William Halsey

1. Lead

William Frederick Halsey Jr. (1882–1959), known to his men as “Bull” Halsey, was the most popular American admiral of the Second World War — and one of the most controversial. A destroyer officer who became a carrier admiral, he took command of the South Pacific forces at their darkest hour in October 1942, when the battle for Guadalcanal hung in the balance, and he held them together with a combination of aggression, optimism and sheer force of personality. His slogan — “Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs” — was crude, and it reflected the racial hatreds of the Pacific war, but it also captured the mood of a navy that had been on the defensive for a year and was ready to fight back. In 1944–45 he commanded the Third Fleet, the most powerful naval force in history, in the battles for the Philippines, Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and he was present on the battleship Missouri when Japan surrendered in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945.

Halsey’s career was not without its failures, and they were serious ones. At Leyte Gulf in October 1944 he took his fleet north in pursuit of a Japanese decoy force, leaving the landing beaches unguarded, and only the heroism of a small group of escort carriers off Samar saved the invasion from disaster. In December 1944 he sailed his fleet into Typhoon Cobra, which sank three destroyers and killed more than 790 men, and in June 1945 he did much the same thing again in Typhoon Connie. After Typhoon Connie, a court of inquiry recommended that he be relieved, but Admiral Nimitz, his superior, refused. Halsey was promoted to five-star Fleet Admiral in December 1945, and he retired in 1947 as a national hero. This article tells the story of his life, his victories and his mistakes, and asks what his record shows about the qualities — and the dangers — of aggressive command at sea.

2. Key Facts

Full name	William Frederick Halsey Jr. / William Frederick Halsey Jr.
Born	30 October 1882, Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA
Died	16 August 1959, Fishers Island, New York, USA
Nickname	“Bull” Halsey / “Bull” Halsey
Rank	Fleet Admiral (five stars)
Service	United States Navy, 1904–1947
Main commands	South Pacific Force (1942–44); Third Fleet (1944–45)
Main battles	Guadalcanal (1942–43); Leyte Gulf (1944); Iwo Jima and Okinawa (1945)
Controversies	Leyte Gulf (1944); Typhoon Cobra (1944); Typhoon Connie (1945)
Awards	Navy Cross; Navy Distinguished Service Medal (4); Army Distinguished Service Medal
Buried / An táng	Arlington National Cemetery

3. Early Life and Education

3.1. New Jersey and Annapolis

William Halsey was born on 30 October 1882 at Elizabeth, New Jersey, the son of a United States Navy captain. He grew up in a naval family, and he was, from an early age, determined to follow his father into the navy. He entered the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis in 1900, and he graduated in 1904, in a class that included many of the men who would lead the American navy in the Second World War. He was not a brilliant student — he was better at football than at mathematics, and he was known more for his energy and his humour than for his scholarship — but he was a natural leader, and his classmates remembered him as a man who could make a crew laugh and make them work at the same time. He was also, from his earliest days, a man of strong opinions and a quick temper, qualities that would serve him well in war and cause him trouble in peace. His father had served in the Spanish–American War, and Halsey grew up hearing stories of the sea and of battle, and dreaming of the day when he would command a ship of his own.

3.2. The Young Officer

Halsey’s early career was spent, for the most part, in destroyers and in torpedo boats, the small, fast ships that were the training ground for the aggressive young officers of the American navy. He served in the Great White Fleet’s cruise around the world in 1907–09, he commanded destroyers in the Atlantic during the First World War, and he was awarded the Navy Cross for his service in command of the destroyer USS Shaw, which was damaged in a collision in 1918. He was, by the 1920s, a recognised expert on destroyers and on torpedo warfare, and he was also a man with a reputation for daring: he had once, as a young officer, taken his destroyer through a hurricane to rescue a stricken ship, and he had earned the respect of his men by sharing their dangers. In the 1920s he served as a naval attaché in Berlin, where he learned German and observed the rebuilding of the German navy, and he returned to the United States convinced that another war was coming and that the navy was not ready for it.

3.2.1. The Destroyer Years

The destroyer years shaped Halsey in ways that stayed with him for the rest of his career. Destroyers were small ships, commanded by young officers, and they demanded initiative, aggression and a willingness to take risks: a destroyer captain could not wait for orders from above, because by the time the orders arrived, the battle would be over. Halsey learned, in destroyers, to trust his instincts, to act quickly, and to accept the consequences of his decisions. He also learned to love the sea and to hate the desk: he was never comfortable in a staff job, and he was at his best when he was at sea, with a ship under his command and an enemy in front of him. The destroyer years also gave him his nickname: his men called him “Bull”, partly because of his build and his temper, and partly because of the way he charged at a problem. The nickname stuck, and it became, in the Second World War, one of the best-known names in the American navy.

