By the time McCain changed course to 220 degrees and then finally ordered the ships to steam at will, the battleships and large carriers had been battered, but the smaller destroyers and services ships had suffered a frightful toll. “No one who has not been through a typhoon can conceive its fury,” Halsey later recalled. “The 70-foot seas smash you from all sides. At broad noon I couldn’t see the bow of my ship, 350 feet from the bridge. What it was like on a destroyer one-twentieth the New Jersey’s size, I can only imagine.”5
But Halsey certainly had a very good idea. He was first and foremost a destroyer man. If he was being tossed about on the mass of the New Jersey, he had to know what hellish conditions his destroyers and destroyer escorts were facing, not to mention the pitching decks of his smaller escort carriers. Where was the innate seamanship that Halsey had exhibited so often throughout his career? Where was that intuitiveness that had caused him to bring the destroyer Jarvis to a halt in a dense fog off the coast of Long Island in 1914?
If other experienced commanders in his fleet had qualms about the weather, why did Halsey vacillate on a course to clear the storm? Even if he was getting conflicting estimates of its track, the general consensus was that a decided run south on the afternoon of December 17, rather than repeatedly trying to turn back north, would have avoided much of the catastrophe.
The answer seems to be Halsey’s determination to keep his commitment to support MacArthur—a commitment he may have been feeling particularly sharply in light of criticism that he had forsaken the Leyte beachhead just six weeks before. “Have been unable to dodge storm which so far has prevented refueling,” Halsey signaled MacArthur, as he was unable to strike the intended targets. A few minutes later, Halsey reported to Nimitz, “Baffling storm pursues us.”6 But no matter the reason, there seems in hindsight little rationale to subject a fleet to such a pounding.
Three destroyers, including the Spence, capsized, with the loss of most of their crews. The Independence-class light carriers Cowpens and San Jacinto suffered minor damage, but their sister, Monterey, was almost lost when loose aircraft on the hangar deck ignited a horrible inferno. A thirty-one-year-old lieutenant from Grand Rapids, Michigan, named Gerald R. Ford was among those who led the charge to save the ship. The total toll for the Third Fleet was 790 officers and men dead and 156 aircraft destroyed.
By midafternoon on the 18th, the typhoon’s fury had passed, and a massive search-and-rescue operation was launched. From the Spence’s complement of 336 men, only 24 were pulled from the water. Meanwhile, Halsey stubbornly tried to keep his commitment to MacArthur, and on the 20th he steamed westward toward Luzon. Heavy seas on the 21st and a large measure of damage and confusion prompted a cancellation. The fleet came about and headed back to Ulithi to regroup and repair.
Early on the morning of December 24, Halsey’s battered fleet moved into the protected anchorage at Ulithi, and within a few hours a plane carrying Chester Nimitz touched down in the broad lagoon. Nimitz brought along a Christmas tree and holiday greetings to Halsey and his staff, but once the public pleasantries were over, he sat down with Halsey on Christmas Day and ordered a court of inquiry into the loss of the three destroyers and general damage to the fleet. Save for a few encounters such as at Savo Island, it was a far greater calamity than anything that had befallen the American navy since Pearl Harbor. If this court of inquiry so determined, full-blown courts-martial might later be convened against those found wanting in the discharge of their duties—including, quite possibly, Halsey himself.
