NATIONAL WAR COLLEGE
In June 1961 my tour in the Pentagon was up and I was detached from OP-05 and ordered to the National War College at Fort McNair, the Department of Defense’s senior educational service school. I had entered the War College in the summer of 1961 in the class of 1962. My classmates included captains and colonels from the Navy, Marines, Army, and Air Force as well as employees of the State Department, CIA, and NSA, all of which had quotas to be filled by career officers at the executive level. It was a watershed experience in my professional career and served me well in later flag-level dealings at top government assignments. The War College class of 1962 also included several of my Naval Academy classmates who later rose to distinction. Jim Calvert had been one of the earlier nuclear submariners and had surfaced his submarine at the North Pole, a feat that made headlines and gained him membership in the exclusive Explorer’s Club. Calvert, along with Bill Anderson, another early nuclear submariner classmate, had been selected for captain two years early. Another classmate attending NWC with me was Cdr. Elmo Zumwalt, the nineteenth CNO. Captain Calvert was voted the outstanding member of the War College in our class of 1962.
Meanwhile, back in the Pentagon, two names had been submitted to the Division of Naval Reactors as prospective commanding officers for the Enterprise and one was mine. Rickover, in his authority under the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), had pointed out to CNO Admiral Anderson that the CNO had the authority to order an officer to command of a nuclear-powered ship but the law gave Rickover the responsibility of determining whether or not an officer was qualified to actually operate such a vessel. So he, Rickover, would make that determination only if and when the officer completed Rickover’s training. Rickover alone had the authority to select officers for nuclear training, based upon his evaluation of their engineering ability. He still insisted that the process would be for the CNO to nominate qualified aviation line captains until Rickover found one he considered also qualified by his own technical standards. Adm. George Anderson was furious, but it did him little good. The law was on Rickover’s side, and so was Congress. After all, Congress had written into the law just what Rickover considered necessary to ensure that adequate nuclear safeguards for the Naval Reactor Program would remain in place through the selection of those, and only those, whom Rickover considered smart enough and sufficiently dedicated.
SEAPLANE TENDER
After graduating from the War College and having been promoted to captain, I was ordered to command of the USS Salisbury Sound, a fourteen-thousand-ton seaplane tender operating out of Okinawa as flagship of the Taiwan Patrol Force. The Salisbury Sound’s mission was to support a squadron of sea-based patrol planes, Martin P5M Mariners. These were large flying boats capable of long-range ocean reconnaissance. The operating concept was for the seaplane tender to move forward to a remote location such as the Ryukyus and set up a buoyed seadrome in a sheltered atoll or bay, complete with runway lights and aircraft mooring buoys for the seaplanes. The planes would be fully serviced with the seaplane tender’s aircraft rearming boats and refueling craft. Then, with its personnel boats, the tender would pick up the flight crews, bring them back to the tender, and provide messing in a wardroom and berthing in comfortable staterooms, and deliver freshly rested and fed crews to fully fueled and rearmed patrol planes for their next day’s missions. The Salisbury Sound was fully prepared to provide the complete range of operations support, even nuclear depth-charge capability in its magazine, to be fully ready for action, even in the event of the balloon going up in a nuclear war with the USSR.
The Salisbury Sound, known affectionately to her crew as the Sally Maru, was one of the Currituck class of seaplane tenders. The ship was typical of a naval auxiliary, displacing fourteen thousand tons with a crew of about 260, not counting the additional people, such as pilots, crews, maintenance men, and an embarked admiral and his staff, who would be on board when the ship was actually tending seaplanes. These vessels had considerable capabilities. From amidships forward, the class had the superstructure of a fleet tender, with staterooms, flag spaces, and the wardroom mess above the main deck. Above the bridge was a Mark 37 director to control two single, enclosed, 5-inch dual-purpose gun mounts installed on the foredeck. Below the navigation bridge level were the flag bridge and the flag plotting room for the embarked admiral and his staff. The after half of the ship was taken up by a commodious aircraft hangar and a large, unobstructed aircraft parking deck served by two massive cranes, one on each side, capable of lifting on board the P5M seaplane.
The Salisbury Sound was homeported in Alameda, California, and deployed six months out of an eighteen-month cycle to White Beach on the Japanese island of Okinawa to serve as flagship for the commander, Taiwan Patrol Force. The staff was homeported at White Beach, a very pleasant piece of real estate located on the shores of Buckner Bay. The installations were minimal but included quarters for the staff dependents, bachelor’s quarters, a pleasant officer’s club, a chief petty officer’s club, and an enlisted recreation center. The beach itself was a spectacular strip of sparkling white sand on Buckner Bay, protected by extensive coral reefs. A special pier at White Beach had been constructed for mooring the flagship of the commander, Patrol Force, and a rock breakwater had been built to protect the pier.
When the tender was deployed to Okinawa as the flagship, it went to sea every six weeks for a cruise to visit such exotic ports on the Pacific Rim as Sasebo, Japan; Kaoshung, Taiwan; Hong Kong, and Singapore. Although these visits were officially to show the flag and remind the nations in the Pacific that the United States had a commitment for their defense, they were also opportunities for the crew to visit foreign ports.
The commander of the Taiwan Patrol Force to whom I reported upon taking command of the Salisbury Sound, was a rear admiral, Naval Academy class of 1937, who had been a fighter squadron commander in the Pacific, flying off carriers against the Japanese in World War II. He was an ace and considered a topnotch naval officer. On the afternoon of the day I had assumed command, “Smoke,” as he was known, called me down to his cabin. He was not a glad-hander; to the contrary, he was a man of few words, most of them carrying substantial weight. As I stood in front of his desk — he had not invited me to sit down — he said, “Holloway, I know that you have been sent out here to Salisbury Sound as your deep-draft command prior to assignment to command an aircraft carrier. As such, there are lots of things you will want to do with this ship. But I want to tell you right now that this tender is primarily my flagship as commander, Taiwan Patrol Force. It is not here for you to play with. Consequently, when you prepare the ship’s schedule, please keep this guidance in mind. I do not wish to be inconvenienced or have my staff’s job made more difficult by your scheduling the ship to be underway any more than the minimum required to get your sea legs and to keep the crew qualified.” That was very clear guidance.
In the fall of 1962, a major typhoon, with winds of up to sixty knots, was forecast to pass within one hundred miles of Okinawa. I did not want to ride out sixty-knot winds tied up to a pier. The ship would take a lot of hull banging and could not maneuver to keep its bow into the wind to avoid damage to antennas and light topside equipment. The admiral suggested the ship remain at the pier and simply ride it out, using anchor chain as supplementary spring lines fore and aft. But I had been through a typhoon on the destroyer Bennion twenty years earlier and had an appreciation for the problems encountered with high winds even if only approaching typhoon velocities. Consequently, I replied that I believed it would be a dereliction of duty to fail to get the ship underway. I suggesting anchoring in Buckner Bay, putting out two anchors ninety degrees apart with lots of chain and riding to this arrangement with the ship manned as for underway at sea, with the engines turning over and a senior officer on the bridge at all times. The ship would be maneuvered to minimize the strain on the two anchor chains. The admiral snorted and said okay, but he knew I was right to play it safe. He ordered his staff to come on board at eight o’clock in the morning. We spent two nights at anchor before the blow subsided and the ship returned to its berth at White Beach. That experience made it clear to me that if the winds exceeded sixty knots, I would not want to be in Buckner Bay either at the pier or anchored out. I would only feel safe with plenty of sea room to avoid the high-wind areas of the typhoon and stay within its “safe” quadrant.