4. The Carrier Admiral

4.1. Learning to Fly at Fifty

In the 1930s Halsey made a decision that changed his career: in his early fifties, he learned to fly. The navy, which was building its first aircraft carriers, needed senior officers who understood aviation, and Halsey, who had spent his career in destroyers, volunteered for flight training. He was the oldest man in his class, and he found the training difficult — he was, by his own account, a mediocre pilot — but he completed it, and he earned his wings as a naval aviator in 1935. The decision was a brave one, and it was also a far-sighted one: it made him one of the few senior American admirals who understood the carrier, and it put him in line for the carrier commands that would decide the Pacific war. He was, in the words of a colleague, “a destroyer man who had the sense to learn a new weapon”, and the navy, which needed carrier admirals, was glad to have him.

4.2. Commanding Carriers Before the War

After earning his wings, Halsey commanded the aircraft carrier USS Saratoga and then the carrier division that included the USS Enterprise, the ship that would become the most famous carrier of the war. He was a popular commander, and he was known for his insistence on realistic training: he believed that carriers should operate at sea, in all weathers, and that their air groups should train as they would fight. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, Halsey was at sea aboard the Enterprise, returning from Wake Island, and his task force was one of the few American naval forces that was not caught in port. In the months that followed, he led the Enterprise in the early raids on the Japanese-held islands, and he commanded the task force that carried the Doolittle Raiders to within range of Japan in April 1942. He was, by the summer of 1942, the navy’s most experienced carrier commander, and he was the obvious choice for the command that would make his reputation.

4.2.1. The Saratoga and the Enterprise

The Saratoga and the Enterprise were the two ships that made Halsey a carrier admiral, and they deserve a place in his story. The Saratoga, one of the first American carriers, was a large, fast ship, and Halsey commanded her in 1935–37, learning the business of carrier aviation at first hand. The Enterprise, which he commanded as a task force commander in 1941–42, was the ship that carried American naval aviation through the darkest months of the war: she fought at Midway, at the Eastern Solomons, and at Santa Cruz, and she was, by the end of the war, the most decorated ship in American naval history. Halsey’s time with the two ships taught him what carriers could do and what they could not do, and it taught him to trust his airmen. He was, in the end, a carrier admiral who had learned his trade at sea, not in a classroom, and that was why his men trusted him when the war came.

5. Guadalcanal

5.1. Taking Command in the South Pacific

In October 1942 Halsey was given command of the South Pacific Force, at the moment when the battle for Guadalcanal was going badly for the Americans. The Marines on the island were under heavy attack, the navy had lost several ships in the night battles around the island, and morale was low. Halsey’s predecessor, Vice Admiral Robert Ghormley, was a cautious man, and Admiral Nimitz, the Pacific commander, believed that the South Pacific needed a fighter. Halsey was that fighter. He arrived at Nouméa in New Caledonia on 18 October 1942, and he immediately changed the atmosphere: he told his staff that the offensive was on, he ordered his ships to sea, and he sent a message to his commanders that became famous: “Attack, repeat, attack.” The effect was electric. The men who had been waiting for orders were given them, the ships that had been in port were sent to sea, and the Japanese, who had been pressing their advantage, found themselves facing an enemy who was, at last, fighting back.

5.2. The Naval Battles for Guadalcanal

The weeks that followed were among the most violent in naval history. In November 1942 the Americans and the Japanese fought two great naval battles off Guadalcanal — the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 13–15 November — in which battleships fought at point-blank range at night, and in which both sides lost ships. Halsey’s forces, under Rear Admiral Willis Lee, sank the Japanese battleship Kirishima and turned back a Japanese bombardment force that would have destroyed the Marine airfield on the island. The victory was costly — the Americans lost two cruisers and several destroyers — but it was decisive: the Japanese never again tried to retake Guadalcanal by sea, and in February 1943 they evacuated the island. Halsey’s part in the victory was not tactical — he did not command the ships in battle — but it was, in the judgement of historians, decisive: he had given his subordinates the confidence to fight, and he had created the conditions in which they could win. Guadalcanal made Halsey a national hero, and it made him, in the eyes of the American public, the admiral who had saved the Pacific.

