Richmond K. Turner

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Richmond Kelly Turner
May 27, 1885 – February 12, 1961

Nickname "Terrible" Turner
Place of birth Portland, Oregon
Place of death Monterey, California
Allegiance United States of America
Service/branch United States Navy
Years of service 39
Rank Admiral
Commands held USS Mervine (DD-322)
USS Jason (AC-12)
Commander Aircraft Squadrons, Asiatic Fleet
USS Saratoga (CV-3)
USS Astoria (CA-34)
Director of the War Plans Division
Assistant Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief
Commander, Fifth Amphibious Force
Commander Amphibious Forces, U.S. Pacific Fleet
Battles/wars World War II

Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner (27 May 1885 – 12 February 1961) served in the United States Navy during World War II.

Contents

[edit] Early life and career

Turner was born in Portland, Oregon on May 27, 1885. Appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy from California in 1904, he graduated in June 1908 and served in several ships over the next four years. In 1913, Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Turner briefly held command of the destroyer Stewart. After receiving instruction in ordnance engineering and service on board the gunboat Marietta, he was assigned to the battleships Pennsylvania, Michigan and Mississippi during 1916-19.

From 1919 to 1922, Lieutenant Commander Turner was an Ordnance Officer at the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C. He then was Gunnery Officer of the battleship California, Fleet Gunnery Officer on the Staff of Commander Scouting Fleet and Commanding Officer of the destroyer USS Mervine (DD-322). Following promotion to the rank of Commander in 1925, Turner served with the Bureau of Ordnance at the Navy Department. In 1927, he received flight training at Pensacola, Florida, and a year later became Commanding Officer of the seaplane tender USS Jason (AC-12) and Commander Aircraft Squadrons, Asiatic Fleet. He had further aviation-related assignments into the 1930s and was Executive Officer of the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga (CV-3) in 1933-34. Captain Turner attended the Naval War College and served on that institution's staff in 1935-38 as head of the Strategy faculty. He next commanded the heavy cruiser USS Astoria (CA-34) and took her on a diplomatic mission to Japan in 1939.

[edit] Pearl Harbor

Captain Turner was Director of War Plans in Washington, D.C., in 1940-41 and achieved the rank of Rear Admiral late in the latter year.

Edwin T. Layton (later Rear Admiral Layton), Chief Intelligence Officer to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet, in his book, "And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway -- Breaking the Secrets" (1985) makes the case that Turner was in fact the main person culpable in the Pearl Harbor disaster -- although Turner's boss Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Harold R. Stark, also comes in for a share of the blame -- and argues persuasively that Kimmel, and his Army equivalent, General Walter C. Short, were scapegoats for higher-ups.

Layton lays several main charges at Turner’s door:

  • a) Turner totally misread Japanese war plans, believing far into 1941 that Japan was going to invade Siberia, not SE Asia and islands in the Pacific;
  • b) when Japan’s intentions in these areas started to become more evident, he failed to appreciate the significance of decrypted Japanese messages and continued to discount any attack on American forces, particularly those in Pearl Harbor;
  • c) when he did eventually have worries, they were for the Philippines (at least 4,000 miles further west from Pearl) and the US Navy’s Asiatic Fleet, not for its Pacific Fleet (despite what Turner testified to at official hearings); and
  • d) most seriously, he monopolized intelligence information, dolled out little of it, and failed to provide Kimmel, in particular, with vital data needed in the run up to the attack.

The Navy’s Washington headquarters contained three offices dealing with intelligence: Office of Naval Communications (ONC), Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and the War Plans Division, headed by Turner. An older fight between the first two as to which would analyze and disseminate decrypted information was settled when ONI was given the lead. According to Layton, Turner, however, later used the authority of his boss, Stark, to cut off ONI’s direct access to field commands and to promote himself and his own office to this particular job, which he then failed to perform adequately. As Admiral Dyer, Turner's biographer, notes (see External Link, below), Turner took the position at the Congressional Inquiry in 1945 that his office "never sent out information." Layton argues that Turner also, however, cut off ONI from sending it out, while Stark dithered. Dyer says that Turner's seizure of function from ONI created a "gap" between analysis and communication, and Dyer implies that the communication of vital information got swallowed up in that gap, so that Kimmel was largely in the dark.

