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Kidd, Jr., Isaac, ADM.
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Home Town Cleveland, Ohio
Last Address Alexandria, Virginia
Date of Passing Jun 27, 1999
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Isaac C. Kidd Jr., 79, Admiral And Expert on Maritime Law
By WOLFGANG SAXON
Published: July 4, 1999
Adm. Isaac Campbell Kidd Jr., who capped a 40-year Navy career by becoming an authority on the Law of the Sea, died on June 27 at his home in Alexandria, Va. He was 79.
The cause was prostate cancer, said a spokesman for the John M. Taylor Funeral Home in Annapolis, Md.
Admiral Kidd retired in 1978 as commander in chief of the Atlantic Fleet and supreme commander of NATO forces in the Atlantic. He then put his expertise to work for various public agencies in Washington, lectured widely on maritime law in the United States and abroad and taught a course on the subject at the College of William and Mary.
In 23 years of sea duty, he commanded destroyers, destroyer divisions and Navy fleets in the Mediterranean, the Pacific and the Atlantic.
As chief of materiel at the Pentagon in the early 1970's, he oversaw Navy procurement, logistics and labor relations and supervised 350,000 uniformed and civilian personnel.
The admiral, who was known as Ike, was born into a Navy family in Cleveland and graduated from the United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis, in 1942. His father, Rear Adm. Isaac Kidd Sr., was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, aboard his flagship, the battleship Arizona.
As a newly commissioned officer, Ensign Kidd was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic. He later served as a gunnery officer aboard a destroyer in the Allied landings in Sicily and Italy, and finished the war in the Pacific theater.
He received his first destroyer command shortly after the war ended, and then alternated between sea and shore assignments before becoming a full admiral in 1971.
Admiral Kidd led an inquiry into the Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship Liberty in the Mediterranean off the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, an attack that killed 34 officers and men and wounded 171 others. Israel said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian ship, but the inquiry concluded that the Israeli attack was unprovoked.
Admiral Kidd was chief of the Naval Materiel Command from 1971 to 1975 before he assumed his final Atlantic and NATO commands. His decorations included the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit and the Bronze Star.
He was a member and past president of the International Scuba Association and of the Italian Society of Military Engineers.
Admiral Kidd is survived by his wife of 57 years, Marie Angelique de Golian Kidd; three sons, Isaac I. 3d, of Annapolis, Kevin G., of Portland, Ore., and Christopher A., of Alexandria; three daughters, Marie Angelique de Golian Smith of Bexley, Ohio, Regina I. Wolbarsht of McLean, Va., and Mary C. Littlepage Plumer of Atlanta; 17 grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.
Other Memories He next served as Gunnery Officer and later as Executive Officer on the destroyer USS Putnam (DD-757), seeing action in Leyte Gulf, Saipan and Tinian operations; Iwo Jima; radar picket duty and gunfire support off Okinawa; the rescue of the few survivors of the destroyer TWIGGS, sunk by kamikaze attack, and, assisted in salvage of the battleship PENNSYLVANIA, hit at Buckner Bay.
Following shakedown off the Pacific Coast, Putnam glided beneath the Golden Gate Bridge 30 December 1944 to take her place with the Pacific Fleet. Arriving Pearl Harbor 2 January 1945, the destroyer prepared for her first offensive operation, and got under way 29 January for the Marianas Islands, screening the transports carrying 4th and 5th Division Marines.
Pausing briefly at Eniwetok, Saipan, and Tinian, the destroyer steamed from Guam 17 February in convoy en route to Iwo Jima. She arrived off Iwo Jima on D-Day (19 February) with the amphibious landing and battle underway. Gunfire support ships lying off-shore kept a thunderous rain of destruction pouring on the island.
Putnam inched in dangerously close to blast shore installations in support of the invading marines and illuminated Japanese troop concentrations at night with star shells. On 23 February, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal and a high-ranking Navy-Marine Corps party, after observing the initial phases of the landing, embarked in Putnam for transportation to Guam and a conference with Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz.
Putnam departed Guam 12 March and escorted logistics ships to Leyte in the Philippine Islands, arriving five days later. She stood out of San Pedro Bay, Philippines 27 March and escorted a transport group to Okinawa; arriving Easter Sunday, the destroyer immediately took up anti-aircraft screening duties. After escorting a convoy to Ulithi, Putnam returned to Okinawa and was assigned a gunfire support station southwest of the island 16 April.
Later assigned to a hazardous radar picket station, Putnam vectored Navy fighters against kamikazes. She remained unscathed only because an unidentified American pilot heroically crashed into a kamikaze 16 June just seconds before it would have hit the destroyer.
Soon after sundown the same day, a torpedo dropped from a low-flying Japanese plane struck Twiggs to port and exploded her No. 2 magazine. Captain Glenn R. Hartwig, the squadron commander in Putnam, quickly closed. Exploding ammunition made rescue operations hazardous, but of 188 Twiggs survivors snatched from the sea, Putnam accounted for 114.
