The Admirals

by Walter R. Borneman

  But now it was Spruance’s turn to urge King and Nimitz to speed up the timetable. Four hundred miles west of Kwajalein lay the atoll of Eniwetok. Its lagoon, with a circumference of fifty-some miles, easily provided the largest natural harbor in the Pacific. Reconnaissance photos showed Spruance that the atoll was at present lightly defended, but the recent arrival of several thousand Japanese troops suggested that a buildup was under way. If the Japanese were given another two and a half months until the Joint Chiefs’ target date of May 1, 1944, for an invasion, they might well turn it into a fortress.

  In record time, the Joint Chiefs agreed, and King set a landing on Eniwetok for February 17. In the meantime, Spruance got the news that upon Nimitz’s recommendation and King’s hearty concurrence, he had been promoted to full admiral. This made Spruance, at fifty-seven, the youngest naval officer to attain that rank and at the time only the seventh admiral to fly four stars, behind Leahy, Stark, King, Nimitz, Royal Ingersoll of the Atlantic Fleet, and Halsey.12

  Spruance promptly transferred his flag from the more nimble Indianapolis to the new Iowa-class battleship New Jersey. Teaming other fast battleships up with Mitscher’s carriers in Task Force 58, Spruance led a raid against Truk in the Carolines. For decades, Truk had been the principal Japanese naval base in the Central Pacific, and reports of it being the “Gibraltar of the Pacific” had been ingrained into a generation of American naval officers. Spruance wanted to be on board the big New Jersey in case the Japanese moved to engage in a major surface action. That didn’t happen, but the raid caused considerable damage to the shore facilities around Truk Lagoon, scattered a host of Japanese merchant ships, and sank a cruiser and several destroyers.

  The advance through the Gilberts and Marshalls had been impressive, but this blow against the reputedly impregnable Truk had almost as high a morale factor as the Doolittle Raid two years before. A cartoon on the front page of the Washington Evening Star on Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1944, said it all. Captioned “The George Washington Influence,” it showed a grinning Chester Nimitz dusting off his hands as Prime Minister Tojo sat amid the ruins of Truk in the background. “I cannot tell a lie,” said the admiral. “I did it with the fleet he annihilated [at Pearl Harbor].”13

  Meanwhile, Europe had certainly not been forgotten. With King’s battle against the German U-boats largely won, men and munitions flowed eastward across the Atlantic in a steady stream, reinforcing the war effort in Italy and stocking up Great Britain for the long-planned invasion of France. On June 4, Rome finally fell to Allied forces, marking almost a year of dogged fighting on the Italian peninsula after the previous summer’s race around Sicily.

  President Roosevelt announced the news about Rome in a radio address the next day. FDR coyly gave only a hint of what he knew was even then under way in the skies above Normandy. But close observers focused on something else. Five months in, this was Roosevelt’s first fireside chat of 1944, and he had been conspicuously absent from Washington during much of April. Just how was the president’s health, and would he run for an unprecedented fourth term14

  By the following day—June 6, 1944—such speculation was momentarily swept aside by the news that Allied soldiers, sailors, and airmen under General Dwight Eisenhower’s supreme command had crossed the English Channel and begun the liberation of Europe via Normandy. In what may have been part of an elaborate ruse to throw off German spies, the president’s chief of staff was not even in Washington at the time.

  Instead, Bill Leahy was visiting his birthplace in tiny Hampton, Iowa, having arrived in the state on June 4 to give the commencement address at Cornell College, in Mount Vernon, and receive an honorary doctor of laws degree. On the morning of June 6, he was having breakfast at the home of a daughter of his father’s old law partner when “the radio brought to Iowa news that the invasion of France had begun.” Only that evening did Leahy motor to Mason City and board a Milwaukee Road train en route back to Washington.15

  Leahy’s fellow Joint Chiefs had also stayed relatively low-key—at least as low-key as King was capable of being. Calm Marshall apparently did not even rise early to tune in initial radio reports of the attack from his quarters at Fort Myer. In truth, there was little concrete news that early, and even Eisenhower waited impatiently at Portsmouth, England, to get a clearer picture. But within forty-eight hours, Marshall, King, and Arnold were all off for Great Britain to see firsthand the results of their two-year effort.

