The Admirals Read online

  There was also the matter of his base of operations. King had ships protecting the North Atlantic sea approaches to the eastern United States and the soft underbelly of the Caribbean, including the vital Panama Canal. He also had a patrol squadron of four largely obsolete cruisers and five destroyers covering the South Atlantic between Brazil and Africa. King himself had to be close to Washington, as Roosevelt, Knox, and CNO Stark all came to call on him more and more, but he also wanted to be near the action at sea. So King chose Newport, Rhode Island, and the waters of Narragansett Bay, within sight of the Naval War College, as his home port.

  Never one to run at half speed, he found the uncertainty over rules of engagement in the Atlantic as draining as the regular commutes he made to Washington for staff conferences. “Well,” King would grumble, “I’ve got to go down to Washington again to straighten out those dumb bastards once more.”20

  On April 18, 1941, while King was in Washington on one of his visits, he received a call from the White House asking him to meet the president at Hyde Park at three o’clock the following afternoon. The summons itself was somewhat unusual, but it was the “come alone” part of the message that most aroused King’s curiosity. He flew to a small airfield near Poughkeepsie, New York, was met by a car, and then was driven to Hyde Park. There, from behind the wheel of his 1936 Ford Phaeton, specially outfitted with hand levers, FDR motioned King into the passenger seat and drove up the hill to his secluded stone cottage. This would indeed be a very private talk.

  Despite all that Roosevelt had been doing to aid Great Britain, the situation there was grim, and the president was determined to meet face-to-face with Prime Minister Winston Churchill as soon as practical. The meeting had to be conducted with the utmost secrecy, a condition that argued against Washington, D.C., or any other point of easy access. So Roosevelt spread out his charts of the Canadian Maritime Provinces and proposed to meet Churchill at one of the U.S. Navy’s new Lend-Lease bases on the southeastern toe of Newfoundland—if Admiral King could get him there.

  One might imagine that FDR would have felt more comfortable with either Leahy or Halsey in this role. He had, after all, sailed with both of them. But Leahy was in Vichy France and Halsey far off in the Pacific. King, with at least FDR’s acquiescence, was the commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet that would have to orchestrate the ruse.

  The first plan was for Roosevelt to slip east from Ottawa by rail to Gaspé, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence, after attending a conference with Canadian prime minister Mackenzie King. From Gaspé, one of Admiral King’s cruisers would take FDR to Argentia, on Placentia Bay. King left Hyde Park that day sworn to secrecy, but there were potential problems. The rail segment was long and apt to attract attention, and the mid-May date that Roosevelt proposed might find the Gulf of St. Lawrence still clogged with river ice. FDR decided to postpone the trip, and King heard nothing more from him until late July.21

  In the meantime, King shifted his flag from the venerable Texas to the much newer and sleeker cruiser Augusta. This ship had been Chester Nimitz’s prized command, and it was destined to be on the scene of all the great Atlantic Theater campaigns of World War II. After eight years in the Pacific, Augusta had returned to Mare Island Naval Shipyard for a complete overhaul in November 1940. After King urged that the work be expedited, the ship came through the Panama Canal and arrived at King’s disposal in late April 1941.

  Within a few weeks of moving aboard, King’s attention was fixed on Great Britain’s desperate sea chase after the German battleship Bismarck. After exiting the Denmark Strait between Greenland and Iceland, Bismarck and the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen sank the pride of the British fleet, the gigantic battleship Hood, and badly damaged the accompanying battleship Prince of Wales. Churchill warned Roosevelt that these wolves were loose in the North Atlantic and intended a formidable raid against merchant shipping. “Give us the news” of their whereabouts, Churchill pleaded, “and we will finish the job.”22

  King alerted his ships and dispatched long-range patrol planes from Newfoundland to probe the fog-enshrouded seas. Many of their pilots were still fairly green, and there were many close calls with the weather and navigation. None encountered Bismarck, but some aircraft were forced to land at alternate points. One PBY put down before King’s very eyes in Narragansett Bay, despite his order that the planes avoid public scrutiny by not flying over more populated areas.

