William F. Halsey
U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE COLLECTION
FROM THE MOMENT OF HIS BIRTH IN ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY, ON October 30,1882, William Frederick Halsey, Jr.’s life was dominated by the U.S. Navy. Seafaring men dotted the family tree, from Captain John Halsey, who attacked French shipping as an English privateer in Queen Anne’s War (1703–13), to his own father, William Frederick Halsey, who graduated from the Naval Academy in 1873.
Thus, it was hardly any surprise when he decided to apply for admission to the Naval Academy in 1900. What distinguished Halsey was the determination that he exhibited to get there. Because the Navy constantly shuffled his father from post to post, the family had no permanent address, which made it more difficult for Halsey to receive an appointment. Rather than bemoan the fact, he immediately started writing letters to anyone who might help, including one plea directed to President William McKinley.
His grit paid dividends, and Halsey eventually graduated forty-third of the sixty-two students in the class of 1904. Although he did not exactly light up the academic world with his intellect, Halsey’s pugnacious demeanor showed up both in sports, where he played for the football team, and in the social arena, where his friendly nature and zest for life made him a welcome figure.
After graduating from the Academy, Halsey spent most of his early career on board destroyers, where he earned a solid reputation as a commander. Instead of remaining in that area, however, he gravitated toward the newer branch of aviation. Though not the type to analyze any topic in depth—a tendency displayed throughout his career—Halsey inched toward aviation because he instinctively realized its potential. Hunches and gut feelings, not disciplined study, guided him in this and other key moments of his life.
While serving at the Naval Academy in the late 1920s, Halsey learned the rudiments of flying. He successfully completed the aviation observer’s course in the mid-1930s before receiving command of the aircraft carrier Saratoga. By 1940, Halsey had risen to the post that he held when Japan hit Pearl Harbor, Commander, Aircraft, Battle Force, in which he shouldered responsibility for all aircraft carriers and their air groups operating in the Pacific.
Halsey’s World War II service can be split into two distinctive segments, each containing its own flavor and carrying vastly different impacts. It is almost as though two separate Halseys existed, one for the years 1941–43 and the other for 1944–45. Although the latter segment brought controversy and bitterness, Halsey’s words and deeds in the first portion guarantee his place among great naval leaders.
Fortunately for the U.S. Navy, Halsey and his flagship, the carrier Enterprise, were 150 miles out at sea when Japanese bombs poured down on Pearl Harbor. Typically, he immediately veered his unit north in a desperate attempt to locate the enemy and disregarded the fact that the Japanese might be vastly superior in numbers and destructiveness. His instincts told him to chase after the enemy, so he did. Years later, he wrote that no matter what one might say about him, “I have the consolation of knowing that, on the opening day of the war, I did everything in my power to find a fight.”1
Those words—“to find a fight”—characterized Halsey’s temperament over the war’s four years. He was always ready to do battle. That pugnaciousness lifted him to hero status in the war’s early going, then almost plummeted him to villain’s role as the war progressed.
When Halsey guided his task force back to Pearl Harbor and received his first look at the damage, he shook in anger, especially when he saw the battleship Utah, sunk bottom up at her berth—“the berth the Enterprise would have occupied if we had not been delayed.” Gazing at the incredible destruction about him, Halsey muttered, “Before we’re through with ’em, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!”2
This was the first of Halsey’s numerous wartime utterances that solidified his image as the “Bull” and helped to boost morale. In desperate times, people need someone who can look into the future and promise a better day. It does not matter whether or not the person’s statement is true, but only that the words are said by someone in a position of authority and people believe that the person can follow through. Halsey’s words helped the American public to maintain hope.
In the months following Pearl Harbor, Japanese forces overran every Pacific objective, most with ease. Guam and Wake Island fell. Hong Kong was subjugated. In the Philippines, Bataan and Corregidor succumbed. From the ashes of Allied defeat rose the image of a Japanese superman that could not be corraled. Americans began to doubt their nation’s ability to hold off the enemy. They needed someone to turn that attitude around. As the American spirit slumped after each successive blow by the Japanese, Halsey was there to pick it right up with his bold words.
