Chester W. Nimitz
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE COLLECTION
TENSION MANIFESTED ALMOST A PHYSICAL PRESENCE IN FLEET HEADquarters at Pearl Harbor on Oahu in the Hawaiian Islands for the first two days of June 1942. During the past two weeks, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, United States Pacific Fleet (CinCPac), had engineered a drastic redeployment of his striking force in outright defiance, at least initially, of the orders of his superior, Admiral Ernest J. King. Nimitz recalled his three aircraft carriers from the South Pacific, thousands of miles away, to the Central Pacific to battle a massive offensive that he believed the Japanese Combined Fleet was about to unleash against Midway and also the Aleutian Islands well to the north.
Nimitz acted solely on the basis of intelligence estimates derived from incomplete deciphering of Japanese fleet radio messages. They were served up by the very same analysts who, six months before, could not warn Nimitz’s predecessor, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, that Japanese carriers would strike the fleet at Pearl Harbor. The result then was the crippling of the battleship force. The stakes now were much higher.
Until 3 June, Nimitz had to rely on his professional judgment, moral courage, and a great deal of faith that his radio intelligence specialists had indeed predicted the place and time of the Japanese onslaught. Never did he reveal to his anxious staff a glimmer of doubt or worry over one of the more momentous decisions made by any commander during World War II. That morning, however, sighting reports radioed by American search planes confirmed that the enemy appeared to be coming as expected.
Present with the admiral was the fleet intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Edwin T. Layton, who, along with code-breaker Commander Joseph J. Rochefort, had championed the value of radio intelligence. Nimitz flashed to Layton “that brilliant white smile” that “just lights up.”
“This ought to make your heart warm,” Nimitz congratulated Layton. “This will clear up all the doubters now. They just have to see this to know that what I told them is correct.”1
The ensuing Battle of Midway (4–6 June 1942) was one step, albeit perhaps the most important, that led to ultimate total victory over Japan. Pounded by bombs and gutted by fire, four Japanese carriers and a heavy cruiser slipped beneath the waves at the cost of one American carrier, one destroyer, and many brave aviators. The courage, skill, and sacrifice of the Pacific Fleet’s flyers and the Midway defenders, along with the good fortune that is absolutely essential in warfare, completely vindicated Chester Nimitz’s decision to risk an early decisive battle with the Japanese Combined Fleet and regain the initiative in the Pacific.
What sort of man was this admiral who so swiftly reversed the Pacific balance of power? Within the Pacific Fleet and the U.S. Navy as a whole, Nimitz inspired not only great respect for his skill and insight but tremendous affection for his congenial and considerate personality. Lacking bluster and imperiousness, he was the master of consensus and cooperation. In a biographical sketch, one prominent naval historian referred to Nimitz as the “principal Allied naval administrator” in the Pacific, that is, more of a “manager” than a warrior.2 In fact, Nimitz made it look much too easy. His very success in nearly four years of bitter warfare obscured the obstacles that he had to surmount and his quick adaptation to new ways of naval warfare. His avuncular manner concealed a will of steel that he rarely needed to reveal except in times of extreme crisis, such as the spring of 1942 and in the Guadalcanal campaign later that year.
The grandson of German immigrants, Chester William Nimitz was born on 24 February 1885 in Fredericksburg, a small town in South Texas. He grew up in nearby Kerrville, where his parents, far from being well to do, ran a small hotel. Unable to gain an appointment to West Point, Chester successfully competed for a slot at the Naval Academy and, in the summer of 1901, enrolled as a member of the class of 1905.
Befitting the growing strength of the U.S. Navy, Nimitz’s class, nearly twice as large as its predecessors, was the first to exceed 100 midshipmen. Even so, the number of nascent naval officers was small enough for everyone to get acquainted. During Nimitz’s time at Annapolis, he served with all of his future key subordinates in World War II: William F. Halsey (1904); John H. Towers, Robert Lee Ghormley, and Frank Jack Fletcher (1906); Raymond A. Spruance (1907); and Richmond Kelly Turner (1908). In January 1905, Nimitz graduated 7th in his class of 114.
After nearly two years on the battleship Ohio, Nimitz reported in 1907 to the Asiatic Squadron as commander of the small gunboat Panay. That summer, at the age of twenty-two, Ensign Nimitz became skipper of the destroyer Decatur and took her throughout the Philippines and to Southeast Asia. Only one untoward incident marred an otherwise spotless tour of duty. In July 1908, he ran the Decatur aground and survived a charge of “neglect of duty.”3 Thereafter, Nimitz always gave young officers the benefit of the doubt for one mistake, provided they learned, as did he, from their error.
Nimitz returned home in January 1909 to serve, albeit reluctantly, in submarines. Only recently developed and certainly far from reliable, the small, rotund American “pigboats” were considered suitable mainly for harbor defense, and their gasoline engines made them dangerous to operate. Nimitz commanded three submarines in succession and, by September 1911, also led a division. A pioneer of diesel propulsion for submarines, Nimitz in early 1912 became skipper of the E-1 (Skipjack), the first American diesel-powered submarine, and took command of the Atlantic Submarine Flotilla that spring. In later life, he proudly wore the gold dolphin insignia subsequently adopted for officers who qualified in submarines.
