Background
Harold was born on November 12, 1880 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Colonel Benjamin Franklin Stark, commander of the Ninth Pennsylvania Regiment, and Mary Francis Warner.
Harold was born on November 12, 1880 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Colonel Benjamin Franklin Stark, commander of the Ninth Pennsylvania Regiment, and Mary Francis Warner.
Stark entered the United States Naval Academy in 1899 and graduated in 1903.
His first major assignment was aboard the gunboat Newport on the Eastern seaboard and in the Caribbean, from 1904 to 1906.
He then circumnavigated the globe with his ship as part of the Great White Fleet. Between 1909 and 1915 he successively commanded two torpedo boats and two destroyers in the Atlantic, during which he formed a close friendship with the assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After a year as engineering officer of a cruiser, Stark served at the Naval Torpedo Station in Newport, Rhod Island, which qualified him for command of the Asiatic Fleet's Torpedo Flotilla in 1917.
Upon successfully taking its five aged vessels from Manila to Gibraltar that summer, he served in London as aide to Admiral William S. Sims, commander of United States naval forces in Europe during World War I. Stark moved through a series of choice positions of the battleship-oriented navy after the war, becoming an expert in matters of ordnance (gunnery).
He was well suited for the diplomatic and key administrative assignments that assured his steady advancement. Between 1919 and 1923, he served as executive officer of two separate battleships and of the naval training station at Norfolk, and was a senior student at the Naval War College.
He commanded the ammunition ship Nitro in home waters during 1924 and 1925, followed by three years as chief ordnance inspector at the Dahlgren proving ground and Indian Head powder factory.
Promoted to captain, Stark was chief of staff of the Battle Fleet destroyer force (1928 - 1930) and aide to successive secretaries of the navy Charles Francis Adams and Claude A. Swanson (1930 - 1933). He commanded the battleship West Virginia for a year, culminating with his posting as chief of the Bureau of Ordnance in the rank of rear admiral late in 1934.
He returned to sea in September 1937 as commander of a division of cruisers, the following May moving up to command of all the cruisers in the Battle Force. President Roosevelt, long an admirer, bypassed fifty-nine senior officers to appoint Stark chief of naval operations, the navy's highest administrative post.
He assumed it and the rank of full admiral on August 1, 1939. One month later World War II broke out in Europe, forcing Stark to grapple with the daunting problem of optimizing the navy's size and strength. Through Carl Vinson's initiatives in Congress, Stark settled for a moderate increase in naval expenditure of 11 percent early in 1940, but after the fall of France that summer he enthusiastically oversaw the 70 percent increase Congress authorized.
The prospect of the United States being drawn into a global conflict led to Stark's most singular achievement: that November, a year before the United States entered the war formally, he devised "Plan Dog, " which evolved into "Rainbow 5, " the Allied strategic priority to defeat Germany before defeating Japan.
Throughout 1941 he developed a close working relationship with the British, especially at the Atlantic Charter meeting in August and as presiding officer for the United States military leaders in the initial post-Pearl Harbor meetings with the British between December 24, 1941 and January 14, 1942.
When his office was merged with that of commander in chief United States Fleet two months later, Stark was transferred to London as commander of United States naval forces in Europe. In this capacity he cemented Anglo-American wartime naval relations and acted as de facto ambassador to the Free French of Charles de Gaulle and other governments in exile.
He died in Washington in 1972.
He married Katherine Adelle Rhoads in July 1907; they had two children.