Sooner or later, however, words alone do not suffice. Action, symbolic or real, is needed. In the weeks following Pearl Harbor, Americans began asking why the U.S. Navy had not struck back at the Japanese. Correspondent Robert J. Casey wrote at the time, “We began to feel as the dismal weeks piled up in Honolulu that if the Navy ever got around to do anything in this war we were going to be pleasantly surprised.” Even “Tokyo Rose” taunted the Americans by asking in her propaganda broadcasts from Japan, “Where, oh where, is the United States Navy?”3
Halsey’s February 1942 carrier raids on Kwajalein, Roi, and Jaluit in the Marshalls provided the answer. Although his aircraft did little real damage to Japanese installations, they gave people back home something to point to and thereby reassure themselves that the Navy was indeed guarding the gates. For his role in these raids, Halsey received the Distinguished Service Medal from President Franklin D. Roosevelt and acclaim back home as a fighter.
Halsey added to his luster two months later when his aircraft carriers transported Colonel James H. Doolittle’s sixteen B-25 bombers within 600–700 miles of Japan and launched them on their dramatic bombing raid of Tokyo. Again, little actual damage was done, but the raid electrified disheartened civilians back home and provided a taste of vengeance for Pearl Harbor.
The February air raids and the Doolittle bombing run propelled Halsey to the forefront of American naval commanders in the eyes of Americans eager for a hero. While many naval commanders were embroiled in controversy over military disasters, Halsey reaped headlines for his offensive thrusts against the hated Japanese. Rather than excuses, he delivered aggression.
If America needed a hero, Halsey was the perfect man for the job: he loved the limelight, he carried the ideal nickname of “Bull,” and he preferred to fight first and think later. He seemed made for this phase of the Pacific conflict, a time when bold actions and brash words carried more import than carefully designed plans.
On top of that, he told the public exactly what it was thinking and what it wanted to hear: the world existed only in black and white, good and bad, and the United States represented the good. When he vented, as he frequently did, that “the only good Jap is a Jap who’s been dead six months,”4 millions of heads back home nodded in assent. Mothers and fathers of America’s youth, who would soon be placing their lives on the line to win the war, enthusiastically agreed with Halsey’s words that his main job was to “kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs.”5
Halsey perfected the “sound bite” years before that term came into use. He knew what words the public and his men wanted to hear, and he offered them in short, stirring phrases issued without ambiguity—he would strike at the hated Japanese and restore order to the Pacific. In building this image, however necessary that it was in 1942–43, that Halsey always could be counted on to chase after the enemy, he created a trap into which he would eventually tumble. The public and his men expected him to charge; therefore, he would. But, that would come later. In 1942–43, Halsey filled the hero’s role so sorely demanded. Another Pacific war correspondent, Clark Lee, wrote as much in those dark, early days of the conflict. Halsey “was all the United States Navy needed,” Lee stated. “It needed the confidence that comes with knowledge that you are attacking and not retreating; fighting aggressively instead of defensively.”6
Halsey missed the next two Pacific naval encounters. When the Japanese built up their forces in the Southwest Pacific for a planned invasion of Port Moresby, New Guinea, north of Australia, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet, ordered Halsey to meet with American naval units in the Coral Sea to counter the enemy. Because he had been in the North Pacific with Doolittle, however, Halsey was unable to reach the Coral Sea before the battle, which was the first major clash of opposing aircraft carriers in naval warfare.
If Halsey felt disappointment over missing the Battle of the Coral Sea, that word cannot begin to describe his feelings about his absence during the next contest—the epic carrier duel off Midway Island. After arriving in the South Pacific, he had developed a horrendous skin rash from the combination of heat, humidity, and stress. He resorted to trying oatmeal baths to reduce the itching, but nothing worked. He quickly lost twenty pounds and felt fortunate to get two decent hours of sleep at night. When he returned to Pearl Harbor to be briefed on an upcoming Japanese advance toward Midway, Nimitz sent him into the hospital for treatment.
