William Sowden Sims was an admiral in the United States Navy who fought during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to modernize the navy.
21 Facts About William Sims
2.
William Sims served twice as president of the Naval War College.
3.
William Sims graduated from the United States Naval Academy in 1880, the beginnings of an era of naval reform and greater professionalization.
4.
In March 1897, shortly after his promotion to lieutenant, Sims was assigned as the military attache to Paris and St Petersburg.
5.
William Sims's superiors resisted his suggestions, failing to see the necessity.
6.
From 1911 to 1912, William Sims attended the Naval War College.
7.
Shortly before the United States entered World War I, then Rear Admiral William Sims was assigned as the president of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island in February 1917.
8.
William Sims received a temporary promotion to vice admiral in May 1917.
9.
William Sims ended the war as a vice admiral, in command of all US naval forces operating in Europe.
10.
Shortly after the Armistice, William Sims was promoted to temporary admiral in December 1918 but reverted to his permanent rank of rear admiral in April 1919 when he was assigned as president of the Naval War College.
11.
In 1919 after the war ended in Allied victory, William Sims publicly attacked the deficiencies of American naval strategy, tactics, policy, and administration.
12.
William Sims charged the failures had cost the Allies 2,500,000 tons of supplies, thereby prolonging the war by six months.
13.
William Sims estimated the delay had raised the cost of the war to the Allies by $15 billion, and that it led to the unnecessary loss of 500,000 lives.
14.
William Sims pointed to Sims' anglophilism, and said his vantage point in London was too narrow to assess accurately the overall war effort by the US Navy.
15.
William Sims did however serve a second tour as president of the Naval War College.
16.
William Sims is, possibly, the only career naval officer to win a Pulitzer Prize.
17.
William Sims retired from the Navy in October 1922, having reached the mandatory retirement age of 64.
18.
William Sims appeared on the cover of the October 26,1925 issue of Time magazine and was the subject of a feature article.
19.
William Sims was promoted to full admiral on the retired list in 1930.
20.
Admiral William Sims died in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1936 at the age of 77.
21.
William Sims married Anne Erwin Hitchcock, who was sixteen years his junior, in 1905.