5.2.1. “Kill Japs, Kill Japs, Kill More Japs”

Halsey’s slogan at Guadalcanal — “Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs” — is one of the most quoted lines of the Pacific war, and it needs to be understood in its context. The Pacific war was, on both sides, a war of racial hatred: the Japanese depicted Americans as demons, and the Americans depicted the Japanese as subhuman. Halsey’s slogan was a product of that hatred, and it was, by modern standards, indefensible. But it was also, in 1942, a deliberate act of leadership: Halsey believed that his men needed to hate the enemy in order to fight him, and that the navy, which had been on the defensive for a year, needed a simple, aggressive message. The slogan worked: it was painted on ships, it was repeated in the press, and it became, for a time, the motto of the South Pacific Force. It is also, in retrospect, a reminder of how the Pacific war differed from the war in Europe: it was a war in which the enemy was dehumanised, on both sides, and in which the language of command reflected that dehumanisation. Halsey himself later expressed regret about the slogan, but he never disowned it, and it remains, for better and for worse, a part of his legacy.

6. The South Pacific Campaign

6.1. The Solomons Campaign

After Guadalcanal, Halsey commanded the Allied advance up the Solomon Islands, a campaign of island-hopping that took his forces from Guadalcanal to New Georgia, to Bougainville and towards Rabaul, the great Japanese base in New Britain. The campaign was fought, for the most part, by land, sea and air forces working together, and it was, by any measure, a success: the Japanese were pushed back, island by island, and their base at Rabaul was neutralised without a direct assault. Halsey’s part in the campaign was as a theatre commander, coordinating the efforts of the army, the navy, the Marines and the air forces, and he did it with a skill that surprised those who had thought of him only as a fighting admiral. He was also, during this period, a popular figure in the press, and his exploits were reported in newspapers across America. The Solomons campaign established Halsey as more than a battlefield commander: it established him as a commander who could manage a complex, joint campaign, and who could work with the other services.

6.2. The Advance to Bougainville

The high point of the Solomons campaign was the landing on Bougainville in November 1943, an operation that Halsey planned and executed with great skill. The landing was made at Empress Augusta Bay, on the west coast of the island, and it was supported by a naval battle — the Battle of Empress Augusta Bay — in which American cruisers and destroyers defeated a Japanese force sent to destroy the landing. The operation was a model of joint warfare: the navy protected the landing, the Marines and the army fought ashore, and the air forces provided cover from bases on the islands already taken. Halsey’s command of the operation was widely praised, and it confirmed his reputation as a commander who could do more than fight: he could plan, he could coordinate, and he could bring a complex operation to a successful conclusion. The Bougainville landing was the last major operation Halsey commanded in the South Pacific: in 1944 he was given command of the Third Fleet, and he moved to the central Pacific, where the war was entering its final phase.

6.2.1. “The Slot”: The Night Battles

The waters between the Solomon Islands — the channel the Americans called “the Slot” — were the scene of some of the most savage naval fighting of the war, and Halsey’s forces fought there night after night in 1942 and 1943. The Japanese, who were superb night fighters, sent destroyer forces down the Slot to reinforce their troops on Guadalcanal and to bombard the American positions, and the Americans, who were learning night fighting the hard way, met them in a series of confused, close-range battles in which ships were lost on both sides. Halsey, who commanded the theatre, did not fight the battles himself, but he set the tone: he insisted that his ships go out and fight, even when the odds were against them, and he refused to allow the Japanese to use the Slot unchallenged. The night battles of the Slot were a school for the American navy, and they taught it the lessons — about radar, about torpedoes, about command at night — that would make it, by 1944, the most powerful navy in the world. Halsey’s part was to demand that the lessons be learned in battle, not in theory, and to accept the losses that the learning cost.

7. Leyte Gulf

7.1. The Plan for the Philippines

In October 1944 the Americans invaded the Philippines, landing on the island of Leyte on 20 October. Halsey’s Third Fleet, with its fast carriers, was given the task of covering the invasion from the sea and of destroying the Japanese fleet if it came out to fight. The Japanese, who knew that the loss of the Philippines would cut them off from the oil of the East Indies, sent everything they had: a northern force of carriers under Admiral Ozawa, a central force of battleships under Admiral Kurita, and a southern force under Admiral Nishimura. The plan was a complex one, and it depended on the Japanese forces being defeated in detail. Halsey’s orders from Nimitz were to cover the invasion and to destroy the Japanese fleet if the opportunity offered. The orders were ambiguous — they did not say, in so many words, whether covering the invasion or destroying the fleet came first — and the ambiguity would prove fatal.