Layton makes it clear that the high level Japanese naval codes were not broken at the time of Pearl, but that useful information could be obtained from “traffic analysis” – who sent messages to whom and how often -- from partial decryptions, as well as from incidental pieces of information that helped confirm or disconfirm analyses. But diplomatic cyphers, including the highest level, Purple, were broken and regularly read. Turner, however, shared little or none of this diplomatic traffic with Pacific Command. Layton, pp. 73, 76, 90, 286.

Diplomatic decrypts revealed the day to day hardening of the mindset of the militarists in control of the Japanese government, particularly the sharp descent in the period after the Japanese Combined Fleet set sail for Pearl Harbor (despite some revisionist thinking, it is generally still believed that the fleet observed radio silence throughout the voyage)(see http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14086 for further on this).

Most significantly, the diplomatic traffic revealed something that was of critical importance to those in command at Pearl, but which was never conveyed to them: Japanese Intelligence had, during the period prior to the attack, asked the spy it had sent to Honolulu, Takeo Yoshikawa, to divide the waters of Pearl Harbor into a grid. He was to report "six DDs section AA" instead of "six destroyers in the area northwest of Ford Island", and he did so report. These are sometimes referred to as "bomb plot" messages or “Kita messages” (after the name of the consul). They were obviously designed as efficient aids to targeting torpedoes and bombs. Neither Admiral Kimmel nor General Short were told about these messages. The Japanese also had the Panama Canal and the Philippines under surveillance, but Pearl Harbor was the only installation divided into a grid in this way.

So, right under their noses, Kimmel and Short had a spy providing accurate information on a daily basis about local bombing targets, but neither commander was provided the ability to inhale that something rotten in Pearl. They were not able to do this because of policies (largely unwritten) established by Turner, with the acquiesence of Stark. In late November 1941, both the Navy and Army sent "war warnings" to all Pacific commands. Although these stated the high probability of imminent war with Japan, and instructed recipients to be on alert for war, the focus was on the Far East. Pearl Harbor was not mentioned. Washington's war warning messages have been criticised by some (e.g., the US Army Pearl Harbor Board - "Do/Don't Messages") as containing "conflicting and imprecise" language. Washington did not solicit the views of the Hawaiian commanders or ask if they had special concerns. See Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge debate

The truth is that everyone expected the attack to come in the Philippines, where MacArthur had been sent and where B-17 Flying Fortress bombers were being sent. MacArthur, also, is accused of serious failures by Layton, principal among them being that despite having access to the Purple decrypts denied Kimmel, he underestimated the threat of attack, overestimated the strength of his forces, and then failed to take appropriate action – even after having learned nine hours before the attack on his positions began that the attack on Pearl Harbor had occurred. Layton, p. 76.

Layton also maintains that Turner joined in the persecution of Kimmel in order to cover up his own failures – and culpability. Early in the book (pp. 19-21), he recounts an incident in the wardroom of Nimitz’s flagship, on the first night after peace had been declared, when he (Layton) was playing cards with other officers. As Layton notes, Turner by that time “had executed all our landing operations from Guadalcanal to Iwo Jima with brilliant distinction”, despite his “stormy temper, overbearing ego, and celebrated bouts with the bottle.” “Stoked up,” Turner stormed into the wardroom and propounded that the Pearl Harbor court of inquiry had determined that “goddammed Kimmel had all the information and didn’t do anything about it. They should hang him higher than a kite!” Layton protests. “But Kimmel did not have that information. You say that he did. I know that he did not, and I was there.” Instead of entering into a reasonable discussion on the finer points of naval intelligence (this is a joke), Turner came “roaring across the room, bellowing, ‘Are you calling me a liar?’” Fisticuffs were avoided only by the swift intervention of the flagship’s skipper, Captain Ernest P. Forrestel.

[edit] Pearl Harbor: Further

Vice Admiral Dyer wrote Turner’s biography, the relevant chapter of which is available at http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USN/ACTC/actc-5.html (pages 153-199 of the book). In summary, as to Turner’s culpability for Pearl Harbor:

1. READINESS & ENEMY INTENTIONS

Background: In the summers of 1939 and 1940, the Navy’s General Board issued documents maintaining that the Navy was not ready to fight a war. Turner became Director of War Plans 19 October 1940.

