II.
TACTICS.
VIII.
THE BATTLE.
Let us first evoke the spectacle of a single-ship combat. The two vessels advance towards each other. When they come within range, they open fire.
At first the fire is slow, each side feeling for the target. Shell fall all around the ships. As they present themselves bows on, and the distance is changing rapidly, accuracy of fire is not to be counted upon.
At this moment the commander still remains master of his ship and his men; the gunnery officer really controls his guns; the divisional officers have their men in hand. There has been no faltering and the established conditions of battle quarters still subsist. The attitude of each one is all that reveals the difference.
The officers struggle to keep cool. They give orders slowly, but their voices are a little husky. The non-commissioned officers put a good face on the matter; accustomed to the critical situations of sea-life, they have confidence in their superiors and keep up the spirits of the men by those brief and figurative phrases that are characteristic of seamen. The sailors are pale; their faces betray their distress of mind; their eyes turn alternately from the enemy ship to their officers. Brutally recalled to reality by orders, they obey mechanically; their bodies move as if automatically, through force of habit.
In the depths of the ship a great excitement reigns. The machinists call loudly to overmatch the noise of the engines; the firemen nervously throw shovelfuls of coal onto the grate bars—the effort soothes them.
This situation lasts but an instant. Very soon the vessels arrive at deadly range and present their broadsides to give a clear field of fire to their whole batteries. Then the tempest is loosed. All the guns fire; all the shots hit. The shell beat upon the armored sides like hail upon a window pane, terrifying the men in the coal bunkers, who imagine the ship will be smashed in. The superstructures are, cut to pieces; fragments of the thin plating fly in all directions, wounding men in their way; mangled corpses encumber the passages; men paralyzed by fear cower in corners, death in their eyes, with halting breath. In the casemates, in the turrets, the excitement of firing rages. The gun servants uselessly accelerate their motions in order to forget themselves; the officers and petty officers with difficulty succeed in preventing the gun
captains from firing wildly, with eyes shut.
On deck the confusion is extreme. The noise of the guns drowns all else. It is no longer possible to give an order; the means of communication are cut off, some by injuries, others by the uproar. The commander, who at first shut himself up in the conning-tower, has been obliged to come out to see better; powerless to make himself heard, he no longer directs his ship except by vague gestures that the navigating officer interprets as well as he can and transmits in the same manner to the helmsman. The vessel no longer obeys but by spasmodic movements.
In the midst of this unchaining of all the elements injuries multiply, guns are dismounted, compartments are flooded with water. The end is approaching.
Then the advantage will be seen clearly revealed in favor of the vessel that was able first to secure superiority of fire. For the third time, the aspect of the battle will change.
On one side, the commander, despairing of success, will begin to hesitate; he will think of saving the remnants of his fortune; the control will become uncertain; the battery, precipitating its fire to recover the advantage, will throw away its ammunition; the officers will be powerless to direct their men.
On the other side, the spectacle will be quite different. At the beginning of the action, courage is only sustained by an effort of will which takes away from each a portion of his faculties; but as soon as it is felt that the enemy begins to yield, the tension slackens; confidence succeeds to apprehension. Each one recovers his coolness and the battle then becomes more methodical. Like a man who struggles violently when he falls unexpectedly into the water and then swims slowly when he has recovered his senses, each gun captain, after having fired wildly to protect himself, will fire only with the greatest precision as soon as he feels himself master of the situation. Every one will regain his balance; thenceforth victory is assured.
Let us now picture the fleet action in its simplest form; two naval forces engaged in two parallel lines, each vessel taking for its target a vessel of the opposite line. This is not a gratuitous supposition; history furnishes numerous examples of the sort.
It seems, then, that the fleet action must be made up of a series of individual actions, and that success will not be on the same side everywhere. Victor at one point, one may be vanquished at another, because in a numerous force all ships are not of the same value and do not always find themselves opposed to an adversary of the same strength. The victor ought therefore to be, in the final reckoning, the one who has had the fewest losses.
Very well! it is not so that things happen. It is the vanquished alone who loses or abandons ships; and those of the victor have usually suffered the least.
Is this because there is always a great difference between the combatants, both in respect to material and to personnel? Not at all; the victor of one day has been seen to be the vanquished of the morrow.
The real reason is that there is a common bond that unites all the ships of any one naval force. When this bond comes to be broken, it is impossible to reconnect the severed ends. If in an action a first advantage is secured at one of the extremities of the battlefield, the effect is immediately felt throughout the whole line. Victory, starting from a single point, will propagate itself everywhere, reanimating courage on one side and making the other side lose all that it had gained. As soon as the vessels of a squadron perceive any weakening on their own side, they no longer fight with the same ardor; they feel that their situation is compromised. Their adversaries, on the contrary, know that they will soon receive aid and nothing can make them give in.
