Book Review. Manley R. Irwin. Walter R. Borneman s The Admirals, poses a question rarely asked by naval historians.

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1 Book Review Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy and King, the Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea, (Boston: Little, Brown, 2012). Manley R. Irwin Walter R. Borneman s The Admirals, poses a question rarely asked by naval historians. How did four naval officers add a fifth star to their rank as admiral? To answer that query, the author examines the career path of Ernest King, Chester Nimitz, William Halsey and William Leahy. Borneman s research takes him to naval archives, the library of congress, the U.S. Naval War College, oral histories, dissertations, personal diaries supplemented by a compendium of books and articles. Borneman not only reviews each candidate s career, he delves into the content and substance of each officer s decision-making. Consider Ernest J. King. Upon graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy, King served on destroyers, cruisers, battleships. During his tenure, King also resuscitated two sunken submarines. In mid-career, King enrolled at the Navy s Pensacola Air Station and qualified as an aviation observer an award that permitted him to command an aircraft carrier. In the early 30 s, King became Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. In the late 1930 s King s performance in the fleet exercises revealed a flair for tactical ingenuity as well as a reputation as a no nonsense commander. King failed to achieve his ultimate career goal in 1939 when Harold Stark was selected as Chief of Naval Operation (CNO). Instead, King was detailed to the navy s General Board, marking time while awaiting mandatory retirement.

2 The war in Europe intervened. Plucked from the board King was assigned command of the U.S. Fleet, Atlantic, an ocean infested with German U-Boats. Following the Japanese strike at Pearl Harbor, Secretary of the Navy, Frank Knox, flew to Hawaii, inspected the damaged base and returned to Washington, D.C. Knox recommended to President Franklin Roosevelt that King be appointed Commander of the Fleet, U.S. Navy (CINCUS). Within four short months, Ernest King had achieved an unprecedented scope of naval authority and responsibility. In addition to CINCUS King added CNO to his portfolio as well as effective control over the department s shore establishment and bureau system. By June 1942, King participated as member of the joint and combined Chiefs of Staff. Ernest King brought to his position a thorough knowledge of naval tactics, a clarity of strategic vision, a dedication to offensive action. In dealing with colleagues, allies, civilians, cabinet officers, King was direct and blunt. King may not have been loved. But he was respected. In the early days of 1942, King accepted an overarching U.S. commitment to the European Theater of war. His heart and mind, however, remained fixated on the Pacific. By May 1942, King spotting Japan s attempt to isolate Australia. The battle of the Coral Sea blocked Japan s end run. Following the battle of Midway in June, U.S. Pacific Fleet engaged in sporadic raids to keep the Japanese fleet off balance. By late 1943, the productive output of the U.S. industrial sector began to make itself felt. By November of that year, the U.S. commenced an island hopping strategy that, in less than a year, would take the fleet 5,000 miles across the vast reaches of the Pacific. By 1944, the U.S. Fleet supported two amphibious operations, one in the Pacific Marianas, the other across the English Channel. U.S. armed forces anticipated as assault on the

3 Japanese homeland scheduled for October The atomic bomb ended hostilities. If King had had his way, however, he would have preferred to isolate Japan into surrender by imposing a submarine embargo. King had brought the navy along way. In the early months of the war in 1942, he had taken the U.S. navy by the scuff of the neck and shook it unmercifully. By the end of the Pacific war King commanded 3.4 million navy personnel, administered the largest fleet in the world, according the U.S. a global presence, accomplished by a staff of less than 500 officers. King subscribed to one overriding command principle. He determined the what of a mission; his subordinate officers would execute the how. King s management system rippled up and down the navy s hierarchical structure, a protocol, that blended command accountability with subordinate ingenuity. Striking a balance between centralization and decentralization King would have made Alfred P. Sloan, an administrative genius, proud. King merited a fifth star. Following his education at the U.S. Naval Academy, Chester Nimitz s tour of duty included submarines, destroyers, tenders, cruisers. Thoughtful, personable, decisive, resourceful, Nimitz in temperament was almost the opposite of Ernest King. At the time of the Japanese Pearl Harbor attack Nimitz was Chief of the Bureau of Navigation (personnel). President Roosevelt appointed Nimitz to replace Husband Kimmel as Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet. Borneman notes that Nimitz took the train to the west coast on route to the Pacific. He wanted time to ponder his new assignment and responsibility. Apprehensive Kimmel s staff personnel anticipated a thorough house cleaning. Upon arrival at Pearl Harbor, Nimitz reassured the staff that no such purge would take place. He directed his staff to concentrate on the problem at hand.

