Nimitz was born 139 years ago today in Fredericksburg, TX. Like my grandfather and about his same age, Nimitz was the son of German immigrants. In his picture below he even bears a resemblance to that grandfather. Of course Nimitz is best known for commanding our Pacific fleet during WW II. I used to wonder whether his fame came solely from holding that position -- seemingly a glorified desk job. Not at all true. For OBs interested in his bio, here are a few other things of note I've learned about him over the years:
1. Nimitz's father died before he was born, so he was raised early on in Fredericksburg by his mother, paternal uncle (who later married his widowed mother), and immigrant grandfather (who had been in the German merchant marine), and then later in Kerrville where his mother ran a boarding house. He went to Tivy High School there.
2. After being impressed by some Army officers staying at his mother's boarding house, Nimitz decided he wanted to go to West Point. His Congressman told him that with all the people with army ties in San Antonio, Nimitz had virtually no chance for admission there. However, there was a place open at the Naval Academy. Although Nimitz had never seen the ocean, he applied and with tutoring help from relatives and some of his Tivy High teachers, he made an outstanding grade on the entrance exam and got the appointment to Annapolis.
3. As a young naval officer, Nimitz served in the Pacific and at a naval reception in Tokyo even got to meet the famous Japanese Admiral Togo who had destroyed the Russian fleet in the Battle of Tsushima in 1905 (and died before WWII). Although tensions ran high between the Japanese and Americans in the 1910s and 1920s and the naval officers of each country knew that war between the countries was almost an inevitability, they were nevertheless very respectful of one another. After WWII, as a gesture of goodwill to the Japanese people, Nimitz led efforts to restore Adm. Togo's flagship the battleship
Mikasa -- an immense source of pride to the Japanese -- as a memorial. (I've heard that Japan reciprocated the honor by building a garden in Nimitz's honor in Fredericksburg, but I haven't seen it yet.)
4. The first ship Nimitz commanded was the destroyer
Decatur. He ran it aground in the Philippines on one of his first voyages. He knew then that this type of thing had ended many sailors' careers and that he would have to undergo a court martial. When he realized he couldn't free the ship before nightfall, he unfolded a cot and slept soundly overnight on the ship's deck. He later said he had remembered that night his grandfather's advice to not worry about things he couldn't control. He was reprimanded in the court martial, but it turned out to be only a minor setback in his career.
5. Before WWII, Nimitz was instrumental in many aspects of the U.S. Navy's emergence as a world naval power: he was one of its first submarine commanders, he was one of the foremost experts on converting U.S. warships from coal to diesel power, he started the first on-campus naval ROTC program (at Cal-Berkeley of all places), he helped establish the techniques for refueling the fleet while it was underway, though given no resources he supervised from scratch construction of the submarine base at Pearl Harbor by calling in favors from colleagues, and he developed the "circular" cruising formation that was initially scoffed at by the Navy, but became the standard fleet formation during WWII.
6. Ten days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Pres. Roosevelt called Nimitz and ordered him to "get the hell to Pearl and stay there until the war is won." Nimitz arrived at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve 1941, while the many of the damaged ships were still smoking from the attack. At the time, he told his wife he didn't see how in world he could get the job done. Yet less than four years later, he was on the deck of the battleship
Missouri with Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepting the Japanese surrender.
7. Even though he didn't take part in battles at sea, he was personally courageous: as a young officer he dove from his ship into freezing water to save a sailor who was a poor swimmer and had fallen overboard, he lost part of a finger demonstrating diesel technology to a large group but finished his presentation before seeking medical help, he flew to Guadalcanal and stayed there with the Marines while they were under bombardment by the Japanese fleet and the outcome of the battle was still in doubt, and he toured several islands shortly after they were captured from the Japanese while combat mopping up operations were still going on and snipers were still a significant risk.
