Neptune's Needle

Naval officer. King earned an appointment through competitive examination to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1897. King graduated fourth in the class of 1901. He served between 1901 and 1906 on a variety of warships in Asiatic waters during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905. King became a drill master at the Naval Academy in 1906.

Extremely ambitious and impatient with the rate of promotion, in 1909 King accepted the patronage of a rising young admiral, Hugo Osterhaus, commander of the Battleship Division, Atlantic Fleet in 1910. King rejoined Osterhaus as flag secretary in 1911, when the admiral assumed command of the Atlantic Fleet. King returned to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1912 as executive officer of the Naval Engineering Experiment Station. King received his first command in 1914, but King's career ambitions led him once again to accept the patronage of an influential admiral when in 1915 he joined Vice Admiral Henry T. Mayo's staff.

Career opportunities diminished after the war as the navy cut back on manpower and scrapped warships under the terms of the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty. King asked for a transfer in 1921 to command a supply ship. He commanded a submarine flotilla and the submarine base at New London, Connecticut, between 1922 and 1926. King welcomed the chance to leave Washington in June 1936 to command a force of seaplanes.

King was given command in December 1940 of the Patrol Forces, U.S. Fleet, in the Atlantic. German U-boat activities there threatened to undermine American neutrality in the war that had broken out in Europe in September 1939. The Japanese surprise air attack on American bases at Pearl Harbor ended the ambiguity of neutrality and propelled King, a constant critic of the lack of naval preparedness and planning, to the position of commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet (COMINCH). As COMINCH King had full authority over all operational planning and fleet operations, reporting directly to the president.

King was a major architect of strategy during the Second World War, and determined the pace and shape of the Pacific war more than any other person. Soon after Pearl Harbor he pursued a relentless offensive against Japan that resulted in the critical battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. He concentrated on blocking Japanese advances into the South Pacific by pressing the Guadalcanal operation and launched a southwest Pacific offensive against Japanese naval forces in the Solomons.

The world war gave King the power to determine strategy, run an organization, and get the job done his way, a task that he could never have handled in peacetime. When Japan surrendered in August 1945, King seemed lost, uncertain what his job would be now that the fighting had ended. To avoid criticism of the navy, he quickly abolished the COMINCH position in October 1945 and recommended that Pacific Fleet commander Nimitz become CNO. King never retired from the navy, maintaining a postwar office in the Pentagon, but he had no role in Cold War naval organization, strategies, or policies. A stroke incapacitated him in 1949, and he died seven years later at the Portsmouth Naval Hospital.

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Peter Richards