The character and personality of the admiral and of the general have always been of professional as well as popular interest. They are of professional interest because character and personality, equally with intellect and training, enter into leadership and decision making. The way they enter differs somewhat as regards the tactical commander and the strategic commander. That is because the tactical commander, particularly at sea, must usually make his decisions without consultation, whereas in modern warfare the strategic commander nearly always makes his decisions in conference or as the result of conference.
On the tactical level, the most readily compared World War II naval officers are Admiral Raymond A. Spruance and Admiral William F. Halsey Jr., who alternated in command of the Central Pacific Force—known as 5th Fleet when commanded by Spruance, and 3rd Fleet when commanded by Halsey.
Remote vs. Dashing
Admirals Spruance and Halsey have been likened to Admirals John Jellicoe and David Beatty, successive commanders of Britain’s Grand Fleet in World War I, and the comparison is apt. Spruance was remote, austere, methodical, and intellectual, and was little known to the public. Halsey was dashing, colorful, somewhat slapdash, salty of tongue, a popular hero. In battle, Spruance, like Jellicoe, twice turned away from the enemy and in the ensuing pursuit was never able to overtake him to inflict maximum damage. For this, Spruance was sharply criticized. In battle, Halsey, like Beatty, was tricked into pursuing a decoy fleet, for which he was sharply criticized.
Spruance’s remoteness was intentional, and his explanation is simple, yet profound. Said he:
Personal publicity in a war can be a drawback because it may affect a man’s thinking. A commander may not have sought it; it may have been forced upon him by zealous subordinates or imaginative war correspondents. Once started, however, it is hard to keep in check. In the early days of a war, when little about the various commanders is known to the public, and some general or admiral does a good and perhaps spectacular job, he gets a head start in publicity. Anything he does thereafter tends toward greater headline value than the same thing done by others, following the journalistic rule that “Names make news.” Thus his reputation snowballs, and soon, probably against his will, he has become a colorful figure, credited with fabulous characteristics over and above the competence in war command for which he has been conditioning himself all his life.
His fame may not have gone to his head, but there is nevertheless danger of this. Should he get to identifying himself with the figure as publicized, he may subconsciously start thinking in terms of what his reputation calls for, rather than of how best to meet the actual problem confronting him. A man’s judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired, and can concentrate wholly on making the right decision.
Spruance thus explained why he refused to grant interviews and generally avoided journalists, “not through ungraciousness, but rather to keep his thinking impersonal and realistic.”1
Spruance was also explaining, no doubt consciously, what had happened to Admiral Halsey. For Halsey was very much a victim of his own publicity. In the dark early days of World War II, his carrier raids on Japanese bases, outrageously overrated by the press, made Halsey not only a national hero but, in the popular imagination, something of a superman. Halsey’s own bellicose statements, couched in salty language, delighted press and public and added to his bigger-than-life popular image. In newspapers he became “Bull Halsey,” nemesis of the Japanese.
When illness prevented Halsey from putting the capstone on his fame by commanding in the Battle of Midway, his determination to spectacularly sink the enemy was only increased. As he said long afterward at the U.S. Naval Academy: “Missing the Battle of Midway was the greatest disappointment of my life—but I’ll sink those damned Jap carriers yet!” Under the circumstances, given Halsey’s impulsive nature, it would be asking too much to expect him not to go dashing off from Leyte Gulf when he learned that there were enemy carriers to the north. When it was revealed that these carriers were merely planeless bait, sent specifically to draw Halsey away from the Leyte beachhead, one of the newspaper writers who had helped to create the super-Halsey legend now made fun of his action as “the Battle of Bull’s Run.”
Postwar revelations vindicated Spruance’s two turnaways. In the Battle of Midway, had he not turned east in the evening of 4 June 1942, he could hardly have avoided a night battle against greatly superior forces. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea, had he advanced and attacked the Japanese carriers in the morning of 19 June 1944, no enemy force would have got between his fleet and the Saipan beachhead, as he feared. But the attack would have cost heavily in American planes, for the Japanese heavy surface ships were a hundred miles nearer than the Japanese big carriers. Our attacking planes would have passed going and coming through the intense antiaircraft fire of the surface vessels.
