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

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the various types of combatant ships.” Listed in order of their importance

within the U.S. Battle Fleet were “battleships, light cruisers, destroyers, de-

stroyer leaders, submarines, and airplane carriers.”

The second strategic

mission would be carried out by “attacks upon and interference with en-

emy commerce, the defense of our own commerce, the blockade of enemy

ports, the escort of military expeditions, the repulse of invasions and, in gen-

eral, the control of sea communications.”

This mission required “less

ﬁghting strength” and would be assigned to cruisers assisted by submarines,

and whatever aircraft carriers—the battlecruiser-turned-carrier Saratoga

would not be completed until 1927—or destroyers were available.

On paper, the U.S. Fleet was divided into four forces composed of var-

ious types of ships. In addition to the Battle Fleet described above were the

Scouting Fleet, Control Force, and the Fleet Base Force. The Scouting

Fleet was considered an auxiliary to the Battle Fleet. In principle it con-

tained light cruisers, aircraft carriers, submarines, and destroyers. The

Control Force was charged with accomplishing the navy’s secondary strate-

gic mission: maintaining control of the sea. It was to be composed of light

cruisers, aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines, minelayers, and patrol

vessels. The Fleet Base Force included the Fleet Train, auxiliary vessels

needed to supply the ﬂeet, and whatever combatant vessels were assigned

to protect the Fleet Train and advanced naval bases.

The Board recognized the aviation threat to the battleship, but the tes-

timony of civilian aeronautical experts indicated that the future evolution

of aircraft, which were not subject to any treaty restrictions, was more lim-

ited than that of the battleship. The experts included Massachusetts Insti-

tute of Technology (MIT) President S. W. Stratton, Johns Hopkins physi-

cist J. S. Ames, the chair of MIT’s Aerodynamic Department, E. P. Warner

(who later became the ﬁrst assistant secretary of the navy for air in 1926),

and several important NACA ﬁgures such as W. F. Durand of Stanford Uni-

versity, George W. Lewis, director of NACA research, and Rear Admiral

David Taylor, secretary of NACA. These foremost representatives of the

nation’s aviation establishment all agreed that the “present maximum per-

formance of heavier-than-air craft may be increased about thirty per cent

by future developments extending over an indeﬁnite period of years. All of

them consider it most unwise to base a policy of national defense on ex-

pectation much beyond present performance.

After the experts placed a technological ceiling on the future of aviation,

the Board addressed the considerable agitation to create a cabinet-level De-

Technological Change and the United States Navy

144

partment of Aeronautics to supervise civil and military aviation. This de-

partment would include a united air service, or air force, that would absorb

all army and naval aviation. The Board argued that the testimony of its wit-

nesses supported the position that such a department would hinder the

navy’s ability to defend the nation. The agitation within the army and navy

for a separate air service was attributed to “(1) Unsatisfactory promotion

from their [aviators’] point of view. (2) A desire to be always under the com-

mand from the top down of practical ﬂying ofﬁcers. (3) A belief that there

exists a lack of sympathy for them on the part of the senior ofﬁcers of the

Army and Navy.”

The Board dismissed the case for promotion as the misguided belief by

pilots that an air force would be expanded so that existing ofﬁcers would

enter the new service with “greatly increased rank and pay.” As to the com-

mand structure of naval aviation, the time was fast approaching when all

the “immediate commanders of ﬂying squadrons will be practical ﬂying of-

ﬁcers.” However, the Board pointed out that the existing situation was no

different from the fact that ofﬁcers specializing in naval engineering and

ordnance were not always commanded by ofﬁcers of their own specialty.

The lack of sympathy for aviators, if it did exist, was attributed to the fact

that the “higher authorities in both Army and Navy understand the serious

limitations in war operations in the air.”

That is, they disagreed with the

ardent advocates of aviation who espoused the unlimited potential of air

power.

