Edward W. Eberle

Edward Walter Eberle (born August 17, 1864 in Denton , Texas , USA - † July 6, 1929 in Washington, DC ) was an American admiral and 3rd  Chief of Naval Operations from July 21, 1923 to November 14, 1927.

Edward Eberle, an American in the first generation, experienced during his career as an officer the transformation of the US Navy from a small, mainly sail-powered, civil war fleet to a modern and professional navy and played a key role in this development. He dealt particularly with the ship artillery and wrote the first modern training manual about it. In addition, he promoted ship communication by radio, the use of smoke screens during combat, which became the standard for the entire Navy, and was one of the first to recognize the importance of airplanes for exploring and eliminating submarines.

Life

Edward Eberle , 1921

Edward Walter Eberle was the fifth son of Joseph Eberle, a Swiss emigrant (1846) and Confederate officer, originally from Walenstadt in Sarganserland , Switzerland, and his wife Mary Stemler, born in Denton, Texas, but grew up in Fort Smith , Arkansas , to where his family moved in 1865. Thanks to his father's good connections with a congressman, he was drafted to the US Naval Academy in Annapolis , Maryland , and graduated there in 1885.

During the next ten years he served on various ships and stations and showed particular talent for on-board armament and naval artillery, but was also used on board the USS Albatross in sea surveying and mapping (1887).

After five years of service in Asian waters, he returned to the United States, became an instructor at the Naval Academy for two years, and then went to sea as a first lieutenant ( July 12, 1896 ) on the new battleship USS Oregon . There he distinguished himself in the Spanish-American War as the commander of the front - rotating - gun turret in the Battle of Santiago in 1898 when he effectively shot at the fast Spanish armored cruiser Cristóbal Colón , so that it ultimately dropped the flag and stopped fighting (even if no direct hits had been made with the heavy artillery).

Promoted to lieutenant captain, he then served as flag lieutenant and adjutant to the commander in chief of the Asian station, Admiral Barker , in Manila . In the first years of the 20th century he further developed his knowledge of the field of ship artillery and became one of the leading experts in this field.

During the 14-month voyage of the Great White Fleet around the world, Eberle was first officer of the battleship USS Louisiana (1907-1908) and was then commander of the naval training station in San Francisco until he was in 1910 captain of the training ship USS Pensacola and then the USS Milwaukee has been. From 1910 to 1911 he guided the USS Wheeling and the USS Petrel on a voyage around the world.

From 1911 to 1913 he was in command of the newly formed Atlantic Torpedo Flotilla and was promoted to captain of the sea in 1912. After several other uses on board and on land, including as captain of the armored cruiser USS Washington , he became superintendent of the Naval Academy in 1915. Eberle remained in this post during the First World War . In 1918 he was appointed temporary rear admiral from 1919 to 1921 in command of the 5th and then the 7th battleship divisions of the Atlantic Fleet and, after Admiral Rodman's resignation in 1921, became commander of the Pacific Fleet with the temporary rank of admiral.

On July 23, 1923, Secretary of the Navy Curtis D. Wilbur , Eberle's classmate at the Naval Academy, appointed him third Chief of Naval Operations CNO ( Chief of Naval Operations , the highest operational command in the Navy). His four years in this position were marked by an effort to maintain the scope of the Navy - despite the limitations set by the Washington Naval Treaty of February 6, 1922, the government's austerity plans and the political attacks on naval aviation. Eberle managed to get budgets to modernize the battleships, to build a fleet of eight heavy cruisers and to complete the aircraft carriers USS Lexington and USS Saratoga .

After his four-year tenure as CNO, Eberle was chairman of the Executive Committee of the General Board of the Navy until his retirement in August 1928 . He died on July 6, 1929 at the Naval Hospital in Washington, DC, and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Marriage and family

In 1889 he married Tazie Harrison (1865-1924) of San Francisco, a relative of President Benjamin Harrison . They had a son, Edward Randolph Eberle (1890-1935), who also served in the US Navy.

Namesake

The ships USS Eberle (1940) and USS Admiral EW Eberle (1945) are named after him.

Publications

• Guns and Torpedo Drills for the United States Navy. Naval Institute, Annapolis MD 1900.

literature

• Leo J. Daugherty: Eberle, Edward Walter. - American National Biography Online , February 2000. (Access Date: Wed Sep 07 2005 13:16:55 GMT + 0200).
• Clark G. Reynolds: Famous American Admirals. Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York NY et al. 1978, ISBN 0-442-26068-7 (Reprint: Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 2002, ISBN 1-55750-006-1 ).
• Richard Turk: Rear Adm. Edward W. Eberle. In: Robert William Love (Ed.): The Chiefs of Naval Operations. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis MD 1980, ISBN 0-87021-115-3 .
• Walter Zürcher: From sailor to US admiral. In: International shipping. 10/2000 online .