Thomas Kinkaid - In the Spirit of John Paul Jones

If one man could be chosen to represent the American naval war in the Pacific, Thomas Kinkaid would be that man. His task forces saw action throughout the Pacific—from the Aleutians in the north to the Solomons in the south. In all, Kinkaid and his sailors supported more than two dozen assaults during the Pacific war.

In the early days of the war, following the Pearl Harbor disaster, Kinkaid and his tiny task force saw so much action in so many places that the Japanese were led to believe that the United States had a much larger fleet roaming the Pacific than it actually did. Some naval observers have theorized that it might have been planned that way.

Distinguished Service in the Navy

Thomas Kinkaid was born in 1888 in Hanover, New Hampshire. The son of a rear admiral, he was appointed to the Naval Academy by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904. The cadet was only 16.Graduating in 1908, Kinkaid was assigned to the battleship Nebraska and then to the Minnesota. In 1913, he was selected to receive post-graduate instruction in ordnance. During Pershing’s military incursion into Mexico, Kinkaid was on duty in Mexican waters. When World War I heated up, he was assigned to the battleship Pennsylvania. After the war, he was serving on the Arizona when President Wilson sailed the ship to Europe. The president was on his way to the peace conference at Versailles.

The naval officer kept moving up the career ladder. He was assigned to the critically important U.S. Navy Bureau of Ordnance, and then as assistant chief of staff to an admiral.

Kinkaid received his first command in 1924: the U.S.S. Sherwood. Three years later, he was selected as gunnery officer to the commander in chief of the fleet. He won a plum spot at the Naval War College and then served as secretary to the naval panel, making recommendations on fleet disposition in the event of war. During 1932, Kinkaid was part of the American delegation attending the Naval Disarmament Con-ference in Geneva.

In 1937, Kinkaid was captain of the cruiser Indianapolis. Two years later, war broke out in Europe. Kinkaid became U.S. naval attaché in Rome.

A Game of Cat and Mouse

Six months before Pearl Harbor was attacked, Kinkaid was back at sea. The attack on Pearl Harbor would put him smack in the middle of the Pacific war. He was about to participate in the most extraordinary use of limited naval resources since John Paul Jones made do with what he had during the American Revolution. Kinkaid’s initial battles with the Japanese were carried out with a small cruiser task force. His first assaults against the Japanese were raids on the Marshalls, the Gilberts, Wake, and Marcus; the battle of the Coral Sea; and the battle of Midway.

Two carriers—the Enterprise and the Hornet—joined his new task force. Kinkaid now engaged the Japanese more often and on a larger scale at Santa Cruz, Guadalcanal, and the Solomon Islands. All that was accomplished just in 1942. Every man on the carrier Enterprise would be honored with the unit citation.

In 1943, commanding joint American and Canadian naval forces, he wrested back two of the Aleutian Islands that had been seized by Japan the year before. The island of Attu was taken after fierce resistance by the Japanese that ended in mass suicide. The Japanese evacuated Kiska in one foggy night before Kinkaid could strike.

Closing in on the Victory

From the extreme northern Pacific, Kinkaid headed to the southwest to work with MacArthur (Number 8), island hopping closer and closer to the Philippines. The American fleet would land MacArthur’s forces on the beaches, then support them with naval fire and air strikes.

Late in October 1944 came the Philippine landings. The initial target was Leyte.Kinkaid’s force was in charge of landing the troops and getting them safely on shore. The Japanese response came in three separate fleet movements. Though the Americans did not know it at the time, one of those fleets was assigned to lure Halsey (Number 26) away from guarding the San Bernardino Strait, which led to Leyte. Once Halsey was drawn away by the decoy, another fleet, under Japanese Admiral Kurita (Number 38), was to attack the landing forces and supplies on the Leyte beaches. But C.A.F. Sprague (Number 36), one of Kinkaid’s captains, put up such fierce resistance with his tiny carrier escorts that Kurita turned around and headed for home. After Leyte came an attack on Luzon, the largest Philippine island, and then islands closer to the Japanese mainland.

Until the end of the war, the American fleet’s biggest threat was from Japanese suicide planes called kamikazes. Japanese volunteers crashed their planes, filled with explosives, on American ships. The suicide missions were highly successful.

Witness to Surrender

The war ended in Tokyo Bay early in September 1945. Fittingly, Kinkaid was one of the witnesses to sign the Japanese surrender document. After the war, he was appointed commander of the reserve Atlantic Fleet.

Admiral Thomas Kinkaid died in 1972.