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ap e years after World War II, it was
sUf^rent ^at the Navy would need
t<Zntially more regular officers in
than it had previously. The
re i.r ^ahfwe) helped devise a plan to
r that goal. The Navy agreed. The K-°npr„.
$entl SS a&ree(t- But one more
e,,,an had to aeree before it went effect.
J[n July 1945, 1 was completing my ninth month as commanding officer of the fast battleship Iowa (BB-61) in the Pacific. The Iowa group had just pulled back after bombarding Hokkaido and Honshu in the Japanese home islands when I received a message from Admiral Nimitz that I was to be relieved, detached, and promoted to rear admiral. Captain Charlie Wellborn came aboard to relieve me, and I took the high-line to a destroyer. Those fast battleships were the loveliest ships we ever built, and as I looked back at the Iowa the thought struck me: “My Lord! Have 1 had the pleasure of having that beautiful thing all these months?”
My new job was Commander Fleet Training Command, Pacific Fleet, at Coronado. I wasn’t very happy with it, because I’d already had more than my share of training assignments, but fortunately it didn’t last long. After I’d been there about two weeks, 1 got a call from Vice Admiral Louis Denfeld, the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Personnel, in Washington. He said, “Drop whatever you’re doing and take the first plane back here. Have them send your stuff on later, and come in a hurry."
When I saw Admiral Denfeld, he told me I was to be president of a board. “What board?” I asked.
He replied, “Mr Forrestal1 wants to set up the modus operandi for the whole officer structure in the postwar Navy. The Naval Academy can’t possibly support the number we know we’re going to have to have.” I protested that I was a fresh-caught rear admiral and no intellectual, and that I really did not feel that I was the best man for the job. But he said, “Well, you’re it.”
How I came to be put at the head of this board is a good question. As I’d told Admiral Denfeld, I didn’t have much in the way of academic credentials. I d graduated from the academy in what we called the “five-fathom shot,” among the men near the anchorman. I wouldn’t have made it at all if it hadn’t been for World War I. We got into it just before my second-class year, when I know I’d have bilged in mechanics, but everybody was graduated early, so I was saved.
The main thing I had to offer was that I was passionately fond of the Navy. And I was fortunate in that over the years I had been exposed to a number of truly outstanding people. That exposure, which began in 1915, my plebe year at the academy, had a terrific
‘For footnotes, please turn to page 77.
impact on me and on the way I handled jobs. To my way of thinking, our first class (1916) was one of the greatest classes that ever came to the academy, and to have it bring us up as plebes was an education in itself.
Then, in 1922, when I was a lieutenant on the China station, the Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet, Admiral Edwin A. Anderson, had us to dinner on board his flagship, the tender Black Hawk (AD-9), one evening and told a story I took to heart. There had been some trouble with rival warlords in Canton, and the admiral sent a senior officer down in a gunboat to straighten things out. No sooner was this fellow over the horizon than he began requesting instructions: “What shall I do in this case? What shall I do in that case?” And so on, about six times. The commander in chief never replied, and before the senior officer reached Canton, Lieutenant Leland Lovette,2 commanding a "spit kit,” sailed in between the two armies on the opposite banks and said, “Cease fire in the name of the great republic,” and did the trick. So from that time on, in more than 40 years of active duty, I never requested instructions. I always said what I intended to do, and sometimes, but not too often, added, “unless otherwise directed,” and always allowed enough time for my seniors to change it if they so desired.
The next gentleman who had a great impact on me was Rear Admiral Harris Laning. I was his flag lieutenant for five years, at sea and at the Naval War College. He was a real naval philosopher and a great inspiration. Later, 1 had two cruises in the Fleet Training Division of OpNav. There I sat opposite “Ching” Lee3 for one year and “Spike” Blandy4 for two. They were both marvelous officers, and anyone who couldn’t learn something from close association with them was asleep at the switch.
On leaving Fleet Training in 1936, I went as navigator in the Idaho (BB-42). Going through the Panama Canal, we had a steering casualty and bumped the side of the Gaillard Cut. When you touched the ground with a ship in those days, you were practically up for a firing squad. The court of inquiry was composed of Ernie King,[1] who was a vice admiral then, and two captains. Captain Alexander Sharp and 1 were the defendants. Selected for commander and confident in my professional virtue, 1 refused to show any trepidation. But 1 could see the two junior members of the court rubbing their hands together and thinking, “We’d better hang them just to be on the safe side.” But Ernie went down into the bowels of the ship, tested everything, and found the Bureau of Ships responsible. That was the only time that had ever happened in the Navy, I believe.
