Admiral James L. Holloway III, who slipped his cable on 26 November 2019, stands as one of the towering U.S. Navy leaders of the late 20th century. As an officer on board the destroyer USS Bennion (DD-262), he earned a combat decoration during the decisive World War II Battle of Leyte Gulf. He flew hundreds of combat missions as a naval aviator in Korea, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross. James Holloway also led naval forces into battle during the Vietnam War’s Rolling Thunder campaign as the commanding officer of the USS Enterprise (CVAN-65). He once again entered the fray as Commander, Seventh Fleet, in the final, pivotal operations of the conflict. Through precision mining and bombing operations, the naval forces in his charge helped compel North Vietnamese leaders to accept a negotiated settlement of the war.1
A Problem Solver and Consensus Builder
Throughout his Navy career, Holloway proved to be a clear-eyed, pragmatic, and insightful problem solver. As Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air Warfare) in the Pentagon, he developed a new approach to damage control and shipboard safety following the catastrophic fires on board the carriers USS Oriskany (CVA-34), Forrestal (CVA-59), and Enterprise. Those conflagrations during the Vietnam War killed 206 men, destroyed scores of aircraft, and put the Forrestal out of commission for seven months.
Holloway burnished his leadership credentials by persuading the Navy to adopt a cost-saving idea that the air wing of each carrier should be tailored for the mission at hand. In his “CV Concept,” all carriers would be designated multipurpose carriers (CVs), but each carrier’s air wing would be tailored for the mission at hand. Hence, carriers bombing targets in North Vietnam would operate with a wing heavy in fighter and attack aircraft and only a few for antisubmarine protection. Carriers deployed to the Mediterranean, where the threat from Soviet submarines was greatest, would employ a wing strong in antisubmarine planes and a few fighters for air defense.2
Holloway’s skill at consensus building also was a hallmark of his Navy career. With the enthusiastic support of Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Admiral Thomas H. Moorer and Admiral Hyman G. Rickover, the father of the nuclear navy, Holloway oversaw a Navy carrier program aimed at streamlining the bureaucratic process for carrier development and construction. His numerous appearances before Congress and positive working relationships with key senators and senior flag officers ultimately led to the commissioning in May 1975 of the supercarrier USS Nimitz (CVN-68) and the development of a robust nuclear-powered carrier force.3
In July 1973, CNO Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. brought him on as his Vice Chief of Naval Operations. Holloway proved to be a loyal, hard-working subordinate, even though he did not share Zumwalt’s less than enthusiastic support for nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines and absolute disdain for Admiral Rickover, one of Holloway’s mentors.4
A Common-Sense Leader
James Holloway became the Chief of Naval Operations on 29 June 1974, a time when the U.S. Navy was suffering badly from the consequences of the Vietnam War. Congress, reflecting the nation’s strong aversion to similar overseas commitments, starved the Navy of the new ships, aircraft, and repair support it needed to counter a modernizing and globally operating Soviet Navy.
Post-Vietnam antimilitary and antiestablishment sentiment, racial conflict, drug abuse, and a host of other societal ills troubled the Navy’s personnel base. Admiral Zumwalt’s social reforms had set the Navy on the right course to eliminate racial and gender discrimination and to improve sailors’ quality of service; however, Holloway recognized that these corrective measures had unsettled the service and disoriented leaders and sailors of all ranks.
Holloway’s primary accomplishment as CNO was to bring stability to the Navy. In response to a request from Secretary of the Navy John Warner, Holloway laid out his goals in a “personal and private” memo. He observed that he energetically supported Zumwalt’s programs but would “slow down the rate of change.” In elaboration, he wrote that Zumwalt’s reforms were marked by innovation and imagination and routinely resulted in “drastic changes to the traditional ‘old Navy’ way of doing things.” He added, however, that he thought it was time for the Navy to go slower and concentrate on implementing those changes that showed the most promise.5
He took a measured, common-sense approach that reemphasized tradition, experience, and practicality. He dropped some of Zumwalt’s personnel programs, kept others that worked, and introduced his own more fully developed measures, including the Navy Affirmative Action Program. He accommodated many young sailors’ desires for free expression but insisted on greater discipline and order in shipboard life. He endorsed the promotion of African Americans to flag rank and the attendance of women at the U.S. Naval Academy. He opened many more aviation and other billets to women. Avoiding a display of favoritism for one warfare specialty over another, he enabled surface warfare officers and submariners to command major naval aviation units.