The court of inquiry called the principal participants, including Halsey, McCain, Bogan, and Kosco. Halsey wasted no time blaming the weather warning system in the Pacific, at one point calling it “nonexistent.” But when asked just two questions later on what basis he had testified that the storm was curving to the northeast, Halsey gave a long answer clearly indicating that some weather information had been available. Even so, when asked if he had had a “timely warning” of the storm, he maintained that he had had “no warning.” Pacific weather information was indeed somewhat hit-or-miss, but Halsey’s effort to cast blame elsewhere flew in the face of testimony from Bogan and others that local conditions certainly indicated an approaching storm and apparent track.7
It also flew in the face of Halsey’s own testimony. When asked to compare the conditions on December 17, when the Spence encountered its refueling problems alongside New Jersey, with those on the morning of the 18th, Halsey replied, “On the morning of the 17th I was under the impression that we were on the fringes of a disturbance. On that morning of the 18th there was no doubt in my mind that we were approaching a storm of major proportions and that it was almost too late to do anything.”8
And he did nothing. For a period of nineteen hours, Halsey failed to issue a fleet-wide advisory that the storm center was much closer than initially plotted. Focusing on this, the court of inquiry found Halsey “at fault in not broadcasting definite danger warnings to all vessels early morning of December 18 in order that preparations might be made as practicable and that inexperienced commanding officers might have sooner realized the seriousness of their situations.”9
Ultimately, the court held Halsey accountable for “mistakes, errors and faults,” but then backpedaled and classified such as “errors in judgment under stress of war operations and not as offenses.” The court then went on to recommend impressing on all commanders the adverse weather likely to be found in the Western Pacific and urged the navy to upgrade its weather operations with special weather ships and increased reconnaissance planes staffed by qualified weather observers.10
Nimitz approved the court’s opinion, but in his endorsement he got Halsey off the hook a bit further. Noting that the court was of the “firm opinion that no question of negligence is involved,” Nimitz affirmed that not only were Halsey’s errors in judgment “committed under stress of war operations,” but also that they stemmed “from a commendable desire to meet military commitments”—supporting MacArthur.11
When Nimitz allowed himself some measure of criticism, it was limited to a general indictment of the reliance on new technologies over raw seamanship in a memo titled “Damage of Typhoon, Lessons of,” which he sent to the entire Pacific Fleet. Perhaps remembering his own experience with a typhoon aboard the Decatur in his early years, Nimitz found general fault with captains and aerologists alike who placed too much reliance on radio reports and other outside sources for warnings of dangerous weather. It might well be necessary, Nimitz lectured the fleet, “for a revival of the age-old habits of self-reliance and caution in regard to the hazard from storms, and for officers in all echelons of command to take their personal responsibilities in this respect more seriously.”12 No one, of course, should have been more aware of that level of innate seamanship than Bill Halsey.
King concurred in Nimitz’s opinion but softened its indictment of Halsey even more by adding “resulting from insufficient information” after “errors of judgment” and changing Nimitz’s “commendable desire” to “firm determination.”13 It was too late in the war to jettison one of the navy’s biggest heroes. Nimitz knew it, King knew it, and doubtless Leahy and FDR knew it. But on a gut level, perhaps Halsey, too, knew that he had been saved. In the end, Halsey, who was so loquacious about so many things, never mentioned the court of inquiry in his memoirs.
While Bill Halsey was battling Pacific typhoons, a whirlwind of a different sort was coming to a climax in Washington. For several years, there had been discussions about creating a five-star rank above that of the four stars of a full general in the army and a full admiral in the navy. King, in particular, was in the vanguard of those urging the new rank, while George Marshall, typically, was far more reticent about the matter.
Some of the reasons for the higher rank were indeed related to ego, but there were also practical issues. In dealing with the British chiefs of staff, the Americans always came up one star short against the five stars of a field marshal, air marshal, or admiral of
the fleet. Aside from such tradition-bound circumstances as whose plane should land first or whose flag should be flown during joint exercises, there was the general perception that somehow members of the American military were not quite equal to their British counterparts, a perception that became even more important when a bevy of Russian field marshals was added to the mix.
But it is also true that on the American side, the ranks of general officers were swelling, and four stars was not the apex it had once been. In the navy, for example, there had been only four prewar slots authorized for four-star rank. At the time of Pearl Harbor, the CNO and the commanders in chief of the Pacific, Atlantic, and Asiatic Fleets wore these stars. (The four-star rank of the Asiatic Fleet commander was more a matter of parity with the other fleet commanders—American and otherwise—than a reflection of the size of the fleet.)