  “Admiral,” stammered his nervous air officer, “there must be a Narragansett Bay in Newfoundland.”

  “There had better be,” King growled.23

  Swordfish torpedo planes flying off the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal ultimately crippled Bismarck’s steering mechanism to the point that its subsequent wobbly course to a safe port in occupied France was intercepted by other elements of the Royal Navy. The giant battleship was finally sunk after a concerted attack by battleships, carrier-based planes, and torpedo-firing cruisers and destroyers. By now, neither King nor anyone else in the U.S. Navy with any foresight doubted the power of carrier-based aircraft. Still, at the British Admiralty’s request, King put several older American battleships on station in the western Atlantic to guard against a similar outbreak.

  On the day that Bismarck went down, May 27, 1941, President Roosevelt proclaimed an “unlimited national emergency.” The difference between this and FDR’s “limited national emergency,” in place since September 1939, was largely a matter of semantics. The president was slowly bringing the American public around to Bill Leahy’s pessimistic outlook. Certainly, the events that King was charged with orchestrating that summer bespoke an inevitable escalation toward war.

  American forces had already assumed the defense of Greenland. In June, U.S. troops relieved the British garrison in Iceland, freeing up British troops for duties elsewhere and, even more important, providing King’s ships with another port from which to shepherd convoys. While Roosevelt was still reluctant to protect British ships, King was ordered to conduct convoys of American and Icelandic ships from the United States to Iceland and include any ships from friendly neutrals that chose to sail along. Then, on July 25, 1941, King was again summoned to Hyde Park. This time, Roosevelt intended to use the cover of an August vacation aboard the presidential yacht, Potomac, to board the Augusta in secrecy and sail to Argentia to meet Churchill. Barely a week later, on Sunday, August 3, Augusta anchored off City Island at the western end of Long Island Sound. King had not even told its captain the purpose of the trip, but the hurried construction of several ramps that could accommodate a wheelchair offered a strong clue.

  That afternoon, a destroyer came alongside and transferred Chief of Naval Operations Harold Stark and Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall to the Augusta. It was the first time King had more than a passing encounter with Marshall. Major General Henry H. Arnold, chief of the Army Air Corps, and other senior aides from both the army and navy went aboard the nearby cruiser Tuscaloosa at the same time. Tuscaloosa was to accompany Augusta to Newfoundland and serve as a backup in case any calamity befell King’s flagship. Then, the two cruisers, screened by a division of destroyers, got under way and steamed slowly eastward along the northern shore of Long Island to Smithtown Bay, where they anchored for the night.

  Sixty-some miles to the northeast across the waters of Long Island Sound, President Roosevelt departed the submarine base at New London, Connecticut, that same afternoon aboard the Potomac, with all the trappings of a weeklong fishing trip. Potomac leisurely sailed eastward with the Coast Guard cutter Calypso as escort and anchored for the night at Port Judith, Rhode Island. On Monday morning, Roosevelt even managed to put a touch of royalty on his charade at a port call just south of New Bedford, Massachusetts, when he entertained Princess Martha of Norway, who was a regular guest at the White House after Germany’s invasion of Norway.

  By nightfall, the Potomac had made its way to Menemsha Bight, near the western tip of Martha’s Vineyard. There the Augusta and its escorts were waiting, having passed a
cross the waters of Block Island Sound that King knew so well. In the morning, the president, his personal physician, and two military aides came on board. King lost no time in getting under way, while the Potomac, with the presidential flag still flying, carried on its deception. The yacht even transited the Cape Cod Canal with a crew member seated on deck wearing a floppy FDR fishing hat and tossing an occasional wave.

  There was no apparent rush, as Churchill was not due in Argentia until August 9, but King ordered the Augusta and its consorts to 21 and then 22 knots. Radar had recently been installed on the cruisers, and King apparently placed great reliance on it. Despite dense fog off Cape Breton Island and the crowded shipping lanes then hurrying support from the mouth of the St. Lawrence to Great Britain, King maintained his speed. No doubt he meant to show the president a bit of dash, both personally and for the navy as a whole, but one wonders what might have happened had the Augusta encountered a stray merchantman or fishing trawler in the gloom. Early radar was certainly not foolproof.

