[8][9][10] His class was the most successful ever: five of its members would reach four-star rank while on active duty: Leahy, Thomas C. Hart, Arthur J. Hepburn, Orin G. Murfin and Harry E. Yarnell.

[17] Seeking further action, Leahy volunteered to serve on the gunboat USS Castine, which was bound for the war in the Pacific, traveling via the Mediterranean Sea and the Suez Canal, but he got only as far as Ceylon when he received orders to report to Annapolis for his final ensign's examinations.

While it was there the Boxer Rebellion broke out in China, and it was retained in Shanghai to help British, French and Japanese forces guard the city,[19] although Leahy did not like their chances if the 4,500 Chinese troops in the vicinity joined the uprising, as they had in the Battle of Tientsin.

[35] After two years ashore, he received orders on 14 August 1909, to return to San Francisco and sea duty as navigator of the armored cruiser USS California, commanded by Captain Henry T. Mayo,[33] in whom Leahy found a patron and a role model.

The ship took part in the United States occupation of Haiti, where Leahy again acted as chief of staff, this time to Rear Admiral William B. Caperton.

Shortly before it was due to depart for France, Leahy was summoned to Washington, D.C., by the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Admiral William S. Benson, who offered him the position of the Navy's director of gunnery.

[45] Leahy was awarded the Navy Cross "for distinguished service in the line of his profession as commanding officer of the USS Princess Matoika, engaged in the important, exacting and hazardous duty of transporting and escorting troops and supplies to European ports through waters infested with enemy submarines and mines during World War I.

"[46] Leahy returned to the United States,[47] where he was promoted to captain on 1 July 1918,[9] and soon after was on his way back to Europe to confer with representatives of the Royal Navy and discuss their gunnery practices.

[49] Leahy was attached to the staff of Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman, the commander of the American division of the Grand Fleet, and was able to view a gunnery exercise from the British battleship HMS Queen Elizabeth.

Leahy had the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation block this, but decided that it would be in his best interest to get away from Pratt, and he secured command of the destroyers of the Scouting Force on the West Coast in 1931.

He could not find a tenant for the Florida Avenue property at a rent that would pay for its upkeep;[59] the price of food had fallen so much that his land in the Sacramento Valley could not generate a profit, and was seized by the government to recover unpaid taxes;[60] and a run on the bank in January 1933 caused the Colusa County Bank to close its doors, taking with it Leahy's life savings, and leaving him with a large debt that he would not pay off until 1941.

When his successor as the Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, Rear Admiral Edgar B. Larimer, suffered a mental breakdown and was hospitalized, Leahy ensured that he was kept on the active list until he reached retirement age, thereby safeguarding his pension.

When two midshipmen at Annapolis, John Hyland and Victor Krulak, faced expulsion for failing to reach the required minimum height of 5 feet 6 inches (168 cm), Leahy waived the regulations to permit them to graduate with the class of 1934, and both went on to have distinguished careers.

Leahy treated him to the largest fleet maneuver the U.S. Navy had ever carried out, with 129 warships, including 12 battleships, participating, which the President observed from the deck of the cruiser USS Houston.

On 22 May, Leahy accompanied the President and dignitaries including John Nance Garner, Harry Hopkins, James F. Byrnes, Morris Sheppard, Edwin C. Johnson, Claude Pepper and Sam Rayburn on a cruise on the presidential yacht USS Potomac to watch a baseball game between congressmen and the press.

The commander-in-chief of the Asiatic Fleet, Admiral Harry Yarnell, asked for four more cruisers to help evacuate American citizens from the Shanghai International Settlement, but the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, thought this would be too provocative.

[79][81] Leahy wrote in his diary that a Japanese threat to bomb the civilian population in China was "evidence, and a conclusive one, that the old accepted rules of warfare are no longer in effect.

On 5 January, Roosevelt, Leahy and Edison met with Congressman Carl Vinson to draw up a strategy for obtaining Congressional approval for a 20 percent increase in all classes of warships.

[90] Although given the unflattering sobriquet Almirante Lija ("Admiral Sandpaper") by locals, based on his surname, [91] Luis Muñoz Marín came to regard Leahy as "by far the best governor that has been sent to Puerto Rico since the beginning of the American Regime.

He regulated prices and production in the coffee industry, and had ships traveling between the United States and the Panama Canal, where major upgrade works were being undertaken, stop over in Puerto Rico when they needed repairs or supplies.

Planning was based on the assumption that France would be a bulwark against Germany, as it had been in World War I, and the United States would have ample time to mobilize industry and create armies.

[117] Leahy thought the United States's entry into the war would strengthen his hand with the Vichy government,[118] but Charles de Gaulle's capture of Saint Pierre and Miquelon later that month discredited American assurances that French colonies would not be seized.

"[125] Waging a two-ocean war as part of a coalition revealed serious deficiencies in the organization of the American high command when it came to formulating grand strategy: meetings of the senior officers of the Army and Navy with each other and with the President were irregular and infrequent, and there was no joint planning staff or secretariat to record decisions taken.

Marshall and King were opposed to it on the grounds that it would divert resources necessary for Operation Roundup, a landing in northern France, but after listening to their arguments, Leahy informed them Roosevelt was adamant that it was vital American forces take the field against Germany in 1942, and that Gymnast was to proceed.

[161] In San Diego they boarded the cruiser USS Baltimore, which took them to Hawaii, where Nimitz briefed them on a proposed invasion of the island of Formosa, King's preferred target, but also spoke favorably of MacArthur's alternative of liberating the Philippines.

The United States was allocated the southern part of Germany, which meant that its lines of communications would run through France, where Leahy was concerned about the prospect of a postwar Communist takeover.

The cruiser USS Quincy took them to Malta, where Leahy chaired a CCS meeting to discuss the war against Germany, and then the President's personal aircraft, the Sacred Cow, flew them to Yalta.

"[174] After the bomb was tested and did explode, Truman consulted with Byrnes, Stimson, Leahy, Marshall, Arnold and Dwight D. Eisenhower, the commander of United States Forces, European Theater.

[192] Truman officially accepted his resignation as his chief of staff on 2 March 1949, although as an officer with five-star rank, Leahy technically remained on active service as an advisor to the Secretary of the Navy.

Unfortunately, he hasn't... its stiff official manner, its elaborate discretion, its desperate need of editing and its lack of any exciting new information make it dull and dusty fare... writes in a prose style as rigid as a naval cadet standing at attention in his review.