How are wars won; especially the larger wars, which involve relatively equal world-powers? Is it technology, overwhelming numbers, tactical brilliance or stategic insight? Of course, victory requires all of the above plus a handsome dollop of good, old-fashioned luck. But victory requires something more. It requires a core of intelligent, courageous, ambitious and dedicated men, who will bring their separate powers and weaknesses to bear in the struggle for victory. "The Admirals...." is a story of five men; the four, five-star admirals, who led the United States Navy to victory in World War II and a fifth Admiral, who was, in the interest of maintaining the equality of rewards between the Army and the Navy, denied his.
The men were: Leahy, King, Nimitz, Halsey and Spruance. William Leahy was hardly a familiar name even during the war. He served as the original chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, before either the chairmanship or his staff had been created by Congress. More a diplomat than a fighter, he was perhaps Roosevelt's closest advisor after Harry Hopkins. His most important contribution was probably preventing open warfare among our own Chiefs as well as with Britain's Imperial General Staff. While the imperious Marshall, the volatile King and the flamboyant Arnold ran the war, Leahy kept the wheels on, the slides greased and everyone's eyes on the final goal.
Ernest King too has been eclipsed by time. In his day, he was courageous, arrogant, defiant, demanding and, in his own daughter's recollection, always enraged. For King, every defeat, every ship sunk, every sailor lost was a personal insult. Despite the official Allied policy of Europe First, King would have his naval war of vengeance in the Pacific theater, if he had to steal every ship, plane, sailor and Marine to do it. With a little help from Leahy and Marshall, he pulled it off.
Chester Nimitz eventually became one of the more recognized personalities of World War II, but not in the dark days of 1941. He was quiet, taciturn and determined, but he wasn't King's man, he wasn't Leahy's man, he wasn't even favored by Frank Knox, the Secretary of the Navy. Nimitz was Rossevelt's hand-picked choice to lead the Navy in the Pacific. "Tell Nimitz", Roosevelt said to Knox, "To get the hell out there to the Pacific and not come back until the war is won". Nobody knew what to expect of Nimitz. King considered him a personnel man, little more than a clerk, but then came the Coral Sea and Midway, the slog through the jungles of Guadalcanal, the race across the Central Pacific with the fast carriers, and the ultimate destruction of the Japanese Fleet off the Philippines. It is I think, to Nimitz' great credit that as the war progressed, he seemed to drift further into the background to permit other heroes to emerge.
William Halsey was America's first great naval hero of World War II. He transported the Doolittle Raiders to Japan's doorstep in the early days of the war. He was pugnacious, defiant, accessible to the media and oh-so quotable. He led the Navy and Marines through jungles of Guadalcanal, when it appeared that the U.S. had neither ships, planes nor men enough to go toe-to-toe with Japanese empire so far from home. Halsey was a hero before any of the rest, but Borneman is honest. Halsey's later missteps at Leyte Gulf and with two typhoons suggests that the technology of war, if not its spirit, may have passed Halsey by.
Finally, we speak of the man, who didn't receive the star, Raymond Spruance. When Halsey was incapacitated with shingles, following the Doolittle Raid, Spruance, a battleship Admiral, effortlessly replaced Halsey at Midway, Americas' first great victory in a carrier-battle. It was Spruance who led the race across the Pacific with the fast carriers. It was Spruance, who protected the Marines first, then went after the Japanese Navy at the Marianas Turkey Shoot. Perhaps, no higher praise can be given Spruance than Ernest King's assessment, "He's the smartest man in the Navy, after me".
Perhaps the glory of war is the ability of disparate with often conflicting personalities to yoke their individual ambitions and ideas to a common goal and thereby achieve more than the sum of their parts. This marvelous book explores the nature of military leadership formed in the crucuible of a desperate war. I wish Spruance had gotten his fifth star. He certainly deserved it; maybe more than some of the others. I would not, however, want to choose the one to give it up.
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Supposedly a new copy
I am glad I do not intend to keep this as a collector copy. It came in pretty rough condition for being New. The box it was shipped in is in perfect condition so it was shipped this way from the D. C.