Nimitz’s expertise in diesel engines led to study in Germany and the job, as prospective executive officer and chief engineer, of helping to design and install diesels in the fleet oiler Maumee. In early 1917, the Maumee experimented with underway refueling and, in April, provided oil far out at sea for destroyers bound for the War in Europe.4 That summer, Lieutenant Commander Nimitz became an aide to Captain Samuel S. Robison, commander of the Atlantic Fleet submarines. Nimitz spent the balance of World War I on staff duty, but he made the important transition from engineering, which would limit his career opportunities, to command. As his eminent biographer E. B. Potter wrote, Nimitz became “concerned less with machinery than with people, less with construction and maintenance than with organization, and thus he found his true vocation.”5
In 1920, Commander Nimitz erected, virtually from scratch, a submarine base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and took command. He attended the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1922 to study naval strategy, particularly the conduct of a naval war across the vast Pacific to defeat Japan (War Plan Orange). Nimitz also joined in tactical experiments on ship formations to devise something better than the cumbersome columns of ships used in 1916 by the British and German fleets at the Battle of Jutland. He helped to develop the circular formation with capital ships surrounded by concentric circles of screening vessels. In 1923, by a fortunate circumstance, Nimitz joined the staff of then Vice Admiral Robison, commander of the Battle Fleet, which enabled him to test the circular formation at sea. Two years later, Robison became Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet, with Nimitz as his assistant chief of staff and tactical officer. Although the Navy did not take immediately to the circular formation, the fleet was aware of its potential, particularly in connection with carriers, and revived it just prior to World War II, when it really counted.
Captain Nimitz demonstrated his “people” skills when he turned the Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps program at the University of California-Berkeley into an unqualified success. After several administrative posts, he gratefully returned to sea in October 1933 as commanding officer of the heavy cruiser Augusta with the Asiatic Fleet. Her crew reckoned themselves fortunate to have such a competent, yet genial captain. On voyages throughout the Far East, the Augusta became known as one of the finest ships in the Navy.
In 1935, the Navy brass had the opportunity to take the measure of Captain Nimitz when he reported as assistant chief to the Bureau of Navigation (predecessor to the Bureau of Naval Personnel) in Washington, D.C. They liked what they saw and only let him escape that hotbed of politics and red tape for a short interval. In July 1938, newly promoted Rear Admiral Nimitz assumed command of a light cruiser division, but illness forced his immediate relief. That September, he took over Battleship Division One at San Pedro, California, with his flag on the Arizona.6 In January 1939, when most of the U.S. Fleet departed for the Caribbean and Fleet Problem XX, Nimitz was left as senior officer in the Pacific. He conducted gunnery and amphibious exercises, as well as more underway refueling tests, for the first time with heavy ships. In one of his few questionable calls, he recommended the stern-to-bow, rather than what became the standard beam-to-beam, refueling configuration, only to be overruled by Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO).7
Nimitz returned to Washington in June 1939 to run the Bureau of Navigation under the new CNO, Admiral Harold R. Stark. Thus, he became a key player in President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s vast expansion of the Navy to prepare for the war that Roosevelt felt to be inevitable after Europe erupted in conflict. Nimitz’s superb administrative ability and political skills were put sorely to the test as he oversaw programs to acquire and train the greatly increased numbers of personnel required by the Navy. The urgency became more apparent in May 1941 after the President declared an unlimited national emergency. Faced toward Europe, Washington focused on what became an undeclared war with Germany in the North Atlantic, while discounting the growing threat of Japan in the Far East.
When war finally came on 7 December 1941, the principal blow landed neither in the Atlantic nor in the Far East, but where it was least expected, against the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. His reputation permanently scarred by the devastation of his battle line, Admiral Kimmel could no longer effectively exercise command. On 15 December, he offered Stark the names of seven admirals that he recommended to replace him as CinCPac.8 Last on the list was Rear Admiral Chester Nimitz. Kimmel evidently was unaware that, in January 1941, the President had offered Nimitz the same post. Nimitz declined because he felt that he lacked seniority, and the job went to Kimmel. Now in the aftermath of disaster, Nimitz again stood first on the President’s own list. On 16 December, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox informed Nimitz of his promotion to admiral and his new command, then relayed Roosevelt’s valedictory: “Tell Nimitz to get the hell out to Pearl and stay there till the war is won.”9
Kimmel was relieved of command on 17 December by Vice Admiral William S. Pye, the Battle Force commander whose only significant (and correct) decision as caretaker CinCPac was to recall the carriers attempting to reinforce besieged Wake Island, which fell on 23 December. On 31 December, Nimitz assumed command of the Pacific Fleet in a ceremony conducted at Pearl Harbor on the deck of the submarine Grayling. He liked to joke that a submarine was the only vessel that the Japanese left for him there.
Why Nimitz? Of all the senior admirals, he had probably accumulated the least sea duty as a flag officer and had never exercised command in any of the massive fleet problems that so dominated the pre–World War II Navy. Since his stints at the Naval War College and on Robison’s staff during the early 1920s, he had not moved within the inner councils that formulated fleet strategy and doctrine. On the positive side, Nimitz had acquitted himself superbly in all of his duty assignments. The President knew personally from Nimitz’s performance as a bureau chief that he was clear thinking and innovative, an excellent administrator, calm, resolute, and unflappable under pressure. His gracious, cheerful personality seemed just the thing to revive sagging morale in Hawaii. Another possible plus in the President’s mind was that Nimitz, not wedded to any particular faction in the Navy, would approach his daunting task with an open mind.
