John Sidney McCain Jr. (January 17, 1911 – March 22, 1981) was a United States Navy admiral who served in conflicts from the 1940s through the 1970s, including as the Commander, United States Pacific Command.
The son and namesake of a naval officer, McCain grew up in Washington, D.C., and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1931, after which he entered the submarine service. During World War II, he commanded submarines in several theaters of operation and was responsible for sinking several Japanese ships, eventually being decorated with both the Silver Star and Bronze Star. After the war, he held a variety of commands, specializing in amphibious warfare. He led the U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965. He also served in several posts in Washington, including the Legislative Affairs Office and as Chief of Naval Information, where he became influential in political affairs. He was a staunch anti-Communist, and his advocacy of a strong naval presence earned him the nickname of "Mr. Seapower".
During the Vietnam War, McCain was Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), commanding all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater from 1968 to 1972. He was a stalwart supporter of President Richard Nixon's policy of Vietnamization. McCain played a significant role in the militarization of U.S. policy towards Cambodia, helping to convince Nixon to launch the 1970 Cambodian Incursion and establishing a personal relationship with Cambodian leader Lon Nol. McCain was also a proponent of the 1971 incursion into Laos. He retired from the Navy in 1972.
His father, Admiral John S. McCain Sr., was a naval aviator and Task Force commander during World War II. They were the first father-son pair to achieve a four-star rank. He was called "Jack" by his family, His family's history of military service extended beyond his father—his paternal uncle was U.S. Army Brigadier General William Alexander McCain. His family tree also contained other people engaged in military service, which extended back through many wars.
McCain grew up at various naval stations where his father was posted and then in Northwest, Washington, D.C., going to local schools and working as a paperboy.
McCain entered the United States Naval Academy in 1927, aged 16. McCain later stated: "I was known as a 'ratey' plebe, and that's the plebe who does not conform always to the specific rules and regulations of the upperclassmen. Some of these upperclassmen would ... require you to do such things which only incited rebellion and mutiny in me, see." He applied to flight school to become a naval aviator, but was turned down due to a heart murmur, and was accepted at Submarine School at Naval Submarine Base New London in Connecticut instead. the couple eloped to Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, marrying in Caesar's Bar on January 21, 1933. McCain was suspended five days for leaving ship without permission. The couple would have three children: Jean Alexandra "Sandy" McCain (1934−2019, born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone); John Sidney McCain III (1936−2018, also born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station);
The family was frequently uprooted as they followed McCain from New London to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and other stations in the Pacific Ocean; Roberta took on the lead role in raising the children. In 1940 and early 1941, he sailed in the more modern submarine (SS-184) In April 1941, McCain was detached to his first command, the antique (SS-69), recommissioned as a training boat at the Submarine School in New London. The Hooven-Owens-Rentschler (H.O.R.) diesels (known as "whores") which powered Gunnel were troublesome; at one point while returning home, drive gears of all four of the main engines were out of commission, and McCain's crew had to rely on their tiny auxiliary engine for the last . Gunnel went into the navy yard for an extensive refit
After the refit, Gunnel was ordered to the Pacific Fleet, and in June 1943, went on patrol in the East China and Yellow Seas. Early on June 19, he engaged a Japanese convoy that was headed for Shanghai. He torpedoed and sank the freighter Tokiwa Maru (7000 tons) and hit a smaller vessel. Despite the reduced time, the freighter tonnage Gunnel sunk was the second-largest total for any of the sixteen U.S. submarines deployed into operational areas in the Pacific that month.
McCain was awarded the Silver Star for this patrol, for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity in action, as Commanding Officer of a submarine in enemy Japanese-controlled waters ... [and] bravery under fire and aggressive fighting spirit." McCain's personality was a good fit for wartime submarine duty. Many of the U.S. submarine commanders trained in peacetime had focused excessively on conformance to regulations and adherence to official tactical doctrine; they lacked the aggressiveness and ability to improvise that the conflict in the Pacific demanded, and by the end of the first year of the war, almost a third of them had been relieved as inadequate.
