Miles Browning (War Hero) – Overview, Biography

Name:Miles Browning
Occupation: War Hero
Gender:Male
Birth Day: April 10,
1897
Death Date:Sep 29, 1954 (age 57)
Age: Aged 57
Birth Place: Perth Amboy,
United States
Zodiac Sign:Aries

Miles Browning

Miles Browning was born on April 10, 1897 in Perth Amboy, United States (57 years old). Miles Browning is a War Hero, zodiac sign: Aries. Nationality: United States. Approx. Net Worth: Undisclosed.

Trivia

He participated in many of the most important Pacific theater events during World War II, including the Battle of Midway, the Battle of Guadalcanal, and the Doolittle Raid.

Net Worth 2020

Undisclosed
Find out more about Miles Browning net worth here.

Does Miles Browning Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Miles Browning died on Sep 29, 1954 (age 57).

Physique

HeightWeightHair ColourEye ColourBlood TypeTattoo(s)
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Before Fame

He understood the destructive power of carrier strikes after he witnessed Japanese planes bombing the American fleet in Pearl Harbor.

Biography

Biography Timeline

1914

Miles Browning was born in Perth Amboy, New Jersey, the son of Sarah Louise (née Smith) and New York City stockbroker Oren Fogle Browning, Jr. He attended public schools before his appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis, in 1914. He graduated early, commissioned Ensign with the Class of 1918 on June 29, 1917.

1918

Following graduation, Browning briefly served on the USS Oklahoma, a battleship of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet. From February, 1918 he then had duty in connection with fitting out the battleship New Mexico. In June 1918, he joined the French cruiser Lutetia, and was an observer aboard while she operated with Cruiser Force, Atlantic Fleet, through the end of the war.

1920

Following the war Browning spent four consecutive years afloat, serving on the battleship USS Pennsylvania (flagship of the Atlantic Fleet), the destroyer McKean, and as Engineer Officer of Crane, and later Howard (destroyers operating with the U.S. Pacific Fleet). Lieutenant Browning joined Badger in 1920, serving as executive officer until transferred a year later to similar duty as XO of Kidder.

1922

On May 20, 1922, Browning married San Francisco socialite Cathalene Isabella Parker, stepdaughter of Vice Admiral Clark H. Woodward. From 1922 to January 1924, Browning served as Senior Patrol Officer on the cruiser USS Charleston and the destroyer USS Thompson, operating out of Naval Station San Diego. During that time, his only daughter, Cathalene Parker Browning, was born in San Diego (her son is the American comedian Chevy Chase).

1924

In January 1924, Browning reported to Naval Air Station Pensacola for flight training. He showed exceptional skill in the cockpit, but also exhibited a “wild streak” which struck his squadron mates as “potentially dangerous.” Designated Naval Aviator on September 29, 1924, he became one of America’s earliest navy combat pilots, joining USS Langley, America’s first aircraft carrier, which had been converted from the collier USS Jupiter (whose sister ships, Cyclops and Nereus, vanished without a trace in the Bermuda Triangle area). From January 1925 until May 1927, Browning was assigned to Observation Squadron 2, attached first to the minelayer Aroostook, later to the battleship Idaho. Advanced to Operations Officer, he served for two years at Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia. Promoted to Naval Flight Officer, he was assigned his first command in July 1929: Scouting Squadron 5S, the aviation unit of the light cruiser Trenton. During that time he performed additional duty on the staff of the commander of Light Cruiser Division Two of the Scouting Fleet (USS Trenton, flagship).

1931

As an early combat aviator, Browning helped develop and implement fighter aircraft tactics and strategy; he also helped shape how naval warplanes were designed and built. In July 1931, he reported to the Bureau of Aeronautics to serve in the Material Division (Design), and spent the next three years helping to design and test combat aircraft. As a test pilot, he crashed a plane in 1932 and was laid up in a San Diego naval hospital. The monoplane fighters which Browning and others piloted went through numerous upgrades in both structure and function, every design change hotly debated by men whose very lives were at stake. Browning was part of the group of “progressives” that pushed for development of a high-performance fighter, with maneuverability secondary to speed. These men felt that a true fighter had to be fast enough to quickly overtake and shoot down enemy planes. Unfortunately for Browning and the other progressive thinkers, the Bureau of Aeronautics continued to emphasize maneuverability, climb, and flight ceiling at the expense of speed and other characteristics that the progressives argued were more important. If the bureau had been more receptive to the emphasis on speed, the United States might have entered World War II with a more advanced high-performance fighter.

