Harry D . Felt Admiral Harry Donald Felt ( June 21 , 1902 – February 25 , 1992 ) was an aviator in the United States Navy who led U . S . carrier strikes during World War II and later served as commander in chief of Pacific Command ( CINCPAC ) from 1958 to 1964 . Early career . Born in Topeka , Kansas to Harry Victor Felt and the former Grace Greenwood Johnson , Felt attended public school in Goodland , Kansas before moving with his family to Washington , D . C . at the age of ten . Lacking money for college , Felt entered a cram school for the U . S . Naval Academy and was appointed to the academy in 1919 . At the Academy , Felt received good marks but graduated in 1923 with the unremarkable class rank of 152 out of 413 , having accumulated almost as many demerits as anyone in his class . As a junior officer , Felt served five years aboard the battleship " Mississippi " and the destroyer " Farenholt " before applying for flight training out of sheer boredom . From then on , naval aviation was his life . While training at Naval Air Station Pensacola from 1928 to 1929 , Felt met his future wife , Kathryn Cowley , whom he married on August 3 , 1929 after warning her that the Navy would always come first . She later reported that even as a newlywed , Felt ' s life was " just fly , fly , fly . " World War II . Following the attack on Pearl Harbor , Felt was transferred to command the air group on the carrier , with promotion to Commander in January 1942 . During the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on August 24 , 1942 , Felt led Air Group 3 ( AG - 3 ) from in an attack that sank the Japanese light carrier " Ryujo " . Diving with his second wave of bombers through enemy flak and fighters , Felt personally scored the first of his group ' s several 1000 - lb bomb hits on the carrier . In January 1943 , he was commanding officer of Naval Air Station Daytona Beach , and of Naval Air Station Miami in February . He was promoted to captain in July . In March 1944 , Felt became the first naval aviator assigned to the U . S . Military Mission to Moscow . He commanded the escort carrier from February 1945 to January 1946 , a tour that included heavy participation in the Battle of Okinawa from March through June , followed by Magic Carpet duty ferrying servicemen home at war ' s end . Postwar . After the war , Felt was assigned to the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations before attending the National War College from 1947 to 1948 . He commanded the carrier " Franklin D . Roosevelt " in the Atlantic and Mediterranean from August 3 , 1948 to July 11 , 1949 . He was on staff at the Naval War College from 1949 to 1951 , becoming chief of staff in the spring of 1950 and acting as president from October 17 , 1950 to December 1 , 1950 . He was promoted to rear admiral in January 1951 . In March 1951 , Felt was sent to command the Middle East Force in the Persian Gulf , the first flag officer to serve in that billet . He later described his principal adversaries during that tour to have been the British , who greatly resented American intrusion into what they considered to be their exclusive sphere of influence . Returning to the Navy Department in October , Felt worked for Rear Admiral Arleigh Burke as assistant director of the Strategic Plans Division . He was Commander Carrier Division 15 in 1953 – 54 , practicing anti - submarine warfare from the escort carrier " Rendova " ; Commander Carrier Division Three in the spring of 1954 , operating attack carriers " Essex " and " Philippine Sea " in the South China Sea ; and assistant chief of naval operations ( fleet readiness ) from 1954 to 1956 . Vice Chief of Naval Operations . Promoted to vice admiral in 1956 , Felt commanded the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean for six months before the new chief of naval operations , Arleigh Burke , tapped his former assistant to be his vice chief , a promotion that leapfrogged Felt over a score of senior admirals and carried the rank of full admiral . As vice chief of naval operations , Felt enjoyed " a reputation for eating admirals for breakfast , lunch and dinner . " " The majority of naval officers in the Pentagon when told that Admiral Felt wanted to see them would practically start quivering in their boots , " recalled Admiral David McDonald , future chief of naval operations . Burke joked that he kept Felt around because during the war Burke had learned the value of a " no " man . When Burke retired in 1961 , " Newsweek " rated Felt as a 20 - 1 longshot to succeed Burke as chief of naval operations . Vice Admiral William P . Mack recalled the antics of the diminutive vice chief : " He would grab three - star officers by the lapels , literally shake them , and say , ' Why don ' t you do so and so or such and such ? ' They ' d be thirty or forty pounds heavier than he was , but that didn ' t bother him at all . He was there for two years , which was probably about a year too long , because morale was getting pretty low . As I told Admiral Burke , it was just a matter of time before someone was going to slug him . You can ' t operate like that . Admiral Felt wasn ' t big enough to defend himself . I said that one of these days he ' s going to come at someone who ' s going to wipe up the corridor with him , regardless of how many stars he has . " By the end of Felt ' s second year as vice chief , even Burke had had about enough of him . " It isn ' t pleasant to fight continually with a good friend , and after a while you wonder whether he ' s all that good a friend . " Furthermore , Burke suspected that Felt had become an automatic faultfinder , which if true would render his advice as useless as that of an automatic yes - man . When a four - star command opened up in the Pacific , Burke appointed Felt , claiming virtuously , " I couldn ' t hold him back just selfishly to keep him in the vice chief ' s job . " Commander in Chief , Pacific . In 1958 , Felt was offered the command of all U . S . forces in the Pacific and Far East , and he jumped at the opportunity to avoid spending the rest of his career behind a desk . Upon becoming commander in chief of Pacific Command on July 31 , 1958 , Felt immersed himself in the details of its operation , bombarding his staff with scribbled