Danforth Whitcomb

Danforth Whitcomb
Biographical information
Homeworld:	Earth
Born:	July 3, 2489
Died:	September 13, 2552 (revised slipspace date) (aged 63)
Personal details
Species:	Human
Gender:	Male
Height:	186 centimeters (6 ft 1 in)
Weight:	117 kilograms (258 lb)
Hair color:	None
Eye color:	Brown
Political and military information
Affiliation:	UNSC Navy
Rank:	Vice Admiral
Service number:	11113-32871-DW

"I know all that, and you're three hundred percent correct, Lieutenant. But, I won't leave a single man or woman behind on this planet for the Covenant to tear apart for sport. No way. And that goes double for a Spartan. We're going in."

— Whitcomb to LT Elias Haverson on Reach

Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb was the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for the United Nations Space Command Navy. In August 2552, he was one of the many UNSC leadership involved in the Fall of Reach, though was extracted in the days following the battle by John-117 and the SPARTAN-II survivors of the cataclysm. This led the Whitcomb's death during the subsequent Operation: FIRST STRIKE, which saw his self-sacrifice in order to secure the destruction of the Covenant battlestation Unyielding Hierophant.

Despite his death, Whitcomb's legacy lives on in the form of the NOVA bomb, the most destructive nuclear weapon in the UNSC arsenal and one that would later be used to destroy two Covenant worlds - Saepon'kal and Glyke, the former personally done by Whitcomb, who armed the bomb himself. These posthumous destructive attacks in combination with the destruction of Unyielding Hierophant and its fleet have secured Whitcomb as the single human with the highest number of Covenant kills that can be personally accredited to one person.

As Deputy Chief of Naval Operations, Whitcomb was subordinate to Fleet Admiral Lord Terrence Hood, the Chief of Naval Operations. In this role, he held a seat on the UNSC Security Council.

Biography

Early life and military career

Danforth Whitcomb was born on Earth on July 3, 2489. He would claim to have descended from Russian Cossacks, though his accent suggested that he originated from the Texas area. During the Human-Covenant War, Whitcomb fought in the Battle of New Constantinople and the Siege of the Atlas Moons, and as such, every SPARTAN-II had studied his record. Throughout his career, Whitcomb was repeatedly criticised for his unorthodox tactics and strategies, though his insight had proven correct each time, eventually allowing him to rise to the rank of Vice Admiral and hold the seat of the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations.

During the war, Whitcomb headed up the YGGDRASIL program, a research endeavour intended to run parallel to Dr. Catherine Halsey's Project MJOLNIR in the creation of powered exoskeletons and other related technologies. The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) created YGGDRASIL in order to take the offshoot technologies developed by Halsey for MJOLNIR and investigate how they may be further applied in other areas of military R&D, in conjunction with corporate partners. In 2535, YGGDRASIL was merged with the much older Project HRUNTING due to that project reaching its dead end, pairing scientists and technicians from both programs with funding by the Office of Naval Intelligence and the Materials Group, among other corporatations. The results of the combined HRUNTING/YGGDRASIL project included the development of the Mark I Armor Defense System, Mark II Geyrion, Mark II Colossus. and Mark IX Mantis. The admiral was also involved in the research project for the then-prototype NOVA bombs, a planet-killing weapon intended to help the UNSC even the playing field in space warfare.

Fall of Reach

Main article: Fall of Reach

Whitcomb was stationed on Reach in summer of 2552, when the Covenant, led by the Fleet of Valiant Prudence, entered the system. Even despite initial UNSC successes against the invaders, Whitcomb felt that the planet's fall was inevitable. When evacuations began, Whitcomb stayed behind to secure the nascent NOVA bomb project and try to use them to fend off the inevitable, though was caught off-guard when the combined Covenant fleet arrived on August 30 to deliver the killing blow. As such, Whitcomb instead intended to repurpose the NOVA bombs, setting them on an automated timer and leaving them for the Covenant to find with the hopes that they would take them aboard one of their ships and return them to one of their worlds, or that they would detonate while still on Reach and take the Covenant armada assembled around the planet with it.

