america's greatest great war flag officer

56 U N I T E D S TAT E S N AVA L I N S T I T U T E

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Admiral William S. Sims was often accused of beimg an Anglophile. Years before World War I, he had embarrassed the U.S. Navy when he publicly declared unerring American support, down to “every dollar, every drop of blood,” for the British Empire. He also raised hackles during the war when he gave over U.S. ships to British command. But in the end, his approach to naval strategy in the conflict proved prescient.


Reprinted from Naval History with permission; Copyright © 2016 U.S. Naval Institute / www.usni.org

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During the first of the last century’s world wars, General of the Armies John J. Pershing was the most lionized of American flag officers. His, however, was not the most vital part played by an American commanding in

that war. Indeed, the attention garnered by Pershing has long served as a distraction from acknowledgment of the far more laudable contributions to victory of his naval counterpart, Admiral William S. Sims. Furthermore, the path to greatness traveled by Sims affords the student of warfare with a better example of the development of a leader capable of engaging in adaptive thinking under the most demanding of circumstances. The Great War brought forth many new and seemingly intractable problems that only the most nimble of minds could surmount; fortunately for the United States and the Allied cause, Sims was a remarkably fast study.

Pershing’s record as a commander is a subject that is hotly debated, while Sims’ efforts have been somewhat more resistant to scrutiny. Despite criticism from some of his contemporaries that he was too pro-British, Sims acted in a manner that marked him among the most assiduous students of war and the most competent of allies—two claims that few, if any, would make on behalf of Pershing.

Sims’ finest hours came during the darkest days of the war, when France was demoralized to the point of near-paralysis, Russia was being driven out of the conflict by a combination of internal and external influences, Britain was reeling from an unrelenting submarine blockade, and American participation seemed to offer the only path to Allied success. The greatest contribution of U.S. servicemen to victory might very well have been the revitalization their arrival inspired in their French and British allies. However, by the time enthusiastic young American soldiers and Marines were fighting on the Western Front, Britain and France had been saved from defeat by the combined efforts of the American and British navies.

Advancing Despite Scant ProspectsAt first glance, the points of comparison between Sims

and Pershing seem exceedingly strong. They were close in age; Sims was the senior of the two, born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1858, while Pershing was born in Laclede, Missouri, in 1860. Both attended their respective services’

undergraduate academies and entered service at a time when America found itself lacking significant military threats. Both men enjoyed the patronage of Theodore Roosevelt at critical times in their careers. For Pershing, Roosevelt’s support meant rapid promotion, while for a reform-

minded Sims it meant avoiding the wrath of his more orthodox superiors. They were both stars and would rise to lead America’s principal military and naval commands in the Great War. According to Sims, their responsibilities in the conflict were remarkably similar, if not “precisely the same.”1 After the war they would both be credited with producing Pulitzer Prize–winning memoirs. However strong these similarities might appear, Pershing and Sims were the products of two very different systems of professional development, and both approached their duties in ways that were characteristic of the different demands of succeeding in their respective services.

When Pershing graduated from West Point in 1886 he entered an army that was searching for a purpose. According to Edward M. Coffman: “by the 1880s it was apparent that the days of the Indian-fighting army were coming to an end. Army thinkers considered their future in terms of becoming an urban constabulary to deal with the strikes and riots or, more to their liking, of creating a larger and more modern army capable of defending against a European invader.”2 Whatever dreams the minds of those within the Army harbored, the reality was that the service had always suffered from public distrust and neglect; neither the end of the Indian wars nor the Spanish-American War would bring about the development of an army to rival those of Europe’s great powers. Pershing’s misfortune was to be a soldier in an army that did not enjoy the favor of the public and its elected representatives.3

Without prospects for regular promotion, Pershing en-gaged in a good deal of string-pulling and manipulation to garner postings that would advance his career. As one of his more adoring biographers, Frank Vandiver, noted, “he had . . . made a fairly definite decision to stick with the army. This decision did not mean he had to accept his paltry lot without squirming, or that he could not work to better his military position.”4 So it was that in 1896 Persh-ing sought a remedy to continuing service with the 10th Cavalry (one of the famed Buffalo Soldier regiments) by gaining an appointment as aide to General Nelson Miles, then the commanding general of the Army. When Miles received orders to observe the Greco-Turkish War the fol-lowing year, Pershing took the opportunity to return to West Point as a tactical officer. Neither Pershing nor the cadets he supervised enjoyed the experience, his rigid ways earning him their contempt and the sobriquet of “Nigger Jack.”5

The U.S. fighting experience in World War I was framed by a tale of two leaders—the oft-praised General Pershing and the undervalued Admiral Sims.




Pershing would be saved from his predicament on the Hudson by the outbreak of war with Spain in 1898. Using all the connections he could muster, he managed to obtain his return to the 10th Cavalry in time to demonstrate that he was a good and courageous soldier. Pershing and Roosevelt were prewar acquaintances, and figuratively (almost literally) fighting side by side helped to build a strong bond between the two men. Following combat in Cuba, Pershing would distinguish himself in the suppression of insurrection in the Philippines. His outstanding record in these affairs won the s u p p o r t o f b y - n o w President Roosevelt, who nominated Pershing for a promotion that moved him f rom capta in to brigadier general—passing over more than 860 officers senior to him in service.

On his path to general, Pershing had skipped many opportunities to enhance his professional knowledge. In 1904 he was appointed a student to the Army War College, an assignment that would last but a few months; he abandoned it in favor of taking a posting to observe the Russo-Japanese War. Considering Pershing’s penchant for “open warfare” in 1918, it is fairly obvious that he learned no more than any of his European counterparts who studied the same bloody conflict. In sum, Pershing did well in promoting his own cause at a time when the Army offered scant prospects for a notable career. Unfortunately, as a the future commander of the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), his quest for better positions did not leave him much time to develop intellectually into a soldier with an appreciation for the changing character of war.

The Intellectually Curious CareeristThe contrasts between Sims and Pershing, and the

services responsible for their development, were stark. Neither of these officers could be termed “typical,” but they both reflected the different standards of professionalism embraced by their respective services. While Pershing’s experiences before World War I were insufficient to prepare him for the tasks associated with his command of the AEF, Sims serves well as an exemplar of military/

naval professionalism. The beneficiary of both formal education and practical experience, Sims demonstrated a tremendous ability to adapt to the challenges posed

by waging war in an age of unprecedented technological development.

Graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1880, Sims entered a

service that was on a different trajectory than its land-bound

counterpart. Although subject to similar budgetary neglect

in the first decades after the Civil War, American naval

professionals did not allow their service to stagnate. In 1873, the U.S.

Naval Institute was founded by a group of instructors at the Naval Academy, creating a

forum for the exchange of ideas that exists to this day, and has never been equaled by either of the other services.

Indeed, the Navy seemed to contain an extraordinary allotment of energetic and gifted thinkers, foremost among those being Stephen B. Luce. Working to establish an intellectually more vibrant Navy, Luce had the opportunity to influence officer development beyond the example he set through his service at sea, first as an instructor at the Naval Academy, starting in 1860, then as commandant of Midshipmen in the years immediately following the Civil War, and later as the founding president of the Naval War College. Luce laid the foundation for an officer corps that would prove able to think and act across the levels of war, and there was no shortage of men willing to build on that foundation.

Naval service also provided Sims with an opportunity to study war in a very practical way. At about the same time Pershing was completing an assignment as head of the University of Nebraska’s ROTC detachment (an assignment that enabled him to simultaneously create well-drilled cadets and earn a law degree), Sims was

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From leading a regiment of Buffalo Soldiers to fighting in the Spanish-American War and the Philippine Insurrection, General John J. Pershing had managed by luck and by pluck to rise in the ranks of the U.S. Army; he was destined

to be most indelibly etched in the public’s consciousness

as commander of the American Expeditionary Force in World War I.



serving as the intelligence officer of the protected cruiser Charleston. In that position he was tasked with observing and reporting on a wide range of naval affairs during the Sino-Japanese War. He assessed both technology and training and, early in his career, found himself detailing the comparative merits of equipping the man, and manning the equipment. Specifically, Sims noted that Japanese success was founded more on superior organization and skill at arms than advantages in technology.6 His analytical abilities impressed the Office of Naval Intelligence, and in 1897 he took up the duties of naval attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. His thoroughness in this job won him the admiration of then–Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt.

According to Sims, his time spent in France was a career turning point. His observations of European navies shattered his impressions of American naval adequacy. On this matter Sims is purported to have said: “When I went over to the other side, I got acquainted with the French Navy, and the British Navy, and, God Help our Souls, the Russian Navy, too. I found that we were not in it at all, either in design or in marksmanship, and I made report after report.”7

Effectively observing and reporting became hallmarks of Sims. While on assignment to China he made the acquaintance of Captain Percy

Scott, the Royal Navy officer who gained fame developing a system for improving the accuracy of naval gunfire. Sims was thoroughly impressed by what Scott had accomplished and sought to import the Briton’s improvements to the United States. As noted in Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske’s memoir, Sims was a forceful and somewhat unorthodox advocate for reform. At a time when Pershing sought to use his connections for the advancement of his career,

Sims used his connections to advance the efficiency of his service. According to Fiske:

Realizing the inertia of the department [the Navy’s Bureau of Ordnance] and the straightforward character of President Roosevelt, Sims wrote to him direct, which was a most improper proceeding from the point of view of officialdom. Mr. Roosevelt took up the matter at once and with his accustomed force. Backed by this, Sims was able to bring about an actual revolution in our methods of target practice, and in the matters of the construction of ordnance apparatus as applied to naval gunnery. Among other things he brought it about that some strongly constructed telescope-sights were made, and that target practice was held with them.8

While the changes wrought by Sims’ insubordinate act were not as immediate as Fiske recounted, the point that Sims put his career in jeopardy for the sake of improving

the Navy’s preparedness for war was indisputable. Circumventing the chain of command was a

risky undertaking, but it was a calculated risk that paid handsome dividends.

Rather than irritate the new President, Sims became one of his

favorites, eventually becoming his naval aide in 1907. On his way to that post, Sims had been se lec ted by Roosevelt to spar with no less an iconic figure than Alfred Thayer Mahan. The subject of the war of words was the advent of HMS Dreadnought and the inevitable turn to constructing all-big-gun battleships. Sims’ advocacy

for change carried the day and further impressed

Roosevelt.9 Although Sims did not reap so large a reward

as promotion to flag rank, he did receive command of the battleship

Minnesota, despite only being a commander and not having exercised

a previous command at sea.10 In another area of contrast with Pershing,

Sims, too, was assigned to his service’s war college. Unlike Pershing at the Army War College, Sims remained at the Naval War College for two years and endeavored to gain a fuller understanding of the demands of his

U.S. NAVAL INSTITUTE PHOTO ARCHIVE

Sims’s career was remarkably parallel in many respects to Pershing’s; The two men were roughly the same age, both had enjoyed the patronage of Theodore Roosevelt, and both would be crucial to the American cause in World War I. But there the similarities ended—they were, above all, a study in stark contrasts.



profession. At Newport, Sims evolved from a tactical thinker and observer of naval affairs into a planner with a thorough understanding of the operational and strategic levels of war. It would be fair to say that Sims had spent the majority of his career thinking about the future of war. As an intelligence officer he had considered the weaponry and tactics of friends and potential foes alike. He had worked tirelessly to understand the changing shape of war at sea, and then took the extraordinary step of arguing at all hazards for corresponding evolutions within the Navy. By 1917 he may well have been the best-prepared flag officer the Navy ever sent to face the challenge of war.

Under Which Flag to Fight?By 1917, being at the point of decision was certainly

nothing new to Pershing. He had demonstrated his worth in real fighting in Cuba and the Philippines. He also had recently commanded an expedition into Mexico, making

him one of very few officers worthy of consideration for leading American forces on their greatest expedition to date. Unfortunately, those formative experiences were far removed in complexity from the challenges that would confront Pershing as commander of the AEF. The Army’s unpreparedness was not entirely Pershing’s fault. The service was so small that when Pershing was sent to chase Mexican revolutionary/bandit Pancho Villa in 1916, the Army had to close its artillery school at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to meet

the needs of providing artillery to protect the border.11 Thus, as Europe was embroiled in the greatest gunners’ war yet, the U.S. Army was forced to close its center for the distillation and dissemination of lessons learned on artillery on the figurative eve of entering that war.

Not surprisingly, when the United States entered World War I, Sims and Pershing were disposed to make contributions that reflected the “wisdom” accumulated over the courses of two distinctive and distinctly different careers. Perhaps the greatest difference between the two concerned the issue of whether U.S. forces should be placed under the service of another country’s commander. Secretary of War Newton Baker had directed Pershing that “the underlying idea must be kept in view that the forces of the United States are a separate and distinct component of the combined forces, the identity of which must be preserved.”12 These were not difficult instructions to heed, as Pershing was staunchly against amalgamation.

So, when queried about the prospects of letting Americans serve in British divisions, he informed British media magnate Lord Northcliffe: “it is all very well to make such an appeal to us but it is impossible to ignore our national viewpoint. The people themselves would not approve, even though the President should lean that way. I am strongly opposed to it. We cannot permit our men to serve under another flag except in extreme emergency and then only temporarily.”13


Serving as intelligence officer on board the protected cruiser Charleston, Sims observed and reported on the Sino-Japanese War. He gained valuable and far-reaching insight from the assignment, noting that “Japanese success was founded more on superior organization and skill at arms than advantages in technology.” His subsequent posting to Europe “shattered his impressions of American naval adequacy.”



Meanwhile, Sims had a much higher level of trust in the competence of his Allied (British) counterparts, and he showed no compunction over placing the most important assets assigned to him under British operational command. As the first American destroyers arrived at Queenstown, Ireland, for antisubmarine patrols, they were placed under the operational command of Vice Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly of the Royal Navy. According to Sims:

The fact that these American destroyers were placed under the command of a British Admiral was somewhat displeasing to certain Americans. I remember that one rather bumptious American correspondent, on a visit to Queenstown, was loud in expressing his disapproval of this state of affairs, and even threatened to “expose” us all in the American press. The fact that I was specifically commissioned as destroyer commander also confused the situation. Yet the procedure was entirely proper, and, in fact, absolutely necessary.14

S ims under s tood the d i re circumstances confronting Britain and the Allied cause in the early months of

1917, and he knew that the British were intellectually adept enough to know how best to campaign against the U-boat menace. In his memoir The Victory at Sea, Sims recounted how British First Sea Lord Admiral John Jellicoe was well aware that convoys offered the best means to break the grip of the U-boats. Unfortunately, merchant captains were reluctant to put their faith in the idea, and Britain did not have an adequate supply of

escort vessels.15 The problem as Sims saw it was one of resources. The Royal Navy

needed to maintain the lion’s share of its naval strength in the North

Sea to keep the German surface fleet from breaking

out . This meant that British destroyers needed to remain with the Royal Navy’s Grand Fleet and could not be spared for convoy duty.16

Realizing the many facets of the problem

confronting the Allies in waging a naval war, Sims was

not constrained by adherence to the same perceptions of national

strategy that guided Pershing. Sims was capable of thinking at the grand strategic

level, and in his pressing for the delivery of more destroyers and transports (as opposed to the continued building of capital ships) he demonstrated that he was an effective partner in waging coalition warfare. In retrospect, Sims offered the opinion that “it is improbable that any one nation could have won the naval war; that was a task which demanded not only that we should all exert our fullest energies, but that, so far as it was humanly possible, we should exert them as a unit.”17

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The October 1918 Meuse-Argonne offensive gave American forces a bitter taste of combat, World War I–style, at the cost of 100,000 casualties. It was also a personal/professional setback for Pershing, who finally handed over the reins of First Army to Lieutenant General Hunter Liggett. But Pershing’s career, along with his reputation, would rebound.


Sims arrives in Washington in April 1919, where he is greeted by Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. Sims’ best-selling postwar memoir, The Victory at Sea, would vindicate his naval views, yet popular history would end up remembering Pershing’s name more than Sims’ in relation to the U.S. effort in World War I.



To Which Victor Go the Laurels?Pershing did allow American forces to serve temporarily

under foreign commanders, but he never relinquished control of the AEF. He played to the expectation that America would make a distinct contribution to victory—regardless of how poorly prepared he and his army were to take on so formidable a task. It is true that when the United States entered the war the British and French armies had done little to inspire the sort of confidence that Britain’s Royal Navy engendered in Sims. Indeed, shortly after the U.S. entry, the French launched the disastrous Nivelle Offensive, and the British would follow suit with their own abysmal offensive in the Ypres salient. Nevertheless, Pershing’s ideas on how to fight in this most lethal of wars was a regression to the naivety shown by those leading armies in the war’s first years. He put his faith in “open warfare,” a tactical nightmare that relied on superior American fighting spirit and marksmanship (along with organizing his forces into bigger divisions than those of the British and French).18

The AEF’s results were not the unqualified success associated with American naval forces. By the time U.S. ground forces were ready for large-scale offensive action, the Germans had sapped much of their own strength through various offensives in the spring of 1918. Yet Americans would still be savaged in their biggest push against the enemy. The handpicked best American divisions performed well during the Saint-Mihiel offensive, but the remainder of the AEF found progress in the Meuse-Argonne exceedingly difficult. As one Pershing critic contended, the Meuse-Argonne offensive was a personal disaster for the AEF’s commander:

On October 12, tacitly admitting he did not have the answer to the Argonne, Pershing gave [Lieutenant General Hunter] Liggett command of First Army and created Second Army under [Lieutenant General Robert Lee] Bullard, to operate east of the Meuse. Pershing became the commander of the army group—chairman of the board instead of chief executive officer. The First Army continued the attack for another seven days, finally breaching the Kriemhilde Stellung on October 19. It had taken three weeks and 100,000 casualties to achieve what Pershing and his staff had thought they could do in a single day.19

A final assessment of the two commanders was offered by their coalition partners. The British were impressed with Sims to the point they wanted to reward him with an honorary seat on the Admiralty Board. Although President Woodrow Wilson disallowed the honor, and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels (a man Sims viewed as an

adversary of the worst sort) endorsed the rejection, the point remains that the British appreciated Sims and his contributions to victory in the fullest.20 Pershing did not inspire much affection in his Allied partners. During the Meuse-Argonne fiasco that prompted Pershing to relinquish control of First Army, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau became so infuriated with Pershing that he desperately admonished Marshal Ferdinand Foch to report the general’s unsatisfactory performance to President Wilson.21

Despite the ire of the Allies, Pershing emerged from the war as an American hero second to none. The conflict would last less than a month beyond Clemenceau’s faultfinding, and Americans were not in the mood to be critical of a winning general. Sims, however, had contributed tremendously to Allied success, and those most willing to proclaim that fact seemed to be the Allies.

The cornerstones of his success were a lifetime of preparation and an abundance of courage—both of which were committed to the betterment of the U.S. Navy and the cause of Allied victory. For being the more assiduous student of war, and the wiser strategic thinker, William S. Sims deserves to be remembered as the best flag officer the United States sent to wage World War I, and as one of the finest exemplars of professionalism the Navy ever produced.

1. William S. Sims, The Victory at Sea (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984), 75–76.2. Edward M. Coffman, The Regulars: The American Army 1898–1941(Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press), i.3. Ibid., 4-5.4. Frank E. Vandiver, Black Jack: The Life and Times of John J. Pershing (College Station: Texas A&M University Press), 155.5. Ibid., 168, 171.6. Elting E. Morison, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1942), 43.7. Sims quoted in Morison, 57.8. Bradley A. Fiske, From Midshipman to Rear-Admiral (New York: the Century Company, 1919), 347.9. Morison, 104–105, 164–173.10. Branden Little and Kenneth J. Hagan, “Radical, but Right,” Nineteen-gun Salute: Case Studies of Operational, Strategic, and Diplomatic Naval Leadership During the 20th and Early 21st Centuries, ed. John B. Hattendorf and Bruce A. Elleman (Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2010), 4.11. Mark E. Grotelueschen, Doctrine Under Trial: American Artillery Employment in World War I (Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 2001), 4.12. Letter from Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to Major General John J. Pershing, reproduced in John J. Pershing, My Experiences in the World War (New York: Frederick Stokes Company, 1931), vol. 1, 38. 13. Ibid., 254.14. Sims, 74–75.15. Sims, 103–106.16. Sims, 36–38.17. Sims, 245.18. Thomas Fleming, “Iron General,” Military History Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 2 (1995), 61.19. Fleming, 71. 20. Josephus Daniels, The Wilson Era: Years of War and After 1917-1923 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1946), 495.21. Doughty, 493–494.


america's greatest great war flag officer

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