A Man Made for War, Part II

By C. Bernard Bambury

Admiral Ernest J. King’s five decades in the U.S. Navy witnessed a military leadership style unblemished by civility and unburdened by compromise. The Royal Navy’s Sir Arthur B. Cunningham, Great Britain’s most celebrated wartime admiral, recorded: “On the whole, I think Ernest King was the right man in the right place, though one could hardly call him a good co-operator … A man of immense capacity and ability, quite ruthless in his methods, King was not an easy person to get on with.” In direct contrast, Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s brilliant working relationship with the British and other Allied leaders, is WWII’s gold standard of a formidable fighting-spirit coupled with a distinct diplomatic spirit. Ernest J. King was a man cut from a very different cloth. He was also a man fighting a very different war.

Born 23 November 1878 in Ohio, of English and Scottish stock, a young King worked in the railroad yards where his forbearers served as foremen. “The boy loved to visit in the shops, noisy, murky, and smelling of smoke and grease. The workers liked young Ernest and taught him the intricacies of steam-driven machinery, the precision of the lathe, and the interrelationships of valves and pistons and gears,” says Thomas B. Buell in his King biography, “Master of Seapower.” King’s young mind intuitively understood and appreciated these mechanical complexities, and it served him tremendously along his long and incredibly varied naval career.  King possessed a mind capable of seeing the problem and effortlessly knowing the solution. He never once backed away from damning both subordinates and superiors who could not do the same.

The death of his mother at sixteen, “perhaps forced him to be a man too early.” He lived alone with his father, working among the hardened men of the railroad shops. “Ernest King admired such men. Like his father and grandfather, they were rudimentary, honest, blunt, and outspoken. They could also be profane, opinionated, stubborn, and self-righteous, disdaining equivocation and scorning pretention.” These austere and officious personalities were no doubt the genesis of King’s future leadership style. One purpose-built for the onerous life of a Navy seadog.

When WWII finally reached the United States, President Roosevelt and the Allies promptly agreed upon a “Europe First” policy. This initially placed Britain’s immediate survival and the defeat of Nazi and fascist Italy as the primary goal, with the defeat of the Japanese as secondary.  n consequence, prioritizing close to three-quarters of American war production and personnel for Europe, and sending just enough resources to U.S. Pacific forces to fight a “holding war.” This proposed, defensive “holding war,” was anathema to King and his bevy of salty fighting Admirals.

Upon taking command of the U.S. Navy, King immediately assumed two top priorities.  First: Directing immediate offensive action against the rampaging Japanese forces with what remained of his own Pacific Fleet, largely smashed at Pearl Harbor. Second: Fighting a veritable brawl with some of his own fellow Allied commanders, redirecting to the Pacific, assets originally earmarked for Europe. To ensure both priorities, King jettisoned any pretense of genteel diplomacy or convivial cooperation.

Regardless of how the think tank in Washington first envisioned the war’s early strategic progression, King had no intention of his Navy fighting a defensive war. He adroitly picked, placed, and prodded, the appropriate admirals to get on with the fighting. King continually made it crystal clear how every moment the Japanese Imperial Empire had to consolidate their growing positions throughout the Pacific would ultimately cost American forces more in blood and treasure.

Fortunately for King, and the American people, the U.S. Navy already possessed a war-winning asset far more valuable and durable than the ships and planes destroyed at Pearl Harbor. The lean years of the American Depression ensured the Navy’s best and brightest remained in the service. Thousands of officers and sailors not holding mere jobs, but following and mastering, noble vocations. A fleet of stolid seafarers, worthy of Neptune’s great ocean. With vocational dedication came excellence and proficiency. And these proficient quartermasters, mechanics, machinists, engineers, electricians, yeomen, signalmen, radiomen, frogmen, boilermen, boatswains, coxswains, aviators, submariners, ship-handlers, stewards, cooks, canon-cockers, corpsmen, and marines deserved a Commander in Chief who would fight tooth and nail for every single asset they required to bring the fight to the Japanese as quickly and as masterfully as possible.

The future Commander in Chief entered the United States Naval Academy in August 1897.  “A high class standing was easy for King … he was gifted with a prodigious memory … Technical subjects, whether steam engineering or mechanics, were simple after years in the Ohio railroad shops.” His acute talents and life experience profited him greatly. The recognition King received from superiors early in his career ensured him a rare front row seat to the First World War. An invaluable exposure to naval policy, politics, and performance. Prior to WWI, King regarded the British Royal Navy’s history, replete with great admirals and exploits, as a storied zenith in naval tradition. His close contact with the Royal Navy in WWI dimmed these earlier admirations.

Royal Navy rigidity and its pageantry, celebrating archaic traditions, complete with serving titled nobility, did nothing to impress King. (A naval roundtable of Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester; Lord Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma; Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburg; Ernest J. King, Ohio Railroad S.O.B.; seems incongruous at best.) He became convinced of the U.S. Navy’s newfound supremacy over its Royal Navy counterpart.  This belief, and perhaps Old World arrogance grinding against New Word immodesty, contributed to many garrulous squabbles over resources and policy. Locked in a fierce argument concerning the deployment of submarines with Sir Arthur B. Cunningham, (after the war: “1st Viscount Cunninham of Hyndhope”) England’s unflappable top admiral lost his bearing with King and furiously pounded the table. King lost no time in coldly closing the conversation with the remark: “Britannia may have ruled the waves for 300 years, but she doesn’t anymore. There’s the door.” America’s top admiral held no deference for the world’s most celebrated Navy nor its own top admiral.  Ernest King had his own war to win.

These struggles and differences of opinion served to bring out both King’s best and also his worst. But consumed by a war to win, and free from the pitfalls of heavy drinking and carousing (the admiral’s admirable abstinence throughout the war was a truly rare concession to humility), King’s worst now stood alongside his best. A less aggressive Commander in Chief, one without the same hard-earned convictions of his own unquestioned veracity, may have lacked the imperative foresight and fortitude, required in resurrecting the very spirit of the post-Pearl Harbor United States Navy. The Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, both bold, fortuitous gambles fought within six months of Pearl Harbor, and launching the American offensive drive ending only in Tokyo, were the realizations of Ernest J. King’s indomitable will and impossible recourse. Today, leaders like Admiral Ernest J. King stand stirring behind a thick barrier of glass, broken only in times of extreme trouble. May America’s fighting forces forever embrace the mantra: “When they get in trouble, that’s when they send for the sons-of-bitches.”