Since the push for a united air service and attacks on the battleship had

grown out of the 1921 battleship bombing experiments, the Board discussed

these trials at length, concluding that battleship antiaircraft guns would

make the already inaccurate aerial bombing even more so. For example,

when the battleship Iowa was attacked while being maneuvered by radio

control, only two of eight bombs hit the ship from an altitude of 4,000 feet.

In July 1924 the British had conducted a similar trial using the radio-

controlled battleship Agamemnon. One hundred fourteen bombs were

dropped without a single hit. Trials of antiaircraft guns had yielded 75 per-

cent hits on small aerial targets at altitudes higher than 4,000 feet, indicat-

ing that a battleship could fend off aerial attack.

The inaccuracy of the peacetime bombing trials cast doubt on the avi-

ation argument. The navy argued that the battleship was the superior

means to defeat an enemy battle ﬂeet, since gunﬁre from a battleship was

quicker and more accurate than aerial bombing: “The turrets of our latest

Controlling Aviation after the World War

145

[battle]ships ﬁre a projectile weighing 2,100 pounds to a distance of twenty

sea miles [40,000 yards]. At 19,000 yards no armor aﬂoat will withstand a

normal hit from these guns. While it takes 28 seconds for an airplane bomb

to reach the target, 12,000 feet beneath it, the 16-inch projectile ﬁred from

a gun traverses an equal distance in less than ﬁve seconds.”

The mystique of air attack was dismissed as well: “There seems to be in

the minds of most of us, the idea that there is some especially deadly qual-

ity pertaining to missiles dropped from above. This idea is probably in-

stinctive and is kept alive by accidents which occur from time to time. The

idea is not true of course, but if it were, what of the 2,100 pound [battle-

ship] shell which, when ﬁred at the maximum range as mounted, drops

from a height of 18,700 feet?”

The battleship was judged superior to aviation by what Admiral William

Sims used to call “rapidity of hitting” coupled with the greater percentage

of hits from battleship guns.

The West Virginia delivered a volume of

carefully aimed ﬁre which amounted to one shell every ﬁve seconds.

peacetime target practice, American battleships successfully hit a relatively

small target about 10 percent of the time at ranges between 19,000 yards

and 20,000 yards. In battle, the navy estimated the rate of hits would be re-

duced to around 3 percent, which, according to reconstructions, was be-

lieved to be the case during the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

The reduction

of hits during battle was attributed to “haste, smoke, nerves, et cetera.” The

Board concluded that such factors also would affect adversely the accuracy

of bombing and torpedo ﬁre, reducing its effectiveness from the results

obtained during the “drill and experiment of peace.”

Battle drills indicated that a large number of projectiles, whether shells

or aerial bombs, would be required to get hits on enemy ships: “If a battle-

ship ﬁres ﬁve hundred 2,100-pound shells in an engagement, she may

count on making ﬁfteen hits.”

The Five-Power Treaty had set a ceiling

on aircraft carrier tonnage, and even the large aircraft carriers Lexington

and Saratoga, being converted from the 1916 Program battlecruisers, would

each only carry seventy-two aircraft and not all of these aircraft were

bombers.

If the navy built the maximum number of aircraft carriers al-

lowed under the Five-Power Treaty, the total number of aircraft available

at sea would be approximately three hundred.

If each one of these air-

craft was a bomber, which was not the case, the number of bombs that

could reach an undefended, motionless battleship would still be less than

the number of shells ﬁred from a single battleship’s guns and the aerial

Technological Change and the United States Navy

146

bombs (based upon trials) would achieve a smaller percentage of hits.

When antiaircraft ﬁre and ship maneuvering were added to the picture, the

Board argued, the success of the airborne attack would be reduced even

further.

