Harold Rainsford Stark - CNO and The Beginning of World War II

CNO and The Beginning of World War II

In August 1939, Stark became Chief of Naval Operations with the rank of Admiral. In that position, he oversaw the expansion of the Navy during 1940 and 1941, and its involvement in a the Neutrality Patrols against German submarines in the Atlantic during the latter part of 1941. It was at this time that he authored the Plan Dog memo, which laid the basis for America's Europe first policy. He also orchestrated the Navy's change to adopting unrestricted submarine warfare in case of war with Japan; Stark expressly ordered it at 17.52 Washington time on 7 December 1941, not quite four hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It appears the decision was taken without the knowledge or prior consent of the government. It violated the London Naval Treaty, to which the U.S. was signatory.

His most controversial service involved the growing menace of Japanese forces in the period before America was bombed into the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The controversy centers on whether he and his Director of War Plans, Admiral Richmond K. Turner provided sufficient information to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, about Japanese moves in the fall of 1941 to enable to Kimmel to anticipate an attack and to take steps to counter it. Captain (later Rear Admiral) Edwin T. Layton was Kimmel's chief intelligence officer (later also Adm. Chester W. Nimitz's intelligence officer) at the time of the attack. In his book, And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (1985), Layton maintained Stark offered meaningless advice throughout this period, withheld vital information at the insistence of his Director of War Plans, Admiral Turner, showed timidity in dealing with the Japanese, and utterly failed to provide anything of use to Kimmel. John Costello (Layton's co-author), in Days of Infamy (Pocket, 1994), points out MacArthur had complete access to both and JN-25, plus over eight hours warning, and was still caught by surprise. Moreover, as SCAP official historian Gordon Prange and his colleagues note in December 7, 1941 (McGraw-Hill, 1988), defense of the fleet was General Short's responsibility, not Stark's. Turner's insistence on having intelligence go through War Plans led Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) to a wrong belief ONI was only to collect intelligence; Turner did not correct this view, nor aid Stark in understanding the problem. Among others, Morison and Layton agree Turner was most responsible for the debacle, as does Ned Beach in Scapegoats (Annapolis, 1995).

In addition, there was considerable confusion over where Japan might strike, including against the Soviet Union or British colonies in Asia.