Spruance: Picture of the Admiral

Spruance: Picture of the Admiral
By Fletcher Pratt
From Harpers Magazine, August, 1946
Articles from Harpers Magazine archives are made
available to the WW2 History Club for educational
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SPRUANCE:
.
.
PICTURE 'OF THE ADMIRAL
FLETCHER
HE late war was on so wide a scale
as to have been conducted almost
exclusively by specialists-not
in
one arm alone, but in one of the tasks performed by that arm. Thus Eisenhower,
King, Marshall, and Nimitz confined
themselves to broad strategic decisions;
the conduct of operations in contact with
the enemy lay in the hands of Halsey,
Simpson, Patton, MacArthur, Vandegrift. Only two men succeeded in crossing _
the shadow-line that separates the two arts
of war and emerged from the conflict with
the reputation of being capable of anything-General
Omar Bradley by land
and Admiral Raymond Ames Spruance
by sea. It is too early yet to call them the
prime movers of victory or even the best
men in their respective fields, but it is
significant that no other leaders have been
so highly regarded in the professional
circles of their own service.
Yet the true homologue of Admiral
Spruance is not the amiable Bradley, with
his patient smile and Will Rogers-like
voice, but an earlier American soldier.
When one places them side by side, there
is a striking similarity between the face
that "looks out at us from the Gilbert
Stuart portraits of George Washington
and the published photographs of the
victor of Midway and the Philippine Sea.
The nose of the General is slightly wider
T
PRATT
than that of the seaman but in both there
are the same firm lips and thinking forehead, the same cant of the ears and solid
chin. In both cases the eyes are calm,
fixed inward rather than outward, seeing
yet not seeing, so that sailors laboring
among the litter of a newly-won beachhead on Iwo Jima or Kwajalein would
hardly be conscious of the tall, lonely,
striding figure till it had passed and memory reported there had been four stars on
the collar. "Why, that must be that great
big admiral, the boss of the whole show."
The resemblance is more than picturedeep, and deeper still than such externals
as the fact that the official presence of both
men brought upon them the imputation of
frigidity, contradicted by their personal
lives. It extends into careers which are
curiously parallel in beginning, so to
speak, at the top. Both men "were held in
enormous respect by their contemporaries
at the time they attained high command;
but it was a respect for character and general intellect rather than for achievement.
There was no more in Spruance's record
in 1941 to show that he would become the
great exponent of carrier war than there
was in 1775 to show that the Continental
Congress was appointing one of the ablest
strategists of history to command its
armies.
The Admiral was neither an aviator nor
This is the third study of an individual admiral to appear in Mr. Pratt's
series on naval operations in the Pacific. The other two were Nimitz,
in Harper's for February 1945, and Callaghan, September 1944.
SPRUANCE:
PICTURE
a "Pensacola admiral" (the term applied
to high-ranking officers who take their
wings after reaching a stage where it is
certain that they will one day command
fleets) when suddenly, and rather surprisingly for the wiseacres of the Navy, he
succeeded to the command of the most
important of all the carrier task forces in
May 1942. He had not even worked very
much with carriers save in the rather
brief period when, as commander of
Cruiser Division 5, he had accompanied
Halsey in raids tc the Marshalls, Wake,
and Marcus. All of his previous service
afloat had been in destroyers and battleships, and all through the war he had to
fly his flag in a vessel whose. primary
weapon was her guns. When he selected a
chief of staff it was not an aviator but an
officer who had been an engineer under
him in one of the old ~'Delilah type"
destroyers in the Philippines. If ever there
was a commander who deserved the usually derisive epithet of "battleship admiral" it was Raymond Ames Spruance.
The results are now in and they support
the thesis that what is needed for high
command is a good level of general intelligence rather than experience with, or a
bias toward, any particular type of
weapon. That Spruance possessed the
former there was no doubt at any time.
Indeed, one may hypothesize this as one
of the main reasons why he received the
cruiser command as second to the flamboyant Halsey, with reversion of the
chief place if anything should happen
to the latter in action. The question of
who will lead if the admiral is killed must
always be a consideration in making appointments for naval war, and it seems
to have been felt both in Washington and
at Pearl Harbor that while Halsey's vivid
leadership and fighting spirit were exactly the qualities necessary to take a
fleet into battle, the cool judgment and
the broad mind of Spruance would be
particularly useful in getting the ships out
again if things went so wrong that he had
to assume command.
II
1'WAS thus less as a leader than as a
kind of staff officer and one-man brain
1
OF
THE
ADMIRAL
145
trust that Spruance received command of
Cruiser Division 5 and went with Halsey
on the first of the carrier raids-the attack
on the Marshalls of February 1, 1942.
Some aggressive action on the part of
the fleet, both for its own morale and
that of the American people, was clearly
needed at the time, just after Pearl Harbor, when the news from the Philippines
clearly meant they could not be- held,
when the J aps were closing in on Singapore and pouring down into the Java Sea.
Australia was evidently next on their list,
and the fact that the carrier cover for the
first convoy of the war in that direction
would cross the carrier cover for the second on its return, gave Nimitz, always an
aggressive thinker, the idea that something might be attempted on the enemy.
Nevertheless, there seems to have been
some very reasonable doubt as to the
advisability of the step. It will be remembered that our heavy cruisers and carriers
(only four carriers, and the Japs were
known to have ten) were the fleet in those
days, and if anything were to happen to
them the goose would be well cooked.