  The skies were clear, however, on the morning of August 7, when Cape St. Mary loomed above the entrance to Placentia Bay. The destroyers busied themselves with patrol duty, while Augusta and Tuscaloosa anchored in their assigned locations off Ship Harbour. For two days, the Americans waited as the sunny weather gave way to the more typical Newfoundland fog.

  Winston Churchill couldn’t have scripted it better had he tried. For out of the mist, on the morning of August 9, still bearing the scars from its encounter with the Bismarck, the battleship Prince of Wales glided into the harbor, with its crew lining the rails, its band playing, and Churchill standing unmistakably on a wing of the bridge. Those susceptible to historical hyperbole might even claim that it was the moment when the Allies won World War II.

  But in truth, it was only the beginning. Prince of Wales anchored astern of Augusta, and Churchill and his military retinue came aboard to pay their respects. While Roosevelt and Churchill dined privately for lunch, King hosted a luncheon for the assembled staffs. This was an event of some importance because it was the first meeting—however relaxed for the moment—of what would be called the Combined Chiefs of Staff. King was not yet at their level—Admiral Stark still represented the U.S. Navy—but King’s presence at this conference gave him an introduction to his British counterparts, as well as a proximity to Roosevelt, Churchill, and Marshall that would serve him well in wartime conferences to come. Although there would be rancorous debates between the American and British chiefs, First Sea Lord Sir Dudley Pound admitted a few weeks after Argentia that he had “formed a very good opinion of Admiral King.”

  The next day was Sunday, and FDR accepted Churchill’s invitation to attend church services on the quarterdeck of the Prince of Wales. The American destroyer McDougal ferried the president and his party from the Augusta to the British man-of-war, coming alongside in bow-to-stern fashion to better accommodate the president’s transfer via a narrow gangway. King, who had once been called to task for bringing his dinghy alongside a ship in just such a manner, made no comment on this occasion.

  Churchill chose the hymns, which included “Onward, Christian Soldiers” and “O God, Our Help in Ages Past.” This seemed to seal the emotional bonds, and before they parted, Roosevelt and Churchill crafted what came to be called the Atlantic Charter. It enumerated eight common goals, essentially war aims. Given the United States’ official status as a neutral, they had to be couched, in Roosevelt’s words, as “certain common principles in the national policies of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.” Among them were self-determination for all peoples, “the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny,” and the time-honored freedom of the seas.24

  That freedom of the seas was soon to be tested. During the frenzied hunt for the Bismarck the preceding May, a German submarine, U-69, had torpedoed the five-thousand-ton American merchantman Robin Moor in the Atlantic between Brazil and Sierra Leone. The commander of U-69 gave proper warning and permitted the thirty-eight crew members and eight passengers to evacuate into lifeboats before sending the ship to the bottom. But the lifeboats drifted with sparse food and water for five days before serendipitously being rescued.

  The delay in learning of the sinking and the Bismarck story pushed the Robin Moor off the front pages, but Roosevelt was determined that it not set a precedent. Characterizing the sinking as “a warning that the United States may use the high seas of the world only with Nazi consent,” FDR told Congress, “We are not yielding and we do not propose to yield.”25

  Then came the Greer incident. The Greer was a Wickes-class destroyer of World War I vintage assigned to the North Atlantic convoy routes. On September 4, 1941, a British patrol plane signaled the ship that a German U-boat was lurking ten miles ahead. The Greer’s sonar picked up a contact, and the plane dropped four depth charges before departing the scene because of low fuel. But the destroyer kept up a pursuit until the U-boat fired a near-miss torpedo, after which the Greer unleashed a flurry of depth charges. Another torpedo and more depth charges were exchanged before Greer discontinued the engagement.