7.2. The Decision to Chase Ozawa

On 24 October 1944 Halsey’s scouts found Ozawa’s carriers to the north, and Halsey, believing that the carriers were the main Japanese force and that the central force under Kurita had been turned back, took his whole fleet north in pursuit. He left the San Bernardino Strait, the passage through which Kurita’s battleships could reach the landing beaches, completely unguarded. It was a fateful decision. Kurita, who had not been turned back, passed through the strait during the night and, on the morning of 25 October, fell upon a small group of American escort carriers — “Taffy 3” — off the island of Samar. The escort carriers, with their destroyers, fought one of the most heroic actions in naval history, and Kurita, confused and under air attack, turned back. But the invasion had been saved by luck and by heroism, not by Halsey’s judgement, and the question of whether Halsey had been right to chase Ozawa has been debated ever since. Halsey himself never admitted that he had been wrong, and he blamed Nimitz’s ambiguous orders for the confusion.

7.2.1. The Battle off Samar

The Battle off Samar, on the morning of 25 October 1944, was one of the most extraordinary naval actions of the war. A small force of six American escort carriers, three destroyers and four destroyer escorts — “Taffy 3”, under Rear Admiral Clifton Sprague — found itself facing Kurita’s central force: four battleships, including the Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, six heavy cruisers and eleven destroyers. The Americans, who were outgunned by an overwhelming margin, attacked: the destroyers charged the Japanese battleships, launching torpedoes and laying smoke, and the escort carriers launched every aircraft they had, including planes armed with whatever was at hand. The Japanese, confused by the ferocity of the attack and convinced that they were facing a much larger force, turned away, and Kurita, who had lost three heavy cruisers, broke off the action and retired. The Americans lost two escort carriers and three destroyers, but they had saved the invasion. The battle is remembered as a triumph of courage over firepower, and it is also remembered as the battle that Halsey’s decision made necessary.

8. The Typhoons

8.1. Typhoon Cobra, December 1944

In December 1944, while supporting the invasion of Mindoro in the Philippines, Halsey’s Third Fleet sailed into Typhoon Cobra, one of the most violent storms in the history of the Pacific. The fleet, which was refuelling at sea, was caught by the storm, and three destroyers — the Hull, the Monaghan and the Spence — capsized and sank, with the loss of more than 790 men. Many other ships were damaged, and more than a hundred aircraft were destroyed. The disaster was the worst the American navy had suffered from weather in its history, and it was, in the judgement of the court of inquiry that investigated it, the result of Halsey’s failure to heed the weather warnings and to move his fleet out of the storm’s path. Halsey himself was aboard his flagship, the battleship New Jersey, and he survived the storm, but the loss of the three destroyers and their crews haunted him for the rest of his life. The typhoon was a natural disaster, but it was also a failure of command, and it is remembered as such.

8.2. Typhoon Connie and the Court of Inquiry

In June 1945 Halsey did it again. While operating off Okinawa, his fleet sailed into Typhoon Connie, and although no ships were lost this time, many were damaged, and the fleet was, for a time, unable to operate. A court of inquiry into Typhoon Connie was convened, and it recommended that Halsey be relieved of command. Admiral Nimitz, who was Halsey’s superior and who had recommended him for promotion, refused to act on the recommendation: he believed that Halsey’s services outweighed his mistakes, and that relieving him in the last weeks of the war would do more harm than good. Halsey remained in command until the end of the war, and he was promoted to Fleet Admiral in December 1945. The typhoons remain the darkest stain on his record, and they are the reason his reputation, unlike Nimitz’s or Spruance’s, has always been argued over. They show, as Leyte Gulf showed, that Halsey’s greatest strength — his aggression, his refusal to turn back — was also his greatest weakness, when the enemy was not the Japanese but the weather.