Conﬁdential torpedo, bomb, and gunﬁre tests conducted in November

1924 on the uncompleted hull of the 1916 Program battleship Washington

indicated that the three newest American superdreadnoughts could with-

stand eight torpedo hits. During the torpedo trials, a 14-inch shell weigh-

ing 1,440 pounds was also dropped onto the Washington from an altitude

of 4,000 feet and failed to penetrate the thick armored deck. The members

of the test board believed, however, that if the bomb had been dropped

from a higher height, which was within the capabilities of contemporary

aircraft, the shell would have penetrated. The Board argued that such an

occurrence could be avoided by adding more horizontal armor as part of

the defensive tonnage increase allowed by the treaty. Washington was also

subjected to long-range gunﬁre, and the tests indicated that present U.S.

battleship designs “justiﬁed expectations.”

Additional trials were con-

ducted to evaluate the effect of underwater explosions caused by near

misses of aerial bombs. Because of their intense pressure wave, the latter

were considered more dangerous than direct hits.

In developing a strategic policy for the secretary of the navy, the Special

Policy Board had to decide whether the present capabilities of naval air-

craft—or rather the present capabilities increased by 30 percent—posed a

credible challenge to the battleship. Both battleship advocates and aviators

saw limitations in each other’s artifacts, but none in their own. To ensure

penetration of a reinforced armored deck, General Mitchell threatened to

double the size of aerial bombs from the present maximum of 2,000 pounds

to 4,000 pounds. Mitchell’s plan sounded good to the public, but in real-

ity doubling the weight of explosive (which comprised about 50 percent of

the total weight in an armor-piercing bomb) only increased the pressure ef-

fect of the explosive charge by 50 percent rather than 100 percent.

While

such a large bomb could penetrate the armored deck of a battleship, the

navy dismissed it as too heavy to deliver based upon the testimony of the

aeronautical experts. The maximum load of contemporary bombers was

4,000 pounds, which included fuel and bombs. To carry a bomb larger than

2,000 pounds would mean a signiﬁcant reduction in the bomber’s radius

of action, even if aircraft performance improved by the predicted maxi-

mum of 30 percent. Using newly developed supercharged engines, a

Controlling Aviation after the World War

147

bomber could only reach a ceiling of 8,000 feet with a 2,000-pound bomb.

A larger bomb would reduce the aircraft’s ceiling, bringing the aircraft

within range of ship-mounted antiaircraft guns which, as mentioned, were

believed to be very effective based on live-ﬁre exercises.

The Board’s focus on bombs ignored the weapon long advocated by

Bradley Fiske—the torpedo plane. Although the three newest U.S. battle-

ships of the 1916 Program had been judged capable of surviving eight tor-

pedo hits, no mention was made of earlier designs which remained in the

battle line. The deﬁnition of survival was also vague. Modern naval

weaponeers speak of varying types of kills, such as mobility, mission,

weapons, electronic, or total. In 1924 the Special Board’s term “survival”

was less sophisticated; the ship remained aﬂoat. In May 1941 the German

battleship Bismarck survived two hits from aerial torpedoes. The second

jammed her rudder and inﬂicted a mobility kill, preventing Bismarck from

reaching port.

Mitchell may have fared better with his antibattleship

campaign if he had focused on delivering torpedoes rather than bombs.

However, the torpedo was not a normal technology within the army avia-

tion technological paradigm.

“Normal” Strategy

In their testimony before the Special Board, naval aviators reﬂected their

philosophical identiﬁcation with the normal practice of the battleship-

based strategic paradigm. Rear Admiral Moffett, chief of the Bureau of

Aeronautics, typiﬁed the battleship thought style, characterizing aircraft at

sea as “auxiliary to the ﬂeet—as an auxiliary arm. Its functions being, I

would say, spotting [battleship] gun ﬁre, reconnaissance, scouting, torpedo

and bombing.”

Perhaps recalling his own fondness for big-gunned

battleships—he had advocated a battleship with “the largest gun” possible

in 1916

—and his Medal of Honor-winning shelling of Mexicans at Vera

Cruz, Moffett’s ultimate expression was his statement to the Special Board

that “Aviation is a gun; it is a form of a gun.”

