THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, January 2, 1996 TAG: 9601020049
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DALE EISMAN, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Long : 127 lines
Arleigh A. Burke, whose courage and speedy sailing made him one of the Navy's biggest heroes during World War II and who later sped past more senior admirals to take charge of the service during a critical peacetime transition, died Monday. He was 94.
Burke passed away quietly at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., the Navy said.
His current successor as chief of naval operations, Adm. Mike Boorda, hailed Burke as ``the sailor's sailor,'' and said he ``defined what it means to be a naval officer: relentless in combat, resourceful in command, and revered by his crews.''
``The nation has lost a true hero,'' said Navy Secretary John H. Dalton. ``Arleigh Burke was a patriot in the most classic tradition.''
Burke earned those accolades in command of Navy destroyers during 22 battles in the South Pacific. His pursuit of the Japanese fleet, often at boiler-breaking speeds, brought the nickname ``31-Knot Burke,'' which followed him for the rest of his career.
But Burke's legend was born as he commanded Destroyer Squadron 23 in November 1943. During two battles that month, Burke's ``Little Beavers,'' as they were known, sank one Japanese cruiser, nine destroyers, one submarine and several smaller ships. They also downed 30 Japanese aircraft.
``We traveled a little faster. We maneuvered a little differently,'' Irving McLeod, chief gunner's mate on the Converse, one of the squadron's ships, recalled in a 1991 interview. ``He wasn't scared to fight. He wasn't afraid to use his ships for what they were built for.''
Burke himself wrote at the time that the captains in his squadron ``went out looking for trouble; they found it; they sank it; and then they looked for more. . . . There are NO officers in the United States Navy who could have done better.''
His exploits with Squadron 23 earned Burke the Distinguished Service Medal, the Navy Cross and the Legion of Merit.
A Presidential Unit Citation awarded to the squadron later praised its ``daring defiance of repeated attacks by hostile air groups'' and its ``closing (to) the enemy's strongly fortified shores to carry out sustained bombardments against Japanese coastal defenses and render effective cover and fire support for the major invasion operations in this area.''
His heroism got Burke a job as chief of staff to Vice Adm. Mark Mitscher, commander of an aircraft carrier task force. There, he helped plan the battles of Iwo Jima, Guam, the Marianas and Okinawa, and came to respect the Japanese, he said in a 1991 interview, as ``very skillful fighters. . .
``I admire the Japanese very much,'' he added, ``mostly because they work. They work hard. I have great admiration for them as a nation and the philosophies they live by.''
Born and raised on a farm near Boulder, Colo., Burke sought admission to West Point and, with no slots available there, the Naval Academy, to escape what he considered an unpromising future. He graduated, was commissioned as an ensign and married on the same day in 1923.
His wife, the former Bobbie Gorsuch of Washington, survives. The couple had no children. They met on a blind date when he was at the academy.
``I married the right girl at the right time,'' he once told an interviewer. They stuck together through long wartime separations, years in one-room apartments, and a more comfortable tenure in what she fondly remembered as the ``Admiral's House,'' the Naval Observatory residence that once was assigned to the chief of naval operations but is now the vice president's home.
``I came into the Navy when the Navy was expanding,'' he once said. ``I think there were a lot of advantages then. Competition was keen . . . People in my era, things were changing fast. The Navy changed fast. War changed fast.''
After the war, Burke came home and worked in a series of jobs in the Navy's bureaucracy. He headed Operation 23, a research group created by the Navy to counter Air Force arguments that all aircraft operations should be turned over to that fledgling service.
As leader of Operation 23 during a series of congressional hearings that later became known as the ``revolt of the admirals,'' Burke was demoted in 1947 from commodore, a rank no longer used by the Navy, to captain. After public protests, President Truman made him a rear admiral in 1950.
Burke commanded a cruiser division during the Korean War and was a United Nations delegate to the truce talks that ultimately ended that conflict. But his career seemed destined to end quietly in the Pentagon's bureaucracy until President Eisenhower in 1955 selected him to be chief of naval operations.
Burke was promoted over 92 flag officers who were ahead of him on the seniority list as Eisenhower sought to shake up a Navy that was widely seen as struggling to adapt in the postwar era.
As the Navy's boss, Burke became known for consulting junior officers, usually without warning, and offering rides to hitchhiking sailors to find out what was going on.
``I'd found out what they were doing, what their job was and I'd say `How do you like it, what's wrong with it?' '' he told an interviewer in 1991.
``And you get a lot of (inside) dope from the seamen. Navy people talked pretty frankly. The big thing for the top senior officers is (to) know what's going on.''
Burke also is credited with pushing the development of solid rocket fuel missiles for Navy ships, and the use of nuclear power to drive submarines and carriers. He lobbied Congress and the Eisenhower administration to increase spending on the Navy, arguing that the Soviet Union threatened the peace mainly through small skirmishes that could be countered from the sea rather than in a global thermo-nuclear war.
``If there wasn't a Navy, they would have to invent one or the United States would disappear,'' he once said. ``No Navy, nobody to protect its seas.''
Eisenhower reappointed Burke twice, in 1957 and '59, giving him an unprecedented three terms as the Navy's senior admiral. President Kennedy offered him a fourth term, but Burke said the Navy needed younger leaders and opted to retire in 1961.
But the Navy did not forget him, naming its current class of his beloved destroyers for Burke. The Arleigh Burke, first ship in the line, was commissioned in July 1991 in Norfolk, with the admiral on hand to tell its crew: ``This ship is made to fight. You'd better know how.'' ILLUSTRATION: File Photo
[Burke]
[pic of a Arleigh Burke class destroyer]
THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT/ Staff file
Arleigh Burke and his wife, Roberta ``Bobbie'' Burke, came to
Norfolk in 1991 for the commissioning of the Arleigh Burke, the
first ship in the class of destroyers that also bears his name.
[Side Bar]
Career Highlights
For copy of side bar, see microfilm
KEYWORDS: DEATH by CNB