The strength of the Marshalls was utterly
unknown; and as to what happened to
carriers within reach of land-based air,
there was only the testimony of the battering HMS Illustrious took in the Strait of
Sicily, which suggested that something
very serious indeed would happen to
them. The carrier admirals still favored
the attack, as demonstrating their point
that a cruiser-carrier force contained its
own protection and need fear nothing
that flew or swam, but there were doubts
elsewhere all the way back to Washington, and it must have been with something approaching surprise that the others
heard Spruance, the battleship admiral,
pronounce in favor of making the attack.
Not that he had a casting vote, being
quite junior at the time. But his opinions
OQ matters of strategy carried weight. He
was one of the few officers who had been
three times to the Naval War College; at
first as a student, when he had an outstanding record, and later for two terms on
the staff, where his record was still more
remarkable and might have earned him a
wide reputation as a naval thinker if he
could have conquered an inherent dislike
146
HARPER'S'
for writing and an invincible repugnance
to seeing his own name in print. In fact,
it was his capacity for thinking in strategic
terms that had brought him to his rank.
His only command among large ships had
been the battleship Mississippi, and he had
had her for just the length of time conventionally necessary to permit promotion
to flag rank. When he received that promotion he had chosen his staff from a list
of names on a piece of paper without ever
having met the men before, which is to say
that he lacked the interest in the personnel
factor which is one of Nimitz' characteristics.
He also knew what the fleet would be up
against in the Marshalls, in a psychological sense if not in a mechanical. Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto had been on duty
as naval attache in Washington when
Spruance was in Naval Intelligence, and
the latter rated him as one of the most
capable officers he had ever met-certainly the best of the Japanese. Yet
Spruance's voice' was unhesitatingly in
favor of the calculated risk in the .Marshalls. Later at Midway, of course, he had
no choice; the risk was imposed upon him
from without-doubly,
because the strategy that produced the battle was Japanese
and the American tactics of at least part
of it belonged to Admiral F. J. Fletcher,
who arrived on the scene aboard the
Yorktown just as the action began, and
as senior officer present of course had
Spruance's force under his general direction.
AT
THE time of Midway Spruance was
still very junior, and indeed, only
accidentally a task force commander. He
was still iii command of the cruiser division when Halsey ran his task force, built
round the carriers Enterprise and Hornet,
down to the south to try to catch the enemy in retreat from the Battle of Coral Sea
in 'early May of 1942, It would be at the
,end of this long voyage that code intercepts
began to warn our high command of the
forthcoming attempt on Midway, and the
reports of the scouting submarines began
to confirm it. The Halsey force came racing north to parry the blow, when itsadmiral fell ill. The loss of Lexington had left
one ranking officer marooned in southern
n
MAGAZINE
waters, while two others had temporarily
gone back to the Coast; there was quite
literally no one to take command of the
force but Spruance.
HE picture of the Admiral as a cold,
hard, ruthlessly efficient leader, "the
thinking machine," was already being
assiduously spread"by the correspondents,
whom he refused to interview or to permit
aboard his flagship on the ground there
was' no room for them. As in the case of
the first President, those who saw him under conditions that did not require him to
answer every question with "no'? had a
somewhat different impression. On the
bridge or striding back and forth along
the deck in one of those famous constitutionals that lasted for hours and wore out
two or three sets of companions, he could
be impassive as granite; and also below,
when he would often stand before a map
for thirty minutes on end, thinking, thinking, thinking,' without moving a muscle
except to wave away interruptions.
Then the decision would be made, the
Admiral would emerge from his brown
study to talk and listen with the small mannerisms of an intensely nervous mind intensely held under control-sometimes the
chin resting on the back of a hand with
one finger running up the long jaw, or
again the fingers of both hands interlaced
and gripping till the knuckles whitened.
He has a habit of opening his eyes wide
and shooting up his eyebrows as he makes
a point, usually with a good deal of that
wit which it is impossible to reproduce
because it depends upon the whole run of
the conversation.
The decision reached before dawn on
June 4 off Midway (Fletcher had not yet
arrived, and aboard the other carriers
they did not know he was near till Yorktown's planes streaked past in"the first attack) was to run the carriers up northeast
of Midway. There was no question but
that here was the crisis of the war and the
whole fleet might be considered expendable; but there was also no doubt that we
were heavily outnumbered, with no reserves, and that attrition on a one-for-one
basis would be fatal. Our forces that morning were faced with the insoluble problem
war often imposes on the weaker party-
T
SPRUANCE:
PICTURE
that- of hurting without being hurt, of
hitting without being allowed to take
blows in return. The only countervailing
advantage possessed by our side was a
knowledge of the enemy's strength and
approximate position.
""J"HE
fact that the latter piece of knowl-
1. edge was only approximate led to the
most celebrated incident of the battle, the
incident that apparently confirmed the
diagnosis of Spruance as a model of the icy
efficiency usually associated with the Teuton in war--his famous "Attack at once"
order when Torpedo Squadron 8 discovered the Japanese carriers under their
blanket of cloud, but also, finding themselves low on gas and without fighter cover,
asked permission to withdraw and refuel.
Spruance's answer Hashed so instantly
over the radio that then and later it was
assumed to have been a product of impulse-a double injustice to the Admiral.