Perhaps the only concern regarding the new CinCPac was whether he really was a fighter. Only battle would tell the tale. Just appointed Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet (CominCh), imperious Admiral Ernest J. King (whose pugnacity nobody doubted), was evidently unsure of his new subordinate. Deeply distrusting those he thought were political admirals, the “fixers” who supposedly owed their advancement to their proximity to the President, King was not about to keep Nimitz on anything but a short leash.10 As to which of the two admirals was the more aggressive, however, the reader can judge. Throughout the war, their relations, while always correct, certainly were not cordial.
At Pearl Harbor, Nimitz discovered that his principal mobile fleet assets were the three carriers Lexington, Saratoga, and Enterprise, with a total of about 210 aircraft. Each flattop was the nucleus of a task force screened by two or three cruisers and about a half dozen destroyers.11 Nimitz also controlled half of the fifty-odd submarines in the Pacific, with the rest under the Asiatic Fleet. He realized, far sooner than most admirals, that battleships were no longer the cynosure of naval warfare. Japanese carrier airpower, an order of magnitude more powerful than any American had understood, rendered what was left of Kimmel’s proud battle line virtually irrelevant. The old battleships were far too slow to operate with the swift carriers and too poorly protected to face enemy aircraft alone. In January 1942, Nimitz relegated them to escorting convoys between the West Coast and Pearl Harbor in order to free up his cruisers. Later at Coral Sea and Midway, he deliberately kept them far away from the battle.12
Nimitz faced a frustrating situation during the first months of 1942 as he settled in as CinCPac. The disaster at Pearl Harbor and manifest Japanese naval strength prevented the Pacific Fleet from seizing the strategic initiative. Despite public expectations, there could be no dramatic rush westward to stem the tide of conquest in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. Equally unfeasible for the immediate time was the amphibious advance to the Marshall Islands long enshrined in the War Plan Orange studies. King harped on the need to divert enemy strength away from the collapsing Far East, but Nimitz felt that any significant target he could reach would prove too tough for the weak Pacific Fleet. Instead, he had to concentrate on holding Hawaii and Midway because the Japanese Combined Fleet appeared powerful enough to threaten America’s strongholds in the Central Pacific. That left only swift, small-scale raids against outlying bases in the Central Pacific. Even so, they proved difficult to orchestrate. Finally, on 1 February 1942, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey’s Enterprise and Rear Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher’s newly arrived carrier Yorktown raided widely throughout the eastern Marshall and Gilbert Islands and provided a vital boost to American morale.
Within a month of taking command, Nimitz found himself in fundamental strategic disagreement with King, his difficult superior in Washington. In a 30 December 1941 directive, King had stated the obvious need to defend Hawaii and Midway but added that “only in small degree less important [is the] maintenance of communications [from the] West Coast to Australia.”13 That foreshadowed his growing interest in the South and Southwest Pacific that would decisively affect fleet deployment.
Passionately committed to fighting Japan in the Pacific, King battled both his colleagues in Washington and the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) within the constraints of the basic strategic question of Germany first. He feared that the Allies would effectively shut down offensive operations in the Pacific by shifting badly needed resources to the European theater. In January, King arranged with the CCS to set up, under his direct command and not Nimitz’s, the so-called ANZAC Area to control U.S. and Allied naval forces in Australia and New Zealand and waters north of there. He matured plans to build up strength and create new bases in the distant South and Southwest Pacific to halt the enemy advance. That became crucial after 23 January when the Japanese invaded Rabaul on New Britain in the Bismarck Archipelago. From there, they threatened not only eastern New Guinea (and ultimately Australia itself) but also key South Pacific islands on the sea route between the United States, New Zealand, and Australia. Once the Allies could regain the initiative, King intended to launch his first counteroffensive in the South Pacific, rather than the Central Pacific.
Because the Allies lacked the strength to defend the South Pacific, King informed Nimitz that he must provide the requisite forces. Worry about the havoc the Japanese could wreak if they returned in strength to the Central Pacific precipitated vigorous debate at Pearl Harbor: “Are we going to gamble all upon securing Australia as a base of future operations against the enemy and leave our Pacific Area open to attack?”14 In early February, King removed the Lexington, one third of CinCPac’s striking force, from Nimitz’s command and sent her south. Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, the task force commander, noted the lack of suitable friendly harbors in the remote South Pacific. He likened his mission to “jumping off into space.”15 The staff at Pearl Harbor agreed. Nimitz felt reluctant to disperse his meager forces in the South Pacific but slowly recognized its inevitability. On 21 February, the War Plans Section opined that the South Pacific region was “one in which our forces will meet advancing enemy forces, and we may be forced to make the move due to political or ‘desperation strategical’ consideration.”16
King showed he meant business on 24 February when he also detached the Yorktown for the Southwest Pacific. That left Nimitz only the Enterprise, which he had committed to raids on Wake and Marcus Islands in the Central Pacific. (A submarine had torpedoed the Saratoga on 11 January, and Nimitz sent her limping back to the West Coast for repairs). On 19 March, Nimitz learned that King had again appropriated his carriers. In a grandstand play designed to appeal to President Roosevelt, CominCh decreed that, in April, the Enterprise and the new Hornet were to bomb Japan.
