The shipments, charged to Halsey’s personal account, were to be “marked with the usual shipping indicators for Nouméa but will also have three stars stenciled on the cases to indicate the consignee as old Killer Bill.” By the time this letter reached Halsey, Crosse was one star short and someone, perhaps Halsey himself, penciled “4 stars” in the margin of the letter. Crosse went on to propose a code for future correspondence, including a promised radio message whereby a reference to “urser ten dash five” would mean ten cases of Scotch and five cases of bourbon. War or not, someone, it seemed, had time on his hands. In a postscript, Crosse noted, “Your crowd at Nouméa were sadly lacking in any recreational equipment,” and he promised to send along baseball gear to distribute “among the boys and let ’em go to it.”36

  A week later, Crosse wrote Halsey the “latest dope on ‘10-5,’ advising, “Ten cases of Black & White are loaded in the S. S. JOHN BABCOCK, scheduled to leave here the 28th and ETA EPIC [Nouméa] is December 20th.” Crosse gave Halsey the name of the chief mate who had signed for the special cargo and told him, “In case you are thirsty and can hardly wait, it is stowed in a locker on the boat deck, starboard side, aft.”37

  Alcohol was a cherished commodity in all commands and all theaters throughout the war and a much-sought-after form of unwinding after the stress of battle, whether in the cockpit of an F4F Wildcat or a sweltering office nervously awaiting radiograms describing the action. Ironically, one of the few top commanders who usually eschewed hard liquor—save maybe a rum punch—was Raymond Spruance, Halsey’s early supplier.

  Later, when it became easier logistically to supply all commands with a liquor ration, many commanders, Halsey included, continued to get their own personal shipments. As a COMSOPAC directive pointed out some months later, these shipments to Halsey were outside the scope of the regular shipments to Nouméa because “such stores [Halsey’s personal supply] are maintained largely for the purposes and needs of official and semi-official entertaining.” Weekly consumption was estimated “to be approximately limited to one bottle per regular mess member, which is, however, exclusive of entertainment requirements.”38

  And so, as 1942 drew to a close, Allied troops around the globe paused to celebrate another wartime Christmas. It had been a year in which the issue had been in doubt more times than not. But in hindsight, despite ferocious losses of men, ships, and planes, it was remarkable what the entire Allied effort had accomplished in just one year’s time, since the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  In the South Pacific, Guadalcanal was secure. MacArthur’s forces had saved Port Moresby and pushed the Japanese back across the Owen Stanley Range. The British had won a decisive victory in Egypt at El Alamein and were pursuing Rommel’s Afrika Korps across North Africa toward the Allied forces landed under Operation Torch. In Russia, the expanse of that country and the determined resistance of its soldiers had worn down the German onslaught, and the Russians had entrapped a portion of the German forces at Stalingrad.

  There would be many more moments of high drama and uncertainty, but on all fronts, November 1942 had been a watershed that forecast a hint of victory. It was far from the beginning of the end, but it was, as Winston Churchill opined, “perhaps, the end of the beginning.”39

  Ernest King’s portrait appeared on the cover of Time the week after Halsey’s. The cover date was December 7, 1942. “I’d say they started something at Pearl Harbor that they are not going to finish,” remarked the admiral. “We are going to win this war.” Indicative of the general measure of increasing confidence, King talked more freely than usual with the press about the year’s successes as well as its losses. Perhaps most important, he repeated what he had said at the beginning of the year: “Our days of victory are in the making.”40

  When Chester Nimitz was asked which moment during the war had scared him the most, he replied, “The whole first six months.”41 But now to all of his fighting men in the Pacific, he sent this Christmas greeting: “To all fighting men in the Pacific X On this holiest of days I extend my greetings with admiration of your brave deeds of the past year X The victories you have won, the sacrifices you have made, the ordeals you now endure, are an inspiration to the Christian world X As you meet the Jap along this vast battle line from the Aleutians to the Solomons, remember, liberty is in every blow you strike X Nimitz”42

  There was a momentary lull in the interservice wars in Washington as well. Having begrudgingly come to respect each other, General Marshall and Admiral King exchanged cordial Christmas notes. “Dear King,” wrote Marshall, “This is a note of Christmas greetings to you, with my thanks for the manner in which you have cooperated with me to meet our extremely difficult problems of the past year. With assurance of my regard and esteem, and full confidence in the prospects for the New Year, Faithfully yours, George Marshall.”

  “Dear Marshall,” King responded a day later, “I wish to thank you for your kind note of Christmas greetings and to express my hearty reciprocation of your views as to the manner and extent of our cooperation throughout the past year. With the background we have, I am confident that we will go on to even closer cooperation in the conduct of the war. With renewed assurance of my respect and esteem, I am, faithfully yours, E. J. King.”43

  The momentary pause on all fronts even caused a lull in the ongoing feud with MacArthur, although King, for one, would never be taken with him. King always resented MacArthur’s sharp criticism of the early efforts of Admiral Thomas Hart’s tiny Asiatic Fleet against the Japanese onslaught—something akin to stopping a flood with a paper towel. Then, too, King was used to being his own favorite martinet. Neither he nor MacArthur was accustomed to sharing the stage with anyone.

  Halsey would come to seek his own moments in the sun, but he would do so much more as “one of the guys”—the top guy to be sure—but his demeanor was far friendlier and folksier than anything King or MacArthur evidenced. King’s cameo roles as “one of the guys” during his prewar partying had long since stopped, and Douglas MacArthur was never one to have really close friends. Ironically, one of those historically closest to him—other than MacArthur’s similarly self-important wartime chief of staff, Richard Sutherland—may have been Dwight Eisenhower, because of their long association in Washington and the Philippines.

  Halsey, who had yet to meet MacArthur face-to-face, couldn’t resist tweaking the general just a little for his rather plush headquarters in Brisbane. “Would not MacArthur enjoy knowing,” Halsey asked Nimitz parenthetically in one of his letters, “that we are sending people from the combat zone for r
est and recuperation, in sight of his headquarters?”44

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  From Casablanca to Teheran

  In congratulating Major General Dwight Eisenhower on the success of the Torch landings, Franklin Roosevelt gave no hint that he might soon be visiting North Africa himself. This was to be Roosevelt’s first wartime trip outside the United States, and Leahy, Marshall, and King were all scheduled to accompany him.

  In one respect, King counted himself fortunate to be included. The prewar retirement age of sixty-four that King feared had arrived for him on November 23, 1942. One month to the day prior, King wrote Roosevelt with some trepidation: “My dear Mr. President: It appears proper that I should bring to your notice the fact that the record shows that I shall attain the age of 64 years on November 23d next—one month from today. I am, as always, at your service.”

  “So what, old top,” the president scrawled on the letter as he returned it. “I may send you a birthday present!”1 Just what that was to be was open to question, but Roosevelt, who was himself about to turn sixty-one and already in worse health than King or many of his top commanders, was not about to push any of his fighters into retirement. The retirement age was a handy excuse for those the president wanted retired, but he never enforced it during the war for those he needed. Bill Leahy would turn sixty-eight the following May.