His impulse in an emergency is to make a
joke, the point of which is that the questioner has been placed in a responsible
position because he was supposed to possess judgment and should go ahead and
use it. In the present instance it struck
Spruance as merely astonishing that anyone could make such a request-hence the
note of brusqueness. He himself had long
ago reasoned out the idea that the J aps
set so high a valuation on surprise in war
because their own reactions to surprise
are those of confusion and error. (He believes this is fundamentally due to the Ian.
guage in which they think, a language
poor in the means for rapid ratiocination.) He had led the carriers to an abnormal position for the purpose of obtaining surprise. The logical position for them
would have been south of Midway or between it and Hawaii. The surprise was
now obtained; most of the enemy planes
were on their carrier decks. The one essential was to hit them, both to give the tardy
Japanese intellect a problem beyond its
powers, and to damage their ships so their
positions would be relatively fixed for the
succeeding waves of assault. "Attack at
once." Torpedo 8 had only one survivor
but the Japanese were lost.
One of their carriers, Hiryu, escaped
OF
THE
ADMIRAL
147
and late in the afternoon her planes disabled Yorktown. Hiryu herself was heavily
hit in return, but no one quite knew how
heavily, and there was a good deal of confusion in our fleet as to the results. Especially, there was no certainty that the
Japs' spirit had been broken, that they
might not find means and courage for another attack. Spruance got in touch with
Fletcher as the latter's damaged flagship
was being dragged out of action and asked
whether there were any orders. No, replied Fletcher, there was no reason to
change the original plan for the night.
That plan was for the American carrier
force to stearn a course north (the Japanese were expected to be searching west
or south), then east, then south and west
around a lopsided square which should.
never pass twice through the same spot
(in order to avoid possible submarines),
but would end up at dawn with the
carriers running west toward the enemy's
fleet of transports. At the end of the
northward leg, however, the fleet had a
radar contact-on what, not even postwar
analysis has revealed. It might have been
a surfaced submarine; and with his miserable complement of destroyers, of which
two had already been detached to aid the
damaged Yorktown, Spruance hardly dared
close a submarine in the dark. Still less
anxious was he to encounter the Japs'
surface craft, among which were four'
battleships; for a carrier, though queen of
the sea by daylight, is not much better
than a good destroyer by night. Moreover
.his objective was to protect Midway Island and he felt he could not go far wrong
as long as he stayed close to it.
He turned away forthwith-the famous
southeasterly turn about which so much
has been written. Dawn of June 5 saw him
swinging west again, but at dawn there
was a report from a long-range search
plane that Hiryu had been spotted out to
the northeastward, damaged but still
afloat and making ten knots. Search strikes
were flown off; at the same time a flight of
Army B-l7's went over in that direction.
Actually the J ap carrier had been stopped
when seen and she went down before any
of our planes got to her, but this did not
become certain till thrf'''' """.".!c-. hot".,. mhA'"
148
HARPER'S
MAGAZINE
Under the clouds of the weather front miral's function was that of a strategic
the search for her took nearly all day and censor-s-listening quietly to the presentaby that much still further delayed the tion of a plan, and in one or two succinct
pursuit. At evening came two more fine sentences bringing up some feature that
examples of the temptation to lose the had been overlooked.
main thread that besets an admiral in
"Oh, but that's no objection," the
action. The crew of a forced-down PBY proponent would reply: "Why, see ... "
remembered several hours after they had
But next morning (says the informant)
been rescued that their precious secret there would be a little clearing of throats,
bombsight had been left aboard. Spruance
and a confession: "Do you know, Admiral
had to detach one of his few remaining
Spruance, I believe you were right."
destroyers to go find it; they wanted him
This is stating the matter in unsatisto send three. Two more destroyers ran factory general terms. I t appears more
Iowan fuel; and just at twilight there was clearly and specifically in the planning
an apparently reliable "recon" report that for the attack on the Japanese-held Gilfar to the west, at the edge of the retreating
berts, scheduled for November of 1943.
weather front, an air battle was going on
The original design was for simultaneous
between J ap fighters and our land-based
attacks on Tarawa and Nauru. The latter
bombers, with an enemy battleship help- had been a thorn in the flank of American
ing out their planes.
strategy for some time, since from it J apaSpruance sent the fuelless destroyers nese search planes operated over the whole
home, evaluated the battle report as non- area to the Solomons and beyond, while
sense, and pursued at his best speedin our hands it would be a watchtower
with the result that he caught and sank towards the Carolines. Spruance offered
one of the J ap heavy cruisers and so badly an objection to striking Nauru along with
battered another that she had to stay in Tarawa; despite its strategic and ecodock nearly two years. But the point was nomic importance, Nauru would be too
that in every phase of the action from the .tough a nut. Behind the low foreshore,
very beginning, when he sent the Entercliffs rose a hundred feet; they would be
prise and Hornet fliers out with orders not filled with J ap gun positions impervious
to try to slow up the enemy by hitting to anything but a direct hit, and direct
many ships but to pile damage on the hits would be hard to get in view of the
cripples till they sank, his analysis had distance of the encircling coral reef,
.proved correct in the large terms of strat- through which there was, by the way,
only a single entrance, probably well
egy.
calibrated by the shore guns. We had
III
learned something of Japanese defensive
IMITZ, a specialist in human relations,
methods in the Solomons but on these
.
