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Veazie Pratt: 17 September 1930—30 June 1933,” in The Chiefs of Naval Opera-

tions, ed. Robert W. Love Jr. (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1980), 69–86.

21. Hall, Arms Control, 101.

22. Both cruiser and submarine tonnage ratios were critical to Japanese strate-

gic and tactical planning regarding war with the United States. Both ship types

were necessary to reduce the advancing U.S. ﬂeet through attrition to a size com-

parable to the Japanese ﬂeet; Tiedemann, Introduction, in Japan Erupts, 9. On

submarines, see O’Connell, Sacred Vessels, 295–96. Also see Edward P. Stafford,

The Far and the Deep (New York: Putnam, 1967).

23. Department of State press release, 12 April 1930, cited by Hall, Arms Control,

104. This mirrored the $1.17 billion Navy Department proposal for new ships sub-

mitted to the director of the budget the previous year. Secretary of State Stimson

pointed out that one modern 10,000-ton cruiser cost more than double the origi-

nal price of the Library of Congress; Secretary of State Press Release, 31 May 1929,

Foreign Affairs—Disarmament File, Presidential Papers, Hoover Papers, Hoover

Library. Also see Hall, Arms Control, 106–7.

24. Quotes from President Hoover’s Message to the Senate reprinted in Hoover,

The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Cabinet and Presidency, 1920–1933 (New York:

Macmillan, 1952), 349–52. Also see West, “Legislative Foundation,” 32.

25. Hall, Arms Control, 116–17. Historical characterizations of the naval budget

reductions as “meat-ax” cuts accept the contemporary navy’s view of the worldwide

scope of its mission and are inﬂuenced by post facto knowledge of the conﬂict with

Japan. See, for example, Robert G. Albion, Makers of Naval Policy, 1798–1947 (An-

napolis: Naval Institute Press, 1980), chap. 12; and West, “Legislative Foundation,”

49–50. They ignore the fact that the deﬁnition of the navy’s mission had been

drafted by the General Board, which sought to aggrandize the navy through the

adoption of the most comprehensive strategic responsibilities.

26. William L. Neumann, “Franklin Delano Roosevelt: A Disciple of Admiral

Mahan,” USNIP 78 (1952): 718. Eleanor Roosevelt said that her husband had al-

ways characterized Mahan’s histories as books that he found “most illuminating”;

ibid., 719. Two of Roosevelt’s appointees to serve as chief of naval operations dur-

ing the 1930s were eminent members of the “Gun Club”—Admirals William D.

Leahy and Harold Stark. The successful careers of these Bureau of Ordnance of-

ﬁcers, or rather the popularity of ordnance ofﬁcers with Congress and politicians

in general, may be linked with the great number of ordnance facilities scattered

around the country and the magnitude of the contracts for armor plate and

weapons that the bureau handled. See Albion, Makers of Naval Policy, 170–71; for

the “Gun Club,” see 384. For useful treatments of these two prewar CNOs, see

Notes to Pages 163–165

294

John Major, “William Daniel Leahy, 2 January 1937—1 August 1939,” 101–17; and

B. Mitchell Simpson III, “Harold Raynsford Stark, 1 August 1939—26 March 1942,”

119–35, both in Love, Chiefs of Naval Operations.

27. Albion, Makers of Naval Policy, 67. On Roosevelt as ship designer, see, for

example, Roosevelt to Captain Wilson, 17 December 1934; Roosevelt to the Assis-

tant Secretary of the Navy, 15 March 1938; and Roosevelt to Commander

Callaghan, 29 August 1938, all in President’s Ofﬁcial File, Franklin D. Roosevelt

Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. (hereafter FDR Ofﬁcial File), 18s.

28. See the correspondence on this dating from fall 1938 in FDR Ofﬁcial File

18i. Also of interest is Douglas H. Robinson and Charles L. Keller, “Up Ship!”: A

History of the U.S. Navy’s Rigid Airships (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1982).

