Who Was Ernest J. King — And Why Did So Many Officers Fear Him? 

When President Franklin Roosevelt needed someone to rebuild the United States Navy after Pearl Harbor, he reached for the one admiral everyone feared. Roosevelt himself put it best. Admiral Ernest Joseph King shaves every morning with a blowtorrch. This was not a compliment. It was a warning. King’s own daughter observed that her father was the most eventempered person in the United States Navy.

 He is always in a rage. Officers who served under him described the experience as psychological warfare. Peers who negotiated with him compared it to handling explosives. When the Navy announced his appointment as commander-in-chief of the fleet in December 1941, King told the assembled press corps exactly what to expect.

Somebody has got to be an so and I’m telling you fellows in the press right now so you will know loud and clear it is me. I will be that fellow. He kept that promise for the next four years. The question is not whether Ernest King was brutal. The question is why the most powerful military establishment in human history chose to be led by a man who terrified everyone around him.

 Ernest Joseph King was born November 23, 1878 in Lorraine, Ohio. His father was a Scottish immigrant railroad foreman. His mother was English, the daughter of a sawyer in the Royal Navy dockyards at Plymouth. The household was strict Calvinist, establishing the severe worldview that defined his entire career.

 A childhood incident captured what would become his lifelong trademark. At 7 years old, served pie at a dinner party that he found distasteful. Young Nest expressed his displeasure directly to the hostess. When his mother scolded him, he refused to back down. “It’s true,” he insisted. “I don’t like it.” “Absolute cander, no matter how rude or insulting, became his signature.

 If I didn’t agree, I said so,” King later reflected. He maintained that philosophy from childhood through fleet command. King graduated fourth in his naval academy class of 1901. Intellectually brilliant but already displaying the combative personality that would nearly destroy his career before it began. During his early service in the Asiatic Fleet aboard USS Cincinnati, the young officer developed a reputation that read like a checklist of career-ending behaviors.

 Excessive drinking, bringing women aboard ship, frequenting bars with enlisted men, a forthright and arrogant attitude bordering on insubordination that earned him adverse fitness reports. Bouts of heavy drinking led to King being put under hatches, confined to quarters as punishment. He ran so a foul of executive officer Hugh Rodman that he was nominated for dismissal from the Navy.

 The critical moment came when King faced the Navy’s retention board. Rear Admiral Charles Stockton, president of the Naval War College and chairman of the board, recognized something valuable beneath the disciplinary wreckage. King survived, but the experience marked him permanently. Biographer Thomas Buell noted that King’s memoirs are mute on his own self-appraisal other than when, as an enson, he vowed to shed his softness and become a tough naval officer. This was the turning point.

King didn’t merely reform. He consciously reconstructed his entire personality. Recognizing that his natural temperament was insufficiently hard for greatness, he deliberately molded himself into the commander he believed the Navy needed. He would later drive his men with fervor that would have done credit to Captain Blie, bullying colleagues and heranging subordinates as a deliberate choice, not a character flaw.

 The transformation was complete and permanent. Ernest King had made himself into a human weapon. King’s rise through the Navy demonstrated both his exceptional capabilities and his gift for making enemies in equal measure. His 1899 essay, Some ideas Ideas about organization on board ship, won the Naval Institutees Prize for best essay, earning a gold medal, $500 and launching him from obscurity into professional prominence.

 The essay revealed his contempt for institutional complacency. If there is anything more characteristic of the Navy than its fighting ability, he wrote, it is its inertia to change, or conservatism, or the clinging to things that are old because they are old. He became that rarest of officers, a triple threat qualified in surface warfare, submarines, and aviation.

 He commanded submarine divisions at New London. He directed the dramatic salvage of sunken submarine S51 from 130 ft of water. Then at age 48, he completed flight training at Pensacola, earning his wings as naval aviator number 3,368. He flew an average of 150 hours annually until regulations prohibited solo flying for aviators over 50.

 His commands included the aircraft carrier Lexington, one of the largest warships afloat. There his reputation for both excellence and excess solidified. He ignored complaints that his officers rented a secluded farmhouse where prohibition was openly flouted. He partied alongside his subordinates with equal intensity.

 The damnedest party man in the place, one associate recalled. Ernie was the first guy there on Saturdays. He was a great guy with the ladies and with liquor both. King’s personal conduct became legendary Navy scuttlebutt. He was known as the garter snatcher. At dinner parties, attractive women sat next to him at their own risk, for king’s hands might spend as much time under the table as above.

 His affairs with officers wives were notorious. His own wife, Matty, knew to call the home of Captain Paul Peele if she couldn’t locate her husband at the office. So frequently did King pursue Charlotte Peele when her husband was at sea. King himself expressed the philosophy bluntly. You ought to be very suspicious of anyone who won’t take a drink or doesn’t like women.