At around 0500 hours on August 30, Whitcomb became the commander of all UNSC forces involved in the defence of Reach operating in the Reach Defense Coordination Zone. This followed an attack on Reach High Command which left most of the senior officers dead alongside the simultaneous defeat of the UNSC fleet in orbit, including the death of Vice Admiral Michael Stanforth. Whitcomb and his staff were able to escape the facility's destruction, ultimately hiking south-east and holing up in a gully located in the Highland Mountains. At around 0700, he personally radioed Charlie Company, who were defending Orbital Defense Generator Facility A-331, hoping to order Lieutenant Jake Chapman to extract Whitcomb and his staff to safety. However, by this time Chapman was dead, and so Whitcomb instead gave the order to Frederic-104, leader of SPARTAN-II Red Team and acting leader for the remains of Charlie Company. Despite the Spartans' strict orders to keep the Erőd-class orbital weapon platforms online to assist in the space battle overhead, Whitcomb's status as the commander for all forces in the Reach AO gave him the authority to countermand them. Due to Whitcomb's inexperience as a ground commander, due to his naval background, Fred wondered if Whitcomb had been the one to authorise the Longsword airstrike near Facility A-331 that had gotten most of Charlie Company killed.

Fred selected Anton-044, Grace-093 and Li-008 to extract Whitcomb, intending to bring the officers to the generator facility to hole up - though also noted that the admiral would have likely been better off staying where he was. The Spartans were ultimately able to save the admiral and were later joined by the rest of Red Team after their defence of the generator facility failed. The combined group of officers and Spartans moved to finish Whitcomb's plan to arm the NOVA bombs, arming them on around September 14 with a ten-day timer set, before then establishing a headquarters at Camp Independence. The group then spent the following days conducting hit-and-run attacks on Covenant occupation forces throughout the Highland Mountains, culminating in the admiral's rescue by Spartan John-117 on September 23. Despite the protests of Lieutenant Elias Haverson, the admiral refused to evacuate from Reach and head to Earth despite acknowledging it as the most sensible decision - instead ordering the remaining Spartans to take him in their captured Dextro Xur-pattern Spirit dropship to the remains of CASTLE Base under Menachite Mountain so that they could rescue the stranded remnants of Red Team who had been deployed there.

Whitcomb took command of the mission to CASTLE Base, ordering Warrant Officer Shiela Polaski to drive their Spirit straight into the excavation site and let the Covenant's own gravity lift handle the job of decelerating them safely. Throughout the mission, the admiral showed a penchance for brazen missions and adept planning, and a seeming lack of fear. Once on the ground, Whitcomb joined the assault force inside the Covenant mine, successfully extracting Fred-104, Kelly-087, and Dr. Halsey. Despite being attacked by thousands of Covenant troops, the admiral was able to escape back onto the Spirit with the rest of the group unhurt, ultimately correctly guessing that the Covenant would not fire on the Spirit due to the slipspace crystal that was now in Halsey's posession. The group were ultimately able to rendezvous with the captured Ruma-pattern light carrier Ascendant Justice, now piloted by Cortana and docked with the frigate UNSC Gettysburg, and escape from Reach.

Ascendant Justice/Gettysburg

"My duty is clear: to protect the men and women of Earth—not a pack of privateers and outlaws."

— Whitcomb before leaving Governor Jiles' people to face the Covenant alone.

Now in a more familiar context, Whitcomb took command of Ascendant Justice after it entered slipspace, quickly thrust into battle as a number of Covenant ships pursued the carrier from Reach. However, thanks to the slipspace crystal aboard, a unique interaction occurred which formed a slipspace bubble around Ascendant Justice and the pursuing fleet, allowing them to fire their plasma torpedoes at one another, though with almost no way to accurately aim due to the strange properties of slipspace's physics. Dropping back out of slipspace would mean facing off against thirteen Ket-pattern battlecruisers alone, and staying in the bubble would mean increasingly succumbing to the random trajectories that the plasma projectiles were on. In his characteristically aggressive style, Whitcomb ordered Ascendant Justice to come about and charge back into the pursuing enemy fleet, charging its own weapons and preparing to engage at point-blank range. With so little space between the ships, Justice's weapons fire would be nearly guaranteed to hit their aggressors either way. After several minutes spent waiting for the Spartans to conduct an EVA critical hull repair, Cortana estimated that of the fourteen ships which had pursued the carrier, only 3-5 were left, leading Whitcomb to survey the identified targets and conclude that the still active carrier and a mostly-undamaged battlecruiser were the priority targets. He set in a collision course for Ascendant Justice which put it on a collision course with the battlecruiser, also arming the still-docked Gettysburg by filling up its lateral deployment bay with air. When the Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg came within point-blank range of the cruiser, its weapons fired, hitting the target with no time to go off course. At the same time, Gettysburg's bay was depressurised, shoving the carrier-frigate combination off course and narrowly missing the battlecruiser, which was promptly hit by the plasma weapons and destroyed. Whitcomb recognised that the same tactic would not work again due to the smart shipmaster commanding the carrier, and so instead ordered (with only seconds before Justice itself was due to break apart from stress) that Ascendant Justice ram debris from the Covenant cruiser and use it as a shield with which to get in close to the carrier. While Justice diverted at the last second, the cruiser's debris, in conjunction with a salvo from Ascendant Justice's weapons, finished off the carrier and allowed Cortana to drop the ship back into normal space.

