The Admirals Quotes

“Leadership,” said Nimitz, “consists of picking good men and helping them do their best for you. The attributes of loyalty, discipline and devotion to duty on the part of subordinates must be matched by patience, tolerance and understanding on the part of superiors.”24”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“No fighter ever won his fight by covering up—by merely fending off the other fellow’s blows. The winner hits and keeps on hitting even though he has to take some stiff blows in order to be able to keep on hitting. —ADMIRAL ERNEST J. KING, Commander in Chief, U.S. Fleet, 1942”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Chester and Catherine had begun a lifelong ritual of writing each other daily letters whenever they were apart.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“With a combination of nimble counsel, exasperating ego, studied patience, and street-fighter tactics, William D. Leahy, Ernest J. King, Chester W. Nimitz, and William F. Halsey, Jr., built the modern United States Navy and won World War II on the seas. Each”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“As always, King was the ultimate authority, the one and only arbiter. One night when the communications watch officer groped his way across the darkened flag bridge, he bumped into an unrecognized figure. “Sir, are you on duty?” he queried. “Young man,” came the response, “this is the Admiral. I am always on duty.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“On one foggy, misty night, King ordered the air groups from the Lexington and Saratoga to launch simultaneously well after sunset. The chaos was predictable but, in King’s mind, instructional.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Leahy wholeheartedly supported the airlift and Truman’s election, but he remained skeptical of the politics of the Middle East. “The President’s announcement [recognizing Israel],” Leahy wrote, “made with inadequate consideration leaves many questions unanswered” and could, he concluded, “drag the United States into a war between the two religious groups.”10”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“As Halsey looked over his shoulder from his campaigns across the Pacific, “the old battlefields were already disappearing into the jungle or under neat, new buildings. Where 500 men had lost their lives in a night attack a few months before, eighteen men were now playing baseball. Where a Jap pillbox had crouched, a movie projector stood. Where a hand grenade had wiped out a foxhole, a storekeeper was serving cokes. Only the cemeteries were left.”20”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“General Douglas MacArthur was the most brilliant, most important, and most valuable military leader in American history—at least that’s what Douglas MacArthur thought. When”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“In all, Yamamoto deployed 162 ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, practically its entire fighting force, in support of the Midway operation. (No”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Midway wasn’t much of a place. Two tiny islands, crisscrossed by airstrips, totaled barely fifteen hundred acres on the edge of a lagoon circled by a jagged reef. But in May 1942, Midway may have been the most heavily defended acreage in the Pacific. Certainly,”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“The ultimate test of any military commander, however, is that he rises or falls with whatever glories or misfortunes befall his command. Sometimes he is responsible, sometimes he is not, but as the commander he is always accountable nonetheless. Had”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“But perhaps the greatest asset was the surviving oil tanks. Had 4.5 million barrels of fuel oil been blown up, what was left of the Pacific Fleet would have been forced to limp back to the West Coast and have its operations in the Pacific severely curtailed. That action, not Japan’s sinking of a few aging battleships, would have given Japan the free rein it sought in the South Pacific.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Nothing could ever replace the treasure of America’s men and women killed or forever maimed by Japan’s attack, but Nimitz looked around Pearl Harbor and decided that it could have been much worse. On the list of physical casualties, there were three glaring omissions that would prove to be major strategic blunders on the part of the Japanese.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Other men would get to command the spear point; Nimitz would calmly and diligently manage the arm that held the spear.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Roosevelt’s election was particularly pleasing to Leahy because he believed “from personal knowledge of the man that he will use his office more directly for the benefit of the United States…. The Country and the Navy undoubtedly face a bad period, but I believe their policies will now be directed by a man whose point of view is wholly American.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Then Nimitz, being Nimitz, posted the usual watches and did the only thing that made sense to him. “On that black night somewhere in the Philippines,” he later recalled, “the advice of my grandfather returned to me: ‘Don’t worry about things over which you have no control.’ So I set up a cot on deck and went to sleep.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“To Mayo, this meant “passing down the chain of command the handling of all details to the lowest link in the chain which could properly handle them,” while keeping in hand matters of policy and strategic importance.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Leadership,” said Nimitz, “consists of picking good men and helping them do their best for you. The attributes of loyalty, discipline and devotion to duty on the part of subordinates must be matched by patience, tolerance and understanding on the part of superiors.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Naval aviation and America’s submarine force would continue their ascension as both spear point and deterrent, but for the fleet admirals, September 2, 1945, was the apex of their careers.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“But Nimitz was very careful not to criticize Halsey in any way or to allow even a hint of controversy to enter the official records.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Marshall was forced to acknowledge that there was little he could do but acquiesce to the reverse in the South Pacific, where so many of the operations were to be on or near water. King later described these discussions as having “to ‘educate’ the Army people.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“At his new headquarters in Melbourne, Australia, MacArthur granted Time correspondent Theodore H. White an interview and “managed to denounce all at once, and with equal gusto and abandon,” Franklin Roosevelt, George Marshall, Harry Luce (Time’s publisher), and the U.S. Navy. “White,” MacArthur lectured, “the best navy in the world is the Japanese navy. A first-class navy. Then comes the British Navy. The U.S. Navy is a fourth-class navy, not even as good as the Italian navy.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“MacArthur “might have made a better showing at the beaches and passes, and certainly he should have saved his planes on December 8,” a newly appointed brigadier general who had long served as the general’s aide confided to his diary. “But,” wrote Dwight D. Eisenhower, “he’s still the hero.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“The ultimate test of any military commander, however, is that he rises or falls with whatever glories or misfortunes befall his command. Sometimes he is responsible, sometimes he is not, but as the commander he is always accountable nonetheless”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Halsey was a guy who got things done and King definitely liked and respected that quality.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“The academy certainly wasn’t an absolute requirement for flag rank, but between the Spanish-American War, when Annapolis increased its enrollment, and World War II, no nongraduate attained flag rank.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“To Nimitz, the solution was obvious. Admiral Sims was right: the carrier, not the battleship, was the chief capital ship, and the concentric-circle formation should have the carrier at its center.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“In a minute and a half Halsey’s destroyers had done a million and a half dollars’ worth of damage” in a mock attack that should have been a rude wake-up call to the battleship admirals.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea

“Jervis exclaimed, “Pitt is the greatest fool that ever existed to encourage a mode of war which those who command the sea do not want and which, if successful, will deprive them of it.”
― Walter R. Borneman, The Admirals: Nimitz, Halsey, Leahy, and King--The Five-Star Admirals Who Won the War at Sea