Ernest King

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Ernest Joseph King
November 23, 1878 – June 25, 1956 (aged 77)
Ernest King
Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King
Place of birth Lorain, Ohio
Place of death Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Allegiance Flag of the United States United States
Service/branch United States Navy
Years of service 1901–1950
Rank Fleet Admiral
Commands United States Fleet
Battles/wars Spanish-American War, United States occupation of Veracruz, World War I, World War II
Awards Navy Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, Sampson Medal, more...

Fleet Admiral Ernest Joseph King GCB (November 23, 1878 – June 25, 1956) was Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations (COMINCH-CNO) during World War II. As COMINCH, he directed the United States Navy's operations, planning, and administration and was a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He was the US Navy's second most senior officer after Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, and the second admiral to be promoted to five star rank. As COMINCH, he served under Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and, later, James Forrestal.

Contents

King was born in Lorain, Ohio on 23 November 1878, the son of James Clydesdale King and Elizabath Keam King. [1] He attended the U.S. Naval Academy from 1897 until 1901, graduating fourth in his class. During his senior year at the Academy, he attained the rank of Cadet Lieutenant Commander, the highest possible cadet ranking.[2]

While still at the Academy, he served on the USS San Francisco during the Spanish American War. After graduation, he served a junior officer on the survey ship USS Eagle, the battleships USS Illinois, USS Alabama and USS New Hampshire, and the cruiser USS Cincinnati.[3]

While still at the Naval Academy, he met Mattie Egerton, a Baltimore socialite, whom he married in a ceremony at the Naval Academy Chapel on 10 October 1905.[4] They had six daughters, Claire, Elizabeth, Florie, Martha, Eleanor and Mildred; and then a son, Ernest Joseph King, Jr. (Captain, USN Ret.)[5]

King returned to shore duty at Annapolis in 1912. He received his first command, the destroyer USS Terry in 1914, participating in the United States occupation of Veracruz. He then moved on to a more modern ship, USS Cassin.

During World War I he served on the staff of Vice Admiral Henry T. Mayo, the Commander in Chief, Atlantic Fleet. As such, he was a frequent visitor to the Royal Navy and occasionally saw action as an observer on board British ships. It appears that his anglophobia developed during this period[6], although the reasons are unclear. He was awarded the Navy Cross "for distinguished service in the line of his profession as assistant chief of staff of the Atlantic Fleet".[7]

After the war, King, now a captain, became head of the Naval Postgraduate School. Along with Captains Dudley Wright Knox and William S. Pye, King prepared a report on naval training that recommended changes to naval training and career paths. Most of the report's recommendations were accepted and became policy.[8]

Before World War I he served in the surface fleet. From 1923 to 1925, he held several posts associated with submarines. As a junior captain , the best sea command he was able to secure in 1921 was the store ship USS Bridge. The relatively new submarine force offered the prospect of advancement.[9]

King attended a short training course at the Naval Submarine Base New London before taking command of a submarine division, flying his commodore's pennant from USS S-20'. He never earned his Submarine Warfare insignia, although he did propose and design the now-familiar dolphin insignia. In 1923, he took over command of Submarine Base itself.[10] During this period, he directed the salvage of the submarine S-51, earning the first of his three Distiguished Service Medals. [1]

In 1926, he took command of the aircraft tender USS Wright with additional duties as Senior Aide on the Staff of Commander Air Squadrons, Atlantic Fleet. In January 1927 he began flying lessons. He was designated Naval Aviator 3368 in May 1927, when he resumed command of Wright. He commanded Wright until 1929 (with a brief interlude commanding the salvage operations of USS S-4), then served as the Assistant Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics under Admiral Moffett. The two unsurprisingly did not see eye-to-eye on certain elements of Bureau policy [1], and he was soon assigned the command of Naval Air Station, Norfolk, Virginia. In June 1930, he became captain of the carrier USS Lexington which he commanded for the next two years. In 1932 he attended the Naval War College.

