The Admirals Read online

  “You always wanted to command the Pacific Fleet,” Catherine responded brightly. “You always thought that would be the height of glory.”

  “Darling,” replied Chester, “the fleet’s at the bottom of the sea. Nobody must know that here, but I’ve got to tell you.”12

  That night, Nimitz also faced his daughters, although they guessed that he was headed for Pearl Harbor even before he could get out the news. Afterward, anticipating that he would have to make some statement to the press, Nimitz took a tablet and wrote in his neat hand, “It is a great responsibility, and I will do my utmost to meet it.”

  He passed the pad around the dining room table for comment, and when it reached Kate, she tore off the page and pocketed it, claiming that she was sure it was history and her father could simply make another copy. He did, but this time it was Chet’s wife, Joan, who snapped it up. Finally, on his third try, he was able to keep his brief but direct statement. Soon it would be Nimitz’s turn to take a train trip.13

  He spent two hectic days turning the Bureau of Navigation over to his successor. On Friday morning, December 19, he paused for a quiet hour with Catherine to attend daughter Mary’s school Christmas pageant. A family lunch followed, and then his flag lieutenant H. Arthur Lamar, arrived with a car and driver to take them to the Navy Department for brief good-byes to Stark and Knox and then to Washington’s Union Station. Knox had offered a plane, but Nimitz pled exhaustion and asked for several relatively calm days on a transcontinental train to study reports and gather his thoughts before descending into the Pearl Harbor cauldron. So the Baltimore and Ohio’s Capitol Limited carried Nimitz and Lamar westward to Chicago later that afternoon.

  Lamar was under strict instructions from all concerned that his primary job was to get the admiral to relax, and he brought along two bottles of Scotch to help with the process. They each had two healthy highballs and ate dinner, and then Nimitz, exhausted, fell into his first good sleep in two weeks.

  Shortly after breakfast the next morning, the Capitol Limited pulled into Chicago, and Lamar hailed a taxi for a quick trip to the Navy Pier so that Nimitz could get an overdue haircut. Afterward, the admiral checked the progress of the Naval Reserve Midshipmen’s School, then renting space in Abbott Hall on Northwestern’s campus. The navy would now need every one of the men. Then Nimitz and Lamar rode to Dearborn Station; boarded the vaunted Chief of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway; and settled into adjoining compartments as the train started its journey westward across the heartland, bound for Los Angeles.

  Lamar poured an afternoon libation, and the admiral began to read the ten pounds of reports on the Pearl Harbor attack. They had been entrusted to Lamar with instructions to show them to Nimitz only west of Chicago, after he had had a day of rest. It was grim business. Perhaps most heartbreaking to Nimitz personally was the photograph of the Arizona, his flagship as commander, Battleship Division One, now resting broken in the mud. Gone were more than a thousand of its crew, including Nimitz’s friend since Annapolis, Rear Admiral Isaac C. Kidd, who had rushed from his flag quarters to the battleship’s signal bridge at the first sounds of the attack.

  Eight battleships, 3 light cruisers, 3 destroyers, and 4 auxiliary craft lay either sunk, capsized, or heavily damaged. Naval aviation had lost 92 planes, including 46 patrol bombers and 5 of Halsey’s incoming planes from the Enterprise mistakenly shot down. (That evening, four of the Enterprise’s F4F Wildcats, returning from searching for the Japanese fleet, were also shot down by friendly fire.) Army air losses were equally staggering: 77 planes destroyed and 128 heavily damaged. Then there was the human toll: 2,403 navy, marine, army, and civilian personnel killed and 1,178 wounded.

  And there was continuing angst all across the Pacific. Japanese aircraft sank the British battleships Prince of Wales and Repulse off Malaya; bombs rained down on Hong Kong, Singapore, and Manila; and Japanese soldiers invaded the Philippines. Guam fell on December 10 (December 9, Washington, D.C., time), but Wake Island fifteen hundred miles closer to Hawaii still held out. A relief force centered on the carrier Saratoga, newly arrived from the West Coast and commanded by Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, was en route to Wake, while Halsey and the Enterprise sailed off Midway in support and as a deterrent to another Japanese attack on Hawaii. The third Pacific carrier, Lexington, was momentarily making a feint toward Jaluit, in the Marshall Islands.

