Admiral Nimitz Quotes

TF-16 returned to Pearl Harbor on May 26 in good order, with one huge exception: Admiral Halsey, the sixty-year-old commander, arrived back completely exhausted and ill. After six months of intense underway operations, culminating in the fruitless 7000-mile mission across the Pacific to the Coral Sea and back, Halsey had lost twenty pounds and had contracted a serious case of dermatitis. Nimitz took one look at him and sent him straight to the Pearl Harbor hospital. The Navy’s most experienced and highly regarded carrier force commander would sit out the Battle of Midway. The ultimate sea warrior, Halsey would watch from his hospital window as the two task forces departed Pearl Harbor for Midway.

Leadership,” said Nimitz, “consists of picking good men and helping them do their best for you. The attributes of loyalty, discipline and devotion to duty on the part of subordinates must be matched by patience, tolerance and understanding on the part of superiors.”24

Chester and Catherine had begun a lifelong ritual of writing each other daily letters whenever they were apart.

No fighter ever won his fight by covering up—by merely fending off the other fellow’s blows. The winner hits and keeps on hitting even though he has to take some stiff blows in order to be able to keep on hitting. —ADMIRAL ERNEST J. KING, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, 1942

With a combination of nimble counsel, exasperating ego, studied patience, and street-fighter tactics, William D. Leahy, Ernest J. King, Chester W. Nimitz, and William F. Halsey, Jr., built the modern United States Navy and won World War II on the seas. Each

A prediction: In coming decades, involuntary euthanasia will be commonplace in Europe, and Gen-Xers' battles to stay alive into old age will be treated with the same cold contempt as they treated the silent screams of the unborn. Millions will be put to sleep like aged and incontinent household pets." -The Sad Suicide of Admiral Nimitz, Jan. 18, 2002

General Douglas MacArthur was the most brilliant, most important, and most valuable military leader in American history—at least that’s what Douglas MacArthur thought. When

Other men would get to command the spear point; Nimitz would calmly and diligently manage the arm that held the spear.

In all, Yamamoto deployed 162 ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, practically its entire fighting force, in support of the Midway operation. (No

On one foggy, misty night, King ordered the air groups from the Lexington and Saratoga to launch simultaneously well after sunset. The chaos was predictable but, in King’s mind, instructional.

The ultimate test of any military commander, however, is that he rises or falls with whatever glories or misfortunes befall his command. Sometimes he is responsible, sometimes he is not, but as the commander he is always accountable nonetheless. Had

Midway wasn’t much of a place. Two tiny islands, crisscrossed by airstrips, totaled barely fifteen hundred acres on the edge of a lagoon circled by a jagged reef. But in May 1942, Midway may have been the most heavily defended acreage in the Pacific. Certainly,

As always, King was the ultimate authority, the one and only arbiter. One night when the communications watch officer groped his way across the darkened flag bridge, he bumped into an unrecognized figure. “Sir, are you on duty?” he queried. “Young man,” came the response, “this is the Admiral. I am always on duty.

Then Nimitz, being Nimitz, posted the usual watches and did the only thing that made sense to him. “On that black night somewhere in the Philippines,” he later recalled, “the advice of my grandfather returned to me: ‘Don’t worry about things over which you have no control.’ So I set up a cot on deck and went to sleep.

Nothing could ever replace the treasure of America’s men and women killed or forever maimed by Japan’s attack, but Nimitz looked around Pearl Harbor and decided that it could have been much worse. On the list of physical casualties, there were three glaring omissions that would prove to be major strategic blunders on the part of the Japanese.

Roosevelt’s election was particularly pleasing to Leahy because he believed “from personal knowledge of the man that he will use his office more directly for the benefit of the United States…. The Country and the Navy undoubtedly face a bad period, but I believe their policies will now be directed by a man whose point of view is wholly American.

Leahy wholeheartedly supported the airlift and Truman’s election, but he remained skeptical of the politics of the Middle East. “The President’s announcement [recognizing Israel],” Leahy wrote, “made with inadequate consideration leaves many questions unanswered” and could, he concluded, “drag the United States into a war between the two religious groups.”10

But perhaps the greatest asset was the surviving oil tanks. Had 4.5 million barrels of fuel oil been blown up, what was left of the Pacific Fleet would have been forced to limp back to the West Coast and have its operations in the Pacific severely curtailed. That action, not Japan’s sinking of a few aging battleships, would have given Japan the free rein it sought in the South Pacific.