As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and on occasion as its Acting Chairman, Admiral Holloway proved to be a steady hand in international crises. His advice to President Gerald R. Ford during the confrontation with North Korea over the killing of U.S. officers in the Demilitarized Zone in August 1976 helped the Commander-in-Chief resolve the crisis without further bloodshed.6 Holloway also ably served the National Command Authority during the evacuations from Cambodia and South Vietnam and the seizure of the merchant ship Mayaguez by the Khmer Rouge in the spring of 1975.7
A Strong Voice for National Security
Holloway had an extraordinary ability to win and keep allies who could help strengthen the military in general and the Navy in particular. His fact-based and civil approach to issues won the support of President Ford, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, successive Secretaries of Defense and of the Navy, and key members of Congress. Holloway’s support on Capitol Hill proved especially useful when he had to face off against Rickover, even though Holloway admired the legendary officer.
Rickover wanted every ship in the fleet to be nuclear powered. Holloway understood that the Navy needed an affordable and balanced fleet of non-nuclear-powered cruisers and destroyers, as well as the nuclear-powered ships. Holloway asked key members Congress if they should follow “the advice of the CNO, the senior uniformed official responsible for the readiness of naval forces now and in the future—and whose views are supported by the Secretary of the Navy and Secretary of Defense and presidential decision—or the advice of Admiral Rickover.”8 Holloway’s position prevailed and the policy of limiting nuclear power to carriers and submarines became firmly established. John Lehman, Secretary of the Navy during the 1980s, considered Holloway “not the average, docile peacetime chief” but a leader “who never trimmed his sails to [the] prevailing winds.”9
Holloway stood up to even more powerful leaders with whom he disagreed. On one occasion, President Ford, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and arms negotiator Kissinger wanted to limit the allowed number of revolutionary Tomahawk cruise missiles in a draft nuclear arms treaty with the Soviet Union. Holloway, then Acting Joint Chiefs Chairman, argued before the National Security Council against what he considered “an unbalanced agreement.” When Ford turned to Holloway, the admiral replied that “you’re not going to like this Mr. President but we cannot agree” with giving up the cruise missile.10 Ford, displeased with Holloway’s position but unwilling to proceed without the endorsement of the uniformed heads of the armed services, overruled his Secretary of State. Kissinger later admitted to Holloway that at the time he was “very mad” at the admiral over the issue, but he came to recognize the great value of the game-changing weapon system.
The newly elected administration of Jimmy Carter did sign a strategic arms limitation agreement with the Soviet Union—but neither the United States nor the Soviet legislatures ratified it.11 Holloway also opposed President Carter’s efforts to drop the construction of a new carrier from successive Defense Department budgets. Strengthened by the admiral’s persuasive arguments, Congress ultimately overcame the President’s opposition and approved funding for the construction of a new nuclear-powered carrier, later commissioned as the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). 12
The Carter administration, soured by the Vietnam experience and opposed to similar overseas entanglements, decided that the only U.S. commitment that really mattered was support for NATO. Carter and his Defense Secretary, Harold Brown, mandated that the Navy’s primary, if not exclusive, mission should be to control the Atlantic so troop reinforcements and supplies could reach Europe in a war with the Soviet Union. Indeed, the Carter administration’s “Swing Strategy” was based on the assumption that in a war with the USSR, the U.S. Pacific Fleet would dispatch most of its warships to the Atlantic. Acceptance of that strategy implied a much smaller Navy and a reduced presence in the Pacific and East Asia. The admiral fought not only against the administration’s cuts to Navy strength but the European focus of Carter’s strategy.
Indeed, Holloway reaffirmed the importance of maintaining U.S. warships around the globe to deter enemies and to reassure allies. Japan and the United States’ other Asian allies worried that Carter’s strategy would “sacrifice the East to save the West.”13 Holloway also testified before Congress that if the size of the fleet were reduced, the U.S. Navy would be unable to help Japan. Lehman remembered that “a number of aggressive navy strategic thinkers kept the flame alive during the Carter years [and] Admiral Holloway was, of course, first among them.”14 Unfortunately, he paid a price for his stand. Holloway was convinced that because of his opposition to administration policies, Carter and Brown did not select him to succeed Air Force General George Brown as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.15
A Strategic Vision
Holloway reorganized the operating Navy based on a battle force fleet concept, which concentrated an aircraft carrier, two cruisers, four destroyers, and a nuclear submarine in individual battle groups. The admiral’s overall approach was embodied in Naval Warfare Publication No. 1: Strategic Concepts of the U.S. Navy, issued Navy-wide in May 1978.16 He considered the battle force fleet concept as “probably my most significant contribution to the U.S. Navy in my tour as CNO,” and it remained the Navy’s central organizational tool well into the 21st century.17
Holloway’s Sea Plan 2000 strategic blueprint, even though suppressed by the Carter administration, eventually solidified thinking in strategic circles about the optimum naval approach to the Soviet Union. Holloway promoted the strategic vision of his Pacific Fleet commander, Admiral Thomas B. Hayward, who called for a two-ocean counter to Soviet military power. These ideas formed the core of the Reagan administration’s 600-ship navy and the maritime strategy of the 1980s that witnessed the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Thus, in battle and in command, Admiral James L. Holloway III exhibited the courage, balance, vision, and professionalism of an extraordinary naval leader.