December 1940: Turner and McNarney, his Army equivalent on the Joint Army-Navy Planning Committee, authored "Study of the Immediate Problems concerning Involvement in War." It maintained:

“ …With respect to Japan, hostilities prior to United States entry into the European War or to the defeat of Britain may depend upon the consequences of steps taken by the United States to oppose Japanese aggression. If these steps seriously threaten her [Japan's] economic welfare or military adventures, there can be no assurance that Japan will not suddenly attack United States armed forces. ”

The study took pains to enumerate factors that might provoke this, including an effort to “reinforce our Asiatic Fleet or the Philippine garrison”, imposition of additional economic sanctions, significant increase in material aid to China, clear alliance with the British or Dutch, and “opposition to a Japanese attack on British or Dutch territory.“ The study also argued that if we became involved in the Atlantic, yet were attacked by the Japanese, “we should undertake only a limited war.”

“ Believing as these planners did, it can now be understood why the Asiatic Fleet was not reinforced and the Philippine Garrison more rapidly built up in the 12 months between December 1940 and December 1941, despite the pleas of the military commanders responsible for defense in the Far East area. ”

Dyer, p. 158.

24 January 1941: Turner drafted a letter sent to the Secretary of War from the Secretary of the Navy which said:

“ If war eventuates with Japan, it is believed easily possible that hostilities would be initiated by a surprise attack upon the Fleet or the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. ”

It is not clear that this was anything other than a general statement similar to others which also seem prescient when viewed with hindsight, but which at the time were offered more in the nature of thought-experiments than in the nature of action items requiring specific follow-up. It is clearer that they were not followed up.

11 July 1941, about three weeks after Hitler attacked Stalin: Turner wrote a memorandum to his boss stating:

“ During July or August, the Japanese will occupy important points in Indo-China, and will adopt an opportunistic attitude towards the Siberian Maritime Provinces. Japanese action against the Russians may be expected if the Stalin regime collapses, and Russian resistance to Germany is overcome. ”
“ Since it is inexcusable for military forces to be unprepared for an attack, even if the chances for an attack appear small, it is recommended that steps be taken to place our Army and Navy forces in the Far East [emphasis added] in an alert status to be achieved as far as practicable within about two weeks. ”

2. RESPONSIBILITY TO INFORM At the Congressional Inquiry in 1945 (the most important of a series of inquiries by various authorities), Turner testified it was the Office of Naval Intelligence which was charged with disseminating information [and, by inference, warning the field commanders]. He, on the other had, was charged with advising the Chief of Naval Operations – a sort of “the Lowells speak only to the Cabots and the Cabots speak only to God” argument. Dyer, p. 183.

But in fact, shortly after taking up his duties, Turner persuaded his boss, CNO Stark, to limit the responsibilities of ONI. In a showdown, resulting from objections by Admiral Kirk (then head of ONI), in Stark’s office, Stark took Turner’s side -- the responsibility for “preparing papers or despatches for dissemination in regard to the over-all international situation which might involve the United States in war,” as well as the responsibility for war plans, resided with Turner. Dyer, p. 186.

On this same page, Dyer very subtly explains how Turner’s bureaucratic victory made him the man to point fingers at if and when one arrives at the conclusion, documented by Layton, that Kimmel was not informed and lacked vital data:

“ Rear Admiral Turner's belief that Admiral Stark's decision was an "Interpretation" of the written instructions for the conduct of business in Naval Operations rather than a marked qualification or change of the written instructions was largely confined to himself and his immediate seniors. ”


“ The Director of Naval Intelligence interpreted the decision to be that ONI was not to disseminate to the Operating Forces any estimates of enemy, or prospective enemy, intentions the natural reaction to which would seem to call for immediate acts of war on the part of our Operating Forces, and so passed this interpretation on to his relief [his successor], Rear Admiral Wilkinson. The following testimony during the Pearl Harbor hearing bears this out: ”


“ ‘GESELL [Counsel to the Congressional committee]: In other words, you had the responsibility to disseminate, but where you reached a situation which led you to feel that the information disseminated might approach the area of a directive, or an order to take some specific action to the recipient; then you felt you were required to consult War Plans, or the Chief of Naval Operations?’ ”


“ ‘WILKINSON: Exactly.’ ”


“ The belief of one of Rear Admiral Wilkinson's best subordinates, Commander Arthur H. McCollum, the Head of the Far Eastern Section in the Foreign Intelligence Division of ONI, was that the change was very much broader in effect, if not intent, and that ”