Ascendant Justice emerged into realspace in the middle of deep space, far from any star system or planet. For Whitcomb, this presented a dilemma; recovered intelligence from Cortana's access in the Covenant battlenet had uncovered that the Covenant had finally found the location of Earth, and were preparing to strike there with haste. However, the slipspace crystal retrieved by Halsey emitted high levels of radiation which would kill the crew in under 72 hours, making a slipspace transit to Earth impossible; even if that weren't an issue, the crystal acted as a "beacon" to Covenant fleets while in slipspace, surely attracting them to Ascendant Justice's position. Under John-117's suggestion, Whitcomb made the decision to transit to the relatively nearby Eridanus system, one which had been evacuated during the early stages of the war with the Covenant. Unbeknownst to Whitcomb, John intended to try and seek harbour at Eridanus Secundus, an insurrectionist hidden asteroid facility that had been the site of the Spartans' first mission in 2525.

On the approach to the base at Eridanus Secundus, Whitcomb improvised a feint to improve the UNSC's bargaining position: Ascendant Justice was only capable of firing one plasma turret, but could still charge most of them. As such, Whitcomb ordered all of them be charged in order to fool the rebels into believing the ship was more heavily-armed than it was. When station governor Jacob Jiles initially blew off Whitcomb's demands to dock at Eridanus, noting that Ascendant Justice was in such a poor state that even the rebels wouldn't need to use a nuclear weapon to destroy it, Whitcomb ordered the ship fire at one of the nearby asteroids and destroy it to demonstrate the ship's firepower. Jiles relented, and agreed to bring Whitcomb and his staff aboard to discuss their needs, ultimately allowing Whitcomb to explain in brief everything that had gone on since Reach's destruction. Whitcomb noted that the Covenant were almost certainly pursuing Ascendant Justice so that Jiles had essentially no choice but to help the UNSC, feigning that they had found the asteroid redoubt of their own volition rather than because of John's foreknowledge. In return for the rebels' help, Whitcomb promised that he would have all staff on the station evacuated to Earth and pardoned for any crimes against the Unified Earth Government.

During the meeting, a Covenant cruiser appeared over Eridanus Secundus, prompting the loose alliance into action. Whitcomb suggested that Jiles use one of the rebels' nukes to damage the cruiser for a follow-up strike by Ascendant Justice leading to Jiles revealing that his nukes had been a ruse; in return Whitcomb revealed that only the single cannon aboard Justice was operational, and that both leaders had overplayed their positions relative to one another. Justice attempted to fire its plasma cannon, though the shot misfired due to a damaged electromagnetic coil. Due to this, Ascendant Justice was forced to flee the battlefield, leaving the rebels to engage the cruiser alone while Cortana diagnosed the issue. Instead, the crew devised a plan to use Gettysburg's Magnetic Accelerator Cannon (which was out of ammunition) to focus a magnetic field for Ascendant Justice's plasma turret, firing it at the Covenant cruiser and destroying it. Despite the victory, Whitcomb recognised its short-lived nature, and so ordered the Spartans to get at least six hours of sleep and repair their equipment while the rebels got to work on expediting repairs to the Ascendant Justice-Gettsyburg. For Whitcomb, his priority was getting away from Eridanus Secundus as soon as possible so that he could get back to the Sol system and warn UNSC High Command of the threat facing them, leading to his own outrage when Halsey was able to reactivate the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine of Jiles' Chiroptera-class subprowler and escape into slipspace with Kelly-087 for reasons unknown. That the craft did not have a slipspace drive had been assured to the admiral by Lieutenant Haverson prior, leading to the admiral's conclusion that Halsey had somehow managed to reactivate it on her own.