Rear Admiral King arrives on board the USS Lexington in a new SOC Seagull in 1936
Rear Admiral King arrives on board the USS Lexington in a new SOC Seagull in 1936

In 1933, he was promoted to Rear Admiral, and, as a promoter of air warfare, was appointed Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics. From 1936 until 1939, he commanded various aircraft forces. He was promoted to Vice Admiral in 1938.

In 1939, bitterly disappointed at not being named Chief of Naval Operations, he reported for duty to the General Board, commonly perceived as a retirement assignment. His career was resurrected by one of his few friends in the Navy, CNO Admiral Harold "Betty" Stark, who realized that King's talent for command was being wasted on the General Board.[1] Stark appointed King as Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet in the fall of 1940, and he was promoted to Admiral in February 1941 . On 30 December 1941 he became Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet. On 18 March 1942, he was appointed Chief of Naval Operations, relieving Admiral Stark. He is the only person to hold this combined command. On 17 December 1944 he was promoted to the newly created rank of Fleet Admiral. He retired on December 15, 1945 but was recalled as an advisor to the Secretary of the Navy in 1950.

After retiring, King lived in Washington DC. He was active in his early post-retirement, but suffered a debilitating stroke in 1947, and subsequent ill-health ultimately forced him to stay in Naval Hospitals at Bethesda, Maryland, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He died of a heart-attack in Portsmouth on June 26, 1956 and was buried in the United States Naval Academy Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland.

King was highly intelligent and extremely capable, but controversial. Some consider him to have been one of the greatest admirals of the 20th century[citation needed]; others, however, point out that he never commanded ships or fleets at sea in war time, and that his anglophobia led him to make decisions which cost many Allied lives[11]. He was considered rude and abrasive; as a result, King was loathed by many officers with whom he served.

He was... perhaps the most disliked Allied leader of World War II. Only British Field Marshal Montgomery may have had more enemies... King also loved parties and often drank to excess. Apparently, he reserved his charm for the wives of fellow naval officers. On the job, he "seemed always to be angry or annoyed." [12]

There was a tongue-in-cheek remark about King, made by one of his daughters, carried about by Naval personnel at the time that "he is the most even-tempered person in the United States Navy. He is always in a rage." Roosevelt once described King as "... a man who shaves with a blow torch".

King is famous for stating to a reporter, when the United States entered World War II in 1942: “When the shooting starts, they call for the sons-of –bitches”. [13]

Admiral King at the Atlantic Conference in 1941
Admiral King at the Atlantic Conference in 1941

At the start of US involvement in World War II, King decided not to request blackouts on the U.S. eastern seaboard and not to convoy ships. His critics attribute these decisions to King's anglophobia, as the convoys and seaboard blackouts were British proposals, and he was loath to have his much-beloved U.S Navy adopt any ideas from the Royal Navy. He also refused, until March 1942, the loan of British convoy escorts when the USN had only a handful of suitable vessels. He was, however, aggressive in driving his destroyer captains to attack u-boats in defence of convoys and in planning counter-measures against German surface raiders, even before the formal declaration of war by Germany.

Instead of convoys, King had the U.S Navy and Coast Guard perform regular anti-submarine patrols, but these patrols followed a regular schedule. U-boat commanders learned the schedule, and cooordinated their attacks to these schedules. Leaving the lights on in coastal towns back-lit merchant ships to the U-Boats. As a result, there were disastrous shipping losses - two million tons lost in January and February 1942, alone, and urgent pressure applied from both sides of the Atlantic. However, King resisted the use of convoys because he believed, against the available evidence, that he lacked sufficient escort vessels to make them effective and that the formation of convoys with inadequate escort would give the enemy larger targets. Furthermore, blackouts were a politically-sensitive issue (coastal cities resisted, citing the loss of tourism revenue), and in any event would have been of limited value, due to the sheer numbers of "targets" available to the enemy.

