It is graduation day at Annapolis—the United States Naval Academy. The year is not important. The date might be in the past, today, or one of many to come. The speaker’s words reverberate across the field, but something more resonates here.
Nearby, the broad estuary of the Severn River meets the waters of Chesapeake Bay. The warm breeze carries with it the scent of tidewater and the squawks of gulls, but there is more here, too, than salty smells and aerial cacophony.
The academy’s motto is simple and direct: Ex Scientia Tridens—“From Knowledge, Sea Power.” From this place has come that and much more.
The tree-lined pathways, the grassy parade grounds, and even the small boats tugging gently at their moorings are heavy with it. The names of the buildings that rise above the banks of the Severn shout it: history and tradition, duty and honor, vision and courage, abound here.
The granite walls of Leahy Hall are the first stop for aspiring midshipmen. King Hall serves thousands of meals daily with a proficiency its no-nonsense namesake would demand. Nimitz Library overlooks College Creek, beyond which the academy cemetery holds the bones of many whose history fills its books. Halsey Field House is a testing ground, the focal point of hard-fought athletic competition.
An office building, a mess hall, a library, and a field house—as varied as the men whose names they bear. Consummate diplomat, opinionated strategist, calculating master of detail, pugnacious fighter—all began their naval careers here within a period of eight years near the opening of the twentieth century.
They are the only four men in American history to hold the five-star rank of fleet admiral. None of them envisioned as they walked these grounds the extent to which their diverse personalities and methods would transform Theodore Roosevelt’s Great White Fleet of their youth into his cousin Franklin’s ultimate weapon of global supremacy.
With a combination of nimble counsel, exasperating ego, studied patience, and street-fighter tactics, William D. Leahy, Ernest J. King, Chester W. Nimitz, and William F. Halsey, Jr., built the modern United States Navy and won World War II on the seas. Each is forever a part of the United States Naval Academy; Annapolis was forever a part of them.
On the graduation field this day, the brigade stands at attention. Another class is about to follow these men, to march into history.
Europe has been at war for more than two years. Amid the mineral spas of Vichy, the American embassy occupies what was previously a doctor’s office. While its accoutrements are sufficient, the tone and fabric of the entire town mirror the sad conditions that have befallen France. Quick to oppose Hitler’s invasion of Poland, France was forced by the German blitzkrieg to accept a humiliating surrender.
The surrender terms—the armistice, the Vichy French prefer to call them—left a provisional government to administer the unoccupied southern third of the country, as well as France’s colonies around the world. The wild card remains what will become of the French fleet, arguably still among the most powerful in the world.
The U.S. ambassador, retired admiral William D. Leahy, appreciates this more than most. He is first and foremost a sailor, but over a forty-year naval career, he has also witnessed the diplomatic side of international power. Admiral Leahy wouldn’t be here if President Franklin D. Roosevelt did not trust his ability to wring every last drop of pro-American support from Vichy’s shadow government.
But Leahy is discouraged. He is used to serving his chief with fidelity, but the last few months have been frustrating. Vichy France is a nation subservient to the Third Reich in all but name. Leahy goes to bed hoping for a recall to Washington—either to impress the French with the seriousness of Roosevelt’s displeasure or simply to allow for his own retirement. Because of the time difference, dawn the next morning will fall upon Vichy twelve hours before it reaches the Central Pacific.
The heavy cruiser USS Augusta is already a storied ship. Four months before, the flagship of the Atlantic Fleet carried President Roosevelt to a secret rendezvous with British prime minister Winston Churchill off the southeast toe of Newfoundland. After a conference that included a Sunday church service featuring the hymn “Onward, Christian Soldiers,” America was not yet at war, but Roosevelt and Churchill were newfound friends.
This particular morning, Augusta steams into the sheltered waters of Narragansett Bay and moors at its buoy off Newport, Rhode Island, the fleet headquarters. From its mast flies the four-star flag of Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet. There is neither war nor peace. American ships are being lost in the North Atlantic, but King’s response is limited by political considerations.
As Augusta rides gently at its buoy, King spends the morning writing a batch of letters. Some are official navy business. Others go to friends in his hometown and Annapolis classmates. His family is another story.
That afternoon, the admiral’s barge ferries him into Newport, where he walks up Church Street past the spire of Trinity Church. As is his custom when in port, he drops by the Newport Reading Room, the town’s most venerable private club, for a glass of sherry. He is still in a pensive mood when he returns to the Augusta and hears its bugler signal the lowering of the colors at sunset. King has always appreciated a sense of history, and in his cabin aboard the darkened ship, he selects a title from his collection of biographies and histories and reads himself to sleep.
The barren limbs on numerous maple, elm, and oak trees along the avenues bespeak the obvious: it is late fall in the nation’s capital. The cherry trees—a 1912 gift from the people of Japan—surrounding the Tidal Basin and the nearly completed Jefferson Memorial are also stark and black in the low-angled December sun. Washington itself is in a state of denial as to its increasing role at the center of a rapidly expanding federal government.
As is usual on a Saturday, Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz is in his office at the Navy Department Building, a massive structure that sprawls almost four blocks along the north side of the Mall. It is the admiral’s turn for a tour of shore duty, and since 1939 he has been chief of the Bureau of Navigation.
Evening brings a respite that Nimitz always embraces—dinner at home with his family. He lives with his wife, Catherine; youngest daughter, Mary; daughter-in-law, Joan; and an eighteen-month-old granddaughter. They occupy an apartment at 2222 Q Street, a block from Rock Creek Park in one direction and the embassies of Massachusetts Avenue in the other. Part of the admiral’s daily ritual is to take Freckles, the family’s cocker spaniel, for his evening walk along a route that takes them past the Japanese embassy.
The two older Nimitz girls, Kate and Nancy, live across the hall. The only member of the family not present is the admiral’s son. A 1936 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, young Chet is halfway around the world, assigned to the submarine Sturgeon operating out of the Philippines.
The weather is not cooperating. Task Force 8, comprising the aircraft carrier Enterprise, three heavy cruisers, and nine destroyers, pounds eastward into heavy seas. On the bridge of the carrier, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., is surprised that the weather is the only thing he is fighting. Halsey has issued orders that Enterprise and its escorts operate under war conditions.
Nine days earlier, his ships left Pearl Harbor for a destination known only to the admiral and his closest aides. Once at sea, Enterprise welcomed its own air squadrons but also took aboard twelve Grumman F4F Wildcat fighters belonging to Marine Fighting Squadron 211. Its commander told his pilots to expect two days of maneuvers, and no one threw more than a shaving kit and a change of Skivvies into his cockpit.
The marine pilots took off from Enterprise for their secret destination in the early dawn of December 4 without incident. Delivery accomplished, Task Force 8 headed back toward Pearl Harbor, not knowing that hundreds of miles to the north a huge Japanese carrier force was roughly paralleling its eastward course.
Halsey planned to dock in Pearl Harbor today, but buffeting winds and waves crack a seam in one of his destroyers and slow refueling operations. The admiral takes it in stride, but his crews are less understanding. A Saturday arrival in Hawaii would salvage a portion of their weekend ashore. Now those off-duty on Enterprise will have to be content to gather on the hangar deck and watch Gary Cooper in Sergeant York. Task Force 8 is rescheduled to enter Pearl Harbor about noon on Sunday, December 7.