So he knew me from across the “green table,” as a defendant, but was always for me. In a navy that small, everybody knew almost everybody else, and it was helpful for me to have the reputation of a fellow who would say, “Don't worry, Boss, I’ve got it in hand.”
The specific reason I was appointed to the board went back to a training command I held during the war. At the beginning of 1943, the Navy had hundreds of destroyer escorts coming off the line, and nobody knew anything about them. There were no training plans, no operating manuals, and not much of anything else that would help get them ready for the war. I’d commanded Destroyer Squadron Ten in the invasion of North Africa; that presumably gave me the background, so I was sent down to Bermuda with the first squadron of DEs to work out a program for training their crews. I did as 1 was told, and my efforts caught the eye of Admirals King, Ingersoll, and Denfeld. Denfeld was then Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel, and Ingersoll was Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet, COMINCH (Commander in Chief, U. S. Fleet [ Admiral King]) had been giving the Bureau of Personnel a lot of grief about its training programs, and that fall Admiral Denfeld called me back to Washington and made me the bureau’s Director of Training.
I was unhappy, because I was up for commodore, and that broad stripe looked awfully good. But as Director of Training I had to forgo it and continue as a captain. As things turned out, I was lucky. Commodore was often the kiss of death. You wouldn’t give it up when you should, in order to get a big ship, and Ernie King wouldn’t initial your name on the selection board list for rear admiral until you’d had a big ship under your belt. At any rate, Admiral Denfeld told me, “Jimmy, you get this show on the road, and at the end of a year you can write your own ticket. I’ll save either the Missouri or the Iowa fi>r you.” Of course, he was as good as his word.
Admiral Denfeld had a personal assistant, a reserve commander named Milton Mumford, who had been placed with him as a management advisor.6 Mum- ford and I were about the same age, and we instinctively hit it off. He called me “Colonel” and 1 called him "Major,” which we thought was a friendly sort of way not to appear too rank conscious. We came into close and frequent contact while I was Director of Training; that was to be important later on.
My first day on the job, I found that my predecessor had assembled a great group of professional educators as heads of section. A1 Eurich, vice president of Leland Stanford, was typical. They were brilliant, but I felt that we needed line officers, with experi-
U. S. NAVY (NATIONAL ARCHIVES)
^nce and objectivity, in the leadership roles. So we I ePt educators, but we also brought in regular ne officers fresh from combat to serve as section ^eads. I averted the destruction of The Bluejackets' anual, a Naval Institute publication. It was being eplaced by a bureau publication, and the commer- la dlustrators were drawing pictures of sailors with ears, elephant trunks, and the like. I threw . .. t*lat stuff out and told them to make sailors look e Arrow shirt models in all illustrations. The idea j.as t0 enhance pride, not to undermine it. Soon I discovered that part of the problem was that the Miisjch staff was harassing our people. On learn- ln8 that, I g0t on the horn and said, “You buzzards ^et out of my hair! I was in Fleet Training before you ever heard of it, and I’m running this show!’’ ^tale was much improved thereafter.
^ he offshoot of all this was that “Major” Mumford k°t the idea that Jimmy Holloway could do no ofro^8, which—as Mark Twain remarked of reports his death—was greatly exaggerated. But he be- ai^e my booster, and when Mr. Forrestal asked . 'T'iral Denfeld to convene a board on officer train- strongly urged the admiral to send for me. ]<?/ t*lat s really why I got the board job in August 5> right after the end of the war. y that point, it had become apparent that the retVVar Navy was going to stay at a size that would fiuire a greater input of officers than the Naval adetny, as traditionally constituted, could possibly I, ce' The first plan submitted to Mr. Forrestal t\v ^ ^°r convertln8 rhe academy program into a ''year course for young men who had completed e sophomore year at civilian schools. That would ole the academy’s annual output of ensigns. But tly ^orrestal> *n his wisdom, was not convinced that •* Was the best way to go, and he decided to seek er advice. Our board was formed to provide it.
In the early part of World War II, Captain Holloway trained crews for destroyer escorts just going into commission. There were no training plans and no manuals, but as usual he was able to say, “Don’t worry, Boss, I’ve got it in hand. ” [2] S.
the four years at Annapolis was the optimum system to create—I don’t like the word “dedication,” but call it “a habit of service”—in people who would stay with you. Some would get out, of course, but in most cases the imprint of those four years of almost Jesuitical preparation would produce a career commitment. That’s what gives you your pros, and you can’t get along without them.