Still chagrined about the Battle of the Coral Sea, Halsey watched from his hospital bed, where he lay covered with soothing ointment, as Admiral Raymond A. Spruance took the American carriers to sea. In early June, Spruance’s aviators sank four Japanese carriers in a crucial struggle that turned the war in favor of the United States.
Though elated over the victory, Halsey was crushed to have missed the action. His ships, his men, and his aircraft carried the day off Midway while he was on the sidelines. “Instead of being allowed to fight it—and I would have been senior officer present—I was sent to the hospital.” Halsey later labeled this “the most grievous disappointment in my career.” His only consolation came in knowing that much fighting yet lay ahead. Certainly, he would get his crack at Japanese carriers—and when he did, he would be ready.7
Although he had missed out on Midway, Halsey still basked in the adulation of home-front civilians. Fortunately for Halsey’s image, Spruance, who is called the “quiet warrior” by his biographer, Thomas B. Buell, cared little for public acclaim, even though he had won a momentous battle. Some commanders would have eagerly tried to grab a portion of the spotlight from Halsey, but Spruance was content with knowing that he had performed his duty. As a result, Halsey’s star was in no way eclipsed by Spruance’s victory. He remained the fighting admiral, the naval commander whom most people expected to take up the charge.
After a trip to Richmond, Virginia, for further treatment of his dermatitis, Halsey finally left Johnston-Willis Hospital on August 5. Later that month, he gave an illuminating speech at the Naval Academy. He let his fellow Americans know that he was back and raring to fight: “Missing the Battle of Midway has been the greatest disappointment of my life, but I am going back to the Pacific where I intend personally to have a crack at those yellow-bellied sons of bitches and their carriers.”8
It was significant that, not only did he again employ words about the enemy that he knew his countrymen loved to hear, he also referred to its carriers. Those ships would dominate much of his thinking during the next few years.
Halsey flew to Pearl Harbor the next month. On September 22, at an award ceremony on board the damaged Saratoga in Pearl Harbor, Nimitz announced Halsey’s return. “Boys,” he told the assembled crew, “I’ve got a surprise for you. Bill Halsey’s back!” The resultant cheers delighted Halsey, who was just as eager to get back to combat as the men were for him to be there.9
While Halsey was still in the states, U.S. Marines had landed on Tulagi and Guadalcanal, two islands in the Solomon chain northeast of Australia, to block Japanese construction of an airfield from which planes could threaten the vital supply lines from the United States to Australia. Although news of the offensive boosted home-front morale, the operation quickly bogged down in a series of disasters. During the battle of Savo Island, the Japanese sank four Allied heavy cruisers, damaged three other ships, and inflicted one thousand casualties in what became the worst defeat at sea ever suffered by the U.S. Navy. Vice Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, commander of the expeditionary force, withdrew his carriers to the southeast to avoid further loss. Without protection from the carriers, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner, commander of amphibious forces, felt compelled to pull his transports out of Guadalcanal before they had put all of the supplies ashore. As a result, sixteen thousand Marines were stranded on Guadalcanal with inadequate supplies, insufficient naval support, and increasing bitterness. The fighting in the Solomons bogged down to a nip-and-tuck struggle for control of Guadalcanal and its precious airfield site.
