A Man Made for War

By C. Bernard Bambury

[Author’s Note: In this first installment of a two-piece celebration of Admiral Ernest J. King, the reader will learn of the Admiral’s reputation. In the second installment, the reader will learn of his early background and incredible contributions in WWII.] 

“When they get in trouble, that’s when they send for the sons-of-bitches.” These words are attributed to Admiral Ernest J. King, uttered upon hearing of his summons to Washington D.C., to take top command of the United States Navy following the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by the Imperial Japanese Navy. In the peacetime Navy, volatile, imperious men of unrivaled capacity, like Ernest King, could expect slow, steady promotion throughout decades of competent service. But forceful, abrasive men like King ruffled too many feathers. They could never expect to reach the very top.  In times of peace, leaders of the free world go along to get along. In times of war, hell, that’s when they send for the sons-of-bitches.

Noted naval historian Thomas B. Buell’s “Master of Seapower,” is an outstanding biography on perhaps WWII’s most colorful, hostile, enigmatic, and brutally brilliant, top-level military leader. In a nutshell, King simply knew the thing better than the individual explaining it, expected and accepted only the highest levels of effort and ability, and reviled incompetence so thoroughly, he made an art of the outburst. His daughter Mattie, went a step further of her father: “He is the most even-tempered person in the United States Navy. He is always in a rage.”

“Praise [by King] was given grudgingly and then only in private. Censure was swift, devastating, and before a cloud of witnesses. The object of his wrath was unlikely to forget the occasion, recalled one officer, nor would anyone else within earshot.” King simply possessed the conviction of always being right. Capable of quickly grasping any subject matter and seeing the situation at hand with perfect clarity. Additionally, he experienced an upbringing amongst hard Mid-Western railroad men who led harder men. Earning their respect and obedience, not by the fist or the lash, but through an acerbic showmanship borne of confidence, veracity, and vocational excellence.

An error in ship-handling meant the steering wheel violently grabbed from your hand.  Inaccurate gunnery brought a storming King (who could compute complex gunnery tables in his sleep) publically deriding your calculations as the work of an unworthy hack. Signs of weakness or doubt were immediately trounced upon (with a voice so booming it could reach above and below deck). And if you were just plain inept, you were just plain gone.

It is tempting to continue enumerating the prickly qualities of a man whose habits even Hitler, Tojo, and Mussolini would have faulted as obtuse and unbecoming. But he was not without method, “Although King lost his temper, he rarely lost his self-control.” He was an exacting task-master. And as he saw it, in his vocation, there was little place for tact or civility. For King, ship handling and surface warfare were duties befitting a select few. “Under King the fit survived and developed into some of the Navy’s finest captains and admirals. The unfit were eliminated.”

Regardless of his reputation for rage and rancor, “King treated many of his officers like his sons.” He backed his performing junior officers’ career advancements with glowing, discerning, and uncommonly thorough fitness reports. He was unfailingly truthful (a character trait notoriously lacking in many senior leaders treading the murky waters of diplomacy and appeasement). Despite his traditional regard for the separation between commissioned officers and enlisted men, he would make herculean efforts in keeping his oft unruly sailors out of facing any genuinely harmful disciplinary charges. And, most human of all: “Uncle Ernie” always liked a good party.

An anecdote from 1927 perfectly captures the dichotomy of Ernest J. King.  Close to turning 50, with three decades in the Navy, holding the god-like rank of Captain, King joined the trend of senior officers struggling to complete the rigors of Naval flight school, in Pensacola, Fl. A gargantuan effort mentally and physically, these old salts pursued pilot status to fulfill a new Navy policy, allowing only qualified aviators entry into the most recent addition to the fleet’s vast arsenal. Command aboard the revolutionary new aircraft carriers.

For 10 months, enterprising old fuds like King, essentially abandoned their rank and status, sitting in rustic classrooms as mere “student aviators.” “Student Aviator King” sat in wooden desks, took penciled notes, and prepared for exams, surrounded by recent Naval Academy graduates not far removed from high school (many of who would go on to become top WWII fighter aces). Spending his first five months in Pensacola, distant, aloof, entirely committed to his studies, and on the wagon (technically the rules, since it was Prohibition), he developed an unsavory reputation. King was an archaic teetotaler. A fun-sponge. He initially even badgered the base commander to enforce the prohibition laws then on the books.

He followed this sour bent, until, “One Saturday noon King stumbled upon a drinking party that had just begun in officer’s quarters. The startled host impetuously offered King a drink.” No doubt that young officer’s offer took real gumption. A bystander recounted King’s awkward initial reaction: “Ernie was just standing there looking silly with a glass in his hand before he realized what had happened. Then he said he might as well taste it. And then he wanted to know how long this had been going on. Hell, he’d been missing something for months and from then on you couldn’t hold him. He was the damnedest partyman in the place. He’d been spending Saturday nights in his room studying while everybody else was just raising hell with a big dance. Ernie was the first guy there on Saturdays from then on. He actually was a great guy with the ladies and with liquor both.”

King earned his pilot’s wings, and soon took the coveted command of the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Lexington. King’s ability allowed him to adroitly tackle the myriad of new and unprecedented challenges found aboard the young, nubile “Lady Lex.” His ability included a noteworthy capacity to responsibly let loose as well, “On the mornings after, King would always be the first to work, aloof and sober, disdaining anyone with a hangover.” King instinctively embraced the unwritten rules of fraternization: “Regardless of who said what to him, however (and there were some extreme cases), King never retaliated, much to the relief of terrified junior officers who, when sober, realized their indiscretions of the night before.” King was a true seadog. His acid tongue and widely reputed reputation for partying ensured he would never reach the very top. Then the Japanese awoke America and her Armed Forces from their slumbering complacency. Suddenly being a son-of-a-bitch wasn’t such a bad thing after all…

[Author’s Note: Next week, we will cover King’s early youth and WWII service. And the party was truly put on hold, as King stopped drinking for the entire duration of the war.]