4 If King formulated overall strategy, Nimitz dealt with the how of that assignment. Following the Coral Sea engagement naval officers contemplated Japan s next move. King s intelligence staff thought the Japanese fleet would move northeast toward Alaska. Nimitz s intelligence staff was convinced that Japan would strike Midway. Nimitz prevailing over a doubting King, ordered his carriers back to Hawaii in preparation for a Midway response. The Midway battle embodied the confusion and fog of war. As U.S. torpedo planes sacrificed themselves, U.S. navy dive bombers sent four Japanese carriers to the ocean bottom. Historians would define the U.S. Midway as a seminal victory. The engagement shredded Japan s premise that the Pacific war would be a short, quick, easy affair. Given Japan s setback the war would be prolonged and lengthy, permitting U.S. industrial output to supply 2 tons of supplies to U.S. personnel compared to 4 pounds to their Japanese opponent. Midway purchased time for that U.S. logistic variable industrial mobilization. Following Tarawa in November 1943, Nimitz proposed an assault at Kwajalein in the Marshalls. His staff discussed and debated the plan. Nimitz quietly ended the meeting by setting a Kwajalein date. After the session, two officers (Turner and Spruance) attempted to reverse Nimitz s plan. Nimitz replied that if they were not interested, he would find someone else who was. His officers fell in-line. Beneath Nimitz s velvet glove resided a fist of steel. As Pacific commander, Nimitz directed an offensive operation that would include a fast carrier task force, army-marine amphibious forces, an island hopping strategy, a floating, mobile supply chain. These elements would confer upon the U.S. a first mover advantage against the Imperial Japanese fleet.

5 Borneman also makes reference to Nimitz s moral courage. After the war, prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials presented their case against Admiral Carl Doenitz, commander of German U-Boats. Nimitz testified that U.S. submarines in the Pacific replicated Doenitz s action in the Atlantic. In so doing, Nimitz saved Doenitz s life. Nimitz s leadership in the Pacific guaranteed him a fifth star. William Halsey distinguished himself on the gridiron while at Annapolis. After graduation Halsey s tour of duty included battleships, torpedo boats, destroyers. Not unlike Ernest King, William Halsey qualified as an air observer. Between the two world wars, fleet exercises convinced Halsey that carrier speed and mobility had dethroned the battleship as the fleet s premier weapon. By1942, the Japanese fleet had sunk the Lexington and Yorktown. Short of carriers, the U.S. Navy turned to Britain s Royal Navy for a carrier loan. In the meantime, Halsey commanded the carrier Hornet in support of James Doolittle s B-25 bombers raid over Tokyo. Halsey also carried out raiding tactics against Japanese islands in the central Pacific. Later, Halsey was put in command of the Pacific southwest. By the fall of 1943 Halsey s tactical judgment appeared somewhat erratic, possible due to the loss of a brilliant staff officer, Miles Browning who possessed a slide rule brain. Halsey also may have been tripped up by an informal command structure. During the Philippines, Halsey s 3 rd fleet, assigned to protect Leyte beaches near the San Bernadino strait, reported to Chester Nimitz; Thomas Kincaid s 7 th fleet, assigned to Surigao strait, reported to Douglas MacArthur. Spotting Japanese carriers racing north, Halsey, thinking Kincaid covered the Leyte beaches, took off in pursuit of Jisaburo Ozawa s carriers. A small U.S. contingent of destroyers

6 and escort carriers protecting the beach unexpectantly found themselves confronted by Takeo Kurita s main battle force. U.S. ships threw themselves into the breech. Kurita, thinking he had run into the main U.S. fleet, elected to withdraw. Halsey, in the meantime, had pursued Ozawa s carriers, devoid of planes. Some historians would refer to Halsey s Ozawa s pursuit as bull s run. William Halsey also had the misfortune of placing his third fleet in the path of two typhoons, one in December 1944 and the other in June, In the latter instance, a navy court of inquiry recommended that Halsey be given a command transfer. Nimitz refused to do so. Although King and Nimitz supported Halsey s candidacy for a fifth star, Halsey enjoyed a more important patron. Congressman Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Naval Affairs committee, enthusiastically backed Halsey s fifth star. William Leahy, a fifth candidate, graduated from the naval academy and served on cruisers, destroyers, battleships. As he moved up the navy s chain of command, Leahy became director of naval gunnery practice, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance. In late 1936 President Roosevelt appointed Leahy as Chief of the Office of Naval Operations. Leahy served in that position until Upon retirement, Leahy recommended that Harold Stark should succeed him as the next CNO. As CNO Leahy labored under Claude Swanson, Secretary of the Navy. Swanson, suffering from pleurisy, was often absent from office. At one time, Swanson was on medical leave for the better part of a year. During that interim, Leahy served as CNO as well as acting navy secretary. Given his access to FDR Leahy s influence was wide and pervasive.