Near the end of September, Nimitz flew on an inspection trip to the Nouméa, New Caledonia, headquarters of Rear Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley, Commander, South Pacific Forces. He found a dispirited staff, exhausted commander, indecision, and defeatism. Correspondent Lee interviewed naval officers at this time and concluded that “some of our officers thought only of NOT [capitals are Lee’s] losing more ships, and it was in that mood that we undertook our early operations in the Solomons.” When Nimitz asked General Alexander A. Vandegrift, U.S. Marine commander on Guadalcanal, to list the problems he faced, Vandegrift bluntly replied, “Out here too many commanders have been far too leery about risking their ships.”10
Nimitz decided to relieve Ghormley and name Halsey as his replacement. When Halsey learned of his new post, he exclaimed, “Jesus Christ and General Jackson! This is the hottest potato they ever handed me!”11
The effect, both at home and on the troops ashore, was electrifying. A Marine officer on Guadalcanal gushed, “I’ll never forget it! One minute we were too limp with malaria to crawl out of our foxholes; the next we were running around whooping like kids.”12 A New York Times headline declared, “Shift to Offensive Is Seen in Selection of ‘Fighting’ Admiral Halsey as Commander in the South Pacific.”13
Halsey lived up to expectations. In answer to a reporter’s query about his strategy for Guadalcanal, he characteristically blustered, “Kill Japs, kill Japs, and keep on killing Japs,” precisely the words that the weary Marines longed to hear. He promised Vandegrift that he would immediately send every available ship, supply, and man he could spare. He flew to Guadalcanal for a personal inspection; according to Vandegrift, this was “like a wonderful breath of fresh air.”14
Most important, Halsey’s combativeness permeated the men under him and led to a new spirit. As Time magazine reported in a cover story on Halsey in late November, instead of timorously striking at the Japanese and then pulling back, Halsey’s Navy “came in slugging again and yet again” and tried to live up to Bull’s battle cry of, “Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.” This led to a series of engagements with the enemy that culminated in the momentous Battle of Guadalcanal in mid-November, which caused Japan to abandon its intention of reinforcing the island. Under Halsey’s aggressive guidance, American aviators transformed the skies over the Solomons into a vast battlefield. In a series of determined assaults, they removed one of Japan’s most heralded advantages—its core of expert aviators. Lacking adequate replacement pilots, Japanese airpower rarely posed a significant threat from the spring of 1943 until the introduction of the kamikaze attacks in late 1944.15
Once again, Halsey had been thrust into the limelight as a battler, as the man who, according to Time, “saved Guadalcanal.” When the nation most needed its knight in shining armor, both in words and in deeds, Halsey rode in. Added to his previous exploits, Halsey attained a level of adulation that no other American naval commander could approach. In recognition of his outstanding performance during 1941–42, which alone guarantees that his name will forever reside with those of history’s other great naval commanders, Halsey was promoted to full admiral. Only one nagging aspect plagued the hero—would he get a crack at Japanese carriers?
By the end of 1943, American forces under Halsey had driven the Japanese up the Solomon chain to Bougainville and had begun bombing the immense enemy installations at Rabaul on New Britain. By seizing Bougainville, the Americans acquired airfields to use in keeping Rabaul in check through air attacks, which might preclude the need to take it with a bloody assault. Instead of worrying about what the enemy would do and trying to prevent more territory from falling into Japanese hands, American forces could now switch to the offensive.
For two years, Halsey had stepped to the vanguard and injected boldness and purpose where little had existed. With Allied forces reeling in disaster and people clamoring for action, Halsey had thrown both vitriolic words and daring deeds at the Japanese.
Now, however, the Pacific war was entering a new phase less suited to his talents—an organizational war. American factories were sending a gigantic flow of ships, weapons, and supplies to the Pacific. Instead of desperation tactics that called for throwing at the enemy whatever was available, a planned approach was now required to achieve maximum utilization of hundreds of ships and aircraft. Halsey best loved fighting when his back was to the wall and he could rely on gut instinct. Careful thought and detailed planning were not his forte.
The manner in which the Pacific Fleet was divided illustrates this point. By the first half of 1944, with so much war material flowing out of American factories, the fleet had been divided into three commands designated the Third, Fifth, and Seventh Fleets. As the Seventh Fleet supported General Douglas MacArthur’s offensive operations in the Southwest Pacific, Halsey’s Third Fleet and Spruance’s Fifth Fleet—in effect, the same ships under separate commands—would alternate operations in the Central Pacific drive for maximal employment. While Spruance was at sea with the ships, Halsey would plan his next operation and vice versa.