black pencil missives dubbed " Feltgrams " that invariably concluded , " Advise me ASAP . What do you think ? No ? Why ? Resp ' y , F . " Although his job title was officially abbreviated as " CINCPAC " , he was informally nicknamed " CINCFELT " within the command , due to his larger - than - life personality . During his tenure as CINCPAC , Felt directed American military operations in three regional hotspots : Taiwan , Laos , and Vietnam . On August 23 , 1958 , People ' s Liberation Army forces commenced shelling Republic of China forces on the islands of Quemoy and Matsu , initiating the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis . Felt immediately deployed the Seventh Fleet to help the Nationalist government defend Quemoy ' s supply lines . " We didn ' t go to war then because we were strong and moved in a deterrent force , " he later concluded . During the crisis , Felt and his staff planned for the use of tactical nuclear weapon s in the Taiwan Strait because they believed the use of such weapons would not trigger World War III and because " we didn ' t have a plan to do it any other way " . A fervent anti - communist , Felt advocated American military intervention in Laos to suppress the Soviet - backed Pathet Lao insurrection and to interdict the flow of supplies from North Vietnam to Communist insurgents in South Vietnam through the Laotian town of Tchepone . In a meeting with Defense Secretary Robert S . McNamara , Felt declared , " We have the Seventh Fleet and we have the planes to wipe Tchepone off the face of the earth . " Instead , after an initial buildup of ships and Marines near Laotian borders , all American forces were withdrawn in accordance with a 1962 Geneva Conference in which all parties pledged to respect Laotian sovereignty . North Vietnam continued to supply South Vietnamese insurgents via Laos along what would become the Ho Chi Minh Trail . Vietnam War . Felt strongly opposed deploying American soldiers into Vietnam . In internal administration debates , he warned that the proposed American intervention lacked a sound strategic concept and " would commit the U . S . to another Korea - type support and assistance situation " from which " we can ' t pull out at will without damaging repercussions . " In a conference with General Maxwell D . Taylor , military representative to President John F . Kennedy , Felt stressed that introducing U . S . troops into Indochina would be perceived throughout Asia as the reintroduction of white colonialism into Vietnam , would provoke intensified Communist aggression , and would entangle U . S . soldiers in military engagement with the Viet Cong . In early 1962 , Felt presciently predicted that Viet Cong forces would seek " a prolonged form of attritional warfare " that could not " be defeated by purely military means . " His favored policy was to organize , train , and equip indigenous Vietnamese forces , but to keep U . S . troops out of the country . Nevertheless , on February 8 , 1962 , by order of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , Felt created the U . S . Military Assistance Command Vietnam ( MACV ) as a sub - unified command headed by General Paul D . Harkins . As Harkins ' superior in the chain of command , Felt was criticized for exercising excessive control over MACV field operations . Felt denied many of Harkins ' equipment requests , interfered with details of Harkins ' tactical planning , forbade Harkins to communicate with the Joint Chiefs of Staff without advance permission from CINCPAC , and actually bypassed Harkins to direct certain tactical operations himself from his headquarters in Hawaii . Many observers argued that reporting to CINCPAC was hindering MACV operations and that MACV should be an independent command under the direct supervision of the Joint Chiefs of Staff , but Felt and his successors as CINCPAC blocked multiple attempts to remove MACV from their control , arguing that allowing MACV to bypass the unified regional commander would violate the principle of unity of command in the region . Felt was publicly optimistic about the American intervention , declaring at a 1963 press conference that the war could be won in three years . He bristled at members of the press who did not seem sufficiently enthusiastic about ongoing American military operations . Introduced to Associated Press correspondent Malcolm W . Browne at a Saigon press conference , Felt growled , " So you ' re Browne . Why don ' t you get on the team ? " Legacy . Felt retired in July 1964 upon reaching the mandatory retirement age , and spent his later years in Honolulu , Hawaii . He died on February 25 , 1992 , and is buried beside his wife in Arlington National Cemetery . He had one son , Donald Linn Felt , a naval aviator and jet pilot who commanded the carrier " Midway " before retiring at the rank of rear admiral . He was awarded the Navy Distinguished Service Medal for his service as CINCPAC ; the Navy Cross for " extraordinary heroism and distinguished service " at the Battle of the Eastern Solomons ; the Distinguished Flying Cross ; the Legion of Merit as commander of USS " Chenango " during operations off Okinawa , for which the ship received a Navy Unit Commendation ; the Order of the Rising Sun , First Class , by the government of Japan ; and the Medal of Cloud and Banner with special Grand Cordon , by the Republic of China . Cape Felt , in Antarctica , is named after him , as vice chief of naval operations during the International Geophysical Year . Felt had a terrifying reputation as an arrogant , caustic , hard - driving perfectionist . " Many people were afraid of him . . . he was pretty rough , " commented Vice Admiral Lawson P . Ramage . A former aide described him as " mean as hell " , and his staff complained that he worked " as though there were no holidays , Saturdays and Sundays , and expects others to do the same . " " He was small in stature , but a blunt , tough , demanding taskmaster who brought discomfiture to his peers and earned the antipathy , if not animosity , of his subordinates , " judged former subordinate and future four - star admiral Ignatius J . Galantin . A crack poker player , Felt unapologetically summarized his philosophy as " Trust everybody , but always cut the cards . "