Sometimes a badly executed maneuver, causing a partial stoppage, has been sufficient to bring about rupture of the balance of forces. One or two ships that become available join their efforts to those of their neighbors and an irresistible pressure is produced. Then at a corner of the battlefield the vantage is acquired on one side, lost on the other, and nothing more is needed to decide the fate of the day.
If we now picture to ourselves an action between two fleets in which no attempt is made to oppose line to line, ship to ship; if, in the case of these two forces, the initial breach is determined, no longer by some incident, but by a tactical maneuver that annihilates with a single blow the resistance at a point; if, moreover, this point is judiciously chosen, then the victory will be more prompt and less costly.
The problem set for each ship is, therefore, to reduce the immediate adversary in the shortest time in order to assist friends and to destroy the efficacy of renewed attacks.
Theoretically, the best solution consists in sinking ships by aiming at their water-lines with armor-piercing shell. This is a method that has long been looked upon with favor; for the preponderance assigned for a long time past to heavy over medium calibers, and at the precise epoch when the guns were not protected, can only be explained by desire to reach the vitals. This preponderance even became a monopoly on a whole class of vessels that have only one or two big guns."
The conception of firing with a view to sinking is attractive; it is also the most difficult to realize. The water-line, being the most sensitive part of a vessel, is the best protected. To attack it is like making a frontal attack upon a position.
Those who have advocated this method have confused the proving ground with the battlefield. To hit a strip 30 centimeters high there is necessary an accuracy of fire that requires mathematical data; the pointer must be unaffected by the excitement of battle; the target must be stationary. Moreover 50-ton guns are not assimilable to small arms, and the dimensions of the target should be in proportion to the ballistic accuracy of the guns; so that the chances of hitting the water-line depend upon the number of rounds fired, and as loading is slower in proportion as guns are bigger, time is necessary, and a very long time, to secure a hit.
" By a singular anomaly, while the whole power of a vessel was concentrated in two big guns, their operation was put at the mercy of a 14 cm. or to cm. projectile. In this respect the earlier coast-defence ships of Tonnerre type were more logical than the later ones, since their guns were in closed turrets.
This entire aggregate of operations would not offer any difficulty if the enemy were merely a motionless and passive target, but he is not so at all. Far from accepting blows without returning them, he will defend himself energetically; and while we are lingering over the execution of an accurate fire seeking the fault in his armor, he will bombard us full in the side and will dismount our guns. The first thing to do, therefore, is to extinguish his fire.
It is true that with the exception of the coast-defence vessels that form an important part of our naval strength, our armored ships have guns of medium and small caliber. It was to utilize them that the theory of the division of labor was brought forward.
To secure the maximum efficiency, we are told, each gun must fulfill the role that is most favorable to its utilization, relatively to the work that it is capable of accomplishing. Consequently the heavy guns, which are powerful, will devote themselves to firing against armor; the medium will destroy the unarmored parts and the small will attack the personnel.
The argument is a specious one. Not that the principle of the division of labor is false, but that it is only sound when applicable. But is it so in the present case?
What we wish is to wrest from the enemy the weapon with which he is destroying us. When we have succeeded in doing this, he will be nothing but a floating wreck that a torpedo, a shell fired point blank or a blow with the ram will finish. We are, therefore, abandoning our objective when we assign to the heavy guns a role that is disconnected with the end to be attained, and the return that they could render us will be the more missed the more sparingly medium guns have been distributed upon our fighting ships. By pursuing two or three objectives at once we risk not attaining any; it is true that we are sacrificing to the sacred principle of the division of labor, but it is at the expense of our interests. Is not this same principle satisfied equally well by disarming the enemy first, and then sinking or capturing him? Perhaps it is less mathematical, but it is more military.
By assigning to the slowest-firing guns a target that has the width of a geometrical line, we lose the greater part of the projectiles and the return is very small; so that, of the principle of the division of labor, only the skeleton is left.
Firing to cause sinking is a manifestation of the influence of ancient ways. In the period of sailing ships the French persisted in firing at the masts and rigging; to-day they wish to hit the water-line. Thus we have substituted a horizontal for a vertical line; in both cases we have taken the most difficult course. The English, for their part, have always fired full at the hull, and they have come out well in doing so. Why do we persist in a system that has always given disappointing results?
We will, therefore, employ all our means to extinguish first of all the enemy's fire, to disarm him. And then the whole importance of rapidity of fire will make itself felt.