Although the Pacific war had solidified into a more rigid system, Halsey intended to operate his carriers in the same bold manner as he had during the desperate days of 1942. “I believe in violating the rules,” he boasted. “We violate them every day. We do the unexpected. . . . But, most important, whatever we do—we do fast!”16
This was not the most effective way to command a fleet in 1944. Some officers griped that Halsey’s tendency to act first and think later caused problems, especially when they compared his system to the organized conditions under Spruance. One officer mentioned that, working for Halsey, “you never knew what you were going to do in the next five minutes or how you were going to do it.” Another added, “My feeling was one of confidence when Spruance was there and one of concern when Halsey was there.” Even the Japanese unfavorably compared Halsey to Spruance. Captain Yasuji Watanabe, a staff officer for Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, claimed that Spruance possessed an “air admiral’s best character—strong, straight thinker, not impulsive fluctuating thinker.”17
The situation was more apt to produce mistakes when one remembers Halsey’s intense desire to battle with the enemy, carrier for carrier. Many of his contemporaries and even some subordinates had had their cracks at carrier duels. Halsey, the name that most Americans thought of when the word “fighter” came to mind, wanted his chance before the war ended.
An apparent chance for Halsey brewed east of the Philippine Islands in October 1944, when Halsey’s Third Fleet supported other naval units involved in MacArthur’s landings at Leyte. According to Operation Plan 8–44 from Nimitz’s headquarters, Halsey’s prime duty was to keep enemy air and naval forces away from Vice Admiral Thomas C. Kinkaid’s Seventh Fleet, a conglomeration of more than seven hundred ships that would land MacArthur’s troops and supplies and launch supporting missions from its eighteen small escort carriers.
There was nothing unusual in this setup. Standard assault procedure stipulated that, while one arm of the Navy landed troops and supplies, another arm shielded them from the Japanese. Nimitz, however, added a directive telling Halsey that if the Japanese fleet appeared and Halsey believed he could inflict serious damage to the enemy, “such destruction becomes the primary task” for his ships.18
This extra directive created havoc during a crucial portion of the upcoming battle. Although Nimitz did not intend that Halsey should completely abandon Kinkaid by removing all of his forces to go after the enemy fleet, the directive gave Halsey free rein to do precisely that. A more cautious commander might have juggled the two duties correctly, but, for an impetuous commander such as Halsey, who was eager to take on Japanese carriers, it became a green light to do whatever he thought proper.
As his fleet entered the Philippine operation, Halsey was determined that, should enemy carriers appear, he would go after them. He was courting disaster here because he was inclined to mold events to a predetermined pattern instead of examining them for what they truly were and selecting the best option. Carriers, not the Leyte beachhead, occupied his mind.
Halsey needed prudence off Leyte Gulf that would permit him to be alert for enemy carriers while not forgetting his responsibility to the men and supplies pouring ashore. Prudence, however, did not take him within six hundred miles of Tokyo in early 1942, sweep the enemy out of the Solomons, or dictate the audacious statements that he had issued to a victory-starved nation. Prudence was the last thing on his mind in October 1944.
This is exactly what the Japanese counted on. Their complex plan, called SHO-1, unleashed four separate naval forces on the Philippines. Two arms would steam through Surigao Strait and attack MacArthur’s forces from the south, while a third, the vastly powerful First Striking Force under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, dashed through San Bernardino Strait and struck from the north.
The key to the entire plan, however, rested with the fourth arm—the four aircraft carriers and supporting ships of Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s Northern Force. If Ozawa could lure Halsey’s potent Third Fleet away from the Leyte Gulf area, the other three arms might succeed in disrupting MacArthur’s landing operations. Knowing Halsey’s penchant for aggressive action, the Japanese dangled four aircraft carriers as bait. The carriers contained little offensive capability because American carrier airpower had shorn the Japanese Imperial Navy of its air arm in a series of engagements, most notably the Battle of the Philippine Sea where Spruance, not Halsey, had again commanded U.S. forces. The Japanese hoped that the Americans were unaware of their shortage of aircraft and that the mere appearance of Japanese carriers would lure Halsey north.