  By the time the Chief thundered over the big bridge across the Mississippi, Nimitz paused to write his daily letter to Catherine, which was his ritual whenever and for however long they were apart. Having made an analysis of the reports, he told her, “my conscience will now permit me to relax,” although he admitted that he found “it difficult to keep on the cheerful side.” He was “convinced that there will be more action in the Pacific than elsewhere for many a day to come” and that “by the time I reach Pearl Harbor, I will be able to meet the requirements of the situation.”

  Four days later, after high winds foiled one takeoff attempt and cost him a day, Nimitz was airborne from San Diego in a Consolidated PB2Y Coronado four-engine flying boat en route across the wide Pacific. It was Christmas Eve, and showing his typical concern for those serving under him, the admiral told Catherine that he greatly regretted taking its pilots and crew away from their families just before Christmas, but he had “no choice on my part.”14

  Leahy heard the news of King’s and Nimitz’s appointments via the BBC in Vichy. “These three admirals all of whom I know intimately,” Leahy wrote in his diary of King, Nimitz, and Thomas C. Hart, who was to remain in command of the dwindling Asiatic Fleet, “are in my opinion the best qualified by experience, talent and temperament of all the flag officers known to me for high sea command in war.”15

  Leahy told FDR much the same thing in a letter the next day. “Given a free choice,” Leahy said, he would have selected exactly those three “as the best.” Of them, he considered “Hart the most reliable, the least likely to make a mistake, [but] as being physically doubtful because of his age.” Leahy may have leaned toward the older Hart, an Annapolis classmate, because of the time-honored academy pecking order, but he was not above admitting to an earlier mistake. “One error of judgment in regard to the selection of a CinC which I made in the past,” Leahy confessed to FDR in reference to his support of Admiral Richardson, “should make me doubtful but one can feel pretty sure of Hart, King and Nimitz.”16

  By then, King had already received his official orders from both Knox and Roosevelt, the latter addressing him on White House stationery: “Sir… you are hereby designated as Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, and will continue the rank of admiral.” Having returned to Newport to wind up matters there, King departed the Augusta permanently for Washington the same day.17

  As previously constituted, CINCUS, now COMINCH, had been a seagoing command. King’s most immediate task was to assemble a fleet staff, land based in Washington, to become his headquarters and support his operational directives as well as his future global travels. Rooms were hastily arranged on the third floor of the Navy Department Building on Constitution Avenue, but subordinates answering the summons to King’s staff found barren offices, void of all but the most basic furniture and an ample collection of dirt.

  Captain Francis S. “Frog” Low, who had first earned King’s respect by standing his ground under the admiral’s berating on the bridge of the Texas, was called from the Atlantic Fleet. Rear Admiral Russell Willson, then superintendent of the Naval Academy and a shipmate of King’s from their days on Hugo Osterhaus’s staff, reluctantly reported to become King’s chief of staff and swallowed his disappointment that he wasn’t given a seagoing command. Summoned as deputy chief of staff was Rear Admiral Richard S. Edwards, lately in command of the submarine base at New London, Connecticut, and another key member of King’s North Atlantic team.

  Edwards arrived in Washington on December 29 and found King “enthroned in the most disreputable office I have ever seen.” King and Willson
were sharing a beat-up desk with a couple of chairs. Edwards and Low “borrowed a broken down table from a friend who was out to lunch and set up shop in a corner of the Admiral’s office… As the headquarters of the greatest navy in the world it fell somewhat short of being impressive.”18

  But while King was assembling a staff, his attention was also required at the White House. Winston Churchill swept into town three days before Christmas, encamped on the second floor of the White House, and showed no inclination to leave until he and his new ally had come to grips with basic strategy. This first of Roosevelt and Churchill’s wartime conferences—counting their Atlantic Charter meeting as occurring while America was technically neutral—also marked the first time King directly participated in strategy sessions at the chiefs-of-staff level. Admiral Stark was also present as chief of naval operations, and there was still some uncertainty over who was the senior American naval officer. This run of meetings between American and British military leaders—officially the First Washington Conference—lasted into January and was code-named Arcadia.

