Charles M. Cooke (Admiral)

Vice Admiral Cooke

Charles Maynard Cooke Jr. (Born December 19, 1886 in Fort Smith , Arkansas , † December 24, 1970 in Sonoma County , California ) was an American admiral .

He was Admiral King's chief planning officer . From 1945 to 1948 he was in command of the 7th Fleet ( Naval Forces Western Pacific ).

Life

Charles "Savvy" Cooke earned a degree from the University of Arkansas in 1906 and then entered the US Naval Academy in Annapolis , Maryland , from which he graduated in 1910 as the second best of his class.

He then served on the battleships Connecticut , Maine and Alabama until 1913 and was promoted to lieutenant at sea - after the prescribed two years had expired. He was then trained as a submarine leader and took command of the submarine E-2 (formerly Sturgeon ) as a first lieutenant . From 1916 to 1918 he served ashore at the Quincy , Massachusetts shipyard ( Inspection Duty ). In June 1917 promoted to lieutenant captain and in July 1918 to corvette captain for the duration of the war, he supervised the equipment of the submarine R-2 and became the commander after its commissioning in January 1919.

From 1919 to 1920 Cooke repeated the same thing again for the larger submarine S-5 and distinguished itself when it sank off Delaware Bay on September 1, 1920 due to a water ingress through an air valve accidentally not closed .

For the next decade, Cooke served as executive officer on the submarine tender Rainbow , had land uses on the Cavite and Mare Island naval bases , was gun officer on battleship Idaho, and served in the Department of the Navy. From 1931 to 1933 he led a submarine department, attended the senior course at Naval War College , was in command of the naval station in Guantánamo Bay , was once again at the Ministry of the Navy and then an operational planning and supply officer ( War Plans and Logistics Officer ) on the staff the United States Fleet .

Promoted to sea captain in June 1938 , Cooke returned to Washington, DC and became a staff officer on the operations planning staff of the Chief of Naval Operations CNO. In February 1941 he took command of the battleship Pennsylvania , which he also led during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and until 1942. Appointed Rear Admiral, Cooke was then the chief planning officer on the staff of Ernest J. Kings , who was at the same time Commander in Chief of the US Fleet (CINCUS) and Chief of Naval Operations (CNO). He played an important role on King's staff until the end of World War II. He was most recently Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Operations) and Vice Admiral King's Deputy, and is considered the most brilliant planner of the Pacific War .

From October 2, 1945 to February 28, 1948, as a four-star admiral, he commanded the 7th Fleet , which was renamed Naval Forces Western Pacific on January 1, 1947 . After his retirement in May 1948, he settled in Sonoma County , California, where he died on December 24, 1970.

literature

• Alvin J. Hill: Under Pressure. The Final Voyage of Submarine S-Five. The Free Press, New York NY 2002, ISBN 0-7432-3677-7 (Paperback: New American Library, New York NY 2003, ISBN 0-451-20911-7 ).