 He was, by his own admission, guilty of neither sin. Yet these vices coexisted with relentless professional excellence. When asked why he hoped to become chief of naval operations or commander-in-chief despite making so many enemies, King embodied the paradox that defined his career. He was meaner than hell. The general opinion was that King was as much despised as he was respected.

 This didn’t seem to bother him. He seemed almost to pride himself on the fact that he had earned his rank solely on his merits. as a professional naval officer rather than as a result of the friendship of others. By 1940, King had reached flag rank as a two-star admiral, and he articulated his management philosophy with characteristic bluntness.

 I don’t care how good they are. Unless they get a kick in the ass every 6 weeks, they’ll slack off. This wasn’t mere tough talk. King viewed constant pressure as essential to maintaining readiness. Fear was not a byproduct of his command style. Fear was the tool. King’s approach to leadership was explicitly designed to keep subordinates perpetually off balance.

 On the job, he seemed always to be angry or annoyed. Historian Robert Love observed his temper was volcanic and unpredictable. Any interaction could explode without warning. Officers learned to approach him with the weariness usually reserved for unexloded ordinance. When King was appointed commander-in-chief of the United States Fleet after Pearl Harbor and then chief of naval operations 3 months later, he announced his intentions with deliberate menace.

 The press statement about being an sob was calculated. Roosevelt himself warned his staff what they were getting. King shaves every morning with a blowtorrch, the president observed. His command environment was demanding beyond measure. King regarded exceptional performance as the baseline, not the exception. Those who failed to meet his impossible standards faced his fury without warning or mitigation.

 His philosophy left no room for defensive operations. No fighter ever won his fight by covering up, merely fending off the other fellows blows, he declared. The winner hits and keeps on hitting, even though he has to be able to take some stiff blows in order to keep on hitting. The physical environment reinforced the psychological pressure.

 King lived aboard USS Dauntless, a former luxury yacht converted to headquarters ship morowed at the Washington Navyyard. His staff was assigned aboard and received Cay, a touch that infuriated Senator Harry Truman, who questioned the $252,77 annual cost. King’s daily routine was militarily precise. Wake at 0630, coffee and message traffic, then a deliberate walk from the Washington Monument so people would see him.

 a calculated leadership visibility tactic in his office by 0830. He received a 20inut top secret ultra briefing covering the global situation at 0900 sharp. He was out the door at 1600, remarkably disciplined for a workaholic running a global war. His staff meetings were exercises in controlled terror. King expected officers to know their material perfectly and present it concisely.

Hesitation invited fury. uncertainty guaranteed humiliation. One officer recalled that briefing King felt like standing before a firing squad where you didn’t know if the rifles were loaded. The specific confrontational incidents in King’s career illuminate why officers feared him far more than abstract descriptions of his temperament ever could.

 The Commander Rashfor affair stands as perhaps the most damning example of King’s vindictiveness. Joseph Rashfor commanded station hypo, the cryptonalytic unit that correctly predicted the Japanese attack at Midway. When King’s own Washington intelligence staff predicted a different target, Rashford’s analysis proved correct. The American victory at Midway was largely built on his work.

 Admiral Chester Nimttz recommended Rashfor the Distinguished Service Medal. King denied the award. He deemed Rashfor uncooperative for having contradicted Washington’s analysis. Rashford was recalled from Hawaii and given command of a floating dry dock, a humiliating demotion for the man who had enabled America’s most important naval victory.

Kings Washington staff took credit for the intelligent success they had opposed. Historian John Parall explained the deeper motivation. The nub of the matter is that King wanted intelligence to be centralized in Washington, and Rashfor was seen as an impediment to that broader organizational goal. Admiral Nimttz wasn’t happy with it, but he knew better than to fight with King on the matter.

 Rashfor was only postuously awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal in 1985, nearly a decade after his death. King’s institutional control mattered more than recognition for the officer who had won the battle. The Rear Admiral letter incident became legendary throughout Washington. General Henry Hap Arnold sent an important message to King regarding urgent joint matters.

 Arnold’s stenographer, through inadvertence, addressed the envelope to Rear Admiral King. 24 hours later, the letter came back unopened with an arrow pointing to the word rear. King, a full admiral, refused to open a letter incorrectly addressed. General Dwight Eisenhower recorded this in his diary with withering contempt.

 And that’s the size of man the Navy has at its head. The near physical confrontation with Field Marshall Brookke at the Cairo conference in November 1943 revealed King at his most volcanic. During heated discussions over Pacific versus European strategy, British Field Marshall Sir Alan Brookke accused King of prioritizing the Pacific at the expense of Allied unity.

