John Sidney "Slew" McCain Sr. (9 August 1884 – 6 September 1945) was a United States Navy admiral and the patriarch of the McCain military family. McCain held several commands during the Pacific War of World War II and was a pioneer of aircraft carrier operations. He and his son, John S. McCain Jr., were the first father-and-son pair to achieve four-star admiral rank in the U.S. Navy.
A graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, class of 1906, McCain's early career was on battleships and cruisers. During World War I, he served on convoy duty in the Atlantic. From 1918 to 1935, he alternated between duty ashore with the Bureau of Navigation, where he developed officer personnel policies, and at sea, where he commanded the cargo ship and ammunition ship . He attended the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1928 and 1929. In 1935, he qualified as a naval aviator and commanded the aircraft carrier from 1937 to 1939.
During World War II, McCain commanded land-based air operations in support of the Guadalcanal campaign. He served as Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics and Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Air. In 1944–1945, he led Task Force 38 in operations off the Philippines and Okinawa and air strikes against Formosa and the Japanese home islands that caused the destruction of Japanese naval and air forces in the closing period of the war. McCain died four days after attending the formal Japanese surrender ceremony on 2 September 1945.
Early life, education, and family John Sidney "Slew" McCain was born in Carroll County, Mississippi, on 9 August 1884, the third child and second son and namesake of plantation owner John Sidney McCain and his wife Elizabeth-Ann Young. He had an older brother, William Alexander, an older sister, Katherine Louise, and three younger siblings: Mary James, Harry Hart and Joseph Pinckney.
McCain attended the University of Mississippi for the 1901–1902 academic year, where he joined the Phi Delta Theta fraternity, and then decided to attend the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, where his brother William Alexander was enrolled. To practice for its entrance exams, he decided to take the ones for the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland; when he passed and earned an appointment from Senator Anselm J. McLaurin, he decided to attend there instead.
On 25 September 1902, McCain entered the Naval Academy. He acquired the nickname "Slew". Each summer, midshipmen went on a training cruise to familiarize them with shipboard life. The 1903 cruise was on the USS Chesapeake, a barque skippered by Commander William F. Halsey Sr., whose son William F. Halsey Jr., a midshipman two years ahead of McCain, was also aboard. McCain then went to New York for Independence Day celebrations on the battleship and returned to Annapolis on the sloop-of-war . The 1904 cruise was also on the Hartford, with a return trip on the battleship , and the 1905 cruise on the monitors and . McCain failed his annual physical in 1905 on account of defective hearing, but the condition was waived due to the great need for officers.
McCain's academic performance was lackluster: when he graduated on 12 February 1906, he ranked 79th out of 116 in his class, and the yearbook labeled him "The skeleton in the family closet of 1906." His classmates included William L. Calhoun, Aubrey W. Fitch, Frank J. Fletcher, Robert L. Ghormley, Isaac C. Kidd, Leigh Noyes, John H. Towers and Russell Willson.
Early career and World War I Midshipmen were not immediately commissioned, but had to first serve a year or two at sea. McCain's first assignment, in April 1906, was the battleship , the flagship of the Asiatic Fleet, based at Manila Bay. After five months he was transferred to the protected cruiser . Then, in January 1907, he became the executive officer of the patrol boat , under the command of Ensign Chester W. Nimitz. In July, he became the engineering officer on the destroyer . He was promoted to ensign on 18 March 1908. On 27 November 1908, he joined the battleship for the home stretch of the Great White Fleet's world cruise from 1907 to 1909. The Connecticut sailed through the Suez Canal and participated in disaster relief efforts for the 1908 Messina earthquake in Sicily before reaching Hampton Roads on 22 February 1909. He was then ordered to report to the armored cruiser on the West Coast.
McCain married Katherine Davey Vaulx, who was eight years his senior, in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on 9 August 1909, in a ceremony performed by Vaulx's clergyman father, James Junius Vaulx. The couple had three children: John Sidney McCain Jr., James Gordon McCain, and Catherine Vaulx McCain. In December 1909, McCain joined the crew of the armored cruiser as its engineering officer. He appeared before the examination board for promotion to the rank of lieutenant (junior grade) on 2 February 1911 and was questioned about his knowledge of seamanship, navigation, gunnery, and engineering. He was promoted on 10 March, with seniority backdated to 13 February 1911.
Duty afloat alternated with duty ashore, so McCain's next posting was to the Charleston Navy Yard, where he was in charge of the machinist's mates school. While there, he was promoted to lieutenant on 5 August 1912, backdated to 1 July, and he temporarily commanded the torpedo boat during a naval review in New York from 13 to 15 October 1912. In April 1914, he became the executive officer and engineering officer of the armored cruiser , the flagship for the Pacific Fleet. During 1914 and 1915, it patroled the Pacific coast of Mexico during the Mexican Revolution. On 11 September 1915, he joined the armored cruiser as its engineering officer. The ship was placed in reserve in February 1917 but was restored to active service after the American entry into World War I in April. He assumed the acting rank of lieutenant commander on 31 August. This became substantive on 16 January 1918, with seniority backdated to 22 September 1917.
