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

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ley a “coyote among lambs” and a “bartender among drunkards,” Bream

saw Standley’s appointment as “an arrogant slap in the face to people who

have the good sense to see that this mad race in armament building is a

mad race, with the only possible out-come being more poverty, more war,

and the eventual destruction of civilized peoples by their own weapons.”

Cultural acceptance of the battleship as the measure of naval power was

reﬂected in the discussion during a presidential press conference in No-

vember 1935, one month prior to the London Naval Conference. When

asked if the United States would build new battleships to replace those

reaching obsolescence, Roosevelt admitted that new U.S. battleship con-

struction had been considered, but only “for about a minute and a half,”

during a meeting with Assistant Secretary of the Navy Henry L. Roosevelt

and Admiral Standley the previous day. According to Roosevelt, no deci-

sion regarding a resumption of battleship construction had been made, but

he was being disingenuous about the extent of U.S. battleship plans and his

involvement with them. Two months earlier, Roosevelt had reviewed de-

signs for new battleships with Admiral Standley and the chief of the Bu-

reau of Construction & Repair, Rear Admiral Land. These designs origi-

nated with Roosevelt’s December 1934 directive to Secretary Swanson to

“discuss with the proper ofﬁcers . . . the development of new types of ships

on the theory that the Washington and London Treaty restrictions may be

entirely removed within the next two years.” Roosevelt promised additional

appropriations for the design bureaus if special studies were required.

Happily rid of Hoover, the navy responded quickly to presidential in-

terest in new battleships. The navy had prepared design sketches for a

35,000-ton battleship in 1929 in anticipation of the resumption of super-

dreadnought construction in 1932. It is likely that these plans were updated

regularly by the Bureau of Construction & Repair since Roosevelt’s naval

aide informed him that sketches and comments on existing designs would

be forwarded “at once” to the commander-in-chief, U.S. Fleet, for his com-

ments, prior to being sent to the General Board and the Ship Development

Board.

The Japanese were mistaken if they thought their interest in super-

battleships unique. In January 1935, the Bureau of Construction & Repair

was directed to design the largest possible battleship with 20-inch guns lim-

ited only by the maximum beam (108 feet) that would ﬁt through the

Panama Canal. The resulting designs were true leviathans: a 72,000-ton,

30-knot ship and a 60,000-ton, 25-knot design. But such monstrous ships

Technological Change and the United States Navy

174

were merely the latest example of wishful, “bigger is better” thinking by

battleship advocates dating back to 1903.

When the London Naval Conference began in December 1935, the

Japanese delegation rejected continuation of the quantitative limitations of

the ratio system. Japan was willing to allow Britain to build above a “com-

mon upper [tonnage] limit” because of its worldwide commitments, but

was insistent on exact parity with the United States.

With the talks at an

impasse in January 1936, the Japanese delegation made a sweeping pro-

posal for deep cuts in naval armaments. The head of the delegation, Ad-

miral Nagano Osami, proposed a reduction in all “offensive” weapons,

which he deﬁned as battleships, aircraft carriers, and 8-inch-gun heavy

cruisers. The Japanese further proposed retention of a common upper

limit, that is, parity among the three major naval powers, with no restric-

tions on the type of warships allowed. This proposal was rejected in short

order by the British and Americans, who believed that such a reduction in

their naval superiority would cede Asia to Japan and threaten the security

of Australia, New Zealand, and the Philippines. Admiral Nagano an-

nounced that Japan could no longer pursue negotiations based upon quan-

titative inferiority, and the Japanese delegation announced its withdrawal

from the conference that afternoon.

In spite of Japan’s withdrawal, the Second London Naval Treaty was

signed by the United States, Britain, and France on 25 March 1936 to run

from 1937 through 1942. Separate agreements were signed with Germany

and the Soviet Union. An escape clause allowed an escalation to 16-inch

guns if either Japan or Italy failed to subscribe to the treaty by 1937.