As it was, Spruance’s fleet, in assuming a defensive posture, shot down 430 attacking Japanese planes while sustaining very minor damage. At this late period in the war, stripping Japanese carriers of planes was practically the equivalent of sinking the carriers themselves, for Japan had neither time nor fuel to train replacement aviators. Thereafter, the only use the Japanese made of their planeless carriers was as bait to lure Admiral Halsey away from the Leyte Gulf beachhead the following October.
In short, in his second turnaway, Spruance did the right thing, for what we now see to have been the wrong reason. In any case, his reputation is secure. One cannot help wondering, however, what his reputation would be if postwar revelations had shown that he achieved nothing by his turnaways, only missed golden opportunities.
Capabilities vs. Probabilities
An important reason for his caution is that Spruance was what in military jargon we call a “capabilities man.” As Admiral Spruance himself explained:
At the Naval War College in our Estimate of the Situation form we used to have: “The enemy, his strength, disposition and probable intentions.” Later, “probable intentions” was changed to “capabilities.” We found that there had been a tendency to decide what an enemy was going to do and lose sight of what he could do. I have seen just this happen in fleet problems at sea, and it is very dangerous.2
It goes without saying that a capabilities man with a vivid imagination can be paralyzed into a permanent defensive posture, but of course Spruance was much too intelligent to fall into that trap. “In making war,” he said, “we try to minimize rather than to avoid danger.”
Admiral Halsey was a “probabilities man,” that is, he tended to make up his mind what the enemy would probably do and acted accordingly. In this respect, as well as in his liking for publicity, Halsey was in the Nelsonian tradition. When the French Mediterranean Fleet escaped out of Toulon in 1798, Nelson assumed that it was going by direct route to Egypt and sped thither. Finding no enemy there, he dashed off to the north just before the French, who had come by an indirect route, arrived off Alexandria. In 1805, when the French Mediterranean Fleet again escaped from Toulon, Nelson again dashed off eastward. At length realizing his mistake, he sped to the West Indies, whereupon the French fleet headed for the English Channel, its original objective. If Nelson had not been dealing with an incompetent and demoralized enemy, incapable of seizing opportunities, and if his wild-goose chases had not been followed by spectacular victories, one wonders what his reputation would be today. It was Halsey’s misfortune to be dealing with a highly motivated, alert enemy.
Nelson’s impulsiveness, unlike Halsey’s, did not extend to day-by-day operations. Halsey’s whimsical, often slapdash, methods of operating were the despair of his subordinates. I have never met a commander who did not much prefer serving under the methodical Spruance. Vice Admiral George C. Dyer, who had commanded the light cruiser Astoria (CL-90) under both Halsey and Spruance, expresses their attitude this way:
My feeling was one of confidence when Spruance was there and one of concern when Halsey was there . . . . When you moved into Admiral Spruance’s command from Admiral Halsey’s . . . you moved from an area in which you never knew what you were going to do in the next five minutes or how you were going to do it, because the printed instructions were never up to date. . . . He never did things the same way twice. When you moved into Admiral Spruance’s command, the printed instructions were up to date, and you did things in accordance with them.
When you’ve got hundreds of ships under you, you’ve got to have some common ground to stand on, or when you’re charging around at 25 or 30 knots in one of these great big ships, what you’re going to do in the next two or three minutes is important, and what the other ships are going to do is important.3
But Admiral Halsey, despite his shortcomings, which were few compared to his virtues, was ever revered by the little men of his fleet and command. Always approachable, always solicitous, always daring, he operated not in the spirit of “Go!” but of “Let’s go!” He asked no man to face dangers that he would not face himself. He passed no bucks, he shirked no responsibilities. Always appreciative, he never left a command or ended a campaign without words of thanks or commendation. One remembers his opening words to his fleet on ending the Philippines campaign were: “I am so proud of you that no words can express my feelings.”
Perhaps Admiral Chester Nimitz has left us the best brief description of his top fleet commanders: “Bill Halsey was a sailor’s admiral and Spruance, an admiral’s admiral.”
1. Emmett P. Forrestel, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, USN: A Study in Command (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1966) 62.
2. Letter from R. A. Spruance to E. B. Potter, 21 February 1959.
3. VADM George C. Dyer, USN (Ret.), interview by the author, 23 May 1968, U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, MD.
