Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. served as an innovative Chief of Naval Operations from 1970 to 1974. His actions elicited praise on one hand and criticism on the other. (See “A Study in Contrast") Following are edited excerpts from oral history interviews with the Naval Institute’s Paul Stillwell—Admiral Bagley in May 1983 and Admiral Shear in June 1993.
Admiral Bagley: During the first three years of Admiral Zumwalt’s tenure, he and Bagley worked well together and had a mutual sense of personal loyalty. In 1973, the CNO assigned Bagley to be the four-star Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, based in England.
I went over there and did my job in London, and then there was a discussion about who was going to relieve Zumwalt. It got down to either me or Admiral James Holloway. We had talks with Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and Deputy Secretary of Defense William Clements. And we talked with the Secretary of the Navy.
An issue that I think was explicit was whether to continue the Zumwalt ideas and process or whether it ought to be arrested. So they made a compromise and said, “We want a team. Holloway will be CNO, and you will be VCNO [Vice Chief of Naval Operations].” It wasn’t a choice being offered to me. It was something that I probably ought to do, because that’s what they wanted to do. I interpreted it to mean that I would have the benefit of being able to present ideas and concepts and have something to do with the final decisions that the CNO made.
When I relieved Admiral Holloway as VCNO, he told me his precept of that office—a guy who went and did what the CNO said. I figured that he just finished being VCNO to Zumwalt, and he didn’t want anybody to think that what Zumwalt did was what Holloway believed in. The second interpretation that I could get was that this wasn’t going to be a team thing. When Holloway came in as CNO on the first of August, I had the hope that we could do a decent job. When we began together, probably in the expectation that I would serve two years as Vice Chief, he said that I would go out as relief for Admiral Maurice Weisner as Commander in Chief, Pacific.
By the first of October, however, it was clear that what he said in the opening interview was what he meant. This was not the team effort I expected. So I told him then, having been VCNO for two months, that I felt I ought to leave. He did not offer me another four-star job. So we agreed mutually that I would retire the following summer. I observed over the course of our nearly a year together that the Holloway regime was a dead one.
Admiral Shear: On 30 June 1975, Admiral Harold Shear, who had been serving as Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces Europe, in London, succeeded Admiral Bagley as Vice Chief.
I got a call from Jim Holloway. He said, “Worth’s going to retire, and I want you to come back and take the job.” It had to be either a destroyerman or submariner. It couldn’t be another aviator, which Holloway was.
So I said, “Good gosh, Jim, I thought I was going to be over here for three years and retire when you retire.”
He said, “Well, things have changed.”
I could not have worked for a better man than Jim Holloway. I think the world of him. There was some feeling there. Although I’m sure Worth worked conscientiously for Jim Holloway, he was not Holloway’s boy; he was Zumwalt’s boy.
The Vice Chief runs the Navy, and I ran that Navy with a very fair hand, a very firm hand. I enjoyed that job tremendously, and I think Holloway had full confidence in me.
Probably the most important thing I did in 42 years of active duty was to get the Navy back to battery after Zumwalt. What he did with regard to racism, to blacks, and to women, and so forth was absolutely positive. All the other things he did were not good for the Navy. Something Holloway and I had to do was quietly and firmly get the Navy back to battery. We just slowly and calmly took a round turn, and it became obvious in a matter of months that we were getting the Navy back to where it ought to be.
Holloway and I never made up a list of things we should do. We just in our own minds knew what had to be done, and we did it. The Navy had gotten sloppy. We just got the word out to fleet commanders and others that we were going to tighten up. I think personnel issues were probably the most obvious ones. Because the Navy had gotten very sloppy in terms of appearance and discipline.
It wasn’t any big publicity that, “By golly, we’re dropping Zumwalt; we’re changing things in a different way.” With written directives and by word of mouth, we got the word out. By actions—or inactions in some cases—we made sure that the Navy was changing.