  With Marshall and Arnold in one C-54 transport and King in another, they flew from Washington to Newfoundland and then across the North Atlantic to an attempted landing at Prestwick, Scotland. Heavy fog obscured the field, and the planes were diverted south to Wales. There an aide flagged down the Irish Mail and hastily arranged for an unheated car to be added to the train. With only a tin of strong, scalding tea among them, the three American chiefs sat through a six-hour ride to London, arriving at Euston Station to be greeted by Sir Alan Brooke and his British chiefs of staff at 7:45 p.m. on June 9.

  The Americans were quartered at Stanwell Place in Staines, about twenty miles southwest of London, and the next morning the Combined Chiefs of Staff met at the War Cabinet office for a review of all fronts. But their thoughts kept returning to Normandy. Early on Sunday morning, June 11, King and Arnold decided to pay an impromptu visit to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force and get the latest information on the landings firsthand. It was supposed to be only a twenty-minute drive, and Arnold’s aide assured the general that he knew the route. Forty-five minutes later, Arnold and King were reduced to asking directions from bobbies, to no avail. Finally finding their way back to Stanwell Place, but without any information, Arnold recorded, “Admiral King was somewhat irked.”

  But they need not have worried. The boy soldier in Churchill had been itching to get to the Normandy front, and he proposed an excursion that soon took on the feeling of a school field trip. The Combined Chiefs took a special train to Portsmouth, and early on June 12 they were met there by a beaming Dwight Eisenhower. Victory was far from assured, but the initial progress was encouraging. Marshall, King, Arnold, and Eisenhower then boarded the American destroyer Thompson and set off for the American beaches of Omaha and Utah, while Churchill and the British chiefs boarded a British destroyer and embarked on a similar inspection of the British sector.

  As the Thompson surged across the Channel at 30 knots, through a mass of hundreds of ships of all types and sizes, King no doubt took pride in what the U.S. Navy had accomplished. But perhaps there was an even more profound sight overhead. There were four thousand American and British planes in the air that day, but not one German aircraft. Arnold called the harbor at Portsmouth and the mass of ships moving across the Channel “a bomber’s paradise,” but the Allies had clearly established air superiority. It was as graphic a demonstration as possible of the entwined roles of air and sea power.

  This did not mean, however, that all friction between the army and navy had been eliminated. As four P-51s and three Spitfires fell to friendly fire from King’s ships, Arnold noted, “Our own Navy [is] far more dangerous than GAF [German Air Force] in spite of [the] fact that they demand overhead cover from our Air Force.”

  Off Omaha Beach, Eisenhower and the American chiefs transferred first to a smaller sub chaser and then to a DUKW (pronounced “duck”), a six-wheeled amphibious craft built by General Motors and capable of either land or water travel, for the ride to the beach. There was to be no theatrical splashing ashore as Douglas MacArthur would soon stage in the Philippines. Instead, army photographers caught the group climbing somewhat awkwardly over the side of the vehicle and onto French soil. They toured the beach area in jeeps, met U.S. ground commander Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, ate lunch in a field kitchen, and visited wounded soldiers about to be flown back to England.

  Late in the afternoon, Arnold opted to return to England by air, while Marshall and King retraced their journey by DUKW to the Thompson. Being punctual almost to a
fault, both men wanted to be on time for a celebratory dinner Churchill was hosting on his private train upon everyone’s return to Portsmouth. Churchill’s concept of time was quite different, however, and he had no qualms about detouring his own destroyer to fire a few rounds into the German lines, despite the fact that this made him quite late.