recognized that he needed a brain comparatively large land masses it had
like that at headquarters, particular! y been possible to set up supply dumps
since his own strategic thinking tended in ashore and to make a systematic land
the direction of an offensive so vigorous campaign. Anything of the kind attempted
that he sometimes failed to balance all the from the sea against small islands would
factors involved in an operation. After pin the fleet and supporting vessels to a
Midway he accordingly brought Spruance
narrow area for some time and offer ideal
ashore with an appointment on the staff, opportunities not only to Jap submarines
and kept him there for a year and a and aircraft, but also to their surface
quarter. Just what Spruance's influence fleet, which could come down through
was on the strategy of the long campaign
the Carolines at the most inappropriate
up the Solomons, which fell in that period, moment. We had not yet learned how to
it would be' impossible to tell without a conduct a fast campaign in these islands,
stenographic transcript of the conversa- and defects' of technique would undoubttions at headquarters. We have the word edly show up during an operation.
of one officer who was present at a good
"What
would you substitute
for
N
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SPRUANCE:
PICTURE
OF
...
ENIWETOK
THE
ADMIRAL
149
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NEUTRALIZATION OF NAURU
Spruance proposed to attack Makin, rather than Nauru, believing that Nauru
could later be eliminated by shuttle-bombing between Makin and the Solomons.
party to the conference with Nimitz.
"Makin," said Spruance; and added, in
effect, .that with airfields on Makin, at
Tarawa, and in the central Solomons, it
would be possible to neutralize Nauru by
shuttle bombing.
was decided, and Spruance himself
received command of the expedition.
Halsey was due for a rest; he was very
tired after the long campaign up the
O IT
S
Solomons ladder. In any case, it was an
operation that called for a sense of strategy
of the widest kind. It called for rejecting
even the long-desired general action with
the Japanese fleet unless it could be
brought about under conditions that
guaranteed that the enemy would not
interfere with our beachheads while it
was in progress. Not only was Halsey less
likely to make the beachhead his primary
concern (in which, incidentally, he would
150
HARPER'S
MAGAZINE
probably have had the full support of or X to the beach command, do this or
Mahan), but there seems also to have that. Spruance heard them all in silence
been a Turner question.
and when they had finished said, "GentleVice-Admiral Richmond Kelley Turner
men, on that beach are Marine officers in
was certainly our ablest amphibian com- whom I have the utmost confidence. We
mander, but his opinions were decided will proceed with the plan."
and his method of expressing them, to
put it mildly, vigorous. Halsey was another
IV
of the same stamp and there is no doubt
that the fur occasionally flew between the
HERE were no changes. The Marines
two men. Spruance, on the other hand,
picked themselves up from the beach
had been closely allied with Turner at the and swept the island. But the operation as
Naval War College and later in Washing- a whole was, so far from satisfactory that
ton, when one was in Intelligence and the considerable alterations were made in the
other in War Plans; they liked and thor- planning for the next operation, the attack
oughly understood one another and got on the Marshalls, which fell in February
along (the phrase keeps recurring) as of 1944, or as soon after the MakinWashington had with such explosive char':' Tarawa attack as possible in view of the
acters as Hamilton and Anthony Wayne. time needed for assembling men and
It was the mildest-mannered staff ever materials.
It may be considered characteristic of
assembled; they achieved the odd feat
of conducting a war for survival in an the Admiral's strategic ideas, which
atmosphere of reasonableness and kindly throughout the phase of island warfare
had the fixed purpose of eliminating risks
geniality.
We have a picture of the Admiral as to beachheads, that he did not at first
like the idea of going to Kwajalein. To be
he moved down toward Tarawa aboard
his flagship, the cruiser Indianapolis; chosen sure, the possibility of interference from
because, although fast, she was an old the Japanese fleet had been practically
ship that would not be too much loss to eliminated by the two great.air raids on
the fleet if she were badly hurt by being Rabaul, just before the Tarawa operataken in as close as he proposed to have tion in November 1943. The enemy had
her. The operation orders for the offensive gathered their heavy cruiser squadron at
, had been drawn in detail by the task group Rabaul, with attendant destroyers, in the
commanders with whom he had previ- intention of wiping out our then-new
ously talked things over, and now these beachhead on Bougainville. Our carrier
orders were in the staff cabin-a three-foot air groups had surprised them in the
shelf of top secret volumes. (Those for the harbor with such damage that all but one
,'Normandy invasion ran to a matter of of the ships had to go back to Japan for
tons.) "Thank you," said Spruance when major repairs, which meant that the
they arrived, and continued poring over enemy fleet lacked a screen.
But the Japs had good airfields in the
his charts.
