"William Ewing, a reporter with the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, thought Nimitz seemed too "kindly," too "fatherly," and his khaki uniform seemed at least one size too large. "I thought Admiral Nimitz looked more like a retired banker than the kind of hell-for-leather leader we needed to pull us out of the worst hole the country had ever been in." The remark anticipated Samuel Eliot Morison's observation that "war correspondents who expected admirals to pound the table and bellow as in the movies, were apt to wonder 'Is this the man?'" It was true that Nimitz was not a cinematic naval hero in the mold of Nelson, Decatur or Jones. Like most American officers of his vintage, he had no experience of combat. He had never even seen a shot fired in anger. But the fleet did not need a show of blood and thunder after the beating it had suffered; there was plenty of the real stuff to go around. Nimitz was an executive, a strategist, and a leader. He was a gentleman of the old school. It was not in him to shout or abuse the furniture or let a word of profanity fall from his lips. Holmes took comfort in the admiral's "aura of calm confidence" while Edwin Layton thought "the incisive thrust of his questions... made it clear that he was steeled for the tremendous task he was to assume.""