When the Asiatic Fleet was disbanded early in 1942, the four slots were filled by King as COMINCH, Nimitz as CINCPAC, Royal Ingersoll as commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet, and Harold Stark, who managed to keep his rank when sent to London despite no longer being CNO. By that July, Roosevelt had accorded four stars to Leahy upon his return to active duty, and largely through the good graces of Congressman Carl Vinson, Halsey received four stars after his successful efforts in the Solomons. At the same time, Eisenhower was promoted to four-star rank in the army behind only Marshall and MacArthur.
King wasn’t opposed to these promotions, but he wanted a formal policy of advancement and a clear path above four-star rank. King’s own suggestions of the higher ranks of “Arch-Admiral” and “Arch-General” fell on deaf ears. Secretary of the Navy Knox, usually King’s champion, agreed with King on “the idea of an increase of rank for you and Marshall” but thought “Arch-Admiral” sounded “too much like a church designation.”14
Leahy claimed that Roosevelt first mentioned his promotion to five-star rank early in January 1944 by saying, “Bill, I’m going to promote you to a higher rank.” Gracious Leahy expressed surprise and told FDR that “the other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who were working for him exactly as I was were entitled to the same reward as he proposed to give me.”15
Considerable debate in Congress followed over nomenclature and the number of authorized slots. In the end, the British equivalents of “admiral of the fleet” and “field marshal” were also discarded for the more uniquely American “fleet admiral” and “general of the army.” When Congress finally passed the legislation on December 14, 1944, it authorized four officers of five-star grade in the active rolls of each service at any one time. And, significantly, the legislation provided that the president’s authority to make such appointments and the grades themselves would terminate six months after the cessation of the current hostilities.16
When these sets of five stars began to fall, it was no surprise that the first to receive them was Bill Leahy. In a military establishment where date of rank determines seniority within grades, there could be no question that Leahy was both FDR’s and the country’s ranking officer. His appointment was dated December 15, 1944, and the other recipients followed, one day after another.
With Leahy and the navy taking top billing, there was also no question—in Roosevelt’s mind, at least—that George Marshall would become the first five-star general of the army. Whatever glories others had found on far-flung battlefields or nurtured in the public’s perception of them, they all owed the organization and the resources that made their efforts possible to Marshall’s leadership.
King’s promotion to fleet admiral was dated December 17, 1944, making him third on the five-star list. For someone who had once worried about approaching retirement age before achieving his goal of CNO, it was the epitome of his expectations.
The fourth slot belonged to the army. Even though Dwight Eisenhower had skillfully led supreme Allied commands from Torch to Overlord and was arguably the principal implementer of Germany’s defeat, there was another that Roosevelt felt compelled to put ahead of him. Douglas MacArthur could hardly argue with the choice of Marshall, but politics and public image dictated that he receive five-star rank ahead of his one-time “clerk.” And whatever the realities of MacArthur’s role in the Pacific, in the minds of a great many Americans, he personified the Pacific war effort. Chester Nimitz held much the same position on the navy’s side and became the third fleet admiral on December 19. Eisenhower got his five stars the next day.
Roosevelt might well have stopped there with six—three fleet admirals and three generals of the army. But parity on the American Joint Chiefs, as well as with the British air marshal on the Combined Chiefs of Staff, encouraged the appointment of Army Air Forces Chief of Staff Henry H. “Hap” Arnold to the seventh set of five stars on December 21. (In 1949, with the department of the Air Force now separate from the army, Arnold would be honored as the only “general of the air force” and the only American to hold five-star rank in two military branches.)
Then FDR did pause. No one on the navy side had to be promoted to the fourth fleet admiral slot, but with four five-star generals of the army, the navy was not about to be left out. But who would be accorded the fourth set of five stars as a fleet admiral?
King, who rarely allowed himself to be put in an awkward position, seems to have been forced into just such an uncomfortable spot on this issue. James Forrestal, who had become secretary of the navy following Frank Knox’s death, told King to make a recommendation. King was inclined to pick Raymond Spruance, the only officer in the navy who King felt was his intellectual superior and who had been steadfastly reliable from Midway to the Marianas.
