Second Saturday: Nimitz at War

good morning and welcome to our august second saturday program for 2022 where i will interview exclusively dr craig simons author of the newly released book nimitz at war our presentation is completely pre-recorded so you for this month only will be unable to ask questions of dr simons i don't think you'll mind the slight change from our program this one time our program was pre-recorded in the jack taylor center at the united states naval institute in annapolis if you haven't seen it yet jump in your cars and do it as soon as possible this new facility is state of the art nautical and inspiring to those who wear the cloth of our sea services to that end our foundation warmly thanks vice admiral pete daly for his magnanimous hospitality and his wonderful support staff that helped us with this program ms kelly michaela and especially mr franklin gunther enjoy our program please hit like subscribe and the bell for notifications of our future content now on to the introduction by prestigious washington attorney mr steven ryan a great friend of our armed forces and patriot extraordinaire and member of our foundation steve over to you good morning i'm delighted to be here my name's steve ryan i'm a washington lawyer who writes magazine articles including book reviews and i had the privilege of writing a review of professor craig simon's new book nimitz a study in command he's going to be interviewed by admiral masso who's the head of the foundation and i'm going to give a short introduction to the book and the professor and the ideas that we'll be talking about today i think the first thing we should do is is genuflect a bit to the professor who's written 17 books and taught for three decades and his books made him an expert on the civil war and on all things naval and his books are very powerful the nimitz book however is really important the nimitz book is one of hundreds of books written about nimitz but it's fresh and it's new and it gives insights that all of us who have been getting ready for the world war ii quiz show that's never occurred can learn from and i mean that it it has new insights i think the first new insight that his book presents is how nimitz treated the people who were his subordinates how he chose them how he nurtured them how he protected them from each other and sometimes from admiral king and how he gave them the kind of instructions that you dream about as a commander they were instructions that could be carried out with your decision-making at sea and they were just they were they were evaluative orders that told you what level of risk you could take and of course nimitz risked all in may and june of 1942 he took the wreck of the united states fleet and gambled all four of his aircraft carriers in two consecutive battles in the coral sea and midway and the first battle he lost the largest of those carriers the lexington in the second battle he lost the yorktown but in that gamble and with those losses he ended up destroying five different japanese carriers and destroying the the backbone of the air arm of the japanese navy it was a victory that couldn't have been predicted when he took over in december 1941 flying into pearl harbor and seeing the wrecks of four of the battleships that would never really be in action again two of them completely destroyed oklahoma and arizona and all of them needing substantial year-long repairs in the west coast yards so he took what he had and he won he won by recognizing the admirals who could get him there and then sustaining them in fact i don't know of any other leader who rotated his commanders so that they would stay fresh and so that he could use all of his commanders to run the navy in that war he went to pearl harbor and he stayed in the pacific until the war was won he also had to fire some of his officers but when he did that it was only after careful consideration of them and their character and what they were doing but he made brilliant decisions choosing admiral lockwood to head the submarine force being able to negotiate and deal with douglas macarthur who was perhaps the biggest ego that anyone would be ever asked to deal with in terms of a joint commander in the same theater all of these achievements are addressed in the professor's book but more than that i think he captures some of the style of command that we would think about today admiral nimitz would entertain all of the congress people that came to the pacific admiral nimitz would bend people's ears over a game of horseshoes and gin and tonics and other drinks that he made in order to create goodwill for the navy he was an ambassador of the navy at all moments beyond his command authority which could have broken another man and he sustained himself throughout the entire war physically in command and choosing these people to create the greatest naval victories that we have ever won as a nation so when we think about leadership in the current era we face a world that looks a lot like the world nimitz saw and where he had to take over a wrecked pacific command we see a revaunchest russia we see a very aggressive one leaning forward china and iran who seem to have sustained a tripartite arrangement that would be reminiscent of the world of nazi germany fascist japan and italy that nimitz and his colleagues faced so as we look to the future of the navy i think nimitz in command has something to say to the current leaders of the navy and to the cadets at this academy that will someday be serving officers of a fleet that undoubtedly will go in harm's way at the worst possible time under the worst possible conditions that our enemies can create for us which is exactly what nimitz had to deal with so with that introduction i hope that you'll be spellbound by the program that's about to follow and think about what nimitz achieved and what his generation achieved under nimitz were four presidents that we can name john kennedy survived in the pacific with his ship wrecked jerry ford was on an aircraft carrier richard nixon was a supply officer george bush was a flyer and lbj actually came out in a naval officer's uniform and flew on a very dangerous bombing mission as an observer so think about the interaction of nimitz with that world and leaving us five presidents who carried us to the next generation thanks very much for your time this morning thank you steve ryan for that wonderful introduction framing and shaping what we're about to talk about and of course it's nimitz at war dr craig simon's brand new book and it's very exciting and we're glad to have him here we are here at the brand new jack taylor center at the naval institute and if you have not been here or had the opportunity to donate i really encourage you to do that what vice admiral pete daly as the ceo of the naval institute has done is remarkable and it's a national treasure