Free The Battle of Midway by Craig L. Symonds

Aeronautics, to command the carrier
Saratoga
if he completed the short observer’s course at Pensacola. Once he got there, however, Halsey managed to get himself transferred into the full pilot training program despite his age and his poor eyesight; he earned his gold wings as a 52-year-old grandfather. In January of 1942, he was the only vice admiral in the Navy who was a naval aviator. Officially he was commander, Aircraft Battle Force; operationally, he was the commanding officer of Task Force 8, built around the carrier
Enterprise
. Halsey did not command the ship itself—that responsibility fell to the ship’s captain, George D. Murray, a career naval aviator who had earned his gold wings in 1915. Murray was responsible for the day-to-day management of the vessel and its crew. Halsey was a kind of passenger on the
Enterprise
, having a suite of rooms known as flag quarters in the island amidships, and dispensing orders through a staff.

    Vice Admiral William F. Halsey sports gold wings on the breast of his forest-green aviator’s uniform. Note the cigarette in his right hand. (U.S. Naval Institute)
    As a midshipman at the Academy, Halsey had played fullback on the football team and he possessed something of a fullback’s attitude. He was direct, often blunt, occasionally profane, and utterly fearless. Some thought his facial features resembled those of a bulldog, and not only did that give him his nickname, it added to his reputation for ferocity. To balance that, he was outgoing and gregarious, a bit of a showman and, like Yamamoto, willing to speak his mind openly. Once the war began, he became a favorite of newspaper reporters, who counted on him to provide some fiery rhetoric for their columns. He seldom let them down. After Pearl Harbor, he claimed that he had always distrusted “Japs,” and vowed that by the time he was through with them, the Japanese language would be spoken only in hell. 5
    The most senior of Nimitz’s task-force commanders was Vice Admiral Wilson Brown, who was in charge of Task Force 11, built around the big carrier
Lexington
. Brown was three years older than Halsey or Nimitz, having graduated from the Academy in the class of 1902. Brown was, in the words of one modern scholar, “an intelligent paragon of old school formality.” In the 1902 yearbook,
Lucky Bag
, his classmates described him as “modest and unassuming … with a sweet voice and a sweeter smile.” In short, he was a dramatic contrast to Halsey in almost every way. Like Halsey, however, Brown had started out in destroyers and commanded the destroyer
Parker
in the First World War. After the war, while Halsey was still commanding destroyers, Brown occupied a series of staff positions, including a tour as naval aide to President Calvin Coolidge. When Halsey underwent flight training, Brown remained in the black-shoe community and commanded the battleship
California
, then served a tour as the superintendent of the Naval Academy, a position in which his headmasterly qualities served him well. In February of 1941, ten months before Pearl Harbor, he was promoted to vice admiral and made commanding officer of the Scouting Force. His health was suspect. Though only a few years older than Nimitz and Halsey, he looked at least a decade older. Thin and pallid, he had a slight tremor that caused his head to twitch, leading irreverent junior officers to dub him “Shaky” Brown. As events would show, he wasan intelligent and thoughtful officer, but he lacked the boldness and the energetic self-confidence of Bull Halsey. 6
    The third of Nimitz’s task-force commanders was Rear Admiral Herbert Fairfax Leary, who commanded the
Saratoga
group, dubbed Task Force 14. Leary was another black shoe, a 1905 classmate of Nimitz, a tall, thin, lantern-jawed man whose tenure was destined to be short. On January 11, a month after Pearl Harbor, the
Saratoga
was operating near Johnston Island five hundred miles southwest of Hawaii in seas so