One of the greatest strokes of fortune ever to befall the United States occurred on Dec. 7, 1941.

On that day of infamy the ships under the command of vice admiral William F. "Bull" Halsey Jr. weren't at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese carried out their devastating attack. His flagship, the aircraft carrier Enterprise, along with three battleships and a number of heavy cruisers and destroyers, were a day out of Honolulu when the attack came.

Halsey, the commander of the Navy's aircraft battle force in the Pacific, had taken his ships to Wake Island, where they had delivered 12 F4F Marine fighter planes. Task Force 2, as it was called, was returning to Pearl Harbor when the first gift of luck occurred.

Halsey had planned to have his ships enter the channel leading into Pearl Harbor at 7:30 on the morning of Dec. 7. If that had occurred, they would have been sitting ducks for the Japanese, who started their aerial attack at 7:53 a.m.

Because of a delay in fueling the destroyers on the return trip, Task Force 2 was still 200 miles from Pearl Harbor when the attack began. When the delayed ships entered the smoking harbor on the evening of the 7th, Halsey surveyed the wreckage from the bridge of his flagship and gritted his teeth.

The admiral later wrote that the worst sight he saw was the battleship Utah sunk under her berth. What made the sight all the more chilling was the fact that, if the group hadn't been delayed, the Enterprise would have been in that slip.

As it was, Halsey was able to refuel his ships and, two days after the attack, head back out to sea in search of Japanese submarines. Because of happenstance and sheer good luck, the United States still had a naval presence in the Pacific, albeit a much reduced one.

The nation was also fortunate to have Halsey at the helm of a naval battle group during this dark period in the country's history. The New Jersey native had proven his naval skills during a long and illustrious career. It didn't take the Japanese long to find out how tough and unpredictable Halsey was. The admiral had showed these same qualities while attending the University of Virginia in 1899-1900.

After waiting two years for an appointment to the US Naval Academy, Halsey decided to study medicine at UVa and get into the Navy as a doctor. He chose the university because his best friend, Karl Osterhause, was there.

Years later, Halsey admitted that he didn't learn much during his one and only year at the university, but he had a wonderful time. He became a member of Delta Psi and, for the rest of his life, he carried the fraternity's emblem on his watch chain.

Halsey's academic problems at UVa stemmed from the fact that he was woefully unprepared to tackle medical subjects such as anatomy and medical chemistry. About the only use the young student found for "Mr. Bones," an expensive human skeleton that was a major feature of the Delta Psi house, was to shock guests.

Normally the skeleton was used by the students to study anatomy. When Halsey's turn with the study aid came, he sat it in a rocking chair next to his bed in St. Anthony Hall.

By using various ruses Halsey induced other students to enter his room while he hid nearby and gleefully watched their reactions. The prankster got a taste of his own medicine during an early morning visit to the gross anatomy room, where cadavers were dissected.

In order to bone up for a test, Halsey got up at 4 a.m. one day and made his way down to the room the students called "Stiff Hall." He didn't know that a number of bodies had been brought in since his last visit and, as he searched for the light switch, he started stumbling over them.

Halsey tangled his feet with one corpse and sprawled over two others. As soon as he got back on his feet, he lit out of the room and didn't stop running until he had covered at least a mile.

Halsey probably would have done even worse in his studies at UVa, if not for the intercession of Wiley Grandy. When Grandy, a fellow Delta Psi brother, learned about Halsey's poor academic performance, he took the young man aside and gave him a tongue lashing that shook the failing student out of his complacency.

The stern lecture got Halsey's attention. He buckled down and started studying like never before. Although he flunked histology and medical chemistry, he managed to get a passing grade in anatomy and comparative anatomy.

If Halsey's academic prowess at UVa wasn't that memorable, his play on the football field was - and not for the reasons one might think. The future naval leader wasn't good enough to make the varsity team, but he was allowed to play left end with the second string scrubs.

During the last scrimmage before a big game with Georgetown College, Halsey tackled UVa's star quarterback and broke his leg.

"The coach couldn't make up his mind whether to kill me suddenly or to liquidate me gradually," Halsey would later say when telling the story himself. Although Halsey said the student body would have happily hanged him, the coach took the young player to Washington with the team.

The game was played on Nov. 18, 1899, and when the dust had settled the two teams had fought to a scoreless tie. The tie was considered a victory for the hurting Cavaliers.

Halsey had hoped to redeem himself during the game, but he never got off the bench. In 1900 he received a presidential appointment to the U.S. Naval Academy and left UVa to start preparing for a naval career.

It could be said that Halsey was destined for life on the sea. His father was a Navy captain and many of the Halsey men before him had gone to sea on whaling ships.

Young Halsey was born in Elizabeth, N.J., on Oct. 30, 1882. His father was away at sea when his mother, Anne Brewster Halsey, gave birth. Willie, as nearly everybody except his mother called him as a youngster, was nearly 3 years old when his father returned.

When Halsey senior first laid eyes on his son, he was shocked to see his face framed in long, yellow curls. With his boy in tow, Lt. Halsey marched down to the local barbershop and had the curls cut off.

The father kept the locks, but not because he liked them. Whenever his son started to get out of line he would bring the ringlets out and threaten to paste them back on if he wouldn't straighten out.

During Halsey's formative years, he traveled with his family to Panama, the Navy Yard at Mare Island near San Francisco and to the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where his father taught physics and chemistry. It was while at the academy that the young Halsey decided to follow in his father's footsteps and become a Navy man.

Halsey did much better at the Naval Academy than he had at UVa. He passed all his courses and graduated in 1904 with a standing of 43 in a class of 62.

He hadn't excelled in his studies at Virginia, but he had done well socially. Despite his poor showing on the gridiron at UVa, he made the varsity team during his last two years at the academy. Although he loved to play football, and played his heart out, Halsey never held any illusion that he was very good at the sport.

During World War II, when Halsey met General of the Army Dwight D. Eisenhower for the first time, football was the immediate subject. Eisenhower told Halsey that he had heard the admiral claimed to be the worst fullback to have ever played for the Naval Academy.

Halsey, not knowing where this was leading, bristled slightly, admitted it was true and said, "What about it?"

Eisenhower laughed, stuck out his hand and introduced himself as the worst halfback that ever played for the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Halsey was actually better at football than he would have people believe. During the Army-Navy game of 1903 he caught the ball on the 4-yard line during a kickoff and eluded half a dozen Army tackles before he was brought down on the 43-yard line.

When Halsey left the academy, one fellow student noted that he looked like a figurehead of Neptune. That was a lot nicer than the nickname the Mare Island sailors had given him. As a youngster he was called Billy Bighead in reference to the size of his noggin.

The Japanese certainly came up with worse names than that for the fighting admiral who would lay waste to their vaunted navy. During the bleak early days of World War II, about all that stood between the Japanese and the western coast of the United States were Halsey and his aircraft battle force.

It would prove to be enough.