At the turn of the century, then-Lieutenant William Sowden Sims—pictured here in 1919 with Rear Admiral Victor Blue (left), and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Franklin D. Roosevelt (right)—saw the tremendous advantages of continuous-aim firing. Through daring, persistence, and the willingness to support his ideas in writing, he was able to bring needed change to the Navy.
In 1899, five ships of the U.S. Navy’s North Atlantic Squadron shot for five minutes at a practice hulk anchored 1,600 yards away. When the smoke cleared, they had managed a typical score for the era: two hits to the target ship’s sails. A mere six years later, a single gunner on one ship, shooting for one minute at the same range, placed 15 hits into a 75- foot by 25-foot target, with more than 50% landing within a bullseye 50-inch square. The improvement in accuracy exceeded 3000%.1
How did such a dramatic change occur? The answer lies in the story of Lieutenant William Sowden Sims, U.S. Navy, and it holds a lesson for every military professional in a time of "rightsizing,” budget cuts, and constant change.
In 1898 and 1899, Captain Percy Scott of the Royal Navy had invented and refined continuous-aim firing while captain of HMS Scylla.2 Prior to this development, a naval gun’s prefiring elevation was fixed, and a gunner had to wait until the roll of the ship brought the target into the sight. By modifying the Scylla's guns in three ways, Scott changed naval gunnery forever.3 First, he altered the ratio of the elevation gears so that a gunner could continuously raise and lower his gun and thereby track a target. Second, he installed a telescopic sight that could lead a target and was unaffected by the barrel’s recoil. Third, he added a movable target and dry-fire scoring system to allow daily practice in all sea conditions. The change in accuracy was phenomenal.
In 1900, the United States’ newest battleship, the USS Kentucky, was dispatched to China with Lieutenant William Sowden Sims on board. It was there that Sims met Captain Percy Scott, who was patrolling the waters off China on board the HMS Terrible. The two men were drawn together by their similar temperaments, and from Scott, Sims learned everything there was to know about continuous-aim firing. Until this intellectual exchange, no one in the U.S. Navy knew anything about the new technique.4
Sims modified several guns on the Kentucky, and after a few month’s practice, his crews were duplicating Scott’s extraordinary results. Convinced of the value of continuous-aim firing, Sims set out to inform Washington. Over the next two years he wrote 13 massive official reports in which he made the case for continuous-aim firing. Supporting his position with reams of data collected from his own tests and those of Scott, Sims provided detailed descriptions of the techniques and mechanisms used.5
The response from Washington came in three phases.6
- Silence. Without any investigation, the men in charge of the Bureaus of Ordnance and Navigation dismissed Sims as a crackpot. To them, the continuous-aim firing scores were not believable, and the reports were filed and forgotten (To Sims’s delight, some later were discovered half-eaten by cockroaches).
- Rebuttal. When his early reports garnered no response, Sims decided to raise the stakes. He altered the tone of his later reports and distributed them to other officers in the U.S. Navy. As Sims later noted, “They were furious at my first papers and stowed them away. I therefore made up my mind I would give these later papers such form that they would be dangerous documents to leave neglected in the files.”7 This did succeed in prodding Washington into action—sort of. The Chief of the Bureau of Ordnance’s formal rebuttal distributed to the Fleet dismissed Sims’s claims, saying that U.S. equipment was as good as anything the British had, so if the British were getting better gunnery scores the problem was with the men, and that tests conducted at the Washington Navy Yard proved continuous-aim firing was impossible (an ill-conceived experiment that ignored the physics of a ship at sea).8
- Outside Intervention. At this point, Sims decided to take an incredible step for a junior officer. He wrote directly to the President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt. As Sims saw it. President Roosevelt was his last hope.9 Sims knew he had discovered something of great importance for national defense, and those who were suppose to listen and act were stonewalling instead. Knowing full well that his attempt to contact the President could be viewed as an act of insubordination and end his career, Sims penned the following conclusion to his letter:
I am aware of the irregularity of thus addressing you personally; but the danger of the false impression, that is universal throughout the United States concerning the efficiency of the Navy, appears to me so great, and the need of prompt and radical reform therefore so extremely urgent, that 1 hope I may not be considered as overstepping the bounds of propriety in inviting your personal attention to the papers indicated in the enclosed memorandum.10
Late in 1902, President Roosevelt recalled Sims from China and installed him as Inspector of Target Practice. Sims eventually became known within the Navy as "the man who taught us how to shoot”11 and rose to the rank of admiral.
