The Battle of Midway by Craig L. Symonds

In retrospect it is difficult to imagine anyone else accomplishing what Nimitz did. He captures Nimitz's composure, discipline, homespun wisdom, and most of all his uncanny sense of when to assert authority and when to pull back. Using Nimitz's headquartersthe eye of the hurricaneas his vantage point, Symonds covers all the major campaigns in the Pacific from Guadalcanal to Okinawa. And of course, he also confronted a formidable and implacable enemy in the Imperial Japanese Navy, which, until the Battle of Midway, had the run of the Pacific.Ĭraig Symonds' Nimitz at War reveals how the quiet man from the Hill Country of Texas eventually surmounted all of these challenges.

He had to navigate the expectations of a nation impatient for revenge and eventual victory. He had to maintain a sometimes-fraught relationship with his Army counterpart Douglas MacArthur, and cope with his superiors, including the formidably prickly King and the inscrutable FDR. He had to corral independent-minded subordinatesincluding Admiral Bill 'Bull' Halsey and General Holland 'Howlin' Mad' Smithand keep them focused on shared objectives. Facing demands from Washington to mount an early offensive, he had first to revive the depressed morale of the thousands of sailors, soldiers, and Marines who served under him. From the precarious early months of the war after December 7thÂ 1941 to the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay nearly four years later, Nimitz transformed the devastated and dispirited Pacific fleet into the most powerful and commanding naval force in history.įrom the start, the pressures on Nimitz were crushing. Yet FDR's selection proved nothing less than inspired. King, considered him a 'desk admiral,' more suited to running a bureaucracy than a theater of war.

Nimitz was not the most senior candidate available, and some, including his new boss, U.S. Nimitz to assume command of the Pacific Fleet. From America's preeminent naval historian, the first full-length portrait in over fifty years of the man who won the war in the Pacific in World War Two'destined,' says Andrew Roberts, 'to be the defining life of Chester Nimitz for a long time to come.' Only days after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D.

The Battle of Midway by Craig L. Symonds