29. Standley quoted in Thaddeus V. Tuleja, Statesmen and Admirals: Quest for

a Far Eastern Naval Policy (New York: Norton, 1963), 91. While Theodore Roo-

sevelt was instrumental in the rise of the U.S. Navy, his relationship with the ser-

vice involved policy rather than technology issues. Although he ordered the New-

port Conference of 1908 to review the charges made by William Sims and others

that U.S. capital ship designs were inferior, Roosevelt did not interfere and let the

naval hierarchy, and its technical experts, sort things out.

30. Felix Herbert, Republican National Committee, to Lawrence Richey, Sec-

retary to President Hoover, 20 October 1932, Navy Correspondence File, Presi-

dential Papers—Cabinet, Hoover Papers, Hoover Library. Commander Whortley

memorandum to all naval reserve ofﬁcers in the Great Lakes area, 5 October 1932,

Naval Reserve File, Presidential Papers—Subject File, Hoover Papers, Hoover

Library.

31. Harold G. Brownson, “The Naval Policy of the United States,” USNIP 59

(1933) and editor’s comments, both cited in Neumann, “Roosevelt,” 719.

32. A treatment of Stark is B. Mitchell Simpson, Admiral Harold R. Stark:

Architect of Victory, 1939–1945 (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1989).

33. Stark to Roosevelt, 21 March 1933, and Stark to Roosevelt, 22 June 1933, Pres-

ident’s Personal File, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, N.Y. (hereafter

FDR Personal File), Box 166.

34. For Vinson’s experiences during his ﬁrst term as chairman of the Naval Af-

fairs Committee and his work for renewed naval construction, see West, “Legisla-

tive Foundation,” chap. 4. The New York Times, 30 November 1932, cited in West,

“Legislative Foundation,” 276; also see 275–77.

35. See West, “Legislative Foundation,” 299–305; Secretary Adams to Con-

gressman Vinson, 22 December 1932, RG 80, quoted on 299–300. See The United

States Navy in Peace Time: The Navy in Its Relation to the Industrial, Scientiﬁc,

Notes to Pages 165–167

295

Economic, and Political Development of the Nation (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Gov-

ernment Printing Ofﬁce, 1931).

36. Secretary Swanson wrote: “The recent [NIRA shipbuilding] program is in

close accord with the purposes of the National Recovery Act, since it will substan-

tially aid unemployment and the restoration of commercial, industrial, and agri-

cultural activity. Approximately 85 percent of the moneys spent on this naval con-

struction will go directly into the pockets of labor; about half at the shipyards and

the remainder scattered throughout the country among the producers and fabri-

cators of raw materials. Every State will beneﬁt”; Annual Report of the Secretary of

the Navy for the Fiscal Year 1933 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing

Ofﬁce, 1933), 2.

37. The New York Times, 21 March 1933, cited in West, “Legislative Foundation,”

304–5. Commander A. B. Court memorandum to Chief of Naval Operations,

“History of development of current Naval Building Programs, and the effect of

these programs on Treaty Strength,” 8 July 1934, RG 80, cited in West, “Legislative

Foundation,” ibid.

38. See Ellis W. Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly: A Study

in Economic Ambivalence (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1966), 24–

25. See West, “Legislative Foundation,” 295.

39. Roosevelt’s message to foreign leaders, his message to Congress, and foreign

replies are reprinted in Franklin D. Roosevelt, Roosevelt’s Foreign Policy, 1933–

1941: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Unedited Speeches and Messages (New York: W. Funk,

1942), 11–19. My quotations are from 12 and 14 respectively.

40. These letters are typical of those in FDR Ofﬁcial File 18.

41. Moley wrote: “if Franklin Roosevelt can be said to have had any philosophy

at all, that philosophy rested on the fundamental belief that the success of con-

certed international action toward recovery presupposed the beginnings of recov-

ery at home. He did not believe that our depression could be conquered by inter-

national measures”; Raymond Moley, After Seven Years (New York: Harper &

Brothers, 1939), 88. This assessment is echoed by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. in

The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933 (Boston: Houghton

Mifﬂin, 1957), 442.