  Churchill was thrilled by the United States’ entry into the war, but he was also concerned lest Japan’s onslaught in the Pacific distract America’s attention from the war against Germany that Great Britain had been fighting for nearly two and a half soul-draining years. The results of Arcadia reassured Churchill that the United States was indeed committed to a strategy of “Germany First” and that Germany’s defeat was the ultimate key to victory over Italy and Japan. What this strategic concept of Germany First meant in tactics in the field was another matter. Figuring that out would occupy a considerable part of King’s attention over the next three years, as well as nag at his responsibilities to float a two-ocean navy and prosecute a global war in the Pacific at the same time.

  Meanwhile, for all the orders from Roosevelt and Knox, King still had not assumed formal command as COMINCH. There is at least anecdotal evidence that he wanted to delay his formal assumption of command until January 1, 1942, “hoping that history would disassociate him with the disastrous events of December 1941.” Certainly, this is just the sort of politically savvy decision making King frequently practiced throughout his forty-year career. As a voracious and opinionated reader of history and biography, King may well have been thinking of history’s verdict, although the exigencies of the moment would seem to have influenced him otherwise.

  King may simply have wanted to get better organized before he hoisted his flag. This was his excuse when Knox repeatedly urged him to set a date late in December. Finally, an exasperated Knox asked King, “Well, what are you waiting for?” and King took command as COMINCH on December 30, 1941.19

  King’s orders to Nimitz were more readily acted upon. Nimitz flew into Pearl Harbor at 7:00 a.m. on Christmas Day 1941. Gunners were still very jumpy, and the admiral’s PB2Y Coronado was met over Molokai by a fighter escort and shepherded into a watery landing near the submarine base east of Battleship Row. Still wearing a civilian suit, Nimitz climbed into a whaleboat for the short trip to the dock and realized that he didn’t dare sit down. The tiny craft was fouled with debris and covered by a thick oily residue inside and out. It was a microcosm of what Nimitz saw when he looked about him. The air wreaked of black oil and burned wood. The usually bright waters of the East Loch were littered with the sources of the smells. Behind him, the capsized hull of the Oklahoma protruded above the water.

  As horrific as the scene was, Nimitz had a pressing question on his mind. “What news of the relief of Wake?” he asked the three officers who met him. It was grim. Under Japanese attack from air and sea, Wake’s defenders had radioed, “Issue in doubt.” Admiral William S. Pye, Kimmel’s temporary replacement, overruled a counterattack and ordered all forces eastward. Rumor had it that when Halsey, aboard Enterprise, heard the news, he cussed a blue streak for half an hour.

  Nimitz remained silent. “When you get back to your office,” he quietly told Kimmel’s chief of staff, “call Washington and report my arrival.” Then, perhaps to himself, he muttered, “This is a terrible sight, seeing all these ships down.” That evening, Nimitz was only too glad to have Christmas dinner with Kimmel and Admiral and Mrs. Pye. Later, he wrote Catherine that the country “must be very, very patient because we are confronted with a most difficult period.”20

  At 10:00 a.m. on Wednesday, December 31, 1941, Nimitz stood on the deck of the submarine Grayling and read his orders assuming command of the Pacific Fleet. Later, Nimitz liked to joke that the Grayling’s deck was the only one in the fleet undamaged and free of debris, but given his years in submarines, it was a fitting choice.

  King’s operational orders to Nimitz were as simple and concise as the geography of the Pacific made executing them overwhelming and complex: first, Nimitz was to secure and hold the communication and supply lines between Midway, Hawaii, and the West Coast; second, he must maintain a similar lifeline between the West Coast and Australia via Samoa, the Fiji Islands, and New Caledonia. Most Americans had never heard of these places, but if the Japanese were allowed a toehold on any of them, they would push a bulge of military influence well eastward into the South Pacific and detour any support for Australia southward around New Zealand—a wildly circuitous route.

