I want to put this one to bed, once and for all.
Sir Winston Churchill sent a special investigator to look into the Battle of Cape Spartivento Cape^1; specifically the British commanding officer on the British side of that mishandled affair.
^1 O'Hara, Vincent P.: Struggle for the Middle Sea, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 2009 (pp72) and
^1 Heathcote, Tony (2002). The British Admirals of the Fleet 1734 – 1995. Pen & Sword Ltd (pp23)
The man sent to look over Somerville's shoulder was Admiral of the fleet William Henry Dudley Boyle, 12th Earl of Cork, 12th Earl of Orrery. He was the RN admiral who may have mismanaged the British naval side of things at Narvik. (His idea, not successfully carried out. Also the author of a lunatic operation called
Operation Catherine; so not the first guy, I would send out to second guess anybody. McP.). Despite the investigation; Somerville's fellow admirals (especially Lancelot Holland commanding the cruiser screen), supported their commander's decision to break off, when the Italians let go of them. Note that Commando Supremo promptly SACKED Admiral Campioni on the Italian side, who faithfully followed their mandated orders to him to not risk decisive battle if he thought the odds were too even?
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Now let us take a look at the victor of Santa Cruz?
Part TWO of that little exercise.
Fletcher was sent to the Aleutians.
Note that it was TURNER who goofed up Tulagi and subsequently the Santa Cruz operation, part of WATCHTOWER, that would have secured that forward air base?
Let me quote John Lundstrom about that "genius" John Towers (INTENSE SARCASM), who was instrumental in getting one of the USN's two best tactical admirals of the time sent to the Aleutians, because he was "a coward" about his, Tower's, view of OPERATION GALVANIC, led by the other great op-art tactician, Raymond Spruance and pad with John Lundstrom's own observations.,. again from the Lundstrom article:
I note with SARCASM, that Fletcher would never have lost WASP the way Ghormley lost her, by cutting circles in a stationary patrol sector.
So what happened to Fletcher and why?
The Americans, it is joked, "send people to the Aleutians to count penguins" (There are no penguins in the Aleutians, McP.), when they have FUBARED. As a matter of historical record, Fletcher was concussed and badly injured when USS Saratoga was torpedoed in one of those "circle jerk" station keeping exercises Ghormley and Turner mandated during WATCHTOWER. He was sent to Pearl Harbor for treatment and then Admiral Ernest King, who was screwing up his end of the Battle of the North Atlantic,
needed someone in a hurry to straighten out the absolute naval fluster cluck that was the 13th Naval District and who could somehow get along with the idiots on the army FUBAR side of things in Alaska. IT was as much a matter of bad timing, as well as the conniving of Towers, Turner, and a host of other PACFLT eff you alibi Als, who had to explain WATCHTOWER to Nimitz and to King and thence to Knox and FDR, that results in Fletcher's new posting as naval area commander. Now to King's credit, he did not hang Fletcher out to dry, when he did this, as in making Fletcher the scapegoat for the cumulative poor performance the USN showed in the early Solomon Islands campaign, but you know how popular historians love to finger point?
King criticized Fletcher repeatedly and savagely for caution at Wake Island, Coral Sea, Midway, and Santa Cruz. King was not there. He listened to people(Pye, Tower, Ghormley, especially TURNER), who were not qualified to lead a division of opey dopes in a rowboat drill. Fletcher, from what we know now, was a remarkably aggressive and capable admiral, who picked and chose his spots with amazing skill, who fought BLIND with inadequate information, under vacillating and incompetent superiors during WATCHTOWER. He was wounded, recovered and assigned to a command in absolute crisis that needed an able administrator and a STRONG capable leader to straighten it out. From that record, historians (like Samual Eliot Morrison) created the myth of the "timid admiral".
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If there might have been a "cautious" admiral who needed career counseling, it was Somerville. That appears to be his record. Churchill, a man of intense passion and belief, was prepared to sack him. HE, Churchill, CHOSE the most aggressive RN admiral he knew, to research the case on Somerville. If not for colleagues like Lancelot Holland (A most aggressive man, McP.), Somerville WOULD have been court-martialed or sacked after Spartivento. The representation of the man, based on Mers al Kabir and what the Italians thought of his actions after what they call the Battle of Teucreda, shows me enough to formulate, that such an opinion of his activity would be justified in the RN admiralty at that time. I am reading closely Somerville's actions off Sri Lanka to see HOW he used his aircraft carriers and what information he had available to him in his aircraft carrier battle with Nagumo's First Mobile Fleet. I have Andrew Boyd, of course, and I am crosschecking that account with the USNWC op-art analysis. Up to now, I was and am still prepared to assert that Somerville's actions in the confusion prevalent at sea and ashore at Trincomalee, might explain his caution and "mixed" results. The Battle of Makassar Strait, in this fiction, certainly does not justify his continued tenure in command or possible exculpation after this "fictional" outcome no matter how successful, however. (In an RTL example, some were calling for ADM Halsey's head on a pike after his own monumental screwup and Kincaid's 7th Fleet subsequent "destruction" of the Combined Fleet SAGs at Leyte Gulf.). Such a blatant mishandling of aircraft carriers and of their gunship shield would make me wonder if he was the man we know of the historical record. I mean he, Somerville, did mishandle his aircraft carrier at Spartivento, but
he seemed to have learned subsequently how to dodge and weave and know the importance of maneuver room for such ships. (The Indian Ocean Raid: Bay of Bengal and Trincomalee ...)
No more on this sidebar topic.