 General Joseph Fineer Joe Stillwell witnessed what happened next. Brookke got good and nasty and King got good and sore. King about climbed over the table at Brooke. God, he was mad. I wish he had socked him. Brookke himself called the confrontation the mother and father of a row. Two of the most senior commanders in the Allied war effort nearly came to blows over strategic priorities.

 King’s rage was theatrical, calculated, and completely sincere all at once. The Admiral Cunningham standoff demonstrated King’s willingness to humiliate even Allied senior commanders. When British Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham arrived in Washington as the Admiral T’s representative and requested a meeting with his American counterpart, King responded that he was busy and could not see him for 6 days.

 Cunningham, furious, forced a joint chief’s meeting and pointedly apologized for wasting everyone’s time, explaining he had urgent matters King refused to discuss privately. Later, when King rudely brushed aside a request for submarines for Atlantic operations, Cunningham snapped back exactly what he thought of Admiral King’s method of advancing Allied unity and amity. Shaken, King apologized.

 It was one of the few recorded instances of him doing so. Even King recognized when he’d gone too far. But the recognition came only after public confrontation forced his hand. These incidents reveal a consistent pattern. King used institutional power, personal intimidation, and calculated rage to maintain absolute control over his domain.

 Officers feared him because his fury was both genuine and weaponized. You could never predict when it would strike, but you knew it would eventually. King’s relationships with fellow senior commanders revealed that his harshness was distributed equally. He bullied everyone, not just subordinates. Eisenhower’s diary entries constitute the most damning contemporary assessment of King by a peer.

 On February 23, 1942, Eisenhower wrote this. Admiral King, commander-in-chief of United States Fleet and directly subordinate to the president, is an arbitrary, stubborn type with not too much brains and a tendency toward bullying his juniors. But I think he wants to fight, which is vastly encouraging. By March 10th, Eisenhower’s frustration had metastasized into something approaching hatred.

 One thing that might help win this war is to get someone to shoot King. He’s the antithesis of cooperation, a deliberately rude person, which means he’s a mental bully. Yet Eisenhower later revised his assessment after the war. In justice, I should say, that all through the war, whenever I called on him for assistance, he supported me fully and instantly.

 This paradox, being loathed personally while proving professionally indispensable, defined King’s relationships with nearly everyone. General Douglas MacArthur waged sustained bureaucratic warfare with King throughout the Pacific War. MacArthur’s autobiography, Reiniscences, provides a blistering indictment.

 King claimed the Pacific as the rightful domain of the Navy. He seemed to regard the operations there as almost his own private war. He apparently felt that the only way to remove the blot on the Navy disaster at Pearl Harbor was to have the Navy command a great victory over Japan. He resented the prominent part I had in the Pacific War.

 He was vehement in his personal criticism of me and encouraged Navy propaganda to that end. King refused to allow fleet carriers under MacArthur’s command. He insisted on launching the Guadal Canal campaign over MacArthur’s objections. He fought MacArthur’s return to the Philippines, advocating for bypassing them entirely to invade Formosa.

 Their mutual contempt resulted in the Pacific being divided into separate theaters rather than unified command. Two of America’s most important commanders could not function in the same chain of command. George Marshall managed the most functional relationship with King among the Joint Chiefs despite fierce army navy rivalry. Admiral William Leehi noted that Marshall managed to cultivate a good relationship with Admiral Ernest J.

King, the Arassible Chief of Naval Operations despite fierce Army Navy rivalries. Marshall organized weekly working lunches with King before formal joint chiefs meetings, specifically to settle or diffuse disagreements privately. When President Roosevelt considered sending Marshall to command Operation Overlord, King was vehemently opposed.

 “We have the winning combination here in Washington,” he argued. King valued Marshall enough to fight keeping him. The British found King nearly impossible to work with. General Hastings Isme described him as tough as nails and carried himself as stiffly as a poker. He was blunt and standoffish almost to the point of rudeness.

 At the start he was intolerant and suspicious of all things British, especially the Royal Navy. But he was almost equally intolerant and suspicious of the American army. Isme noted King mistrusted Churchill’s advocacy skills and feared the prime minister would weedle President Roosevelt into neglecting the war in the Pacific.

 King’s suspicion of Allied intentions bordered on paranoia. He believed everyone was trying to subordinate American naval power to their own strategic agendas. Yet beneath the volcanic surface existed a hidden dimension that complicated the simple narrative of King as merely brutal. A portrait artist who painted King during the war discovered something unexpected.

The admiral possessed a sense of humor, quite a good one. He was also sensitive in ways that many people thought he wouldn’t be. When the artist mentioned enjoying Booth Tarkington’s work, King or his aid borrowed a volume of Tarkington’s Rumbin galleries from the DC library. The library card was still inside showing Ernest J. King.