For Nimitz, the first three months as CinCPac proved disappointing, relieved only by brief triumph when the carriers fought. To those around him, the ever imperturbable, intensely private admiral managed to conceal his growing frustration, but, on 22 March, he confided to his wife Catherine:
Ever so many people were enthusiastic for me at the start but when things do not move fast enough—they sour on me. I will be lucky to last six months. The public may demand action and results faster than I can produce.17
For most of this period Nimitz exercised little control over his carriers. Quite likely, he felt that King might never give him the latitude to lead his fleet and fight the enemy his own way. He could not know that the next three months would bring him glory.
King’s strategy of projecting American naval power into the South Pacific was brilliant. On 10 March, the Lexington and Yorktown combined at Lae and Salamaua in northern Papua to deal the Imperial Navy its heaviest losses to date.18 That compelled the Japanese to divert significant forces to further their own rather modest offensive plans in that region. Envisioning an enlarged ANZAC Area under his own and not Nimitz’s command, King looked forward to directing his offensive through the South Pacific island chains straight to Rabaul; however, a great obstacle to his grand design appeared in the form of General Douglas MacArthur, just recalled from the Philippines and eager to lead the way back. Suddenly, Nimitz was back in the picture as a counterweight to MacArthur, whom King distrusted intensely. On 4 April, Nimitz learned that the entire Pacific command would soon be reorganized and the ANZAC Area abolished. As Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, he would exercise direct control of the North and Central Pacific Areas and run the South Pacific Area (SoPac) through a subordinate. (Nimitz later nominated and King approved Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley.) MacArthur became Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area (SWPA). King saw to it that the boundary between SoPac and SWPA was blurred so that the Navy could control at least the opening stages of the assault on Rabaul.19
Finally, Nimitz could fight his fleet. Quite providentially, the increasingly efficient radio intelligence in April detected hints of major enemy moves in the Southwest and South Pacific set to begin in late April or early May. Actually, the code breakers had uncovered elements of Japanese plans for an offensive (the MO Operation) using three carriers to capture Port Moresby in Papua and the Solomon Islands. Yet, Nimitz’s analysts thought that Port Moresby would be only the first stage of a wider rampage by as many as six or more enemy flattops against northeastern Australia, New Caledonia, Fiji, and Samoa. That would seriously threaten communications with Australia and delay any Allied offensive in the region.
Nimitz boldly proposed to counter the Japanese South Pacific onslaught by committing all four of his carriers and their three hundred aircraft to battle. Fletcher, with the Yorktown and Lexington, would tackle the first blow in early May against Port Moresby. About two weeks later, Halsey, back from the Tokyo raid with the Enterprise and Hornet, would join Fletcher and take command. Nimitz quickly recognized that, although the bombing of Japan, which went off spectacularly on 18 April, provided good propaganda, it ultimately harmed his strategy because it deprived him of half his carriers when he especially needed them.20
The traditional view is that Nimitz, cued by his superb radio intelligence, simply reacted to the enemy’s moves and, in desperation, threw his forces into the path of the Japanese in the hope of an “incredible victory.” Actually, Nimitz saw the defense of the South Pacific bases as a great opportunity to accomplish what he felt to be his primary mission—the destruction of the Japanese carriers. Since January 1942, the enemy had employed its flattops in the Dutch East Indies or the Indian Ocean, where the Pacific Fleet could not get at them. To Nimitz, the tremendous advantage of reading the enemy’s naval ciphers went far to negate the fact that the Japanese enjoyed interior lines and held the initiative. Mobility and the concentration of forces became the keys to defeating them. Cautiously confident, Nimitz felt: “Because of our superior personnel in resourcefulness and initiative, and the undoubted superiority of much of our equipment, we should be able to accept odds in battle if necessary.”21 King approved the plan to use all four carriers in the South Pacific. Concerned as always with protecting his vital foothold, however, he ordered Nimitz to keep at least two carriers in the South Pacific until further notice.
In the Battle of the Coral Sea (4–8 May 1942), Fletcher fought the first carrier-versus-carrier duel in history.22 It cost the Japanese the light carrier Shoho, damage to the big carrier Shokaku, and such severe aircraft losses that they called off the Port Moresby invasion. Coral Sea became the first Allied strategic victory in the Pacific. Unfortunately, the gallant Lexington succumbed to fires, while the Yorktown ran southward with bomb damage deep in her vitals. Racing down from Pearl Harbor, Halsey’s two flattops reached the South Pacific too late to fight in the first battle.
Nobody expected the Japanese to give up after just one try for Port Moresby. Yet, by 10 May, Rochefort and Layton, Nimitz’s radio intelligence analysts at Pearl Harbor, could find no evidence that strong enemy forces were indeed concentrating in the south. Instead, indications pointed to the Central Pacific as the next Japanese target. That was always the gravest danger to the Pacific Fleet. Rochefort’s code breakers had detected elements of the plan by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the Combined Fleet, to capture Midway in early June and entice the Pacific Fleet into decisive battle.23
In contrast to their colleagues at Pearl Harbor, King’s own intelligence specialists forecast another major enemy South Pacific assault and failed to see the growing danger to Midway and Hawaii. Deeply worried about the threat to his bases and shaken by the loss of the Lexington, King suggested to Nimitz on 12 May that the damaged Yorktown leave her planes (and the Lexington’s) to help defend the South Pacific. His thoughts regarding the Enterprise and Hornet betrayed his fears over the next battle: “In order to preserve our carriers during such an attack on islands it may be better to operate one or more carrier air groups from shore.”24
Restricting the mobility of his carrier striking force was the last thing Nimitz desired, especially now. He needed all of them back in the Central Pacific as soon as possible. Forcefully but tactfully, he tried to warn King that the Japanese were about to descend on Midway and possibly Hawaii. Even so, he took the extraordinary step of using a ruse to contravene King’s direct orders to retain two carriers in the South Pacific until further notice. On 13 May, Nimitz sent an “eyes-only” order telling Halsey to let his carriers be sighted by the Japanese, both to deter the enemy and to give Nimitz the excuse to pull them back. Not waiting for CominCh’s concurrence, Nimitz followed on 15 May with orders for Halsey and Fletcher to return immediately to Pearl Harbor. To King, he explained, “Will watch situation closely and return Halsey to Southward if imminent [enemy] concentration [in] that area is indicated.”25 CinCPac’s faith in the validity of his radio intelligence gave him the courage to shift his carriers three thousand miles to the northeast.
