McBride W.M. Technological change and the United States Navy, 1865-1945

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lieved that more efﬁcient hull subdivision, to minimize the ﬂooding after

a torpedo hit, could easily be offset by the development of larger torpedo

warheads. According to Yarnell, the only defense against the torpedo was

speed, and when faced with a torpedo attack, the ﬂeet would only achieve

victory if led by “an admiral, who realizing the danger, has the moral

courage to ignore it, accept the losses entailed, and push his ﬂeet in to de-

cisive gun range and victory.”

Moral courage did not make battleships, or

soldiers, torpedo- or bullet-proof. One might excuse Yarnell’s bravado since

he was removed from the European land war and writing before Verdun

and the Somme, where courage, virility, and esprit d’corps failed to counter

the effects of the machine gun and artillery.

While Yarnell (a future ad-

miral) trusted courage, the Bureau of Construction & Repair placed its

trust in steel subdivision bulkheads and delayed the construction of battle-

ships 43 and 44 to make the hulls “torpedo-proof.”

In December 1916 Lieutenant (junior grade) F. A. Daubin ﬁrst eluci-

dated a submarine with a mission subordinate to the battleship. In an apt

comparison, Daubin called for the construction of large submarines ex-

clusively since small, coastal defense submarines were as unnecessary as

coastal defense battleships.

Between August 1914 and February 1916, sub-

marines had sunk 487 vessels—the vast majority of which were merchant

ships. Daubin rejected the commerce raiding experience of the European

War, surprising given the parallel between the island empires of Japan and

the United Kingdom and American strategic concerns over Japan. Instead,

he argued for submarine employment in guerre d’escadre targeting enemy

warships. Daubin did offer guerre de course as a secondary mission, while

characterizing the European War as strangely inverted: “Abroad, it would

seem the secondary role has become the primary, or the submarine having

failed in its more important mission is doing what can be done within its

capacity against commerce.”

Daubin argued for the placement of ﬂeet

submarines under the command of the ﬂeet commander-in-chief, just like

the torpedo ﬂotilla, so that the submarines’ “offensive power would be co-

ordinated with that of the ﬂeet.”

Daubin’s article reﬂected the more realistic view that submariners could

only ﬂourish if they presented their technology, not as a counter to the

battleship but as a supportive element within the hierarchy of the battle-

ship technological paradigm. According to Daubin, ﬂeet submarines

would act as scouts searching out the enemy battleship ﬂeet or populate

Technological Change and the United States Navy

124

“submarine zones” over which the enemy ﬂeet could be lured. In addition,

submarines could also serve as “mobile mine ﬁelds.”

Even after the U.S. naval hierarchy learned how close submarines had

come to forcing Britain to capitulate early in 1917, its members minimized

the effectiveness of the submarine threat. Unlike the United States, Britain

was an island nation whose past policies forced her to import most of her

Construction of the battlecruiser Lexington has ceased in this 1922 view. A circular,

heavily armored barbette for one of the main gun turrets sits on the deck and trans-

verse watertight bulkheads are visible in the foreground. Lexington and sister ship

Saratoga were completed as aircraft carriers and their large size inﬂuenced U.S. naval

aviation doctrine. (Naval Historical Center, 19-N-11978)

Image not available.

food by World War I. The German submarine campaign had been directed

against merchant shipping, not against battleships. As such, it was an im-

proper effort to gain command of the seas in a Mahanian sense and easily

dismissed. Although held hostage by the submarine, no dreadnought had

been sunk by one and the battleship remained supreme. In belittling the

submarine, naval ofﬁcers were voicing their traditional distrust of a coun-

terweapon made more aversive by its nature. Although written about naval

ofﬁcers ﬁfty years earlier, Alex Roland’s observation remained valid. Naval

ofﬁcers were expressing

a combination of medieval aversion to clandestine weapons and a lingering as-

sociation of gunpowder weapons with the devil. Underwater warfare always of-

fended both of these prejudices, but as time went on the ofﬁcers were less and

less able to remember why. The association with the devil was forgotten (but

not lost) in the epithet “infernal machine,” and though this term came to be ap-

plied to fewer and fewer weapons, underwater warfare was always one of them.

The prejudice against clandestine weapons, a persuasion derived from the me-

dieval view of war as a judicial duel, could only be expressed in terms like “want

of manly courage.”