8. During the war, Nimitz was a master at being decisive and managing relationships. Early in the war when things were looking very doubtful for the Navy in the South Pacific, he made the difficult decision to can his good friend Adm. Robert Ghormley and substitute ass-kicking Adm. Bull Halsey. To figure out Japanese strategy in early 1942, he ordered a broadcast over an open channel that the American post at Midway was out of water. When the Japanese in their military communications repeated that news a few days later using a special code name for "Midway," our codebreakers picked it up, were on to them, and Nimitz knew to commit the fleet there. From
Nimitz at War: Command Leadership from Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay, by esteemed naval historian Craig L. Symonds:
Nimitz might have reasonably concluded that risking three carriers to defend a tiny outpost of sand and coral against a superior enemy was not only unwise, but foolish. Defending Port Moresby had cost Fletcher the Lexington [at the Battle of Coral Sea]. If Nimitz successfully defended Midway while losing two or more carriers, it would leave the Japanese masters of the Pacific.
Another factor was that if the Japanese did seize Midway, Nimitz knew they would have great difficulty holding it. Given its distance from Tokyo (2,200 miles), keeping it supplied would strain Japan’s shipping resources to the breaking point. The long sea lines of communication could be assailed by American submarines and make Midway more of a burden to the Japanese than an asset. Letting them have Midway and then savaging their supply lines was arguably the smarter strategic move. Should Nimitz let Midway go by default to conserve his scarce carriers for more important things?
Nimitz concluded that the advantage provided by Rochefort’s cryptanalysts could not be thrown away. It is difficult in hindsight to appreciate the boldness of that decision. Twenty years earlier, as a student at the Naval War College, Nimitz had written his thesis on naval tactics. In it, he argued that “great results cannot be accomplished without a corresponding degree of risk.” “The leader who awaits perfection of plans, material, or training, will wait in vain,” he wrote, “and in the end will yield the victory to him who employs the tools at hand with the greatest vigor.” In the last week of May 1942, Nimitz staked everything on an unequal contest with the enemy’s main battle fleet. It was a bold decision, but it was not reckless. Having carefully calculated the odds, assessed the circumstances, and considered the prospects, he decided to employ “the tools at hand with the greatest vigor.”
9. He also successfully navigated throughout the war between two giant egotistical a--holes: his superior Chief of Naval Operations Earnest King in Washington D.C. and Army Gen. MacArthur in the Philippines. Nimitz played a key role in convincing Roosevelt and the Joint Chiefs to let himself and MacArthur pursue a two-pronged offensive in the South Pacific that kept the Japanese off balance for most of the war.
10. Nimitz took Marines' and sailors' loss of life very personally. Earlier in the war, when he received anguished letters from mothers of dead servicemen, he replied personally to each one. As losses mounted during the campaign across the Pacific, his staff shielded him from many of these letters and replied themselves on his behalf.
11. At the end of the war, he and his wife were deluged with invitations from across the country to attend victory parades. They accepted only four of the invitations: New York, Washington, Austin, and Fredericksburg. His staff members were perturbed when some townfolk in Fredericksburg still referred to the admiral as "Chester." Nimitz told his staff that these were Nimitz's people and he didn't care one bit.
12. After the war Nimitz became Chief of Naval Operations and fought successfully to preserve the Navy's strategic role for projecting American power around the globe. At that time, many Army and Air Force officers had come close to persuading Congress that air power in the nuclear age made naval ships -- especially aircraft carriers -- obsolete.
13. One of the most moving things about Nimitz is that he and his wife, at their request, were buried in the impressive Golden Gate National Cemetery alongside their closest friends and WWII naval colleagues Adm. Raymond Spruance, Adm. Kelly Turner, Adm. Charles Lockwood and their wives. That cemetery is about a five minute drive from the San Francisco airport if you're ever interested in seeing it when you're out there.
14. The Navy has named their most powerful warships -- the Nimitz class carriers -- in his honor.
Nimitz was one hell of an American and Texan.