On 17 May, King informed Nimitz of his general agreement with CinCPac’s estimate of Japanese intentions. If he ever knew of Nimitz’s subterfuge regarding Halsey, he never admitted it. Fully realizing the vital necessity of fighting for Midway, King nevertheless feared the possible cost. As Clark G. Reynolds shows, CominCh much preferred a “fleet-in-being” strategy to risking all his forces in one battle.26 King urged Nimitz to: “Chiefly employ strong attrition tactics and not repeat NOT allow our forces to accept such decisive action as would likely to incur heavy losses in our carriers and cruisers.”27
The Pacific Fleet staff situation estimate outlined the problem and suggested the tactics to be followed:
Not only our directive from Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet, but common sense dictates that we cannot now afford to slug it out with the probably superior approaching Japanese forces. We must endeavor to reduce his forces by attrition—submarine attacks, air bombing, attack on isolated units. . . . If attrition is successful the enemy must accept the failure of his venture or risk battle on disadvantageous terms.28
Despite all the pious talk about standing off and inflicting attrition, however, Nimitz knew full well that defending Midway still meant meeting the Combined Fleet in battle, where anything could happen. Expecting to do that without risking significant loss was like jumping into the water and hoping not to get wet. With typical sangfroid, Nimitz summed up his feelings in a 29 May 1942 letter to King: “We are very actively preparing to greet our expected visitors with the kind of reception they deserve, and we will do the best we can with what we have.”29
By 2 June, Nimitz had deployed off Midway all three carriers, including, remarkably, the damaged Yorktown, as well as fifteen submarines. More than 120 aircraft crowded the tiny atoll. This time, the Pacific Fleet enjoyed superior reconnaissance and, because of superb radio intelligence, the priceless advantage of surprise. During the battle on 4 June, both Midway’s airpower and the submarines proved much less effective than anticipated, but the carriers under Fletcher and Rear Admiral Raymond A. Spruance came through splendidly. Himself counting on surprise, Admiral Yamamoto had so contrived his plans that his four carriers, the Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, led the Midway assault, but, in traditional fashion, his battleships were to deliver the coup de grâce to the U.S. Pacific Fleet. After his carriers were ambushed and crushed, however, he could only meekly withdraw the rest of his vast armada.30
Never again would Nimitz exercise such direct personal influence over the course of the Pacific War as he did during the period between 15 April and 15 June 1942. As was said of British Admiral Sir John Jellicoe during World War I, Nimitz literally could win or lose the war in an afternoon. Thereafter, he operated within the tight framework of policy and strategy formulated by the Joint Chiefs and CominCh. His overwhelming victory at Midway completely changed the complexion of the Pacific War. Japan’s initial superiority dwindled to parity at best. Despite the benefits, one wonders if King ever quite forgave Nimitz for putting the fleet in jeopardy at Midway. He certainly allowed his communications bureaucrats, the Washington experts embarrassed when Rochefort and Layton were proved correct about enemy plans for Midway, to supplant their counterparts at Pearl Harbor. Rochefort was cast off, but Nimitz managed to save Layton.31
The way was open for the Allies to assume the initiative in the Pacific. Indeed, shortly after Midway, MacArthur suggested a direct amphibious assault, naturally under his command, against Rabaul. In late June 1942, King stepped in and secured the approval from the Joint Chiefs to begin his gradual advance to Rabaul via the southern Solomons. Ghormley, the new ComSoPac, assumed direct control of Operation Watchtower. These days, with such massive logistical efforts as Operation Desert Storm, it is hard to imagine how quickly the United States improvised and unleashed its first amphibious offensive of World War II. From 23 June, when King first alerted Nimitz, only forty-five days elapsed until 7 August when Marines stormed ashore on distant Tulagi and Guadalcanal, 3,500 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese responded more violently than either King or Nimitz expected. For the next five months, it became a race between Japan and the Allies to rush more ships, aircraft, and troops to eject the other from Guadalcanal.
Although King conceived the Guadalcanal offensive, Nimitz swiftly became its champion and did everything he could to support SoPac and build morale. A message on 25 August to Ghormley and Fletcher typified Nimitz’s attitude throughout the long campaign: “Realize situation still critical but exchange of damage to date seems to be in our favor.” On 1 September, he urged King: “Let’s give Guadalcanal the wherewithal to live up to its name. Something for the Japs to remember forever.”32 Nimitz’s visit on 30 September to Guadalcanal, a rare inspection by a commander-in-chief in a direct combat zone, provided him invaluable personal insight and ultimately led to the relief of the unfortunate Ghormley on 16 October. Halsey swiftly revitalized SoPac and very likely saved Guadalcanal. Cheered by the sentiments expressed in Halsey’s first personal letter as ComSoPac, Nimitz wrote in the margin: “That is the spirit desired.”33 By December, victory at Guadalcanal was in sight, although the Japanese finally evacuated the island on 8 February 1943.
