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King was irritated by what he considered the President's dilettante interest in the Navy, and refused to yield to Roosevelt's blandishments. With retirement age in mind, he wrote F.D.R. in 1942: "I should bring to your notice the fact that the record shows that I shall attain the age of 64 years on November 23rd." The scrawled notation he got back shivered his steely timbers: "So what, old top? I may even send you a birthday present!—F.D.R."
A year later, crossing the Atlantic in the battleship Iowa on the way to Teheran, King and the President were nearly blown up when a destroyer accidentally loosed a live torpedo. "King wished to relieve the commanding officer of the destroyer at once," writes King, "but, to his great amazement, the President told him to forget it. Consequently, no steps were taken." In King's report of Roosevelt's death, there is no word of sorrow or compassion. He complains: "There was such a press of mourners that the Joint Chiefs could not even see the grave."
For Navy buffs, refighting old battles, there are a few glimpses into King's once-secret mental files:
¶ King thought that Admiral Spruance was absolutely right in refusing to be drawn away from Saipan in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, even if (though King does not say this) the decision reduced the scope of his victory.
¶ King held Admirals Halsey and Kinkaid both at fault in the Battle for Leyte Gulf—Halsey for letting himself be drawn off base by a Japanese decoy force, Kinkaid for not making dawn air searches.
Ernie King was human, after all. He could not bring himself to take blame for things that went wrong (like the wholesale sinking of allied ships off the East Coast early in 1942). He was a typical tourist, delighting in side trips to the antiquities of Egypt and Jerusalem, and flights over Bagdad and Damascus, even in the darkest days of war. And he had the G.I.'s souvenir-hunting spirit: at Teheran, he tried to "liberate" one of Stalin's desk-pad doodles, and was miffed when a Briton beat him to it.
But Fleet Admiral King, like its subject, is heavy weather nearly all the way.
*Today, though more than one-third of its 4,000 ships are in mothballs and in reserve, the U.S. Navy still ranks first. According to the new edition of Jane's Fighting Ships, it is "the largest peacetime fleet ever maintained by any country and is as large as all the other navies of the world put together."