Greatest Naval Commander of WW2??

Who was the Greatest Naval Commander of World War II??

  • Admiral, Erich Raeder (Germany)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto (Japan)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Admiral Chuichi Nagumo (Japan)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher (USA)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Admiral Raymond A Spruance

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Admiral Raizo Tanaka

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    7

godofthunder9010

Active member
World War II saw some spectacular naval battles. The misnamed Battle of the Atlantic pitted the minds of Admiral Raeder and Admiral Dönitz against the very potent British Royal Navy. That chessmatch did not completely end until the final surrender of Germany by Admiral Dönitz in 1945. (I find an overall lack of documentation of notable British commanders for some strange reason and that makes no sense to me.) The Italian navy was the star "lets sit here and do nothing at all" player in that game.

The Pacific War saw the largest naval conflict in history. The Japanese had built an extremely potent navy and scored a brilliant victory at Pearl Harbor under the command of Admiral Chuichi Nagumo. The star players of the Japanese were Admiral Chuichi Nagumo and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. Victorious early on, but ultimately overwhelmed by the USA's superior production in the long run. On the USA's side, some brilliant victories against superior forces shortly after Pearl Harbor put an exclamation on the brilliance of the US Naval leadership. Best known stars: Admiral William "Bull" Halsey and Admiral Chester Nimitz. Other stars worth noting: Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher captured victory against the odds at the Battle of the Coral Sea and then, perhaps the most amazing victory, the Battle of Midway under the direction of Nimitz, although Admiral Raymond A Spruance deserves more credit that Fletcher at Midway as the man on scene that got it done. Of course, the overall victory at Midway belongs to Nimitz.

With all the outstanding stars, who deserves to be called "the Greatest Naval Commander of World War II"?
 
My heart would like to vote for Admiral Halsey as my family owes him a debt we can never repay. However, I voted for Admiral Nimitz. His overall strategy and shouldering of massive responsibility in the Pacific war were beyond measure. I agree with you up to a point about Midway, Thunder, but Spruance while the tactical commander was not the commander who bet his career and the US Navy's ability to continue the war on that battle. It was Nimitz who made the call and Nimitz who would have been destroyed had he been wrong. Also it was Nimitz who decided where Spruance would be to await the Japanese and it was Nimitz who had the repair crews perform the miracle of getting USS Yorktown back into the fight after being seriously damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea. So it was both of them who deserve credit for Midway and equally as neither's contribution can truly be quantified.
 
I've been a long admirer of Karl Donitz because he made great use of very limited resources. In the end though I went for Nimitz simply because he made most of the calls that had to be made and the Pacific Theatre was by far the biggest sphere of naval operations in WW2.
 
Captain Walker really shouldn't be in this list. It is certainly true that he pioneered the most effective ways of anti-submarine warfare that went a long way to winning the the Battle of the Atlantic and he literally worked himself to death in doing so, but he was not a force commander (though he did command a small group of ships) and it isn't right for him to be in a list of them.
 
Charge_7 said:
I agree with you up to a point about Midway, Thunder, but Spruance while the tactical commander was not the commander who bet his career and the US Navy's ability to continue the war on that battle. It was Nimitz who made the call and Nimitz who would have been destroyed had he been wrong. Also it was Nimitz who decided where Spruance would be to await the Japanese and it was Nimitz who had the repair crews perform the miracle of getting USS Yorktown back into the fight after being seriously damaged in the Battle of the Coral Sea. So it was both of them who deserve credit for Midway and equally as neither's contribution can truly be quantified.
I agree and did not intend for it to come out quite that way. As I reread my post, I see what you mean. You just automatically assume that Nimitz is the key in every major battle. Spruance was the hero on the scene of the battle, so while Fletcher was truly in command at Midway, Spruance deserves more credit than Fletcher for victory that day. Lets be honest, dumb luck was our greatest friend in the Battle of Midway, but we must celebrate the heroes of that day for brilliant success as well. Nimitz was an extraordinary master in the greatest naval chessmatch in history.

Walker is the result of a dilema I ran into: An overall lack of extraordinary British Commanders other that ABC himself. I'd like to have a British replacement for him, but there isn't anyone I can think of to list.
 
Rear Admiral Tanaka was widely respected by the USN. He was a fierce fighter - often scoring amazing victories against long odds.
 