“ the function of evaluation of Intelligence, that is, the drawing of inferences therefrom, had been transferred over to be a function of the War Plans Division. ”

Dyer:

“ It is apparent from the above quotes that the policy decision of the Chief of Naval Operations created a gap between what the director of War Plans thought ONI should and would send to the Operating Forces and what the most important intelligence subordinate of the Director of Naval Intelligence actually felt that the Office of Naval Intelligence [was] responsible for distributing to the Fleet. The McCollum interpretation of the decision was widely held at the second and third levels in ONI and since they believed that they had been robbed of one of their main functions, evaluation, they sulked in their tents. The essential close cooperation between War Plans and Intelligence suffered. ”

This conclusion is carefully worded to say that Turner thought ONI would be sending intelligence to field commands, but there is no evidence that Turner thought about this at all, let alone thought it through.

As somewhat of an aside Dyer also notes: “This War Plans-Intelligence gap was indirectly widened by the special handling of decoded enemy despatches called "magic" and later "ultra." These despatches were handled, and were known to be handled, in a completely separate and distinct manner from routine secret information. By and large, second echelon War Plans officers received more of the droppings from these despatches than second echelon ONI officers, except for the Far Eastern Section of ONI.”

Further, Dyer suggests “that there undoubtedly was an administrative error by both Turner and Kirk in failing to reduce to writing the CNO policy decision in regard to advising the CNO and the Operating Forces of political action-initiating intelligence, so that the dividing line between the duties and procedures of Naval Intelligence and War Plans in this area was cleanly etched. It is only necessary to state that on 12 December 1941 War Plans proposed such an arrangement.”

Again, Dyer’s wording is overly kind to his fellow admiral. “Administrative error” hardly gets to the heart of the matter and could well be replaced by “culpable failure.”

3. FAILING TO INFORM KIMMEL

A. Before the last minute: Overview Dyer can base his statement that “Rear Admiral Turner thought the chances of a raid in Hawaii were about 50-50 ….” only on Turner’s self-serving testimony in 1945. But, significantly, after making this statement Dyer immediately adds:

“ but no specific mention of this belief appear[s] in the final version of any despatch which he drafted for the CNO to send to CINCPAC, although it has been asserted such a warning was in one of the preliminary drafts.” [citing Turner’s PHH testimony; and citing Hoehling, “The Week Before Pearl Harbor”, p. 55, as to the preliminary draft). ”

Dyer, p. 189.

Turner and Stark may have mistakenly thought – incredibly -- that Kimmel’s staff was able to read all the diplomatic messaging the two of them had access to in Washington and that Kimmel (CINCPAC) was thus informing himself. They may mistakenly have thought that Honolulu possessed one of the few Purple machines which had been constructed as codebreaking devices capable of reading Japanese Foreign Office coded messages. Dyer, p. 189:

“ And when Admiral Stark, on three different occasions, sought assurances that CINCPAC did in fact have decryption facilities, and the despatches available to him so he could read the Japanese diplomatic traffic, Rear Admiral Turner brought back the wrong information from the Director of Naval Communications. This was either through poorly phrased inquiries to Rear Admiral Noyes, since Noyes stated that he thought Turner was talking about traffic analysis (called radio intelligence) or through ignorance of Noyes in regard to what the decryption capability [was] at Pearl Harbor. The latter has been generally suspected, since (1) the Pearl Harbor Naval Radio Station routinely did not even copy Japanese Diplomatic traffic, because there was no decoding machine in Pearl Harbor essential to change the coded Japanese diplomatic message into Japanese language, even if it was copied, and (2) because Rear Admiral Noyes's testimony showed ignorance of several other aspects of Pearl Harbor's decryption capabilities and systems. For example, he stated: ”


“ ‘. . . and as I learned from listening to Commander Rochefort's testimony, they [Pearl Harbor] could not read another code, which was necessary’. ”

Further:

“ Rear Admiral Noyes … testified that he did not remember making any statement to the Director of War Plans that would imply that Admiral Kimmel had the means of decrypting "purple" (diplomatic) traffic and that he believed that Rear Admiral Turner had "traffic analysis" and "decrypted traffic" confused in his mind. ”

Dyer, p. 189.

