William Bull Halsey: Legendary World War II Admiral
By Barrett Tillman

World War II  | 0 comments  |  Print This Post  |  Email This Post

William F. Halsey was a sailor born and bred. His heart was Navy blue and gold, and it pumped salt water each of his seventy-six years. As a first to last combatant of the Pacific War, he launched aircraft into the Sunday surprise on December 7, 1941, and forty-five months later stood witness to the end of Imperial Japan on the deck of the battleship Missouri. Along the way Halsey became America’s most acclaimed fighting admiral and his own worst enemy.

His strengths were manifest in his faults: extreme aggressiveness driven by instinct rather than intellect. Historians still ponder the what-ifs of his career: the ailment that prevented him from commanding during the battle at Midway, the lapses that led to unnecessary losses at Leyte Gulf and “Halsey’s Typhoon,” the December 1944 storm that sank three destroyers and wrecked much of his Third Fleet.

Halsey was born into a navy family and, like so many navy juniors, followed the same path as his father, graduating the Naval Academy in 1904, forty-second in a class of sixty-two. In the years to follow he accumulated an enormous amount of seagoing experience. From 1909 to 1932 he was captain of twelve different torpedo boats and destroyers, commanded three destroyer divisions, and served as executive officer of the battleship Wyoming. His shore duty included naval intelligence, Annapolis, and attaché duty in Europe during the 1920s.

Naval aviation was meanwhile steadily growing in size and importance, and Congress had decreed that all aviation units of the U.S. Navy be commanded by a naval aviator. Recognizing the shortage of qualified commanders to fill these roles, the navy offered a quick course at Pensacola, Florida, where senior officers could earn their wings. In 1934, at the age of fifty-one and with a waiver permitting him to fly with glasses, Halsey became one of these “JCLs”—Johnny Come Latelys—as the young pilots called them. He completed the course in May 1935, the last in his class to solo, and, after commanding the carrier Saratoga for two years, continued his career as an aviation officer, commanding the Pensacola Naval Air Station in 1937.

Halsey was a captain for eleven years, from 1927 to 1938—not unusual during the dolorous Depression years. Upon elevation to flag rank he commanded carrier divisions in the Atlantic and Pacific. Receiving his third star in June 1940, Vice Admiral Halsey commanded Aircraft, Battle Force, based in Hawaii—the premier peacetime carrier assignment. It became his wartime ticket to fame.

Halsey’s superior in Hawaii was his Naval Academy classmate Adm. Husband Kimmel, commander of the Pacific Fleet. As tensions increased with Japan, Kimmel reinforced outlying bases such as Wake Island and Midway, obvious targets in the event of war. On one such mission, Halsey left Pearl Harbor on November 28, 1941, flying his pennant on the carrier Enterprise, and delivered marine fighters to Wake six days later.

Early on December 7, on the way home, the carrier launched aircraft to scout ahead. They arrived at Pearl Harbor in the middle of the Japanese attack and several were shot from the sky. The next day when Enterprise returned there, Halsey glowered at the wreckage and exclaimed, “Before we’re through with them, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell.”

He meant it from his core. Halsey detested the Japanese Empire and seldom missed an opportunity to excoriate the enemy while encouraging his men to slay the foe in increasing numbers. Halsey was about results, and his priorities were expressed in visceral terms: “Kill Japs! Kill Japs! Kill more Japs!” Later in the war he told a stateside audience, “The only good Jap is one that’s been dead six months.”

The smoke had barely cleared at Pearl Harbor when Adm. Chester A. Nimitz replaced Kimmel. The new Pacific Fleet commander quickly learned who was motivated. When a difficult job popped up, it often went Halsey’s way. If he was not the brightest admiral in the Pacific Fleet, he was eager to fight—an attitude that endeared him to Nimitz, whose own job was on the line.

Tags: 20th - 21st Century, Historical Conflicts, Historical Figures, Naval Battles, World War II

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