"Admiral, Hell!"

Said gusty, bearded Admiral William Sowden Sims, 17 years before Pearl Harbor: "An airplane carrier . . . is in reality a capital ship of much greater offensive power than any battleship." When General Billy Mitchell was court-martialed, the old Admiral (who described his own career as "largely getting into trouble with the principal dignitaries") stood up to defend him.

A multitude of forgotten incidents like these make the story of Sims lively reading during World War II. His son-in-law, Elting E. Morison, has written it in Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (Houghton, Mifflin; $5), published last week. For 30 years the great voice of public self-analysis in the Navy, Sims was highly vocal and knew it. But "never did he discover the difference between rapping for attention and knocking his audience cold." Out of Annapolis in 1880, Sims spent his first six years at sea in silence, then settled down to improving the Navy. His main theme was a continuous assault on the Navy's uncoordinated bureau system (which it still has), a demand for a general staff (which still does not exist).

Although Sims never won his main objective, his vocal technique did achieve many smaller ones--enough to assure his place in naval history even though he was never under fire. He began by criticizing battleships. In 1900 the U.S. Navy, in Sims's opinion, was far behind European navies, even Japan's ("and, God help our souls," Russia's).

Meanwhile the public thought the Navy was "hot stuff" and the Navy was "inordinately flattered by a boastful press." From the Philippines Sims sent a report to the Navy Department in Washington showing that the battleship Kentucky, current pride of the fleet, was a very poor fighting machine--"not a battleship at all." Assigned to the old cruiser Brooklyn, he immediately began tearing her apart in a report, remarked: "I invite you to take a look at the wreck of the Brooklyn when I get through with her." Of the monitor Monterey at Canton, he made only an informal complaint:

"She is a double-elliptical, high-uffen-buffen, double-turreted, back-acting submarine war junk. . . . She is about the shape of a sweet potato that has burst in the boiling. She draws 14 feet of mud forward, and 16 ft. 6 in. of slime aft, and has three feet of discolored water over the maindeck in fair weather. . . . All the clinkers, ashes, buckets, shovels, etc. and an occasional sleepy coal passer are sucked up the flue and blown thousands of miles in the air. . . ."

The bureaus shelved the Sims reports. Sims fumed that a man who would have to fight a ship could have no say in its design.

He had better luck on his second project, teaching the Navy to shoot. In face of opposition, he introduced a real target instead of an imaginary one, longer practice ranges, continuous aim firing, improved telescopic sights, new methods of fire control. He developed a spirit of competition in a fleet that used to shoot off its year's ammunition as an unpleasant chore. The Navy's marksmanship became legend.

By the time the U.S. entered World War I, he had fought for adoption of all-big-gun ships (dreadnoughts), commanded the newest, finest battleship of all, the Nevada (still in service). Most important, he had commanded a destroyer flotilla and developed doctrines for handling destroyers that proved invaluable.

But outside the Navy Sims was not famous until he was suddenly (March 31, 1917) exported incognito to London as Commander of the U.S. Naval Forces operating in European waters. Again he had to combat the bureaus and a Navy leadership sluggish in action. Though the British Admiralty confessed that if U-boat sinkings kept on at their top rate (nearly 90,000 tons in April 1917) Britain was done for by October, the men in Washington were slow to approve the convoy system. Sims prodded in cable after cable. Once convoys became routine, sub successes dwindled.

Congress refused to restore Sims's rank to full admiral after the war. Sims was disappointed. When Congress ordered blanket restoration of World War I temporary ranks to retired officers in 1930 a Newport lady congratulated the 71-year-old Admiral. Said he: "Admiral, hell!"

In retirement (1922-36) he still fought. Besides defending Billy Mitchell, he argued saltily for a better system of promotion in the Navy, for recognition of the powers of aircraft, for Prohibition (though no teetotaler), for adequate bases in the Pacific, for a larger Navy. Says Author Morison: "He remembered Pearl Harbor before it happened."

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