now for events such as this and and even more academic uh ones i'm the executive director sonny masso of the naval historical foundation uh we're about to enter our 97th year and we're very pleased to really raise the bar in historical content and today's program is no exception to that if you are watching on youtube please hit like subscribe and join our group and you won't you won't regret it uh dr simon's welcome today and thank you for joining us and i i hold up your book uh one more time but uh wine emmett's why now what was compelling about uh about this book well first of all nimitz has been part of my professional career from the very beginning i worked in nimitz library i shared an office suite with ned potter who was new it's his first biography i used as a textbook the nimitz and potter c power book for many years so nimitz has been part of my environment if you say for a long time but i really wanted to to do a deep dig into his command character and temperament so i focused just on the war years the book begins with his arrival in pearl harbor it pretty much ends with his signing of the japanese instrument of surrender in tokyo bay and i really wanted to look at how he managed that enormous theater of war and the disparate cast of characters that worked for him and you ask why now and i think one reason may be that we find ourselves today in a confrontational environment about so many things and everybody seems to be something must be 100 percent right or 100 percent wrong and nimitz was one of those rare individuals who could look at circumstances and say let's find a way to get this done efficiently non-confrontationally we'll work around it we'll work through it we'll get it done what's the best way to do it and that that really appealed to me uh particularly at this moment in time uh in terms of command temperament and command overall well thank you as a stage setter there were some events that happened even prior to pearl harbor the predecessor to husband a kimmel was j.o richardson admiral richardson and he had a very controversial conversation with the president of the united states viewed as a navy guy can you talk about that i can richardson is an interesting fellow and he's a he's old school i mean his idea was he's responsible for the fleet his job then is training supply preparation exercise and those things could be done most effectively from the west coast of the united states where he had access to obviously logistics support fuel support and other things and when president roosevelt strongly suggested through the then cno that he should carry out his summer exercise in the central pacific he was okay with that but then when roosevelt said and then i want you to keep the fleet in pearl harbor richardson's response well that makes everything more difficult for me all the fuel has to come from california the training the logistics all that's greatly complicated and when roosevelt was asked why he was doing this roosevelt said well the commander of the fleet suggested it would be a good idea well of course richardson had suggested no such thing so he flew to washington to complain about it so far okay i understand it he could have laid out his case explained why it was difficult roosevelt then would have explained yes but i'm making a diplomatic statement to the japanese which they will understand and it may have an impact on our ability to restrain their aggression in south asia instead of that richardson committed what i would call an unforced error by saying you know mr president the officers of the u.s navy have no confidence in your leadership well what first of all is a shocking thing to say to any president but in particular to this president who considered himself a navy man he'd been assistant secretary of the navy a time by the way that he always referred to as when i was in the navy he was interested in things nautical from the time he was a child he'd read his great his cousin and subsequently uncle by marriage teddy roosevelt's book in the war of 1812 a dozen times so this was a navy man and for richardson to come in and say that to him that probably marked the moment when richardson's days in command were numbered and who did uh who did the president or secretary of the navy turn to when they were looking at succeeding a lot of this is circumstantial evidence but it's pretty strong circumstantial evidence that roosevelt really wanted nimitz to take that job after richardson nimitz was the head of what was then called the bureau of navigation subsequently the bureau of personnel as you well know and knew him because they they talk to one another about the promotion of particular individuals in the navy so he knew nimitz liked him liked his temperament and wanted to appoint him and nimitz convinced him not to do it there were 50 admirals senior to him in the list he said they would all resent it there would be anger and it's just not good for the navy i urge you to choose someone else for that position and so that became admiral husband kim husband kimmel got the job and and the reasons why and how he was picked i i do not know quite frankly well of course uh on the day that we'll live in infamy everything changed for admiral kimmel the united states of america the united states navy and of course for admiral nimitz how did that roll out well you know kimmel is controversial remains controversial to this day nimitz i think believed and subsequently told kimmel it's not your fault it could have happened to anyone and of course that leads to speculation about what if newman said said aye aye sir and and taken that job uh to replace richardson and been in command at pearl harbor on the day of infamy what would have happened to him two ways to look at this well nimitz would have been more proactive with patrols and so on and it wouldn't maybe that's entirely possible it's more likely in my opinion he would have been victimized similarly if not exactly in the same way that kimmel was and might have been put on the shelf for the rest of the war as kimmel was and we would have lost his services so when they sent him out did he get any direction from any any leadership in washington when they sent nimitz well the story goes and again i've tried to track down the origin of this quotation it's mostly second hand but that knox was in the oval office with the president and the fdr told knox tell nimitz to get the hell out to pearl harbor and don't come back till the war is one he may indeed have said something very like that but that's not a lot of command guidance you know go out there fix things up hang on do the best you can as nimitz's subsequent boss ernie king always said we must do the best we can with what we have but remember that the overall allied strategy at this time is germany first that had been decided even prior to pearl harbor that if the united states