The bureau’s Lieutenant

Commander Marc Mitscher, who would later achieve fame as a com-

mander of aircraft carrier task forces against the Japanese during World

War II, also testiﬁed from within the battleship framework. Basing his con-

clusion upon bombing and gunnery exercises conducted since 1922,

Technological Change and the United States Navy

148

Mitscher told the Board that gunﬁre was more effective than aerial bomb-

ing.

Submarine and aviation advocates were competing for reduced postwar

naval funding and each claimed their technology better served the battle

ﬂeet. The submarine’s future was not as a counterweapon to the battleship,

as Ensign Bieg thought in 1915, but as a more stealthy and more economi-

cal scout than the rival aircraft carrier or light cruiser. Rear Admiral M. M.

Taylor, commander of the Control Force, emphasized the efﬁciency of the

submarine when he argued that a Hawaii-based, continuous naval patrol

off southern Japan would only require four 2,000-ton submarines at a total

cost of $16 million. The same thirty-day patrol, using highly visible and vul-

nerable light cruisers, would require ﬁve ships at a cost of $20 million. An

aircraft carrier with its forty planes, along with four destroyers for protec-

tion, could only patrol for ten days at a cost of $22.4 million. An added con-

sideration was the fact that the large and costly aircraft carrier would be ex-

tremely vulnerable to attack.

Conversely, Rear Admiral Magruder, commander of the Light Cruiser

Division of the Scouting Fleet, defended aviation as the technology that

was perfectly consonant with the geographical realities of the navy’s Paciﬁc

strategy.

The weather in the Paciﬁc, according to Magruder, lent itself to

successful air operations, and he recommended allocating a larger per-

centage of the shrinking naval budget to naval aviation.

He also argued

that aviation could serve as an economical buffer against the “treacherous”

Japanese until the United States reached war footing by “bring[ing] our

air ﬂeet up to . . . its proper strength,” which was a quicker method of

“strengthening the Fleet” and “would be cheaper also.”

After reviewing the extensive testimony of the special hearings, the Spe-

cial Policy Board recommended a force structure in which the battleship

remained “the element of ultimate force in the ﬂeet.” In a perfect expres-

sion of the battleship technological paradigm, the Board deﬁned all “other

elements” as “contributory to the fulﬁllment of its [battleship’s] function as

the ﬁnal arbiter of sea warfare.” The Board mimicked Rear Admiral Frank

Fletcher’s testimony in 1914 that “offense always beats defense”:

From time to time apparent threats to the superiority of the battleship have ap-

peared. Each has resulted in some modiﬁcations of its design and in the meth-

ods of its employment in war, but its supremacy remains. With the invention

Controlling Aviation after the World War

149

and development of offensive weapons has always come the counter invention

and development of defensive means and methods, so that in the end a fair bal-

ance is struck between them. The history of the gun and armor, and of the tor-

pedo and interior subdivision, merely repeats the process by which offense al-

ways begets defense. . . . [Aviation’s] inﬂuence on naval warfare undoubtedly

will increase in the future, but the prediction that it will assume paramount im-

portance in sea warfare will not be realized. The airplane (heavier-than-air) is

inherently limited in performance by physical laws. Airplanes have demon-

strated their great value to the ﬂeet in scouting, observation, and bombing. The

use of torpedo planes, [poison] gas,

and smoke screens still is in the process

of development. Airplane carriers are necessary elements of a properly consti-

tuted ﬂeet to carry airplanes to the scene of action.

In reafﬁrming the battleship’s dominance in guerre d’escadre, the Spe-

cial Policy Board ignored the warning of retired Admiral William F. Ful-

lam, whose career had spanned the battleship era and who admitted that

his “whole heart was given to the biggest gun and the biggest ship that could

be conceived.”

Fullam’s allegiance to the battleship ended on Armistice

Day in 1918, when his ﬂagship was anchored in San Diego Harbor. The

commander at Rockwell Field sent up 212 airplanes to celebrate the end of

the war, and they ﬂew over the ﬂeet for three hours “in ﬂocks.” It became

perfectly clear to Fullam that if “each of those lads up there had a bomb as

big as a grapefruit, that wouldn’t have been the place for us, or for any col-

lection of ships. If we started out at ﬁfteen knots, they would have pursued

us at a hundred knots.”