  In undertaking these tasks, Nimitz quickly came to the same conclusion as King. This was to be a different kind of war. The days of Commodore Dewey standing on the bridge of his flagship, leading his fleet into battle, and uttering some pithy remark were over. The numbers of men and ships flung across the sprawling Pacific demanded that Nimitz maintain his headquarters at Pearl Harbor, where some measure of central command and control afforded him half a chance of keeping the big picture in mind.

  In looking out across Pearl Harbor from his new CINCPAC offices at the submarine base, Nimitz quickly came to realize that production plants, shipyards, dry docks, support ships, and a host of operations behind the scenes would factor as heavily into winning the war as a night carrier launch or a torpedo fired down the throat at an onrushing destroyer. Other men would get to command the spear point; Nimitz would calmly and diligently manage the arm that held the spear.

  And in examining how he might go about it, he came to a second, prophetic conclusion. Nothing could ever replace the treasure of America’s men and women killed or forever maimed by Japan’s attack, but Nimitz looked around Pearl Harbor and decided that it could have been much worse. On the list of physical casualties, there were three glaring omissions that would prove to be major strategic blunders on the part of the Japanese.

  The American aircraft carriers—albeit a lonely three in number in the Pacific—had escaped unscathed. Equally important, the American submarine base, whose construction Nimitz had supervised twenty years before, was largely untouched. No American submarines were sunk or heavily damaged in the attack. In the opening six months of the war, while America tried to establish a defensive perimeter and searched for both scapegoats and heroes, these carriers and submarines would aggressively counterpunch.

  Nimitz recognized one other oversight by the attacking Japanese. The dry docks, maintenance facilities, and oil storage tanks were generally unscathed. The battleship Pennsylvania had taken some hits as it sat in one of the dry docks, but it was back afloat and headed for the West Coast for repairs by the time Nimitz took command. The maintenance shops hummed with round-the-clock activity repairing damaged ships. But perhaps the greatest asset was the surviving oil tanks. Had 4.5 million barrels of fuel oil been blown up, what was left of the Pacific Fleet would have been forced to limp back to the West Coast and have its operations in the Pacific severely curtailed. That action, not Japan’s sinking of a few aging battleships, would have given Japan the free rein it sought in the South Pacific.

  Japan’s intent had been to cripple the American battleship might that could rapidly disrupt its drive south toward the natural resources it needed in the Netherlands East Indies and Southeast Asia. In that, the Japanese succeeded. But within a year, all but two of those
battleships would be refloated and heading west to seek revenge, even as the very nature of Japan’s attack had proven that their days as strategic weapons were fading.

  The other man who recognized these failings in the Pearl Harbor attack as readily as Chester Nimitz was Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s architect of the attack. His country was flush with victory and his pilots even more so, but Yamamoto understood the industrial might of the United States and feared for Japan’s future. He felt strongly that Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, the leader of the Japanese attack force, should have delivered a final knockout blow. Yamamoto would never forgive Nagumo for following his orders only to the point where King would have demanded that “the initiative of the subordinate” take over.

  In Japan, there would be a continuing controversy about whether Nagumo should have ordered a third attack wave to hit the dry docks, fuel tanks, submarine base, and more—not just striking a blow against the American fleet, but crippling its refuge. No formal actions against him were ever taken, of course, because on the face of it, Japan had won a great victory.21

  On the American side, it was a different story. Frank Knox’s whirlwind tour was just the beginning. The Roberts Commission, chaired by Supreme Court justice Owen J. Roberts and composed of two navy and two army officers, arrived in Honolulu even before Admiral Nimitz. The panel took testimony from 127 witnesses and pored over stacks of documents. Not surprisingly, the most damning words in the commission’s final report were aimed squarely at Kimmel and Short. In view of prior warnings to be on the alert for possible attacks in the Pacific, including the “war warning” of November 27 that Kimmel discussed with Halsey just prior to Halsey’s departure for Wake, the report concluded that it had been a “dereliction of duty” for both Kimmel and Short not to have consulted with each other about the warnings and better coordinated the appropriate defense measures each was undertaking.