got into a war germany was by far the more dangerous enemy a much larger gdp had already conquered much of europe the thing to do was to focus on the defeat of germany and then afterward pay attention to what was going on in the pacific so in a way nimitz's job was a caretaker you know do the best you can with what you have so this informed uh his arrival on christmas eve his leadership style and and can we talk about a little about that when he took command yeah it's a tough spot i mean not just because the fleet has been badly crippled four battleships sunk four more heavily damaged other ships as well it's they're still pulling dead american servicemen out of the drink when nimitz arrives but keep in mind too that he arrives without a staff you think about taking over a major command he arrived by himself at the end of a 17-hour plane ride walks into a room inheriting his predecessor staff well they're all down in the dump they're looking at the floor not sure what to expect in walks the new guy what's this going to be like and of course nimitz being nimitz went up to each one looked him in the eye shook their hand and asked for their help i'm new here i'm going to need your help so that we can recover and get over this and win the war and wow what a the whole room just changed spruance happened to be in the room at the time and subsequently told an interviewer that he says it was like somebody opened a window uh in the room everyone felt like they were part of the team now and that was one of nimitz's great gifts one of his skills as a commander including other people making them feel like they were part of not just the process but the team that came to the decision at the end and then executed it once they'd made the decision who was his first chief of staff who was nimitz first chief of staff well he inherited that entire staff so he inherited the chief of staff that pai had had william pye took over from kimmel when kimmel resigned on the 17th and so pie was technically sync pack temporarily before nimitz arrived and he asked milo dremel great 19th century name milo dremel to be his chief of staff dremel had been in command of the destroyer squadron in pearl harbor on the day and nimitz just inherited him dremel moved into nimitz's house they shared a house for the term when dremel was chief of staff because nimitz had to get to know him understand and feel like he could work with dremel and uh i think and again most of this is circumstantial because nimitz didn't put any of this in writing but he got the sense that dremel tended to be a well gee are we really sure this looks a little dangerous we don't have the resources maybe we can't that his his tendency to pour cold water on a lot of ideas uh struck nimitz is not quite the guy i need in that job and he had picked raymond spruance to replace him even before midway spruance was on the daca to become chief of staff before midway ever took place so that relationship of course was significantly different they were peas and pod now when when admiral nimitz assumed command and he's now exercising his will on on everything what when did he decide that he was going to reach out to rochefort and to uh to to leighton and really start laser focusing on intel yeah great question um we mentioned already that nimitz inherited the staff that had was there in place in situ when he arrived and one of those was his intelligence officer eddie leighton had been intelligence officer for pie and and for kimmel prior to that so of course the investigating committee had a lot of questions to ask him wait a minute you're the intelligence officer you didn't know you didn't see any of this coming so he had a tough couple of days but that's the intelligence officer that he inherited and as fate would have it he and joe rochefort who headed up the hypo staff in the basement building the 14th naval district headquarters there in the with the crypt analysts were friends they in fact had spent three years together in japan learning ostensibly to learn the japanese language but of course also learning japanese culture japanese values japanese ideas so that they could not only read japanese messages literally but could also read into those messages what that might imply so the fact that leighton knew rochefort created it in a way a kind of back channel intelligence source for nimitz rochefort would call layton and say hey you know i just saw a message i can't tell for sure but it looks like this may be happening at about this time the boss might want to know this and then layton would come in and brief nimitz nimitz told leighton when he first arrived he said i want you to come into my office every morning at eight o'clock there was a staff meeting every morning at nine so he wanted to see leighton first come into my office every morning at eight o'clock and tell me anything you can about what you have learned or what joe rochard has ordered so it was through leighton that nimitz got to know rochefort leighton took him down to the basement did a little tour down there but he he in this case being nimitz learned early on that if the information was you know not hard and fast it was still useful was there a relationship between the will of admiral king and his desire to control the intelligence drum beats and admiral nimitz and and can we speak about that uh whether it be complimentary or or one of ten well it's a complicated relationship i mean there's two levels of it you mentioned the intelligence one and i'll do that in a minute but first of all remember that king is king i mean he is a confident uh aggressive assertive pugnacious confrontational individual very very talented very gifted gets things done and everybody knows it but also kind of hard to work with and that's nimitz's boss and although king knows as a member of the joint chiefs that and the combined chiefs he knows that the overall allied strategy is europe first he's determined to do as much offensive work as he can in the pacific as early as he can in order to keep the japanese kind of back on their heels if he could so he's he pressures nimitz almost from the beginning can't you do something can't you hit something can't you conduct a raid let's get going let's get something done and that's a drum beat you feel in that message traffic almost till the end of the war nimitz is therefore in a position of saying i'm going to try to be as aggressive as i can on the other hand we have to be realistic about what we can do so that's part of the relationship then of course in terms of the intelligence thing king is in a situation where technically joe rochefort works for op 20g in washington his boss is not leighton and it's not nimitz his boss is back in washington the theory is all that intelligence gathered at the various intelligence gathering sites would go to dc be you know looked at studied examined