Once that was settled, we had to decide how we were going to turn out the additional officers that were needed. The answer we came up with was to establish a broad-based, regular Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps (NROTC) at selected colleges and universities across the country. The young men who were accepted into the program would receive four years’ paid tuition and fees, along with $50 a month. That $50 may not sound like much now, but remember, this was 1945. The midshipmen who passed through the program would be obligated for a certain period of active duty, so the government would get its money back, and the Navy would have an assured supply of junior officers to supplement the Naval Academy’s graduates.14 Some of them would go on to make the Navy a career, and the others could be let out after their required service, which would ease the attrition during mid-career selection later on. This thought derived from my hearing of the Royal Air Force short-term commission system.
The key man in working this out was my classmate Beanie Adams. He’d had a great deal of experience in the V-7 and V-12 officer training programs early in the war, and he was the one who developed the techniques that were involved in the NROTC program. Then, after the plan was approved, he was in charge of its implementation. He selected the schools, and his office evolved the method and organized the system of selecting and screening the candidates, who had to be accepted by both the Navy and the school. Beanie Adams was the real architect of the Holloway Plan. It just had to have a flag officer’s name on it to make it Navy.15
The major difference of opinion that arose during our sessions was in regard to aviation training. The aviation community, represented by Johnnie Vest, wanted to send the midshipmen into flight training at the end of their sophomore year. After they’d got their wings and spent two or three years in the fleet, they’d return to college for the last two years. Johnnie had some data that indicated you could train aviators better at age 18 than at 21 or 22. This was right after the war, and possibly the younger aviators were supposed to have thrown themselves on the enemy with more abandon.
Beanie Adams was thoroughly opposed to this idea, and he and Johnnie locked horns. They were men of strong conviction, and it was a sight to behold their eyes flash across the table. In the end, 1 helped Johnnie push the thing through, because he wouldn’t budge an inch, and that was the only way 1 could get unanimity. I told Beanie, “This will work itself out,” and it did. After a few years, the aviation community decided that it would rather train newly minted ensigns than sophomores out of college.
As I saw it, the main thing was to get out a unanimous report on which we could write legislation and start up the NROTC program. So we had to compromise some here and there all the way through. For example, the educators wanted to limit the term of obligated service to 15 months, which I thought was too short. They also put in some gratuitous philosophy, which I accepted, such as “provide curricula aimed at the exercise of thought rather than at the mere acquisition of information,”16 which was a needless slap at instruction at the Naval Academy. I had gone there, and I had taught there, and I knew from both experiences that if there’s anything that exercises thought, it’s having to dig material out for yourself, not sitting there listening to an instructor telling you everything yon need to know. But we let it stand.
Another arbitrary feature in Part I stipulated that the annual input of commissions from the NROTC and the Naval Academy would be exactly the same, so there would be complete fairness and neithef group could overslaugh the other. If the academy graduated too many, they wouldn’t all be commissioned. That slipped out of context and was responsible for a lot of hard feeling at the “Navy school.” I accepted these things because, in my administrative instinct—I won’t call it “wisdom”—I realized that if certain portions of the report weren’t satisfactory, they could easily be phased out administratively at a later date.
We knocked out this Part I of the report in less than a month. We’d start work at 1000 in the morning and break for lunch and at 1600. Then the real workhorses—Beanie Adams, Jim Baxter, Felix Johnson, and I—would go back to draft, redraft, and dictate, sometimes until 0200 in the morning, to get the material ready for the full board when it met the next day. We had two secretaries going all the time. I was never one to make things long and drawn out, and this portion of the report, much of which I drafted in my own hand, was only three-and-a-haU typed pages. We held it down by making the point that we were keeping on the policy level. We stated that, “There exist suitable administrative echelons of the | Navy] Department to implement such recom-
rnen ed policy as may be approved. The Board is °nvinced that over-emphasis of detail in its report an serve only as a deterrent to decision. . . ,”17 e other two parts dealt with questions of con- jnuing education. Because of the increased size of postwar Navy, a great many reserve officers who
the
had
served in the war, some of them quite young, ^ete being transferred to permanent commissions. ar>y of these kids, in their eagerness to get into the
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fray, had left or skipped college to join the Navy, where they had performed exceedingly well. They were being selected for regular commissions on the grounds of their wartime performance, but it was inevitable that they would be at a relative disadvantage later on. The board was unanimously agreed that they should have the opportunity to extend their education. It recommended the adoption of a sliding scale that would allow everyone to get the equivalent of five semesters and a year of line school, or its equivalent. This would put them roughly on the same level as their contemporaries from the Naval Academy, whose wartime curriculum had been considerably abbreviated. We also recommended the immediate opening of a school of the line, in addition to the one at Monterey, at Quonset, Rhode Island. That was Part II.