Many naval ofﬁcers dismissed the acoustic submarine detection devices

developed late in the war. They were peripheral to the traditional naval tac-

tic of the convoy that had “already” defeated the submarine. Only ﬁve or

six enemy submarines were sunk by ships employing the acoustic detectors

developed in a naval-academic-industrial alliance under the auspices of

the Bureau of Steam Engineering. As a result, Admiral Sims gave credit to

the convoy system: “The world might still clamor for a speciﬁc ‘invention’

that would destroy all the submarines over night . . . but the naval chiefs of

the Allies discovered . . . that they could defeat the German [submarine]

campaign without these rather uncertain aids.”

While dismissed by Sims,

the new acoustic detection devices pointed to a vulnerability in the sub-

marine and supported the battleship’s continued supremacy.

Sims, and most of his colleagues, perceived the submarine threat to the

battleship as minimal and easily countered by the battleship’s higher speed

and the new antitorpedo modiﬁcations incorporated into battleship hulls.

Under Sims’s presidency after the war, the Naval War College paid no

attention to the submarine, except as it could support the strategy of the

battleship.

The navy built larger ﬂeet submarines and the submarine ser-

Technological Change and the United States Navy

126

vice survived because it was assigned to work with the battle ﬂeet in the

supportive role proposed by Daubin.

The Rise of Naval Aviation

The ﬁrst ﬂight of an aircraft from a U.S. Navy ship took place in 1908,

but aviation developed slowly. It was not until 1914 that a mission for naval

aviation appeared within the professional literature. Lieutenant R. C.

Sauﬂey presented aviation as an airborne scout cruiser that would increase

the scouting range of the battle ﬂeet.

Although he did not make the point

himself, it is interesting that one important advantage Sauﬂey claimed for

the airplane was the same as that claimed for the battlecruiser. Scouting

would allow the ﬂeet commander to obtain a superior ﬁghting position.

Sauﬂey linked an adequate national defense to a strong ﬂeet, but to him

a ﬂeet meant “more than dreadnoughts, and the commissioned personnel

of the navy would be remiss in its duty should it allow our development to

proceed upon limited lines, until, with a blind strategic eye, we are forced

into action with a modern aggressive opponent.”

The United States, ac-

cording to Sauﬂey, was ﬁve years behind Europe in aviation. One year later

(1915), Commander (later chief of the Bureau of Ordnance) Ralph Earle

advocated a mission for naval aviation within the battleship technological

paradigm: installation of seaplanes on scout cruisers.

In 1915 the ﬁrst honorable mention in the Naval Institute’s annual essay

contest was awarded to Commander Thomas Parker for his article, “An Air

Fleet: Our Most Pressing Naval Want.”

Parker reiterated Sauﬂey’s con-

tention that the United States was lagging farther and farther behind the

European combatants with respect to aviation. Presaging air power strate-

gists, Parker warned that should an enemy be able to reach America

through the air, “the navy fails in its purpose and the Monroe Doctrine be-

comes archaic.”

Writing prior to the massive 1916 naval appropriations, when “we so se-

verely limit our military budgets,” Parker characterized the airplane as an

efﬁcient adjunct to the battleship. According to Parker, the United States

“must seize, more eagerly than other nations, inexpensive weapons of great

and known efﬁcacy, like the submarine, the destroyer, and the airship.”

The airplane was, according to Parker, an ideal counter to the submarine.

Parker advocated purchasing one hundred airplanes ($1.1 million) and four

Anomalous Technologies of the Great War

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dirigibles ($1 million) per year for four years, for a total expenditure ap-

proximately equal to the cost of one battleship.

Parker quaintly described the role of naval aviation within the battleship

technological paradigm. Aircraft and airships would guide friendly sub-

marines and destroyers to their “prey.” By performing aerial scouting, the

airplanes would allow the battleship crews, “racked by watching, to rest.”

Airplanes could protect the battleship by locating and dropping “mines”

on enemy submarines, unless, of course, the submarine “porpoises and un-

masks an aerial gun.”

The airplane could also serve to carry messages

when “the enemy are ‘jamming’ the radio”; or, remarkably, even as the post

of the ﬂeet commander-in-chief during a battle.

Just before the publication of Parker’s article, the Navy Department had

approved the report of the special Aeronautical Board that had studied the

question of naval aviation.

