Past Naval War College Presidents

Donald B. Beary (1888 – 1966) was awarded the Navy Cross for convoy duty in World War One. When the United States entered World War Two in 1941, Beary commanded the Fleet Operational Training Command, Atlantic. Later, during the battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa in 1944, he was serving as Commander, Service Squadron 6, and was assigned the task of providing at-sea support to the Third and Fifth Fleets. At the U.S. Naval War College, Vice Admiral Beary undertook to broaden the students’ views by bringing to Newport a wide variety of business authorities and leaders to meet and have discussions with students.

Spruance graduated from the U.S. Naval War College in 1927 and returned to serve on the faculty, first as head of correspondence courses in 1932 – 1933, then as head of tactics instruction for the junior class in 1935 – 1936, and for the senior class in 1936 – 1937. Finally, as the twenty-sixth president of the college in 1946 – 1948, Spruance lent dignity and prestige to the college as it led in educational preparations for the Cold War era. He laid the groundwork for a wide number of innovations, including a much broader curriculum, establishing academic chairs for a distinguished civilian historian and a political scientist, and what eventually would become the Naval War College Review.

William Satterlee Pye (1880 – 1957) had a long association with the U.S. Naval War College dating back to 1913 – 1915, when, as a lieutenant, he served as a member of the college staff. Among his important early contributions were mathematical tables developed from the college’s war games to assist the fleet in maneuvers. In 1920, while serving as Executive Officer of the battleship Pennsylvania (BB 38), he had been a member of the influential Knox-King-Pye Board that recommended a policy for advanced naval education. In 1934 – 1935, he attended the Naval War College as a member of the first Advanced Class.

Edward Kalbfus (1877 – 1954) was a staunch believer in the value of the U.S. Naval War College to the service. On reassignment as the twenty-fourth college president, he reverted to his permanent rank as a rear admiral. He is best remembered for the production by the Naval War College of Sound Military Decision (1942), the only published guide for naval planning in the U.S. Navy, and for the successful efforts that he made to keep the college open during the Second World War. After leaving the War College in 1942, he became a member of the Navy’s General Board and in 1944, the first Director of Naval History. In 1944, he was a member of the three-officer Pearl Harbor Court of Enquiry.

Edward Kalbfus (1877 – 1954) was a staunch believer in the value of the U.S. Naval War College to the service. He exerted strenuous efforts to forward the institution’s objects and to enhance its stature within the Navy Department as well as in the City of Newport, which names the main street leading from town to the college as Admiral Kalbfus Road. He graduated from the college in 1927, served two years on the staff and served two separate tours as president. On leaving the college as the twenty-second president, he was promoted to vice admiral in 1936 as Commander Battleships, Battle Force, and in 1938 to four stars as Commander Battle Force, United States Fleet.

The nineteenth president of the U.S. Naval War College, Joel R. P. Pringle (1873–1932), had been the first commanding officer of the destroyer USS Perkins (D 26) in 1910 and went on to command the destroyer tender USS Dixie (AD 1), Flotilla 2 of the Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, and the battleship USS Idaho (BB 24). During World War One, he was simultaneously Chief of Staff, Destroyer Flotilla, European Waters, and Commanding Officer of the destroyer tender USS Melville (AD 2), Admiral Sims’s flagship. He graduated from the Naval War College in 1920 and served as Chief of Staff at the Naval War College in 1923–1925 under Rear Admiral C. S. Williams.

William V. Pratt (1869–1957) had served as a member of the U.S. Naval War College staff in 1911–1912. On becoming the eighteenth president in 1925, he instituted reforms that changed the focus of student education significantly for the future. Most important, he believed that naval officers should be made to view the totality of modern warfare, and expanded course requirements to include much more than tactics and strategy. Pratt eventually rose to the rank of admiral and was the first president of the Naval War College to hold the office of Chief of Naval Operations. He served in that capacity from September 1930 through June 1933, during the administration of President Herbert Hoover.

Long before becoming the fifteenth president of the U.S. Naval War College, in 1917, Sims was one of the best-known officers in the Navy. In 1919, Sims returned to the college as its sixteenth president, reverting to two-star rank. While president of the college, he published his Pulitzer Prize–winning memoir, The Victory at Sea (1920), and became a major public figure through his criticism of Washington’s conduct of the naval war.

Long before becoming the fifteenth president of the U.S. Naval War College, in 1917, Sims was one of the best-known officers in the Navy. As an advocate of improved naval gunnery, Inspector of Naval Ordnance, and naval aide to President Theodore Roosevelt, Sims had been an outspoken naval critic. He attended the college’s two-year Long Course in 1911 – 1912. Shortly after becoming the college’s president, Sims was ordered in late March 1917 to sail secretly for England under an assumed name to begin discussions with the Royal Navy on wartime cooperation. After the United States declared war, he stayed on and rose to four-star rank as Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe.

Rear Admiral Charles Stillman Sperry (1847–1911) was the tenth president of the U.S. Naval War College (1903–1906) and afterward commanded the Great White Fleet on its voyage from California to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, across the Indian Ocean, through the Mediterranean, and across the Atlantic to Norfolk, Virginia, in 1908–1909.