Part III concerned long-range planning for education and training. We often remarked that you can train a seal, but you can’t educate him. After a great deal of discussion, we decided to endorse the recommendations made in an earlier study of military education by the Knox-King-Pye Board. Also the postwar Joint Chiefs of Staff called for emphasis on cross-fertilization—that is, sending people from one service to another’s postgraduate schools—and the creation of a joint staff college. We all thought that those were good ideas.
We sent the report to Mr. Forrestal via Admiral King. Ernie was a man of very pronounced views, and he had a vigorous staff, some of whose members were probably not admirers of mine, so he really gave it a going over. Some of his points were very well taken. He exploded the ideas of limiting the NROTC obligated service to 15 months and of letting some Naval Academy graduates go in order to maintain an artificial balance between it and the NROTC. He also made a strong case that our desire to educate all those transferees did not give sufficient attention to the immediate needs of the fleet, which was pragmatic and true, because no one could have foreseen things like Korea coming up. He concluded, “I am not prepared to recommend implementation of a plan of this scope and magnitude without evaluating its effects ... on the Navy as a whole . . ,”18 Actually, this program had to be extended in time and mod-
During World War II, Reserve Officer Training Corps programs such as this one produced thousands of qualified officers. The author's task u as to find a means of replacing them once the war was over.
ified, because of Korea.
Mr. Forrestal liked it, though, and all three parts of the report came back from his office “approved with . . . modifications.”'5' The modifications were amendments of the weak points, such as waiving the restrictive requirement of not using all of the Naval Academy graduates. So in that regard, things had worked out pretty much the way I’d hoped and expected they would.
The next step was to get Congress to appropriate the money we needed to put the NROTC program into operation—the tuition and books, the monthly stipend, and so on. We drafted sample legislation and sent it up to Capitol Hill. And it got pigeonholed. Finally, in August 1946, Vice Admiral Arthur W. Radford, the Deputy CNO for Air, told me to go see Mr. Carl Vinson,2" the chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, and ask him to get things unstrung. I picked up Felix Johnson, who was a rear admiral by then, and we flew down to Milledgeville, Georgia, where Mr. Vinson was at home on his farm.
Mr. Vinson met us at the top of the big front steps that led up to the verandah of his house. “Hello there,” he called. “You boys in trouble again?”
I said, “No, First Lord”—I always called him that because in the British parliamentary system he would have been First Lord of the Admiralty—“We’re here for counsel and advice. We’ve got this piece of legislation for a regular NROTC. You’ve seen it and liked it. But we can’t get it on the calendar.”
He called out to his administrative assistant, Bob Harper. “Bob, go in there and get on the telephone. Tell them to get Pat Drury straightened out and get that bill through.” Pat Drury was the next-ranking member of the Naval Affairs Committee. When that was settled, Mr. Vinson sat us down to share a watermelon with him.
As it turned out, Congress loved the bill. A great many members believed that West Point and Annapolis were a little too stiff-necked, and the prospect of having a complementary source of officers simply delighted them. Felix Johnson testified for it in the committee hearings, and he was a marvelous witness, persuasive and charming. The outcome was that the bill passed both houses unanimously.[3]
That wasn’t the end of our problems, though- When the bill went up to the White House, President Truman declined to sign it. He had been an Army officer, a captain of artillery, and a fine one, m World War I. He was always very sympathetic to the Army, and it had talked him into exercising a pocket veto. The Army’s position was backed up by the Bureau of the Budget. I saw General Thomas T- Handy, the Vice Chief of Staff, and Jim Webb,[4]" the new Director of the Bureau of the Budget, but I didn’t make any headway. The Army wanted an annual input of thousands of second lieutenants, so it didn’t want the Navy to set the precedent of having 3 paid ROTC, and the Bureau of the Budget agreed that it would be too expensive. Jim Webb told me that personally he thought it was a wonderful plan, but all his people were against it, and he didn’t feel he could come fresh into office and overrule them on something like that.
