Faith of My Fathers (7 page)

As he raced toward the Northern Force, Halsey finally formed Task Force 34, and ordered the battleships to steam ahead of the carriers. Third Fleet aircraft began attacking the Japanese carriers at eight o'clock on the morning of the 25th, and continued until evening.

When the second strike of the day was under way, Halsey received an urgent message from Kinkaid informing him that the Seventh Fleet's small carriers were under attack off Samar Island by a superior enemy force and pleading for assistance from Halsey's carriers. Halsey ignored the message and continued north. He received several successive messages from Kinkaid, the last warning that Kinkaid's battleships were running out of ammunition. At nine-thirty, Halsey signaled back, informing Kinkaid that my grandfather's task group was on the way.

At ten o'clock, Halsey received a message from Admiral Nimitz:
WHERE IS, REPEAT, WHERE IS TASK FORCE THIRTY FOUR
?
THE WORLD WONDERS
. The message infuriated Halsey, who interpreted the sentence “The world wonders” as an insulting rebuke. He threw his cap to the deck after reading it.

Clearly, Nimitz was alarmed about the Seventh Fleet's precarious situation and wanted Halsey's battleships to defend the battered escort carrier units off Samar Island and prevent the enemy from entering Leyte Gulf. The success of the invasion hung in the balance. But the message to Halsey had been a mistake. The last three words had been included as padding to confuse enemy decoders. The signal clerk who received the message before it was handed to Halsey should have deleted them. The irate Halsey considered his response for an hour before signaling Nimitz,
I HAVE SENT MCCAIN
.

My grandfather was already on the way before Halsey recalled him to the battle. He had intercepted Kinkaid's messages to Halsey and had made the decision to render whatever assistance he could to the outgunned escort carriers without waiting for orders from the fleet commander. He turned his task group around and raced downwind at a speed of thirty knots toward the battle.

At the time, he had two squadrons of dive-bombers in the air that had not returned from scouting patrols. Carriers have to turn into the wind before aircraft can land on them. In order not to slow down the entire task group while the returning scouts landed, he ordered his carriers to race ahead of the rest of the task group at a top speed of thirty-three knots. When six or more of their planes returned they approached upwind to begin their landing patterns. The carriers whipped around into the wind and took them aboard. Once the planes landed, the carriers turned sharply downwind again and resumed their thirty-three knots until the next planes returned, and the maneuver was repeated. Thus, the carriers were able to take on their planes without impeding the forward movement of the entire task group, which maintained an overall speed of thirty knots. It was a very difficult maneuver that had never been attempted before, nor since to the best of my knowledge. It required split-second timing on the part of the carrier skippers and the returning pilots, and steel nerves on the part of the commander who ordered its execution.

Halsey had also dispatched his battleships and one of his carrier groups to join the fight. But Halsey's response had come too late to inflict much additional damage on the main Japanese force.

My grandfather was now steaming toward the battle, but he was still nearly 350 miles to the east. He went to his cabin for a few minutes to consider the situation and decide what to do. A short time later, at ten-thirty, he emerged from his cabin, gave the order for his carriers to “turn into the wind,” and launched his aircraft. He knew that at such a distance from their targets, they would burn all their fuel reaching the battle and would have to land on other carriers or in the Philippines if they didn't run out of fuel while striking the enemy force. It was a daring move, and one of the longest-range carrier strikes of the Pacific war.

By the time Task Force 34 and the accompanying carriers arrived off Samar Island, Kurita had broken off his attack and turned north, fearing that he faced a much larger fleet than the greatly outnumbered Taffy Three. At the time of his withdrawal, his ships were within forty miles of the invasion force. He initially intended to reassemble his disorganized force and resume the attack on Leyte Gulf. But the Japanese commander suddenly lost his nerve and made for the San Bernardino Strait. The commander of Taffy Three, Vice Admiral Clifton Sprague, who had commanded his ships with courage and resourcefulness during the fierce attack, credited the battle's abrupt end to divine intervention.

John Thach credited Kurita's unexpected retreat to intelligence the Japanese commander had received that warned him of the approaching strike from my grandfather's planes. Thach had read an interview Kurita had given after the war. The old admiral explained his decision to withdraw from the battle by recalling information he had received of a large air strike coming from an unknown location. Kurita's chief of staff gave the same explanation for the force's withdrawal.

According to Thach, until Kurita received the intelligence that precipitated his decision to run, he “thought the whole task force was up there, and he didn't know about McCain. As a matter of fact, neither did Halsey and Mitscher know what McCain was doing at the time.”

