US Marine Corps - The Black Vault

Planniug for War, 1940–1941 155
of Naval Operations for 14 months. Rear Admiral Ingersoll was Stark’s
“Assistant,” later called Vice Chief. Rear Admiral Walter S. Anderson was
Director of Naval Intelligence, Rear Admiral Herbert F. Leary was Director
of Fleet Training, and Rear Admiral Alexander Sharp was Director of the
Naval Districts Division. Rear Admiral Roland M. Brainard was Director
of Ship Movements and Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes was Director of Communications.
These divisions and War Plans were the principal centers of
authority and power in Naval Operations.
Within the War Plans Division, there was much talent including Turner’s
successor as Director of War Plans, Captain Charles M. Cooke, together
with Captains Oscar Smith, Charles J. Moore, Harry W. Hill, Frank L.
Lowe, Edmund D. Burroughs, and Commanders John L. McCrea, Forrest P.
Sherman, and Walter C. Ansel. In the United States Fleet, Commander
Vincent R. Murphy ( 1918) and later Commander Lynde D. McCormick
( 1915) were the War Plans Officers, while in the Asiatic Fleet, Captain
William R. Purnell acted as such until Commander William G. Lalor
( 1921) was so designated. At lower Fleet echelons, War Plans was generally
an additional duty assignment for the Operations Officer. Commander Heber
H. McLean ( 1921) was ordered to Admiral King’s staff as War Plans Officer
when the Atlantic Fleet was formed up. All of these officers went on to fight
the war which they were engaged in planning against, some in positions of
major responsibility.
When Captain Turner arrived in Washington, the major portion of the
United States Fleet (Admiral James O. Richardson, Commander in Chief)
was in Pearl Harbor. A Two ocean Navy had been authorized by the
Congress on 19 July 1940, but the Atlantic Fleet had not yet been formed
up. The old Atlantic Squadron, about to become the Patrol Force and under
Rear Admiral Hayne Ellis in the Texa~, had been carrying out the increasingly
complex naval tasks of the Atlantic. Many naval officers thought some
of the tasks were highly irregular and others saw a violation of the United
States laws of neutrality. By Presidential order, all were keeping quiet
about it.
The Germans were still basking in the downfall of France, and had ports
on the Atlantic Ocean from which to operate their submarines. Italy was
about to invade Greece. The Havana Conference of June 1940, on the sur-
face at least, had gained the support of all the American republics for a
non-neutral neutrality policy of the United States, as well as for an agree-
ment that territory in the Americas could not be transferred from one non-