In January 1942, King allowed troop convoy AT-10 to Iceland to take priority over anti-submarine work (it was not urgent) and some of his limited number of escort craft were reassigned to escort it. Despite this, a credible destroyer force was allowed to remain idle in New York when the first u-boats were known to be near and ships were being sunk off Long Island. It was not until May 1942 that King marshalled resources - small cutters and private vesels that he had previously scorned - to establish a day-and-night interlocking convoy system running from Newport, Rhode Island, to Key West, Florida.[14]

By August, 1942, the submarine threat to shipping in U.S. coastal waters had been contained. The U-boats' "second happy time" ended, with the loss of seven U-boats and a dramatic reduction in shipping losses. The same effect occurred when convoys were extended to the Caribbean. Despite the ultimate defeat of the U-boat, some of King's initial decisions in this theater had been flawed. [15]

Other decisions perceived as questionable were his resistance to employ (depsite direct instructions to do so) long-range Liberators on Atlantic maritime patrols (thus allowing the U-boats a safe area in the middle of the Atlantic - the "Atlantic Gap"), the denial of adequate numbers of landing craft to the Allied invasion of Europe, and the reluctance to permit the Royal Navy's Pacific Fleet any role in the Pacific. In all of these instances, circumstances forced a re-evaluation or he was over-ruled. It has also been pointed out that King did not, in his post-war report to the Secretary of the Navy, accurately describe the slowness of the American response to the off-shore u-boat threat in early 1942[16].

It should be noted, however, that the employment of long-range maritime patrol aircraft in the Atlantic was complicated by inter-service squabbling over command and control (the aircraft belonged to the Air Force; the mission was the Navy's). And although King had certainly used the allocation of ships to the European Theater as leverage to get the necessary resources for his Pacific objectives, he released (at General Marshall's request) an additional month's production of landing craft to ensure the success of [[Operation Overlord. The employment of British forces in the Pacific was a political measure forced on Churchill by the British Chiefs of Staff, not only to "show the flag" and re-establish British influence over her pre-war colonies in the region, but to mitigate any perception that the British were doing nothing to help defeat Japan. King, of course, was adamant that naval operations against Japan remain 100% American, and angrily resisted the idea of a politically-motivated British naval presence in the Pacific at the Quadrant Conference in late 1944. He (along with Marshall) wanted no part of the British agenda in reclaiming or maintaining any part of her pre-war colonial holdings, whether in the Pacific or the eastern Mediterranean. [1][16] Roosevelt, however, overruled him and, despite King's reservations, the British Pacific Fleet accounted itself well (under American command) against Japan in the last months of the war.

It should also be remembered that, under King's command, the United States Navy grew to be the dominant naval force in the world, with a superb fleet train, capable of operating for long periods away from its permament bases.


General Hastings Ismay, chief of staff to Winston Churchill, described King as:

tough as nails and carried himself as stiffly as a poker. He was blunt and stand-offish, almost to the point of rudeness. At the start, he was intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy; but he was almost equally intolerant and suspicious of the American Army. War against Japan was the problem to which he had devoted the study of a lifetime, and he resented the idea of American resources being used for any other purpose than to destroy Japanese. He mistrusted Churchill's powers of advocacy, and was apprehensive that he would wheedle President Roosevelt into neglecting the war in the Pacific.

Despite British perceptions, King was a strong believer in the Germany first strategy, and gave priority to the war in the Atlantic.[citation needed] However, his natural aggression did not permit him to leave resources idle in the Atlantic that could be utilized in the Pacific, especially when "it was doubtful when — if ever — the British would consent to a cross-Channel operation".[17] King once complained that the Pacific deserved 30% of Allied resources but was getting only 15%. When he was accused by General Alan Brooke of favoring the Pacific war, the argument became heated. General Joseph Stilwell wrote: "Brooke got nasty, and King got good and sore. King almost climbed over the table at Brooke. God, he was mad. I wished he had socked him."[18]

Following Japan's defeat at the Battle of Midway, King advocated (with Roosevelt's tacit approval) the invasion of Guadalcanal. When General Marshall resisted this line of action, King stated that the Navy (and the Marines) would then carry out the operation by themselves, and instructed Admiral Nimitz to proceed with the preliminary planning.[1] King eventually won the argument, and the invasion went ahead with the backing of the Joint Chiefs. It was ultimately successful, and was the first time the Japanese lost ground during the War. For his attention to the Pacific Theatre he is highly regarded by some Australian war historians.[1]

In spite of (or perhaps partly because of) the fact that the two men did not get along[2], the combined influence of King and General Douglas MacArthur increased the diversion of resources to the Pacific War[3].