Gunnel was the first Pearl Harbor boat to have her H.O.R. diesels replaced, and she returned to action off Iwo Jima in December 1943. Alerted by Station HYPO intelligence to the presence of aircraft carriers, on the night of December 2–3, McCain fired four torpedoes at Japanese carrier at a very long range of , only to miss as Zuihō zigged. Although he did not hit it, McCain was one of only a handful of U.S. submarine commanders to actually attack an enemy carrier. Gunnel did sink one ship of 4000 tons during this patrol.
thumb|left|"Jack" McCain alongside his father, [[John S. McCain Sr.|Admiral John S. "Slew" McCain Sr., on board a U.S. Navy ship in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945
During the May 1944 joint American and British Operation Transom air strike on Surabaya, Gunnel lay off Tawi Tawi in company with Robert I. Olsen's , but McCain managed no attacks on Japanese ships. He shifted his operations to the coast of Indochina, where, on June 8, he picked up a convoy, escorted by yet another aircraft carrier. He was unable to approach closer than . In July 1944, he was detached for a brief return to New London. during his one patrol with that submarine he damaged a large freighter and sank two guard boat-style patrol craft in the East China Sea and the Taiwan Straits. For this action, McCain was awarded the Bronze Star Medal with Combat V.
In addition to his Silver and Bronze Stars, McCain's actions in the war earned him two letters of commendation. He was assigned as Director of Records to the Bureau of Naval Personnel until early 1949. He assumed command of Submarine Division 71 in the Pacific that year, with his flag in , and two exploratory cruises to extreme northern waters,
Now a captain, McCain was assigned to a series of posts at the Pentagon in alternation with various commands. From 1958 to 1960, he was assigned to the Office of the Secretary of the Navy, where he joined the Legislative Affairs Office as Chief Legislative Liaison. McCain was also a member of the Cosmos Club, Army and Navy Club, and the Chevy Chase Club, all in the D.C. area, and was a 33rd degree mason.) During this stint, Rear Admiral McCain became an effective advocate for the Navy in congressional hearings and behind-the-scenes dealmaking, McCain was promoted to vice admiral in July 1963, and was made commander of the entire Amphibious Forces, Atlantic Fleet (COMPHIBLANT). He came up with the idea for Operation Sea Orbit, the voyage around the world without refuelling of three nuclear-powered Navy ships; it was reminiscent of the Great White Fleet circumnavigation that his father had been part of over half a century earlier. Later in 1964, McCain commanded the Operation Steel Pike exercise off the coast of Spain, which was the largest amphibious landing ever in peacetime; and became a prominent public advocate for the geostrategic importance of the merchant marine.
In 1964 McCain was elected as an hereditary member of the Virginia Society of the Cincinnati by right of his descent from his great(4) grandfather Captain John Young who served with the Virginia State Troops during the American Revolution.
In April 1965, McCain led the United States invasion of the Dominican Republic as commander of Task Force 124,
Throughout much of his career, McCain was known for his short and thin stature, and trademark cigar. He gave regular speeches on the subject with an increasing fervor, and worked with his large number of political contacts in what some saw as an effort to get a final promotion.
Beginning in 1965, Senate Minority Leader Dirksen had been championing McCain's case for four-star admiral promotion to President Lyndon Johnson. At the change of command ceremony for the Eastern Sea Frontier post, held on his father's old flagship , McCain was awarded a gold star in lieu of a third Legion of Merit for his work during the U.N. assignment. As the Vietnam War escalated, McCain was a strong advocate for bringing s out of the United States Navy reserve fleets in order to support shore bombardment missions. He ordered a Naval Court of Inquiry to be convened following the June 1967 USS Liberty incident, and chose his colleague, Admiral Isaac C. Kidd Jr., to head it.
McCain's son, naval aviator Lieutenant Commander John S. McCain III, became a prisoner of war in North Vietnam in October 1967, after being shot down and badly injured during a bombing raid over Hanoi. McCain's prominence made the downing of his son front-page news. McCain and his wife Roberta treated the news stoically, attending a dinner party in London without indicating anything was wrong, even though initial word indicated their son was unlikely to have survived the shoot-down. In April 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War, McCain was named by President Johnson as Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Command (CINCPAC), effective in July 1968, stationed in Honolulu and commander of all U.S. forces in the Vietnam theater. In an unprecedented move, Johnson had considered candidates from outside the Navy, including U.S. Army General William Westmoreland, who was leaving as commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV). However, the strong recommendation of Ellsworth Bunker, who had since become U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, was key in Johnson's decision.
McCain was a strong believer in the domino theory, He became well known within the Pentagon and to the press for his fervent briefings on the "Chicom" menace, showing maps with bright-red claws or arrows extending from a bright-red China into much of the area he was responsible for. while to others, he was over-the-top and spoke longer than necessary.