Kurita's forces escaped through the strait, despite being harried by my grandfather's planes. In several accounts of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, historians praised my grandfather for understanding the predicament confronting Kinkaid's carriers and the stakes at risk in the battle better than had the other commanders of Task Force 38. They also judged him a much better tactician than his old friend and commander, Halsey.

Halsey had glimpsed the prospect of a moment of glory and hurried recklessly toward it. He had not fought at the battles of Midway and the Coral Sea, and he was hell-bent to seize this opportunity to destroy the last of the enemy's once mighty carrier force. In fact, he managed to sink four carriers and one destroyer. But his disregard for the Seventh Fleet's situation had jeopardized the entire invasion and had allowed the main Japanese battleship force to escape.

My grandfather, grasping the size of the threat that Halsey had so badly underestimated, had risked his planes in a desperate attempt to fill the gap left by Halsey's run for glory.

A few days after the Battle of Leyte Gulf, my grandfather relieved Admiral Mitscher and assumed command of the entire Task Force 38. He directed its operations until the Philippine Islands were retaken, and then, after a four-month interval, until the war's end. In that command he directed assaults against Japanese strongholds in Indochina, Formosa, China, and the Japanese home islands. By the war's end, his ships were “steaming boldly within sight of the Japanese mainland.”

At his death, he was a leading figure in naval aviation, credited with devising some of the most successful innovations in the use of attack carriers. “Give me enough fast carriers,” he said, “and let me run them, and you can have your atom bomb.”

Near the end of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Japanese introduced their last desperate offensive measure to prevent the inexorable Allied advance to the Japanese homeland—the kamikaze attack. Throughout the rest of the Philippines campaign, kamikaze assaults wreaked horrible damage on the Third and Seventh Fleets.

In December, my grandfather and John Thach devised an innovation to keep Japanese planes based on Luzon from attacking the invasion convoy or joining the terrifying suicide missions. He called it the “Big Blue Blanket.” He had his planes form an umbrella that flew over Luzon's airfields twenty-four hours a day, destroying over two hundred Japanese planes in a few days. In a series of Japanese raids on ships participating in the invasion of Mindoro, not one plane had flown from Luzon. My grandfather's pilots had kept them all grounded.

He increased the striking power of his carriers by reducing the number of dive-bombers by half and doubling the number of fighters, fitting them with bombs so that they could serve, as circumstances warranted, as both fighter and bomber.

He also concentrated his antiaircraft fire by reducing his four task groups to three. He dispatched “picket” destroyers to patrol waters sixty miles from the flanks of his force to warn him of an approaching strike. He assigned his pickets their own patrol aircraft. When his planes returned from a strike they were ordered to circle designated pickets so that the patrol aircraft could identify them as friendly and pick out any kamikazes that had attempted to slip past the force's defenses in company with the returning planes.

In a strike on Saigon, his pilots attacked four Japanese convoys and destroyed or damaged sixty-nine enemy ships in a single day, a record that endures to this day. During a three-month period, in preparation for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, my grandfather's task force sank or damaged 101 cruisers, destroyers, and destroyer escorts and 298 merchant ships. During that same period they destroyed or damaged 2,962 enemy planes. Japanese ships were no longer safe even in the waters off the Japanese mainland. Throughout this last campaign, which ended when atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, my grandfather lost only one destroyer.

He was awarded his second Distinguished Service Medal for his “gallant command” of fast carriers from October 1944 through January 1945. The citation praised his “indomitable courage” as he “led his units aggressively and with brilliant tactical control in extremely hazardous attacks.” He received a third DSM, posthumously, for his service in the last three months of the war, when he “hurled the might of his aircraft against the remnants of the once vaunted Japanese Navy to destroy or cripple every remaining major hostile ship by July 28.”

Under my grandfather's command, TF 38 was considered the most powerful naval task force ever assembled for combat. Following his death, Secretary Forrestal stated: “His conception of the aggressive use of fast carriers as the principle instrument for bringing about the quick reduction of Japanese defensive capabilities was one of the basic forces in the evolution of naval strategy in the Pacific War.”

An officer who served with him said it more succinctly: “When there isn't anything to be done, he's the kind of fellow who does it.”

The night after my grandfather died, Paul Shubert, a radio network commentator, talked about the controversial wartime decision allowing men of advanced years like Halsey and my grandfather to hold strenuous combat commands, while younger, fitter officers remained in subordinate roles. Shubert took no side in the dispute, but he spoke of my grandfather, of his age and “frail physique.” Despite his condition, my grandfather “had his will,” Shubert allowed. Whether younger officers could have accomplished what he had or not, “John Sidney McCain did what his country called on him to do—one of those intrepid seafarers who refused to accept the traditional devotion to the past…who learned to fly when he was past fifty, and went on to high rank in the Navy skies—one of the world's greatest carrier task force commanders, an outstanding example of American manhood at sea.”