This confusion about what Kimmel had or did not have is a really critical point, particularly as between Turner and Stark, who, after all, approved Turner’s seizure of control of intelligence. It shows a realization by Stark that Kimmel needed information about deteriorating negotiations with the Japanese that he himself was getting, but incompetence or lack of sufficient concern on the part of Turner in finding out what the situation was in regards to Kimmel’s knowledge.

B. Before the last minute: Warnings Mid-October 1941:

“ Admiral Turner remembered, with some pride and much regret, [that] when he drafted the 16 October 1941 despatch directing CINCPAC, CINCAF, and CINCLANT to take preparatory deployments, his original wording had included the phrase that there "was a distinct probability Japan will attack Britain and the United States in the near future." He regretted that this wording had been toned down by his Joint Board seniors to ‘there is a possibility that Japan may attack these two powers.’ ”

Dyer, p. 188.

Late November 1941:

“ Admiral Turner also was proud of his authorship of ‘This is a warning,’ in the 27 November 1941 despatch and regretted that his wording ‘war within the next few days’ was changed to ‘an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days.’ ”


“ ‘There was discussion as to whether or not the opening sentence should be included in this dispatch. I recall that Vice Admiral Turner was firmly of the opinion that it should be included.’ [Testimony of Captain john L. McCrea, Special Assistant to Admiral Stark, at the 1945 Congressional Hearings.] ”


“ The phrase ‘This is a war warning’ was under attack from below as well as from above. Admiral Turner also regretted the phrase ‘in any direction’ included in the draft of the 24 November 1941 despatch was left off the sentence "an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days" of the War Warning Despatch three days later. ”

Dyer, p. 188.

Finally, Dyer does not note (but Layton does) that Kimmel did not have adequate resources to do more than he did. See article on Admiral Husband E. Kimmel.

C. The last minute. The long message from Japan giving reasons for breaking off peace negotiations sent to its embassy in Washington, and intercepted by the US, contained 13 parts stating the reasons for the break-off, a 14th part concluding that negotiations were at an end, and a 15th part, the “one o’clock message,” directing the ambassador to deliver the whole message at precisely 1 p.m., Sunday 7 December 1941, Washington, DC time. The 14th part was decrypted late after the first 13 parts; and the 15th part was not transmitted, intercepted, or received until the morning of 7 December. It is generally agreed that the one o’clock message was viewed in Washington as something pregnant with meaning, not a routine administrative direction in any sense.

David Kahn, in his incomparable thousand-page masterpiece, “The Codebreakers” (1967), pp. 2-4, gives us Lieutenant Commander Alwin D. Kramer, the Japanese-language expert who headed the translation section of the navy’s intelligence unit and who has just delivered the 14th part of the interception to the Chief of Naval Operations, to the Secretary of the Navy, and to the President of the United States. When he returns to his office about 1020 he sees the translation of the 15th part which has just come in:

“ Its import crashed in upon him at once. … The hour set for the Japanese ambassadors to deliver the notification—1 p.m. on a Sunday—was highly unusual. And, as Kramer had quickly ascertained by drawing a navigator’s time circle, 1 p.m. in Washington meant 7:30 a.m. in Hawaii and a couple of hours before dawn in the tense Far East around Malaya, which Japan had been threatening with ships and troops. ”

Within ten minutes Kramer is on his way, arriving first at the office of the Chief of Naval Operations, handing it in to a meeting already in session and indicating the significance of the timing. He emerges from Navy headquarters which were then on the edge of the Mall, between the Reflecting Pool, and Constitution Avenue. Heading up the avenue, to the State Department eight blocks away, next to the White House, “The urgency of the situation washed over him again, and he began to move on the double.”

Kahn characterizes

“ This moment, with Kramer running through the empty streets of Washington bearing his crucial intercept, an hour before sleepy code clerks at the Japanese embassy had even deciphered it and an hour before the Japanese planes roared off the carrier flight decks on their treacherous mission, is perhaps the finest hour in the history of cryptology. ”

And he goes on to explain that this is true because Kramer’s sprint symbolizes cryptanalysis breaking through what he calls the time’s “miasma of apathy” to achieve “a peak of alertness and accomplishment” not matched by any other agency in the US. It also symbolizes vital data needed by field commanders as soon as they can get it.

What did Admiral Turner know of this and think about it, and what did he do that was of aid to Pearl Harbor?