The early stages of the encounter, known as the Battle of Leyte Gulf, appeared to swing Halsey’s way when his aviators hammered Kurita’s First Striking Force in the Sibuyan Sea west of Leyte in five air strikes on 24 October. Halsey’s aviators sank the huge battleship Musashi and knocked out of the battle a heavy cruiser, which caused a shaken Kurita to reverse course and temporarily head away from Leyte Gulf. An emboldened Halsey, fresh from tasting an easy victory, was more eager than ever to search for enemy carriers.
That afternoon, he issued directives detailing what the Third Fleet would do if Japanese carriers approached. He first ordered his subordinates to be prepared to form Task Force 34 should it be needed. This force of battleships, cruisers, and destroyers would be left behind to block San Bernardino Strait’s eastern exit and prevent Japanese forces from swooping down on Leyte Gulf. Halsey meant this directive as an alert to his commanders—the force would be formed when the occasion demanded. To ensure that they understood this point, he sent a second message to them via TBS (talk between ship) emphasizing it. Almost every naval commander from the Philippines to Pearl Harbor, including Nimitz and Kinkaid, had intercepted Halsey’s first message about forming Task Force 34, even though it was not intended for anyone other than Halsey’s subordinates. Unfortunately, the other commanders could not pick up Halsey’s second message transmitted over the short-range TBS. They assumed from the intercepted message that Halsey had already formed and placed Task Force 34 off San Bernardino Strait.
Less than two hours after sending his directive, Halsey learned that a force of enemy carriers was approaching from the north. He paid lip service to proper procedure and discussed with his staff whether he should take the Third Fleet away from Leyte Gulf, but, in reality, he had made up his mind long before. Three options faced him: (1) he could remain on station off Leyte Gulf with his entire force, (2) he could leave Task Force 34 behind and attack Ozawa with the rest of his Third Fleet, or (3) he could take everything he had and hit Ozawa with his full might.
Halsey quickly discounted the first two options. Even if Kurita broke through the strait and into Leyte Gulf, Halsey believed that Kinkaid’s escort carriers contained enough strength to deflect him because Kurita had been badly mauled by Halsey’s earlier air strikes. His choice was to take the entire Third Fleet with him and pursue the enemy carriers.
Halsey’s judgment was blinded by his desire to command in a carrier encounter. He saw what he wanted to see, not what was actually unfolding. It had been no secret that the enemy planned to use a decoy sometime soon; however, when two intelligence officers on Halsey’s flagship tried to argue that Halsey was being lured away, no one listened. Halsey and his staff irritated Third Fleet commanders throughout the entire night of October 24–25 by rejecting or ignoring all their advice to leave a unit off San Bernardino Strait.
When so many high-ranking subordinates disagree with their commander’s action, it means that either the commander sees something that none of the other men notice or the commander is making a huge mistake. Halsey fell into the latter category because he wanted a carrier engagement too much. He also had become trapped by his own publicity, cranked out early in the war, that he was the “Bull,” the fighting admiral. Halsey, the leader whom most Americans associated with aggressiveness and carrier airpower, was not about to let this opportunity slip away. Faced with either guarding a static strait or attacking enemy carriers, Halsey never hesitated. He swung north with the entire Third Fleet.
Thus the door to Leyte Gulf lay wide open for Kurita’s potent force. When the Japanese commander barreled down on the unsuspecting escort carriers of Taffy 3, the support force stationed just off Leyte Gulf, Rear Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague, their commander, bellowed in exasperation, “That son-of-a-bitch Halsey has left us bare-assed!” He and Kinkaid then commenced a lengthy series of messages to Halsey that begged him for assistance.19
These pleas angered Halsey, who wondered why Kinkaid’s search planes had not spotted Kurita earlier or why eighteen escort carriers could not hold off a damaged Kurita until help arrived from naval units to the south. His Third Fleet was drawing close to striking range of Ozawa, yet he had to worry about fellow commanders.