42. Roosevelt to Assistant Secretary of the Navy H. L. Roosevelt, 18 June 1934,

FDR Ofﬁcial File 18.

43. CNO to Secretary of the Navy, 24 March 1933, an enclosure to Secretary

Swanson to Roosevelt, 5 April 1933, in FDR Ofﬁcial File 18, Box 12.

44. On the technological limits placed by Congress on the ﬁrst battleships, see

John C. Reilly and Robert L. Scheina, American Battleships, 1886–1923: Predread-

Notes to Pages 167–169

296

nought Design and Construction (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1980), chaps.

3–6. See West, “Legislative Foundation,” 326–28.

45. “Appendix: United States Naval Policy,” Annual Report of the Secretary of

the Navy for 1933, 34–36.

46. Admiral Land to Secretary Swanson, 13 June 1933, RG 19, and Swanson to

Roosevelt, 15 June 1933, RG 80, cited in West, “Legislative Foundation,” 329. The

New York Times, 3 August 1933, also cited in West, “Legislative Foundation,” 332.

47. Shipyards located in Democratic strongholds that received NIRA contracts

were Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia; Bethlehem Shipbuilding in

Quincy, Massachusetts; New York Shipbuilding in Camden, New Jersey; Federal

Shipbuilding in Kearny, New Jersey; United Dry Dock in New York City; and the

Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Charleston, and Norfolk navy yards; Navy Press

Release, 19 June 1933, RG 80, cited in West, “Legislative Foundation,” n. 56, 332.

On Newall’s conversion, see Roger S. McGrath to Louis Howe, Presidential Sec-

retary, 15 August 1933, FDR Ofﬁcial File 18.

48. Regarding the funding, see the New York Times, 17 June 1933, cited in West,

“Legislative Foundation,” 330. For the Morrow Board and the 1,000-plane navy, see

Archibald D. Turnbull and Clifford L. Lord, History of United States Naval Avia-

tion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1949), chaps. 23 and 24.

49. King to Secretary of the Navy, 11 August 1933, serial Aer-P-3-ML, FDR Ofﬁ-

cial File 18. See Secretary of the Navy to Secretary Ickes, 10 August 1933, FDR

Ofﬁcial File 18.

50. See West, “Legislative Foundation,” 338–40.

51. See ibid., 348–64. See John C. Walter, “William Harrison Standley: 1 July

1933–1 January 1937,” in Love, Chiefs of Naval Operations, 93; and West, “Legisla-

tive Foundation,” 375. Secretary Cordell Hull to Roosevelt, 21 February 1934, FDR

Personal File 5901.

52. Senator Park Trammell was an old warhorse who initiated similar legislation

in the Senate. On enactment of the Vinson–Trammell Act, see West, “Legislative

Foundation,” chap. 6. See Roosevelt’s statement in the New York Herald, 28 March

1934, reprinted in West, “Legislative Foundation,” 435. On WPA funding, see West,

“Legislative Foundation,” 436.

53. Arthur J. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Im-

perial Japanese Navy; Strategic Illusions, 1936–1941 (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1981), 9.

54. Sadao Asada, “The Japanese Navy and the United States,” in Pearl Harbor

as History, 238. According to Asada, the 1930 London Naval Treaty aggravated “in-

ternal splits within the navy and a steady erosion of the top ministry leadership by

Notes to Pages 169–172

297

the high command and middle-echelon ofﬁcers. . . . With the rise of violently anti-

British, anti-American, and pro-German elements, the navy’s policy was increas-

ingly dominated by highly emotional modes of thinking and myopic strategic pre-

occupations. By the mid-1930s the ‘moderate’ naval leadership had been reduced

to a decided minority” (225–26). For opposition to the Five-Power Treaty, see Sadao

Asada, “Japanese Admirals and the Politics of Naval Limitation: Kato¯Tomosaburo

and Kato¯ Kanji,” in Naval Warfare in the Twentieth Century, 1900–1945: Essays in

Honour of Arthur Marder, ed. Gerald Jordan (London: Croom Helm, 1977), 141–

66.

55. Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor, 19 and 25; Tuleja, Statesmen and Admirals, 95;

also see “Warship Building,” Japan Advertiser, 25 December 1935, reprinted in

USNIP 62 (1936): 435–37.

56. Asada, “Japanese Navy,” 240–42. Resignation of the navy minister would

cause a constitutional crisis. For the Japanese domestic decision to abrogate the ra-

tio system, see Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor, chaps. 1, 3, and 4.

57. Asada, “Japanese Navy,” 235. The Japanese relied on their new Type 6 sub-

marines and torpedo-carrying Mitsubishi Type 96 bombers stationed in the Mar-

shall and Caroline Islands; Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor. Also see Tuleja, Statesmen

and Admirals, 88–89. Asada, “Japanese Navy,” 243 and n. 81. As Asada observed,

such a strategy assumed the United States would pursue a decisive ﬂeet encounter

early in the war rather than build up overwhelming strength before advancing west-

ward. The Japanese strategy for war with the United States was consistently my-

opic. The 1936 Tactical Plan, for example, speciﬁed only initial stages of operations

against the United States; later stages would be “expedient measures as the occa-

sion may demand”; 236.

58. Ibid., 234. Yamamoto believed that Japan lacked the resources and indus-

trial might to win a war with the United States and endorsed the ratio system: “The

5:5:3 ratio works just ﬁne for us; it [the Five-Power Treaty] is a treaty to restrict the

other parties [the United States and Britain]”; Yamamoto quoted by Asada, ibid.

59. See Tim Travers, The Killing Ground: The British Army, The Western Front

and the Emergence of Modern Warfare, 1900–1918 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987),

chaps. 2 and 3.

60. Asada, “Japanese Navy,” 237.

61. Ibid., 242. See Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor, 31–32, on the Yamato class. As early

as 1931, three years before Yamato-class design began in October 1934, the Japan-

ese successfully tested an 18.1-inch battleship gun that delivered “30 percent more

power” on impact than a 16-inch gun, the largest size then in existence; Pelz, ibid.

Gun “power” is an imprecise term. An analysis based on the ballistic data in tables

Notes to Pages 172–173

298

C-7 and C-11 in Dulin and Garzke, Battleships, 234–35 and 240–41, indicates that

at a range of 30,000 yards, the striking energy of the Yamato-class 18.1-inch gun was

approximately 52 percent greater than that of the U.S. Navy’s Mark 5, 16-inch/45-

caliber gun carried by the superdreadnought Maryland of the 1916 Program; at a

range of 20,000 yards, the Japanese 18.1-inch gun delivered approximately 51 per-

cent greater striking energy than the U.S. Mark 5 gun. Striking energy—a function

of shell mass, velocity, and shape—contributed to kinetic penetration or damage

to armor plate.

62. See Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor, 33–39.

63. Roosevelt to Swanson, Navy Day, 1935, London Times reprinted in USNIP

62 (1936): 116. Chicago Tribune, “Address by Admiral Standley” reprinted in

USNIP 62 (1936): 115–16. For a discussion of naval issues during Standley’s tenure

as CNO, see Walter, “William Harrison Standley.”

64. State Senator Charles S. Bream to Roosevelt, 26 November 1935, FDR Of-

ﬁcial File 1818.

65. Transcript of Presidential Press Conference, 13 November 1935 (excerpt),

reprinted in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs, vol. III, ed. Edgar B. Nixon

(Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1969), 58–60. Pres-

idential memorandum to Charles Swanson, 20 September 1935, FDR Ofﬁcial File

18s. Standley resented Roosevelt’s “inﬂated opinion of his knowledge of naval strat-

egy and tactics”; Standley quoted in Tuleja, Statesmen and Admirals, 91. Roosevelt

to Secretary of the Navy, 17 December 1934, FDR Ofﬁcial File 18i.