While dealing with Halsey's insubordination, a fleet of thirty Covenant ships emerged at Eridanus Secundus, leading Whitcomb to pull Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg out of dock to prepare to engage. Despite authorising Jiles to evacuate his people to UNSC Gettysburg, Whitcomb ultimately could not find a way to survive the fight ahead and so instead made the decision to emergency jump to slipspace, rationalising that the hundreds of rebel lives he was abandoning were nothing compared to the billions on Earth that were at risk. When discussing his options with John-117, Whitcomb drew comparisons to the Battle of the Alamo, in which around 250 Texan soldiers were able to hold off a siege from over 600 Mexican troops, trading inordinate enemy casualties for their own lives. Whitcomb regretfully drew an unfavourable comparison to Texan Colonel William Travis, noting his desire to stay, stand his ground and go down fighting, but recognising that the fate of Earth was more important.

Operation: FIRST STRIKE

Main article: Operation: FIRST STRIKE

"Come on, mighty Covenant warriors! We're here in the middle of your fleet with your "holy of holies", come and get it!"

— Whitcomb's transmission to the Covenant.

While Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg had been undergoing repairs, the Spartans came up with a plan to try and delay the Covenant's imminent invasion of Earth, something which John-117 intended to bring to Whitcomb for his approval, noting that Whitcomb had the authority to scrub the Spartans' previous directive. After the ship escaped into slipspace, John presented this plan - termed Operation: FIRST STRIKE - to Whitcomb, who initially denied it, recognising returning to Earth as the top priority. John countered by noting that a Spirit dropship could be launched from Ascendant Justice while in slipspace, only requiring a small course adjustment for the carrier while still letting the vice admiral finish his objective. After Cortana noted that she could make a copy of herself to send back to Earth with all of the data from her time on Installation 04 and aboard Ascendant Justice thanks to the Covenant program she had destroyed earlier, Whitcomb relented and approved the mission, though noted that the Spartans would be totally on their own. He reasoned that the weight of the potential Covenant losses may make the sacrifice of the Spartans worth it.

After the Spartans launched from Ascendant Justice and boarded Unyielding Hierophant, only Whitcomb and Haverson were left aboard Ascendant Justice. In this time, Haverson convinced Whitcomb to exit slipspace on the edge of the Tau Ceti system where the armada was massing, hiding in the Oort cloud to gather intel. Instead, Whitcomb came to the conclusion that even if Unyielding Hierophant were destroyed, there would still be hundreds of ships heading to Earth, and that there was little his warning could practically achieve. He moved the Ascendant Justice-Gettysburg to behind a nearby moon and had Ascendant Justice's slipspace matrix moved to Gettysburg so that ship could jump, then detached the two ships, slingshoting Ascendant Justice around the moon towards Unyielding Hierophant in an attempt to maximize Covenant losses by drawing in as many ships as possible towards the impending explosion. He set Ascendant Justice on a collision course with Unyielding Hierophant and broadcast a message that he had the Forerunner crystal that the Covenant wanted and told them to come and get it. The Covenant launched a boarding action of Ascendant Justice in order to reclaim the crystal, but Whitcomb and Haverson held the bridge with M7 SMGs. By the time Unyielding Hierophant exploded, nearly five hundred vessels were clustered around it, many of them drawn in thanks to their pursuit of Ascendant Justice.

Vice Admiral Whitcomb's sacrifice ultimately allowed for the destruction of almost all of the fleet gathered around Unyielding Hierophant, as well as providing an avenue in which the remaining SPARTAN-IIs could return to Earth to report their massive amount of intelligence to the UNSC. In his last words, Whitcomb reminded John-117 of the Alamo which they had spoken of earlier, noting that while the battle was a tactical defeat, it was ultimately a strategic victory that allowed the defeated force to win the wider war.

After the deaths of Whitcomb and Haverson, the Master Chief added both men to his team roster along with Corporal Locklear and Petty Officer Polaski and listed them as killed in action. Whitcomb's name was later listed on the ONI memorial held within their Apha Site facility in New Mombasa, which had been constructed by October 20, 2552.

Whitcomb's legacy: the NOVA bomb

Main article: NOVA bombing of Joyous Exultation

"This is the prototype NOVA bomb, nine fusion warheads encased in lithium triteride armor. When detonated, it compresses its fissionable material to neutron-star density, boosting the thermonuclear yield a hundredfold. I am Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb, temporarily in command of the UNSC military base Reach. To the Covenant uglies that might be listening, you have a few seconds to pray to your damned heathen gods. You all have a nice day in hell..."

