Dan Able Kimball

Background

Dan Able Kimball was born on March 01, 1896 in St. Louis, Missouri, United States, the son of John H. Kimball and Mary Able.

Education

Kimball attended public schools in St. Louis. Accounts differ as to whether he graduated from Soldan High School there or quit to take a job as a mechanic in a garage that repaired electric automobiles. In any case, he furthered his education by studying engineering through correspondence courses. During World War I, Kimball enlisted in the army to learn aviation. He completed ground school in Berkeley, California, and flight training at Rockwell Field in San Diego, where he was a classmate of Jimmy Doolittle. Although Kimball was urged by his superiors to seek a career in army aviation, he preferred to return to civilian life and was discharged in 1919 as a first lieutenant, having done a stint as an engineering test pilot.

Career

In 1919 Kimball secured a sales job with the General Tire and Rubber Company and soon progressed through the corporation's ranks as Los Angeles area manager and then manager of the eleven-state western region. When World War II came, General Tire and Rubber secured extensive defense contracts, manufacturing life rafts and many other items. Its newly acquired subsidiary, the Aerojet Engineering Corporation of Azusa, California, brought into large-scale production the jet-assisted take-off (JATO) apparatus to help boost planes off short runways. Kimball was named both a vice-president of the parent corporation and executive vice-president and general manager of Aerojet. He stayed with Aerojet after the war. The company helped to develop the Aerobee rocket, used for weather research in the early years of the nation's space program.

In addition to his business career, Kimball was active in California politics. He almost sought the California Democratic party's gubernatorial nomination in 1950 but concluded that no one could defeat the popular Republican Earl Warren and decided not to enter the contest. Kimball had been named assistant secretary of the navy for air in February 1949. Shortly thereafter Secretary of Defense Louis Johnson halted construction of a supercarrier in order to fund additional B-36 bombers for the air force. Both the secretary and the undersecretary of the navy resigned in protest. Johnson dissuaded Kimball from following their example. Kimball was soon named undersecretary, a position he held until July 1951, when he became secretary of the navy.

The energetic Kimball was the right man for the post, for the continuing feud over the supercarrier and other matters had led to the resignation of the navy's top uniformed officer, Chief of Naval Operations Louis Denfeld, and to ill feelings between Secretary of the Navy Francis Matthews and other high-ranking officers. In contrast to his predecessor Matthews, whose ignorance of naval affairs at the time of his appointment was such that he had been nicknamed "the rowboat secretary, " Kimball had become well schooled in naval matters prior to assuming the top civilian office in the Navy Department. A tall, heavyset man, Kimball was hardworking and affable, ideally suited for dealing with admirals, his counterparts in the defense establishment, and influential congressmen. Due in part to Kimball's skills and in part to the Korean conflict, which made it easier to secure defense appropriations, the navy was able to gain funding for nuclear submarines and for large carriers of the new Forrestal class capable of handling planes that could deliver atomic bombs. The keel for the submarine Nautilus, the world's first nuclear-powered vessel, was laid during his tenure, although plans had been made for it before Kimball became secretary. A forceful advocate of modernization, Kimball urged the construction of other nuclear-powered ships, including carriers, and insisted that priority be given to replacing guns with guided missiles as the navy's primary antiaircraft weapon. Kimball also called for enhanced defenses against Soviet submarines.

When he left office in January 1953 to return to General Tire, Kimball could claim that his service had been "enjoyable and satisfying"; it certainly strengthened the navy. In July 1953, Kimball became president of the renamed Aerojet-General Corporation and continued with the company as president and subsequently chairman until his retirement in 1969. His contribution to civic life did not end with his departure from the Navy Department. He was perhaps proudest of his efforts to secure construction of a factory in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles after the riots of 1965. Priority in hiring went to those who had not completed high school and/or who had police records. Kimball arranged for management personnel to receive training at Aerojet, hoping to develop a leadership cadre prior to turning over operation of the factory to Watts residents. He died in Washington, D. C.

Achievements

• Kimball's chief successes were with Aerojet General Corporation, where he became one of the most influential figures in the aerospace industry, and in his four years in the Navy Department. A strong but tactful leader, he provided continuity in the navy's civilian hierarchy as undersecretary and in his tenure as secretary helped restore a sense of purpose to a demoralized and dissension-ridden service.

Politics

A lifelong Democrat, Kimball backed Franklin D. Roosevelt throughout the twelve years of Roosevelt's presidency and helped raise funds for Harry Truman's 1948 campaign.

Connections

Kimball married Dorothy Ames on June 22, 1925. They had no children. After his first marriage ended in divorce in 1957, he married Doris Fleeson, a syndicated political columnist, in August 1958.

Father:

John H. Kimball

Mother:

Mary Able

Spouse:

Dorothy Ames

Spouse:

Doris Fleeson

References

• American Secretaries of the Navy, Volume II, 1913-1972
• American Civil-Military Decisions: a Book of case Studies.
• A whale of a territory;: The story of Bill O'Neil,