McCain and the San Diego served on convoy duty in the Atlantic Ocean, escorting shipping through the first dangerous leg of their passages to Europe. Based out of Tompkinsville, New York, and Halifax, Nova Scotia, San Diego operated in the weather-torn, submarine-infested North Atlantic. McCain left San Diego on 26 May 1918, two months before she was sunk on 19 July by a mine laid by a U-boat, for a new assignment in the Bureau of Navigation in Washington, D.C., dealing with the assignment of naval personnel, with the rank of commander from 28 May.
Interwar period Battleships and the Bureau of Navigation The Bureau of Navigation handled the assignment, classification and promotion of naval personnel. McCain had to deal with both the wartime expansion of the Navy to 31,194 officers and 495,662 men in 1918, and its post-war demobilization that reduced the Navy to 10,109 officers and 108,950 enlisted personnel in 1920. The Bureau of Navigation sought to retain personnel with valuable skills in the regular service where possible. He served on a board that drafted regulations and legislation for such transfers, and published an article in the US Naval Institute Proceedings on the wartime "hump" of officers and the system of promotion based on seniority. In addition to professional articles in the Proceedings, during the inter-war years, McCain was a would-be author who wrote fiction that was never published, including some adventure stories under the name Casper Clubfoot. In one story, The Rout of the Red Mayor, the heroes of the story were the Ku Klux Klan.
McCain joined the newly-commissioned battleship as its navigator while it was still fitting out at Newport News Shipbuilding in June 1921. He returned to the Bureau of Navigation in April 1923, working in the office of officer personnel, whose director was Captain William D. Leahy. McCain participated in another board, drafting legislation of an Equalization Bill that sought to provide officers in specialist staff corps with the same promotion opportunities as line officers. The bill was eventually signed into law on 10 June 1926. He also convinced the General Board of the merits of raising the number of years of service for captains before mandatory retirement by a year.
On 6 October 1925, McCain was called before a board of inquiry headed by businessman Dwight Morrow into the crash of the airship . McCain was asked whether aviators should be a separate corps. McCain supported the position of the Bureau of Navigation and Bureau of Aeronautics that aviators should remain line officers, and therefore eligible to command ships, but he acknowledged that they had to forgo flight pay during service at sea in non-aviation positions. McCain returned to sea duty in April 1926 to assume command of the cargo ship . In August he became the executive officer of the battleship , which was commanded by Leahy. McCain submitted a request for flight training in January 1928, but although he passed the physical examination, he was rejected because he exceeded the Bureau of Navigation's age limits for aviator training.
In February 1928, McCain entered the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. His 47 classmates included future admirals H. Kent Hewitt, Alan G. Kirk and Jesse B. Oldendorf. Students studied the works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, Julian Corbett and Herbert Richmond, with an emphasis on major naval actions like the Battle of Trafalgar, Battle of Tsushima and the Battle of Jutland. McCain wrote theses on the "Causes of the Spanish American War, and the Naval and Combined Operations in the Atlantic, Including the Transfer of the Oregon" and "Foreign Policies of the United States". On graduation in June 1929, he returned to the Bureau of Navigation, before assuming command of the ammunition ship on 9 June 1931. He was promoted to the temporary rank of captain on 25 September. This became substantive in June 1932, and with seniority backdated to 30 June 1931. He left Nitro on 1 April 1933 and returned to the Bureau of Navigation for his third and final tour of duty there. This time he worked on legislation to provide sailors for new ships authorized under the 1934 Vinson-Trammell Act.
Naval aviation The Vinson-Trammell Act opened up another opportunity for flight training. Only naval aviators and observers could command aircraft carriers, aviation shore establishments or air units, but the expansion of the fleet authorized by the act created a shortage of aviators qualified for senior command positions. Leahy was now Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and he waived the age requirement in McCain's case. McCain's request also received the endorsement of the Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, Rear Admiral Ernest J. King, who had completed flight training in 1927. McCain passed the physical; he now required a full set of dentures but otherwise was considered fully fit and teeth were not a requirement.
On 20 June 1935, McCain reported to Naval Air Station Pensacola for flight training. Training was conducted on the old Consolidated NY-1 and the new Stearman NS-1 biplanes. The training consisted of 465 hours of classroom instruction in aerial navigation, aerodynamics, aerology, aircraft engines, aerial gunnery and communications, and 282.75 hours of flight time that included some night flying.
On 18 April 1936, McCain was detached from flight training and went to Naval Air Station North Island in San Diego, where he reported to the aircraft carrier , which was commanded by Annapolis classmate Captain Aubrey Fitch. Over the following weeks McCain was an observer of war games that simulated an attack on the Panama Canal. At the conclusion, he returned to San Diego on the aircraft carrier , and then resumed his aviation training at Pensacola.