Although greatly overplaying the effect of grapefruit-sized bombs (and

ignoring the potential of the torpedo plane), Fullam, like Saul on the road

to Damascus, became a convert. He conceptualized a “ ‘Three Plane Navy’

with forces on the surface, below the surface and over the surface.”

Ful-

lam pointed out that the most powerful battleship ﬂeet in the world could

not keep Britain from starvation and the brink of defeat in the spring of

1917. Citing German records analyzed at the Naval War College, Fullam

characterized the German blockade as the epitome of efﬁciency, compris-

ing only nine to ﬁfteen submarines at any one time. He emphasized that

the entire German submarine force of ten thousand men had managed to

circumvent the one million men that manned the ﬁve greatest battleship

navies in the world.

Using the submarine as an example, Fullam accused

the navy of learning nothing from the World War since antisubmariners

Technological Change and the United States Navy

150

within the Navy Department had prevented the director of submarines

from testifying before the Senate Naval Affairs Committee in February 1921

regarding the need for submarines.

In addition, Secretary of the Navy

Josephus Daniels’s appointee as chief of naval operations, Admiral Robert

E. Coontz, had deleted all submarines from the naval appropriations bill.

Although critical of the limited naval appropriations of the Harding and

Coolidge administrations, Fullam idealistically argued that whatever funds

were given to the navy should be used to develop the three-plane navy to

its fullest efﬁciency, so that all technological factions could work together

like a Nelsonian “band of brothers.”

Rejecting the singularity of the

battleship thought style, Fullam demanded the creation of a “three idea

Navy,” as it would win out over a “one idea navy every time.” According to

Fullam, “The nation that ﬁrst does this, that ﬁrst solves that very compli-

cated problem, will win the next war.”

The American naval profession had no room for three disparate and

roughly equal technological paradigms. Fullam’s argument was for naught,

and the Special Policy Board justiﬁed the retention of the battleship-based

strategy for two reasons. First, the testimony of civilian aviation experts set

a technological ceiling on aviation, predicting that airplanes had little po-

tential for growth and, therefore, would never attain performance levels

that would pose a threat to the battleship. Second, those charged with the

advancement of naval aviation, such as Rear Admiral Moffett, were ﬁrmly

rooted in the battleship thought collective and envisioned aviation as sup-

porting the battleship rather than challenging it.

There was strong support for the development of naval aviation by se-

nior naval ofﬁcers, but only in roles that reinforced the normal battleship-

based strategic philosophy. A different employment of naval aviation was

only a possibility if a rival naval power should pursue a radically different

aviation mission, for example, offensive operations utilizing torpedo

planes, which would threaten, or in the case of hostilities, pose a serious

presumptive anomaly to the existing technological paradigm.

After the “Airphobia” of 1924–1925

The Special Policy Board report was an internal navy document, and

the release of its conclusions failed to end the criticism from those calling

for the retirement of the battleship and the establishment of a separate air

Controlling Aviation after the World War

151

service. As a result, President Coolidge appointed a civilian panel, the Mor-

row Board, to study the best way to develop aviation for use in national de-

fense.

The Morrow Board found no merit in a separate air force, but did

recommend the adoption of a multiyear aircraft procurement program for

the army and navy.

Believing there was merit in the contention that avi-

ators were being suppressed, the Morrow Board recommended increased

promotion opportunities and the restriction of aircraft carrier command to

aviation ofﬁcers. The Board also advised the president to authorize the ap-

pointment of a new assistant secretary of the navy for aviation.

Coolidge signed the appropriations act of 24 June 1926 incorporating the

provisions of the Morrow Board report, including funding for a thousand

new navy aircraft over a ﬁve-year period.

