One Year of War

(See Cover)

The first year was ending, and it had been a Navy year. The tall, taut man who is both Commander in Chief of the U.S. Fleet (COMINCH) and Chief of Naval Operations (OPNAV) let his mind go back to the morning of Pearl Harbor, and observed that the Japanese probably had not expected their attack to be so successful. Said Admiral Ernest Joseph King: "If they had it to do over, I think you would probably find them moving in with a tremendous invasion force such as they brought against us at Midway."

He smiled, and his face for a moment was not wholly bleak.

"Of course," he said, "if we had it to do over, we would do differently too."

Had the Japs, then, lost the war by missing their main chance to seize Pearl Harbor and drive the U.S. from the Pacific on the first Dec. 7? Admiral King answered :

"I'd say they started something at Pearl Harbor that they are not going to finish. We are going to win this war."

The Admiral. When the Japanese bombs and torpedoes shattered the peace and sleep of Pearl Harbor, Admiral King was on the Navy's second ocean, directing the Atlantic Fleet's undeclared war of 1941. In mid-December, when he was summoned to Washington to be COMINCH of all the fleets, "Betty" Stark was doing his limited best as OPNAV. The Utah and the Arizona gaped from their graves at Oahu, ships slightly more fortunate were being readied for removal and repair, and bombed planes still made ugly piles on the Army fields. The Japs were closing on Manila, hacking away the last Army air forces in the Philippines; MacArthur was looking to Corregidor and Bataan, and Admiral Hart's Asiatic "Fleet" of cruisers and destroyers was on its way to glory and futility in the Indies. Guam had fallen; Wake had a few days of glory left. The Japs were in Malaya, headed for Singapore. The Prince of Wales and the Repulse--pillars of British and U.S. sea power in the western Pacific--were gone. People at home were saying that the whole U.S. fleet was at the bottom of the Pacific, and profane Admiral King was saying to his colleagues at the Navy Department:

"When they get into trouble, they always send for the sons of bitches."

This remark accurately summarized both Admiral King's reputation in the prewar Navy and the principal reason for his commanding the wartime Navy. Few men in peace or war have known "Rey" King well enough to find the warm self behind his hard, hazel eyes. Well does he know that others in the Navy hold him to be a brutal and forthright man, savage in his judgments and merciless in his expression of them, uncompromising and often extreme in his demands upon his subordinates, a man who can be as forbidding in family crises as he is on a bridge or at a Navy desk.

He takes a certain pride in this reputation. Last year, when he saw a suitably brutal account of himself in print (TIME, June 2, 1941), his curses roared through the Navy Building. But officers who knew him smiled at each other. "I think he rather liked it," one of them said.

Commanders, weapons, many of the Navy's pre-war plans and conceptions failed to meet the test of war and had to be changed in the first year. Admiral King and his quality of inward hardness neither failed nor changed. The Navy's judgment of him, of what he could do and of how he would do it, was one judgment that withstood the fires.

The Admiral Speaks. To Admiral King of "the silent service," loquacity is a vice, and in public he has said very little. The Marshall and Gilbert Island raids had briefly lifted American spirits, Singapore and Java had fallen, Bataan was falling, and Admiral King had become both OPNAV and COMINCH when he said in March: "Our days of victory are in the making."

The battles of the Coral Sea had been fought, the Lexington had been lost and Midway had been won at the cost of the York town when he told the war class of Annapolis midshipmen in June: "War is force--force to the utmost--force to make the enemy yield to our own will--to yield because their own will to fight is broken. War is men against men--mechanized war is still men against men."

The Navy and the Marines had attacked in the Solomons, and the Navy had tragically lost the first rounds at sea when Admiral King said in Ohio at Lorain (where he was born 64 years ago), and at Cleveland: "It's going to be a long war. We will really hit our stride in about a year's time. . . . Our two-ocean Navy is not yet in service. The smaller ships for it will begin to come into service around Thanksgiving or Christmas. The plain fact is we haven't the tools. Some of our critics would have us do everything everywhere all at once. It can't be done with what we have to work with."

The Wasp and a fourth carrier had gone down, but along with its offensive spirit the Navy had regained the seas around the Solomons, and across the world the Atlantic Fleet had assisted in the invasion of North Africa, when Admiral King again broke his rule of silence last week. His remarks were memorable because they were: 1) his first such interview since he took command; 2) the most thorough official review to date of the Navy's strategy, record and policy in the first year of war.