 The man was immensely sensitive and human at the same time. The artist reflected. He had a gentle streak about him which might be lost with so many of his colleagues. This hidden dimension appeared in unexpected moments. Admiral William Holsey himself, no shrinking violet, wrote King a handwritten note after serving under him.

 It has been an education and a very pleasant one to serve under you. May I thank you for your patience of me personally and for the professional lessons you have given me. I should be proud to serve under you anytime, anywhere, and under any conditions. King’s strategic mind earned genuine admiration from those who worked closely enough to see past the fury.

 His deputy chief of staff, Richard Edwards, observed that King’s custom was to encourage free and uninhibited debate until he had absorbed all points of view. He would then come forward with a clear-cut scheme, usually so obviously applicable as to cause all concern to wonder why they had not thought of it themselves. King studied Napoleon, Jackson, and Grant as intently as naval figures like Nelson and Mahan.

 He predicted Pearl Harbor’s vulnerability years before the attack, staging a mock air raid from Lexington using flower sacks that demonstrated exactly how Japanese carriers would strike. He was ignored. When his prediction came true on December 7th, 1941, King did not say, “I told you so.” He simply set about rebuilding what had been destroyed.

 The fundamental paradox of King’s character was articulated by biographer Thomas Buell. Paradoxically, King resented anyone who treated him the way he treated others. Yet, there is little evidence that he tried very hard to be more considerate or patient with other people. He held others to standards of discipline.

 He flagrantly violated himself. He demanded sobriety while carrying a flask. He expected moral rectitude while pursuing officers wives. Historians struggle with Ernest King. He was undeniably effective. The Navy’s principal architect of victory in Samuel Elliot Morrison’s assessment. King built the navy from its post pearl harbor nater to 92,000 ships and 4 million men.

His strategic vision drove the Pacific campaign. His personnel selections, Nimmits, Hollyy Spruent were largely brilliant. Yet modern analysis is increasingly critical. The Naval History and Heritage Command’s 2017 assessment states bluntly that King possessed a leadership style and a volcanic temperament that would probably not survive in today’s Navy.

 A 2007 Army Command and General Staff College analysis concluded that King was a flawed leader and would today be called toxic. The comparison with Chester Nimmits is instructive. Nimttz achieved equally impressive results through consensus building and diplomatic leadership. King himself initially dismissed Nimttz as a paper pusher who used politics to get ahead.

 The famous saying captures the distinction. If Admiral Hollyy was the man to win a battle and Admiral Spruent the man to win a campaign, then Admiral Nimttz was the man to win a war. King’s legacy in naval command culture may be his most troubling contribution. His example that harsh fearbased leadership is acceptable if it produces results may have contributed to persistent problems with toxic leadership in the Navy.

 One recent analysis noted that unlike the Army, the Navy has neither an official definition of what constitutes a toxic leader nor any prohibition against toxic leadership behaviors. Ernest King embodied an uncomfortable historical truth. Some of history’s most effective military leaders possess deeply problematic leadership styles.

 His case raises enduring questions about whether crisis conditions justify harsh methods or whether equally impressive results could have been achieved through more humane approaches. When King reached mandatory retirement age during the war, he wrote Roosevelt pointing out this fact. President Roosevelt’s reply was brief.

So what, old Top? The president knew exactly what kind of man he was keeping. King was essential precisely because he was terrible. A human weapon too brutal to use in peace time, but too effective to discard in war. Admiral Lehei captured it best. He was an exceptionally able sea commander.

 He also was explosive, and at times it was just as well that the deliberations of the joint chiefs were a well-kept secret. Who was Ernest King? He was a man who deliberately reconstructed his own personality into something harder, colder, more ruthless than nature had made him. He believed the Navy needed a commander who would drive men beyond their limits, who would centralize all power in his own hands, who would never apologize and never explain.

 He made himself into that commander through sheer force of will. Why did so many officers fear him? Because his rage was real. His standards were impossible, and his power was absolute. Because he could destroy careers with a word, humiliate subordinates in front of their peers, and deny recognition to those who contradicted him.

 Because working for King meant existing in a state of permanent psychological siege, never knowing when the next explosion would come, but also because officers recognized something else. King’s methods produced results. The navy he rebuilt dominated two oceans simultaneously. His strategic vision was sound.

 His administrative reforms endured. And when the nation needed someone to transform a shattered fleet into the instrument of victory, there was only one man brutal enough to do it. When they got in trouble, they sent for the son of a and the son of a  delivered. That is who Ernest King was, and that is why they feared him. The question is whether America should be proud of that answer or troubled by it. History offers no clue.