1934

In June 1934, Browning was given command of Fighting Squadron 3B, based on the USS Langley and later on USS Ranger, the first American warship built from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. He served in that capacity until June 1936, when he reported to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, for postgraduate studies with additional duty at the Naval Torpedo Station there. Upon completion of his junior year, he became one of the first naval instructors at the Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field in 1937, training a new generation of fighter pilots while continuing his advanced studies in combat theory, national security policy, airborne command and control and joint military operations.

1936

Browning laid out his tactical logic in a 13-page, single-spaced, typewritten memorandum on carrier warfare prepared at the Naval War College in 1936, the year that Nazi Germany allied with Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. Browning’s essay briefly noted the vulnerability of carriers during the aircraft re-arming process, which he later successfully exploited during the Battle of Midway. After completing his academic work, Browning was appointed to Admiral William F. Halsey’s staff in the new billet of Air Tactical Officer. In June 1938, he joined the United States’ second new aircraft carrier, Yorktown, to serve as commander of Yorktown’s carrier air wing. Browning personally developed and organized the Fleet Aircraft Tactical Unit based on Yorktown, and commanded it for two additional years. When Halsey became the commander of Air Battle Forces two years later, Browning remained on his staff as Operations and War Plans Officer and became Halsey’s Chief of staff in June 1941. From the onset of U.S. involvement in World War II, Browning provided tactical counsel to Halsey from the bridge of the flagship USS Enterprise.

Some accounts credit Browning’s tactical genius and carrier operations experience with winning the battle of Midway. Spruance wanted to wait to launch fighter aircraft until the Japanese ships were within 100 miles (160 km). Browning, however, had deduced that the Japanese would commit to another strike on Midway Island and that he could catch them off guard. By ordering Enterprise’s aircraft to attack the Japanese task force on sight while the Japanese planes were committed to fueling and rearming operations on deck, Browning caught the Japanese ships without adequate protection and was able to sink all four of Japan’s big carriers, as he had predicted in his 1936 tactical thesis.

1941

As war loomed on the horizon, Halsey had Browning prepare the crew of Enterprise and her aircraft squadrons. They were en route to Hawaii after delivering a doomed Marine Corps fighter squadron to Wake Island when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. USS Enterprise scout bombers arrived over Pearl during the attack, and immediately went into action in defense of the naval base. Six of them were shot down. The carrier reached the devastated harbor just after the attack, and put to sea again early the next morning to patrol against any additional threats to the Hawaiian Islands. (Enterprise planes sank a Japanese submarine on December 10, 1941, three days into the war.)

1942

Designated flagship of the Pacific Fleet, Enterprise sailed in January 1942 to protect American convoys reinforcing Samoa. Soon, though, under the aggressive leadership of Halsey and Browning, Enterprise took up the offensive. In February and March 1942, Browning directed numerous daring air raids on Japanese bases at Kwajalein, Wotje, and Maloelap in the Marshall Islands, and blasted enemy installations in the Gilbert Islands, Marcus Island, and Wake Island. Halsey gave credit for much of his own remarkable military success to his chief of staff, and recommended Commander Browning for a spot promotion to the rank of captain. So dramatic were Browning’s air raids on Japanese island bases that Life magazine dubbed him “America’s mastermind in aerial warfare.”

Browning’s promotion was approved by CINCPAC that April following the “Doolittle Raid”, in which Browning himself played a role in both planning and executing. Dubbed “Jimmy Doolittle’s Raid” by the American press, the daring scheme launched 16 Army Air Forces long-range bombers, led by Lt. Col. James H. Doolittle, from the deck of the carrier Hornet, with Enterprise providing combat air support. The squadron dropped bombs on Tokyo and other Japanese cities on April 18, 1942, completely surprising the Japanese and giving the beleaguered American troops and public a much-needed boost in morale.