Appreciating the growing aviation gap, the

Board called for a vigorous aviation program “superior in all articles of aer-

ial equipment—in dirigibles as well as in aeroplanes.” It was no surprise

that the Board members considered aircraft a technology augmenting the

battleship and recommended aircraft carried by “both ﬁghting ships and

auxiliaries. Every battleship should carry them [original emphasis].”

The problem with developing American naval aviation centered around

materiel. In July 1913 Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske, serving as the secretary

of the navy’s aide for operations, convinced Secretary of the Navy Josephus

Daniels to ask for a General Board study on aviation.

The General Board

farmed out the study to Captain Washington Chambers, who, with a com-

mittee of several ofﬁcers, came up with a complex, multibureau organiza-

tion for naval aviation. Fiske objected to the Chambers Plan, which would

reinforce the power of the technical bureaus while failing to provide for

centralized line ofﬁcer control. Fiske pressured the General Board to

shelve the Chambers Report and to convince Daniels to establish an Of-

ﬁce of Aeronautics under Fiske. This ofﬁce was established on a pro tem-

pore basis on 30 August 1913. Commander Mark Bristol became Fiske’s

naval aviation assistant and director of the Ofﬁce of Aeronautics when it

was established formally on 1 July 1914.

Bristol estimated that the battle ﬂeet would require at least one hundred

airplanes to support it during hostilities.

To defend American naval bases,

even more planes would be required. Bristol reported difﬁculty in con-

vincing the naval hierarchy to allocate funds for such a new technology, a

perfect example of senior ofﬁcers’ hesitancy regarding a potentially de-

Technological Change and the United States Navy

128

stabilizing weapon. He complained that the thought of buying “1000

launches [small boats] would not stagger us; but we talk in whispers of 40

aeroplanes!”

By the end of 1914, the naval hierarchy’s desire to expand naval aviation

far exceeded its ability. Testifying before the House Naval Affairs Commit-

tee in November 1914, Rear Admiral Victor Blue admitted that the navy

owned only “ﬁve or six” ﬂying machines.

The navy had established an

aviation training station at Pensacola, Florida, and increased the number

of aviation students. However, as Secretary Daniels pointed out, the war in

Europe made airplanes hard to come by: “we have been trying to buy air-

craft; we have been trying very hard, but we could not get them. As I say,

we ordered one from France and one from Germany. If we had $5,000,000

now I could not spend it wisely.”

Daniels had $1 million to spend on naval

aviation in 1913, but the money was turned back to the Treasury because

there were no suitable aircraft to purchase. In spite of the dearth of aircraft,

both the General Board and Fiske were enthusiastic and the Navy De-

partment requested $10 million for aviation as a part of the 1915 Appropri-

ations Bill.

In keeping with past reliance on the private sector for technology de-

velopment, Fiske and the General Board sought to use a large congres-

sional appropriation as bait for the development of aviation technology by

the domestic aviation industry. Fiske told the House Naval Affairs Com-

mittee that the $5 million for aviation requested by the General Board

would “get people in the United States to put up plants to construct air

craft, so that we will not have to depend upon the manufacturers abroad.”

In addition to establishing a domestic source for aircraft, the naval hier-

archy wanted to ensure that naval aviators remained loyal members of the

battleship thought collective. The unique practice of aviation, like service

in submarines, increased aviators’ loyalty toward their specialty. A separatist

movement began to form to the extent that some aviators even prevailed

upon friendly congressmen to support a reorganization of the naval ofﬁcer

corps. A provision was included in the Naval Appropriations Bill for 1917

calling for the creation of a separate “naval ﬂying corps.” Such a potential

schism raised the ire of the General Board. The Board was quick to call for

an organization that would temper the independence of naval aviation:

The General Board believes that the establishment of a special corps so very dis-

tinct from the rest of the Navy would not tend to promote efﬁciency . . . [and]

Anomalous Technologies of the Great War

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that the aeronautic service of the Navy will best be dealt with under the exist-

ing law and conditions; by detailing young ofﬁcers and men to the aeronautic

service for instruction in ﬂying and observation at the aeronautic station and af-

terwards for aviation duty for a few years while maintaining their place in the

Navy List and their connection with the general duties of naval ofﬁcers. The

aviation party on board ship should constitute a division of the ship’s crew avail-

able for general service as necessary, like a torpedo division or a turret division.