Zucchini said:
Rear Admiral Tanaka was widely respected by the USN. He was a fierce fighter - often scoring amazing victories against long odds.
Excellent, can you give his full name so I can get him added? Mods have to do it unfortunately.
 
Rear-Admiral Raizo Tanaka


Here is a website about him:

http://www.geocities.com/dutcheastindies/tanaka.html



Just me, but I'm going to like combat guys better than "big picture" guys.

My dad was on the USS New Orleans when it was torpedoed off Guadacanal. When he was a kid he used to tell me the Japanese commander who defeated their task force that night deserved Japan's version of the medal of honor. About 5 years ago he repeated the story and I sat down at a computer and typed "USS New Orleans" into the search engine.

I asked him if he was in the "Battle of Tassafaronga" and he said he'd never heard of it. I told him that he was in it, which he was. And then I was able to tell him the name of the Japanese commander, and after that he said computers were okay.

That article incorrectly leaves the USS New Orleans off the list of ships heavily damaged by Tanaka's Long Lance counterattack at Tassafaronga.
 
I'd love to vote for Bull Halsey because he took such good care of the Marines he had in his care.

I'd love to vote for Ray Spurance because it's amazing to me what a Cruiser Driver accomplished as a Carrier TF commander.

But in the end I voted for Nimitz because IMHO he was the one that pulled it all together.
 
A better choice than Walker for the Brits would be Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey. As Fleet Admiral Dover he was responsible for the coordination of effort that enabled the successful evacuation of troops at Dunkirk. Later on he was the admiral commanding Operation Neptune which was the naval aspect of D-Day. Unfortunately, he was killed in a plane crash in January of 1945 and so didn't enjoy the awards of the victors and is little remembered today outside of Britain and the Commonwealth.

You can see something about him here and of course many other places on the web:

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/admiral_sir_bertram_ramsay.htm


Oh yes, not entirely luck at Midway, btw. We had a fair enough idea of their codes by then (though only about 10 - 20%) to make a educated guess about Midway being the Japanese goal and not elsewhere. The idea to have Midway report its salt water converter out of operation was pure brilliance on the part of Commander Rochefort. When the Japanese reported it to higher HQ there was no doubt that Midway was the target.

A detailed account of intel prior to Midway can be found here:

http://www.centurytel.net/midway/priceless/
 
My point on Midway is that we got lucky on many counts.
1. Breaking the Japanese code to begin with.
2. We sunk at least two Japanese carriers because we were lucky enough to find them and hit them at precisely the right time.
3. Finding their carriers first.

As already stated, this does not take anything away from what American commanders accomplished at Midway. Many brilliant moves and many things done right, but we started the day completely outgunned and won anyway. Lady Luck was a big help there. The rest was the USA forces doing a brilliant job.
Zucchini said:
Rear Admiral Tanaka was widely respected by the USN. He was a fierce fighter - often scoring amazing victories against long odds.
Sent a request to the mods, so now we wait I suppose.
 
I think Thunder would agree to this, could you please also change Captain Walker to Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsey?
 
Even though Walker was a ship commander, his ideas on anti-sub warfare were very intuitve and brilliant in my estimation. He is probably misplaced here, but he did have substantial impact on things well outside his own ship.

Ramsey seems to have been deeply involved in two very important things: The evacuation of the BEF from Dunkirk and the Normandy invasion. One constituted a race against time, the other was a massive amphibious assault. That potentially makes him a brilliant organizer of large scale amphibious movements, but the article you linked is extremely scarce on the details. Neither of those leads one to conclude that he was brilliant naval strategist since there was no significant opposing navy in either circumstance.
 
Here is a better website on Tassafaronga, as well as other Naval battles in the South Pacific:


http://www.everblue.net/1942/



Battle damage - USS New Orleans after bow blown away by Long Lance:


0403205.jpg
 
I picked Yamamoto, the man on the opposite side of the chessboard from Nimitz. He had realistic view and knew that his nation was getting in over their head by attacking the USA. He gave it his all anyways and he did a brilliant job with what he had available. The USA almost definitely ended the war more quickly by assassinating him.
 
I wouldn't call it "assassinating". He was in the military and a legitimate military target the same as any other Japanese - the fact that we went out of our way to kill him not withstanding.

The more I read about Yamamoto the more I've come to the conclusion that his accomplishments while often well done have been over played simply because he was the best the Japanese had.
 
My vote goes to Admiral Andrew B. Cunningham, who's aggressive handling of the out-numbered RN, denied the Italian Navy control of the Med.
 
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