Like Midway, Guadalcanal provided another watershed of the Pacific War. Thereafter, enjoying increasing superiority in men and material, the Allies went irrevocably on the offensive. After 1942, Nimitz ran a Pacific Fleet whose numbers and combat power seemed to grow in geometric progression, along with the attendant problems in administering such a vast armada. Nimitz’s management skills came to the fore, and Pacific Fleet/Pacific Ocean Areas became probably the most efficient wartime organization of its size and complexity. He put great store in cooperation between different branches of the Navy and Marine Corps and between the services themselves. His treatment of the Army troops under his command was always friendly and fair, and he worked hard to prevent or mitigate interservice disputes.34
Probably Nimitz’s biggest row within the Pacific Fleet was with his naval aviators, personified by Vice Admiral John H. Towers (Naval Aviator No. 3), who became Commander, Air Force, Pacific Fleet, in October 1942. Obviously, carrier airpower had become central to the offensive mission of the Pacific Fleet; with full justification, the air admirals felt that they and not non-aviators should lead carrier task forces. They also campaigned to exclude non-aviators automatically from the top echelons of naval command, however, something that Nimitz would not tolerate. He brokered a series of compromises to see that the aviation viewpoint always would be represented. In 1944, Towers, a superb administrator who hankered for combat command, became Deputy CinCPac. Despite Nimitz’s personal dislike of the ambitious Towers, the two worked together effectively.
Unlike his overbearing and devious neighbor MacArthur, Nimitz did not consider himself a prime initiator of strategy in the Pacific. That role he left to his irascible but astute superior, Admiral King, who hammered out policy with his colleagues on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Once a plan was proposed, however, Nimitz gave it the closest scrutiny and did not hesitate to offer his informed opinion. He encouraged his subordinates to come forward with their ideas and particularly valued the keen insights of Raymond Spruance, one of the victors of Midway and his chief of staff in 1942–43; Captain Forrest P. Sherman, his war plans officer; and Rear Admiral Charles H. McMorris, Spruance’s successor as chief of staff.
By late 1943, two general axes of advance had evolved to project Allied forces through the maze of Pacific strongholds to the vital centers of Japanese power. The first was the southern route, begun by SoPac in the Solomons and SWPA in Papua to capture or, at least, neutralize Rabaul. MacArthur extended it westward along the north coast of New Guinea toward the Philippines, his predominant goal. To his chagrin, he had to depend on Nimitz for the loan of naval support whenever he desired to leap forward.
Rather than get bogged down in the Solomons and New Guinea, King resurrected the traditional Navy concept of a Central Pacific offensive, which Nimitz placed under the command of Spruance, the subordinate whom he most respected and trusted. Fearing the Marshalls might be too strong as yet, Nimitz recommended the Gilbert Islands as the first objective. Spruance swiftly conquered the Gilberts in November 1943, despite suffering great losses at Tarawa. In December, he and the other planners recommended a cautious advance toward Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshalls. However, in one of the rare instances when Nimitz completely overruled his strategic brain trust, he ordered a direct and much earlier assault on Kwajalein. The ease in which Kwajalein fell in February 1944, one of the model amphibious operations of the war, vindicated CinCPac’s judgment.35
Throughout 1944, debate raged among Washington, Pearl Harbor, and Australia as to the precise courses that the two Pacific offensives would take. To King’s exasperation, Nimitz did not follow in lockstep his strategic proposals but kept an open mind and recommended what he thought was best. In early 1944, the way through Truk Atoll in the Carolines to the Philippines looked most attractive to Nimitz as the goal of the Central Pacific drive, but King persuaded him of the value of bypassing Truk and capturing the Marianas, both to threaten Japan directly and to isolate the many enemy-held islands south of there. King’s desire to seize the Marianas coincided, for once, with the wishes of Joint Chiefs rival General Henry H. (“Hap”) Arnold, head of the U.S. Army Air Forces, who needed bases for his huge Boeing B-29 heavy bombers to strike Japan. To Arnold, the Marianas became vital after efforts to base B-29s in China ran into trouble. On 15 June, Admiral Spruance’s Fifth Fleet invaded Saipan and inflicted a devastating defeat on the Japanese fleet in the Battle of the Philippine Sea (19–20 June 1944). The Japanese defeat in the Marianas brought down Premier Hideki Tojo’s government.
King wanted to jump northwest from the Marianas all the way to Formosa (now Taiwan) to cut off Japan from its southern resources and facilitate a foothold on the Chinese mainland. He hoped to substitute Formosa for MacArthur’s long-bruited return to Luzon in the Philippines but lost out in July when the President decided in favor of MacArthur. For his own part, Nimitz had accepted the inevitability of MacArthur’s Philippine crusade and instead urged King to accept a proposal by Spruance to capture two islands on the direct approach to Japan: Iwo Jima in the Bonin Islands and Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands. Nimitz recognized the value of Iwo Jima as a fighter base to support the Army Air Force bombing offensive against Japan, and the capture of Okinawa would open the way for the assault on Kyushu, southernmost of the Japanese home islands. With King’s concurrence, the way to final victory in the Pacific was open.
