Nimitz at the Naval Academy: The Plebe Year of One of America’s Most Distinguished Admirals

On 29 June 2023, more than a thousand aspiring future naval officers took the oath of enlistment and officially joined the U.S. Naval Academy’s corps of midshipmen. In doing so, they followed in the footsteps of more than 90,000 men and women who have studied on the scenic Severn River in Maryland since the school’s establishment in 1845.[1] One of the most famous forbearers of the class of 2027 was Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who became a member of the class of 1905 nearly 122 years ago.

On a warm June day in 1901, the sandy-haired, sixteen-year-old from Texas arrived in the capital of the Old Line State to complete his final preparations and exams before entering the U.S. Naval Academy. “I am in Annapolis at last,” declared an excited Nimitz in a letter home to his beloved paternal grandfather on 15 June.[2] The future admiral prepared to don the uniform of a naval cadet just as the United States embarked on a massive naval building program intended to provide the nation with a global force capable of defending the overseas empire it had won in the Spanish-American War of 1898.[3] To man the new ships joining the fleet, the Naval Academy itself was expanding and undergoing a number of significant changes during Nimitz’s time there. His surviving letters home from his residency at the U.S. Naval Academy Preparatory School and his plebe year in the Naval Academy paint the picture of a young man determined to take full advantage of the opportunities afforded to him and overcome the serious obstacles he encountered.

When Nimitz arrived in Annapolis, he promptly enrolled in Robert L. Werntz’s nearby preparatory school for three months in order to receive supplementary instruction intended to improve his chances of passing the entrance examinations for the Naval Academy. In the rare hours when Nimitz was not studying, he observed the Academy’s grounds for the first time and was impressed by the construction he saw all around campus. “The new boat house and the new armory are nearly completed and they are just commencing on the new quarters,” he explained to his grandfather. Having spent his entire life up to that point in the Texas hill country, Nimitz’s initial months in Maryland also provided him with an introduction to all things nautical. Almost immediately, the water held a special appeal for him. “Last night it was so calm,” he mused on 24 June, “and the water was so much like glass that the reflection of the light from the light house, two miles out, looked just like one long string of fire in the water.”[4] Though Nimitz knew nothing of sailing or seamanship, the outgoing cadet quickly made friends with classmates who did. He recounted to his family how on one occasion he and several other boys rented a sailboat and ventured out into the Chesapeake Bay to observe the monitor Puritan (BM-1) anchored there. Another Sunday evening in late July, Nimitz and his companions again rented a boat to sail the fourteen miles to Kent Island and go swimming. They had a pleasant time on the beach, but the choppy water on the way back gave Nimitz experience with another new nautical sensation. “The sail out there was the first real enjoyment I have had since I have been here,” he recalled. “On the way back I got seasick and there is only one thing that I can say is that a person does not know what seasickness is until he has had it.”[5]

Nearly three months after arriving in Annapolis, Nimitz prepared to take the entrance examinations for the Naval Academy in early September. Although he had not graduated high school, and his alma mater back in Texas graduated less than thirty pupils each year, he still felt confident about his chances for admission.[6] While most of his fellow aspirants had received appointments through political connections, Nimitz was one of the few students at the preparatory school who secured their spot through a competitive process.[7] He initially struggled to learn the new method of arithmetic taught at the academy, but he noted his progress in his correspondence. Throughout the process, he felt the weight of his family’s expectations on him, and was resolved to do his best in all subjects. “Grandfather,” the young man began tenderly, “you don’t know how much I appreciate all your kindness to me and I will try to repay it by going through the Academy and doing my best to graduate near the head.”[8] This single-minded determination paid dividends when the entrance examination results were posted in the first week of September 1901. “Out of ninety three that took the examinations,” shared the modest Nimitz, “only about fifteen passed in everything on first trial. My roommate… and myself were among the lucky ones.”[9] In truth, luck had little to do with Nimitz’s high marks on the entrance exams, and he continued to make a strong showing throughout his plebe year. By December, he reported to his stepfather that he stood twelfth in math, twenty-second in English, thirty-eighth in French, and forty-sixth in drawing out of 148 cadets.[10] His performance might have been even better had Nimitz not fallen seriously ill in November.