"Don't you want to check them or look eastern Marshalls; they could stage planes
down to them through Eniwetok. Unat them?" said the chief of staff.
doubtedly they would do so as soon as
"No. That's your job. Go to it."
our ships penetrated the island screen
The point was emphasized after that
first bloody day at Tarawa when the east of Kwajalein, with results that were
higher officers gathered for a conference likely to be hard on the beachhead there.
in the flag cabin. There were lines of In addition, we knew from intercepts that
strain on every face as details piled up of Japanese submarines had located the area
frightful casualties, with the Marines cling- out east of the Gilberts where our ships
ing to thirty yards of beachhead by their were meeting their tankers for refueling.
eyebrows and every likelihood that they A new area would have to be found, probwould be pitched into the sea before ably still further east, which meant longer
another dawn. One after another the runs from fueling point to combat area, all
officers put forward suggestions-send A the way under the threat of air attack. The
T
PICTURE
SPRUANCE:
OF THE
commander of the 5th Fleet (this was now
the designation for Spruance's command)
was for an attack on Wotje or Maloelap,
where we could obtain surprise by coming
up out of the sea. Nimitz and King overruled him; whether on the political-military ground of protests against "island
hopping" that were rising back home or
on the straight military consideration of
taking the more aggressive action it is not
clear-and Spruance went for one of those
famous eighteen-mile walks.
When he came back the broad lines of
the solution were laid down. The fleet
would not move through the island screen
at all,"but would run up the western flank
of the Gilberts direct to Kwajalein and
thus gain their surprise. One carrier group
would run fast for Eniwetok and hold it
under attack to cut off the enemy's aerial
reinforcements. The refueling area would
not be moved east but west, west of the
Gilberts, right under the nose of Nauru.
It was the trick of Poe's "Purloined Letter"
THE
ADMIRAL
151
(as the Admiral commented in explaining
the plan). Furthermore, there would be
air cover from the little field at Nanoumea
and from the carriers of the moving fleet.
There would be twice as much preparation
fire on the Kwajalein beaches as had been
given at Tarawa, and this fire was to
continue till the landing craft were
actually in the water, giving the shellshocked enemy no chance to recover.
There was a revamping of the areas of
command between the amphibian forces
and those fighting ashore.
AS
the Admiral held a series of
commanders' conferences at which
the plan was explained; then he left to
group and unit staffs the task of drawing
specific operations orders. For morale reasons there was a special effort with the
tanker skippers, who have an unappetizing
job; instead of summoning them to his
headquarters Spruance went to theirs,
described the whole operation, and told
n
USUAL,
"PuRLOINED LETTER"
When the Japanese located our refueling area east of the Gilberts, Spruance
deliberately placed the new area under the very nose of enemy-held Nauru.
To-Japan
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152
HARPER'S
them its success depended upon the way
they carried out the purloined letter concealment. The Admiral's staff were still
checking details of the orders as the fleet
got under way. Even in the Tawara operation they had learned that it was normally
quite useless to bring before the "old man"
items in these plans that might strike them
as badly arranged. "No," Spruance would
say with an impatient gesture; "they have
understood their orders. The details are
their business. I will not interfere," and
would go back to his contemplation of the
charts; his study of times, speeds, distances. Later in the war, being informed
that a plan called for the bombardment of
Peleliu by a six-inch gun cruiser "and
you know the J aps have eight-inch in
there," he would snap his fingers in vexation, remark, "Guess I'll have to do something about that," and unhappily dictate
an order.
On the march up to the Marshalls there
was something really worth an interruption. The general orders said very clearly
that each of the fast carrier groups was
to detach one of its accompanying battleships for the preliminary shelling, but
among the files of orders from one of the
carrier groups there was no record of any
such assignment having been made. "It
·was the only time I ever saw the Admiral
really angry," said one of his staff afterwards, and the reason is not hid under a
bushel. The "utmost confidence" that he
delighted to place in his subordinates in
order to leave his own mind free for larger
problems had been violated. The battleship was detached on orders from the flag
and shortly afterward the offending rearadmiral was relieved.
. The Kwajalein operation was the most
nearly perfect of all those in the central
Pacific. The fire was such that the only
J aps who came out of their holes to meet
our men at the beaches were idiots and
the whole business was completed many
days ahead of schedule.
Of course this produced a reaction from
the top brass, who began to send through
dispatches suggesting that we get on with
the war, step up the Eniwetok attack
ahead of schedule. Spruance consulted
everybody, especially the logistics officers,
and replied simply that the Eniwetok at-
MAGAZINE
tack would be carried out ·"as planned."
In the meanwhile, Willis Lee had run
down with the fast battleships to give
Nauru that tremendous shelling which so
crippled it that the shuttle bombers
thenceforward had no difficulty in keeping
it out of business, as Spruance had predicted. Now it was decided to use the
extra time for the sweep to Truk.
TRATEGY
at sea is always a matter which
includes dealing. with the ideas of the
S
home authorities as well as those of the
enemy, and since the American forces
found themselves strong enough for major
offensives the operating officers in the
west had been forced to throw a series of
body blocks in the direction of more
remote planners to keep them from setting
up an expedition against Truk-toward
which all American naval thought for a
generation had been directed. The Spruance sweep was designed to show the
ancient menace of Truk for the fake it
was; but the Admiral, for the first and
last time, flew his flag in the battleship
New Jersey, since there was some chance
of action against the enemy heavy ships.
We know now that the Japanese admiral had called in his guards just the day
before the attack fell on him, so that it not
only succeeded in revealing Truk- as an
empty Halloween bogy but also produced
a slaughter of planes and shipping that
was not a bad comparison with Pearl
Harbor. In the personal history of Raymond Spruance, however, this was less
important than a small incident during
the expedition.