What can be learned from this story? Consider these six main points:
- Being daring is essential to any individual who desires to be an agent of change.12 Neither Sims nor Scott was a wallflower. Each was willing to seize the moment. In a pre-World War I endorsement of correspondence regarding destroyers, Sims stated, “There must be developed in the men that handle [destroyers] that mixture of skill and daring which can only be attained if the boats are habitually used under circumstances that imply risk of accident. The business of a naval officer is one which above all others, needs daring and decision.”11 Sims knew firsthand what it was like to “bet your bars.”
- Persistence can overcome the greatest of obstacles. Calvin Coolidge said it best: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent." Sims almost single-handedly fought an entrenched bureaucracy for two full years. If Sims was anything, he was persistent.
- For daring and persistence to be of value, they must be combined with vision. Every service has its “loose cannons”—individuals who possess the attributes of daring and persistence, but whose efforts seem somehow misguided. It is the label almost always given to those who, like Sims, bring forth new ideas. What allowed Sims to rise above this label and succeed was his vision. Sims did not pursue the introduction of continuous-aim firing for personal recognition, but rather because he saw in it something of value for the entire group. He had a vision of something important for the U.S. Navy and for national defense.
- Paper is the instrument by which daring, persistence, and vision are focused to create change. Wardrooms and mess decks are filled with those who believe they can affect change by endlessly reciting a litany of complaints to the assembled masses. Sims knew better. He put it in writing, used facts, suggested solutions. One man, acting from 8,000 miles away, changed an entire Navy because he made his case on paper and had it available when he appealed to President Roosevelt.
- The more junior the individual or radical the change, the more work will be required to alter the institution. Institutions are structured things, and change threatens that order. And the institution has inertia on its side. Consequently, it is the individual with the least horsepower and best idea who faces the biggest fight. Sims showed us this battle can be won.
- Any individual or institution that expects to thrive must be adaptive. Of the 9,500 shells fired at Santiago during the Spanish-American War, only 123 found their mark.14 Yet this was good enough for the men who squared off against Lieutenant Sims. They were motivated by a need to protect a way of life, a system, a product that they had always known.15 Only outside intervention changed their minds. Anytime outside intervention is required to change an institution or redirect the individuals who run it, the institution has stopped dealing with reality and is unable to cope with change. Consider an early-1900s U.S. Navy without continuous-aim firing pitted against an enemy with continuous- aim firing. The term “slaughter" would be too kind. The message is clear for both institutions and individuals alike: promote change, adapt, or die.
In the last part of the 20th century, many challenges lie ahead for the U. S. Navy. Change is certain. To actively channel this change, we will need men and women who are daring, persistent, and visionary. They also must know how to use the power of the pen and must have an unrelenting belief that being right makes might. In addition, our leadership must ensure that the Navy’s institutions are aligned with change, not with defending a product or a way of life. For all these individuals, the story of Lieutenant Sims and continuous-aim firing is one that should be taken to heart.
1 Elting Elmore Morison, Men. Machines, and Modem Times, 1972 paperback ed. (Cambridge, MA: The M.I.T. Press, 1966), p. 22.
2 Morison, 1966, p. 23.
3 Ibid.
4 Elting Elmore Morison, Admiral Sims and the Modern American Navy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1942), pp. 83, 132.
5 Morison, 1966, p. 28.
6 Ibid., p. 29.
7 Ibid.
8 Morison, 1942, p. 120.
9 Ibid., pp. 101-102.
10 "Charles L. Lewis, Famous American Naval Officers (Boston: L. C. Page and Company, Inc., 1924), p. 333.
11 Morison, 1966, p. 31.
12 Ibid p. 33.
13 Robert D. Heinl. Jr., Dictionary of Military and Naval Quotations (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1966), p. 329.
14 Morison, 1942, p. 86.
15 Morison, 1966, p. 39.
A Marine Corps A-6 pilot while on active duty, Commander Swazee currently is serving as the commanding officer of one of the USS Theodore Roosevelt's (CVN-71) Naval Reserve augmentation units (NR CVN-71 0178). drilling at Naval Air Reserve Center, Minneapolis.
Author’s Note: This essay is based on a speech given by Elting E. Morison to the California Institute of Technology in February 1950. The speech later was published as "Gunfire at Sea: A Case Study of Innovation,” the second chapter of the 1966 McKinsey Award winner, Men, Machines, and Modern Times (Cambridge, MA: M.I.T. Press, 1966). Morison also wrote the biography of William S. Sims and spent four years editing the presidential papers and letters of Theodore Roosevelt.
Some of the discussion of the continuous- aim firing controversy was published in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. An important eight-year period of coverage begins with an article by Lieutenant Joseph Strauss, "Telescope Sights for Guns," vol. 22, 1896, and ends with Lieutenant W. S. Sims’s, "Training Rangers and Long Range Firing,” vol. 30, September 1904.