  King passed the time in Churchill’s well-stocked railcar bar, and as Churchill’s arrival got later and later, King drank more and more sherry. When Churchill finally arrived, it was obvious that Churchill, too, had been drinking en route, and the host insisted that it continue. Endless rounds of champagne atop sherry were almost too much for King, but he “managed it.” According to Thomas B. Buell, his biographer, “It was the only time we know of that King broke his vow of sobriety during the war.” (Marshall seems to have avoided any such condition.)16

  Meetings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff continued the next day, but even after the apparent success of the Overlord landings—or perhaps because of it—the British were once more questioning the need for a planned second invasion of France from the Mediterranean. The strategic theme that wouldn’t die—Churchill’s fixation with Italy and the Balkans—reared its head again. King, in particular, stood by earlier arguments in favor of what was then being called Operation Anvil (later Dragoon). He saw a need for a second deepwater port (Cherbourg being the first), liked the idea of a direct sea link from the United States to Marseilles, and thought that an Allied attack on southern France would divert German resources from the Normandy front. In this, King retained Marshall as his ally against the prospect of Churchill plunging eastward from Italy into the Balkans.

  From King’s viewpoint, there was so much congestion in the English Channel that the efficiency of movements there was becoming saturated. “There are so many craft involved now,” King had told Roosevelt earlier in the year, “that one could almost walk dry-shod from one side of the channel to the other.”17

  Capturing the port at Antwerp, Belgium, was a possible alternative, but Leahy diplomatically noted, “The slowness of the British divisions on our left flank [in that direction] was displeasing.” This left the landings in the south of France front and center. Eventually, the British agreed to a second front in France, and Allied troops landed near Marseilles on August 15. No wonder, however, that when the Joint Chiefs returned to Washington and briefed Leahy, he responded that Overlord had been a success, “but I did gather from the conversations of our Chiefs on their return that there was considerably more argument and criticism of the British than has appeared in publicized accounts.”18

  The British were still bulling their way into the Balkans later in the year after German troops withdrew from Greece. Churchill wanted to use American LSTs (landing ship, tank) to land British troops to occupy Athens, even in the face of resistance from Greek Communists. The official American position was that this resistance was an internal matter for the Greek people to address, and King chose, on his own authority, to order a halt in LST support. Churchill immediately got on the transatlantic hotline and pleaded his case to Harry Hopkins, who just as quickly conferred with Leahy.

  With the war winding down, the lines between military and political decisions were beginning to blur, and Leahy told King that whatever the merits of his order, he “had intruded into politics and had bypassed the chain of command.” It was one of the rare reprimands King received from Leahy, but it underscored that Leahy had no hesitancy in enforcing political directives. True to his methods, however, King quickly devised a face-saving maneuver, arranging to transfer the LSTs to the British as part of larger Lend-Lease operations. King avoided countermanding his orders, Churchill got his support, and the overarching policy of no U.S.-flagged vessels in Greek waters stood.19

  But it was Leahy who expressed the overriding sentiment in Europe after the Overlord and Dragoon invasions. “Before 1944 had ended,” the admiral wrote, “we had met Hitler’s best on a battlefield that favored the defenders, and without any superiority in man power were driving back the Führer’s legions with a speed that amazed everyone, particularly our sensitive Russian allies.”20

  What made the Allied success at Normandy all the more impressive was that halfway around the world, King’s navy was almost simultaneously conducting another major amphibious operation—not thirty miles across the English Channel from well-stocked bases, but three thousand miles across the wide Pacific from Pearl Harbor. This was the invasion of the Mariana Islands, principally Saipan, Tinian, and Guam, that King had long claimed held the key to victory over Japan.

  That the Normandy and Saipan landings occurred within the same month just thirty months after Pearl Harbor was a testament to America’s industrial might. It was also a testament to King’s global vision. Even with his begrudging support of Germany First, King had still managed to wrangle, plead, beg, and borrow enough resources for the Pacific to get the job done. There had never been any long, defensive holding action in the Pacific, but rather a continuing offensive, just as King had initially insisted on during the grim early months of 1942.