King on Strategy: "When the Japs struck at Pearl Harbor, we were not ready. You might say we were in the process of getting ready. The only thing we had set up in the Pacific was the fleet organization at Pearl Harbor. We had to get more bases, we had to get troops to those bases and to Australia, and we didn't have enough tools for the job. General Marshall was being hamstrung by demands for anti-aircraft batteries at every crossroads and the Lord knows what. Some of that is still going on, and it's got to stop."

To illustrate the degree of unreadiness in the Pacific last December, Admiral King strode to a map in his Washington office and pointed to a position conveniently near but safely out of the combat zones. At this logical point he had to establish a fleet-fueling base after the fighting began ("one of the first things I caused to be done").

After Admiral King was called to Washington last December, but before he publicly took command, the Pacific Fleet got its fundamental orders: "Hold the Hawaiian Islands area on the Midway line at all costs," and "Hold the communications line to the southwest Pacific on the Samoa-Fiji line and extend it to New Caledonia" (see map, p. 32). Said Admiral King last week:

"Those orders still stand. Hawaii is the key to our position in the Pacific and we've got to hold it. The supply line to Australia and the southwest Pacific is only slightly less important."

Establishing and holding these lines was what chiefly occupied the Pacific Fleet in the first months after Pearl Harbor. The Gilbert and Marshall raids, offensive in themselves, were defensive in objective: they smelled out the Japs at a point where they threatened the new supply lines, and possibly averted an effort to break up those lines. Only when the lines were functioning was the Navy ready for even a limited offensive, and then the first offensive moves were partly intended to secure the Navy's southwest Pacific communications.

King on Offensive: Air assaults on the Japs at Tulagi and the Coral Sea battle of planes v. ships in May were actually the preludes to the Solomons campaign. But the Navy's air victory (with some Army help) at Midway was the real turning point: "Things began to break for us at Midway. We began to get the edge there. . . . After the Midway action we told ourselves: 'Now is the time to hit the Jap in the southwest Pacific.' "

In June, when the Solomons were finally chosen for the big blow, "we didn't have the resources." But: "We set a date for it to begin. That date was Aug. 1, and they actually got started on Aug. 7.

"We had been getting word of the Jap's activity in the Tulagi area. He'd been there a long while, and when reports came in about that airfield on Guadalcanal it heightened our interest. If our attack had been delayed a week, the Jap would have been able to use that airfield.

"That campaign did two things. It made our own line of communications that much more secure, and it took something away from the Jap that he had had. The virulent, violent reaction was greater than we expected, so our attack must have stung him to the quick."

Admiral King's account seemed to confirm the impression that the Navy had underestimated the requirements of the Solomons campaign (TIME, Oct. 26), and that in this instance the U.S. command's insight into Japanese thinking and strategy had been none too keen. But his recital took nothing from the luster of the Navy-Marine-Army team's recent successes in clearing the Solomons waters of Jap ships and extending the land forces' hold on Guadalcanal.

King on Losses: "We still haven't got enough stuff to be everywhere, but we'll keep a close eye on the Aleutians. No one can say what the Japs planned there, but it has cost them tremendously. The attrition has been very heavy. In the Solomons the Jap's planes have been shot down by the hundreds, his ships have been sunk by the tens, and he's lost men by the hundreds certainly."

Appraising the gains from the Navy's first offensive, Admiral King and other Navy men noticeably do not accent the relative U.S. and Japanese sea losses. One reason probably is that naval officers do for themselves what the Navy seldom does for the public: they add up the total losses in the campaign, and weigh them against the Navy's remaining strength, instead of dwelling upon the results of individual actions.

Admiral King presumably does not forget that in the Coral Sea-Solomons series of actions the Navy has announced loss of three aircraft carriers (not counting one lost at Midway), seven cruisers, 13 destroyers. In the same actions the Navy has claimed the definite sinking of one Japanese carrier, 12 cruisers, one battleship (and possibly another) and 17 destroyers. In the terms of remaining U.S. and Japanese strength--the only terms that count--this balance is favorable to the U.S. in every category except carriers, but the net effect on Pacific sea power is decidedly less than the bare figures from recent actions indicated.

