Admiral Halsey was a flawed man. But I feel that all great men have flaws. Patton was flawed. Churchill was flawed. But Halsey, early in the war, was the right man for the right time.
I loved the story about how Halsey took command of the Guadalcanal Campaign, and when he relived Admiral Ghormley (who was a good friend and classmate at the Naval Academy) he was astonished to see Ghormley cooped up in a little windowless compartment on a ship tied to a pier. When he asked him why he hadn’t acquired any facilities on the shore for his headquarters, he was told the French said there weren’t any, and weren’t helping find any.
Halsey had one of his subordinates put together a unit of armed sailors, and had them march over the to the French Governor’s mansion. When they got there, the Governor was out, so they simply requisitioned the mansion, and that was that.
No wonder his men loved him. He made mistakes with Typhoon Cobra and the Okinawa Typhoon, not to mention his leaving his transports unprotected in Leyte Gulf, but...early in the war, when we NEEDED someone, he was the one who stepped into the breach.
The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors wouldn’t be the great story that it is if Halsey hadn’t left the tiny Taffy 3 battle group all by themselves to take on the main Japanese fleet