7 President Roosevelt assigned Leahy to serve as U.S. ambassador to Vichy, France. Called back to the country Leahy became the president s representative on the Joint Chiefs of Staff a committee that included King (navy), Marshall (army), and Arnold (air corps). Emerging as the chief planning agency of the U.S. the Joint Chiefs adopted a rule that unanimous decisions only were to be sent to the president. Borneman is particularly impressed by Leahy s stewardship on the Joint Chiefs. Clearly the committee s mandate was challenging, exercising coordination over multiple theaters of action, working in tandem with Britain, monitoring U.S. industrial mobilization, settling interservice jurisdictional disputes. Borneman makes the case that Leahy s administrative skill and advisor merited a fifth star. That judgement invites a review of Leahy s policies. For one thing, Leahy supported the independent status of the navy s bureau system. He apposed any CNO s control over bureau anatomy. In 1933, CNO William Standley sought authority to coordinate bureau silos regarding ship alteration and repair. Leahy took his objection directly to President Roosevelt (as did King). The president backed Leahy. After Roosevelt appointed Frank Knox as Navy Secretary, Knox detected a gap between naval logistics and naval strategy. Knox called in Booze Allen, a management consulting firm. Booz Allen verified decentralization as a structural weakness. Subsequently, Undersecretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, institutionalized a form of bureau coordination. As Ordinance Chief, William Leahy exercised cognizance over Newport s Torpedo Station in Rhode Island. During war the plant turned out a flawed product, discovered, not by ordnance personnel but rather by submarine officers in Hawaii. The diagnosis would consume

8 two precious years. In the meantime, the navy outsourced torpedo production to Pontiac Motor Car Company, American Can Inc. and Westinghouse Inc. At the end of the war congress closed the Newport Station. William Leahy influenced the force make up of the navy s battle line. He advocated the construction of 17 new battleships, to be built in government yards. After Coral Sea and Midway the U.S. completed only nine battleships. The rest, including 48,000 ton battle cruisers, were later cancelled. After the end of the Pacific War, Chester Nimitz, now CNO, redefined the battleship as artillery support for the Marines Corps. William Leahy was not particularly inspired by destroyer escorts as an antisubmarine weapon. When in 1942 German U-Boats roamed the Atlantic and Caribbean sinking U.S. merchant tankers, the U.S. northeast faced an oil shortage. The Navy embarked on a crash program of over 560 destroyer escorts. Leahy remained less than an enthusiastic of carrier aviation. One historian went so far to assert that Leahy regarded naval pilots as overly pampered. When asked by congress why he recommended the construction of so few carriers, Leahy implied that flying boats could engage in reconnaissance and artillery spotting. Nor did Leahy regard interservice command unity as a compelling model. He insisted that cooperative liaison agreement between the army and navy served as a proxy to a more formal structured arrangement. The experience in Pearl Harbor and Leyte Gulf prompted congress to create the Department of Defense in 1947, unifying armed services under one command.

9 In 1938, interservice collaboration tripped over an marine amphibious exercises. The Army s Chief of Staff asked CNO Leahy if infantry units could participate in landing exercises. Leahy responded that infantry presence was unwarranted. Subsequently, the army created an Army Amphibious Engineers as their answer to shore to shore amphibious operations. Over time CNO s War Plan Division had outline an alternative to a fixed base in the Pacific, a mobile base that included tenders, oilers, cargo ships, ammunition ships, distilling ships, floating dry docks. Refueling warships at sea now approached a routine replenishment process. Under Leahy s watch the U.S. Maritime Commission sought to build ten merchant tankers for possible conversion to fleet oilers in the event of a national emergency. Leahy vigorously apposed the proposition. Emory Land, maritime head, convinced Leahy to drop his opposition. During the war, refueling at sea served as a force multiplier. By the end of the war U.S. shipyards had turned out over 800 merchant tankers, some converted to navy oilers, a few to escort carriers. In 1940 the operating range of the fleet stood at 1000 miles. By 1945 oiling at sea extended to 6,000 miles. That Leahy was a bureau advocate can be seen his decision to award a landing craft order to the Norfolk navy yard on grounds that civilian yard employees needed work. Leahy s order occurred despite the objection of the Marine Corps who, after testing a craft design by Andrew Jackson Higgins, deemed the latter craft superior to the bureau design. William Leahy was also unreceptive to the notion that U.S. naval officers could learn anything from executives residing in the nation s industrial sector. The army, concerned by the prospect of industrial mobilization, set up an Industrial War College to acquaint their officers with factory start up costs, production lead times, machine tool conversion, inventory

