He was relieved of his duties at the headquarters and publicly reprimanded by Admiral Forrest P. Sherman, Chief of Naval Operations, for making public
confidential Navy letters linking top admirals to active opposition against
unification (i.e. of the air force).
Captain Crommelin was transferred to San Francisco to be air officer of the Western Sea Frontier. After he continued his criticism in the face of orders to keep silent, he was ordered by Admiral Sherman to be furloughed at half pay, beginning early in 1950. That year, The New York Times's military affairs expert Hanson W. Baldwin wrote that Captain Crommelin was a ''stormy petrel who wouldn't shut up.''
Then, the captain moved to his native Alabama, applied for retirement and ended his three-decade Navy career in May 1950, with the rank of rear admiral because of his combat record.
In later years, he operated part of his family plantation, named Harrogate Springs, in Elmore County, raising a variety of crops. He also ran unsuccessfully for various public offices. He was a candidate in the Democratic Presidential primary in New Hampshire in 1968 and also repeatedly announced himself as a candidate for the United States Senate. The National States Rights Party, advocating white supremacy, nominated him for Vice President in 1960.
In retirement, Admiral Crommelin became known as a supporter of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, Republican of Wisconsin, and also as an avowed anti-Semite who was active in segregationist circles. It was reported in 1960 that he was a self-styled ''white man's candidate'' for public office and called Jews the real enemy of ''white Christian Alabamians,'' asserting that they controlled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
Crommelin's 1960 campaign was notable for it's overt racism. (Read here. More here.)
Coming: Von Brunn's connection to William Pierce.
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