Like all new cadets at the Naval Academy, Nimitz began a rigorous routine of exercise and drilling from the day he enrolled. He relished the challenge and the chance to improve his physical fitness. Nimitz boasted a solidly middling height and build for his age, standing a little over five feet nine inches tall and weighing in at 140 pounds.[11] The future chief of naval operations, however, nearly failed his physical entrance examination when a Navy doctor discovered the Texan’s persistent hearing trouble and the sharp pain that the young man experienced in his ears when exposed to loud noises.[12] Once Nimitz acclimated to the academic routine, he resolved to take matters into his own hands regarding his physical health. As he told his family, “every Saturday afternoon and all other hours when I have time to spare I go to the gymnasium and work hard. You see, I want to develop myself physically as well as mentally.”[13] Yet despite his efforts, Nimitz was a frequent patient at the academy’s hospital almost as soon as his first year began. In September he visited the doctor on several occasions because he was issued shoes that were “a size larger than I had been accustomed to wearing and they skinned my feet so bad that I had to go to the hospital and have them treated.”[14] More seriously, Nimitz came down with a case of pneumonia after two hours of infantry drilling on 9 November and spent the next four weeks in the hospital.[15] He relayed to his parents from his recovery bed how “I was pretty sick the first five days in here, my temperature was as high as 103 and a fraction.”[16] As he worked to regain his strength, he fretted over the time and class standing that he had lost. “It is hard luck to get sick after one has made such a good start here,” he told his stepfather.[17] In another undated letter that is likely also from Nimitz’s first year, he reported spending an additional week in the hospital with a case of tonsillitis.[18] The physical hurdles that plagued Nimitz during his initial year at the Academy might have discouraged another cadet, but he persevered and even succeeded in demonstrably improving his physical fitness in the academy’s annual strength tests given to all cadets.[19]

Nimitz’s missives to his family remained remarkably upbeat throughout the 1901–1902 academic year, and he made every effort to reassure his stepfather and grandfather that he was happy and being treated well. Still, the family in Texas could not help but ask about the hazing widely known to take place at the nation’s military and naval academies. When Nimitz’s grandfather inquired whether his grandson was being roughly hazed, the future admiral stated unequivocally and perhaps with some dishonesty that “there is never any bodily hurt done to any one in the hazing here.” Instead, the treatment Nimitz described took on a more comical hue. In October he related how several upperclassmen made him and his roommate dance with a broom. “We then had to go through the manual of arms with our brooms,” he continued. Finally, “I had to climb up my locker and make sail with a handkerchief. That is the style of hazing we get here.” The same letter also explained that Nimitz and his fellow plebes were “not allowed to swing our arms when we walk and must say ‘sir’ when an upperclassman speaks to us. Another form of their hazing is brought out when we are in ranks with them. They swear at us for not doing better, etc.” Even though Nimitz detailed additional hazing in the mess hall where cadets were made to tell jokes and make reports, he also claimed that he liked the hazing because it “makes a man out of a person and keeps him from getting too ‘fresh’ as they say here.”[20] Naturally Nimitz wanted to downplay the extent of the hazing he experienced, and it is common for individuals joining a new organization to desire a difficult initiation process so that they feel as if there is a high barrier of entry to the group. Yet, the commandant at the academy evidently thought that hazing was a problem and made an effort to reduce its prevalence during Nimitz’s tenure at the academy.[21] The practice nevertheless persisted and was the subject of a congressional inquiry in 1906 during which midshipman and future World War II admiral Richmond Kelly Turner defended the practice of hazing and physical abuse under direct questioning from congressmen.[22]

As Nimitz’s first year at the Naval Academy drew to a close, he could only express how he would “certainly be glad when this term is over.”[23] He looked forward to his summer cruise up the east coast aboard the battleship Indiana (BB-1) followed by a stint aboard the training ship Chesapeake.[24] While aboard Indiana, Nimitz learned that his final overall class ranking stood at eighth out of 118 cadets.[25] More than two dozen members of his class did not return for the second year, but Nimitz remained and thrived. Moreover, when he returned to Annapolis in the fall, it was as a midshipman since Congress changed the designation for aspiring officers at the Naval Academy during the summer of 1902. Already an old salt, Nimitz remarked upon his return how the new class of plebes “are a scared-looking bunch… but this only shows us how we looked, and how green we were when we first entered.”[26]