Eight years after my grandfather's death, I watched Admiral Halsey deliver the main address at the commissioning of the Navy's newest destroyer, the USS
John S. McCain,
in Bath, Maine. Halsey was an old man then. I remember he wore thick glasses and appeared very frail as he stood to make his remarks. As he began to talk about his friend of so many years, his eyes welled up with tears, and he began to sob. Barely a half minute had passed before he announced he was unable to talk anymore, and sat down.

Plainly, Halsey deeply mourned my grandfather's loss. But the audience sensed that the old admiral was overcome that day by more than sadness at his friend's passing. Many years had passed since my grandfather's death, and surely Halsey had gotten over his grief by then. I suspect that the commissioning had prompted a great tide of memories that overwhelmed the admiral. As old men do, Halsey could not think of a departed friend without evoking the memory of all they had gone through together. For Halsey, the memory of my grandfather's friendship conjured up all the grim trials and awful strain of combat, the losses they had endured, and the triumphs they had celebrated together as leading figures in a great war that had changed the world forever. The recollection had stunned the old man and left him mute.

I met Halsey that evening, at a reception after the ceremony. He asked me, “Do you drink, boy?”

I was seventeen years old, and had certainly experienced my share of teenage drinking by then. But my mother was standing next to me when the admiral made his inquiry, and I could do nothing but nervously stammer, “Well, no, I don't.”

Halsey looked at me for a long moment before remarking, “Well, your grandfather drank bourbon and water.” Then he told a waiter, “Bring the boy a bourbon and water.”

I had a bourbon and water, and with his old commander watching, silently toasted the memory of my grandfather.

         
CHAPTER
4
         

An Exclusive Tradition

In 1936, while commanding the naval air station in Panama, my grandfather was introduced to me, his first grandson and namesake. My father was stationed in Panama at the same time, serving aboard a submarine as executive officer. He had brought his young, pregnant wife with him. I was born in the Canal Zone at the Coco Solo air base hospital shortly after my grandfather arrived there. My father was transferred to New London, Connecticut, less than three months later, so I have no memory of our time in Panama.

My mother has fond memories of the place despite the rough living conditions that junior officers and their families suffered in prewar Panama. Among those memories is an occasion when my parents left me in my grandfather's care while they attended a dinner party. My mother, mindful of my father's concerns about coddling infants, instructed my grandfather to put me to bed in my crib, and not to mind any protest I might make. When they returned they found me sleeping comfortably with my grandfather in his bed. Admonished by my mother for pampering me, he gamely insisted that the privilege was only fitting. “Dammit, Roberta, that boy has the stamp of nobility on his brow.” Had he lived longer, he might have puzzled over my adolescent misbehavior, lamenting the decline of his once noble grandson.

My parents were married in 1933 at Caesar's Bar in Tijuana, Mexico. They had eloped. My mother's parents, Archibald and Myrtle Wright, objected to the match. For months prior to their elopement, my grandmother had forbidden my father to call on my mother, believing him to be associated with a class of men—sailors—whose lifestyles were often an affront to decent people and whose wandering ways denied their wives the comforts of home and family.

My mother, Roberta Wright McCain, and her identical twin, Rowena, were the daughters of a successful oil wildcatter who had moved the family from Oklahoma to Los Angeles. Wealthy and a loving father, Archie Wright retired at the age of forty to devote his life to the raising of his children. The Wrights were very attentive parents. They provided their children a happy and comfortable childhood, but they took care not to spoil them. And in their care, my mother grew to be an extroverted and irrepressible woman.

My parents met when my father, a young ensign, served on the battleship USS
Oklahoma,
which was homeported at the time in Long Beach, California. Ensign Stewart McAvee, the brother of one of my Aunt Rowena's boyfriends and an Academy classmate of my father's, also served on the
Oklahoma.
At his brother's urging, he had called on Rowena, and soon became a frequent visitor at the Wright home.

Eventually, Ensign McAvee developed a crush on my mother. He took her out on several occasions and often invited her to visit the
Oklahoma.
On one of those visits she met my father, who was dressed in his bathrobe when McAvee introduced them. My mother only remembers thinking how young my father looked, and small, with cheeks, she said, like two small apples. My father, however, was infatuated at once.

Until my parents' courtship, my mother had, in her words, “never teamed up with any man.” She was, she confesses, immature and unsophisticated, possessing no serious aspirations, but cheerfully open to life's varied experiences. Her mother frequently complained to her, “If a Japanese gardener crossed the street and asked you to go to Chinatown, you would go.” To which my mother always responded, “Why, sure I would.” When she met my father, she was a beautiful nineteen-year-old student at the University of Southern California. But unlike her twin sister, she had never fallen in love nor shown more than a casual interest in dating.

