337. Nimitz

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Random

It is probably a good indication of how bored I am that I was kind of excited when our street sign started to fall off and I needed to repair it. It is, of course, an awkward job. The screw that has failed is at the full extension point of our extension ladder. So working on this means balancing a little higher than I’m entirely comfortable with. Thus, I am not repairing the stripped out screw hole the way I would if it were more accessible. I just bought a replacement screw -- the old one was so rusty it is obvious it hasn’t been in contact with the wood for decades. And I bought some plastic screw inserts that you screw in to fill the hole before screwing the new screw into the plastic. This should be reasonably easy to do at the top of our ladder. I even have my drill/driver charging at home to make this even easier. I'm hoping this paragraph will also serve as a “not-suicide” note in the event things go south.

We are now in the June lull of event greening season (I'm still way behind with my publishing) so I had breakfast at the Pork Store and learned that one of my favorite waitresses is moving to Dallas in July. At this point I can’t blame anyone for leaving SF, but it is unfortunate.


Someone on the Chronicle wrote something this week pointing out that the city -- and this means both the politicians and the people -- are willing to do anything to address the housing shortage so long as it doesn’t mean building new housing. That just about sums it up. And this goes nicely with our eagerness to solve the global warming problem so long as it doesn’t mean any change in lifestyle. The obesity situation also suggests itself here.


There’s also a political/sociological aspect to this. To change the world you have to have an unreasonable expectation that change is possible. I don’t believe people are currently willing to make things better. Perhaps it is better to be young and naive (or ignorant) than to see how bad the situation really is. 


If I knew more about Berthier, I would not be surprised to learn that at the beginning, before Napoleon first crossed the Alps into Italy, Berthier was pessimistic based on the very real difficulties of conducting a war on the far side of the Alps while the Royal Navy controlled the Med. I suspect Berthier both understood the difficulties and had reasonable ideas for how to overcome them. But you need a Napoleon who thinks unreasonable things are possible before anyone will attempt the thing. And yes, I’ve been thinking about the Waterloo campaign again and I’m even more convinced that Napoleon could have pulled it off if his army had moved the way it always had when Berthier was his Chief of Staff. Hypotheticals in history are never a sure thing, but this one is relatively easy when you consider how close run the real history was. 

Biography of Nimitz

This is a book I read a long time ago and own a copy of. I’ve been thinking that it was a great introduction to the USN both leading up to and during the Pacific War. Like a one book guide to the USN in the Pacific War. But, as I said, it had been a long time since I’d read it, so I thought I should give it another read to confirm this. There’s a lot I had remembered but some details I had forgotten. I just ran into one which inspired me to write this.

P164 “In June 1936 Chet [Chester Nimitz’s only son] was graduated from the Naval Academy and, after a period of leave, went to sea in the cruiser Indianapolis...” There’s nothing unusual about this except that the Indianapolis was Spruance’s flagship for much of the time he commanded 5th Fleet and the ship was sunk in particularly unfortunate circumstances at the very end of the war.

I had remembered that it was Nimitz who built the submarine base at Pearl Harbor, and that he had been an advocate of the circular sailing formation that became standard during the war. I had forgotten that he had the idea for underway oil replenishment and was serving as an officer on the first oiler to make it work while sending USN destroyers to Britain after the USA entered the Great War. It would be hard to exaggerate the importance of both the circular formation and underway replenishment in the conduct of the Pacific War.

P167 And here’s my favorite Nimitz story -- and this one I have remembered, though I thought it was in San Diego, not Long Beach. Doesn’t matter.

I mis-remembered the story about who transported Roosevelt on a destroyer back in the 20s? It was Halsey, not Nimitz. And it was apparently someone other than Spruance who came up with the “platoon” system for the Big Blue Fleet. And speaking of both of these matters, it occurs to me that Halsey is a perfect example of the Peter Principle. Right up until he took command of 3rd Fleet, everything went perfectly for him and the USN. He just was not up to that last step. If they had only given him 7th Fleet instead, and Kinkaid 3rd Fleet. Only he would not have been happy, though maybe MacArthur could have made him see reason. That’s an odd thing to say.