The Admirals Page 7

  Then Nimitz, being Nimitz, posted the usual watches and did the only thing that made sense to him. “On that black night somewhere in the Philippines,” he later recalled, “the advice of my grandfather returned to me: ‘Don’t worry about things over which you have no control.’ So I set up a cot on deck and went to sleep.”12

  Shortly after dawn the next morning, a passing steamer threw the Decatur a line and pulled the ship off the mudflat. That might have been the end of the matter, but regulations dictated that Nimitz report the grounding, which he dutifully did. This set in motion an investigation that relieved him of command of the Decatur and required him to face a court-martial for “culpable inefficiency in the performance of duty.”

  Fortunately for the young ensign, his prior record and performance reviews spoke strongly in his defense. Given those and the inadequacies of the charts for the Batangas area, the charge was reduced to “neglect of duty.” Nimitz was found guilty and sentenced to a public reprimand. But even then, the commander of U.S. naval forces in the Philippines concluded that the mere record of the proceedings was enough evidence of a public reprimand and took no further action.

  About the only scar on Nimitz’s career was the embarrassment of being relieved of command and having to go through the court-martial process. In fact, after three years of continuous service in the Far East, Nimitz was delighted that the end result was that he was ordered home to take a new assignment.

  Ironically, he sailed in a derelict gunboat with three others from the Annapolis class of 1905. Their three-month cruise westward across the Indian Ocean, through the Suez Canal, and across the Atlantic to Boston, with numerous ports of call, resembled more of a postgraduation road trip than any prejudicial recall. The only problem, one of the young ensigns later complained, was they “made the trip in half the time we would like to have taken.”

  But Nimitz was not pleased when he learned of his new assignment. He had requested more duty on battleships. They were the queens of the fleet, and his command experience on the Panay and Decatur would have put him in good stead for higher responsibility. Instead, the ensign who had just run his ship aground was given duty in submarines, although there is no firm evidence that he was thus assigned as any fallout from the Decatur incident.

  Submarines were definitely very low on the navy’s list of duties, and navy brass would have laughed loudly if someone in 1908 had suggested that they would become a major strategic weapon. The positive side of the posting was that on these much smaller vessels, Nimitz was far more likely to gain another command. So Chester Nimitz maintained his usual positive outlook and took the assignment in stride, even though he would later claim that in those days submarines were “a cross between a Jules Verne fantasy and a humpbacked whale.”13

  CHAPTER FIVE

  First Commands

  In 1909 as the U.S. Navy basked in the glories of the Great White Fleet, William D. Leahy reported for duty aboard the armored cruiser California. Since his baptism of fire at the Battle of Santiago eleven years before, Leahy’s career had been typical of promising young officers. He received his commission as an ensign on schedule in 1899 and rotated through duties aboard cruisers and gunboats, achieving his first command on the derelict gunboat Mariveles in the Philippines. Next came a year on the supply ship Glacier, hauling beef from Australia to American troops occupying that archipelago.

  In 1902, Leahy was promoted to lieutenant junior grade (j.g.), and the following year he was assigned to duty on the training ship Pensacola in San Francisco. That year, Leahy later wrote, was “the most pleasant and possibly the most eventful year of my life—interesting from every point of view as San Francisco always is to a sailor—and eventful in that I managed during the year to be married to Louise Tennent Harrington.”

  Louise lived comfortably with her recently widowed mother on the corner of California and Buchanan streets just west of Nob Hill. Her sister, Mary, was engaged to future admiral Albert P. Niblack, an 1882 graduate of Annapolis and one of Leahy’s former officers. Bill was twenty-eight and Louise a few days shy of it when they exchanged vows on February 3, 1904. By then, Leahy had advanced another grade to lieutenant and helped commission the brand-new cruiser Tacoma. Six months later, when Tacoma was ordered to join the Atlantic Fleet, Leahy swapped assignments with an officer on the cruiser Boston in order to remain on the Pacific Coast near Louise, who was expecting.1

  The next two years took Leahy back and forth between San Francisco and Panama on the Boston. Theodore Roosevelt’s vision of the Panama Canal was becoming a reality and the president unabashedly stationed capital ships off both coasts of the isthmus to ensure local political stability and overall American control. Lieutenant Leahy missed the birth of his son in October 1904 but happened to be in the Harrington house in San Francisco when the great earthquake of 1906 struck.