As Halsey looked over his shoulder from his campaigns across the Pacific, “the old battlefields were already disappearing into the jungle or under neat, new buildings. Where 500 men had lost their lives in a night attack a few months before, eighteen men were now playing baseball. Where a Jap pillbox had crouched, a movie projector stood. Where a hand grenade had wiped out a foxhole, a storekeeper was serving cokes. Only the cemeteries were left.”20

Even Admiral Raymond Spruance, Nimitz’s chief of staff and widely considered one of the Navy’s most capacious minds, had taken lumps for what some critics deemed his excessive caution in the Battle of Midway. The experience soured him on second-guessing: “I have always hesitated to sit in judgment of the responsible man on the spot, unless it was obvious to me at the time he was making a grave error in judgment. Even in that case I wanted to hear his side of the matter before I made any final judgment.

They fought together as brothers in arms; they died together and now they sleep side by side...To them, we have a solemn obligation...to ensure that their sacrifice will help make this a better and safer world in which to live.”—Admiral Nimitz at the official surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay.

Well, this will be easy. The Japanese will surrender Iwo Jima without a fight.” —Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

Mickey Mouse?” suggests Mohr, “It makes a sort of sense.” Through the laughter, Ren says, “I just can’t see debriefing Admiral Nimitz about the movements of the Mickey Mouse Patrol.

To Nimitz, the solution was obvious. Admiral Sims was right: the carrier, not the battleship, was the chief capital ship, and the concentric-circle formation should have the carrier at its center.

But Nimitz was very careful not to criticize Halsey in any way or to allow even a hint of controversy to enter the official records.

At his new headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, MacArthur granted Time correspondent Theodore H. White an interview and “managed to denounce all at once, and with equal gusto and abandon,” Franklin Roosevelt, George Marshall, Harry Luce (Time’s publisher), and the U.S. Navy. “White,” MacArthur lectured, “the best navy in the world is the Japanese navy. A first-class navy. Then comes the British Navy. The U.S. Navy is a fourth-class navy, not even as good as the Italian navy.

Marshall was forced to acknowledge that there was little he could do but acquiesce to the reverse in the South Pacific, where so many of the operations were to be on or near water. King later described these discussions as having “to ‘educate’ the Army people.

However, US Admiral Chester Nimitz was in possession of the decryption codes for Japanese transmissions and was prepared.

Admiral Nimitz never raised his voice and I never heard him curse during the many years I served with him,” wrote Lamar.

Halsey was a guy who got things done and King definitely liked and respected that quality.

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.

Nimitz kept avoiding the hands that attempted to steer him off the wing and into a crash boat. Finally, an eighteen-year-old seaman second class lost patience with the white-haired gentleman, and knowing neither his identity nor his rank, he shouted out, “Commander, if you would only get the hell out of the way, maybe we could get something done around here.” Nimitz merely nodded and finally clambered into the waiting boat.

At the lobby desk, the manager informed them that there was no room for them there either. Fieberling, who was leading-man handsome, flashed a confident grin and asked for the manager’s name, telling him that his squadron’s orders to lodge there had come directly from Admiral Nimitz, and he would need to advise the commander-in-chief why his order had been disobeyed. It was a bald-faced lie, but the manager nervously disappeared into his office. A minute later he came back out smiling at Fieberling as if he had just won the lottery.

I’ve tried to analyze the four five-star Admirals that we’ve had in this Navy,” Smoot reminisced. “You have a man like King—a terrifically ‘hew to the line’ hard martinet, stony steely gentleman; the grandfather and really lovable old man Nimitz—the most beloved man I’ve ever known; the complete and utter clown Halsey—a clown but if he said, ‘Let’s go to hell together,’ you’d go to hell with him; and then the diplomat Leahy—the open-handed, effluent diplomat Leahy. Four more different men never lived and they all got to be five-star admirals, and why?”15 Smoot answered his own question with one word: “leadership.” Each of the fleet admirals, he said, had “the ability to make men admire them one way or another.” But

Nimitz paused to write his daily letter to Catherine, which was his ritual whenever and for however long they were apart. Having

Few love affairs could surpass the devotion, companionship, and mutual adoration shared by Chester and Catherine Nimitz. They were first and foremost—in the catchphrase of a later generation—“soul mates.” They routinely wrote each other almost daily when they were apart, and no matter what the turmoil swirling around them, their letters always managed to convey an intimate, personal touch, as if the other was truly the most important person in the world—which they were. “You are ever in my thoughts,” he told her, “and I am happiest when I know you are well and happy.”15