E. B. Potter was a longtime history professor at the U.S. Naval Academy. His article is excerpted from “The Command Personality,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, vol. 95, no. 1 (January 1969), 19–25. Later, Professor Potter wrote a trio of outstanding biographies: Nimitz (Naval Institute Press, 1976); Halsey (Naval Institute Press, 1985); and Admiral Arleigh Burke (Random House, 1990).
In Defense of Halsey
By Admiral Robert B. Carney, U. S. Navy (Retired)
Professor Potter’s vignette of Admiral Halsey does not sit well with one who served under him as a cruiser skipper and, thereafter, from the summer of 1943 until after VJ Day, was constantly close to him as his chief of staff. The qualified encomiums in the penultimate paragraph do not, in my opinion, offset the greater space devoted to criticism of questionable merit.
For a starter, his preoccupation with Admiral Dyer’s views is odd in the light of his limited contact with Admiral Halsey, and some of the observations attributed to Admiral Dyer call for examination.
Regarding tactical control (in the Central Pacific with the 3rd Fleet) it was Commander TF 38, or one of the Task Group commanders, who issued tactical orders, not Commander 3rd Fleet. Carrier operations called the tune.
I liked Admiral Dyer’s observation that “he [Halsey] never did things the same way twice,” although the observation, as stated, did not appear to have a favorable connotation. Halsey’s constant purpose was to keep the enemy off balance and in the dark, and by avoiding fixed patterns of objectives, tactics, communications, etc., he achieved tactical surprise on many occasions. He was confident that his subordinates were professionally up to meeting the requirements of modified orders.
Descriptive expressions, such as “whimsical,” “slapdash,” and “probabilities man” have a slant potential of which, presumably a professional writer would not be unaware. “Whimsical” I would buy, because it implies the saving grace of humor. “Slapdash” is defined by Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary as “in a slipshod manner”; slipshod, in turn, is a way of saying “careless, slovenly,” according to the same dictionary. “Slapdash” I do not buy.
Next, I would look at “probabilities man.” Does Professor Potter imply here, a fixed and general mentality and way of thinking? Without dwelling on that question, it might be helpful to say that early in the South Pacific campaign Admiral Halsey concluded that he could not penetrate the Oriental mind as to intentions—probabilities—and adopted, as a substitute, the device of disrupting enemy thinking and planning by sudden—and sometimes diversionary—thrusts. Throughout the war, he looked at enemy capabilities in terms of things important to our side in determining his own courses of action. In short, in the opinion of one who enjoyed an authentic vantage point, the title of “probabilities man” is a misnomer. As a matter of fact, in view of the on-the-offensive character of all of Halsey’s operations after the tide was turned in the South Pacific, enemy “probabilities” were largely defensive in character—which would seem to weaken Professor Potter’s case.
Professor Potter says that “it was Halsey’s misfortune to be dealing with a highly motivated, alert enemy.” I find it difficult to discern misfortune in the context of Admiral Halsey’s overall dealings with the enemy; his South Pacific campaign ended in total misfortune for Japan, and the two campaigns of the 3rd Fleet in the Central Pacific inflicted on the enemy losses of planes, warships, merchant ships, and installations which added up to Japanese disaster. To what, then, is Professor Potter referring when he speaks of Halsey’s misfortune? On that point, he is not specific in his article. Perhaps he had Leyte in mind. If so, I could add nothing of substance to Admiral Halsey’s own statements concerning his decisions, but I have long thought that it was a strategic and tactical misfortune that the vast array of U.S. seapower in the area was not under some one, overall commander.
One last point. Aggressive fighting against a tough enemy, over a period of years, and along a road extending from the South Pacific to the Japanese homeland, inevitably included damage and casualties, but compared to the successes, the setbacks were few in number and manageable in magnitude, and the seasoned Old Pro took them in stride—not “impulsively,” but with stamina and determination.
Admiral Carney served as Admiral Halsey’s chief of staff for the final two years of the Pacific war. In August 1953 he was appointed Chief of Naval Operations, a post he held for two years. His article appeared in the June 1969 issue of Proceedings as a “Comment and Discussion” response to Professor Potter’s January 1969 article.