Jerome H. King Jr., at 88; was commander in Vietnam
WASHINGTON - Retired Vice Admiral Jerome H. King Jr., 88, the commander of US naval forces in Vietnam who helped wind down the military branch's involvement in the Vietnam War, died June 13 at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena, Calif. He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and pneumonia.
Admiral King held demanding assignments at sea and in the front offices of the Navy hierarchy. His most crucial mentor was Thomas H. Moorer, who became chief of naval operations and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Moorer had taken note of Admiral King's skill and helped his protege win several important jobs. The most public task was succeeding then-Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. as commander of naval forces in Vietnam.
Reporting to Saigon in 1970, Admiral King continued work started by Zumwalt overseeing the transfer of the Navy's small coastal and river combat boats to the South Vietnamese. This assignment was part of the US strategy called "Vietnamization," in which the South Vietnamese took over more responsibility for military operations.
"Vietnamization became frustrating to King because it wasn't the same desire to victory that had existed before," said historian Paul Stillwell, who conducted an oral history with Admiral King.
"He presided over the diminishment of American capability there," Stillwell said, "and was not always confident of the South Vietnamese ability or willingness to take over the equipment and the roles" of the US Navy operating in rivers and canals.
After an 11-month tenure in Saigon, Admiral King was deputy chief of naval operations for surface warfare.
From 1972 to 1974, when he retired from active duty, he was a key aide to Moorer, who was then serving as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Jerome Henry King Jr. was a native of Youngstown, Ohio, and a 1941 engineering graduate of Yale University, where he was in the Navy ROTC program.
He received a master's degree in nuclear physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1951 and became an authority on the effects of nuclear weapons.
He began his Navy service in the Pacific during World War II and first rose to prominence in the late 1950s when Moorer was commander of Carrier Division Six, which operates mostly in the Mediterranean.
In 1970, Admiral King became one of earliest Navy ROTC graduates to achieve the rank of three-star admiral. Until then, almost all vice admirals had been US Naval Academy graduates.
His marriage to Jane Bellows King ended in divorce.
He leaves his wife of 22 years, Annette Neely King of Palos Verdes Estates; three daughters from his first marriage; two stepsons; six grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