  Critics thought that the Greer’s captain, Commander George W. Johnson, had been too aggressive, perhaps even provoking the U-boat. But King stood behind him one hundred percent. Don’t worry, King assured Johnson, “As long as I command the Atlantic Fleet, no one is going to nail your tail to the mast because you defended yourself.”26

  In fact, Roosevelt used the encounter to adopt a “shoot on sight” policy against both U-boats and German surface ships in the North Atlantic, but the result was predictable. In October, a torpedo struck the U.S. destroyer Kearny, with the loss of eleven men. Then the oiler Salinas and the destroyer Reuben James were hit. The latter sank, with the loss of many of its crew members, prompting Woody Guthrie to pen a song about the dead sailors asking, “Tell me what were their names.”27

  Part of Guthrie’s angst stemmed from the American public not yet comprehending the full sacrifices that King’s men, and all those in the armed forces, were beginning to make. In typical bureaucratic fashion, the Navy Department hoped that it might compensate and boost morale by awarding medals and commendations. King wasn’t convinced.

  “I suggest that we ‘go slow’ in this matter of making ‘heroes’ out of those people who have, after all, done the jobs they are trained to do,” King told Admiral Stark. “The earlier incidents [Salinas and Kearny] loom large by contrast with peacetime conditions—but can be expected to become commonplace incidents as we get further along.”

  “Personally,” King reiterated to Nimitz, “I do not favor such awards unless the incidents indicate clearly deeds which are ‘above and beyond the call of duty.’ ” Perhaps forgetting that he himself had been the recipient of the Navy Cross largely for transiting the Atlantic during World War I, King hoped “there will be no repetition of certain awards made during the last war where people were, in effect, decorated when they lost their ships.” King, being King, could not help but conclude by volunteering, “I do not consider my opinion as being ‘hard-boiled’—naturally!—merely ‘realistic.’ ”28

  That same November, King noted his sixty-third birthday. But despite appearing in a feature article in Life magazine as “King of the Atlantic,” the admiral was in no mood to celebrate. He now had but one year until retirement, and it looked as though his career would end in this uncomfortable and uncertain time.29

  Meanwhile, the man who was soon to be on a seat as hot as Admiral King’s was Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr. Since the summer of 1940, Halsey had been commander, Aircraft, Battle Force, in charge of the navy’s aircraft carriers in the Pacific. His mission of keeping his carriers battle ready meant that at least one was usually undergoing an overhaul at any time. Perhaps the most significant change that occurred was the installation of radar. Halsey was intrigued by its possibilities and awestruck the first time the Yorktown used its antenna array to locate an opposing war games force “out of sig
ht over the horizon.” With each subsequent improvement in equipment, radar ranges increased farther and farther and vastly expanded the eyes of the fleet.

  By the summer of 1941, Yorktown, Ranger, and the recently commissioned carrier Wasp were deployed with King’s forces in the Atlantic. That left Halsey operating out of Pearl Harbor with Saratoga, Lexington, and Enterprise. Halsey and Admiral Kimmel organized task forces of cruisers and destroyers around the three carriers and made it a general rule that only one task force would be in port at Pearl Harbor at any one time, to better protect the fleet from attack or sabotage.30

  Kimmel and Halsey had good reason to be concerned, but they were hardly alone. War with Germany, if not with Japan as well, had taken on an air of inevitability. Newspapers and magazines of this period were filled with stories of a buildup in American military forces and FDR’s slow but steady gearing up of what later would be called the military-industrial complex.

  Roosevelt had really started the buildup in 1933, when he had diverted a slice of a Depression-era public works bill to the navy for the construction of warships, including Enterprise and Yorktown. In 1934, in part in response to Japan flexing its muscles in China, the Vinson-Trammell Act authorized naval strength to be increased to the maximum limits of existing treaties. By FDR’s 1938 Naval Expansion Act, across-the-board increases of 20 percent boosted tonnages that much further. Finally, the Naval Expansion Acts of June 14 and July 19, 1940—the latter called the Two-Ocean Navy Act—authorized the construction of 7 new battleships, 18 aircraft carriers, 29 cruisers, 115 destroyers, and 42 submarines.