World War II and Post-war Years
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941 and the subsequent relief of Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Vice Admiral Pye was Acting Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet from 17 December until 31 December 1941. His major action in this position was to send a relief force built around the USS Saratoga to the aid of Wake Island. In a controversial decision, Pye recalled the relief force on 22 December after reports of additional landings on the island-for fear of losses. After relinquishing command of the Pacific Fleet to Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Pye became the commander of Task Force One, comprising the remaining operational battleships in the Pacific fleet, based in San Francisco. Pye ordered this force to sortie to patrol the West Coast during the Battle of Midway, as a precaution against a possible Japanese attack in that area. His fears proved unfounded and Task Force One remained on training and patrol duties between Hawaii and the West Coast until Pye was relieved in October 1942. After Wake Island and Midway, he never commanded operating forces again. Vice Admiral Pye then became President of the Naval War College and simultaneously commanded the Naval Operating Base, Newport, Rhode Island. Though he officially retired in July 1944, he remained on as War College President until relieved of active duty in December 1945. Vice Admiral William S. Pye died at Bethesda, Maryland, on 4 May 1959. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
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Famous quotes containing the words world, war, post-war and/or years:
“This world is the will to power—and nothing else! And you yourselves are also this will to power—and nothing else!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against Protestant ascendancy. ...The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others ...”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Much of what Mr. Wallace calls his global thinking is, no matter how you slice it, still “globaloney.” Mr. Wallace’s warp of sense and his woof of nonsense is very tricky cloth out of which to cut the pattern of a post-war world.”
—Clare Boothe Luce (1903–1987)
“[F]rom Saratoga [N.Y.] till we got back to Northampton [Mass.], was then mostly desert. Now it is what 34. years of free and good government have made it. It shews how soon the labor of man would make a paradise of the whole earth, were it not for misgovernment, and a diversion of all his energies from their proper object, the happiness of man, to the selfish interests of kings, nobles and priests.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)