A Japanese destroyer, crippled by our
carrier planes, was lying nearly dead in
the water north of the atoll. The Admiral
led the two new battleships in to give the
boys a little gunnery practice by finishing
her off, and everything was going nicely
when a torpedo came zipping through the
water from the dying ship to miss both
battleships by so little that they were saved
only through quickness at the helm. At
the time Spruance said nothing but
"Wouldn't my face have been red if 1 got
the Iowa torpedoed by a single destroyer
in daylight?" But on the next prospective
contact he turned to Admiral Giffen, who
stood on the bridge beside him, and re- -
SPRUANCE:
PICTURE
marked, "You assume tactical command."
He had recognized the fact that modern
war is conducted by specialists-not
in
one type of arm alone, but even specialists
in a particular form of operation within
the framework of various arms. His own
thinking was in the strategic domain,
though he is recorded as responsible for
one tactical innovation of importance-the system of control by which all the
ships of an armada comprising several
carrier groups, a battle line, and any
number of light craft, move, turn, and
maneuver as a single unit by always
keeping a specified bearing and distance
from a designated vessel.
v
HE strategic
quality of Spruance's
thinking shows up as clearly in the
Marianas campaign of 1944 as it does
anywhere.
It appears on a low level; in the first
days the J aps came down through the
Bonins with their bombers by night. It
seemed to the staff that the Admiral
might like to know about it and they
roused him from sleep to say:
"We have Jap planes forty miles away
and they are likely to attack."
"What the hell can I do about it?"
"Why-nothing,
I guess."
"Then come tell me when I can." He
turned his back and went calmly to sleep,
as far aloft the night fighters' guns began
to pound like distant riveting hammers.
It appears also at a high level. Already
by June·16, 1944, which was D plus 1 day
on Saipan, word was in from the submarine scouts that the Japanese fleet was
working through the barrier of the Philippines, bound north and east for the relief
of hard-pressed Saipan, The object of
every American commander throughout
the war was to draw that fleet into a general action which would solve all strategic
problems thenceforward. The news of its
approach came late at night, but Spruance
Went at once to see Turner of the Amphibs and asked him to get all the "stuff"
-transports,
supply vessels, assorted landing craft, and Marine whatnots-well
out
to the east of Saipan, to lend the fighting
fleet all the cruisers and destroyers he
T
OF THE
ADMIRAL
lS3
could spare, and to let them go for the
Japanese navy.
Turner said no. The battle ashore was
not going well, he had already been
forced to commit some of the troops previously destined for Guam, the 27th Division was looking bad, the supply dumps
ashore were not yet adequate to let the
campaign stand on its own legs, and the
closest kind of support in all forms was
needed. Spruance sighed, but he really
had expected nothing else than that the
overall strategy of winning the war would
require him temporarily to adopt the doctrine Mahan had so often condemnedthat of subordinating the destruction of
the enemy's battle fleet on the sea to the
certainty of gaining and holding an objective ashore. A German officer might
not have minded sacrificing the three divisions on the beach for the chance of wiping out the Japanese fleet; an American
could not.
It was accordingly necessary to stay
close to Saipan and guard the beachhead
area while Jacko Clark ran north at the
head of two carrier groups for a blow at
Iwo Jima to keep planes from staging in
along that route. The precaution paid off
when Clark caught a big group of bombers coming down and cut it to pieces. In
the meanwhile it was becoming of the utmost importance to locate the Japanese
fleet and determine what they were really
up to. The submarines that had furnished
the original information were, of course,
unable to trail .fast surface vessels by daylight.
On the 18th one of the Japs incautiously opened up his radio and a compass
fix on him was secured. It seemed to show
the enemy still slanting toward the
Marianas without altering course or
speed. But at that distance there is an error of 50 miles in radio compass fixes and
in any case there was no information on
the arrangement of the ships from which
that one flashing message had gone out
into the dark. Even the fact that the J apanese progress was regular aroused suspicion. The attempted surprise, the element of trickery so seldom absent from
Japanese plans, seemed lacking. To Spruance this meant that the situation-had not
yet resolved itself.
HARPER'S
154
scouting was the obvious need, but
the carriers must still be kept close
to the islands. Now there were waiting
down in Eniwetok several squadrons of
the giant PBY planes which have so
enormous a range and would be just the
thing for the job; but a PBY must be
worked from a tender, and precisely the
same reasons that had prevented Turner
from taking his supply ships out to the
eastward had thus far made it impossible
, for him to allot any spac~ for tenders in
the crowded anchorage. At the same time
it was pointed out that if the 27th Army
Division had performed as desired ashore,
Magicienne Bay on the east side of Saipan
would now be open with its thoroughly
adequate anchorages'.
Turner and General Holland Smith of
the Marines, in charge of ground operations, pressed their case on this issue and
Spruance reluctantly signed an order relieving the Army Smith of his command
of the division. He did it reluctantly, because of his belief that subordinates are
entitled to work things out in their own
way; but he signed, because the Army
man's way had in this case violated the
AIR
fi
TIm
STRAncy
MAGAZINE
confidence and jeopardized the success of
the general undertaking.
Turner made room for one small tender.
That night five of the PBY's arrived from
Eniwetok and four of them immediately
went out again to seek the J ap fleet. They
got a radar fix on it, discovering it in two
widely separated groups on courses carrying them still further apart. Spruance was
roused from sleep to hear the news. He
made himself some coffee (no matter how
many cooks he has around he prefers to
brew his own from French high roast coffee, and of a consistency sufficient to float
an iron wedge); after a period of brown
study he believed he saw the J ap trick.
