Who he was
A submariner and engineer from the Texas Hill Country, Nimitz took command of the Pacific Fleet at the end of December 1941, with much of it lying damaged at Pearl Harbor.
The decisions that defined him
His defining choice came in May 1942, when he accepted his intelligence officers' reading of Japanese plans and committed his carriers to an ambush at Midway. Later he directed the drive across the central Pacific through the Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
Afterward
He signed the Japanese surrender aboard USS Missouri in September 1945 and served as Chief of Naval Operations.