Richard Gary Colbert (February 12, 1915 – December 2, 1973) was a four-star admiral in the United States Navy who served as President of the Naval War College from 1968 to 1971, and as commander in chief of all NATO forces in southern Europe from 1972 to 1973. He was nicknamed "Mr. International Navy" as one of the very few senior admirals in the U.S. Navy identified with international naval cooperation during the Cold War.
Early career
Born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania to Charles F. Colbert, Jr., president of the Pittsburgh Metallurgical Company, and the former Marie Louise Benford, he attended Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, before being appointed to the United States Naval Academy by Congressman Harry A. Estep in 1933. He graduated from the Naval Academy in June 1937 as one of the four midshipmen officers appointed to command a battalion of the Naval Academy regiment for that academic year, with a class rank of 247/331.
World War II
Commissioned ensign, he served aboard the aircraft carrier from its commissioning on September 30, 1937, until 1939, when he was assigned to the destroyer Barker in the Asiatic Fleet. He remained aboard Barker for the next five years, rising from junior ensign to lieutenant commander and commanding officer.
Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Barker operated with the American-British-Dutch-Australian Command (ABDACOM) in Southeast Asian and Australian waters until May 1942, then escorted convoys between San Francisco, California, and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, until May 1943, when the destroyer transferred to the Atlantic Fleet to join Task Group 21.12, a hunter-killer group centered on the escort carrier Core.
In 1944, he assumed command of the destroyer Meade, operating with the Pacific Fleet. After the war, Meade was sent on a relief sweep along Tonkin Gulf coastal areas to assist French forces in combating Chinese pirates off Haiphong. Promoted to commander, Colbert spent the next two and a half years as personnel planning officer in the Bureau of Naval Personnel, where he helped plan the postwar naval reserve and served as a social aide in the White House.
Postwar
In June 1948 he was sent to London as aide and flag secretary to Admiral Richard L. Conolly, Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean (CINCNELM). A superb negotiator, Conolly left a deep impression on Colbert, whose later work on international naval cooperation would be founded on the lessons he learned by watching Conolly interact with allied naval leaders. When Conolly's tour as CINCNELM ended in December 1950, Colbert briefly accompanied Conolly to the admiral's new posting as president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.
Colbert's next assignment was in the Politico-Military Affairs Division in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations (OP-35), where he helped establish the naval commands in the newly created NATO alliance and quickly developed a reputation for familiarity with allied problems and ability to deal with foreign governments. In 1951, Chief of Naval Operations Forrest P. Sherman selected Colbert to be his aide later in the year, in the meantime tapping Colbert for temporary duty as Sherman's special assistant during overseas trips. In July 1951, Colbert accompanied Sherman to Spain to negotiate naval basing with General Francisco Franco. Shortly after the meeting, Sherman suddenly died of a heart attack. With no written record of Sherman's conversations with Franco, it fell to Colbert to debrief the late admiral's negotiations to the Navy Department and other government agencies.
From 1953 to 1955, Colbert was executive officer of the heavy cruiser Albany, which served as flagship for Commander, Battleship-Cruiser Force, Atlantic, and was deployed to the Mediterranean. Vice Admiral Robert H. Rice, his former commanding officer, remembered Colbert as "the best executive officer any ship had had (or the good fortune to have)."
Promoted to captain in 1955, Colbert was offered a choice between assignment as head of an academic section at the Naval Academy or as a student at the Naval War College. On Conolly's advice, Colbert opted for the Naval War College and was enrolled in the naval warfare 1 course. By January 1956 he had been selected to remain for a second academic year as a student in the naval warfare 2 course, but was reassigned that spring to become the first director of a new Naval War College course for international naval officers.
Naval command course
In the spring of 1956, Chief of Naval Operations Arleigh A. Burke assigned Colbert to organize and direct a new course at the Naval War College for senior naval officers from allied and friendly nations. Said Burke, "I had already learned that the CNO could not just give an order and expect to have it carried out. He had to get somebody who was in agreement with the project, who was just as enthusiastic about it, who was capable of running it without supervision, who could get things done, and who could use the authority delegated him wisely to take charge of the project. That man was Dick Colbert."
During his tour in the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations, Colbert had worked closely with Burke as one of Burke's action officers when Burke was director of the Plans Division, and Burke remembered Colbert's unusual competence in international relations. Moreover, during that tour Colbert had actually written a brief staff study on the best way to educate foreign naval officers at Navy service schools without compromising either national security or the level of their instruction.Sokolsky, pp. 9–15 Based on that four-year-old study, Colbert spent the summer of 1956 preparing for the arrival of students from up to 30 countries in August. To avoid using the word "foreign", he selected the title "Naval Command Course for Free World Naval Officers."