Eventually, Clark Clifford,[5] who was then 3 Naval Reserve captain and naval aide to the president, arranged for Admiral Denfeld and Mr. Forrestal to meet with Mr. Truman to discuss his pocket veto. As they were going into the Oval Office, they met Stuart Symington,[6] who was then Assistant Secretary of War for Air, coming out, and they gathered that he had been there to urge Mr. Truman
j° stand firm on the veto. Actually, Clifford had one his best to prepare the way for them, reminding ^ r' Truman that the bill had passed both houses of ngress without a dissenting vote, but Mr. Truman ^as st*W reluctant to sign it. Finally, he promised at he would—in exchange for a gentlemen’s agfeement that the total number of midshipmen in c e NROTC program would be held to 7,000. That dumber would allow us to take in about 2,000 a year ar,d, with attrition, to graduate a class roughly equal *n Slze to that at the Naval Academy. Mr. Forrestal an<d Admiral Denfeld agreed, and Mr. Truman j|*gned the bill. It became the law of the land, and as provided the navy with a splendid supply of junior officers and many successful senior ones ever since.25 jn the meantime, of course, the Army and e Air Force have established similar programs. ®ut it was a close call. | Admiral Holloway was graduated from the Naval Academy in 1918. Among the billets he held as a *' flag officer were Superintendent of the Naval . ' Academy; Commander Battleship-Cruiser Force, U. S. Atlantic Fleet; Chief of Naval Personnel; UL and Commander in Chief, Naval Forces Eastern HjP fll Atlantic and Mediterranean. He retired from active duty in 1959 and now lives in McLean, Virginia. His son. Admiral James L. Holloway III, was Chief of Naval Operations from 1974 to 1978. ■ • ' - A former U. S. Army officer, Dr. Sweetman is an h°nors graduate of Stetson University, DeLand, Florida. He was a Ford Fellow at Emory Univer- ’"’v® < sity, where he received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees. He was associate editor of the Proceedings "*** - from 1975 to 1980 and in that capacity wrote the \ ^ monthly Books of Interest to the Professional column and the annual Notable Naval Books. He is the author of The Landing at Veracruz: 1914 and The V. S. Naval Academy: An Illustrated History. He lives in Arnold, Maryland. |
lj es V. Forrestal, then the Secretary of the Navy and later the first 2^jetary of Defense. *nd Lovette (later vice admiral) USNA 1918, was director of Navy ,c relations during World War II and author of Naval Institute’s Actual c 3ty'| • USt0Tns' 1editions and Usage. ^ A. Lee, Jr. (later vice admiral), USNA 1908, the foremost merican battleship admiral of World War II, was the victor of the f«Val *5attle of Guadalcanal in November 1942 and later commanded the 4^, Battleship task force with the Third and Fifth Fleets. thellllam P‘ Blandy <later admiral), USNA 1913, became at age 50 the y°Ungest line admiral in the Navy upon his appointment as Chief of off jBureau of Ordnance in 1941. He had the Amphibious Support Force wo Jima and Okinawa, and was Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Jet* 1947-50. ^ est J. King (later fleet admiral), USNA 1901, was made Com- oander in Chief, U. S. Fleet in December 1941 and Chief of Naval sh^ rat*°ns *n March 1942. In these posts he played a leading role in 6M^lng Amer*can strategy in World War II. ton C. Mumford later enjoyed a distinguished business and civic cje^er’ Serving as vice president of Marshall Field and Company, presi- jcj^ancl chief executive officer of the Lever Brothers Company, 1959> and National Volunteer Chairman of the United Community v*ign ofAme^a- Was0^ Heald, a distinguished engineer, educator, and civil leader, th ^res*dent °f Illinois Institute of Technology, 1940-52, president of Arnerican Society of Engineering Education, 1942-43, and later 8janCedor °f New York University. rnes p Baxter, Ph.D., served as Deputy Director of the Office of sategic Services, 1942-43 and Historian of the Office of Scientific Re- c and Development, 1943-46. In 1947 he was awarded the Pulitzer *n history. ret * Uf Adams, USNA 1918, resigned from the Navy in 1922 but i(J^ned to active duty during World War II. ades D. Wheelock (later rear admiral), USNA 1920, received the i gree Master of Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology ^ and served during World War II as Head of the Design Section Uj Bufcau of Ships. ° n ^‘nckney W. Vest, USNA 1922, served as Special Naval Ob- »erver a ■ . , ’ with the Royal Air Force in 1941-42. Later he commanded me ljqc r' 1 5 Uroatan (CVE-25) and a task force in the Atlantic Fleet, after | which he was made Director, Aviation Training Section, Office of the Deputy CNO for Air. 12Felix L. Johnson (later vice admiral), USNA 1920, commanded the USS President Adams (AP-38) and the USS Springfield (CL-66) in the Pacific in World War II. He served as Director of Naval Intelligence, 1949-1952. 