and then be sent out to the operational commanders for whatever utility it might have but by short-circuiting the system rochefort to lighten the nimitz it created resentment shall we call it particularly among the redmond brothers uh in washington at op 20 g and king is in washington and he's hearing this from them you know this guy rochefort he's troublesome he doesn't follow the chain of command so that became kind of a fly in the ointment in the nimitz king relationship as well but of course uh admiral king was also commander of the united states fleet oh yeah so that provided some they bumped into each other in the marketplace yeah they did very much so in fact king when he first got that job his conception of it was that he would be not just the administrative ruler of the navy he would be the operational commander that he would command both the atlantic fleets and the pacific fleets and every other ship worldwide he actually issued an order to that extent and then two days later retracted it i think he just figured out there is no way in the world any one human being can do all of that so he had to lean on nimitz in the pacific to be the actual commander but he kept peppering him with these suggestions and ideas and of course when you get a suggestion from your boss it's more than a suggestion so it created a complicated uh scenario for nimitz to deal with now uh guadalcanal starts to rear its ugly head and lots of activity were coming and shortly we would have two battles of savo island we would have the battle of the coral sea uh what were some of the personalities like in terms of flag leadership that yeah that the admiral was dealing with and what was his comfort level with them yeah well you mentioned guadalcanal in particular that comes about in a very interesting way nimitz and king met each other face to face 16 times during the war about 13 of those were in san francisco a couple in washington king actually went out to the pacific once but 13 of those 16 meetings were in san francisco which halfway for each of them so they would sit down face to face and work out what are we going to do now and they were actually discussing the idea after the battle of midway of trying to retake tulagi from the japanese in a little island of indina in the santa cruz island this is what nimitz said we have the capability that's within our ability to do those two things and news arrives again through the the code breakers that a japanese convoy is headed for the island of guadalcanal across the sealark channel from tulagi and on the north coast of guadalcanal it's not yet a military base but there is a flat piece of land where an airfield could be built and the the intelligence suggests that's what's coming they're bringing bulldozers they're bringing equipment they're going to build an airfield if they do the japanese will have the ability to overfly the line of communication between hawaii and australia king said nope got to stop that we're going to erupt that changing it never mind the santa cruz islands guadalcanal and we're going to do it before they get the airstrip built so we're going to do it right now so that's one problem very short fuse brand new identification of a target in a hurry with minimal forces and here's the other one that when nimitz takes command of the pacific ocean area everything from alaska to really antarctica in the ocean and from the west coast the united states to the shores of japan it's an enormous theater so it's subdivided and there's a northern pacific territory that goes to a subordinate commander and a south pacific command area these are still subordinate to nimitz but someone else will be in command and that someone else in the south pacific is robert lee gormley so gormley arrives as nimitz did without a staff coming from london where he'd be in essentially a diplomat told to take over this job and oh by the way conduct the first major offensive operation in the pacific war and you've got a couple of weeks to do it go so it's not just a shortage of material and a short time fuse it's a guy who's just arrived cobbling together a staff living on a old army transport in the middle of numea harbor in new caledonia it's a very tough circumstance and nimitz has to manage that but he has to manage it from a distance he can't go down there and say do this do that because gormley is the one in charge he gives him suggestions he gives them advice tell me what you need i'll do everything i can for you meanwhile over this shoulder king is saying let's go let's go let's go so again nimitz is the man in the middle he's pushing on this end kind of tapping the brakes on this end trying to get things done and he really only was in command it turns out just for a few months right he was uh he he was relieved sometime just yeah he told me normally yeah gormley nimitz really liked gormley i think he he thought gormley was a very talented man and i'm not going to second guess that judgment but gormley in addition to all of the difficulties i just mentioned was also suffering with from nano severely impacted teeth he had horrible gum disease there's no dentist in new caledonia so he's just in pain most of the time he's on this unair conditioned army transport nimitz trying to support him but and on the other hand gormley doesn't do things that a theater commander ought to have done he doesn't go to guadalcanal after the landing to inspect it to make decisions he's not present at the practice landing prior to guadalcanal leaves that to his deputy dan callahan so gormley creates some problems for himself but it's a very difficult situation he's in a nimitz knows that but he see nimitz sees that gourmet is just over his head he later told gormley's son he said i really thought it was possible your father might have a nervous breakdown so with halsey out of the hospital having recovered from what we suspect now is shingles uh and available he tells halsey all right you're going to take over from gourmet and he writes this wonderful letter to gormley thank you for all the hard servants that you've done but we've got halsey available now and given his experience and expertise we're going to give him the opportunity to command in the theater well it's a nice way of saying you're fired but he was fired and he came back to hawaii enroute to washington dc where he would have his teeth fixed and and they sit down at dinner think about what an awkward dinner that would be and gormley asks him admiral nimitz why why did you feel you had to relieve me and nimitz answers him by saying i had to choose from every officer in the navy the man best equipped to meet this crisis were you that man and gormley says well what an important comment i guess you're right i wasn't what a great response so so now we not to not to be disrespectful to the lives of daniel judson callahan norm scott lyman k