Dyer, obviously seeking to navigate around controversy, says at one point (p.191) “No real purpose can be served by a detailed rehashing of Admiral Turner's testimony before the Congressional Inquiry into the Pearl Harbor attack ….” Dyer also dismisses the statement of the Vice Chairman of this Inquiry that “My impression is that much of the information you have given us is somewhat in conflict with other information we have received during the hearing” as apparently a “thrust in the dark.”

Nonetheless, Dyer asserts that “The ‘one o'clock’ despatch inspired both the DNI [Wilkinson] and the DWP [Turner] to make recommendations for the CNO to send an advisory to the Fleet. The delay in sending this advisory, in part at least, was due to a reluctance of Admiral Stark to accept and immediately act personally and dramatically on the recommendation of these two of his subordinates, both united and voicing the same opinions by calling Admiral Kimmel on voice-scramble telephone which was on his desk. “ Dyer, p. 185.

No citation is given by Dyer, however, to support the claim that Turner so recommended. And indeed, Dyer, himself notes on p. 193 testimony which contradicts such a claim:

“ When Admiral Turner was asked why he did not [on the morning of 7 December] urge Admiral Stark to grab the scramble telephone and wake up Admiral Kimmel, he said: ”


“ Why weren't I and a lot of others smarter than we were? I didn't put all the Two's and Two's together before Savo to get four. Maybe I didn't before Pearl, but damned if I know just where. If Noyes had only known that Kimmel couldn't read the diplomatic Magic. If Kimmel had only sent out a few search planes. If the words 'Pearl Harbor' had only survived the redrafting of the warning messages. . . . You find out the answers and let me know. ”

Dyer judges that on that morning “Turner did not realize the importance of the time crisis”, but he has nothing to say in defense of this practically incoherent sputtering by Turner. Indeed, in this statement Turner comes close to admitting fault (“Maybe I didn’t before Pearl….”).

Layton gives a somewhat different account of all this. The discussion in Stark’s office did not involve Turner, who arrived after the others had left. Before Turner arrived, the only person to suggest calling Kimmel was Wilkinson, and Stark started to do this, but then said “No, I think I will call he president.” The discussion Turner missed had focused on how the specified delivery time corresponded with dawn in the Far East, apparently on the assumption that the time in Honolulu was too late to be of special significance. Layton, p.303.

Further, Turner testified:


“ It was not my business to send that dispatch out. I consider that was entirely the province of the Office of Naval Intelligence. . . . It was no evaluation whatsoever. My office never sent out information. ”

Dyer, p. 185.

So, now by his own words, Turner, having earlier in the year won the battle to control the dissemination of intelligence, asserts that such dissemination was in fact the “province” of the very office from whom he had snatched that control. This is known as wanting to have it both ways.

D. Zeal A leak to the press of his “Victory Program” – detailed logistics for the army and navy -- preoccupied Turner two days before Pearl. Dyer says, p. 197, that this leak “had considerable influence in strengthening the belief in the Navy Department of the correctness of limiting secret information to those ‘who need to know.’”

“ Kelly Turner had long been an advocate of this "need to know" policy. Admiral King, when Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet, had not been privy to the ABC-I Staff agreements of 27 March 1941 which provided for American-British collaboration short of war and for full scale military cooperation in time of war. In Admiral King's opinion, Turner guarded his secret knowledge "with supererogatory zeal." ”

(citing testimony by King)

4. CONCLUSION

At one point, Dyer says “Neither Admiral Harold R. Stark, Chief of Naval Operations in 1940, nor Rear Admiral Royal E. Ingersoll, his senior assistant, could remember in detail how Captain Turner came to be picked for the War Plans desk. Each gave the credit to the other, with an assist to Captain Abel T. Bidwell, the Director of Officer Personnel in the Bureau of Navigation.”

“Credit” is perhaps not the right term.

[edit] Post Pearl

Turner was appointed Assistant Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet (a new position created after Pearl Harbor for Admiral King) from December 1941 until June 1942 and was then sent to the Pacific war zone to take command of the Amphibious Force, South Pacific Force.