They were going to fly planes in against
the supply ships and beachhead from a
range where our carriers could not hit
back, landing them on the Marianas
fields afterwards; and when our fleet pursued, they would slip their second squadron around in an end run to complete
the destruction of the beachhead.
This diagnosis turned out to be perfectly
correct as of the hour when it was made,
and the next day was the famous "turkey
shoot" when over 400 planes of the Jap
OF THE "TURKEY SHOOT"
, To defend the Saipan beachhead, Spruance imported scouting PBr's from Eniwetok, sent carriers
against the bomber bases on Itoo Jima, and refrained from surface engagement with the Japanese fleet.
• ,~ BONIN:,
t. ISLANDS
lARK'S
TWO
I.
CARRIER
(jROVPS
..
.:
~
' -
.~ M. ARIANAS
: ISLANDS
f
,SAl PAN
,..-....-;
~
-,--1>\ ••.
\
'_
,/aUAM.
OUR PLANES INTERCEPT
'-.JAP I=LEET I=OR THE
. "TURKEY SHOOr
I '
PBY's FROM
,ENIWETOK
(ENIWETOK
_----C'I
SPRUANCE:
PICTURE
naval air service were knocked down.
Later there was criticism of the Admiral
for not pursuing at once when the last
flaming trail slid down the horizon under
the guns of the battleships. But his first
objective was and still had to be that
'of barring the gate to the beachhead
where Turner's transports lay.
the Japanese might not still
have attempted their end run in
spite of their appalling losses in planes is
uncertain. They had snoopers around our
fleet during the afternoon of the 19th and
though most of them were shot down it is
probable that they got off their reports,
and anyhow the strategic situation required our leaders to assume that they
had done so. During the night, however,
the strategic situation again changed
when the submarine Cavalla, called from
normal patrols to lie in ambush across
the line of advance of the enemy fleet,
found them and put three torpedoes into
their big carrier Shokaku, The sub was
counter-attacked and did not see the results, but when she reported toward
morning, Spruance knew that the Japs
had a cripple and his freedom of action
was by that much increased. (Shokaku had
gone down and the submarine Albacore hit
anothercarrier, Taiho, but apparently her
report did not get through.)
His deIay in pursuing the Japanese fleet
thus had two favorable effects in spite of
the fact that it was a delay. For one, when
the pursuit was actually begun, it carried
our fleet out along a line that kept it between Saipan and the Japanese, making
any end run virtually impossible save for
forces so light that Turner's covering ships
could easily handle them. For the other,
when the]aps learned from their snoopers
that our ships were still off the Marianas
on the afternoon of the 19th and not worrying about pursuit, they slowed up to refuel. In spite of the enormous distances
and the unfavorable wind which forced
our carriers to turn in the wrong direction every time they launched or took in
planes, these factors were enough to bring
the air groups down on the enemy in that
famous "mission beyond darkness" which
completed the wreck of .the carrier force
that had been the leading menace to
W
HETHER
OF THE
ADMIRAL
155
America since December 1941. The long
pursuit also afforded a couple of further
demonstrations of the Admiral's singleness of strategic purpose. Quite early in
the run the staff began to worry about the
destroyers, which were getting low on
fuel. "What shall we do?"
"Send them back one by one as fast as
it becomes dangerous for them to go on,"
said Spruance. "We will proceed without
destroyers if necessary; I am going to strike
that fleet and I will not be distracted by
details."
Afterward, when the planes and survivors were all in, before the fleet turned
back eastward, the dynamic Clark appeared with a request to take his carrier
group down and throw a little jar into the
minds of the enemy by a strike on their
installations at Manila Bay, explaining
how easy it would be to do. Spruance
agreed that it could be done but said no,
the fleet's first mission was still the protection of the beachhead and the ships
gathered there; we must save our bombs,
torpedoes, and reserve strength for that.
Clark was sent back to Iwo Jima instead.
Fortunately, as it turned out, since he arrived just in time to intercept the enemy's
last gasp surprise rush of 75 bombers down
through the Bonins.
VI
time the Admiral had worked
out some fairly clear ideas of J apaB
nese command psychology, which he estiy THIS
mated as being conveniently typical now
that Yamamoto, the individualist, was
gone. They operated (he decided) as a
gang, a committee with a tricky but almost
mulishly persistent collective mind; and
they were now, thanks to the failure of
their navy in its own field, completely
under the domination of the military
authorities. It followed that as long as
there was any chance whatever of success
in any land campaign going on, their navy
would be used to the hilt in its support.