Browning, unfortunately, was a man of tremendous contradictions. At his moment of triumph, in the summer of 1942, he had an affair with the wife of a fellow officer, Commander Francis Massie Hughes. That breach of the Navy’s sacred code for an officer, combined with his drinking and unstable temperament, would eventually derail his career and lead later chroniclers to virtually write him out of military history. Despite this damaging personal incident, Browning resumed combat duties in October 1942, when Halsey was given command of the South Pacific theater, where Allied fortunes had turned for the worse. Browning’s sage tactical advice helped Halsey to execute the command miracle in the Solomon Islands that reversed the declining situation in that war-swept region.

1943

Again, Halsey gave Browning credit for his success. In a New Year’s Day 1943 letter to Admiral Nimitz (CINCPAC) concerning Browning’s precarious career situation, Halsey wrote, “Miles has an uncanny knack of sizing up a situation and coming out with an answer.” Admitting that his chief of staff was “decidedly temperamental”, Halsey begged Nimitz not to break up “this partnership” between himself and Browning, writing, “I am almost superstitious about it.” Several days later, however, Browning antagonized visiting Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, earning himself another powerful enemy who then replaced Browning over Halsey’s objections. Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations and Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet, and another old enemy, concurred. Halsey instead pushed for a promotion to Commodore for Browning. In March 1943, Browning married Jane Matthews, the woman with whom he had the 1942 affair; she was his fourth and last wife. Browning was detached from Halsey’s staff in July 1943 to become the commanding officer of the new USS Hornet (CV-12), the namesake of the USS Hornet (CV-8), lost in October 1942 at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. During his tenure of command, USS Hornet (CV-12) took part in massive aerial raids against Japanese bases in the Pacific, including Palau, Truk, and Ponape, and provided carrier-launched air support during the Allied invasion of New Guinea and the Jayapura operation.

1944

In the spring of 1944, during a nighttime showing of a film on Hornet’s hangar deck, someone discharged a CO2 canister and triggered a stampede. In the chaos, two sailors fell overboard; one of them drowned. By this time, Browning had alienated several of his superiors, including Admirals Joseph J. Clark and Marc Mitscher, who were waiting for Browning to make a misstep after numerous mistakes in ship-handling and general insubordination. He was also generally hated by his subordinates, in particular, the pilots, who held him responsible for numerous crashes as he enforced an unrealistically short take-off distance for the Curtiss SB2C Helldiver based on the theoretical claims of the manufacturer, instead of the practical experience of the pilots. When Browning refused to have a boat lowered to rescue the drowning sailors, despite Admiral Clark’s recommendation that he do so, a board of investigation was ordered, which criticized Browning’s command. The ensuing ruin of his career, “one of the great wastes to the American prosecution of the war,” resulted from nothing to do with combat. Browning was removed from command of Hornet in May 1944 and reassigned to the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where he taught carrier battle tactics during the final months of the war. Halsey was given command of the carrier-oriented Third Fleet during 1944–1945, but with his old chief of staff tossed onto the beach, he made grave mistakes that Browning might well have been able to help prevent.

1947

Browning retired from active duty on January 1, 1947, just short of his 50th birthday, and was retroactively promoted to rear admiral (upper half). He was appointed New Hampshire’s Civil Defense Director in 1950, where he devised a plan wherein 500,000 displaced residents of Boston could be housed in New Hampshire private homes in the event of disaster. Browning resigned from this post in 1952.

1949

Browning toured Japan in 1949, and stated that radiation damage from the atomic bombs was a “myth”. He pointed to gardens and a number of tall chimneys left standing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as proof that there were no long-term effects of the blasts.

1954

On September 29, 1954, Browning died of systemic lupus erythematosus at Chelsea Naval Hospital in Boston. He was buried on October 6, 1954, at Arlington National Cemetery.

1976

In the 1976 film Midway, Browning was portrayed by actor Biff McGuire. In the 1988 TV-mini series “War and Remembrance, Episode 3”, Browning was portrayed by actor Michael McGuire. In the 2019 film Dauntless: The Battle of Midway, Browning was portrayed by actor C. Thomas Howell.

🎂 Upcoming Birthday

Currently, Miles Browning is 124 years, 9 months and 9 days old. Miles Browning will celebrate 125th birthday on a Sunday 10th of April 2022.

Find out about Miles Browning birthday activities in timeline view here.

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