But Congressman Carl Vinson, who as chairman of the Naval Affairs Committee in the House of Representatives since 1931 was the veritable godfather of the navy, remained Bill Halsey’s champion. To slight Vinson in this regard might spell trouble for King, since he had lost his own protector in Frank Knox and would have a rocky relationship with Forrestal. Then there was Halsey’s public persona. He had become “Bull” Halsey, the hard-hitting darling of the press who was seemingly immune from mistakes or too much scrutiny of his military decisions. His reputation had been built on the Marshalls and Wake Island raids of early 1942, when the country desperately needed a hero, and solidified by his gritty talks with war correspondents in the Solomons. Few ever mentioned that when Halsey assumed command of the Third Fleet from Spruance in August 1944, he had not had a sea command in two and a half years—since before Midway—and that the logistics of commanding the Third Fleet could not begin to compare to those of commanding the smaller task forces he had overseen in the earlier hit-and-run raids.
Bill Halsey’s most vehement defense of his actions throughout—whether at Leyte Gulf or in the typhoon—was always that only the man on the spot could truly understand what led him to the decisions he made. Seventy years later, that remains a valid point, and the very fact that those seventy years have done little or nothing to dim Halsey’s reputation in the popular press or among the general public shows how extraordinarily revered he was. Everyone needs heroes, and for the American people and the United States Navy in World War II, Bill Halsey was the hero who personified the effort and the ultimate victory.17
This says something about men making their reputations on the battle line, even if the contributions of those in staff assignments frequently provide the battlers their opportunities—as Spruance readily acknowledged of Nimitz at Midway. Leahy, and to a lesser extent Nimitz, both eschewed the spotlight. Nimitz got more of it because he was more readily accessible to the press and his subordinates. Leahy is usually present in the photos of the major strategic conferences of World War II, but his role—which fit him perfectly—was to give advice and support to only one man, FDR.
King was never shy about promoting his talents, but despite his role as COMINCH, it was Nimitz and his principal deputies who got more press attention. And while King usually held the respect of even his critics, he was simply too aloof and lacked the likability and follow-you-anywh
ere personality that radiated from both Nimitz and Halsey. From Nimitz, it came from studied calm; Halsey’s resulted more from his volcanic “hit ’em again harder” football mentality.
If Marshall and King had agreed on only one thing, it would have been that each of them had their public heroes to nurture and attempt to control: MacArthur for Marshall and Halsey for King. And in the end, it was this recognition of Halsey’s place in the public consciousness that seems to have tipped King from Spruance to Halsey in recommending that fourth set of five stars. Halsey was too much of an institution in the American press to be denied.
Had Spruance been of a similar ilk as Halsey and sought the spotlight rather than shunned it, the result might have been different. As it was, Spruance passed off attempts to be called the hero of Midway by recognizing the staff he had inherited from Halsey and Frank Jack Fletcher’s commanding role.
“It was a tough thing to decide who should be the fourth five-star admiral,” King wrote to Spruance after the war. He had “hoped that the Congress would make a fifth five-star admiral.”18
“The fourth five-star promotion went where it belonged when Bill Halsey got it,” Spruance replied, “and I never had any illusions about Congress ever creating a fifth vacancy.” Then, in a show of the genuine humility and decency that made Raymond Spruance the man he was, he told King, “I have always felt that I was most fortunate in being entrusted with the command of the operations that I had during the war, and their successful outcome was ample reward in itself.”19
Heat-of-battle decisions at Leyte and the typhoon aside, it is difficult to argue that Bill Halsey didn’t deserve the five stars of a fleet admiral, although with King’s procrastination, he didn’t receive them until December 11, 1945. But there is convincing evidence that of the remaining American admirals of World War II, Raymond A. Spruance was no less deserving of five stars than Halsey. Indeed, with the exception of Spruance, it is difficult to imagine another of their contemporaries on the same level as Leahy, King, Nimitz, and Halsey. In 1950, Congress resolved a similar dilemma in the army when it accorded Omar Bradley a fifth set of army five stars, in part for his postwar role. It could have done Spruance similar justice by making a similar provision for the navy.
The Admirals Page 44