“Here I was on the brink of a critical battle, and my kid brother was yelling for help around the corner,” Halsey mentioned later. He had forgotten, however, that protecting his kid brother was precisely his mission.20
Nimitz finally prodded Halsey into turning back to Leyte Gulf by sending a question about the location of Task Force 34. Nimitz hoped that the message would nudge Halsey into sending the task force south, but Halsey misinterpreted its meaning. With padding added to confuse Japanese interceptors, Nimitz’s dispatch read, “Where is RPT where is Task Force Thirty-Four RR the world wonders.” The final three words should have been removed by communicators on the New Jersey, but they were retained in case they were part of Nimitz’s message. When Halsey received the note, he instantly took it as a reprimand and exploded in anger.
“I was stunned as if I had been struck in the face,” Halsey later wrote. “The paper rattled in my hands. I snatched off my cap, threw it on the deck, and shouted something I am ashamed to remember.” His chief of staff finally had to come over, grab Halsey, and remind him to pull himself together. Halsey ordered his ships south, although by now they could do little to help Sprague and Kinkaid because they stood 350 miles away. “I turned my back on the opportunity I had dreamed of since my days as a cadet,” he later mourned.21
Halsey’s heated reaction to Nimitz’s message indicates not only the depth of his desire to command in battle against Japanese carriers but also his guilt, conscious or not, that he placed a higher priority on the carriers than on protecting Leyte Gulf. A clear conscience enables one to react calmly, but Halsey’s bitter reaction underscores his uncertainty over the propriety of turning north.
Because of the stirring defense put up by a courageous Clifton Sprague and Taffy 3, Kurita eventually turned away before entering Leyte Gulf but not before Sprague had lost four ships and hundreds of men. Both Nimitz and Chief of Naval Operations Ernest J. King concluded that Halsey should have guarded San Bernardino Strait, but Nimitz had seen the destructive effects of a Navy controversy earlier in his career, and he stifled public criticism of Halsey. Nimitz wanted to avoid a rift that might split the Navy, and both he and King realized that Halsey was too popular among his own men and with the American public to remove him.
Halsey’s error in the latter part of the war was thus swept under the rug because of his actions during the earlier war years. Halsey could have handled both tasks of guarding the strait and chasing Ozawa by simply leaving one part of his immense force off San Bernardino. While his detached ships destroyed Kurita’s ships piecemeal as they exited the strait, he could have gone after Ozawa with the remainder of his Third Fleet.
As it was, Halsey’s Third Fleet sank Ozawa’s aircraft-shorn carriers at a cost of Taffy 3 lives and ships off Samar. Attacking carriers that were devoid of any airborne punch made little difference to the battle or progress of the war, but, in chasing after them, Halsey almost opened the door to disaster through a monumental error in judgment.
As at Midway, where the spotlight remained fixed on Halsey because the quiet Spruance disdained publicity, the public again acclaimed Halsey after Leyte Gulf because another commander remained silent. Taciturn by nature and carrying a deep affection for the Navy, Sprague would do nothing openly to humiliate his branch of service. He died in 1955 without breaking his silence about the chaos off Leyte Gulf, thereby guaranteeing not only harmony but that Halsey would continue to reap public adulation while his own role received little notice. Even fifty years after the battle, Clifton Sprague’s name is known by few Americans.
An incident at Ulithi in the Palau Islands illustrates not only that Halsey felt deeply indebted to Sprague and Taffy 3 for saving his reputation but that he realized he had erred in leaving the strait wide open. In a letter meant only for his wife’s eyes and not made available to historians until fifty years later, Sprague described a chance meeting with Halsey. Calling Halsey “the gentleman who failed to keep his appointment last October,” Sprague wrote that Halsey walked up to him and said, “I didn’t know whether you would speak to me or not.” When Sprague replied that he bore no anger toward him, Halsey added, “I want you to know I think you wrote the most glorious page in American naval history that day.”22
Unfortunately, Halsey did not add to his luster in the war’s closing months. Twice, his Third Fleet was battered by typhoons that sank three ships, damaged more than forty others, destroyed 250 aircraft, and took the lives of almost eight hundred men—heavier losses than many commanders suffered in battle. Separate courts of inquiry placed the blame on Halsey, who made “errors in judgment under stress of war operations,” and urged that he be relieved, but Nimitz and King, recognizing the damage to morale that might occur should the popular admiral be dismissed, kept him at his post.