As my mother describes it, she would typically go out in large groups where the boys always outnumbered the girls. When a young man asked her for a date, she would reply by inquiring what he had in mind. If he proposed to escort her to the Friday-night dance at the Biltmore Hotel, or the Saturday-afternoon tea dance at the Ambassador Hotel, or the Saturday-evening dance at the Roosevelt Hotel, she consented, believing any other assignation to be a poor use of her time. But even obliging dates were rewarded with nothing more than my mother's charming company and had to content themselves with membership in her wide circle of frustrated suitors.

A short time after being introduced to my mother, my father appeared on her doorstep and asked her to accompany him the following Saturday to the Roosevelt Hotel. She agreed, assuming he was acting on behalf of Ensign McAvee. But McAvee would not be among the young naval officers consorting with my mother's crowd that evening. Instead, my mother found herself having “more fun than I had ever had in my life” with the diminutive, youthful Jack McCain.

Their romance progressed for over a year, despite my grandmother's growing anxiety and the aggrieved McAvee's angry reproaches. When my grandmother finally ordered an end to the relationship and banished my father from the Wright home, my mother prevailed on former suitors to call on her and take her surreptitiously to meet my father.

Until confronted with maternal opposition, my mother “had never planned on marrying anyone.” By her own admission, she was a willful, rebellious girl. Her attraction to my father was only strengthened by her mother's disapproval, and when my father proposed marriage she consented. They eloped on a weekend when my grandmother was in San Francisco. Just before they departed for Tijuana, my mother informed her softhearted father of her intention. Despite his misgivings, he did not stand in her way.

My father had asked one of his shipmates to explain to the executive officer on the
Oklahoma
that he had gone off to get married, but the friend had thought my father was joking. That Saturday, during the ship's inspection, the captain asked, “Where's McCain?” My father's friend responded, “He said he was going to get married or something.” When my father returned to the
Oklahoma
that Sunday, having dropped his new bride at home, he was confined to the ship for ten days with a stern censure from the captain for failing to ask leave to get married.

The bond between my mother and her parents was a strong one, and my grandparents' alarm at losing their daughter to the itinerant life of a professional sailor was understandable. It took several years for them to grow accustomed to the idea. But, in due course, they accepted the marriage and shared with my father the deep affection that distinguished their family.

Captain John S. McCain, Sr., thought the match to be an excellent one from the start. He was as charmed and amused by his new daughter-in-law as she was by him. Six months after my parents married, my father was suspected by the ship's physician of having contracted tuberculosis, and was admitted to a Navy hospital because he had suddenly lost a great deal of weight. When the doctors there asked if my father could explain his dramatic weight loss, he attributed it to his recent marriage.

Sometime later, my grandfather was in Washington, where he went to Navy Records and asked to see his son's latest fitness report. There he read of my father's condition and his response to the doctor's inquiries: “My wife doesn't know how to cook, and my meals are very irregular.” Much amused, my grandfather kept a copy of the report, and delighted in showing his friends how his “son couldn't wait to get married, and within six months the girl had nearly killed him.”

Stationed in San Diego at the time of my parents' elopement, my grandfather had traveled to Tijuana with them to attend the ceremony and stand at his son's side. Theirs was also an exceptionally close relationship.

The relationship of a sailor and his children is, in large part, a metaphysical one. We see much less of our fathers than do other children. Our fathers are often at sea, in peace and war. Our mothers run our households, pay the bills, and manage most of our upbringing. For long stretches of time they are required to be both mother and father. They move us from base to base. They see to our religious, educational, and emotional needs. They arbitrate our quarrels, discipline us, and keep us safe. It is no surprise then that the personalities of children who have grown up in the Navy often resemble those of their mothers more than those of their fathers.

But our fathers, perhaps because of and not in spite of their long absences, can be a huge presence in our lives. You are taught to consider their absence not as a deprivation, but as an honor. By your father's calling, you are born into an exclusive, noble tradition. Its standards require your father to dutifully serve a cause greater than his self-interest, and everyone around you, your mother, other relatives, and the whole Navy world, drafts you to the cause as well. Your father's life is marked by brave and uncomplaining sacrifice. You are asked only to bear the inconveniences caused by his absence with a little of the same stoic acceptance. When your father is away, the tradition remains, and embellishes a paternal image that is powerfully attractive to a small boy, even long after the boy becomes a man.

This is the life to which my older sister, Sandy, my younger brother, Joe, and I were born. It was the life my father was born to as well. And it was the life that adopted my mother, substituting its care for that of a loving and protective family.