King on Command: "I have a philosophy that when you have a commander in the field, let him know what you want done and then let him alone. I have two other philosophies. One is: Do the best you can with what you have. The other is: Don't worry about water over the dam."

According to Admiral King, the Coral Sea, Midway and the Solomons prove that the U.S. had what many people thought it still needed: true unity of command. He also said that:

> The broad directives for Pacific campaigns come not only from the Joint Chiefs of Staff (U.S. Army & Navy), but from the Combined Chiefs of Staff (U.S. and Great Britain).

> General MacArthur had "a clear directive from the Combined Chiefs of Staff," giving him sole authority over all ground, air and naval forces (including the Australian Navy and some remnants of the Dutch Fleet) in the southwest Pacific. It was on orders from the Combined Chiefs of Staff that MacArthur's bombers timed their attacks on the Japs in Rabaul and the upper Solomons with the Navy's offensive ("a very important mission, and one which was planned and approved by the Combined Chiefs of Staff"). For the campaign in the Solomons, General MacArthur was also ordered to turn his Australian naval forces over to the U.S. Navy.

>"Prior to that action, the Solomons had all been in MacArthur's command, but to make sure that there was no misunderstanding, the line of demarcation was straightened." (The effect of the straightening was to put the area to be invaded solely under Navy command. MacArthur kept the upper Solomons and Rabaul, where the Navy and Army presumably will have to arrange an understanding.)

>Area commanders often have complete freedom of decision. Example: Admiral Nimitz' decision to concentrate his forces for the Battle of Midway, when the Japs might have struck in force elsewhere. ("We knew what Nimitz was doing. He did the right thing, and we let him alone.")

King on Allies. Whether or not Admiral King left any doubt as to the actual unity of U.S. command, he left no doubt at all about the state of the United Nations command or his ideas on the subject. Said he:

"We hear a great deal of clamor from time to time for unity of command. That's a loose term and has come to be widely used by people who don't have the full facts. Actually, many good officers are not qualified or competent to exercise unified command, but we keep on hearing amateurs suggest that some one man be called in to exercise sweeping control over all things military.

"As a matter of fact, political considerations dominate a great many military situations. In the Combined Chiefs of Staff, we have an agency that represents the President and the Prime Minister. Our own Joint Chiefs of Staff act for the President, but we have not yet had a single matter to take to the President upon which we have not first been able to agree ourselves.

"Because so many other nations are involved in this global war effort of ours, the Combined Chiefs of Staff have many problems in which the final action can only be decided upon by the President and the Prime Minister. If the proposal to substitute a supreme military commander were adopted, the question of what becomes of the President's constitutional position as Commander in Chief is one to which some thought might be given."*

Admiral King did not pretend that the "Combined Chiefs of Staff" combine all the United Nations. The fact that the U.S. and Britain dominate the Combined Chiefs of Staff makes military sense to Admiral King. Only the U.S. and Britain have the means to prosecute the global war. Russia is only a partial arsenal. There are more than 30 United Nations. Admiral King is no believer in trying to run a war by a show of hands. Said he last week:

"The way it operates, whenever a nation is directly involved, its representatives are consulted. If we are considering aid for China, the Chinese are called in, given a seat at the table and they get the whole story. Periodically, also, the military representatives of all the United Nations are called in and given the whole story of what's going on. They are not told what is being planned, however, because when so many people know a thing, inadvertently somebody is liable to. give the show away."

Most people had thought that the plan for invading French Africa was a well-kept secret. Admiral King thought that it was very poorly kept. Nevertheless, he said, "the actual date was known to only about twelve people among ourselves and the British." Now he must give very serious thought to Europe. Said he: "People talk lightly of our next invading Sicily, Italy, etc. Maybe we can do it, but it's going to be a seaborne invasion and it's not going to be easy."

King on the Future: Admiral King did not attempt to chart the course of the second year. But he was hopeful; he clearly intended to maintain and step up the Navy's offensives. At the approach of the second Dec. 7, he still believed what he said early in the first year: "Our days of victory are in the making."

*Unity of Allied command does not necessarily require a single "supreme military commander," and it certainly does not mean that such a commander would be supreme over the President, the Prime Minister, China's Generalissimo, et al. He would need only the authority to do for the Allies what the President's military coordinator, Admiral William D. Leahy, does for the U.S.

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