The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea by Walter R. Borneman

Author:Walter R. Borneman [Borneman, Walter R.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: History / United States - 20th Century, Biography & Autobiography / Military, History / Military - World War II
ISBN: 9780316202527
Publisher: Hachette Book Group
Published: 2012-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

With the row over Guadalcanal settled, King hurried to San Francisco to meet with Nimitz to review the details of the planned operation. Nimitz almost didn’t get there. Leaving Pearl Harbor with his immediate aides, he flew east on a four-engine flying boat. This airplane was a one-of-a-kind prototype built by Sikorsky in 1935 to win a navy contract that eventually went to Consolidated Aircraft for the PB2Y Coronado. The Sikorsky XPBS-1 could accommodate forty passengers on short hops, but it was outfitted with sixteen bunks for the 2,500-mile, 15-hour trip—at about 160 miles per hour—between Honolulu and Naval Air Station Alameda, just north of San Francisco.

As the plane made its approach into Alameda, Nimitz and Captain Lynde D. McCormick were ready in their blues for the reception, but busy playing a last game of cribbage. Commander Preston V. Mercer, the admiral’s flag secretary, sat by the window cradling an all-important briefcase containing the after-action report from the Battle of Midway for King. Others in the cabin were relief pilots, crew members, and an officer bumming a ride to a new stateside assignment. As the plane neared its splashdown, Mercer suddenly mumbled, “Oh-oh!”

The big flying boat hit the water a little down in the nose, but the cause of Mercer’s concern was debris floating in the landing area. The plane immediately struck a piling the size of a telegraph pole. Its bow shot skyward, the plane flipped over onto its back, and the fuselage cracked in half. As passengers scrambled out a freight hatch onto what moments before had been the underside of a wing, Mercer anxiously asked Nimitz his condition. “I’m all right,” muttered the admiral, “but for God’s sake save that briefcase.”

McCormick and the other passengers weren’t as lucky. McCormick suffered head lacerations and two cracked vertebrae. Everyone else had at least one broken bone, and the copilot, twenty-nine-year-old Lieutenant Thomas M. Roscoe of Oakland, California, was killed. As crash boats and navy corpsmen arrived, Nimitz, despite his share of bumps and bruises, insisted on remaining on the sinking wing while there were still men inside the plane. Each time a corpsman draped a blanket around the admiral’s shoulders, he promptly removed it and wrapped it around an injured man.

Concerned for those around him, Nimitz kept avoiding the hands that attempted to steer him off the wing and into a crash boat. Finally, an eighteen-year-old seaman second class lost patience with the white-haired gentleman, and knowing neither his identity nor his rank, he shouted out, “Commander, if you would only get the hell out of the way, maybe we could get something done around here.” Nimitz merely nodded and finally clambered into the waiting boat.

Draped with a blanket that this time stayed around his shoulders, Nimitz stood up to survey the scene as the boat backed away from the wreckage. “Sit down, you!” yelled the angry coxswain. Nimitz again obeyed, and in doing so caused the blanket to fall, revealing his uniform sleeve. Seeing the rows of gold braid, the coxswain tried to stammer an apology, but Nimitz cut him short.

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