Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Clear Purpose, Comprehensive Execution—Raymond Ames Spruance (1886–1969)

2009; Naval War College; Volume: 62; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

0028-1484

Wayne P. Hughes,

Military and Defense Studies

Abstract : As operational commander of hundreds of ships and aircraft, Admiral Raymond A. Spruance had the capacity to distill what he observed--and sometimes felt--into its essence and to focus on the important details by a mental synthesis. He would then charge his staff with comprehensive planning to achieve his purpose. Often the plan would be rent asunder, but it would retain its tyranny of purpose--roughly, the mission--as Spruance's staff and commanders adapted to the circumstances. Although this seems always to have been the case from the battle of Midway to the extended battle of Okinawa, his first test, fought over Midway Island, foreshadows his wartime leadership. In part this is because we see his strategic acumen in the critical year of 1942; in part because we see his grasp of the decisive factors in the battle; in part because we see him as a lucky admiral; and in part, and not least, because the battle is well known and oft-studied. What did Rear Admiral Spruance see and feel as he arrived on the station that Admiral Chester W. Nimitz had selected for his tiny, two-carrier Task Force (TF) 16? How did he deal with the disorganized staff he had inherited from Admiral William F. Halsey? What ran through his mind when Rear Admiral Frank Fletcher joined on 2 June and assumed command to execute the explicit plan Nimitz had detailed for Fletcher and Spruance just six days before? How did he deal with the disparate and inconsistent scouting reports? How did he team with his inherited aviator chief of staff, the difficult and sometimes overwrought Captain Miles Browning? What ran through his mind as he watched the cumbersome effort to dispatch the Enterprise and Hornet air wings in a compact pulse of power, the goal of every carrier commander but unachievable at this early stage of carrier warfare?