On 15 October, MacArthur’s forces, supported by most of the Pacific Fleet, landed at Leyte in the Central Philippines. Blurred command responsibilities marred victory in the Battle of Leyte Gulf (24–26 October 1944), the biggest naval engagement in history and the one that finally crushed Japanese sea power. The Japanese responded with kamikaze (suicide) air attacks that presented the gravest threat to the Pacific Fleet since Guadalcanal. MacArthur’s Luzon campaign began on 8 January 1945, and reconquering the vast Philippine archipelago kept him busy for the rest of the war.
In December 1944, Leahy, now chairman of the Joint Chiefs, King, and Nimitz were elevated to the new rank of Admiral of the Fleet (fleet admiral), with five stars like their General of the Army counterparts. To get closer to the action, Nimitz moved his headquarters to Guam in January 1945. Two of the bloodiest campaigns of the war followed shortly thereafter: Iwo Jima (16 February-26 March 1945) and the Okinawa Gunto (24 March-30 June 1945). Parked for months off Okinawa as Lieutenant General Simon B. Buckner’s Tenth Army slowly advanced through the island’s intricate defenses, Spruance’s Fifth Fleet suffered under a blizzard of kamikazes. Worries about his fleet drew an unusually harsh reaction from Nimitz, who told Buckner on 23 April: “I’m losing a ship and a half a day. So if this line isn’t moving within five days, we’ll get someone here to move it so we can all get out from under these stupid air attacks.”36
With the fall of Okinawa, planning proceeded apace for the direct invasion of Japan—Kyushu possibly in late 1945 and Honshu the next year. Nimitz thought (or at least hoped) that invasion would not be necessary. Army heavy bombers from the Marianas were incinerating Japan’s cities and industry. Submarines, carrier strikes, and aerial mines had destroyed her merchant marine. Finally, on 15 August, after the agony of two atomic bombs, Japan sued for peace. On 2 September 1945, Nimitz joined MacArthur on the deck of the battleship Missouri to accept the unconditional surrender of Japan. No single other person did more than Fleet Admiral Nimitz to ensure final victory in the Pacific.
Nimitz had long aspired to become Chief of Naval Operations, which King had held concurrently with his job of CominCh. Now with King’s impending retirement, the way seemed open except for the reluctance of Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, who was wrestling with the question of service unification. Nevertheless, with President Harry S Truman’s support, Nimitz became CNO on 15 December 1945. Originally a supporter of limited unification, mainly because it worked so well in the Pacific Ocean Areas, Nimitz backed off when he realized how the mission and best interests of the Navy would suffer at the hands of an executive who clearly was biased toward either the Army or the new independent Air Force about to be created. Along with Forrestal, who became the first Secretary of Defense in 1947, he tried to mitigate the effects of unification on the Navy. Nimitz defined sea power’s vital role in the postwar age and forcefully denied the claims of the strategic airpower enthusiasts that the Navy should not exercise an offensive capability, either in the air or afloat.37
On 15 December 1947, Nimitz resigned upon completing his two-year term as Chief of Naval Operations. By law, as a fleet admiral, he remained on the active list. After serving with the United Nations as a plebiscite administrator for Kashmir and as a roving goodwill ambassador, he withdrew to private life. He died on 20 February 1966, just four days short of his eighty-first birthday. Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz was the last officer of the United States Navy ever to wear the broad sleeve band and four stripes of his rank. This is fitting because no one will ever command a fleet as large, and, in this author’s opinion, as fine as the Pacific Fleet of 1941–45.
The papers of Fleet Admiral Nimitz are in the Naval Historical Center in Washington, D.C., which also holds, among many other vital documents such as action reports and the “CINCPAC Greybook,” a war diary kept by the War Plans Section on the CinCPac staff. The CinCPac Secret and Confidential Message File 1941–45 is on microfilm in Record Group 38 of the National Archives. Throughout his life, Nimitz hoped to avoid controversy and kept his personal opinions to himself. During World War II, he wrote daily to his wife Catherine, but only a few of these letters have been preserved. He was adamantly opposed to writing a memoir, but did act as an associate editor to a naval history textbook, E. B. Potter, Sea Power (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1960), a role that he took seriously and in which he offered suggestions to ensure proper assessment of the roles played by naval officers in the Pacific. The chapters dealing with World War II were also separately published as The Great Sea War: Story of Naval Action in World War II (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1960).
The best biography of Nimitz and an indispensable source on his life is E. B. Potter’s Nimitz (Annapolis, Md., 1976). Memoirs by close associates of Nimitz include: Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King and Commander Walter Muir Whitehill, Fleet Admiral King: A Naval Record (New York, 1952); Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York, 1947); Rear Admiral Edwin T. Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, “And I Was There,” (New York, 1985); Admiral James O. Richardson, On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor: Memoirs of Admiral J. O. Richardson (Washington, D.C., 1973); and Vice Admiral George C. Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, 2 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1971). Also extremely useful are four biographies of naval officers: Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance (Boston, 1974), and Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston, 1980); E. B. Potter, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, Md., 1985); and Clark G. Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy (Annapolis, Md., 1991). Robert W. Love, Jr., Chiefs of Naval Operations (Annapolis, Md., 1980) offers biographical sketches of the CNOs, including Nimitz.
