Husband Edward Kimmel was born on February 26, 1882 in Henderson, Kentucky, United States, the son of Manning Marius Kimmel, a civil engineer and businessman, and Sibbella Lambert. His father, a graduate of West Point, served in the Union cavalry at the First Battle of Bull Run, after which he entered the Confederate service.
Determined to follow his father into the military, Kimmel tried unsuccessfully to enter West Point. He then spent a year at Central University in Richmond, Kentucky. In 1900 he obtained an appointment to the United States Naval Academy; among his classmates was William F. Halsey, Jr. He won high standing in the class of 1904, which was graduated early to fulfill manpower requirements in the new battleship navy. Kimmel was assigned to the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, for postgraduate instruction in ordnance. He immediately excelled in naval gunnery, thereby placing himself in line for key professional posts and promotions. Brief tours of duty on five ships along the eastern seaboard culminated in his being commissioned an ensign and given additional instruction in ordnance engineering in 1906.
Late in 1907 Kimmel was assigned to the battleship Georgia of the "Great White Fleet" for its global cruise. He became the fleet's champion officer of the main battery twelve-inch guns and an important staff officer. Between 1909 and 1917 he served twice as assistant to the director of target practice at the Navy Department, on board two more battleships, and as gunnery officer of the Pacific Fleet. He was wounded slightly at the Veracruz intervention in 1914.
During 1915 he served briefly as aide to Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt. Upon the entry of the United States into World War I in 1917, Kimmel was sent to Great Britain; he materially assisted the Royal Navy in improving its gunfire techniques and participated in a British naval raid on Helgoland in the North Sea. When the American battleship squadron joined the Grand Fleet, he became staff gunnery officer to its commander, Admiral Hugh Rodman. He finished the war as gunnery officer on the Arkansas.
Promoted to the rank of commander in February 1918, Kimmel served at the Naval Gun Factory from 1920 to 1923, successively commanded two destroyer divisions in the Asiatic Fleet. Advanced to captain, he occupied several prestigious posts. In the office of the chief of naval operations (CNO), he was liaison officer between the navy and State Department during the Nicaragua intervention (1926 - 1928). He also served as destroyer squadron commander with the Battle Fleet (1928 - 1930); director of ship movements in the office of the CNO (1930 - 1933); captain of the battleship New York (1933 - 1934); chief of staff of the fleet's battleship command (1934 - 1935); and budget officer of the navy (1935 - 1938). In November 1937 he was advanced to rear admiral.
Assigned to command of a cruiser division, Kimmel made a goodwill tour of South American ports in 1939 and later that year assumed command of all cruisers in the Battle Force, then operating in the Pacific. His bold tactical leadership in this post attracted the notice of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. When the United States Fleet was divided into the Atlantic and Pacific fleets on February 1, 1941, Kimmel was named commander in chief of the Pacific Fleet (while retaining the title of commander in chief of the United States Fleet) and given the temporary rank of four-star admiral; he was advanced over forty-six more-senior admirals because the navy was seeking young, dynamic commanders in its preparations for a probable war with Japan. Headquartered at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Kimmel labored to maintain the credibility of United States naval deterrence in the Pacific at a time when the navy's resources were being diverted to the Atlantic.
On December 7, 1941, the Japanese launched their devastating surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, sinking or disabling most of the battleships moored there and destroying most of the army and navy aircraft in Hawaii. Along with the senior army commander, Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, Kimmel was relieved of command on December 17, reverting to his permanent rank of rear admiral, but he remained in Hawaii during the initial investigation of the disaster by a commission headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts. When the commission found Kimmel and Short guilty of "dereliction of duty, " both men applied for retirement; Kimmel retired on March 1, 1942. A proposed court-martial never materialized. Kimmel was immediately hired by a marine consulting engineering firm in New York under contract to the navy, for which he developed a drydock used in the Pacific war. In the long postwar debate over responsibility for the Pearl Harbor attack, he defended himself in a short book, Admiral Kimmel's Story (1955).
The heated emotions over assigning blame for America's most ignominious defeat have clouded fair judgment of Kimmel's role. However "guilty" American political, diplomatic, and military leaders may have been in underestimating Japan's capability and intention to attack Pearl Harbor, Kimmel was the man on the spot and thus placed in the position of becoming the scapegoat, no matter what evidence might have surfaced to exonerate him. A keen strategist, he had appreciated full well the possibility of a Japanese attack, though he had shared the general belief that war would commence in the Philippines. Tactically, he had made the unfortunate analysis that any attack on Hawaii, if it came, would be from the southwest rather than the northwest. He had thus concentrated his limited patrol planes in the southwest, allowing the enemy to strike from the unprotected northwest. This was his fundamental military error--his "lack of superior judgment" in the words of Admiral Ernest J. King --and the one on which his ultimate performance must be weighed.
Husband Edward Kimmel was well known for his service in the United States Navy during the Mexican Revolution, World War I, and World War II. He served with distinction on several battleships and commanded two destroyer divisions including a destroyer squadron and the USS New York and was in command of Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked.
(Hardcover, published by Henry Regenery Co.)
Kimmel married Dorothy Kinkaid on January 31, 1912. They had three children.
