Speaking of Gen. George Patton (1890-1945), this aggressive WWI tank officer earned a Purple Heart and a Distinguished Service Cross on the battlefields of France in the Great War, later being elevated to Superintendent of West Point.
Problem was, Patton was never a Superintendent of the USMA at West Point. General Douglas MacArthur was a USMA Superintendent from 1919 to 1922
Source: USMA Library Archives Official Register of the Officers and Cadets (1818 to 1966), 1952 edition, page 10 (PDF page 16/176).
At the outbreak of WWII, “Old Blood and Guts” became head of II Corps in North Africa, and then led the 7th Army into Sicily. After an infamous episode of slapping a couple of GIs for “cowardice,” he was demoted to serve under his former junior, Omar Bradley.
Patton was never demoted, General Bradly was promoted over him to command the 12th Army Group, to which Patton's Third Army belonged...
By the time of the infamy at Pearl Harbor, he had engineered the transformation of the ill-prepared American military and was elevated to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, becoming President Franklin Roosevelt’s right hand man throughout the war.
General George C. Marshall (VMI 1901) was the U.S. Army Chief of Staff from August 1939 to November 1945. The then embryonic WWII Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) was presided over by Adm. William D. Leahy, not General Marshall.
Taking charge in the air, Gen. Henry H. “Hap” Arnold (1886-1950) rose to become overall commander of the Army Air Forces in World War II -- the only air commander ever to attain the five-star rank of general of the armies.
His rank was not 'general of the armies', it was "General of the Army". The term 'General of the Armies' only belong to Generals Washington, Grant, Sherman, Sheridan and Pershing. It has always been considered to be the highest rank given the order: General of the Armies (Five-Star plus equivalent); General of the Army (WWII Five-Star); General (Four Star); Lieutenant-General (Three-Star); Major-General (Two-Star); Brigider-General (One-Star).
When a skin disease sidelined Adm. William Halsey, the head of the formidable Task Group 16, Spruance stepped forward into the annals of history in a significant way, leading the task force to a decisive victory over the Japanese forces at Midway.
Historians consider Midway the turning point of the war – pushing Japan back half way across the Pacific and making any designs on America’s West coast a lost dream of the Divine Wind.
In June, 1942, Spruance became chief of staff to Chester Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet. The following year Spruance was promoted to vice admiral and became Nimitz’s deputy, playing a key role in the planning of the Pacific war.
Problems with the above statements is that it was Task Force 16 (TF-16), not Task Group 16. Because the NewsMax author lifted the above sentences, he (as did his source) sort of forgot that then Vice-Admiral Spruance commanded the U.S. 5th Fleet in the Pacific, a little bigger job than his incorrectly described position of just being Chief of Staff to Admiral Nimitz.
The other big problem with the article is that the author has directly lifted paragraphs from an online Internet-based web-site Spartacus International without crediting the source. This used to be known as plagiarism, but I guess at NewsMax it must just be part of meeting the deadline...
Very slipshod work...
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It was always my understanding that McArthur was NOT the
author of the "island hopping campaign".