Literature on World War II in the Pacific is vast, but the starting point is Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, 15 vols. (Boston, 1947–60). Two general histories are John Costello, The Pacific War (New York, 1981), and Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York, 1985). Indispensable for understanding strategy is a once-classified study by Grace Person Hayes, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War against Japan (Annapolis, Md., 1982).
The interpretation given here of Nimitz’s strategy for the Battles of Coral Sea and Midway is based on this author’s book, The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941-June 1942 (Annapolis, Md., 1976). For carrier operations in general in early 1942, see also John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, Md., 1990). The best accounts of the Battle of Midway are Walter Lord’s classic Incredible Victory (New York, 1967) and Robert J. Cressman, ed., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway 4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, Mont., 1990). Richard B. Frank’s Guadalcanal (New York, 1990) is indispensable for that campaign. Among the studies of later campaigns, Thomas J. Cutler’s The Battle of Leyte Gulf, 23–26 October 1944 (New York, 1994) stands out.
1. E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, Md., 1976), 91–92.
2. Clark G. Reynolds, Famous American Admirals (New York, 1978), 238.
3. Potter, Nimitz, 61–62.
4. Thomas Wildenberg, “Chester Nimitz and the Development of Fueling at Sea,” Naval War College Review 46 (Autumn 1993): 52–62.
5. Potter, Nimitz, 130.
6. Paul Stillwell, Battleship Arizona: An Illustrated History (Annapolis, Md., 1991), 198–201.
7. James O. Richardson, On the Treadmill to Pearl Harbor: Memoirs of Admiral J. O. Richardson (Washington, D.C., 1973), 208.
8. Kimmel to Stark, 15 December 1941, cited in Robert J. Cressman, “A Magnificent Fight”: The Battle for Wake Island (Annapolis, Md., 1995), 157.
9. Quoted in Potter, Nimitz, 9.
10. Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Boston, 1980), 197.
11. For the carriers in December 1941, see John B. Lundstrom, The First Team: Pacific Naval Air Combat from Pearl Harbor to Midway (Annapolis, Md., 1990), 47–48.
12. “CINCPAC Greybook,” 21 January 1942, Record Group (RG) 38, National Archives; also, “Estimates of the Situation,” 22 April 1942 and 26 May 1942 contained therein.
13. CominCh to CinCPac, message 301740, December 1941, in “CINCPAC Grey-book,” 121.
14. “Brief Estimate of the Situation,” 5 February 1942, in “CINCPAC Greybook.”
15. Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, “From Sail to Carrier Task Force,” Wilson Brown Papers, Nimitz Library, U.S. Naval Academy, unpublished memoir, 12.
16. “CINCPAC Greybook,” 21 February 1942.
17. Quoted in Potter, Nimitz, 47.
18. Lundstrom, First Team, 122–32.
19. Grace Person Hayes, The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: The War against Japan (Annapolis, Md., 1982), 96–103.
20. John B. Lundstrom, The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy December 1941–June 1942 (Annapolis, Md., 1976), 77–86.
21. “Estimate of the Situation,” 22 April 1942, in “CINCPAC Greybook.”
22. For a detailed account of the Battle of the Coral Sea, see Lundstrom, First Team, 167–282.
23. Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, 137–40.
24. CominCh to CinCPac, Message 121950, May 1942, in “CINCPAC Greybook,” 464.
25. Lundstrom, First South Pacific Campaign, 153–61; CinCPac to CominCh, Message 170407, May 1942, in “CINCPAC Greybook,” 490.
26. Clark G. Reynolds, “The U.S. Fleet-in-Being Strategy of 1942,” The Journal of Military History 58, no. 1 (January 1994): 103–18.
27. CominCh to CinCPac, Message 172200, May 1942, in “CINCPAC Greybook,” 489–90.
28. “Estimate of the Situation,” 26 May 1942, in “CINCPAC Greybook.”
29. Nimitz to King, 29 May 1942, in Correspondence of FADM Nimitz with FADM King, Nimitz Papers, Naval Historical Center (hereafter cited as Nimitz Papers).
30. The best accounts of Midway are in Walter Lord, Incredible Victory (New York, 1976), and Robert J. Cressman, ed., “A Glorious Page in Our History”: The Battle of Midway 4–6 June 1942 (Missoula, Mont., 1990).
31. Edwin T. Layton, with Roger Pineau and John Costello, “And I Was There” (New York, 1985), 464–69.
32. CinCPac to ComSoPac, CTF-61, Message 242125, August 1942, and CinCPac to CominCh, Message 012331, September 1942, both in CINCPAC Secret and Confidential Message File, RG 38, National Archives.
33. Halsey to Nimitz, 31 October 1942, in Correspondence of FADM Nimitz with Commander, South Pacific, Nimitz Papers.
34. For an example, see Harry A. Gailey, “Howlin’ Mad” vs. The Army: Conflict in Command Saipan 1944 (Novato, Calif., 1986), 233–35.
35. Potter, Nimitz, 265–66; George C. Dyer, The Amphibians Came to Conquer: The Story of Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner (Washington, D.C., 1971), 2:738–42.
36. Quoted in Potter, Nimitz, 375.
37. See Jeffrey G. Barlow, Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945–1950 (Washington, D.C., 1994), for a recent account of Nimitz’s role in defending naval aviation.