  The twin themes of his irregular diary entries during these years were the need for better training and the growing threat of Japan. Frequently, they were entwined, as when he speculated that Russia’s weakness at Tsushima was a result of poorly trained men. “An untrained man on board a ship in action is of much less value than the space he occupies,” Leahy wrote, “and in view of the growing power of Japan in the Orient where our interests must conflict, it would seem wise to look to the training of our men.”2

  In February 1907, Leahy had the opportunity to confront the issue head-on, reporting to Annapolis for duty as an instructor in science. He got a close look at the crop of prospective junior officers under cultivation, but he seems to have been only too glad to rotate out of the academy staff and continue his own naval education. Aboard the California late in 1909, he would receive a graduate course in command from Captain Henry T. Mayo, one of the emerging navy’s most influential leaders.

  Mayo was a combination of old-school manners and twentieth-century vision. Born in Burlington, Vermont, on the shores of Lake Champlain in 1856, he graduated from Annapolis in 1876, a member of one of those meager post–Civil War classes. Mayo took part in the headline search for the Arctic explorer Adolphus Greely and later supervised the first hydrographic survey of Pearl Harbor, but he missed the glories of the brief Spanish-American War while commanding a gunboat on the West Coast. The officers of Roosevelt’s increased navy recognized Mayo’s potential, however, and after duty aboard the cruiser Albany off Central America, he was promoted to captain and given command of the California.

  Captain Mayo took Leahy back to his early assignment in the forward turret on the Oregon and made him California’s ordnance officer, setting him firmly on course to become one of the navy’s top gunnery experts. Leahy found it a “not altogether agreeable change from navigating officer but a wise one both in view of the experience to be obtained and the insistence of the Captain.”3

  Their first port of call together was Tokyo and the by-now perfunctory audience with Admiral Togo. Unlike Chester Nimitz, who had been impressed with the Japanese admiral, Leahy’s impressions more closely mirrored Bill Halsey’s. Both thought Japanese hospitality had plenty of show but little genuine warmth. Togo, Leahy recorded in his diary, was “a very ordinary looking Jap with all his gold lace and decorations,” but he added that most of the Japanese officers at a large dinner given by the Navy Club “spoke English that one could understand.”4

  Leahy recalled these cruises with Mayo as “perhaps the most valuable and certainly the most agreeable sea duty that I have had.” He saw in Mayo qualities that he would emulate in his own commands. In Mayo, he found “a splendid seaman who was also a considerate gentleman and a very capable Naval officer.”5

  By 1910, Leahy was a lieutenant commander and the gunnery officer for the entire Pacific Squadron aboard its flagship, California. He proved a strong taskmaster but also a realist. “I have so far been unable to correct apparent faults,” the perfectionist Leahy grumbled. “Much could be done by changing some officers that I have neither the rank or influence to reach.”6

  But Leahy was slowl
y becoming exposed to those who did have rank and influence. Mayo was one, but Leahy had also been introduced to William Howard Taft during Taft’s tenure as governor of the Philippines. By the fall of 1911, Taft was well into his only term as president, and Leahy drew the assignment of serving as his temporary naval aide during a four-day visit to San Francisco. With his typical low-key reaction, Leahy confessed, “While it was interesting and instructive to be attached to the President’s personal staff, I do not think a permanent assignment to such duty could be either agreeable or valuable.”7 But when Leahy declined another teaching tour at the Naval Academy and instead jumped at the chance to go to Washington as assistant director of target practice and engineering competitions, little did he know how close this assignment would bring him to a future president.

