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Contact Info
Home Town Wymore, VA
Last Address Fort Belvoir, VA
Date of Passing Jan 09, 1990
Location of Interment U.S. Naval Academy Cemetery and Columbarium (VLM) - Annapolis, Maryland
After his military service, Robert Pirie worked for Aerojet General Corporation.
Other Comments:
Navy Distinguished Service Medal
Awarded for Actions During Cold War
Service: Navy
General Orders: Board Serial 732 (September 20, 1962)
Citation: The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Distinguished Service Medal to Vice Admiral Robert Burns Pirie (NSN: 0-60482), United States Navy, for exceptionally meritorious and distinguished service in a position of great responsibility to the Government of the United States as Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Air) from May 1958 to November 1962. A dynamic leader and skilled technician in the field of aviation, Vice Admiral Pirie has been responsible for advances which contributed significantly to the effectiveness of the naval air arm as an element of sea power and which raised the level of Fleet readiness to unprecedented heights. In strengthening the Navy's weapons arsenal and improving fleet tactical doctrine, he vigorously sought better weapons and equipment based upon sound research and accurate evaluation of operational experience. Under his direction, significant improvements were achieved in aviation safety, a more efficient and economical program for aviation maintenance was instituted, and training and operating procedures were standardized. Exercising initiative and foresight, Vice Admiral Pirie established the first formal Navy organization for astronautic and led the Navy in the exploitation of space as essential to the perpetuation of sea power supremacy. Through his knowledge and understanding of aviation in general, and of the unique problems of naval aviation in particular, he made important contributions to aviation development as a representative of the Navy and the nation on policy-making boards and committees at inter-service, national and international levels. His inspiring leadership, sound judgment, keen foresight, and untiring devotion to duty reflect the highest credit upon himself and the United States Naval Service.
World War II/China-Burma-India Theater/China Defensive Campaign (1942-45)
From Month/Year
July / 1942
To Month/Year
May / 1945
Description The China Theater of Operations more resembled the Soviet-German war on the Eastern Front than the war in the Pacific or the war in Western Europe. On the Asian continent, as on the Eastern Front, an Allied partner, China, carried the brunt of the fighting. China had been at war with Japan since 1937 and continued the fight until the Japanese surrender in 1945. The United States advised and supported China's ground war, while basing only a few of its own units in China for operations against Japanese forces in the region and Japan itself. The primary American goal was to keep the Chinese actively in the Allied war camp, thereby tying down Japanese forces that otherwise might be deployed against the Allies fighting in the Pacific.
The United States confronted two fundamental challenges in the China theater. The first challenge was political. Despite facing a common foe in Japan, Chinese society was polarized. Some Chinese were supporters of the Nationalist Kuomintang government; some supported one of the numerous former warlords nominally loyal to the Nationalists; and some supported the Communists, who were engaged in a guerrilla war against the military and political forces of the Nationalists. Continuing tensions, which sometimes broke out into pitched battles, precluded development of a truly unified Chinese war effort against the Japanese.
The second challenge in the China theater was logistical. Fighting a two-front war of its own, simultaneously having to supply other Allies, and facing enormous distances involved in moving anything from the United States to China, the U.S. military could not sustain the logistics effort required to build a modern Chinese army. Without sufficient arms, ammunition, and equipment, let alone doctrine and leadership training, the Chinese Nationalist Army was incapable of driving out the Japanese invaders. A "Europe-first" U.S. policy automatically lowered the priority of China for U.S.-manufactured arms behind the needs of U.S. forces, of other European Allies, and of the Soviet Union. The China theater was also the most remote from the United States. American supplies and equipment had to endure long sea passages to India for transshipment to China, primarily by airlift. But transports bringing supplies to China had to fly over the Himalayas the so-called Hump--whose treacherous air currents and rugged mountains claimed the lives of many American air crews. Despite a backbreaking effort, only a fraction of the supplies necessary to successfully wage a war ever reached southern China.
Regardless of these handicaps, the United States and Nationalist China succeeded in forging a coalition that withstood the tests of time. Indeed, Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, the Allied Supreme Commander, China Theater, accepted, though reluctantly, U.S. Army generals as his chiefs of staff. This command relationship also endured differences in national war aims and cultures, as well as personalities, until the end of the war. The original policies of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall succeeded--China stayed in the war and prevented sizable numbers of Japanese troops from deploying to the Pacific.
Strategic Setting
China's estimated 400 million people seemed to offer the Allies a great military asset in terms of inexhaustible manpower. Emerging from a century of defeat and humiliation at the hands of European powers and Japan, plus years of civil wars, China in the early 1900s appeared to be moving slowly toward restoring its national sovereignty. By the late 1920s, the Chinese government had gained at least nominal control over most of the country and embarked on a path of reform and modernization, with advice and support from selected foreign governments and individuals. Japan's undeclared war in China in 1937 gained popular sympathy and respect for the Chinese from the international community. By 1941, for a variety of reasons ranging from noble political idealism to crude anti-Japanese sentiment, the West was again ready to support China.
One key recipient of this support was the Chinese Nationalist Army. Despite Chiang's apparent unification of China by military force, his army incorporated many units more loyal to their former regional warlords than to his new central government. Nationalist Army units were not only uneven in loyalty but also in quality. On paper China had 3.8 million men under arms in 1941. They were organized into 246 "front-line" divisions, with another 70 divisions assigned to rear areas. Perhaps as many as forty Chinese divisions had been equipped with European-manufactured weapons and trained by foreign, particularly German and Soviet, advisers. The rest of the units were under strength and generally untrained. Overall, the Nationalist Army impressed most Western military observers as more reminiscent of a nineteenth- than a twentieth-century army.