Other controversies involving Admiral Ernest King include:

Ensign Lieutenant Junior Grade Lieutenant Lieutenant Commander Commander Captain
O-1 O-2 O-3 O-4 O-5 O-6
07 June 1903 not held 07 June 1906 01 July 1913 01 July 1917 21 September 1918
Rear Admiral (lower half) Rear Admiral (upper half) Vice Admiral Admiral Fleet Admiral
O-7 O-8 O-9 O-10 O-11
never held 26 April 1933 29 January 1938 01 February 1941 17 December 1944

King never held the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade although, for administrative reasons, his service record annotates his promotion to Lieutenant, and Lieutenant J.G., on the same day.

All DOR referenced from Buell's "Master of Sea Power", pp. xii-xv.

King was also the recipient of several foreign awards and decorations:

Grave of Admiral King
Grave of Admiral King

The guided missile destroyer USS King (DDG-10) was named in his honor. A major high school in his hometown of Lorain, Ohio also bears his name — Admiral King High School. Also named after him is the Department of Defense high school on Sasebo Naval Base, in Japan. In 1956, schools located on the U.S. Naval Bases and Air Stations were given names of U.S. heroes of the past. The Sasebo Dependents School was named after the famed World War II Hero, Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King. Thus, the official name of Ernest J. King School, Navy 3912, FPO San Francisco, California became effective School Year 1956/57. Recognizing King's great personal and professional interest in maritime history, the Secretary of the Navy named in his honor an academic chair at the Naval War College to be held with the title of the Ernest J. King Professor of Maritime History.

  1. ^ Buell, Thomas B. (1980). Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet admiral Ernest J. King. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, p. 3. ISBN 0316114693. 
  2. ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1947). History of United States Naval Operations in World War II: Volume I. The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939-May 1943. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, p. 51. ISBN 0785813020. 
  3. ^ Buell, Master of Sea Power, pp. 10-12, 15-41
  4. ^ Ibid, pp. 12, 17, 26
  5. ^ Ibid, pp. 56, 452
  6. ^ Gannon, Michael (1991). Operation Drumbeat. New York: Harper Collins, p.168. ISBN 0-06-092088-2. 
  7. ^ Full Text Citations For Award of The Navy Cross to Members of the US Navy World War I.
  8. ^ Buell, Master of Sea Power, pp. 54-55
  9. ^ Ibid, p. 58
  10. ^ Ibid, pp. 62-64
  11. ^ Gannon, Michael (1990). Operation Drumbeat. Harper, pp.388-389 & 414-415. ISBN 0-06-092088-2. 
  12. ^ Skates, John Ray (2000). The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb. University of South Carolina Press. ISBN 0-87249-972-3. 
  13. ^ Lehman, John (2002). On Seas of Glory: Heroic Men, Great Ships, and Epic Battles of the American Navy. Free Press. ISBN 0684871777. 
  14. ^ Graybar, Lloyd J. (1996). Quarterdeck and Bridge: Two Centuries of American Naval Leaders. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-55750-096-7. 
  15. ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1947). History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. I: The Battle of the Atlantic: 1939 - 1943. Little, Brown and Company, pp. 135-148. ISBN 0316583111. 
  16. ^ Gannon, Michael (1990). Operation Drumbeat. Harper, p.391 & 414-415. ISBN 0-06-092088-2. 
  17. ^ Morison, Samuel Eliot (1957). History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Vol. XI: Invasion of France & Germany: 1944 - 1945. Little, Brown and Company, pp. 13-14. ISBN 0316583111. 
  18. ^ Pogue, Forrest C. (1973). George C. Marshall: Organizer of Victory 1943-1945. Viking Adult, p. 305. ISBN 0670336947. 

Buell, Thomas B. (1995). Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King. Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1557500924. 

Preceded by
Harold R. Stark		 United States Chief of Naval Operations
1942-1945		 Succeeded by
Chester W. Nimitz

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_King"
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