COMMAND: First to Seventh

This week the Navy announced that Vice Admiral Harold M. Martin will relieve Vice Admiral Arthur D. Struble as commander of Seventh Fleet, operating off Korea and Formosa. Admiral Struble, an amphibious-warfare expert who led the Inchon invasion, will return to the U.S. to take over First Fleet, Martin’s old command.

Admiral Martin, once a famed Annapolis halfback (1916) whose friends call him “Beauty” (because he isn’t), is a longtime naval aviator.

On Dec. 7, 1941, he commanded Kaneohe Bay Air Station on Oahu. He was eating Sunday-morning breakfast in his quarters when he heard planes approaching. Snapped Martin from the window when he saw them violating the flight pattern: “When I get hold of those so-and-sos, they’re going to lose some numbers.” His sharp-eyed, twelve-year-old son, who had seen their markings, broke the bad news: “They’re not going to lose any numbers, Pop. They’re Japs.”

Martin was later put in charge of the naval air station on Midway Island. In 1943 and 1944 he commanded the light carrier San Jacinto.