swenson cassin young you know these rule heroes who could have really contributed not to to be disrespectful to him but moving on from the guadalcanal into the coral sea what were your thoughts there what what was nimitz leadership well the coral sea actually comes before uh guadalcanal of course that's the first naval battle and famously in which the two fleets never side each other conducted entirely by carrier-based aircraft and i think what that and midway which comes soon afterward both demonstrated are that for all his quiet temperament for all his ability to listen and find a middle ground nimitz could make astonishingly bold decisions i mean even king who's aggressive as we know is a little really going to send the lexington down there with the yorktown to get in the way of what me may be as many as five japanese aircraft carriers do we is that a good thing but nimitz applied this principle and i know you want to talk about this that he relied on a lot through the entire war of calculated risk how much benefit how much gain is likely for how much risk we are willing to accept and and and it's a logical thing it's an obvious thing it's what they teach at the war college all the time in strategy and policy but the application of that to operational decisions is interesting here because nimitz is very careful about assessing both risk and gain and coming up and saying well look we know they're coming thanks to those code breakers those great guys we know pretty much where they're coming we know what their objective is they'll have greater force than we do but we'll have more information than they do and he tells frank jack fletcher who's going to be the opera the on-scene commander the sopa he tells them look your job isn't to get in front of them and stop this no matter what we can't risk losing two carriers your job is to trick their forces enough that they may second guess their decision to go ahead and of course that's exactly what happened so the coral sea works out for us we lose the lexington well we lose lexington sims and neosho i guess and and very badly damaged yorktown yes there's a lot of losses if you look at tonnage sunk and damage done the japanese win that but if you look at strategic objective the americans win that because the japanese invasion force turns around they never do take port morrison you can look at maps today in history books at the second world war and they'll be the that drawing of the largest expanse of the japanese empire and it stops there's a little bump right there around port moresby they never got it so coral is why yes sir so so may coral sea august and november were of course the guadalcanal but in the middle of that becomes midway midway and now this is all it's showtime for for our country yeah yeah midway i mean it it has an iconic position in our history and it deserves it for a lot of reasons uh one way to look at it is and i have used this example myself more than a dozen times at 10 25 in the morning and june 4th 1942 the japanese were winning the war at 10 30 they were not i mean that's that's so seldom happens in warfare that it's just almost breathtaking and it happened so quickly partly because of coincidence a lot of people say midway was a product of luck some say it was a product of providence i won't argue with that but it was also a product of careful planning and bold decision making all of which lands at chester nimitz's feet he's the guy who decides i have the information now i know they're coming i know what their target is now i have to decide what i'm going to do about that and a lot of the advice he got and even from king who's as we know a very aggressive person is isn't this too much risk for the i mean look at the little atoll two crummy little islands around the coral reef really we're gonna risk the fleet for that um but the application of calculated risk once again leads nimitz to conclude i have two fully operational carriers we know the japanese are coming with four he presses rochefort on that you're sure it's four not six it's four so i have two i can patch up the yorktown quickly get it out there even if it's only 70 percent functional and i've got midway island which has an airstrip i'll pack that island with everything that can fly then we have four air bases they have four air bases and we know they're coming game on i mean that that's a bold decision it's hard i think in retrospect because we know we're going to win this it's hard in retrospect to appreciate just how bold a decision that was if i might read a quote from admiral nimitz in his op plan he wrote you will be governed by the principle of calculated risk which you shall interpret to mean the avoidance of exposure of your force to attack by superior enemy forces without good prospect of inflicting as a result of such exposure greater damage on the enemy right that's a good summary of calculated risk and he wanted fletcher remember that fletch i know spruance gets a lot of credit for this and rightly so but fletcher is the senior officer in command and we know that he has a conversation with fletcher through other sources than the official one that he said to him very very clearly he said listen if it's not working out if you know if if the battle is going against you you know head east get out of there i don't want you to risk the fleet for that island because if they take it we'll all we can always get it back i mean it's the end of a 5 000 mile supply chain and ships trying to bring supplies including fuel to the island of midway from japan they're going to be subject to just devastation by american submarines so you know if if it's not working out get out of there calculated risk calculate that risk figure it out didn't come to that as we know but again it shows him not only applying this principle of calculated risk but also leaving it to his subordinate commanders as operational commanders to apply this principle to judge for themselves where is the point where it's time to turn around and head east so we had another uh opportunity to show and project american influence and that was the uh the uh bombing of of homeland japan or central japan via the uss hornet uh is there is there anything you want to say about that uh and and then i guess the other question would simply be was was admiral nimitz now getting a little bit i mean were they growing in confidence was admiral king more confident with him was he growing into the job or did he still have something left to prove even at that point well let's talk about the doolittle raid this is not a strategic strike at japan the amount of damage done to japan and remember it wasn't just tokyo we think about 30 seconds over tokyo but it was about half a dozen cities and we've only got 16 airplanes and they're only carrying a couple of 500 pound bombs each so it's like throwing rocks so this is not a strategic