— Vice Admiral Danforth Whitcomb's recording on the NOVA bomb, right before it is activated in the space adjacent to the planet Joyous Exultation.

While Whitcomb was himself killed in FIRST STRIKE on September 13, 2552, his final act of retribution did not come to pass until November 3 of that year. The NOVA bombs which Whitcomb had left on an automatic timer were ultimately recovered by the Covenant and presumably deactivated, left in storage aboard the supercarrier Sublime Transcendence. It is likely that the ship's Huragok engineers which tended to the bomb were responsible for this. After the outbreak of the Great Schism days prior, Sublime Transcendance had gathered at the Covenant world Saepon'kal under Imperial Admiral Xytan 'Jar Wattinree as part of the larger Combined Fleet of Righteous Purpose, a faction of Sangheili who were collecting power there with the intent to eventually strike back at the Prophet of Truth and his Jiralhanae loyalists. Unfortunately for the fleet, the bomb was accidentally tripped by Kwassass, an Unggoy who had stumbled upon the bomb in Sublime Transcendance's holds. As such, the NOVA bomb detonated with the seconds that were left on its countdown timer, finally realising Whitcomb's plan from the Fall of Reach and taking with it every single warship gathered over Saepon'kal that was within visible range of the explosion, alongside shattering the planet's moon and dealing extraordinary damage to the planet itself. This action, in combination with his sacrifice at Unyielding Hierophant, garnered Whitcomb the single-highest Covenant kill count that can be attributed to a single individual during the Human-Covenant War.

A second NOVA would later be detonated by Spartan Gray Team on Glyke following the war's end, the team dispatched to deliver the bomb into enemy territory and unaware that hostilities had ceased.

Personality and traits

Whitcomb was an extremely enthusiastic and aggressive commander. As such, he held some disdain for more cautious officers like Lieutenant Haverson - though also recognised that nature as somewhat inherent to being Office of Naval Intelligence staff. On the other hand, he held a strong appreciation for Sergeant Avery Johnson and his uncompromising hatred for the Covenant. He had a like and respect for Doctor Halsey, having met her a few times at various social functions, though also knew enough about her work to know that if the rumours of her projects were true, he could not relate to her methods.

Despite his aggressive command style, Whitcomb was unrelenting where it came to the defense and aid of his subordinates and allies. During the battle in slipspace, Whitcomb noted that he felt for the injured Kelly-087 and, at any other time, would have been beside her side and doing anything in his power to assist her. However, he also recognised his empathy as a negative in the situation at hand and ultimately asked that she be removed from Ascendant Justice's bridge as he could not afford the distraction in the back of his mind. Whitcomb felt that he loved the soldiers under his command like his own children, though also followed an old axiom of command: "To be a good leader, you have to love the service. To be a great commander, you have to be willing to destroy that which you love." This may have manifested in the carpet bombing of the region around Generator Facility A-331, which Frederic-104 speculated had been ordered by Whitcomb. For Fred, if true, this was a symptom of a naval commander being put in charge of ground operations. However, this may have been part of Whitcomb's broader philosophy, in which he emphasised tactical defeats to gain strategic victories - something he liked to call back to with his example being the Battle of Alamo during the Texas Revolution. In general, Whitcomb was proud of his Texan heritage, seeming excited to note it when discussing the Alamo with John-117. Despite this, he also claimed to have been descended from the Cossacks. Whitcomb's preference for unorthodox tactics and strategies drew him some criticism in his early career, though his instincts were always correct and allowed him to rise to the ranks of HIGHCOM among the leadership of the UNSC. These factors served him well during the engagements after Reach, in which he was forced to make do with extremely limited resources against overwhelming odds.

Danforth Whitcomb had a closely shaved and polished head alongside a salt-and-pepper moustache that drooped over his upper lip and dangled off the edge of his chin. His physique has been likened to that of "a large bear."

List of appearances

• Halo: First Strike (First appearance)
• Halo: Ghosts of Onyx (Mentioned only)
• Halo 3: ODST (Mentioned only)
• Halo: Fleet Battles
• Halo Mythos: A Guide to the Story of Halo (Mentioned only)
• Halo: The Television Series
  • Allegiance (Mentioned only)