Chester Nimitz took over command of a battered Pacific Fleet shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was not much left to command: Only four carriers had escaped the Pearl Harbor raid because they had been at sea on maneuvers. Virtually every other ship at the naval base had been either sunk or damaged during the Japanese raid. In short, the Pacific Fleetwas down for the count.
Yet in six months it would be a fighting force once again, bloodying the enemy at the Battle of Midway and preparing the path to Tokyo, with Nimitz leading the way.
A Series of Commands Leads to the Pacific Fleet
Chester Nimitz was born in 1885 in Fredericksburg, Texas. He graduated from Annapolis in 1905 and was commissioned an ensign. His first command was a former Spanish gunboat in the Philippines. In 1908, he commanded a destroyer that, unfortunately, became grounded. He was court-martialed, but because of an excellent record he was let off with a reprimanded.
Nimitz was assigned to the submarine service in 1909 and within three years was heading the submarine fleet in the Atlantic. It would be his sole assignment during World War I. After a number of commands and promotions, Nimitz became assistant chief of something called the Bureau of Navigation, which dealt with naval personnel.
In 1939, he was put in charge of the bureau. Two years later, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the newly named admiral was chosen commander in chief of the crippled Pacific Fleet.
The Battles of the Coral Sea and Midway
Nimitz faced two daunting tasks. First, he had to rebuild, refit, and replace virtu-ally the entire Pacific Fleet. Second, he had to find ways to keep the Japanese off balance with the limited resources he had at his command. Small task forces were sent out to the Marshalls, Gilberts, and other Japanese-held islands to hit and harass. Army Lieutenant-Colonel Jimmy Doolittle (Number 9) and his raiders were taken aboard carriers to within a few hundred miles of the Japanese home islands to bomb Tokyo and other cities. The damage caused by those raids was slight, but it dealt a psychological blow to the Japanese: The American fleet was still very much alive.
In May and June 1942, there were two major naval battles with the Japanese. One took place in the Coral Sea, and the other off Midway Island.At this time, the United States held one huge advantage. It had broken the Japanese code so that planned enemy attacks were known in advance. Early in May, a Japanese force seized one of the Solomon Islands north of Australia. Nimitz learned that the immediate Japanese target was Port Moresby, New Guinea. The ultimate target was the island continent of Australia itself. A major sea battle took place in the Coral Sea off the Solomon Islands in May 1942. Each side had approximately 120 carrier-based planes. There were losses on both sides; the Japanese lost more than 1,000 men and the Americans approximately 300. But the bottom line was that the Japanese fleet had been repelled.
In June 1942, an even more important battle took place near the island of Midway. The Japanese plan was to fake a major attack on Dutch Harbor, Alaska, draw the American Pacific Fleet there, and then have the main Japanese force invade and occupy Midway Island. Nimitz, heavily outnumbered, knew of the attack plans because American intelligence had broken the Japanese code. Yet it was a savage battle, with dive bombers and torpedo planes versus the big battlewagons. When it was over, the Japanese had to withdraw, having lost all four of their aircraft carriers and other vessels, as well as 250 aircraft. The United States lost one carrier, a destroyer, and 147 airplanes. Thousands of lives were lost. But the superior Japanese navy had suffered its first decisive defeat of the war.
A Final Battle and Victory at Last
Nimitz, using Marine and Army forces, started island-hopping across the Pacific.He would avoid the most heavily fortified islands and attack those less well-defended.Cut off from provisions, the heavily defended strongholds were left to rot on the vine.
The last great naval battle took place in October 1944, when the Japanese attempted to stop the Allied landings at Leyte in the Philippines by using a diversionary force as bait. The ploy worked and drew away William Halsey (Number 26) and his forces. But the Navy put up such a good fight that the Japanese never followed up on getting into Leyte and wiping out the troop transports. It was the last gasp of the Japanese navy. Savage fighting would go on for many months, but Japan’s hopes for victory lay crushed amid the wreckage of rusting warships at the bottom of the Pacific.
The atomic bomb is often credited with the American victory in the Pacific. But it was Nimitz and his admirals who met, staved off, and overcame the Japanese navy. The war in the Pacific was won before the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even though the Japanese refused to surrender.
Chester Nimitz, along with Douglas MacArthur (Number 8), witnessed the surrender of Japan on board the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. The admiral died in 1966.
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