William Halsey, Jr. - World War II

World War II

Traditional naval doctrine envisioned naval combat fought between opposing battleship gun lines. This view was challenged when army airman General Billy Mitchell demonstrated the capability of aircraft to substantially damage and sink even the most heavily armored naval vessel. In the inter-war debate that followed, some saw the carrier as defensive in nature, providing air cover to protect the battle-group from shore-based aircraft. Carrier based aircraft were lighter in design, and had not been shown to be as lethal. The adage "Capital ships cannot withstand land-based air power" was well known. Aviation proponents, however, imagined bringing the fight to the enemy with the use of air power. Halsey was a firm believer in the aircraft carrier as the primary naval offensive weapon system. When he testified at Admiral Kimmel’s hearing after the Pearl Harbor debacle, he stated that the Americans had to “get to the other fellow with everything you have as fast as you can and to dump it on him.” Halsey testified he would never hesitate to use the carrier as an offensive weapon.

With tensions high and war imminent, Halsey was ordered to take his command, USS Enterprise, out of Pearl Harbor to ferry aircraft to reinforce Wake Island, which Naval intelligence had thought would be the target of a Japanese surprise attack. The planes flew off her deck on December 2. Highly anxious of being spotted and then jumped by the Japanese carrier force, Halsey gave orders to "sink any shipping sighted, shoot down any plane encountered." Protested his operations officer: "Goddammit, Admiral, you can't start a private war of your own! Who's going to take the responsibility?" Said Halsey: "I'll take it! If anything gets in my way, we'll shoot first and argue afterwards."

A storm delayed Enterprise on her return voyage. Instead of returning to Pearl Harbor on December 6 as planned, she was still 150 miles out at sea when she received word that the surprise attack anticipated was not at Wake Island, but at Pearl Harbor itself. News of the attack came in the form of overhearing desperate radio transmissions from one of her aircraft sent forward to Pearl Harbor, attempting to identify itself as American. The plane was shot down, and her pilot and crew were lost. Now at war, Enterprise searched south and west of the Hawaiian islands for the Japanese attackers, but fortuitously did not locate the six Japanese fleet carriers then retiring to the north and west.