  Like Bill Leahy, Ernest J. King was also still enamored with battleships. After leaving the cruiser Cincinnati in the Far East, King was almost assigned to a lowly gunboat, but he quickly asked to see the chief of the Bureau of Navigation—essentially the navy’s personnel department—in hopes of getting a better assignment. The chief turned out to be King’s old commanding officer from the battleship Illinois, whose advice about staying aboard King had failed to heed when he sought duty on the Cincinnati.

  “Admiral,” said the aide ushering King into the office, “this is Mr. King, who used to be in the Illinois.”

  “Yes, I remember him.”

  “Mr. King wants to go to sea in a battleship,” the aide continued.

  “That is what I advised him to do some years ago,” replied the admiral with a tweak. He held no grudge, however, and King left the interview with an assignment on the battleship Alabama.8

  But before reporting for duty, there was a matter left over from his days at the Naval Academy. Ensign King was still smitten with Martha Rankin Egerton, and she with him. They were married on October 10, 1905, in the chapel at West Point. West Point? Yes, West Point. Mattie was living there with her sister, Florrie, who was married to army lieutenant Walter D. Smith.

  The newlyweds’ rapture knew no bounds but was short-lived. Mattie, who had been the toast of Annapolis, proved singularly focused on routine family matters and intellectually challenged when it came to other topics. “Dull” was one thing that King never was. His conversations and interests were far-ranging, and his interactions with intelligent and lively people—even if he considered himself more intelligent and lively than anyone else—held sway.

  When the infatuation phase passed and Mattie failed to measure up intellectually, King quickly got bored. This didn’t stop him from fathering six daughters and one son with her, but his physical and intellectual lust quickly began to scan other harbors. Mattie in turn established a home port in Annapolis near her family and friends and continued to raise their brood there while King sailed all over the world.

  There was, however, one aspect of King’s interaction with his new brother-in-law that was to color his future views of the army. King struck up a strong friendship with Smith, who eventually became a brigadier general. Together they read books about Napoleon and his marshals, engaged in long discussions about military tactics, and toured Civil War battlefields. The result was that King, who already was fairly convinced that he knew more about the navy than anyone else, now also became convinced that he was an expert on land warfare and generals as well.9

  One result of King’s growing operational confidence was that when he was assigned to staff duty at the Naval Academy after a year on the Alabama, he didn’t hesitate to put into writing some of his views on shipboard organization—essentially giving division officers more direct command over their men. His contribution to the United States Naval Institute Proceedings won the 1909 prize for best essay and got him noticed as a budding authority on naval management. Recognizing the inherent conservatism of the navy, King nevertheless took the command structure to task for “clinging to things that are old because they are old.”10

  After three years on staff at Annapolis, it was time for King to go to sea again. Seeking a command of his own—even if on smaller ships, as Nimitz had done—he applied for destroyers. But Hugo Osterhaus, whose attention King had first attracted by coming alongside the wrong way as a naval cadet, was now a rear admiral. Recognizing the strong points of King’s sometimes overbearing personality, Osterhaus asked him to serve as his flag secretary, essentially the military equivalent of an executive assistant.

  Some would have jumped at the chance, but characteristically, King carefully reviewed the political ramifications. First, putting in for sea duty always looked good on one’s record. Second, in the still relatively small officer corps, those admirals who were deadwood and a subsequent dead end for their junior officers were readily known. King had already turned down two similar offers because he felt they “would not lead anywhere.” But Osterhaus was clearly different, and admirals who were rising stars usually lifted staff officers with them. King deferred his desire for an independent command and said yes to Osterhaus.

  King spent a year with Osterhaus, who flew his flag from Minnesota as commander of the Third Division of battleships stationed in the Atlantic. When Osterhaus subsequently went to command the Mare Island Naval Shipyard in California, King was assigned to the New Hampshire as its engineering officer. But after a year of that, King proved that he had picked his admirals correctly when Osterhaus was appointed commander in chief, Atlantic Fleet, and asked for King to serve again as his flag secretary. Now, as the gatekeeper of all fleet business flowing in and out of the admiral’s cabin, King would have growing influence and come to know many senior officers.

