I do consider Nimitz to be the greatest American warrior ever, but the question is, how come a man like him got in the position where he could add so much value? In WW1, the British, who had hundreds of years of actual naval tradition, managed to find themselves with John Jellicoe in operational command. With all the chips on his side, Jellicoe managed to botch the battle of Jutland. A victory there would have shortened WW1 by 2 years.

Somehow, almost magically, it looks to me, the US Navy had the right promotion criteria in the inter-war period. But how did that happen? Peacetime nations tend to promote people that don't turn out to be quite the best in wartime, Jellicoe being a prime example. The US Navy unlocked the secret. But what secret exactly?

I think the secret was that the rapid growth of the Navy ensured lots of promotional opportunities to replace the WW1 people who had ossified in place.

You had lots of mid-grade officers who had to compete to be promoted, an influx of new blood, and plenty of places to stuff idiots with political juice.

The key thing was the timeline between 1918 and 1942. If you compare early WW2 to the Civil War, in the civil war you were only 13-15 years removed from the Mexican War. Lots of old Napoleonic ideas were still in the heads of the officer corps, and it took a lot of blood and guts for officers like Sherman and Grant to work their way up and adapt. (The Confederates never figured it out)

We glorify the feats of our fighting men and women, but the reality is that a modern military is perhaps the greatest bureaucracy devised. Bureaucracy rewards the embrace of inertia, and only talented leaders AND timing/luck can break it.

Really? I'd consider ching lee to be much much better than Nimitz. Won marksmanship awards with defective eyes, helped defend a squad of Marines from snipers, translated his gun marksmanship philosophy to battleship gunnery, corrected the naval armament calibrations for gunpowder and issued corrections himself, wasn't too proud of a surface officer and admitted early on that carriers would take the day, personally elevated the role of the radar operators (and sometimes operated them himself) and pummelled Japanese ships from behind squalls because he could see them when they couldn't see him...

No argument about how the Brits botched Jutland. But since the German Navy was a non-factor after that anyway, how would a victory have shortened the war by 2 years?

The Russians had offered to the British to land on the Baltic shore of Germany and march towards Berlin, if only the Brits could take them there. With the High Seas Fleet still in being, the Royal Navy had its Grand Fleet tied in patrol duties in the North Sea.

In the event of a victory at Jutland, the UK could have taken the Russian offer. Russia was quite serious about going on an offensive, they started the Brusilov campaign only days after Jutland. If the Germans were forced to move troops to protect Berlin, then either the Western or the Eastern front might have collapsed.

Interesting. I've done a lot of reading and I've never heard this.

There seem to be a lot of hypotheticals here. The Russians were pretty incompetent, plus it's not clear the UK would have taken them up on it.

But could be.

Roosevelt personally ordered him out to Pearl Harbor to take the role of CINCPAC. King appears to have been ambivalent about him, at least up to Midway.

Plenty of people feel that Jellicoe didn't botch the battle of Jutland.