To the members of the General Board, shipborne aircraft were merely a

component of the battleship “system” and aviation personnel formed just

another specialty group within the battleship crew. To ensure aviator con-

formity with the remainder of the ofﬁcer corps, the naval hierarchy sought

to restrict naval aviation, as they had naval engineering, to graduates of the

Naval Academy. A shortage of academy graduates led Secretary Daniels,

to the horror of the admirals, to recommend commissioning civilian avia-

tors directly into the navy.

At the end of 1916, Secretary Daniels reported that U.S. naval aviation

policy speciﬁed four missions for aircraft, all of which supported the status

quo. Naval aircraft would provide “Scouting from ships at sea . . . Off shore

scouting from coastal stations . . . Spotting [for battleship gunﬁre] . . . [and]

Offensive operations against enemy aircraft and possibly against ships or

stations.”

American entry into the World War in April 1917 resulted in the expan-

sion of naval aviation. More than $5.1 million was requested as a part of the

naval appropriations bill for 1918. These funds were to purchase eighty-six

airplanes and two dirigibles, to expand the ground facilities at Pensacola,

and to establish “aeronautic” stations at Pearl Harbor, at the Canal Zone,

and on the Paciﬁc Coast.

Some ofﬁcers saw more to aviation than scouting and spotting in sup-

port of the battle line. Speaking one month before American involvement

in the war, Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske, now retired, called for the devel-

opment of the torpedo plane, a type of aircraft capable, for the ﬁrst time,

of carrying a weapon that could damage a battleship. Fiske believed that

the torpedo plane, “under favorable conditions, would make the $20,000

airplane a worthy match for a $20,000,000 battlecruiser.”

Fiske, inciden-

tally, held a 1912 patent for a torpedo plane carrying a Whitehead torpedo.

In August 1917 Fiske presented his argument to the naval profession in

Technological Change and the United States Navy

130

the Naval Institute Proceedings.

The torpedo plane, Fiske argued, sup-

ported Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s deﬁnition of strat-

egy: “to get the mostest men there the ﬁrstest.”

Fiske, of course, was not

referring to men, but to torpedoes, delivered by an attacking force com-

prising a large number of torpedo planes. In 1911 Fiske had deﬁned mili-

tary power as “mechanical power which can inﬂict injuries upon the bod-

ies of men, and upon any defenses that may be placed around them.”

Naval power, according to Fiske, was superior to military power since the

“properties of water enabled larger machines to be moved” to an enemy.

Since water was a better medium for moving military machines than land,

Fiske argued that the power and mobility attending aviation would make

it the most effective military force. He drew a parallel to his old nemesis,

Mahan:

Mahan proved that the inﬂuence of sea power upon history has been great. But

this, strictly speaking, was not because it was sea power, but because it was me-

chanical power, so harnessed that it enabled the nation which possessed the

power to bring force to bear on another nation, across the joining medium of

the sea. Now the air joins countries together more intimately than does the sea;

so that a book may some day be written, called “The Inﬂuence of Air Power on

History.”

Fiske and his torpedo plane would have to wait.

During the summer of 1918 the General Board attempted to draw con-

clusions from the war in order to deﬁne the proper employment for aircraft

within the navy, even questioning a Lieutenant Colonel Porte, of the Royal

Flying Corps, on British experience with aircraft carriers.

The General

Board determined that airplanes should be carried on scout ships (cruis-

ers) and also on the new battlecruisers. As for battleships, the Board be-

lieved that it would be better to carry its aircraft on a separate aircraft car-

rier on which the planes could land.

The General Board characterized

this aircraft carrier, which would support the battleship ﬂeet of 1925, as one

carrying twenty to thirty scouting seaplanes and displacing about 20,000

tons.

The one drawback with this ship was that its large size would pre-

vent the navy from acquiring more than one or two.

The General Board also considered naval aviation as an essential com-

ponent in American naval power, especially in the vast Paciﬁc:

Anomalous Technologies of the Great War

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This war is not conclusive with regard to aircraft. The North Sea with its few

hundred miles yields little of importance for our larger operations. When you

imagine that our merchant marine will cover the seven seas, airplanes, in some

shape, are going to play a very important part in protecting this merchant ﬂeet.

Otherwise, we shall be reduced to the impotency of the German merchant and

war ﬂeets. We must look forward far enough to protect ourselves, and that means

a very large ﬂeet with all needed components.

