George Whelan Anderson Jr. (15 December 1906-20 March 1992) was a US Navy admiral and diplomat who served as Chief of Naval Operations from 1 August 1961 to 1 August 1963, succeeding Arleigh Burke and preceding David L. McDonald.
Biography[]
George Whelan Anderson Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York in 1906, and he entered the US Naval Academy in 1923 and graduated in 1927. Anderson served as the navigator aboard the USS Yorktown and as commander of USS Mindoro and USS Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II. Anderson went on to command Task Force 77 between Taiwan and China, Carrier Division 6 during Operation Blue Bat, and the US Navy's quarantine of Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Robert McNamara forced Anderson to retire in 1963 in retribution for his warlike approach towards stopping Soviet submarines during the missile crisis, and he went on tos erve as Ambassador to Portugal from 1963 to 1966 and Chair of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board from 1970 to 1976. He went on to work in advertising and business, and he died in McLean, Virginia in 1992.