Word: command
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...games suggested that an attacking fleet would be spotted and badly mauled. As late as October, Yamamoto learned that the staff admirals, determined to concentrate on the drive into Southeast Asia, wanted to take away two or three of his six carriers. The First Air Fleet's own commander, Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, supported that decision. "The success of our surprise attack on Pearl Harbor," Nagumo predicted dolefully, "will prove to be the Waterloo of the war to follow." Yamamoto sent an aide to inform the navy's high command that if his Pearl Harbor plan was rejected, "he will...
...Navy Department sent an even stronger message to its top commanders, specifically including the Pacific Fleet chief in Pearl Harbor, Admiral Husband Kimmel: "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan . . . have ceased, and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days." Kimmel, 60, a hard-driving disciplinarian who had held his command less than a year, took the warning as "no more than saying that Japan was going to attack someplace...
...year-old "Field Marshal" asked his wife Jean to bring him his Bible, and he read in it, as he did every morning, for about 10 minutes. It brought him little comfort. At this moment of crisis, facing a threat that imperiled his life, his command and his whole world, America's greatest living military hero, the bemedaled veteran of bayonet charges through no-man's-land in France, seemed paralyzed. When he did go to his nearby headquarters, he issued no orders to his forces. Officers seeking instructions found themselves barred from his presence...
Afterward Lieut. Colonel Eugene Eubank telephoned MacArthur's headquarters and said, "I want to report that you no longer have to worry about your Bomber Command. We don't have one. The Japanese have just destroyed Clark Field...
Finally stirring, Yamamoto sent a message of MacArthurian unreality: "The enemy fleet, which has practically been destroyed, is retiring to the east . . . Immediately contact and destroy the enemy." As a further measure, he also relieved Nagumo of his command. And imperial headquarters said a great triumph had been achieved, bringing "supreme power in the Pacific...