Naval Intelligence Awards Program

The admiral, who was known as Ike, was born into a Navy family in Cleveland and graduated from the United States Naval Academy, at Annapolis, in 1942. His father, Rear Adm. Isaac Kidd Sr., was killed in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, aboard his flagship, the USS Arizona. As a newly commissioned officer, Ensign Kidd was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic. He later served as a gunnery officer aboard a destroyer in the Allied landings in Sicily and Italy, and finished the war in the Pacific theater.

He received his first destroyer command shortly after the war ended, and then alternated between sea and shore assignments before becoming a full admiral in 1971. In 23 years of sea duty, he commanded destroyers, destroyer divisions and Navy fleets in the Mediterranean, the Pacific and the Atlantic. As the Navy Chief of Materiel in the early 1970?s, he oversaw Navy procurement, logistics and labor relations and supervised 350,000 uniformed and civilian personnel.

Admiral Kidd led an inquiry into the Israeli attack on the American intelligence ship Liberty in the Mediterranean off the Sinai Peninsula during the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, an attack that killed 34 officers and men and wounded 171 others. Israel said the Liberty had been mistaken for an Egyptian ship, but the inquiry concluded that the Israeli attack was unprovoked.