Anderson, George Whelan, Jr.

(b. 15 December 1906 in Brooklyn, New York; d. 20 March 1992 in McLean, Virginia), admiral and chief of naval operations During the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.

Anderson was the son of George W. Anderson, the owner of a real estate agency, and Clara Green, a homemaker. Raised and educated in Brooklyn as a devout Roman Catholic, he graduated from Brooklyn Preparatory School in 1923. He then excelled at the U.S. Naval Academy, from which he graduated in 1927, twenty-eighth in a class of 579 midshipmen. After three years aboard the light cruiser Cincinnati in the Pacific, he qualified as a naval aviator at Pensacola, Florida, in 1930. He flew catapult scout planes attached to two successive light cruisers in the Atlantic until 1933, when he became a test pilot at the Norfolk, Virginia, naval air station. Anderson’s flying skills earned him an assignment to the crack Fighting Squadron Two, aboard the aircraft carrier Lexington in 1935, and two years later to ship’s company of the carrier Yorktown, which he helped place in commission. From 1939 to 1940, in the rank of lieutenant, he briefly flew patrol planes in Seattle.

Because of his exceptional intelligence and knowledge of airplanes, and in spite of his relatively junior rank, Anderson was transferred early in 1940 to the U.S. Navy’s Bureau of Aeronautics at the behest of its chief, Rear Admiral John H. Towers. He was placed in charge of longrange programs and allocations of the navy’s aircraft during the mobilization of 1940–1941. Promoted to lieutenant commander in 1941, he designed the navy’s wartime aircraft program in the three weeks following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that December. Anderson worked closely with counterparts in the U.S. Army, industry, and in Britain. He accompanied Towers and General Dwight D. Eisenhower to London in May 1942 for an important aircraft allocation conference with British prime minister Winston Churchill. His reward for these wartime accomplishments was promotion to commander and assignment as prospective navigator and tactical officer of the second carrier to be named Yorktown in March 1943. Following her commissioning, Anderson participated in raids on Japanese-occupied Marcus and Wake Islands in the Pacific.

Anderson’s organizational and administrative talents and experience led Towers, now a vice admiral, to utilize him as head of the plans division of Pacific Fleet air forces during the offensive of November 1943 to March 1944. He remained as one of two key assistants when Towers was deputy fleet commander in chief during the rest of the offensive. Recalled to Washington, D.C., in the rank of captain in June 1945, Anderson served on the navy’s Strategic Planning Division, interservice Joint Planning Staff, and related agencies during the final months of World War II and through the early cold war period.

With his wife, Muriel Buttling, to whom he was married from 3 October 1933 until her death in 1947, he had one daughter and two sons. His youngest son, Thomas Patrick Anderson, became a decorated carrier pilot during the Vietnam War and died in 1978 when he crashed while trying to land his plane aboard his carrier. Anderson married Mary Lee Lamar, widow of Rear Admiral William D. Sample, on 15 May 1948, by whom he gained a stepdaughter.

After service as captain of the Atlantic antisubmarine aircraft carrier Mindoro from 1948 to 1949, Anderson was a student at the National War College and then fleet operations officer of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. In 1950 Eisenhower, then Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, specifically requested that Anderson be his senior U.S. officer in Plans and Operations, a major post that Anderson occupied from December 1950 to July 1952. He then commanded the attack carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt in the Mediterranean until becoming special assistant to Admiral Arthur W. Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in July 1953, being promoted to rear admiral one year later. During tensions with Communist China from 1955 to 1956, Anderson commanded the Taiwan Patrol Force, then served as chief of staff on the Pacific Fleet’s Joint Staff. Advanced to vice admiral, he was chief of staff to Admiral Felix B. Stump, the Commander in Chief Pacific from 1957 to 1958. Following a navy tradition of earning flag rank (all ranks above captain) at sea instead of ashore, he was permitted reversion in rank to rear admiral to command a carrier division that supported Marine Corps landings in Lebanon in 1958. Again promoted to vice admiral, Anderson commanded the Sixth Fleet and concurrently the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) striking and support forces in southern Europe between 1959 and 1961.

In June 1961 President John F. Kennedy appointed Anderson chief of naval operations (CNO). He was chosen from a pool of 109 candidates, ten of whom were senior to him. Anderson assumed leadership of the navy and four-star rank on 1 August. He soon ran afoul of the new secretary of defense, Robert S. McNamara, who asserted increased civilian authority over the military by micromanaging decisions without much experience in or knowledge of military matters. This became apparent when McNamara forced the navy and air force to adopt the same experimental tactical fighter plane, the TFX, in spite of Anderson’s opposition to it based on his belief that it would be unsuitable for carrier-based operations. When the plane entered naval service as the F-111, Anderson was proved correct. Similarly, McNamara overrode navy plans, championed by Anderson, to replace its oil-driven aircraft carriers entirely with nuclear-powered ones, a policy that was adopted in the 1980s. Anderson also criticized McNamara for authorizing an inadequate pay raise for military personnel.

Anderson brilliantly directed President Kennedy’s “quarantine” (naval blockade) of Soviet Russian vessels carrying potentially nuclear-tipped missiles into communist Cuba during the Cuban crisis of October 1962. McNamara’s inexperience in conducting naval blockades, however, resulted in at least three heated confrontations with Anderson in the Pentagon command center during the course of the operation. Although Anderson attempted to confer privately with McNamara about the issues of U.S. warships tracking Soviet submarines in the Caribbean and U.S. naval vessels firing warning shots to stop Soviet tankers, McNamara became openly distraught for fear of losing control of this delicate international confrontation. As a result, despite the navy’s complete success in the blockade, Anderson did not receive reappointment to an expected second two-year term as CNO. He retired in August 1963 and then served from 1963 to 1966 as U.S. ambassador to Portugal, advising that nation on an orderly transition of its African colonies to independence. From 1973 to 1977 he was a member of, and eventually chaired, the U.S. president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board.

Anderson was an imposing individual at 6 feet, 2 inches, and 190 pounds—and, with deep blue eyes and later silvery hair, sufficiently handsome to draw the nickname “Gorgeous George” from other navy personnel. He inspired immense loyalty from naval personnel, to whom he preached cleanliness in behavior and language (in spite of his own penchant for off-color humor). A perfectionist, he was appreciated for his keen intellect, technical knowledge, and diplomatic, managerial, and command abilities. He died in McLean of congestive heart failure and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.

An oral history transcript of Anderson (1980) is deposited at the U.S. Naval Institute, Annapolis, Maryland. His World War II service is treated in Clark G. Reynolds, Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy (1991), and his role in the Cuban crisis is covered in Dino A. Brugioni, Eyeball to Eyeball: The Inside Story of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1991). An obituary is in the New York Times (22 Mar. 1992).

Clark G. Reynolds