A website devoted to naval communications intelligence (www.centuryinter.net/midway/priceless/footnotes.html#note84) contains this note #65 in an article by Frederick D. Parker:

“ Admiral Turner was relieved as Chief of War Plans on or about 25 May 1942. He was later given command of an amphibious force that subsequently assaulted Guadalcanal. His relief on the eve of a great naval battle is difficult to explain in a positive context, particularly in light of his tense relationships with the Navy's Communications Directorate and others and his apparent isolation from Admiral King. There is some confusion over when his relief actually occurred. His biographer, Dyer (263) said 25 May, but SRMN005 (RG457, NA), a collection of papers related to Midway, contains a situation report signed by Turner dated 29 May. Larrabee (201) indicated reasons outside the navy for his dismissal. According to Larrabee [Commander in Chief. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War. New York: Harper and Row Publishers, 1987], he was removed at the insistence of General George C. Marshall, COS U.S. Army. In March 1942, according to Larrabee, General Marshall convinced the president that Turner, as a member of the Joint Planning Staff, was too difficult to work with. Larrabee (190) also asserted that in 1942 King shifted Pacific war planning functions to Nimitz after Turner was relieved. ”

[edit] Guadalcanal, First Major Amphibious Operation

Layton (p. 458 ff.) significantly modifies his earlier statement about Turner’s “brilliant execution”, by inference if not explicitly, when he describes Turner’s conduct at Guadalcanal, “our first major amphibious operation.”

Layton begins by setting the stage, describing how the Japanese were taken by surprise when US marines landed at Tulagi and Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942. The marines seized control of the airstrip being constructed, but this initial victory was followed over the next six months by “a bitter campaign of attrition.” Admiral Yamamoto responded to the landings within forty-eight hours, dispatching forces sufficient to cause the cautious Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, in overall command of a force which included air support commanded by Admiral Leigh Noyes, to make “the independent decision,” supported by Noyes, “to withdraw his forces to the south for refueling.” These forces included carriers Saratoga, Wasp, and Enterprise. This decision meant that Turner’s transports no longer had air cover, a situation which of course “enormously increased the vulnerability of Turner’s transports," which were still unloading supplies.

“ As usual, turner had insisted, as he had before the attack on Pearl Harbor, that he would be his own intelligence officer. ”

He protested Fletcher’s decision, but

“ ... he nonetheless decided from his reading of the intelligence that no enemy surface force could arrive to interfere with his landing until late the following day. ”

Layton calls this error “understandable”, given the information actually available to him:

“ But he might have saved himself and his ships if he had not refused to have one of Hypo’s mobile radio intelligence units on board his headquarter ship. If he had not been so pigheaded, Turner could have received an early warning that enemy forces were approaching that evening when the Japanese cruisers sent a floatplane to radio a reconnaissance report. ”

Admiral Gunichi Mikawa’s heavy cruisers “swept in from the darkness north of Savo Island and set the night ablaze in a twenty-minute gunnery duel that sank four Allied cruisers and a destroyer.” Only because Mikawa withdrew thereafter, fearing that US carriers were near, were Turner’s transports “saved from complete destruction.”

When the enemy stepped up their bombing raids from Rabaul the following morning, Turner withdrew his transports and a surviving cruiser, thereby stranding the 6000 marines on Tulagi and the 10,000 marines on Guadalcanal, equipped only with some entrenching tools and less than one month’s rations and medical supplies. The marines, however, responded by completing the airstrip (renamed Henderson field in honor of Lofton Henderson a heroic marine aviator who had died at the Battle of Midway, using the one bulldozer on the island, a Japanese bulldozer; this enabled the Navy to fly in food and supplies. The rest of the story belongs to the article on the Guadalcanal campaign.

[edit] After Guadalcanal

Over the next three years, while holding a variety of senior Pacific Fleet amphibious force commands as both a Rear Admiral and Vice Admiral, he helped plan and execute the conquest of enemy positions in the south, central and western Pacific.

In the rank of Admiral, he would have commanded the amphibious component of the invasion of Japan, had that nation not capitulated after atomic bombs were dropped on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.

[edit] Postwar

Following the end of World War II, Admiral Turner served on the Navy Department's General Board and was U.S. Naval Representative on the United Nations Military Staff Committee. He retired from active duty in July 1947. Admiral Richmond K. Turner died in Monterey, California. He is buried in Golden Gate National Cemetery in San Bruno, California alongside his wife and Admirals Chester Nimitz, Raymond A. Spruance, and Charles A. Lockwood, an arrangement made by all of them while living.

[edit] Namesake

The guided missile frigate (later cruiser) Richmond K. Turner (DLG-20, later CG-20) was named in honor of him.

[edit] External links

This article includes information collected from the Naval Historical Center, which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain.