Ernest Joseph King (23 November 1878-25 June 1956) was a US Navy Fleet Admiral who served as Chief of Naval Operations from 2 March 1942 to 15 December 1945, succeeding Harold R. Stark and preceding Chester W. Nimitz.
Biography[]
Ernest Joseph King was born in Lorain, Ohio in 1878 to a Scottish immigrant father and an English immigrant mother. He graduated from the Naval Academy in 1901 and took command of the destroyer USS Terry during the United States occupation of Veracruz in 1914. During World War I, he served on the staff of Atlantic Fleet commander Vice Admiral Henry T. Mayo, and he came to head the Naval Postgraduate School, command submarine divisions, serve as Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, and take command of the Atlantic Fleet in February 1941. Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, he became commander-in-chief, United States Fleet, and he succeeded Admiral Harold R. Stark as Chief of Naval Operations in March 1942. King commanded the Tenth Fleet in the Battle of the Atlantic while also taking the lead in formulating the strategy of the Pacific War, obtaining additional resources for the Pacific theater of World War II. King, who acquired a reputation as an Anglophobe, opposed any operations that would aid the British, French, and Dutch in regaining their prewar colonial possessions. Promoted to Fleet Admiral in December 1944, he left active duty in December 1945 and died in Kittery, Maine in 1956.