66. Naval Aide Wilson Brown memo to Roosevelt, December 1934, FDR Ofﬁ-

cial File 18s.

67. Between 1935 and 1937, a total of seventy-seven battleship designs were pre-

pared by the Bureau of Construction & Repair; Dulin and Garzke, Battleships, 27.

“The biggest is the best” approach to battleship design dates from Lieutenant

Homer Poundstone, USN, “Size of Battleships for U.S. Navy,” USNIP 29 (1903):

161–74.

68. Hall, Arms Control, 184.

69. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, 9–10. For the common upper limit, see

Pelz, Race to Pearl Harbor, passim. Arthur Marder wrote that the Japanese ofﬁcial

war history maintained that the Japanese delegation was “pretty sure” Nagano’s

proposal would be rejected, but that “it was not necessarily a cloak for the unwill-

ingness of the Navy to continue the shipbuilding limitations” and the Naval Gen-

eral Staff was sincere in their support for the proposal as a way to save on naval ex-

penditures; Senshi sosho¯ (War History Series), vol. xci, Daihon’ei kaigunbu: Rengo

kantai (I): Kaisen made (Imperial General Headquarters, Navy Department, Com-

Notes to Pages 173–175

299

bined Fleet (I): Until the Outbreak of War) (Tokyo, 1975), 284, cited by Marder,

11–12.

70. Capital ship size was limited to 35,000 tons and, for the ﬁrst time, battleship

guns were limited in size (to a 14-inch bore). The maximum size for new aircraft

carriers was set at 23,000 tons. Tonnage and maximum gun-size restrictions were

adopted for cruisers and submarines. Italy subscribed to the provisions of the Treaty

in 1938. See Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, 12.

71. Admiralty memorandum for the Committee on Imperial Defence, 6 Janu-

ary 1938, ADM 116/3735, cited in Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, 13. Vinson’s

threat is in The Sun [Baltimore], “Vinson to Push for Naval Construction Program

if Japan Spurns Treaty,” 28 November 1934, FDR Personal File 5901.

72. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, 13–14; Japanese Foreign Ofﬁce state-

ment cited on 13.

73. Ibid.

74. See Allard, “Naval Rearmament,” 45–50. See the New York Herald Tribune,

14 January 1937, reprinted in USNIP 63 (1937): 418–19.

75. Presidential press conference, 8 January 1937, reprinted in Roosevelt and For-

eign Affairs, 575.

76. See articles from the New York Herald Tribune, 18 May 1937, and the Wash-

ington Herald, 22 May 1937, in USNIP 63 (1937): 1034.

77. New York Herald Tribune, “Difﬁculties with Steel,” 14 February 1937,

reprinted in USNIP 63 (1937): 572–73.

78. Brunner to Roosevelt, 5 January 1937; Burnison to Roosevelt, 9 September

1937; Roosevelt to Burnison, 13 September 1937, FDR Ofﬁcial File 1698.

79. Private shipbuilders traditionally complained that the cost and building

estimates of government shipyards bore no relation to reality. Recall the case of the

turboelectric drive.

80. Representative Powers to Roosevelt, 11 October 1937; Senator Moore to Roo-

sevelt, 11 October 1937; Roosevelt to Senator Moore, 20 October 1937, FDR Ofﬁ-

cial File 1698.

81. McIntyre to Secretary Edison, 27 November 1937, FDR Ofﬁcial File 1698.

82. Secretary Edison to McIntyre, 9 December 1937, FDR Ofﬁcial File 1698.

Burnison to Roosevelt, undated, in December 1937 folder, FDR Ofﬁcial File 99.

83. Roosevelt quoted in Charles A. Beard, American Foreign Policy in the Mak-

ing, 1932–1940 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1946), 151.