Chester William Nimitz, Sr. was the last surviving officer to serve as a five star admiral in the Unites States Navy, holding the rank of Fleet Admiral. His career started as a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy where he graduated with honors on January 30, 1905. Becoming a submarine officer, Nimitz was responsible of the construction of the USS Nautilus, the first nuclear powered submarine. During World War II he was appointed the Commander in Chief of the Unites States Pacific Fleet known as CinCPa. His promotions led to his becoming the Chief of Naval Operations, a post he held until 1947. The rank of Fleet Admiral in the U.S. Navy is a lifetime appointment, so he never retired and remained on active duty as the special assistant to the Secretary of the Navy for the Western Sea Frontier. He held this position for the rest of his life, with full pay and benefits. In January 1966 Nimitz suffered a severe stroke, complicated by pneumonia. On February 20, 1966, at 80 years of age, he died at his quarters on Yerba Buena Island in San Francisco Bay. Chester William Nimitz, Sr. was buried with full military honors and lies alongside his wife and some military friends at the Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California.

Nimitz turned for support to Admiral Ernest King, chief of naval operations, and they both advised MacArthur to forget his Rabaul campaign and relieve the First Marine Division “as soon as practicable.” In

The ultimate test of any military commander, however, is that he rises or falls with whatever glories or misfortunes befall his command. Sometimes he is responsible, sometimes he is not, but as the commander he is always accountable nonetheless.

The general once described Eisenhower as “the best clerk I ever had,” and after serving MacArthur as an aide in both Washington and the Philippines, Eisenhower was well versed in his theatrical ways. “In many ways MacArthur is as big a baby as ever,” Eisenhower noted. “But we’ve got to keep him fighting.” 20

General Douglas MacArthur was the most brilliant, most important, and most valuable military leader in American history—at least that’s what Douglas MacArthur thought. When asked by a proper British gentlewoman if he had ever met the famous general, Dwight D. Eisenhower—himself about to march into history—supposedly replied, “Not only have I met him, ma’am; I studied dramatics under him for five years in Washington and four years in the Philippines.

Then King repeated the doctrine of taking calculated risks with concentrated forces that Nimitz had just employed at Coral Sea and Midway. “Don’t forget the proposition,” the admiral told the reporters, “that the minute you try to be strong everywhere, you have only the men available—it means you will be weak everywhere.

Later, much would be made of the fact that October 25 was the ninetieth anniversary of the Crimean War’s Battle of Balaklava, immortalized by Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade.” Twice the poem critically asserts, “All the world wonder’d” at such a military blunder. The young ensign who encoded the message later claimed that “The world wonders” buffer was “just something that popped into my head.” But every man of Halsey’s generation knew well the reference, and the damage had been done.

Assignments ashore and on ship came and went, but one’s academy classmates were forever. From Manila to Panama or Honolulu to Guantánamo Bay, the fraternity gathered just as if its members were still on the banks of the Severn.

Jervis exclaimed, “Pitt is the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war which those who command the sea do not want and which, if successful, will deprive them of it.

the result of this engagement plainly indicates that a cool-headed commander who gets into the fight first and proceeds to business has the best of the battle from the start.

The academy certainly wasn’t an absolute requirement for flag rank, but between the Spanish-American War, when Annapolis increased its enrollment, and World War II, no nongraduate attained flag rank.

In a minute and a half Halsey’s destroyers had done a million and a half dollars’ worth of damage” in a mock attack that should have been a rude wake-up call to the battleship admirals.

If Nimitz could stay off the radio during some of the chanciest moments of the war in the Pacific, many modern managers—with infinitely more access to their subordinate’s inboxes—could take a lesson from the admiral’s self-discipline.

Fortunately for Hypo, and the navy, and the United States, Chester Nimitz was not such an admiral. He was briefed each morning at eight o’clock by his fleet intelligence officer, Lieutenant Commander Edwin Layton. Layton also had a standing invitation to walk into Nimitz’s office at any hour of any day if he believed he had important information for the C-in-C. (No one else on the staff, except perhaps the chief of staff, had this privilege.) Hypo provided a daily briefing to Layton, who in turn drew on other sources and briefed Nimitz. Layton and Rochefort had known one another when both men were stationed in Tokyo as language officers in the 1920s. They had shared in the long trial of learning Japanese. They counted one another as friends, and this tended to smooth the contours of their professional partnership, which might otherwise had been complicated by the organizational rivalry between the Fourteenth Naval District (of which Hypo was a part) and the Pacific Fleet staff. Nimitz paid close attention to all the intelligence products that crossed his desk. On his first day as CINCPAC, he told Layton, “I want you to be the Admiral Nagumo of my staff. I want your every thought, every instinct as you believe Admiral Nagumo might have them. You are to see the war, their operations, their aims, from the Japanese viewpoint and keep me advised what you are thinking about, what you are doing, and what purpose, what strategy, motivates your operations. If you can do this, you will give me the kind of information needed to win this war.