After the Armistice in November 1918, the General Board held hearings

to formulate a policy to govern the future of naval aviation. The Board

heard testimony from the bureau chiefs, senior commanders of the battle-

ship navy, and naval aviators. Considerable attention was paid to the ques-

tion of who would ﬁll the ranks of naval aviation. The Board also laid the

groundwork for the subordination of aviation to the battleship that would

last during the interwar period.

Admiral Henry T. Mayo, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Fleet, told the

General Board in 1919 that aviation is “a subject which must not be ne-

glected in connection with the upbuilding and maintenance of an efﬁcient

Fleet.”

However, Mayo was quick to squelch any idea of aviation auton-

omy or the development of naval aviation in any role except supporting the

battleship. He characterized aviation as an “essential ﬁghting arm of the

Navy,” but “no more of a specialty than submarine or destroyer duty.” Mayo

believed that “aviation will be so closely allied in the future with all naval

activities” so it “should be considered an integral part of the naval profes-

sion.” Mayo wanted a homogenous naval ofﬁcer corps since “separate corps

within one ﬁghting organization usually leads to jealousies, lack of coop-

eration and inefﬁciency.” The solution was “similar training as far as prac-

ticable for all ofﬁcers of the ﬁghting arms of the Navy” including aviators.

This would be critical to inculcation of the battleship thought style and su-

premacy of the battleship strategic paradigm, or as Mayo phrased it, “es-

sential to the establishment of a common point of view with regard to naval

doctrine, traditions and policy.”

Mayo also recommended a reduction in

the hazardous duty pay for aviators to 10 percent of their base pay, believ-

ing that this would preclude jealousy among nonﬂying ofﬁcers. Mayo

further endeared himself to aviators by proposing to compensate for the re-

duction in hazardous duty pay with an increased government life insur-

ance policy.

The Bureaus of Construction & Repair and Steam Engineering had

Technological Change and the United States Navy

132

taken the lead in developing naval aviation. To prevent a recurrence of the

early history of the battleship, and its control by the technical bureaus,

Mayo warned that “the development of Naval Aviation must be governed

by the development of Naval Tactics and Strategy—a branch of the Naval

profession in which the decisions of line ofﬁcers must be supreme.”

100

By 1920 the navy was faced with growing pressure for the establishment

of an independent air force that would include all army and naval aviators.

This movement came primarily from army aviators and their sympathizers

in Congress and the public. To defend naval aviation, Rear Admiral David

Taylor, chief of the Bureau of Construction & Repair, lobbied friendly con-

gressmen to establish a navy bureau of aviation to preserve naval aviation

as a distinct entity. A bill was introduced that provided for such a bureau

and a naval air corps to be ﬁlled with commissioned ofﬁcers drawn from

all branches of the navy. Naval aviation was still under the control of a di-

rector of aviation in the Ofﬁce of the Chief of Naval Operations. However,

Taylor felt that “the present arrangement is not satisfactory, particularly if

the Director of Aviation in Operations is not up to the job, and we have got

to make some change or the Army (in the disguise of an Independent Air

Service) will gobble up naval aviation.”

101

Fiske championed the creation of a bureau devoted to naval aviation to

his old ally, Admiral William Sims:

Meanwhile—for the sake of the U.S.N. and the U.S. [of] America—let’s get a

Bureau of Aeronautics p.d.q.—as p.d.q. as possible. Everybody is agreed to it:

the House Naval Committee agreed to it unanimously and it only just escaped

passing, last session. If we don’t get that Bureau next session, Gen’l Mitchell and

a whole horde of politicians will get an “Air Ministry” established, and the U.S.

Navy will ﬁnd itself lying in the street, and the procession marching over it.—

But, with that Bureau nailed down, we can answer all the arguments against the

navy having navy aeronautics, by accomplishing something practical. There is

a lot of power of many kinds behind this Air Ministry project:—it is the most

powerful enemy the navy has. If the Air Ministry is established, the navy will

rank with mediaeval institutions in about ten years.

102

Sims, recently returned from his wartime command in Europe, agreed

on the necessity of establishing a bureau of aeronautics, promising Fiske

that “When this matter comes up, as it eventually must, before Congress,

I intend to take a hand.”

103

But Sims was embroiled in a heated dispute be-

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