1. “20th Chief of Naval Operations Leaves Behind a Legacy of Service,” 27 November 2019, Naval History and Heritage Command; Admiral James L. Holloway III, obituary, Washington Post, 1 December 2019, C8. Admiral Holloway’s Navy career is discussed at greater length in this author’s forthcoming work, Admirals under Fire: The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War.
2. ADM James L. Holloway III, USN (Ret.), Aircraft Carriers at War: A Personal Retrospective of Korea, Vietnam, and the Soviet Confrontation (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2007), 250–56, 263, 264; Holloway interview with Marolda, 22, 42.
3. Holloway interview with Marolda; Edgar F. Puryear Jr., American Admiralship: The Moral Imperatives of Naval Command (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2005) 396–99; Norman Polmar and Thomas B. Allen, Rickover: Controversy and Genius (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982), 346–47.
4. Memo, CNO 09 “Eyes Only,” 7 December 1973, Zumwalt Coll., acc. no. 6210709001, Texas Tech Vietnam Archive.
5. Memorandum to the Secretary of the Navy, “personal and private,” Goals for the Next CNO (December 1973), Zumwalt Coll., acc. no. 6210709005, Texas Tech Vietnam Archive.
6. Minutes of Washington Special Actions Group Meeting, White House, 19 August 1976, Ford Library, National Security Adviser, NSC Staff for East Asia and Pacific Affairs, Convenience Files, box 27, WSAG Meeting, Korean Incident, 4, 10. See also Richard A. Mobley, “Revisiting the Korean Tree-Cutting Incident,” Joint Force Quarterly 35 (Summer 2003): 112.
7. Christopher J. Lamb, The Mayaguez Crisis, Mission Command, and Civil-Military Relations (Washington, DC: JCS History Office, Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2018); Malcolm Muir Jr., End of the Saga: The Maritime Evacuation of South Vietnam and Cambodia (Washington, DC: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2017).
8. Polmar and Allen, Rickover: Controversy and Genius, 481.
9. John Lehman, On Seas of Glory: Heroic Men, Great Ships, and Epic Battles of the American Navy (New York: The Free Press, 2001), 346, 348.
10. Holloway interview with Marolda, 33. See also Edgar F. Puryear, American Admiralship (Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press, 2008), 136–38; memo, Brent Scowcroft to President, “Kissinger Report re SALT,” 21 January 1976, Ford Library; memo, Scowcroft to the President, “Talking Points for Today’s NSC Meeting on SALT,” 21 January 1976, Ford Library; Minutes of National Security Council Meeting, 21 January 1976, Ford Library.
11. Holloway interview with Marolda, 33; Puryear, American Admiralship, 136–38; memo, Brent Scowcroft to President, “Kissinger Report re SALT”; Scowcroft to the President, “Talking Points for Today’s NSC Meeting on SALT”; Minutes of National Security Council Meeting; Holloway, Aircraft Carriers at War, 412-13.
12. Holloway, Aircraft Carriers at War, 383–85; Puryear, American Admiralship, 141–43.
13. Edward J. Marolda, Ready Seapower: A History of the U.S. Seventh Fleet (Washington, DC: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2012), 91. See also Holloway interview with David Winkler, 21 May 1997, Naval Historical Foundation, 9–10.
14. John Lehman, Oceans Ventured: Winning the Cold War at Sea (New York: W. W. Norton, 2018), 48.
15. Holloway, Aircraft Carriers at War, 391.
16. Holloway, Aircraft Carriers at War, 392–93; John B. Hattendorf, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s (Newport, RI: Naval War College, 2012).
17. Holloway, Aircraft Carriers at War, 390. See also Hattendorf, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s, xvi-xvii; Peter Swartz, U.S. Navy Capstone Strategies and Concepts (1970–1980): Strategy, Policy, Concept, and Vision Documents (Alexandria, VA: Center for Naval Analyses, 2011)