Our advantage over this system of trick
and persistence lay chiefly in flexibility,
which does not consist merely in "being
ready for anything," as the old loose
phrase has it, but in giving all plans a dogree of adaptiveness that would permit
156
HARPER'S
MAGAZINE
rapid changes, like those that Washington
the front were so extreme that there was
made for his Yorktown campaign.
hardly a day when the anchorage failed
This was the basis for the planning
to be crowded. Day and night the Japaagainst Okinawa in 1945-the last great nese hurled their suicides against picket
campaign. Every plan was drawn in three line and supply ships, and there were conor even more versions and the signals ar- siderable casualties.
ranged so that the transmission of a single
word would bring a complete shift in asHIS situation built up to the last of the
signments. The preliminary air strikes
great sea battles, so confused and
against Japanese ships in the Inland Sea dubious an affair that it has never received
during March were a return to the plan
a 'name and has hardly even been recogfollowed against Rabaul; designed to crip- nized
a sea battle-the
action of April
ple them all and keep them home rather
5-6, 1945. The background was that the
than to work complete destruction on a . airfields on Kyushu, southernmost of the
few; (They succeeded so well that when main islands of Japan, had been let alone
most of those ships again put to sea it was by the B-29's for a fortnight or more, and
under the American flag.) Particularly
there was reason to believe that the J apaelaborate precautions were taken against nese were assembling Kamikazes there for
.Kamikaze attacks on the craft off the pro- a major operation instead of feeding
posed beachhead, including greatly in- them through piecemeal as they had precreased complements of fighters for the viously. Spruance took the fleet north to
major carriers and a radar picket line of hit these fields with carrier planes.
ships equipped with this device all round
His judgment of Japanese reaction was
the landing area to give warning of at- exquisitely correct. They had assembled
tack.
their Kamikazes in K yushu, to the numAs a matter of fact the campaign turned
ber of several hundred, and they had
out ·to be much more difficult than any- planned exactly this date for their opera. one could have imagined after the first tion. It was simple and in two parts. First:
the great force of planes was to attack our
Japanese trick of giving us an unopposed
landing in order to make their stand fleet, in which they reckoned on administering crippling damage to at least twenty
deeper inland. Since the war Admiral
Spruance has paid high tributes to the major units. They were aware of the
work of the B-29's, but these tributes are American penchant for getting such ships
to the manner in which they executed home where they themselves would have
their plans, and there is reason to believe left them to their fate or scuttled them,
that at the time he was not very well satis- and they conceived that twenty damaged
battleships and carriers would require the
fied with the way these plans were drawn.
The big bombers were too interested in escorting services of practically all the rest
achieving the ultimate strategic objective of the fleet. Second: while the hospital
march was in progress their battleship
of putting Japan out of the war through
Tomato (with Nagata and Haruna if they
attacks on basic industries, and not enough
concerned with the immediate business of could be repaired in time) and a light
keeping Kamikazes away from the beach- cruiser and ten destroyers were to run
heads. Those Kamikaze attacks were the down the Western flank of the R yukyu
most serious problem the fleet had to Islands to wipe out the Okinawa beachmeet during the entire war. The opera- head and its transports. (It is a tribute to
Spruance's constant preoccupation with
tions ashore were on a larger scale than
anything else in the island war and were the safety of the beachheads that the enconducted by the Japanese with a skill, emy was just as constantly concerned with.
especially in the use of artillery, well attacking them.)
Spruance's carrier strikes on Kyushu
above what they had shown elsewhere.
This made it impossible to follow the took the Japanese by surprise, added to
logical plan of running supply ships in the damage of Haruna and Nagato, immobilizing them, and smashed up a lot of
small groups, unloading them rapidly,
and getting out again. The demands of Kamikazes on the ground-just how many
T
as
SPRUANCE:
PICTURE
is a matter of dispute between the Admiral and his staff. The rest of the Kamikazes came boiling out in a day-long attack on our fleet which produced a butchery second only to the turkey shoot of
Saipan; and though we did have damaged ships, it was nowhere near twenty
and only one was a major unit. That night
the Admiral was roused from his bunkone of the only two occasions when they
turned him out during this Okinawa campaign, though when there was a night attack he often roused himself, came up for
a look around, and then returned. "The
Tomato is out, sir," they told him.
He glanced at the flag chart. He was a
battleship man and here was the opportunity for which every battleship man had
been waiting for years-the
chance of
trading strokes with the Japanese giant
that had slipped away from them at Leyte.
But Mitscher with the carriers was nearer.
"Tell Admiral Mitscher to go take 'em,"
he said simply.
Mitscher did take 'em, and the troops
did take Okinawa after six weeks more of
ordeals. But Spruance had been withdrawn before the finish; he was back at
.Guam, planning the invasion of homeland
Japan, for which he was to furnish the
support with the 5th Fleet while Halsey
with the 3rd Fleet ramped along the coast
flexing his muscles. The Admiral's own
opinion is that he was rather lucky not
OF THE
ADMIRAL
151
to be forced to undertake that final operation, but that it became unnecessary
when the Japanese could find no means
of getting supplies past our submarines.
"The submarines beat Japan.".
ow he has returned to Newport, to
the big building overlooking the bay
where the frigate Constellation lies, as President of the Naval War College, living with
his nice wife, whom he affects to browbeat.
The success of the latter operation may
be judged by the fact that although he is
a Californian, with the prejudices of that
race in favor of the celebrated climate,
they are planning to do a little traveling
when he reaches retirement age, and then
settle in New England, which is her part
of the country. Their son is grown now
and has aNa vy career of his own in the
submarine service; at Pearl Harbor he
was able to show his father over a gigantic
Japanese plane-carrying undersea craft,
which the younger Spruance had brought
in as skipper of the prize crew.
The Admiral worries a good deal over a
feeling of uselessness at the approaching
retirement. Certainly there ought to be a
place for him in the councils of the nation; but it is perhaps characteristic of a
democracy that has swollen beyond a
hundred and thirty millions that it has
difficulty in recognizing the value of
specialists, except those in politics.
N