strike this is a morale boost for the public at home for the fleet generally you hit us we're gonna demonstrate we can hit you okay that may be a worthwhile thing to do politically geopolitically if you would but in terms of applying 50 percent of your offensive capability to what amounts to a public relations stunt strikes nimitz as not calculated risk you're risking a lot for a relatively tiny impact in terms of military terms at least but he also knows not to get in the way he's not going to fly to washington dc and do what j.o richardson and said i disagree with your no no this is coming from washington fdr is behind it king is behind it knox is behind it aye sir so he calls in halsey and he says all right here's what we're going to do get out there do your best get them back so i think it shows nimitz able to pick his fights and when i say that i don't mean pick his fights against the japanese he could do that too coral c midway elsewhere but he's also picking his fights in terms of the navy hierarchy there are fights he will make i think it's a bad idea to do that admiral king but not this time this one this is what you want to do you think you need to do this aye aye sir that's what j.o richardson should have said back in 1940 so looking at uh admiral nimitz job prior to being out in the pacific fleet he was the head of the bureau of navigation or personnel how how did that enable him and how did that either help or hurt his relationships with his battle you know commanders so yeah you know frank jack fletcher everybody mark mitchell it just goes on down the line well of course nimitz no is everybody i mean not only is the navy smaller and it's this group particularly who graduated in the classes of 040506 and 07 who are now wearing stars and in position to make important decisions and they know each other that way but in addition to that being head of the bureau of navigation meant that nimitz had the file of every officer in the navy he had the file and had read them carefully of everybody he was going to deal with through the ensuing four years so i think that gave him a leg up in understanding who they were what their experience had been where to put the right person in the right place and that's a lot of command getting the right person in the right place to do the job which is best suited to his particular capabilities and of course he had that by being there and and i already mentioned that being in washington for two terms as head of the bureau of navigation allowed him to get to know fdr and frank knox and some of these other people as well and that was all very much to his benefit he was he was by the way advised to get out of washington i mean then as now people would say you know how you're in promotion don't you go to sea and they told me you're killing yourself here turned out not to be the case who who did he embrace as his favorite commanders and who did he kind of step back from and for what reasons well i think it's fair to say that he liked both spruance and halsey and for entirely different reasons he and spruance were very much birds of a feather and he would trust spruance with the big complicated amphibious operations such as saipan and iwo jima okinawa but when it came to who wants to go in there and bust him in the teeth then he would go to halsey so they had different strengths and they're different people but he got along with them both the guy he did not get along with particularly was jack towers jack towers who had been the head of the bureau of aviation and was an aviator and early aviator was a champion of aviators and he was absolutely convinced that if you didn't wear the gold wings of an aviator you had no business telling carrier tasks force forces what they should be up to uh and and nimitz just didn't believe that i i want like i said before he wanted the right guy in the right job if that guy happened to be an aviator great if he happened not to be that's great too towers never bought into that and they were just like oil and water well towers was like oil and water with pretty much everyone that really wasn't yet you know from that perspective i i guess uh there was some some doctrinal things in personnel for example if mitchell is an aviator his chief of staff is arleigh burke yeah that knew and that wasn't the way it started they got that way in 1943 about kind of halfway through this figuring this out well now wait a minute if you have a black shoe commanding a carrier task force shouldn't you know where's the aviation expertise going to come from when spruance took over for halsey in the battle of midway spruce being a black shoe he was told by nimitz you know you listen to miles browning he's an aviator he knows that stuff and that worked okay although browning had problems of his own and sprunce ended up overruling him on a very critical decision but i think that was the beginning of this idea that here's a way to resolve this and partly this was to throw a bone to towers as well that if the commander of of a task force or a fleet for that matter is an aviator he must have a black shoe chief of staff and if he's a black shoe he must have an aviator chief of staff and to do that they had to mix some people around arlie burke in particular was really annoyed he was about to take over a brand new destroyer division and was gung-ho to do it and then gets assigned to be pete mitcher's chief of staff well he complained about that for the rest of his life but it worked out and probably it was good for mitcher to have burke at his side during most of the central pacific drive now under immense tension on different fronts including personalities not not the least of which with macarthur and with king how did how did admiral nimitz relieve tension what was his oasis recreate his energy and rest and recreate that's a great question because nimitz went out of his way to make sure that his aviators had lots of r r time when they had a couple of long deployments he would say go back to the states i mean one to recover but also maybe to train the next generation of aviators as they came out when uh you know fletcher for example came back from a long cruise he wanted to give him r r time and and spruance never took leave himself but he did have these periodic outlets and perhaps the most useful the most salutary outlet for him was to visit the home of his good friends sandy and una walker who owned a beach house on the north shore so away from honolulu away from pearl harbor he'd drive over the kulau range and down into this you know kind of eden-like environment where sandy and una set up a horseshoe pit and they had a paddle tennis court and there was a beach where he could swim and he could walk and so he would go there usually for just a day and they kept saying well you should you should spend a weekend admiral look i cannot be out of telephone contact