84. William McNeill pointed out the link between the Gladstone government’s

broadening of the political franchise with the Reform Act of 1884 and the subse-

quent increase in the British naval estimates later that year. The income tax was

Notes to Pages 175–179

300

paid by a small percentage of the electorate while the majority of the new elec-

torate would beneﬁt from government contracts, that is, naval construction, and

voted for them; McNeill, Pursuit of Power, 269–70. The political mechanism for

the 1884–1914 naval race was in place. Paul Kennedy apparently did not consider

naval construction employment as a social issue. He emphasized the limitations

placed on late-nineteenth-century British naval spending by the “demands of a

mass democracy for social and economic improvements”; The Rise and Fall of

British Naval Mastery (London: Allen Lane, 1976), 194.

85. President George Bush’s administration did push ﬁghter aircraft production

for export to help its campaign standing in California and other areas of the aero-

space gun belt.

86. See Merritt Roe Smith, Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The

Challenge of Change (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1977), chap. 1 and

chap. 9, “Regional Interests and Military Needs.” A recent case involved the navy’s

F/A-18 Hornet aircraft, which owed its acquisition, in great measure, to Senator

Edward Kennedy, a long-standing opponent of defense expenditures. Engines for

the Hornet were manufactured in Massachusetts, and Kennedy, along with

Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill, were “mighty proponents of the F-18, and piv-

otal to its acceptance by Congress”; James P. Stevenson, The Pentagon Paradox:

The Development of the F-18 Hornet (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1993), 219.

A recent useful anthology is The Pentagon and the Cities, ed. Andrew Kirby (New-

bury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1992), especially Richard Barff, “Living by the

Sword and Dying by the Sword?: Defense Spending and New England’s Econ-

omy,” 77–99.

87. See Ann Markusen, Peter Hall, Scott Campbell, and Sabrina Dietrick, The

Rise of the Gun Belt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America (New York: Ox-

ford University Press, 1991). On 6 September 1994, with its Tri-Service Standoff

Attack Missile (TSSAM) facing congressional budget cuts, the Pentagon, using tac-

tics devoid of subtlety, released graphics which indicated that the missile’s con-

tractors and subcontractors were spread over twenty states.

88. For a recent treatment of the interwar defense economy, see Paul A. C.

Koistinen, Planning War, Pursuing Peace: The Political Economy of American War-

fare, 1920–1939 (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 1998). On “classifying”

Hoover, see David Burner and Thomas R. West, “A Technocrat’s Morality: Con-

servatism and Hoover the Engineer,” in The Hofstadter Aegis: A Memorial, ed.

Stanley Elkins and Eric McKitrick (New York: Knopf, 1974), 235–56. While

Hoover was “moral” regarding arms expenditures, he did authorize a political bur-

glary by a naval ofﬁcer from the Ofﬁce of Naval Intelligence; see Jeffery M. Dor-

Notes to Page 180

301

wart, Conﬂict of Duty: The U.S. Navy’s Intelligence Dilemma (Annapolis: Naval In-

stitute Press, 1983), 3–5. Roosevelt, on the other hand, availed himself of “private”

spies: his “personal naval secret agent” was Vincent Astor, his neighbor at Hyde

Park and a naval reserve intelligence ofﬁcer. See Dorwart, ibid., 114–15 and chap. 15.

89. Navy Secretary Swanson to Roosevelt, 21 December 1937, FDR Personal

File 1722.

90. Peter Paret, “Clausewitz,” in Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli

to the Nuclear Age, ed. Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

1986), 186–213; Clausewitz quoted on 199. For more detail, see Carl von Clause-

witz, On War, ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.:

Princeton University Press, 1984), Book 1, chaps. 1–2; 75–99.

Chapter 8. War and a Shifting Technological Paradigm

1. Commander Hugh Douglas, USN, lecture on aviation, 23 October 1933,

Naval War College, quoted in Thomas Wildenberg, Destined for Glory: Dive

Bombing, Midway, and the Evolution of Carrier Air Power (Annapolis: Naval Insti-

tute Press, 1998), 128.

2. Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold R. Stark originally wanted to trans-

fer a carrier, four cruisers, and two squadrons of destroyers—along with three bat-

tleships. Secretary of State Cordell Hull opposed any weakening of American Pa-

ciﬁc naval power. Stark reduced his request to the three battleships, and Roosevelt

approved their transfer on 13 May 1940. B. Mitchell Simpson III, Admiral Harold

R. Stark: Architect of Victory, 1939–1945 (Columbia: University of South Carolina

Press, 1989), 86.

3. A recent treatment of Nimitz’s career is John B. Lundstrom, “Chester W.

Nimitz: Victory in the Paciﬁc,” Quarterdeck and Bridge: Two Centuries of Ameri-

can Naval Leaders, ed. James C. Bradford (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997),

327–44. A more lengthy version is E. B. Potter, Nimitz (Annapolis: Naval Institute

Press, 1976).

4. Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A.

Spruance (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974), 217.

5. The Japanese used planes launched from aircraft carriers to sink four U.S.

battleships, severely damage another three, and cause one to be beached in order

to avoid sinking. The ﬁrst wave of attacking aircraft employed bombs converted

from 16-inch armor-piercing battleship shells, as well as aerial torpedoes, to destroy

the American battleship force. At Pearl Harbor, the Japanese lost a relatively high

percentage of their attacking aircraft (8.5 percent—30 planes), lending credence

to prewar estimates of the effectiveness of antiaircraft ﬁre. Japanese losses from Eric

Notes to Pages 180–184

302

Brown, Duels in the Sky: World War II Naval Aircraft in Combat (Annapolis: Naval

Institute Press, 1988), 73.

6. Clark Reynolds, The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy (Huntington,

N.Y.: Robert E. Krieger, 1978), 39.

7. Captain Wayne P. Hughes, USN (Ret.), Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice

(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986), 92. According to Hughes, “a battleship or

heavy cruiser formation could travel two hundred nautical miles at night . . . [and]

air strikes were mounted at ranges of around two hundred nautical miles.” This

gives new meaning to Robert O’Connell’s dismissal of hard-to-retire battleships as

the “Vampires of Sea Power.” During World War II, battleships ruled the night but

were vulnerable during daylight—as long as the weather was good enough for

ﬂight operations. Carrier commanders needed to keep a safe buffer between them-

selves and enemy surface forces; Hughes, Fleet Tactics, 91.

8. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, U.S. Navy at War 1941–1945: Ofﬁcial Re-

ports to the Secretary of the Navy by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, U.S. Navy, Com-

mander-in-Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations (Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Ofﬁce, 1946), 15.

9. Aviators wore brown shoes with their khaki uniforms; all other ofﬁcers wore

black shoes. This made for a simple classiﬁcation. Aviators also could wear a unique

green service uniform.

10. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, USN, Introduction, “Third Report of Opera-

tions of the United States Navy in World War II, 1 March 1945–1 October 1945,” in

U.S. Navy at War 1941–1945, 169.

11. Ibid., 167.

12. Rear Admiral Moffett’s testimony regarding H.R. 9690, “To Authorize the

Construction and Procurement of Aircraft and Aircraft Equipment in the Navy and

Marine Corps,” quoted in Douglas H. Robinson and Charles L. Keller, “Up Ship!”:

A History of the U.S. Navy’s Rigid Airships, 1919–1935 (Annapolis: Naval Institute

Press, 1982), 178.

13. Robinson and Keller, “Up Ship!” 193–94.

14. Ibid., 182–83.

15. The difﬁculty of locating ships from aircraft cannot be overemphasized. Dur-

ing Paciﬁc Fleet exercises in 1976, the author’s destroyer was never detected dur-

ing numerous over ﬂights by carrier search planes during a forty-eight-hour period

of unlimited visibility.

16. Robinson and Keller, “Up Ship!” 183. Akron was assigned to the “Black” (en-

emy) force in Fleet Problem XIII and was to have assisted the weaker Black force

resist seizure of an atoll by the Blue (United States) ﬂeet. See Commander-in-

Notes to Pages 184–187

303