Thomas Cassin Kinkaid served as an admiral in the United States Navy during World War II. He built a reputation as a "fighting admiral" in the aircraft carrier battles of 1942 and commanded the Allied forces in the Aleutian Islands Campaign.
Background
Kinkaid was born on April 3, 1888 in Hanover, New Hampshire, the second child and only son of Thomas Wright Kinkaid, a naval officer, and his wife Virginia Lee née Cassin. When Thomas was only a year old, his father was posted to USS Pinta, and the family moved to Sitka, Alaska, where a third child, Dorothy, was born in 1890. Over the next few years the family successively moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Norfolk, Virginia; Annapolis, Maryland and Georgetown, Washington, D. C.
Education
Kinkaid attended Western High School for three years before entering a U. S. Naval Academy preparatory school. He graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1911.
Career
Having served with the British admiralty in World War I, Kinkaid became gunnery officer of the U. S. S. Arizona in the latter months of that war. From 1938 until 1941 he was naval attaché at the American embassies in Rome, and in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. In June 1940 he returned to the Navy Department, and from March to December 1941 was attached to the office of the chief of naval operations. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, Kinkaid was promoted to the rank of rear admiral (1942) and sent to the Pacific theater, where he assumed command of a cruiser division and was a task-force commander in the battles of the Coral Sea, Midway, and the Solomon Islands (1942). The following year he was named commander in chief of the naval forces in the North Pacific and directed the unopposed landings of United States forces on Kiska Island in August 1943, which soon ended the Aleutian campaign. He was promoted to the rank of vice admiral in June 1943. In November of that year, Kinkaid was appointed commander of the United States Seventh Fleet, and during April and May of 1944 he supported all of General Douglas MacArthur's major operational landings in the Admiralties, Hollandia, the Philippines, and Borneo. During the battle for Leyte Gulf, October 24, 1944, his Seventh Fleet, with Admiral Halsey's Third Fleet, dealt the Japanese navy its death blow, knocking out two of its forces converging on the gulf. In September 1945 he accepted the surrender of the Japanese army and navy in Korea, and two months later he was made a full admiral. After a short tour of duty as commander of the Western Sea Frontier, he was placed in command of the Atlantic Reserve Fleet in 1946. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Medal after the Coral Sea action. He retired from active duty May 1, 1950. Kinkaid died on November 17, 1972, in Bethesda, Maryland.
Achievements
Membership
Member of the National Security Training Commission, Commander Eastern Sea Frontier, Commander Sixteenth Fleet
Connections
Kinkaid met Helen Sherburne Ross (1892-1980), the daughter of a Philadelphia businessman. The two were married on 24 April 1911 in the Silver Chapel of St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia in a ceremony attended by a small number of guests. Their marriage produced no children. They enjoyed playing contract bridge and golf, and Helen was the women's golf champion for the District of Columbia in 1921 and 1922.