from my headquarters for more than a couple of hours so they had a phone line put in all the way across the island and when once they did that then he would sometimes stay overnight as well and those were those were very refreshing for him i think you know he'd swim in the ocean he'd put on an aloha shirt as we call it today sit down on the lanai and play penny annie poker and then next morning get up early and back over the kula ridge back to work but he was very athletic he was he also surrounded himself with friends right he did he did remember well he's athletic not just because he is athletic but he was by the time he was born his father was dead his father died at 29 before chester was even born of a heart attack at 29 and so i think it was that lesson if you would call it that that urged him to walk and swim and play tennis and do horseshoes to be strenuous in his daily life to make sure he didn't fall victim to uh poor health and and he was pretty serious about it he would take a three-mile walk before breakfast in the pre-dawn darkness and then he would take a six mile walk aft just after he got back from work before dinner uh and and he'd play much younger individuals at tennis and usually beat him and these heroic swims he would go to a beach and he'd swim straight out to sea straight out to sea for half a mile and then he'd turn left or right and he'd swim along the beach for a mile two miles and then swim back to shore and then walk back and occasionally he asked you staffers you know 25 year old lieutenant or whatever it says come with me on it they could not keep up yeah that's great so kind of entering into the last phase of your book the third the the central uh pacific now decisions need to be made there's uh japan is on its heels but there's still a lot of danger out there there's still a lot of presence boots on ground in different islands and there were some competing strategies there was a macarthur strategy and the washington strategy and then nimitz strategy how did those play together well you mentioned mcarthur you cannot have a conversation about the pacific war without talking about douglas macarthur to a certain extent and of course for macarthur it was not just a good strategic idea it was a moral imperative to get back to the philippines and he did joint chiefs approved all that we're going to go to laytay we're going to take him into now but then after that his notion was you got to take the rest of the philippines and in particular luzon where manila is located going getting back to manila when he said i'll return to the philippines he really meant back to manila well once mindanao was taken king and nimitz because nimitz works for king and the navy generally all thought well now it's time we've done the central pacific drive from the marianas to go to formosa formosa is one island you take formosa you cut off the japanese from their resource base in the south pacific macarthur says yes so do the philippines and the navy answers yeah but there are a thousand philippine islands there's one formosa so the argument was is it luzon or formosa and uh nimitz because king told him look it's formosa you're going to stand on you're going to die on that hill and in july of 1944 when franklin roosevelt comes to hawaii and meets with nimitz and macarthur who didn't want to come at all but is there ordered there macarthur makes this impassioned plea for luzon why it's important american pows the filipinos will never trust us again and so on and so on it's not a strategic argument it's an emotional argument and fdr seems to be listening to it and of course leahy is there too like he's the chairman of the joint chiefs he's going to have an input to this decision roosevelt doesn't decide but nimitz can see which way the wind is blowing and so he makes king's pitch for formosa but he doesn't die on the hill once again he's picking his battles in this particular battle he sees you know what doug's going to win this one and i'm not going to get in his way now at this time uh there was a move to guam uh when where you know what was the the view of that and and many of my friends who've read your book declared that you know what i didn't really know ever from the book was that he ever moved to guam at the command really yeah and i would include myself in that well it's late in the war it's january of 45. i mean the war is already winding down a bit in uh in europe the battle of the bulge has taken place american and russian forces are closing on berlin there's a mental frame of mind that we're getting to the end game here nimitz moves his headquarters from hawaii from oahu to guam in january of 1945 he'd made the decision three months before that and ordered the construction of a headquarters on guam and when he gets out there and looks it over around christmas time he says okay this this is enough i'm ready to move and in january he and his whole staff some 200 people in this staff by now move out to guam and it's there are two reasons for this one is that's where the war is gone the war is no longer in the gilberts and the marshals even the marianas the war is now in luzon and iwo jima and okinawa and he to be close enough to able to fly there in a couple of hours and see what needs to be done he can't do that from oahu but he can from guam that's the principal reason the secondary reason and maybe almost co-equal is that as long as he was in hawahu he got visitors hundreds of visitors groups of visitors 20 people at a time reporters magazine editors but also congressional delegations british groups allied groups senior officer groups amphibious groups i mean and they would come and expect to be met and put up and entertained and briefed and then sent on their way and then another group would come in and that's not the way to run a war uh nimitz found out he had to get up at four o'clock in the morning get all his paperwork done before the group arrived around eight or nine spend the day with entertaining these people lunch dinner and then stay up again late at night trying to do the rest of his paperwork couldn't be done so if he gets out to guam makes it harder not impossible because they still come but makes it harder for people to come visit his headquarters now back at the ranch in washington we had a very supportive president we had a very supportive frank knox uh secretary of the navy then he leaves succeeded by forstall james forrestall how did that change the relationship and dynamic with admiral nimitz yeah nimitz got along really well with knox um there's a great photograph it's in the book of them when knox visited uh nimitz and and his flight was delayed to go back and he said i want to go to a beach so nimitz took him to the walker's house and he had a white they put on a luau for him he had a wonderful time it was great but it shows them standing together and