A new naval arms race was a certainty unless Japan signed the treaty and

accepted qualitative parity along with quantitative inferiority. The Japan-

ese declined two invitations to sign the treaty during 1937, preferring to be

free to determine their own naval policy. The British Admiralty urged its

government to threaten to use British ﬁnancial and industrial superiority

to outstrip the Japanese efforts through a more aggressive battleship build-

ing program. This was analogous to Carl Vinson’s 1934 threat to build ﬁve

warships for every three laid down by Japan.

On 5 February 1938, France, the United States, and Britain sent Japan

an ultimatum demanding details of Japanese battleship programs and as-

surances that they would not build ships exceeding the limits set by the Sec-

ond London Treaty. Already committed to the construction of the Yamato-

class superbattleships, the Japanese saw no reason to submit to the dictates

Disarmament, Depression, and Politics

175

of the other major powers. On 7 February 1938, the Japanese Foreign Min-

istry denied that Japan was building battleships of 43,000 tons as claimed

by the British and Americans.

This was correct: the Yamato-class battle-

ships displaced over 68,000 tons.

In March 1938, France, Britain, and the United States agreed to invoke

the escalation clause in the Second London Treaty and, after discussion,

signed a protocol in June 1938, raising the maximum battleship displace-

ment to 45,000 tons and setting the maximum gun bore at 16 inches.

new battleship race was on.

The Politics of Naval Construction

Japanese repudiation of the international naval treaties provided Roo-

sevelt perfect justiﬁcation for the general naval buildup authorized by the

Vinson–Trammell Act. Japanese secrecy concerning their battleship de-

signs also aided the political case for resumption of U.S. battleship con-

struction. The ﬁrst U.S. “treaty” superdreadnoughts, the two ships of the

North Carolina class, were authorized for $50 million each in January

1937.

The battleships North Carolina and Washington were the ﬁrst capital

ships to fall under the control of New Deal legislation. A provision of the

Vinson–Trammell Act limited corporate proﬁt from the construction of

government ships to 10 percent. The Walsh–Healey Act of 1936 required

the payment of prevailing wages and speciﬁed minimum standards for

working conditions. According to Roosevelt, the government wanted to

build one ship in a navy yard and one in the private sector. Given the eco-

nomic climate, Roosevelt did not think the increased labor costs of the

Walsh–Healey Act would deter private-sector bids. If it did, then Roosevelt

said the government would build both ships in navy yards.

Even though the New Deal had provided the vehicle for the navy’s re-

construction, naval ofﬁcers were learning that there was a price to be paid

for their new afﬁliation with public works.

While the contract-starved pri-

vate shipyards may have had no objection to the provisions of the Walsh–

Healey Act, the steel industry was another matter. Steel company execu-

tives resented the Walsh–Healey provision that limited the maximum work

week to forty hours and the prescription of a minimum wage as set by the

defunct National Recovery Administration (NRA). Further compounding

Technological Change and the United States Navy

176

the problem was the dispute between the American Federation of Labor

(AFL), representing skilled workers, and the Committee for Industrial Or-

ganization (CIO), which was attempting to organize the unskilled workers

in the steel industry. The navy, which had been riding the crest of the New

Deal, was caught in the middle and unable to obtain the 18 million pounds

of steel needed for the construction of three submarines and six destroyers,

let alone the massive quantities that would be required for the new battle-

ships.

Labor problems also existed in the shipyards. In May 1937, the CIO

halted construction of two destroyers by forcing a strike at the Federal Ship-

building and Drydock Company in Kearny, New Jersey. The strike ended

when management recognized the CIO as the collective bargaining agent

for the company’s workers and agreed to a pay raise of 5 cents per hour.