In addition, all aircraft carriers

were commanded by aviators. The exclusion of nonaviators from com-

mand of the almost completed large carriers Saratoga and Lexington irked

Admiral Samuel S. Robison, commander-in-chief, U.S. Fleet. He ex-

pressed his dismay to the Bureau of Aeronautics:

The particular aircraft carriers now in mind are the largest ships we have ever

built, with the greatest horsepower that has ever been installed, and to try to con-

nect up their command with ability to ﬂy is pifﬂe (see Morrow Board’s recom-

mendation); and that no ofﬁcers should serve on them except aviators is equally

pifﬂe and defeats the desire of the Department and of the Congress that knowl-

edge of aviation should be disseminated as widely as possible.

In the wake of the Special Board and the Morrow Board, Captain Yates

Stirling captured the essence of the battleship thought style regarding the

role of aviation in the navy: “The notion that the airplane is to replace that

panoply of war called ﬂeets came as a surprise to the Navy. The naval man

saw in it merely a weapon to be used by the Navy for offensive and defen-

sive action. . . . In addition to its value in scouting, the Navy’s interest ﬁrst

was directed to the airplane for the purpose of spotting gun ﬁre. . . . Spot-

ting the [battleship] gun salvos from airplanes was the natural solution [to

visibility problems at long range].”

Like, Moffett, the navy’s premier avi-

ator, Stirling also compared the airplane to a battleship shell: “Airplane car-

riers are to all intents and purposes battle cruisers with airplanes replacing

the big guns in armored turrets. . . . The fact is that the naval airplane is

merely a new sort of projectile, carried by a surface ship.”

Stirling compared the aviation threat to that posed by torpedo-carrying

Technological Change and the United States Navy

152

destroyers prior to the World War. The rapid-ﬁre secondary armament of

battleships was judged unable to reach attacking destroyers with sufﬁcient

accuracy to prevent a torpedo attack. The answer had been to advance the

antidestroyer guns to the point of attack, that is, to place them on destroy-

ers and use these destroyers as a protective screen around the capital ship.

Stirling advocated the same course of action with antiaircraft guns: ad-

vancing them to the point of attack by carrying them in airplanes. This

would ensure control of the skies, neutralization of the airplane, and pro-

tection of American capital ships. Naval air assets would cancel each other

out, and war at sea would remain dependent on the battleship.

The

airplane would join the expanding defensive rings protecting the navy’s

castles of steel.

The technological ceiling and pace of subsequent aviation development

prevented aviation theorists from presenting a credible presumptive anom-

aly to the battleship technological paradigm. That would have to wait for

the development and perfection of carrier air groups equipped with mod-

ern aircraft able to damage or sink a moving warship. This would not oc-

cur prior to the introduction of metal, monoplane dive bombers, torpedo

bombers, and ﬁghters at the end of the 1930s.

Naval ofﬁcers tended to see conﬂict as intra-artifact with little, if any,

crossover. In war games at the Naval War College, for example, comman-

ders of opposing ﬂeets regularly launched air strikes against enemy aircraft

carriers, rather than against battleships, as soon as the enemy was within

range.

Fleet exercise experience underscored the vulnerability of aircraft

carriers to air attack. The consensus was that there was no effective defense

against a well-mounted dive bomber attack save the destruction of the en-

emy carrier prior to its launching such an attack. The side whose carriers

were discovered and attacked ﬁrst lost its aviation force.

Once these pre-

liminary bouts were completed, the ring was clear for the main event—the

battleship duel. As the Tactical Orders and Doctrine for the U.S. Fleet, 1941,

stated: “The surest and quickest means of gaining control of the air is the

destruction of enemy carriers.”

Control of the air meant freedom from

destruction from above.

In justifying their existence, both submariners and aviators presented

themselves as the “most effective” supporting technologies to increase the

survivability of the battle ﬂeet. Stirling typiﬁed the view that aircraft would

only ﬁght other aircraft, just as Admiral M. M. Taylor argued that sub-

marines would primarily engage submarines.

Citing the confusion at Jut-

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