they're each holding a cocktail i'm pretty sure this is a cocktail nimitz called a sink pack which is a really tell us please tell us recipe is in the book yeah i think i'll just say read the book get the recipe i've had it it's pretty good uh but it also packs a wallop so they're standing there with these kind of mischievous grins on their faces you can almost tell that that may be their second sink pack but he got along well with frank knox he got along less well with james forrestal forestall had been an investment banker he was a you know a striped suit pipe smoking i don't want to say effete that's not fair that's too judgmental but not the not a texan frank knox was a former rough writer i mean he'd ridden with teddy roosevelt you know and and he was a newspaper man not a career military neither was forrestal but just in terms of the chemistry nimitz got along better with frank knox than he did with james forestall yeah for the in the interest of time and there's so many things we can talk about nimitz career was uh affected by that relationship in the sense that when everything ended so well for us and on september 2nd on the battleship missouri we signed the instrument of surrender but there was some reticence about nimitz succeeding king as cno is that uh that's correct and you know king started out with some skepticism about nimitz and he thought nimitz was a you know good desk very efficient and all that but maybe not bold enough well he clearly got over that and he was absolutely determined that nimitz should succeed him as chief naval operations for stall not so much forrest all found nimitz annoying nimitz stood up to him forestall was interested for example in public relations and he wanted newspaper reporters to go out to guam and be allowed to go to okinawa nemechek said nope that's a battlefront i'm not going to let him go and he uh forestall wanted nimitz to publish a daily newspaper for about the navy that would go to all the personalities i i can't run a war and publish a newspaper no well to forestall this is a difficult person he doesn't want him so when nimitz is proposed to be cno after the end of the war foresaws is not going to do it nimitz uncharacteristically called in a few chips he had some friends too and those friends one of those friends happened to be ed paulie uh who was on the board of the university of california when nimitz was the head of the nrotc unit there the first nrotc unit and so he called ed paulie and said yeah i'm having some trouble here with and paulie had been the fundraiser for truman's reelection campaign so paul said let me make a phone call that's helpful that pretty much did the job but even then forestall was obstreperous he said all right i'll agree to it but he can only do two years instead of four and he did uh noteworthy the book is nimitz at war we're speaking with dr craig simons i'm going to ask him one last question and that's to kind of wrap this up what didn't we discuss that i should have asked you and um and what's next in your event horizon historically well i don't know uh if this is the most important question to discuss but we didn't talk a lot about nimitz's private life he had a happy marriage for 50 years i mean who has that anymore these days which is great his children any naval officer who spends a lot of time at sea particularly in a war environment there's some distance between father and children and his relationship with his son also chester chester jr was more formal than emotional but he get along really well with his daughters there's letters in the archives of from him to them and from them to him they're playful they're thoughtful he supported them in in their interests he was for example not at all religious he chose on his headstone instead of a cross there are the five stars of his frank emblem um but his daughter mary that his youngest daughter uh became a dominican nun and he supported her 100 in that so i i think he was uh not only a great i won't say good he was a great uh commander of the theater a great naval officer and a very good husband and father as well and where does he lying rest today he is not at arlington uh it was obviously offered to him he chose to be in in the cemetery in san bruno it's actually cheek by jowl with san francisco very nearly in san francisco and when he made that known to race bruins who was very close from spruces i'm going to do not size available as every other sailor and marine in that cemetery which they are yeah i really got to look for it to find it and then richmond kelly turner who was kind of a difficult guy in his own right found out about this and he bought two plots next door so so you can visit all four i have visited san bruno yeah not in san francisco san bruno by the airport right it's a 10-minute drive from the airport right yeah well what's next what are you working on next well right now i'm doing uh one of the great courses you may know the teaching company is their official overall umbrella name but usually known as the great courses i did one on the pacific war 24 lectures i'm doing one now in the history of the u.s navy from sailing ships to tomorrow well look look forward to seeing that thank you the book is nimitz at war the author is dr craig simons ucla man among other great schools i'd like to thank him on behalf of the naval historical foundation i'd like to thank steve ryan for his uh excellent introduction if you liked our program hit subscribe like ring the bell for for notification on future content and uh again we thank uh you for watching we thank colin masso our executive producer and uh we're out here thank you sir thank you thank you thank you dr simons for your time this morning your book and your willingness to speak about it were wonderful please purchase and read his book at your earliest convenience special thanks again go out to the united states naval institute and especially to mr franklin gunther for his expert assistance additionally we thank colin masso for his production of this program see you next month when we feature mr tom shepard's book commanding petty despots a treatise on civilian control of the navy during the period of the revolutionary war to 1825 and ironically it still has relevance to this very day today please consider joining our foundation by going to our website at www.navyhistory.org also consider joining us this thursday at the army navy club at 11 30 to celebrate our 2022 commodore w knox winners dr donald bittner and dr norman friedman the attire is business casual the cost is 55 dollars for non-members 45 for members and will conclude no later than 1 30 p.m see you next month thank you for joining us have a great day you

Channel: Naval Historical Foundation

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Length: 62min 55sec (3775 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 20 2022