Industry concerns over labor and steel costs escalated the price of the

North Carolina-class battleships from $50 million to $60 million per ship

by June. The navy’s review of the construction bids was delayed repeatedly

by design modiﬁcations. When the bids were ﬁnally reviewed, the navy

thought those from the private sector to be inﬂated unjustly, and the New

York and Philadelphia navy yards were declared the winners. But the award

of $120 million in battleship contracts to government yards drew strong

criticism from the citizens of Camden, New Jersey, whose livelihood

depended upon the New York Shipbuilding Company. In January 1937,

Mayor George E. Brunner of Camden warned President Roosevelt that

New York Shipbuilding’s work would soon run out and result in massive

unemployment. Recalling Roosevelt’s personal approval of the contract

awards made under the initial NIRA navy program, the mayor asked the

president, without success, to direct new ship construction to New York

Shipbuilding. The president of the Camden Chamber of Commerce,

J. W. Burnison, appealed directly to Roosevelt to shift the $60 million

battleship North Carolina from the nearby Brooklyn navy yard to New York

Shipbuilding. The president responded that the battleship awards had

been made on the basis of sealed bids and that the Navy Yards’ were far

lower than any submitted from the private sector. Roosevelt advised Bur-

nison to tell the private shipyards to sharpen their pencils when subsequent

navy contracts went out for bid.

While the bids submitted by the navy yards were cheaper, at least on pa-

per,

there were other factors that inﬂuenced the award of both battleship

contracts. Although the New York Navy Yard had some labor troubles, they

were minimal compared to the problems that private shipyards had with

Disarmament, Depression, and Politics

177

labor-management disputes and intralabor friction between the skilled

trades, represented by AFL craft unions, and the CIO, which was attempt-

ing to become the sole collective bargaining agent for shipyard workers.

Due to the increased labor and production costs from the Walsh–Healey

Act and the 10 percent limit on proﬁts from navy contracts, private shipyard

management tended to inﬂate their contract bids to maintain their previ-

ous proﬁt margin. It is possible that the award of the two new battleships to

navy yards was a message from the administration to the shipbuilding in-

dustry, and indirectly to the steel industry, to accommodate labor and to

submit bids in the future that reﬂected realistic construction costs. There

was still a feeling within the naval hierarchy that private shipyards, build-

ing the Maryland-class superdreadnoughts after World War I, had used the

cost-plus-ﬁxed-proﬁt contract as a means to prolong construction during

the postwar slump. Given the strategic threat posed by the secret Japanese

battleship program, the admirals wanted no delay in the construction of

their long-awaited superdreadnoughts.

When local politicians had no success shifting the battleship contracts,

New Jersey congressmen entered the act. Representative D. Lane Powers

asked Roosevelt to reconsider the award to the New York Navy Yard. Sen-

ator A. Harry Moore warned the president that New York Shipbuilding

would be forced to close unless it received navy business. Roosevelt told

Moore that nothing could be done regarding the battleships since wide dis-

crepancies existed between the private-sector and navy yard bids and the

material had already been ordered. He advised Moore that the navy would

be soliciting bids for new auxiliary ships the following month.

In response to this enticement, the Camden area launched a campaign

to pressure the White House into awarding one of the new navy contracts

to New York Shipbuilding. Thirty thousand Camden children competed

in an essay contest on shipbuilding. One hundred and twenty-ﬁve prize

winners were brought to Washington and they, along with members of the

Camden political and business community, visited the White House to

plead their case. Roosevelt’s secretary, Marvin McIntyre, asked Assistant

(de facto Acting) Secretary of the Navy Charles Edison if “something could

be done where they [New York Shipbuilding] would sharpen their pencils”

according to the president’s advice. Speaking for the president, McIntyre

asked Edison to consider the matter and see what he could do.

The concerted lobbying effort by the Camden area and New York Ship-

building paid off in December 1937 when Roosevelt approved the award of

Technological Change and the United States Navy

178

two auxiliary ships to New York Shipbuilding. A relieved Edison told McIn-

tyre that this action should ﬁnally “put a period” on the Camden matter.

The president of the Camden Chamber of Commerce fully appreciated

the debt his area owed to the president: “While as low bidder, the NY Ship-

building Corp. was entitled to one of the navy tenders, we fully appreciate

that the authority to award both of them was vested entirely in the Presi-

dent of the United States . . . therefore Camden County owes you a lasting

debt of gratitude for this great boon to our community.”