  With Eniwetok and the Marshalls secure as a forward base, King and Nimitz were free to push on to the Marianas, completing the encirclement of Truk and arriving within striking distance of the Philippines, Formosa, and Japan itself. But it would not be easy, particularly because their first opponent would be Douglas MacArthur. Throughout early 1944, MacArthur had grown increasingly nervous about an advance on one of his flanks—not from the Japanese, but from Nimitz’s forces in the Central Pacific. Taking the Gilberts and the Marshalls had not particularly ruffled MacArthur’s plans, but a leap to the Marianas would not only consume massive amounts of men and ships but also pose the possibility that such a thrust might get to mainland Japan before MacArthur’s own efforts via the Philippines.

  During the cautionary period that gripped most of Nimitz’s staff, between bloody Tarawa and the success at Kwajalein, MacArthur promoted a plan to stop the Central Pacific drive at the Marshalls and divert all efforts southward to support his own advance. The Joint Chiefs rejected this notion, but much like Churchill over the Balkans, MacArthur was not one to be denied.

  On the eve of the landings at Kwajalein, MacArthur sent his three key staff members—chief of staff Richard Sutherland, air commander George Kenney, and naval commander Thomas Kinkaid—to a strategy conference at Pearl Harbor to plead his case. Even as they did so, MacArthur was sending criticisms of the navy and assurances about his own strategy outside the chain of command to Secretary of War Stimson and, through him, to Roosevelt himself.21

  The Pearl Harbor conference proved to be a congenial affair, largely because MacArthur’s representatives chose to hear what they wanted to hear. Their one-front strategy along the MacArthur-Halsey line was not ruled out, and Nimitz’s staff, quite occupied with the pending Marshalls invasion, did not promote any specific plans regarding the Marianas.

  Nimitz routinely reported the conference discussions to Admiral King, but MacArthur wrote General Marshall as if a major shift in strategy had occurred. MacArthur brashly assumed that all air, land, and naval forces in the Pacific, including those of the British, were about to be put under his supreme command. Such an outright transfer of forces—even in the unlikely event that King concurred—was unthinkable without causing mass confusion in the command structure then in place. At the very least, it would have placed Nimitz subordinate to MacArthur. King had made clear his opposition two years before, but the general blindly thought the same was about to occur.

  MacArthur even wove a web for Halsey. “I’ll tell you something you may not know,” MacArthur confided to Halsey privately. “They’re going to send me a big piece of the fleet—put it absolutely at my disposal.” He’d need a ranking admiral, of course. “How about you, Bill?” MacArthur asked, before promising, “If you come with me, I’ll make you a greater man than Nelson ever dreamed of being!” To Halsey’s credit, he didn’t take the bait.22

  King, of course, with the concurrence o
f the Joint Chiefs, hotly opposed MacArthur’s machinations. But King also found fault with Nimitz—“indignant dismay,” he termed it—for even listening to the MacArthur plan.

  “Apparently, neither those who advocated the concentration of effort in the Southwest Pacific [MacArthur’s staff], nor those who admitted the possibility of such a procedure [Nimitz and his staff],” King scolded, “gave thought nor undertook to state when and if the Japanese occupation and use of the Marianas and Carolines was to be terminated. I assume that even the Southwest Pacific advocates will admit that sometime or other this thorn in the side… must be removed.” And if there was any doubt as to where King placed MacArthur’s overall strategy, the admiral affirmed, “The idea of rolling up the Japanese along the New Guinea coast… and up through the Philippines to Luzon, as our major strategic concept, to the exclusion of clearing our Central Pacific line of communications to the Philippines, is to me absurd.”23

  But Nimitz also got himself crosswise with King over the issue of invading Truk. After the success of Spruance’s raid there and the landings in the Marshalls, Nimitz was optimistic about westward progress. He seems to have at least toyed with invading Truk rather than focusing on King’s goal of the Marianas. “I am sorry to say,” King wrote Nimitz, “that the impression prevails here—rightly or wrongly—that you seriously contemplate taking Truk by assault.” This simply would not do, said King. Truk was a vital Japanese base, but pushing westward to the Marianas would have “the effect of pinching off Truk” and isolating it—the classic island-hopping operation applied on a grand scale. Truk would, in effect, become the hole in an encircling doughnut of American air and naval power.