10 management, employee training program, and education orders. The latter served as a trial run in civilian plant conversion. Although the army college extended invitations to all services officers. William Leahy bridled at the concept of a civilian officer lecturing a naval officer. He much preferred that naval officers attend the U.S. Naval War College at Newport, RI. Finally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff conduct was not without its own difficulties. The committee reported to the president. No staff routing slip included the Secretary of War or Navy. All sessions were secret and confidential, and on occasion production lead time was ignored. When a deadline for the North Africa campaign (Torch) was finally release U.S. factories had to embark on a crash, massive production program. Secrecy from the enemy was one thing; distrust of the War Production Board was not a costly exercise. In 1943, the Joint Chiefs released the number of LST s (Landing Ship Tank) required for operation Overload (Normandy) and southern France. Donald Nelson, War Production Board, questioned the estimate, flew to London and met with British staff planners. They verified the LST shortfall. Nelson ordered an LST production ramp up that delivered a 1000 amphibious ships. Even so, the number of LST s were insufficient to permit a simultaneous Normandy and southern France landing. In reviewing Leahy s candidacy for a fifth star, one is struck by how often his decisions were reversed by subsequent events, whether involving navy administration, battleships, carriers, destroyer escorts, unity of command, industrial mobilization, amphibious operations, naval logistics. One can only conclude that foresight was not Leahy s strong suit. Was there another candidate whose performance merited a fifth star? According to Chester Nimitz, Raymond Spruance was that officer. Spruance s command decision in two key

11 naval engagements were noteworthy. Prior to Midway, Nimitz assigned Spruance to replace Halsey because of the latter s skin ailment. Frank Fletcher was put in tactical command. When Fletcher s ship was disabled he passed tactical command to Spruance. Spruance ordered an air strike against Japanese carriers. Though miscoordinated that decision permitted U.S. dive bombers to sink four Japanese carriers. Having scored a critical blow against his opponent, it would have been tempting to race west and finish off the Japanese main fleet. Instead, Spruance retired east. In so doing, he avoided a battleship trap of unknown consequence. Midway suggested that Spruance knew when to be daring, when to be cautious. Spruance s decision in the battle of the Philippine Sea was equally instructive. Spruance s fleet was assigned to support the Marianas s amphibious operation when he learned of the approach of the Japanese fleet. His carrier commander urged an offensive strike. Spruance, concerned by a Japanese end run, elected to protect the landing beach and assumed a protective stance. Aided by radar, proximity fuses, improved aircraft and carriers, Spruance s planes and fleet destroyed 600 or 92% of Japanese aircraft. Spruance understood that technology had made defense a formidable option. Spruance s performance derived from his experience in interwar fleet exercises. He concluded that a commander should not confuse an opponent s intentions with an opponent s capability. Failing to do so, he suggested, could result in all kinds of tactical mischief. On a final note, Spruance possessed a gift in selecting outstanding subordinate officers. The key was matching personnel to a task at hand. Spruance combined the art of delegation with an unusual sense of timing. The historian Samuel Eliot Morison put the case for Spruance succinctly. Spruance, he said, was one of the greatest admirals in American history. That

12 observation, of course, was after the event. Franklin Roosevelt obviously backed Leahy s 5 th star; Carl Vinson supported Halsey s fifth star. Apparently there were not enough stars to go around. To repeat, Borneman s fascinating and insightful study focuses on who merited an admiral s fifth star in World War II. It is also a narrative of an effective executive. It may be too much to suggest that, as one scholar put it, the navy did not so much win the war, they managed it. If that is only half true, The Admirals qualifies as an essential text for all executives, military, civilian, private sector or public. In short, the Admirals is a tour de force.

13 Manley R. Irwin, Professor Emeritus, Economics, University of New Hampshire, is author of Silent Strategists, Harding, Denby and the U.S. Navy s Trans-Pacific Offensive, World War II, University Press of March, MRIRWIN@unh.edu