8.2.1. The Court of Inquiry into Typhoon Cobra

The court of inquiry into Typhoon Cobra was, in the end, a compromise: it found that Halsey had made errors of judgement, but it did not recommend his relief, and Nimitz, who had the final say, decided to keep him in command. The court’s report, which was not made public at the time, criticised Halsey for failing to heed the weather reports, for keeping his fleet in the storm’s path, and for not ordering his ships to take the precautions that might have saved the three destroyers. It also, however, acknowledged that the storm had been exceptionally violent, that the weather forecasting of the time was primitive, and that other commanders might have made the same mistakes. The court’s judgement was, in the end, a balanced one: Halsey was at fault, but he was not solely at fault, and his record as a whole justified keeping him in command. The fact that he sailed into a second typhoon six months later suggests that he had not learned the lesson, and it is the second typhoon, more than the first, that has damaged his reputation with historians.

9. The End of the War

9.1. The Final Campaigns

In 1945 Halsey’s Third Fleet took part in the last great campaigns of the Pacific war: the invasion of Iwo Jima in February, the invasion of Okinawa in April, and the carrier raids on the Japanese home islands in the summer. The fleet, which by this time included more than a hundred ships and a thousand aircraft, was the most powerful naval force ever assembled, and it operated with a freedom that would have been unimaginable in 1942. Halsey’s carriers struck at Japanese airfields, at Japanese shipping, and at the remnants of the Japanese fleet, and his battleships bombarded the Japanese coast. The campaigns were costly — the kamikaze attacks on the fleet off Okinawa were the most dangerous the navy had ever faced — but they were successful, and by August 1945 the Japanese were defeated. Halsey’s part in the final campaigns was as a fleet commander, and he carried it out with the aggression that had always characterised him. He was, in the last months of the war, the admiral who wanted to finish the job, and who was impatient with any suggestion that the war should end by negotiation rather than by victory.

9.2. Tokyo Bay and the Surrender

On 2 September 1945 Halsey was present in Tokyo Bay for the Japanese surrender, aboard his flagship, the battleship USS Missouri. The ceremony, at which General Douglas MacArthur accepted the surrender on behalf of the Allies, was the formal end of the Second World War, and Halsey’s presence was a recognition of his part in the victory. The Missouri was Halsey’s flagship, and it was, by a happy coincidence, named after the state of Missouri, the home state of President Harry Truman. Halsey watched the ceremony from the bridge of his ship, and he was, by all accounts, a proud and satisfied man. The war was over, the navy he had served for forty years had won the greatest victory in its history, and he had played a central part in it. He was promoted to Fleet Admiral in December 1945, one of only four American officers to hold the five-star rank, and he retired from active service in 1947. He was, at the end of the war, a national hero, and he remained one for the rest of his life.

9.2.1. The Missouri / Missouri

The battleship Missouri, Halsey’s flagship at the surrender, deserves a place in his story, because it is the ship most closely associated with him. The Missouri, an Iowa-class battleship, was one of the largest and most powerful battleships ever built, and it served as Halsey’s flagship in the last months of the war. The surrender ceremony was held on her deck, under the guns that had bombarded the Japanese coast, and the ship has been preserved, since 1998, as a museum at Pearl Harbor, where visitors can stand on the deck where the surrender was signed. Halsey’s association with the Missouri is a fitting end to his career: the ship that carried him to victory, the ship on which the war ended, and the ship that, to this day, reminds visitors of the admiral who commanded her. The Missouri is, in the end, Halsey’s monument, and it is a monument that he would have been proud of.

10. Legacy

10.1. The People’s Admiral

Halsey was, in his lifetime, the most popular admiral in the American navy, and his popularity has endured. He was popular with his men, who loved his aggression, his humour and his willingness to share their dangers, and he was popular with the public, who saw in him the fighting admiral they wanted to read about in the newspapers. He was, in the words of a colleague, “the admiral the people understood”, and his slogans, his nickname and his exploits made him a household name. He was also, by all accounts, a man of great personal charm, who loved a good story, a good drink and a good fight, and who never took himself too seriously. His popularity was, in part, a product of the press, which needed heroes, and Halsey, who was always ready with a quotation, was happy to oblige. But it was also real: his men genuinely loved him, and they followed him because they believed in him, and that is a kind of popularity that cannot be manufactured.