Colbert served as director of the naval command course for its first two classes. Students generally attended the regular Naval War College lectures for the naval warfare 1 course, and took field trips during lectures dealing with classified topics such as nuclear operations. Colbert leveraged his extensive personal contacts to arrange visits to military and naval sites, as well as industrial plants in Buffalo, New York, and the New York Stock Exchange. Colbert and his wife also spent a considerable amount of their own money to organize social events to foster lasting informal ties between students, whose personal bonding was viewed as almost as important as the formal curriculum. Colbert was impressed by the high quality of the inaugural class, writing, "The capability of the students is far beyond our expectations—they really look like the 'future CNO's of the Free World' as Admiral Burke describes them."
Major command
After three years at the Naval War College, Colbert was assigned to the Long Range Plans and Basic War Plans Branch of the Joint Staff. In 1960 he became commanding officer of the Sixth Fleet's general stores ship Altair, based in Barcelona, Spain, where he helped pioneer the use of helicopters for vertical replenishment of supplies for ships at sea.
Selected for major command, Colbert requested "a cruiser out of Boston," which resulted in his being assigned as captain of the guided missile cruiser Boston from October 1961 to February 1963.USS Boston: The Captain's Cabin During his tour, Boston deployed to the Mediterranean and briefly hosted the commander of the Sixth Fleet, Vice Admiral David L. McDonald, who recalled that "Colbert and his crew in the Boston went out of their way to make their ship a most outstanding flagship."
While commanding Boston, Colbert applied for one of the two military billets on the Policy Planning Council (PPC) of the Department of State, a long-range planning and advisory staff tasked with analyzing major foreign policy problems and coordinating political-military policy and interagency planning. The Navy had never sent an officer to the PPC, and Colbert's detailing officer in the Bureau of Naval Personnel warned him repeatedly that an assignment to the State Department would irreparably damage his career, but Colbert persisted, passing an interview with Director of Policy Planning Walt W. Rostow and recruiting support from Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Paul H. Nitze, a former PPC chairman whose aide Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., "pulled the necessary levers."
During his time on the PPC, Colbert worked on topics ranging from the Vietnam War, various proposals for multilateral forces, and nuclear weapons arrangements east of the Suez Canal. In May 1964, midway through his two-year tour, he was one of five in his class selected for rear admiral. Indicating its newfound appreciation for the importance of Colbert's work, the Navy had him complete his scheduled term on the PPC instead of immediately transferring him to a traditional flag-level command. For his service on the PPC, he was awarded the Joint Service Commendation Medal.Sokolsky, pp. 17–21
Flag officer
In June 1964 he was assigned as Commander Cruiser-Destroyer Flotilla 6 (COMCRUDESFLOT SIX), based in Charleston, South Carolina, and assumed command in 1965. With about fifty ships under his command, the position was equivalent to being commander in chief of a small navy.
From June 1966 to August 1968 he served as deputy chief of staff and assistant chief of staff for policy, plans and operations to Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic (SACLANT), for which he received the Legion of Merit.Sokolsky, p. 23 His first assignment on the SACLANT staff was to establish Iberian Atlantic Command (IBERLANT), a Portuguese-led command responsible for covering the sea approaches to the Strait of Gibraltar. Said Moorer, "This action not only significantly enhanced the capability of NATO to deal with naval operations in the area, but also significantly increased the morale, prestige and overall interest of the Portuguese allies. I give Admiral Colbert all of the credit for this important move."
In late November 1966, Colbert prepared a concept paper proposing a permanent SACLANT naval contingency force based on Operation Matchmaker, an annual six-month exercising involving ships from allied navies. The proposed contingency force was approved by NATO in December 1967 and activated in January 1968 as Standing Naval Force Atlantic (STANAVFORLANT).
President of the Naval War College
In July 1968, Colbert was unexpectedly selected to be President of the Naval War College and promoted to vice admiral ahead of ten classmates. He replaced Vice Admiral John T. Hayward, who had specifically recommended Colbert as his ideal successor. As a relatively young rear admiral who was expected to rise much further in the Navy after his presidency, Colbert's appointment broke the postwar tradition of selecting an "elder statesman" on the verge of retirement. A pleased Colbert remarked, "It is a dream come true—a dream that I would never have mentioned to anyone, for fear of being precocious."
During his presidency, which lasted from August 30, 1968, until August 17, 1971,United States Naval War College: NWC Past Presidents Colbert consolidated his predecessor's curricular reforms and expanded the civilian and military faculty. He also continued the Naval War College building program, working with Rhode Island Senator John O. Pastore to secure congressional funding for new student housing and other construction projects. In collaboration with sculptor Felix de Weldon and National Gallery of Art director J. Carter Brown, he completed the design of three new buildings—Spruance Hall, Conolly Hall, and Hewitt Hall—for which he arranged to reopen the old quarry in Medford, Massachusetts, to obtain the same granite that had been used to construct the adjacent buildings, so that the new buildings would eventually weather to the same color.