When the Nixon Administration took office in January 1969, the secret National Security Study Memorandum 1 collected views of top officials on the prospects for President Richard Nixon's policy of Vietnamization. McCain suffered a mild stroke around this time, but was back at work a month later. Following an inspection tour of South Vietnam in December 1969, McCain remained very optimistic about the course of the war and the ability of South Vietnamese forces to carry greater burdens. McCain did not give much credence to the anti-Vietnam War movement; in reaction to the popular slogan "Make love, not war", he told a 1970 Naval Academy class that they were part of a fraternity "whose members are men enough to do both." McCain's views, which had the support of his subordinate, MACV commander General Creighton Abrams, helped persuade Nixon to go ahead with the Cambodian Incursion later that month. Kissinger subsequently told another admiral, "We have to be careful about having McCain around the president too much, because he fires up the president." Nevertheless, McCain was involved in the intense U.S. effort to prop up Cambodian leader Lon Nol, paying visits to Phnom Penh to give him assurances and assess the state of the Cambodians. When Lon Nol suffered a stroke in early 1971, he recuperated at McCain's guesthouse in Honolulu. At the same time, a Military Equipment Delivery Team program was organized to supply military assistance to the Cambodian government. McCain gained control of this effort (instead of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam), and to support a conflict that he proprietarily spoke of as "my war", made constant requests to the Pentagon for more arms and staff. He forced an Americanization of many logistics procedures within the Cambodian military. Lon Nol's gratitude towards McCain continued, including the gift of an elephant (soon named "Cincpachyderm") too large to transport on McCain's DC-6.
McCain was also very concerned about the North Vietnamese presence in Laos. He was a proponent of Operation Lam Son 719, the February–March 1971 U.S.-assisted incursion into southeastern Laos by the South Vietnamese Army. He told Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that an offensive against the Ho Chi Minh trail might compel Prince Souvanna Phouma, prime minister of Laos, "to abandon the guise of neutrality and enter the war openly." The operation ended in failure.
Each year while Jack McCain was CINCPAC, he paid a Christmastime visit to the American troops in South Vietnam serving closest to the DMZ; he would stand alone and look north, to be as close to his son as he could get. During Operation Linebacker, the resumed bombing of the north starting in April 1972, the targets included the Hanoi area. The daily orders were issued by McCain, knowing his imprisoned son was in the vicinity.
In March 1972, the Nixon administration announced Admiral Noel Gayler as McCain's successor as CINCPAC, despite McCain's unheeded request to Nixon to have his tour extended so that he could see the war to its conclusion. at the transfer of command ceremony in Honolulu that day, For the next two months, McCain served as special assistant to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. There was no ceremony, as it would have been redundant after the one that took place two months earlier in Hawaii; as one associate said, "He just didn't come to work today." McCain also participated in a January 1978 traveling "Panama Canal Truth Squad", led by Senator Paul Laxalt, that sought Senate rejection of the Panama Canal Treaty; McCain felt that the eventual ceding of the canal to Panamanian control would endanger U.S. security and provide an opening to the Soviets in the region.
However, McCain felt despair over his reluctant retirement from the United States Navy, and fell into prolonged poor health. His son John felt his father's "long years of binge drinking" had caught up with him, despite a mostly successful later recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. He was buried at Arlington National Cemetery on March 27, 1981.
McCain was written about extensively in his son John's 1999 memoir Faith of My Fathers. McCain was portrayed by actor Scott Glenn in the 2005 television movie adaptation.
Grandson John S. "Jack" McCain IV attended and graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 2009, the fourth-generation John S. McCain to do so. including flying helicopters during the War in Afghanistan.
Awards
By the end of his career, Admiral John S. McCain Jr. had received the following medals and decorations:
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|colspan=3|Submarine Warfare insignia
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|Navy Distinguished Service Medal<br> with one star
|Silver Star
|Legion of Merit<br>with two stars
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|Bronze Star<br>with Combat "V"
|Navy Commendation Medal<br>with Combat "V"
|China Service Medal
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|American Defense Service Medal<br>with "FLEET" clasp
|American Campaign Medal
|European-African-Middle<br>Eastern Campaign Medal<br>with one battle star
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|Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal<br>with four battle stars
|World War II Victory Medal
|Navy Occupation Service Medal<br>with "ASIA" clasp
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|National Defense Service Medal<br>with one star
|Korean Service Medal
|Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal
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|Vietnam Service Medal<br>with three stars
|Legion of Honor<br>(Philippines)
|Order of National Security Merit, 1st Class<br>(South Korea)
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|United Nations Korea Medal
|Vietnam Campaign Medal
|Korean War Service Medal
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|colspan=3|Submarine Combat Patrol insignia
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Writings
See also
- List of United States Navy four-star admirals
Bibliography
- Online access to a portion of Chapter 1 is available.
- Online access to Chapter 1 is available.