  Osterhaus came to rely on King’s discretion in handling routine correspondence, and this authority only reinforced King’s self-important ways. There were limits however. Once, when King found himself without a ride back to the flagship, he ordered the admiral’s barge to pick him up across Portsmouth harbor despite the fact that the barge was waiting dockside for Osterhaus. With King aboard, it failed to return on time for the admiral, and King found Osterhaus pacing the dock in a huff. Anyone else would probably have been sent packing, but Osterhaus seems to have genuinely liked most of the arrogance that King brought with him and was content simply to admonish him, “Young man, don’t you dare to change my orders to my own barge!”11

  After this second tour with Osterhaus, King went to the U.S. Naval Engineering Experiment Station at Annapolis as its executive officer in the summer of 1912. For the mechanically minded King, it was almost like being back in the railroad shops in Lorain. He delighted in tinkering with everything from boiler corrosion to the integrity of propeller shafts. He even came in contact with the very beginnings of naval aviation. With a congressional appropriation of $25,000, the navy had ordered two land-based airplanes—a Curtiss and a Wright—and one Curtiss amphibian. Three naval officers were dispatched directly to the factories to learn how to fly them.

  These planes were based at a modest naval aviation camp adjacent to the station, and King watched their performance with fascination. One of the naval aviators was Lieutenant John H. Towers. King captained a torpedo boat to rescue Towers after a mishap in Chesapeake Bay one afternoon and later made his first flight with him. Despite this friendly beginning, these two egotists would be at odds with each other through most of their careers.

  The high-pitched buzzing of these early canvas-covered birdcages seemed quite remote from the thunderous broadsides of 12-inch guns, but a 1912 report of aviation efforts managed to convey both a deference to the past and a bold prediction for the future. “Those who are engaged in the development of aviation for war purposes do not pretend that it is going to revolutionize warfare,” the report reassured the old guard before rushing on to assert, “but it has been fully demonstrated that of two opposing forces, the one which possesses superiority in aerial equipment and skill will surely hold a very great advantage.”12

  In July 1913, after seven years as a lieutenant, King was promoted to lieutenant commander. B
y the following spring, it looked as if there might be a war with Mexico, and King went to Washington to once again press his request for an independent command. The only vessel available was the relatively new oil-burning destroyer Terry, then being held in reserve. King jumped at the chance and joined the ship in Galveston, Texas. Not much came of the Mexican situation as far as the Terry was concerned, but King got his first real taste of command sailing back to Charleston, South Carolina, with the entire Reserve Destroyer Flotilla.

  The commander of the Second Division was F. T. “Kid” Evans, the son of Admiral Robley “Fighting Bob” Evans of Spanish-American War fame. As the destroyers departed Key West, a strong northeaster made for difficult seas, and the Terry struggled to maintain its second position in the column. Evans ordered King to close up, even though the standard distance was three hundred yards. King kept estimating the distance, but Evans finally signaled him to close alongside his leading ship, the Monaghan.

  Terry surged forward to take up that station, and Evans bellowed at King through a megaphone to hold it there. The only appropriate answer—even for the sharp-tongued King—was a prompt “Aye aye, sir!” and it gave him a crash course in destroyer handling. King “told the officer of the watch to keep so close to Monaghan that he would be able to spit from the forecastle to the poop.” It worked, and in about an hour, Evans signaled his approval: “Terry, well done.”13

  The girl that Ensign William F. Halsey, Jr., had been so anxious to see after the Great White Fleet dropped anchor in Hampton Roads was Frances Cooke Grandy, a belle of Norfolk, Virginia, whose family called her “Fanny.” To Bill Halsey, she quickly became just “Fan.” Despite the fact that three of Fan’s first cousins were among Halsey’s friends from his pre-Annapolis year at the University of Virginia, the Grandys were initially skeptical of this Yankee from New Jersey. In part, this was because one of Fan’s uncles had been chief engineer on the Confederate ironclad Merrimac and at least part of her family was still fighting the Civil War.