13Stuart H. Ingersoll (later vice admiral), USNA 1920, was awarded the Navy Cross for heroism in command of the USS Monterey (CVL-26) in the Pacific in 1944. He was commander of the Seventh Fleet, 1955-1957, and president of the Naval War College, 1957-1960. 14There had been voluntary NROTC programs since the 1920s, but the students were not subsidized by the government and incurred no active duty obligation. 15It also had a flag officer’s name on it when published in the Proceedings. See "The Holloway Plan—A Summary View and Commentary,” November 1947, pp. 1293-1303. 16Bureau of Naval Personnel, "Report of Board to Study Proper Form, System and Method of Education of Naval Officers of the Post-War United States Navy,” Part III, 22 September 1945, p. 3 (referred to hereafter as "Report of Board”). 17Report of Board, Part I, 15 September 1945, p. 1. 18Report of Board, Parts I-III, Second Endorsement, 12 October 1945, p.l. ,9Report of Board, Fourth Endorsement, 30 October 1945. 20Carl Vinson was first elected to the U. S. House of Representatives in 1914. Long-time chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee and co-sponsor of the Vinson-Trammel Act (1934), which provided the basis of the Navy’s prewar expansion, he was for decades a key figure in the development of naval legislation. 21 House Resolution 5426 of 8 February 1946. 22James Webb was later administrator of the National Aviation and Space Administration (NASA). 23Clark Clifford, a leading Washington attorney, was commissioned in the U. S. Naval Reserve in 1944. During the Johnson administration he served as Secretary of Defense. 24W. Stuart Symington was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Air, 1946-47, and Secretary of the Air Force, 1947-50. He was later U. S. Senator from Missouri. 25Public Law 729 of 13 August 1946. |
Pr°CeBri,r.™„ / o. . ,______________ . | 77 |
[1] (“Beanie”) Adams,9 a retired Navy captain, who had been assistant dean of engineering at the University of Colorado and was later provost at Cornell and president of the University of New Hampshire. Those three people were intellectuals in the finest sense of the word. The four uniformed members were all captains in the navy, and they were all hard chargers. Charlie Wheelock10 had belonged to the Navy's old Construction Corps, and he was one of the best. The aviation community was represented by Johnnie Vest,11 who was an aviator’s aviator, as tough as they come in mind and body. Felix Johnson12 was a polished and charming North Carolinian, very quick on the uptake. “Slim” Ingersoll13 was commandant of midshipmen at the Naval Academy. He was an old carrier pilot and, of course, he was in there pitching for the academy. Then there were two recorders, Commander Charles K. Duncan and Commander Douglas M. Swift. The board made them members at the end to reward them for their work. We began to meet in August. The first question we took up, which formed Part I of our report, was officer procurement. It was the only part to go into legislation and became known as the Holloway Plan, although that was really a misnomer.
It was immediately apparent that no one favored the idea of turning the academy into a sort of two- year naval finishing school. The educators were philosophically sold on a continuous, four-year undergraduate experience. The boys in blue agreed on the same grounds, and they had an emotional involvement, as well. I remember Slim Ingersoll saying, "What in the world would we do for a football team against Army?” We all felt that the discipline and everything else that go to make up the way of life in Bancroft Hall were just as important to the Navy environment as the “colleges” at Yale and the “halls” at Harvard are to them. I was confident that
The first thing I did was to look at who was on the board, and they were a blue-ribbon bunch. There were three savants: Henry T. Heald,7 who was president of Illinois Institute of Technology; James P. Baxter,8 president of Williams College; and Arthur
Former artilleryman Harry Truman was initially skeptical
about a program which seemed to give the Navy an advantage.
Eventually, though, he was satisfied and signed the Holloway
Plan into law.