Tenders, though, were in a different league than battleships. The admi-

rals, recalling the labor trouble at Federal Shipbuilding in May 1937, were

more comfortable with capital ship construction in navy yards. But by the

end of the 1930s, American capital ship construction had expanded to the

point where the navy was forced to build three of the four “1939” battle-

ships (the South Dakota class) in private shipyards. But when the ﬁrst of

the six Iowa-class battleships was laid down in 1940, the navy was able to

build all ships of this class in navy yards. The navy also allocated all ﬁve of

the monstrous 60,000-ton Montana-class battleships to navy yards as well.

Whether constructed in navy yards or in private-sector shipyards, these ex-

pensive capital ships provided a strong economic boost for their local com-

munities.

Unstable Dynamics and Proportional Power

In a speech on 28 December 1933, Franklin Roosevelt said, “The blame

for the danger to world peace lies not in the world population but in the

political leaders of that population.”

In a conventional sense, Roosevelt’s

truism refers to statesmanship and diplomacy. But in a market-based soci-

ety in which signiﬁcant segments of the economy rely upon—or can be

stimulated by—national security expenditures, the initial danger was not

diplomatic failure. It lay in political leaders exacerbating international ri-

valries by buying votes with military contracts.

Franklin Roosevelt viewed

the use of NIRA funds for naval construction as relatively innocuous and

defensive and a proportional response to Japanese naval policy, but it was

an additional catalyst to an already-hardening Japanese position vis-à-vis

Asia and the role of the United States there. Unlike bridges, dams, and

highways, the effects of warship construction extended abroad. This was

clear to the opponents of naval construction as public works in 1933–34,

Disarmament, Depression, and Politics

179

but with a large segment of the industrial base capable of providing prod-

ucts to the military, the desire for employment won out over moral sensi-

tivities.

A recurring proposal—drawing on a New Deal precedent—during the

1992 presidential election was federal rebuilding of the national infrastruc-

ture to stimulate the sluggish economy. But ﬁve decades into the national

security state, public calls for widespread increases in defense acquisitions

to maintain employment were noticeably absent.

In fact, there has been

a clamor to shift away from heavy development and production of military

technologies in the early, post–cold war world. But things have not

changed since the establishment of the armory at Harpers Ferry in 1794 or

warship construction at Camden, New Jersey, in 1937; local military con-

tracts and expenditures are political prizes. If cost-cutting has to occur,

politicians try to ensure that it occurs outside their districts.

Thanks to so-

phisticated geographic diffusion by modern defense contractors and sub-

contractors, broad political constituencies now work against efforts to re-

duce defense expenditures—just as they worked to win support for naval

construction in the 1930s.

It would be extreme to argue that the U.S. economy during the New Era

or early New Deal lived by the sword, although in many areas like Cam-

den, New Jersey, military spending was considered essential to the local

economy. The pervasiveness of the national security state in the national

economy (among other aspects of U.S. society) would come with World

War II. But its advent was eased by Franklin Roosevelt and the step he ﬁrst

took in 1933 as an important member of the navalist thought collective.

Herbert Hoover was more moralist than politician and would not sanction

naval construction as a means to improve the depressed national econ-

omy.

Roosevelt, the consummate politico, tapped into more plebeian in-

stincts while fulﬁlling his international and domestic agendas.

For the navy, the technological outcome was little different. Hoover

never directly challenged the battleship-based strategic paradigm—he

merely tried to negotiate battleships and other offensive naval platforms out

of existence. Luckily for the navy’s battleship hierarchy in the 1930s, it had

a friend and champion of the battleship thought style in Franklin Roo-

sevelt, who must have been pleased to receive a model of the new battle-

ship North Carolina in December 1937, sent as a “small token of the high

esteem and affectionate regards of the entire Naval Establishment.”

