Shake-Up

The President of the U.S. last week gave the people of the U.S. satisfaction for Pearl Harbor. Long after the last blaze at Pearl Harbor had been doused, masses of smoke still billowed on cinema screens, the pictures of wreckage spread angry disaster across newspapers. There was no public cry for a scapegoat, but the nation wanted: 1) to know why the bombing attack had been permitted to happen; 2) to be reassured that it would not happen again.

The report of Navy Secretary Frank Knox (TIME, Dec. 22) had been reassuring in the frankness of its admission that the U.S. forces in Honolulu were "not on the alert." Next President Roosevelt appointed a five-man board to investigate the Pearl Harbor debacle. To head the board he named Owen Josephus Roberts, 66, Associate Supreme Court Justice, last survivor of the Old Court, a broad-shouldered, broad-gauge jurist who first won national fame by his Teapot Dome prosecution.

Other members were all top-drawer officers: Major General Frank Ross McCoy, bemedaled World War I troop commander and diplomat; Brigadier General Joseph T. McNarney, World War I airman, General Staffer on War Plans; Admiral William Harrison Standley, dynamic onetime Chief of Naval Operations; Rear Admiral Joseph Mason ("Bull") Reeves, ex-CINCUS. (All but McNarney are retired officers.)

The day the Inquiry Board met (before flying to Hawaii), the President acted again, removed the three commanders of Naval, Army and Air Forces in Hawaii. Admiral Husband Edward Kimmel, 59, was relieved of his title as Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet (CINCUS) and his duties as Commander of the Pacific Fleet. Lieut. General Walter Campbell Short, 61, was relieved as Commander of the Hawaiian Department. Major General Frederick LeRoy Martin, 59, was relieved as Hawaiian Air Force Commander. In their places: > As Commander of the Pacific Fleet, a calm, frosty-faced, steel-blue-eyed Texan, one of the Navy's best strategists and administrators, Rear Admiral Chester William ("Cottonhead") Nimitz, 56, Chief of the Bureau of Navigation. To command until Nimitz arrived: Vice Admiral William Satterlee Pye, 61, Battle Force Commander.

> As Army Commander of the Hawaiian Department, Lieut. General Delos Carleton Emmons, 53, Chief of the Air Force Combat Command, a flyer since 1917 (4,000 hours plus), a hard-riding perfectionist, tough as parachute silk. This appointment significantly put a flyer in command of all Army forces in Hawaii.

> As Hawaiian Air Force Commander, Brigadier General Clarence L. Tinker, 54, a spit-&-polish, sky-ripping flight officer, part Osage Indian (Oklahoma), flyer since 1920, chief of Third Interceptor Command.

To replace Nimitz in the BUNAV went Rear Admiral Randall Jacobs, 56, grim-faced, dour veteran (38 years), lately at sea with the Atlantic Fleet.

At the week's end the President appointed one of the toughest "sundowners"* of them all as CINCUS. To be field boss of all the U.S. Navy in all seas he named Admiral Ernest Joseph King, 63, egg-bald, nitroglycerine-tempered, two-fisted, acid-tongued Commander of the Atlantic Fleet (CINCLANT), onetime Aeronautics Bureau Chief. To replace King as CINCLANT he raised small Rear Admiral Royal Eason Ingersoll, 53, at present Assistant Chief of Naval Operations, an exacting, reserved veteran. The promoted admirals were "taut ship" commanders (meaning rigid disciplinarians, as opposed to "happy ship" officers). Air-power exponents were speechless with happiness: for the first time in wartime U.S. naval history, the top man was a flyer.

* Sundowner: an officer who insists his men return from shore leave at sundown.

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