Ships
- USS Hornet (CV-12) Commanding officer from 29 November 1943 · Relieved on 29 May 1944
Miles Rutherford Browning was born on 10 April 1897 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, the son of Sarah Louise Smith and Oren Fogle Browning Jr., a New York stockbroker. He went to public schools and was appointed to the Naval Academy in 1914. His class was graduated early because of the war, and he was commissioned ensign on 29 June 1917.
He served briefly in the battleship Oklahoma and helped fit out New Mexico. From June 1918 to the end of the war he sailed as an observer in the French cruiser Lutetia. Four years at sea followed: the Atlantic Fleet flagship Pennsylvania, the destroyer McKean, engineer of Crane and Howard, executive officer of Badger and then Kidder, and patrol duty in Charleston and Thompson out of San Diego.
In January 1924 he went to Pensacola. His instructors saw exceptional skill in the cockpit and also a "wild streak" that his squadron mates thought might be dangerous. He was designated a naval aviator on 29 September 1924 and flew from Langley, the first carrier. He served with Observation Squadron 2, in operations at Norfolk, and from July 1929 in command of the floatplane unit of the cruiser Trenton. From 1931 he spent three years in the Bureau of Aeronautics designing and testing combat aircraft. In 1932 he crashed in a test flight and was hospitalized in San Diego. He was one of the "progressives" who pressed for fast fighters, with speed ahead of maneuverability. From June 1934 he commanded Fighting Squadron 3B in Langley and Ranger. At the Naval War College in 1936 he wrote a 13-page memorandum on carrier warfare that pointed out how vulnerable carriers were while rearming their planes, the weakness that decided Midway six years later. He was one of the first naval instructors at the Army Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field.
He joined William Halsey's staff as air tactical officer, commanded Yorktown's air group from 1938, and ran the Fleet Aircraft Tactical Unit. In June 1941 he became Halsey's chief of staff. He was on Enterprise's bridge on 7 December 1941, when the carrier, returning from Wake, sent her scouts into the Japanese attack. He planned the raids of February and March 1942 on the Marshalls, Gilberts, Wake and Marcus. Life magazine called him "America's mastermind in aerial warfare," and Halsey had him promoted to captain. He helped plan the Doolittle Raid of 18 April 1942.
When Halsey fell ill before Midway, Browning stayed aboard Enterprise as chief of staff to Raymond Spruance. His Distinguished Service Medal citation credits his "judicious planning and brilliant execution" with the rout of the Japanese fleet. Historians are divided. Craig Symonds calls the claim "manifestly untrue," and John Lundstrom has shown that the story of Spruance wanting to delay the launch, with Browning overruling him, came from a misreading of the war diary. On 5 June Browning planned a long-range strike with heavy bombs. Wade McClusky and his senior pilots, who had come back from the morning's attack on fumes, argued against it, and Spruance sided with the airmen.
In October 1942 he went back to Halsey at Nouméa for the Guadalcanal crisis. Halsey wrote to Nimitz that "Miles has an uncanny knack of sizing up a situation and coming out with an answer," admitting he was "decidedly temperamental" and begging Nimitz not to break up "this partnership." But Browning offended Navy Secretary Frank Knox, King agreed with Knox, and he was replaced. In March 1943 he married Jane, with whom he had had an affair in 1942 while she was married to a fellow officer, Commander Francis Massie Hughes.
He was detached in July 1943 to take the new Hornet (CV-12). He commanded her from 29 November 1943 in strikes on Palau, Truk and Ponape and in support of the Hollandia landings in April 1944. Rear Admiral Jocko Clark flew his flag in Hornet from 13 April 1944. During a movie on the hangar deck someone set off a CO2 canister and started a stampede, and two sailors went overboard. One drowned. Browning refused Clark's urging to lower a boat. Pilots already resented him for enforcing an unrealistic takeoff distance for the SB2C Helldiver. A board of investigation followed, and on 29 May 1944 he was relieved. He spent the rest of the war teaching carrier tactics at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.
He retired on 1 January 1947 with the rank of rear admiral. After a 1949 tour of Japan he called the lasting effects of radiation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki a "myth." He was New Hampshire's civil defense director from 1950 to 1952 and drew up a plan to house half a million Boston evacuees in New Hampshire homes. He died of systemic lupus erythematosus at Chelsea Naval Hospital in Boston on 29 September 1954 and was buried at Arlington on 6 October. His first marriage, in 1922, was to Cathalene Parker, stepdaughter of Vice Admiral Clark H. Woodward. Their daughter Cathalene was the mother of the comedian Chevy Chase. He has been played on screen in Midway (1976 and 2019), War and Remembrance and Dauntless.
Flags, conflicting in Wikipedia's own text:
His third wife's name: "Jane Matthews" in one section and "Katherine Jane Eynon" in another.
Whether she was his third or fourth wife. This bio uses only "Jane." Confirm the full name from an obituary or Arlington record.
Sources
Wikipedia, "Miles Browning" (citing Symonds, The Battle of Midway; Lundstrom; Buell, The Quiet Warrior).
uboat.net, Allied Warship Commanders: Miles Rutherford Browning (ranks; Hornet 29 Nov 1943 – 29 May 1944).