While not hostile to naval aviation or submarines, Roosevelt saw them

Technological Change and the United States Navy

180

in supportive strategic and tactical roles in exactly the same manner as his

“Gun Club” admiral acquaintances. From 1933 on, Roosevelt set out to

reinvigorate the battleship technological paradigm, ﬁrst with the ancillary

warships allowed by treaty and, ultimately, with the seventeen new battle-

ships authorized between 1937 and 1940. Unlike Hoover, Franklin Roo-

sevelt perceived the U.S. naval mission as a global one requiring a large

navy. New Deal construction programs provided the venue for this and re-

versed the navy’s decline during the New Era while expanding domestic

employment and solidifying political allegiances to Roosevelt.

The Japanese viewed the American naval buildup as directed at them

which, in fact, it was despite Roosevelt’s protestations. New Deal naval con-

struction reinforced the Japanese admirals’ determination to demand naval

parity at London in 1935 and resulted in their leaving the conference when

Britain and the United States refused to accede to their demands. The

Japanese naval hierarchy viewed repudiation of the quantitative ratio sys-

tem as the means to achieve economically qualitative, technological su-

periority by building superbattleships. New Deal naval construction did

not spawn World War II, but it did exacerbate civil-naval relations in Japan.

It bolstered the hard-line naval position and contributed to a military-

driven, confrontative Japanese foreign policy which resulted in the Paciﬁc

Ocean War.

In Vom Kriege (1832), Carl von Clausewitz discussed the uncertain dy-

namics of war in which there is a real danger—thanks to the “collision of

two living forces”—of employing force beyond proper proportionality.

The politics of U.S. naval technology during the 1930s illustrate the un-

stable dynamics which can accompany the “proportional” pursuit of mili-

tary power—if only as part of the social welfare of the state.

Disarmament, Depression, and Politics

181

War and a Shifting Technological

Paradigm

Fast Task Forces and “Three-Plane” Warfare

uring the 1930s, naval aviation developed beyond the technological

ceiling predicted in 1924. Yet the technological basis for an effective

presumptive anomaly to challenge the dominant battleship technological

paradigm did not exist until the end of the decade. The advances in naval

aviation during the 1920s resulted in early elucidations of an aviation pre-

sumptive anomaly bolstered by the empirical data of ﬂeet exercises. At the

Naval War College in 1933, Commander Hugh Douglas, former executive

ofﬁce of the aircraft carrier Saratoga, sketched out the essence of what

would occur nine years later during the Battle of Midway. Based on his ex-

perience in recent ﬂeet exercises, Douglas predicted that if “an enemy car-

rier is encountered with planes on deck, a successful dive bombing attack

by even a small number of planes may greatly inﬂuence future opera-

tions.”

While Douglas was prescient, it is important to note that he was

speaking in terms of intra-artifact combat—attack on lightly armored, vul-

nerable aircraft carriers, not on heavily armored battleships.

Since the London Naval Treaty of 1930 extended the moratorium on

battleship construction through 1936, the navy continued to build aircraft

carriers up to its allowed treaty limits. The navy also constructed sub-

marines, not in the image of the counterweapon of the World War, but im-

proved “ﬂeet” submarines to support the battle line. Both submarines and

aircraft carriers became important supportive ships within the interwar

battle ﬂeet.

chapter 8

The development of the “task force” concept by the end of the decade

marked a shift away from the battle line, but not the battleship, which re-

mained the arbiter of war at sea. The transfer of three battleships to the At-

lantic to bolster U.S. forces in May 1941 reﬂected its continuing domi-

nance.

The European naval war reinforced the battleship’s preeminence,

especially the British operations which tracked, harassed, and sank the Ger-

man battleship Bismarck in May 1941.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Paciﬁc

naval war remained ﬁrmly under the control of nonaviators until late 1943.

Admiral Chester Nimitz, a longtime submariner and cruiser captain, and

the former rear admiral commander of Battleship Division One, became

The value of airships to the battle ﬂeet was their ability to serve as effective scouts. In

good weather an airship and its aircraft could search 62,500 square nautical miles in

ﬁve hours. Here, two Curtiss F9C-2’s approach Macon’s recovery trapeze in July 1933.

(Ofﬁcial U.S. Navy photograph, courtesy of the National Museum of Naval Avia-

tion)

Image not available.