Word: denfeld
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...imperfect, became fact. In the end, a group of their most ardent officers rashly strove to put the Navy above the dictates of the Government. Last week the inevitable crash occurred. President Harry Truman, acting with brutal directness, removed the service's highest-ranking officer, Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, as Chief of Naval Operations...
Anchors Aweigh. The effect of the 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...
During most of his tour as CNO he had been an unpopular figure-a man his superiors considered to be "safe" and whom Navy extremists considered a puppet. When he testified before the House Armed Services Committee (TIME, Oct. 24) the picture was dramatically reversed. Admiral Denfeld had broken with his civilian superiors and lined himself up with the Navy's rebels...
...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 while the band broke into Anchors Aweigh...
...records of the members of the J.C.S.: himself, General Hoyt Vandenberg, who had commanded the Ninth Air Force in Europe, the Army's General J. Lawton Collins, who had commanded the VII Corps at Normandy. Then he got in a low blow: "I was not associated with Admiral Denfeld during the war. I am not familiar with his experiences . . . [Denfeld, by order of his superiors, spent most of the war in Washington as Assistant Chief of Naval Personnel]. Undoubtedly it was because of this record that he was appointed Chief of Naval Operations...