Growing up with cowboys, ranches and the excitement of having a father who worked for the Union Pacific Railroad in early Wyoming were not enough to capture the imagination and aspirations of a young Walter Doyle.
His mind sailed in another direction, even as the Wild West was still making waves across Wyoming, from Buffalo Bill to the Wild Bunch.
Those early dreams would lead Doyle to the U.S. Naval Academy and would have him traveling above and below the world’s oceans.
They also set him on a course into the middle of some of the most historic and troublesome times in U.S. military and naval history.
Along the way, he’d rise to command a submarine and build a friendship with famed Admiral Chester Nimitz.
From The Open Range To The Open Sea
In 1938 and 25 years into a Navy career, a red-haired Commander Doyle shared with a Washington, D.C.-based journalist how he came to be one of landlocked Wyoming’s few high-ranking naval officers.
“My dad brought home a big blue book one day shortly after the Spanish American War,” Doyle told Richard Cowell, a Washington-based journalist whose column appeared in the April 12, 1938, edition of the Casper Daily Tribune. “He showed me pictures of the American naval heroes in it.
“The book sold me on the Navy. I entered the academy in June of 1909, and I dread the day that I have to say goodbye to the Navy.”
That day would come in the next decade, but not before Doyle would be part of the nation’s sub commanders trying to fend off the Japanese in World War II.
Bruce Coleman of Casper said he was a teen when Doyle, his grandfather, died Dec. 30, 1963.
But he remembers a man who loved to tell stories about his friend, Chester Nimitz. Admiral Nimitz was the commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and he directed the naval campaign against the Japanese in World War II’s Pacific theater.
“They were lifetime friends, not just shipmates,” Coleman said.
His grandfather also had a lot of stories about his naval career, including some shared only among the men in the family.
Doyle was born April 27, 1889, a year before Wyoming became a state. His father, John Doyle, was a pioneering conductor for the Union Pacific Railroad in Laramie, according to a newspaper account.
Following graduation from high school, Doyle was appointed to the U.S. Naval Academy by Wyoming Congressman Frank W. Mondell.
This undated and faded photo, believed to be from sometime around 1933, shows Admiral Chester Nimitz, left, with Wyoming native Walter Doyle, rightf, and two other unidentified crewmen. (National Museum of the Pacific War Digital Archive) 
Submarines in Manila Bay of the type commanded by Capt. Walter Doyle before Dec. 10, 1941. (Courtesy Naval History and Heritage Command) 
An example of the the type of submarine commanded by Walter Doyle early in his career. (Courtesy NavSource.net)
Naval Academy Class Of 1913
After graduation from the academy in 1913, the young ensign early on received orders for submarine training and duty.
Nimitz, who graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1905, also was cutting his teeth in the evolving submarine component of the Navy.
The website pigboats.com lists commanders of U.S. submarines going back to the early 1900s. Nimitz at various ranks over time appears as the commander of five submarines between 1909 and 1920.
Meanwhile, Lt. Cmdr. Walter Doyle was named skipper of the USS Seawolf from Jan. 1 through Sept. 20, 1918, during World War I.
During that time the submarine was based in New London, Connecticut, and patrolled the Long Island Sound, often with officers training at the submarine school in New London, according to the submarine’s history.
His former hometown paper, The Laramie Republican, took note of the achievement after apparently getting the word from Doyle’s father.
“Passenger conductor John Doyle received word this week that his son, Walter Doyle, was now the youngest submarine commander employed by Uncle Sam,” the paper reported. “The Doyles formerly resided in this city, Walter being from here.”
Coleman believes his grandfather came to the attention of Nimitz because of his math and analytical skills. They may have first met during their time in the submarine service.
In March 1920, Doyle, his wife Gertrude (who he married in 1913) and their first daughter of three, Marjorie Jane, were in Laramie for a dinner.
The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reported that Doyle was “in the city on leave from his submarine, which lies in Boston Harbor for a time.”
Between The Wars
Between the two world wars, Doyle served stints in Hawaii, where his second daughter, Elsie, was born in 1921. Nimitz also had arrived in Hawaii in 1920 to build a submarine base.
But subs were not Doyle’s only duty. A newspaper article has him on the battleship USS Idaho stationed for a time in Seattle in 1924.
Doyle was appointed commander of the submarine school at New London from 1928 to at least 1930, according to a letter to the editor his daughter Patricia Doyle Risling wrote to the Casper Star-Tribune on March 7, 1995.
Risling, Doyle’s third daughter, was born in New London on July 31, 1929, and the family was there for the 1930 U.S. Census.