10.2. The Verdict of History

The verdict of history on Halsey is mixed, and it is likely to remain so. On the one hand, he was the admiral who saved Guadalcanal, who led the Solomons campaign, and who commanded the most powerful fleet in history to victory. On the other hand, he was the admiral who made the greatest operational mistake of the Pacific war at Leyte Gulf, and who sailed his fleet into two typhoons. Historians have generally concluded that Halsey was a great leader of men and a mediocre strategist: that he was at his best when the task was to inspire and to attack, and at his worst when the task was to think carefully and to weigh risks. The comparison with his contemporaries is instructive: Nimitz was the better strategist, Spruance was the better tactician, and Halsey was the better leader. The navy needed all three, and it is fortunate that it had them. Halsey died on 16 August 1959, at the age of seventy-six, and he was buried at Arlington National Cemetery, among the men he had led. His legacy is that of a fighter, and it is a legacy that the navy, which still values aggression above all else, has never forgotten.

10.2.1. Halsey and the Press

Halsey’s relationship with the press was one of the keys to his fame, and it deserves a final word. He understood, better than most admirals, that the navy needed the support of the American people, and that the people needed heroes to believe in. He gave the press what it wanted: slogans, stories and a larger-than-life personality, and the press, in return, made him a star. The relationship was mutually beneficial, but it also distorted his reputation: the press celebrated his victories and ignored his mistakes, and the public, which read only the press, came to believe that Halsey could do no wrong. When his mistakes finally became known — at Leyte Gulf, in the typhoons — the public was shocked, and the historians, who had the full record, were less forgiving than the press had been. The lesson is an old one: that a commander who lives by publicity will, in the end, be judged by it, and that the judgement, when it comes, is rarely kind. Halsey lived by publicity, and he was judged by it, and the judgement, on balance, has been fair.

11. Frequently Asked Questions

Why was Halsey called “Bull”?
His men gave him the nickname because of his build, his temper and the way he charged at a problem. It stuck, and it became one of the best-known names in the American navy. Halsey himself is said to have disliked the nickname at first, but he came to accept it.

What did Halsey do at Guadalcanal?
He took command of the South Pacific Force in October 1942, when the battle was going badly, and he changed the atmosphere overnight with his order to “attack, repeat, attack”. His forces won the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942, sinking the battleship Kirishima and saving the Marine airfield. The Japanese evacuated the island in February 1943.

What happened at Leyte Gulf?
In October 1944 Halsey took his whole fleet north in pursuit of a Japanese decoy force of carriers, leaving the San Bernardino Strait unguarded. The Japanese central force passed through the strait and attacked a small group of American escort carriers off Samar on 25 October. The escort carriers fought heroically and the Japanese turned back, but the invasion was saved by luck and courage, not by Halsey’s judgement.

What were the typhoons?
In December 1944 Halsey’s fleet sailed into Typhoon Cobra, which sank three destroyers and killed more than 790 men. In June 1945 the fleet sailed into Typhoon Connie, which damaged many ships. A court of inquiry into Typhoon Connie recommended Halsey’s relief, but Admiral Nimitz refused to act on it, and Halsey remained in command until the end of the war.

Was Halsey present at the Japanese surrender?
Yes. He was aboard his flagship, the battleship USS Missouri, in Tokyo Bay on 2 September 1945, when General MacArthur accepted the Japanese surrender. The Missouri has been preserved as a museum at Pearl Harbor, where visitors can stand on the deck where the surrender was signed.

Was Halsey a good admiral?
He was a great leader of men and a mediocre strategist. He was at his best when the task was to inspire and to attack — at Guadalcanal and in the Solomons — and at his worst when the task was to think carefully and weigh risks, as at Leyte Gulf and in the typhoons. Historians generally rank Nimitz as the better strategist and Spruance as the better tactician, but Halsey as the better leader.

12. Sources

1. Wikipedia, “William Halsey Jr.” — dates, career, Guadalcanal, Leyte Gulf, the typhoons and the surrender.
2. Encyclopædia Britannica, “William F. Halsey” — life and assessment.
3. William F. Halsey and J. Bryan III, Admiral Halsey’s Story (McGraw-Hill, 1947) — Halsey’s own memoirs.
4. E. B. Potter, Bull Halsey (Naval Institute Press, 1985) — the standard biography.
5. Thomas B. Buell, Master of Sea Power: A Biography of Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King (Little, Brown, 1980) — Halsey in the context of the Pacific command.
6. Samuel Eliot Morison, History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, Vols. V–XIV — the official history of the Pacific war.
7. James D. Hornfischer, The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (Bantam, 2004) — the Battle off Samar.