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What are naval historians to make of all the oral histories at their disposal? Are these hundreds of sea stories told by retired naval officers legitimate sources of primary data? Columbia University produced some 36 of them, mostly in the 1960s. In 1969 the U.S. Naval Institute took up the task, having completed some 175 since then, with another 100 or so in various phases of production. The effort, on the whole, has been worth it.
This opinion comes from experience. When I wrote biographies of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King and Admiral Raymond A. Spruance—Master of Sea Power and The Quiet Warrior, respectively—oral histories were indispensable to my research. Some historians use these resources sparingly or not at all, while others swallow them whole. As a prudent historian myself, I proceeded with caution to avoid their rocks and shoals, but they helped get me where I wanted to go. In order to pass down the line what I have learned about oral histories in the past 20 years, I share here two excellent—as well as entertaining—case studies: the oral histories of two chiefs of staff from World War II, Admiral Robert B. Carney and Rear Admiral Charles J. (Carl) Moore.
Oral history sources do carry some potential pitfalls. Quality is independent of the stature of the participant— one who either witnessed or made history that deserved to be documented. Interviews begin with good intentions, but the results are unpredictable. In some cases the chemistry is wrong between the participant and the interviewer. Some interviewers may not inform themselves well enough to ask the right questions. Or perhaps they are too deferential to query the participant’s veracity, and so the oral history suffers.
Similarly, participants may not be forthcoming because of reticence or faulty memory. The professional Navy is a closed society, instinctively avoiding public exposure. Carney deplored controversy that discredited the Navy’s
reputation: the Sampson-Schley syndrome—so named fof the bitter quarrel between two admirals over credit for tbe victory at Santiago de Cuba in 1898. When Fleet Admi" ral William Halsey raged openly against critics of the Ba1" tie of Leyte Gulf, Carney begged him to be quiet. Sirni' larly, Carney implored Admiral Thomas Kinkaid (who 0 Halsey had betrayed him) not to respond to Halsey s tirades. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz is another exampl^ As Commander in Chief Pacific and later as Chief o* Naval Operations (CNO), he soothed discord and discontent; there would never be a repetition of Sampson- Schley on his watch. Had he done an oral history, too much would have been left unsaid.
As for chiefs of staff—notably Moore and Carney-^ historians instinctively search their papers as potentially the most informative sources on the political and uniformed leaders whom they served. My experience has been mixed. For example, the published diary of Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, chief of staff to Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, was utterly useless, as he rarely acknowledged Yamamoto’s existence. The mud-spattered diary of Brigadier General Francis Shoup, chief of staff to General John Bell Hood in the 1864 Tennessee campaign, describes the destruction of the Army of Tennessee, but its pages are void of anything on the one-legged general who led the debacle. But Moore and Carney have served history well. It is our good fortune that they left us a legacy of information not only on the admirals they served but also the war in the Pacific itself.
Their bosses were Spruance and Halsey, whose intimate friendship was unaffected by their divergent personalities, one the introvert and the other the extrovert: Spruance quiet, deep thinking, always in control; Halsey, loud, impetuous, flamboyant; both unified by their extraordinary fighting spirit.
Spruance hated to write, hated to speak in public, and he shunned personal publicity. To preserve Spruance’s achievements. Rear Admiral Ernest “Judge” Eller, a former director of naval history, asked Moore to undertake an oral history as a surrogate for Spruance. He was a wonderful choice, having served with Spruance in the strategy department of the Naval War College and at sea when Spruance had commanded a destroyer before World War I. Although they were warm friends of long standing, Moore was too honest to produce anything resembling a hagiography. The expectation was that he could get into Spruance’s skin and describe Spruance’s thinking, his char-
s I acter, his way of doing business. He did just that: Su-
0 Perbly. Moore’s oral history was one of my most impor- " [ant sources for The Quiet Warrior.
1 ' Halsey was a different matter. Willing to talk and be 1 quoted, he dictated his memoirs, which became Admiral
Halsey’s Story. Biographies have also been published, together with books on Leyte Gulf, Halsey’s perpetually ■ controversial sea battle. None of these works had the ben- etit of Carney’s oral history, because it was closed for 25 years. Undoubtedly, Eller persuaded Carney to undertake an oral history, but it is conjectural as to the extent he may have asked Carney to focus on Halsey. After all, Carney was eminent in his own right, a full admiral who became CNO. Moore, a passed-over captain, might not have been asked, had it not been for his association with Admiral Spruance.
Both were produced in the mid-1960s. Moore’s contains some 1,245 pages, compared to Carney’s 770. Moore sat for 20 interviews over some 18 months. Carney had eight interviews in six months. Moore’s is the larger and contains much more detail because he had more time to do it. He prepared thoroughly beforehand by reviewing records and letters and by planning just what he wanted to accomplish at each session. As a consequence, his nar
rative is deep and broad, it flows smoothly and logically, and he is very articulate. He also comes across as very human by expressing his feelings with few inhibitions.
Carney, on the other hand, speaks in a broader, more general perspective. He, too, expresses his feelings, but with more restraint. And he, like Moore, is well-spoken. But it seems that he relies upon memory and has not done a lot of spade work beforehand—perhaps his time was limited because of other commitments. Even so, he knew what he was doing and what he wanted to say. Carney closed his oral history until July 1989, so for more than 25 years it was unavailable to researchers. Frankly, it is not apparent why he chose to close it.
Both Carney and Moore were surface officers and Naval Academy graduates. They were top-notch professionals who had commanded at sea and had broad staff experience on their way to flag rank. Their last sea tours prior to their chief-of-staff assignments were cruiser commands. Moore’s proved to be a disaster. His ship ran aground in December 1941, and he would never be promoted. But he was so skilled in planning and strategy that he was assigned to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There he toiled, a middle-aged captain hoping to return to sea and fight a war.
Moore on Spruance
Redemption came in the summer of 1943. Spruance had just been assigned as Commander Central Pacific Force (later known as Fifth Fleet), and his first objective was to seize Tarawa in November. Fie needed to assemble a staff. Spruance functioned best when he talked to others and thought aloud, but translating his decisions into writing was a chore he disliked and could not do well. He wanted a chief of staff who was a hard worker and a talented organizer, an able administrator who could crank out the paperwork, and an expert planner who would speak his mind. Moore was just the man to do the work. Moore often said, half-seriously and half-jokingly, that Spruance was the laziest man he ever knew, and he accommodated Spruance by attending to the incidentals that Spruance wanted to avoid.
Spruance and Moore had been friends for 30 years, and each knew the other intimately, on a first-name basis. Moore was candid and forthright in his descriptions of Spruance and of their relationships. Spruance was a zealot on physical fitness, and his long walks were legendary. When Moore arrived from Washington in the summer of 1943, he was anxious to start planning for Tarawa, but Spruance insisted that Moore spend hours walking with him to toughen him up after his years of desk work. Moore protested but went along, which meant he had to stay up all night doing what he could not do during the day.
When action was imminent, Spruance needed solitude to read and to think and to conserve his energy for the decisions he alone could make. According to Moore, he resented disturbances. “Unless you had something really important to talk about, he just wouldn’t talk,” Moore recalled. “He would make a nasty face and look disgusted, and if he did listen he acted as if he were bored to death. He was never excited and never showed any great amount of emotion. He was probably more quiet than ever.” A few times Spruance slammed the door in Moore’s face.
Moore had hoped his work with Spruance would earn him another shot at promotion. But by then he was too old, and the Navy had a long memory of the cruiser he had run aground. During the Marianas campaign he knew he would be tossed aside and replaced with an aviator flag officer. The tension of the campaign and the uncertainty of Moore’s future bred continuing conflicts and disagreements between the two men. There were things I would object to and think that he should do something about, and sometimes he would, sometimes he wouldn’t. He was usually right and usually didn’t pay any attention to me, but I insisted on his knowing what I was talking about.” Moore went on to say that Spruance wanted him to speak out. “But it was very painful, many times, to keep on arguing and trying to make him understand what I was trying to say. He would interrupt and interfere and try to push me aside, and I simply had to hang on and insist on being heard.”
When Spruance’s flagship returned to Pearl Harbor after the Marianas campaign, Moore put his bitterness behind him. Their friendship remained intact. “We parted in the greatest good spirits,” said Moore, “and nothing difficult, either emotionally or sentimentally, nothing unpleasant, a very pleasant affair.”
In contrast, Halsey and Carney hardly knew each other , in the beginning. Halsey had accepted Carney reluctantly- because he had wanted to keep his original chief-of' staff, Miles Browning. Halsey had a well-known blind spot for Browning, who was notorious for his erratic and disruptive behavior that created chaos. He had to go. King and Nimitz finally pried him loose by bribing Halsey with the promise of a major carrier command for Browning- ;
Carney on Halsey
Carney meanwhile had been as successful with his cruiser command as he had been on other sea assignments- His promotion was foreordained, and at age 48, Carney , was wearing new stars when he reported to Halsey in the summer of 1943. While Moore had been able to select the staff that would serve under Spruance, Carney had to work with those he inherited from Browning. As expected, Carney stabilized a helter-skelter staff and became Halsey’s confidant for the remainder of the war and afterward. In his narrative, Carney comes across as a creative, clear- thinking, ingenious counterbalance to Admiral Halsey’s flights of passion.
Carney does not focus on Halsey’s personality to the extent that Moore does with Spruance. But some good vignettes nevertheless help make Halsey come to life. Comparing the two fleet commanders, Carney says, “Halsey was much more inclined to take risks and to act with extreme boldness and extreme speed. They were utterly different people, and each in his own way was a most effective person.” Staff meetings, according to Carney, were often raucous. “He [Halsey] was always riding my tail- What’ll we do now? What’s the next best thing to do? Get your boys together, let’s have an idea, don’t sit on your ass, let’s have an idea!”’
Carney saw a great deal of General Douglas MacArthur in the South Pacific, and he did not like what he saw- There were terrible morale problems, said Carney, because MacArthur would release press statements taking credit for victories that Halsey’s sailors and Marines had won- MacArthur considered Nimitz to be a rival to his personal ambitions and repeatedly tried to discredit him: in the presence of Halsey and Carney he would refer to him as Kneemits.” Carney was shocked when MacArthur told him his greatest concern was that Nimitz might get to the Philippines before he did. Carney related one particularly trying episode, when MacArthur refused to support a joint operation for this very reason.
Finally, Halsey could no longer stand MacArthur’s vanity and posturing. “General,” said Halsey, “you are placing your personal honor, personal satisfaction, before the security of the United States and the outcome of the war.” There was shocked silence. No one had ever spoken to the imperious MacArthur like that before. Then MacArthur spoke. “Bull [only MacArthur called him by that name], that’s a terrible indictment. That’s a terrible thing to say. But I think in my preoccupation I’ve forgotten some things. You can go back now. The commitment will be met.”
No one else could have faced down MacArthur and still have retained his friendship and respect. Halsey had a way with him. It was Halsey’s finest hour.
Carney told some very revealing things about Halsey ®fter he took command of Third Fleet in the fall of 1944. •veep jn mind that Halsey’s mission was to roam over the Western Pacific and wear down Japanese sea power, while ‘ Pruance was preparing for his next amphibious campaign. According to Carney, Halsey was continually seeking the °ld war college “decisive fleet action” of War Plan Orange, where Japanese sea power would be destroyed in °ne mighty blow.
But for such an action, both sides had to be willing to ;'§ht. Obviously, the Imper- laI Japanese Navy had no intention of cooperating. So Halsey tried two techniques.
One was to use decoys to 'Ure the Japanese fleet into ’he open and then ambush ”• Carney tells the story of detaching a small force as °ait in Japanese waters, and ’hat Halsey was willing to risk.—indeed sacrifice—those ships if he could come to 8fips with the main Japanese battle fleet.
In that case, the ruse did not work. What it did illustrate, though, was Halsey’s strategy of attrition. In Carney’s words, “We were in a Position where we could rePlace anything we lost and replace it quickly. The Japanese. . . could replace nothing
’hat they lost. . . . And it was Halsey’s intention that we go in and slug it out with them ... no matter what the hell it took.”
Hence, there was no hesitation to sacrifice the decoy group of two light carriers and escorts if need be. Carney continued, “I reminded Halsey of his earlier statement ’hat we should encourage contact, and that no matter what losses were taken, we could replace them. We could even Replace the bodies [Emphasis added].”
Halsey’s attitude on attrition is shocking, because the national strategy of the United States was to avoid casualties and to let the Russians and Chinese suffer the attrition. Naval historians should reexamine the operations °f the Third Fleet to see to what extent they were governed by such a strategy contrary to national policy. What 'flakes this even more incongruous is that Carney said Halsey wept when he ordered attacks that he knew would result in heavy casualties to American aviators.
As for Leyte Gulf, Halsey’s attitude until the day he died was that he had acted correctly under the circumstances. He was outraged whenever a historian questioned his decisions and was particularly bitter that Samuel Eliot Morison had criticized him. It must have hurt him terribly, when Morison dedicated his volume on Leyte Gulf to Clifton Sprague, the commander of the jeep carriers that took on the Japanese surface forces under Kurita.
Apparently Morison did not consult Halsey, Carney, or anyone else on Halsey’s staff when he was doing his re
search on the campaign. Carney saw the volume after it was published. While Halsey stormed in public, Carney quietly wrote his own objections and kept them to himself. (This was probably in late 1958, just before Halsey’s death.) What is interesting about them is that Carney wanted things both ways. On the one hand he inferred that nothing went wrong, but if anything did go wrong, it was through no fault of Halsey or his staff.
By the time he dictated his oral history in late 1963, five years later, Carney had second thoughts. He wanted _ to let dead dogs lie and made no attempt to rehash old arguments. What Carney did say in those few brief pages is revealing.
The decision to go after the Japanese carriers, he said, “was almost an obsession.” Having tried decoys themselves, he gave the Japanese credit for using decoys to lure Halsey away from San Bernardino Strait. Said Carney, “In that sense, it was successful.”
Carney ruefully admits that Halsey got his major fleet action and destroyed the Japanese fleet, but at a terrible price. Again, in Carney’s words, “Leyte was unsatisfactory from the American viewpoint, in many ways.” Finally, Carney gets to the nub of the matter. The lack of a unified command at Leyte was “. . . a profound national error.” Someone, he said, and not necessarily Halsey, should have exercised supreme command of all the naval forces. “If I’d been older, more senior in the hierarchy, I would have done something utterly different from what was actually done,” he said. Carney then concluded that the failure to unify the command because of political expediency was a disaster in the making and could have led “. . . to a great national disaster. For the conduct of that operation and the power that we had there, relative to the power opposed to us, it would have been a very different story, had all of the forces been applied to the best advantage by someone in authority, whoever it may have been. And on this 1 certainly wish to put myself on the record.”
MacArthur must have been rattled by Leyte, because Carney says that later he was very concerned about protecting his transports at Lingayen Gulf in northwest Luzon. Halsey assured him that the Japanese fleet was no longer a threat, but MacArthur must have bludgeoned a commitment out of Halsey not to leave him alone ever again. This statement follows with Carney’s assertion that Halsey ran into the December typhoon to keep his pledge. “Halsey could have deserted MacArthur,” he said, “and we could have headed south for a hundred miles or so. But he felt we had to stay until the last minute. This was his decision, and nobody was disposed to argue with it.”
By early January 1945, the fight was out of Halsey.
The command styles of Fleet Admiral William Halsey and Admiral Raymond Spruance—here, on board the battleship New Mexico (BB-40) in 1945—could not have been more different. Under Spruance, things were under control; under Halsey, operations were often confused and intentions uncertain.
After a raid in the China Sea, he wanted to return to Ulithi by a safe interior route through the central Philippines, a complete reversal of his policy of looking for action. Carney wanted to go north of Luzon in harm’s way, within range of Formosa, and whack the Japanese one more time. Said Carney, “He was just so bushed he couldn’t think. There were only two times that I ever saw fatigue get the better of the old man. I have always attributed that decision to utter exhaustion. He was really licked. He was just out.” Candid, unpublished photographs of Halsey at the time clearly indicate that he was unwell. His face is haggard, his body is emaciated, and his arms and legs are like sticks. In contrast, Carney remarked that Spruance was in splendid shape when Halsey relieved him at Okinawa in April 1945.
The war had become too complex for Halsey in any event, even if his health had been more robust. He was over the hill as an effective fleet commander. Politically, however, he could not be replaced, so Nimitz and King had to bear with him and hope that Carney could hold things together. That was too much to expect of a junior rear admiral. The task force commanders realized what
was happening. When Spruance was in command, there was a feeling that things were under control: everyone knew what to expect and what was expected of them When Halsey was in the flagship, operations were ofte*1 confused and intentions uncertain.
When Halsey returned to command Third Fleet aftd the fall of Okinawa, the Japanese Navy was so far gon£ that the Americans “. . . were flogging a dead horse.” The surrender in August caught everyone by surprise, and plan' ning was frantic for the ceremony and the occupation. Carney worked himself to exhaustion himself and, as he said- was down to skin and bone when the signing took place on board the Missouri. “This was the end of the line f°r me,” he said.
Commander Buell is a retired naval officer who has written for the U-S Naval Institute for almost a quarter-century and has been a member since he graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy 35 years ago. His biographies of Admirals King and Spruance were copublished by the Naval Institute Press, and both won the Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Naval Literature. He is now a Writer-in-Residence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is writing a book about the leadership Civil War generals.
Any Questions?
During the Korean War, I had just reported for duty aboard the USS Brinkley Bass (DD-887) as the chief engineer. Being ambitious, I sought out the squadron commodore, a former engineering officer, and asked for some advice. Expecting some fatherly counseling from a kindred spirit, I was stunned when he gruffly replied, “Don’t forget to remove the stack covers before you light off the boilers.” Then he just strode off.
Kit Bonner
World War II in the Pacific Conference
Sponsored by:
American Society of Naval Engineers Marine Corps Association Marine Corps Historical Foundation Marine Corps Historical Center
Naval Historical Center Naval Historical Foundation Naval Order of the United States U.S. Naval Institute
10-12 August 1994
Crystal City Hyatt Regency, Arlington, Va.
Remembrances of veterans of the War k Book exhibits Contemporary film k Displays k Historical discussions
i
Special Events: k The U.S. Navy s spectacular From the Sea Slimmer Pageant at the Washington Navy Yard k The U.S. Marine Corps' renowned Sunset Parade at the 8th and I Barracks.
Speakers: k Admiral James L. Holloway III, former CNO and a combat veteran of the Battle of Leyte Gulf
k Decorated submariners Eugene B. Fluckey and Edward L. "Ned" Beach k Marine infantrymen Edwin H. Simmons, Gordon D. Gayle, and John Gustafson k Aviators John Condon and Paul Drury Coast Guardsman Robert Erwin Johnson Surface warriors Michael J. Hanley and C.
Raymond Calhoun A Army Nurse Ruby Bradley Army intelligence specialist Sunao Ishio
k Historians Russell Weigley, E. B. Potter, Clay Blair, Edward Drea, Benis M. Frank, David Rosenberg, Ronald Spector, Michael Palmer, Ed Bearss, Diane Putney, Richard Frank, Mary Stremlow, Dean Allard, Paul Stillwell, Robert Love, Phyllis Zimmerman k Also invited are veterans and scholars from Japan, Australia, Great Britain, Canada, and Guam.
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Member of sponsoring organization or staff $230 Non member $290 Daily Registration (includes luncheon/banquet of that day)
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