Word: chiefs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...announcement on Louis Denfeld and other naval officers was both strange and pathetic. Denfeld learned he had been fired only when Vice Admiral John Dale Price (who had gotten the news from a reporter) burst into his office and blurted: "Admiral, the President has just relieved you as Chief of Naval Operations." Denfeld looked up incredulously, said, in an odd voice, "Is that so?" and lapsed into stunned silence. Later he wept. Also he became a hero to the service...
Last week, as news of his removal spread, officers crowded his office to shake his hand. A delegation of 250 enlisted men trooped in and a chief petty officer, acting as spokesman, said: "If they can do this to a man like you, what is to happen to us? ... We feel that the Navy is shot ..." Replied Denfeld fervently: "No service and no individual will stop the Navy." Later in the week, when four-star Louis Denfeld took his seat at the Navy-Notre Dame football game in Baltimore, more than 3,000 midshipmen waved their caps and cheered wildly...
There was little doubt as to the man the Administration wanted as Denfeld's successor. He was Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman who, as Deputy Vice Chief of Naval Operations, had committed the Navy sin of joining with the Air Force's Lieut. General Larry Norstad as one of the original authors of unification. When integration came, Forrest Sherman was bundled out of Washington to become commander of the Sixth Task Fleet in the Mediterranean. This week Secretary Matthews smuggled him home on a civilian airline to offer him Denfeld...
Admiral Sherman was an unusual man -brilliant, modest and, at 53, one of the youngest officers ever proposed as Chief of Naval Operations. His World War II record was impressive. He commanded the aircraft carrier Wasp until she was shot out from beneath him in the Solomons in 1942. During the final years of the war he was Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz' "brain"; he helped plan the great sweep across the Pacific from Tarawa to Okinawa...
None of this meant that Sherman would have an easy-or even successful-career as head of the Navy. Resentments against him ran deep in his own service, deeper perhaps than against any other officer erf the Navy. But if he became the choice of the Commander in Chief, it would be up to the Navy to accept the decision...