The Pearl Harbor salvage engineers argued convincingly to Washington that the salvage efforts should be directed to raising less damaged ships first, such as California and West Virginia. Otherwise the available salvage equipment and manpower would be diluted on Arizona, Utah, and Oklahoma. Admiral Nimitz concurred with this argument.

To Mayo, this meant “passing down the chain of command the handling of all details to the lowest link in the chain which could properly handle them,” while keeping in hand matters of policy and strategic importance.

Naval aviation and America’s submarine force would continue their ascension as both spear point and deterrent, but for the fleet admirals, September 2, 1945, was the apex of their careers.

Leadership,” said Nimitz, “consists of picking good men and helping them do their best for you. The attributes of loyalty, discipline and devotion to duty on the part of subordinates must be matched by patience, tolerance and understanding on the part of superiors.

The ultimate test of any military commander, however, is that he rises or falls with whatever glories or misfortunes befall his command. Sometimes he is responsible, sometimes he is not, but as the commander he is always accountable nonetheless

MacArthur “might have made a better showing at the beaches and passes, and certainly he should have saved his planes on December 8,” a newly appointed brigadier general who had long served as the general’s aide confided to his diary. “But,” wrote Dwight D. Eisenhower, “he’s still the hero.

Nimitz paid close attention to all the intelligence products that crossed his desk. On his first day as CINCPAC, he told Layton, “I want you to be the Admiral Nagumo of my staff. I want your every thought, every instinct as you believe Admiral Nagumo might have them. You are to see the war, their operations, their aims, from the Japanese viewpoint and keep me advised what you are thinking about, what you are doing, and what purpose, what strategy, motivates your operations. If you can do this, you will give me the kind of information needed to win this war.

The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.

Yes, in the last war King had convinced Admiral Henry T. Mayo of the importance of delegating and then trusting his destroyer captains; he had preached the importance of individual training and career advancement so as to be fully capable of executing such instructions; but when push came to shove, King had always had a terrible time biting his own sharp tongue and trusting that his orders would be carried out.

How long American naval superiority will last is uncertain, but as to whether or not it matters, history shows the answer to be a resounding yes. China holds approximately $1.2 trillion of United States debt. In a global economy of friendly competition, many view this as a matter of course. But what if China used $12 billion of this debt—1 percent—to deploy an aircraft carrier operating off each coast of the United States? The dynamics suddenly change. Whether the threat comes from another country or from machine-gun-toting pirates or suicide terrorists, an international economy requires naval power.

You will,” Leahy once told graduating midshipmen, “all have to a greater or lesser degree something else that is intangible… a combination of loyalty to ideals, tradition, courage, devotion, clean living, and clear thinking. It is more than ‘esprit de corps’ because it reaches far beyond the corps and comradeship.” Just as this intangible element defined the navy’s four fleet admirals, it characterizes all who pass through the gates of the United States Naval Academy and inexorably binds them to the navy, to one another, and to the steadfast service of their country

This escapade taught me a lesson,” Nimitz later recalled, “to look with lenient and tolerant eye on first offenders when in later years they appeared before me as a Commanding Officer holding Mast.”8

You could no more educate sailors in a shore college than you could teach ducks to swim in a garret”—

If there is anything bigger than the state of Texas, it is the Pacific Ocean. --Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

The admiral was famously unflappable, but found the attack on Pearl Harbor a shattering experience. Spruance revealed this only to his wife and daughter, then waited anxiously for Admiral Chester Nimitz to take over as CincPac—Commander in Chief Pacific Fleet. After the obscenity at Pearl, America’s Pacific Fleet leadership was demoralized. Spruance sensed that Nimitz would inject some sorely needed fighting spirit, and he was right. Nimitz proved bold, aggressive, confident. Energized, the Pacific fleet began to sortie out and fight back. Spruance was elated.

Some optimistically hoped the unprecedented bombing of the tiny island would make the conquest of Iwo Jima a two- to three-day job. But on the command ship USS Eldorado, Howlin' Mad shared none of this optimism. The general was studying reconnaissance photographs that showed every square inch of the island had been bombed. "The Seventh Air Force dropped 5,800 tons in 2,700 sorties. In one square mile of Iwo Jima, a photograph showed 5,000 bomb craters." Admiral Nimitz thought he was dropping bombs "sufficient to pulverize everything on the island." But incredibly, the enemy defenses were growing. There were 450 major defensive installations when the bombing began. Now there were over 750. Howlin' Mad observed: "We thought it would blast any island off the military map, level every defense, no matter how strong, and wipe out the garrison. But nothing of the kind happened. Like the worm, which becomes stronger the more you cut it up, Iwo Jima thrived on our bombardment.