Risling wrote that her father also served as executive officer to Nimitz at the Naval Department in Washington, D.C., from 1937 to 1940. A 1940 census file shows the family in the city, but lists their home as in California.
As the rumbles of World War II get louder, the Casper Daily Tribune reported Dec. 14, 1939, that Doyle had been selected for promotion to captain.
From late 1940 through July 9, 1941, Captain Doyle commanded the USS Holland, a submarine tender ship, in Pacific waters that maintained a group of submarines.
He was then given temporary command of all the submarines of the Asiatic Fleet. He was in that role in the Philippines with his family living in Honolulu when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
“History of the United States Naval Operations Vol. III” says that Doyle was with forces at Manila Bay under the command of Admiral Thomas C. Hart when the Japanese launched their assault.
Three days later on Dec. 10, he was relieved of his role.
The Japanese had seized control of the air over the Philippines and Doyle went with three submarine tenders, including the USS Holland, to Darwin, Australia, to join Admiral W. A. Glassford.
He was given command of a Service Force of ships that included cargo ships, a seaplane tender, a ship that serviced destroyers and others in early 1942.
Admiral Chester Nimitz signs the “instrument of formal surrender” by the Japanese on the USS Missouri. He sent Walter Doyle a photo from the event with a personal message. (Getty Images) 
Walter Doyle and other members of his family are buried in Laramie, the place of his birth. His tombstone is third from left. (Courtesy Find A Grave)
A Family Story
Coleman said that on Dec. 7, his grandmother, Gertrude, lived on the other side of a mountain from Pearl Harbor as Japanese Zeroes attacked. His aunt Jane, who by then was married to a Navy man, was living on Ford Island, where battleships were moored.
He said his aunt had awoken early that morning because she was going to take a pregnant friend to the hospital. She had taken a boat to the city and noticed the Japanese coming in.
She understood what was happening as she watched the planes, Coleman said.
His aunt immediately called her mother to warn her. Coleman said two diaries passed down in the family provide a direct quote about his grandmother’s response to the phone call warning.
“Nana goes, ‘Don’t be silly dear, they wouldn’t dare,’” Coleman said.
Catherine Forsling, Patricia Doyle Forsling’s daughter, said a story she heard growing up about the attack was that after the bombing, her mom and aunt Elsie were under the kitchen table eating oranges while their mom was under the dining room table praying the Rosary.
During his grandfather’s mission, Coleman said he understands Walter Doyle contracted dengue fever. Patricia Forsling wrote that her dad received treatment at a hospital in Darwin and later at Mare Island, California.
Doyle reportedly ended his service in the Navy in July 1943.
Patricia Forsling wrote that after retirement, her dad returned to temporary active duty to command a court martial board in New Orleans.
After his final full retirement in 1947, he returned to live in Laramie.
A Pet Returns
When he finally made it back to Honolulu from Australia aboard a submarine, Doyle’s family had long been evacuated to the mainland.
Coleman said back at his home in Honolulu, Doyle gathered some items that had been left by the family. Family lore also says he brought back his daughter’s pet dog Elsie — aboard a submarine.
Coleman said the story goes that the crew onboard knew the dog was in his cabin and would go to the door and ask, “Where’s Elsie?” The dog would then start barking and reveal that the captain was violating regulations.
“They just ragged him all the way back to San Francisco because, technically, it was illegal,” Coleman said.
Though the war ended early for Doyle, family members say he was not forgotten by Nimitz.
Catherine Forsling said she has a copy of the photograph of the treaty signing with the Japanese on the USS Missouri that Admiral Nimitz sent her grandfather that was passed down to her.
Friendships
“He put a personal note on it to my grandfather saying, ‘Without your help we couldn’t have done this,’” she said. “I also have Catherine Nimitz’s baby spoon, and she put a little note with it that said, ‘From one red-headed Catherine to another.’
“She gave it to me when I was born. So, they were really good friends.”
Coleman said his aunt Jane kept a pen-pal relationship with Nimitz’s son, Chester, who also became admiral, for all their lives.
A faded photograph of Nimitz and Doyle in the National Museum of the Pacific War Digital Archive shows the two standing together possibly on a ship. It’s exact date isn’t known, but it’s from sometime around 1933.
Coleman said his recollections of his grandfather are of a stern and kind man, who wasn’t a hugger.
He was giver, though.
One day he received his grandfather’s fancy captain’s hat and even something sharper.
“My grandfather gave me his dress sword,” he said. “Handed it down to me when I was still 5 years old. The sword was taller than I was.”
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
