Bull Halsey!

He changed things around and was very aggressive in his approach during and after Guadacanal.

I voted for Nimitz, strictly because he had to deal with not only actual strategy and tactics on a large scale, but he had to manage all of the little bits and pieces (logistics, crews, ships, production and manufacturing, etc.) that have to come together to acheive a successful war effort.

Originally Posted by c/LCDR

I voted for Nimitz, strictly because he had to deal with not only actual strategy and tactics on a large scale, but he had to manage all of the little bits and pieces (logistics, crews, ships, production and manufacturing, etc.) that have to come together to acheive a successful war effort.

True, and keep all the subcommanders in line. Then again, Yamamoto did much the same with Japan.

Right, but Japan lost.

Originally Posted by c/LCDR

Right, but Japan lost.

In all honesty, do you think they could have actually won that war? The USA massively outproduced then in everything. Hey, I'm American and I'm glad we won, but with the numbers we had on production, how could we have actually lost??

If I lay my patiriotism aside, I have to go for Yamamoto. He did lot with very little. Every ship he lost was going to take a long time to replace. Every American ship was replaced very quickly. How do you win against that sort of thing?

The following is the Worldwide Rankings for World War II Naval Production

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Military production during World War II

Naval ships

Aircraft carriers
1. United States = 141
2. Japan = 16
3. United Kingdom = 14

Battleships
1. United States = 8
2. United Kingdom = 5
3. Italy = 3
4. Japan = 2

Cruisers
1. United States = 48
2. United Kingdom = 32
3. Japan = 9

4. Italy = 6
5. Soviet Union = 2

Destroyers
1. United States = 349
2. United Kingdom = 240
3. Japan = 63
4. Soviet Union = 25
5. Germany = 17
6. Italy = 6

Submarines
1. Germany = 1,141
2. United States = 203
3. Japan = 167
4. United Kingdom = 167
5. Soviet Union = 52
6. Italy = 28

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Militar...II#Naval_ships

That's the whole point. Didn't we say Nimitz (or his staff) had to handle all of the logistics of naval construction and manufacturing as well?

My vote goes for Karl Dönitz, "The Sea Wolf".

Submarines under his leadership performed so excellently that the Allies put his into jail for ten years just because of that. And Hitler installed him as next president of Germany as his last act.

Originally Posted by c/LCDR

That's the whole point. Didn't we say Nimitz (or his staff) had to handle all of the logistics of naval construction and manufacturing as well?

Right, to a degree. The USA was already pretty much guaranteed to run Japan into the ground in terms of production. The Japanese had a lot less to work with accross the board. Nimitz did not cause the USA to be economically superior by such a gigantic margin. They already were. Yamamoto had many other things to work against that Nimitz did not.

But we're not discussing economics and production. We're discussing who was the most brilliant naval commander. The analysis is concerning how they performed as chessplayers (in effect). Who was the most skilled player? What they lacked or did not lack certainly merits consideration in the comparison. If I can consistently outduel skilled swordsmen with a rapiers, and me with nothing more than a dagger, that would be quite impressive, would it not? If a T72 crews were to manage to score 10 kills on M1A2's and not lose their own tank, would this not be quite impressive? Having less to work with does not make you the worse commander or warrior. Having more to work with does not make you the better commander or warrior.

Tanaka - not much to work with, big wins.

He was a brilliant fighter, and he was right there where the steel hit steel.

I voted for Nimitz as he was the orchestrator of the winning side in the greatest (I think) naval campaign in the human history