ARMED FORCES: Punishment

In war & peace, at Annapolis, Tripoli, Mobile Bay, Santiago, the Philippine Sea, Norfolk and San Diego, the pride of the Navy grew. In intense patriotism, dedicated Navy officers held two words to be all but synonymous—the Navy and the Nation. They upheld one to defend the other—and, after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, fought the biggest, most imaginative and magnificent sea war in history. When peace was won, and they were asked to mothball most of the great and glorious fleet and surrender power and prerogatives, minds shaped by the Navy’s great years found it hard to obey.

The Navy brass went on rebelling after unification of the armed services, however imperfect, became fact. In the end, a group of their most ardent officers rashly strove to put the Navy above the dictates of the Government. Last week the inevitable crash occurred. President Harry Truman, acting with brutal directness, removed the service’s highest-ranking officer, Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, as Chief of Naval Operations.

Anchors Aweigh. The effect of the announcement on Louis Denfeld and other naval officers was both strange and pathetic. Denfeld learned he had been fired only when Vice Admiral John Dale Price (who had gotten the news from a reporter) burst into his office and blurted: “Admiral, the President has just relieved you as Chief of Naval Operations.” Denfeld looked up incredulously, said, in an odd voice, “Is that so?” and lapsed into stunned silence. Later he wept. Also he became a hero to the service.

During most of his tour as CNO he had been an unpopular figure—a man his superiors considered to be “safe” and whom Navy extremists considered a puppet. When he testified before the House Armed Services Committee (TIME, Oct. 24) the picture was dramatically reversed. Admiral Denfeld had broken with his civilian superiors and lined himself up with the Navy’s rebels.

Last week, as news of his removal spread, officers crowded his office to shake his hand. A delegation of 250 enlisted men trooped in and a chief petty officer, acting as spokesman, said: “If they can do this to a man like you, what is to happen to us? … We feel that the Navy is shot …” Replied Denfeld fervently: “No service and no individual will stop the Navy.” Later in the week, when four-star Louis Denfeld took his seat at the Navy-Notre Dame football game in Baltimore, more than 3,000 midshipmen waved their caps and cheered wildly while the band broke into Anchors Aweigh.

Reprisal? The effects of the President’s decision rumbled off much farther than the Pentagon Building. He was immediately accused—most heatedly by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Vinson—of taking reprisals against Denfeld for his testimony before the committee, though witnesses had been guaranteed safe conduct by Louis Johnson himself. Others complained that in the summary manner of firing, the Admiral had been unnecessarily humiliated.

There was undoubtedly truth in both charges. But neither Vinson, Denfeld nor any other Admiral should have been surprised. The Navy’s rebels had gone too far, and their topmost man, Admiral Denfeld himself, had taken a stand which clearly disqualified him to work any longer with his civilian superiors and his opposite numbers in the Army and Air Force. The rebels had ruthlessly and violently attacked, not only the Air Force and its professional integrity but also the whole Joint Chiefs of Staff concept of strategy. They had plainly implied that they would remain insubordinate to the bitter end. They had been thrashed.

There was little doubt as to the man the Administration wanted as Denfeld’s successor. He was Vice Admiral Forrest Sherman who, as Deputy Vice Chief of Naval Operations, had committed the Navy sin of joining with the Air Force’s Lieut. General Larry Norstad as one of the original authors of unification. When integration came, Forrest Sherman was bundled out of Washington to become commander of the Sixth Task Fleet in the Mediterranean. This week Secretary Matthews smuggled him home on a civilian airline to offer him Denfeld’s job.

Admiral Sherman was an unusual man —brilliant, modest and, at 53, one of the youngest officers ever proposed as Chief of Naval Operations. His World War II record was impressive. He commanded the aircraft carrier Wasp until she was shot out from beneath him in the Solomons in 1942. During the final years of the war he was Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz’ “brain”; he helped plan the great sweep across the Pacific from Tarawa to Okinawa.

None of this meant that Sherman would have an easy—or even successful—career as head of the Navy. Resentments against him ran deep in his own service, deeper perhaps than against any other officer erf the Navy. But if he became the choice of the Commander in Chief, it would be up to the Navy to accept the decision.