After the Japanese surrendered on board Halsey’s flagship in September 1945, the old warrior requested his retirement. Promoted to fleet admiral in December 1945, Halsey officially retired on 1 March 1947. Twelve years later, on 1 August 1959, he died of a heart attack. After his body lay in state in Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., for two days, Halsey was buried with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery on 21 August 1959.
In spite of his spotty 1944–45 record, Halsey deserves his lofty place among naval greats for the dramatic turnaround that he helped to engender in 1942–43. The Navy will always need Halseys, fearless leaders who act aggressively in desperate times and never fail to find a fight.
To achieve a basic understanding of Halsey, one should begin with E. B. Potter’s fine biography, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, Md., 1985), and Halsey’s autobiography, written with J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York, 1947). Whereas the former is an objective portrayal produced by one of the Pacific war’s premier historians, the latter must be read with caution, as Halsey understandably presented his side of every issue, particularly in dealing with Leyte Gulf. Important supplements of these two books are James M. Merrill’s biographical essay of Halsey in Stephen Howarth, ed., Men of War: Great Naval Leaders of World War II (London, 1992), and the splendid material on Pacific naval commanders found in Eric Larrabee’s valuable work, Commander in Chief (New York, 1987).
Halsey’s performances in his various Pacific encounters can be located in numerous places, particularly Samuel Eliot Morison’s volumes dealing with the Pacific in his History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, 15 vols. (Boston, 1947–60). For Halsey’s contribution to the Doolittle raid, James H. Doolittle’s autobiography, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again (New York, 1991), provides fascinating detail.
To receive a critical view of Halsey’s actions at Leyte Gulf, one should consult Gerald E. Wheeler, Kinkaid of the Seventh Fleet (Washington, D.C., 1995); E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis, Md., 1976); and John F. Wukovits, Devotion to Duty: A Biography of Admiral Clifton A. F. Sprague (Annapolis, Md., 1995).
1. William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (New York, 1947), 80.
2. Ibid., 81.
3. Robert J. Casey, Torpedo Junction (New York, 1942), 34; John Toland, But Not in Shame (New York, 1961), 103.
4. Quoted in John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York, 1986), 79.
5. Quoted in ibid., 55.
6. Clark Lee, They Call It Pacific (New York, 1943), 358.
7. Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 106–07.
8. Quoted in E. B. Potter, Bull Halsey (Annapolis, Md., 1985), 150.
9. Ibid., 155.
10. Lee, They Call It Pacific, 324; Vandegrift quoted in Potter, Bull Halsey, 179.
11. Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 109.
12. Quoted in Potter, Bull Halsey, 160.
13. Headline quoted by James M. Merrill in Men of War: Great Naval Leaders of World War II, edited by Stephen Howarth (London, 1992), 232.
14. Halsey quoted in “Hit Hard, Hit Fast, Hit Often,” Time, 30 November 1942, 29–30; Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 123.
15. “Hit Hard,” 29–30.
16. Quoted in C. Vann Woodward, The Battle for Leyte Gulf (New York, 1947), 29.
17. First quotation in Ronald H. Spector, Eagle against the Sun: The American War with Japan (New York, 1985), 423; second and third quotations in Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief (New York, 1987), 391–93.
18. Potter, Bull Halsey, 279.
19. Vernon D. Hipchings, Jr., the Fanshaw Bay’s visual fighter-director officer, interview by author, 31 January 1994.
20. Quoted in Gilbert Cant, “Bull’s Run: Was Halsey Right at Leyte Gulf?” Life, 14 November 1947.
21. Halsey and Bryan, Admiral Halsey’s Story, 220–21.
22. C. A. F. Sprague to Annabel Sprague, 15 May 1945, Sprague Family Collection, possession of Courtney Sprague Vaughan.
