Harold Raynsford Stark - Arlington VA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery in Section 30, Site 433-LH

Description: From Wikipedia: Chief of Naval Operations and beginning of World War II. In August 1939, Stark became Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) with the rank of admiral. In that position, he oversaw the expansion of the navy during 1940 and 1941, and its involvement in the Neutrality Patrols against German submarines in the Atlantic during the latter part of 1941. It was at this time that he authored the Plan Dog memo, which laid the basis for America's Europe first policy. He also orchestrated the navy's change to adopting unrestricted submarine warfare in case of war with Japan; Stark expressly ordered it at 17:52 Washington time on 7 December 1941, not quite four hours after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It appears the decision was taken without the knowledge or prior consent of the government. It violated the London Naval Treaty, to which the United States was signatory. Stark's most controversial service involved the growing menace of Japanese forces in the period before America was bombed into the war by the attack on Pearl Harbor. The controversy centers on whether he and his Director of War Plans, Admiral Richmond K. Turner, provided sufficient information to Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, Commander of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, about Japanese moves in the fall of 1941 to enable Kimmel to anticipate an attack and to take steps to counter it. Captain (later Rear Admiral) Edwin T. Layton was Kimmel's chief intelligence officer (later also Admiral Chester W. Nimitz's intelligence officer) at the time of the attack. In his book, And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (1985), Layton maintained that Stark offered meaningless advice throughout the period, withheld vital information at the insistence of his Director of War Plans, Admiral Turner, showed timidity in dealing with the Japanese, and utterly failed to provide anything of use to Kimmel. John Costello (Layton's co-author), in Days of Infamy (Pocket, 1994), points out that Douglas MacArthur had complete access to both PURPLE and JN-25, with over eight hours warning, and was still caught by surprise. Moreover, as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers official historian Gordon Prange and his colleagues note in December 7, 1941 (McGraw-Hill, 1988), the defense of the fleet was General Walter C. Short's responsibility, not Kimmel's. Turner's insistence on having intelligence go through War Plans led Office of Naval Intelligence to a wrong belief that it was only to collect intelligence; Turner did not correct his view or aid Stark in understanding the problem. Among others, Morison and Layton agree that Turner was most responsible for the debacle, as does Ned Beach in Scapegoats (Annapolis, 1995). In addition, there was considerable confusion over where Japan might strike, whether against the United States, the Soviet Union, or British colonies in Asia and the Far East. Date of birth: 11/12/1880 Date of death: 08/20/1972 Area of notoriety: Military Marker Type: Monument Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: None Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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Date Logged Log   10/09/2021 Don.Morfe visited it