The advantages of rapidity of gun-fire have been contested for a long time. Yet it seems evident that a greater rapidity of fire is equivalent to a proportionate increase in number of guns, and that the superiority will be accentuated in proportion as the effect of the fire makes itself felt. The opponents of rapid fire do not deny these advantages; but they fear a squandering of ammunition that would empty the magazines in a short time and leave the ship without defence. This apprehension is justified on condition that at the time when ammunition is found wanting the enemy still has guns to fire; otherwise the shell that remain in his magazines will be of no use to him.
Rapidity of fire is an element of strength and also of danger. We should not deprive ourselves of the strength in order to avoid the danger, but should seek another solution that will allow keeping the strength and escaping the danger.
There are several means of diminishing waste of ammunition. The first is not to begin firing until within good range and to approach so near that all the shot will hit the target; a second is to have good fire-control; finally, a third is to increase the allowance per gun, and to replace with ammunition the dead weight of those absurd structures that tower aloft on our ships and recall a period when artillery did not yet exist.37
The power of his gun-fire is the chief reliance of a commander; it alone is capable of furnishing the immense number of projectiles
37 The question of ammunition supply is one of the most acute to which modern material has given rise. Everyone understands the critical situation in which a naval force would find itself when lacking ammunition on the battlefield; but there is not enough weight given to the moral effect that an insufficient supply will have on the mind of the commander, who will be led at the very outset to make unfortunate decisions. (Witness the return of Bazaine to Metz.)
reaching the mark that will be required to extinguish the enemy's fire. 38 It will not be necessary, however, to disable, one by one, all the guns and all the fire-control stations of a vessel to render it powerless; under the hail of iron that will beat upon it, the hits that enter the ports will multiply; and, without the fatal hit that, perforating the armor, will definitely put a gun out of action, a quantity of accessory mechanisms will cease to work. A wheel out of gear, a port obstructed by fragments of plating, an ammunition hoist damaged, a line of sight blocked, a mechanism broken, all such injuries, some of which are unimportant, will only stop the fire for an instant, and will suffice to cause a momentary let up. To the material damages will be added wounds of the personnel. There will then be produced a slackening, a respite of a few instants, a fleeting occasion which will at once be seized upon to employ one's utmost means. A still nearer approach will be made with a view to point-blank fire at the water-line; a torpedo-boat will be sent to the assault, if one is near at hand; the torpedo itself will be tried, if the dilapidation of the hull indicates that the sighting stations are destroyed; finally there will be the supreme resource of the ram, if the occasion is favorable.
Usually it will not be necessary to go to that extremity. It is readily believed that the battle will last as long as the ship floats, as long as there remains a projectile on board, a gun to fire it and men to work the gun. But this takes small account of the physical exhaustion of the crew, of their state of enervation; it neglects the moral side, which is so important on the battlefield that it may be said that gun-fire produces more effect by its intensity than by its precision. Examine closely the most desperate encounters, and particularly that of the Cochrane and the Huascar. In reading these accounts are we not impressed by the fact that, in the midst of the action, the gunners cannot be expected to point with the precision that would be required in order to select their targets; they will be unable to do anything more than fire into the mass. The best pointers will be in a position like that of apt scholars who, when undergoing an examination, have their faculties diminished; and all that can be said is
38 At the end of a few minutes the pointer of a rapid-fire gun will have his vision obscured; he will see through a mist. Each gun ought, therefore, to have several pointers who can succeed each other without causing delay.
that the good pointers, although firing badly, will fire better than the others. At all events it is an undeniable fact that in a battle the end always comes before the vanquished has used up his means of defence or lost half of his men; it is enough to obtain a marked superiority at the beginning of the action to discourage the adversary and make him speedily abandon a hopeless struggle.
In order that ships may make the superhuman effort that alone can assure victory, the combatants must not be oppressed by fear of having to repel counter attacks.
It is the role of the reserves to keep off disturbers.
IX.
RESERVES.
The utility of reserves is questioned. Among those who advocate them, there is no agreement either as to what should be done with them or as to the type of vessel of which they should be composed.
An opinion frequently put forward is the following: When the battle is at its height, the arrival of a fresh force will decide the fate of the day.
This theory is open to discussion; it is true or false according to the circumstances.
Let us first suppose that at the moment when the new units enter upon the scene, the side to which they belong has already been beaten. There is no evidence that the reserve, encountering vessels exalted by victory, will retrieve the fight; and it cannot be admitted that this same reserve will remain impassive while its own side is being overwhelmed. If the enemy is inferior in numbers, the formation of a reserve offers him his sole chance of safety by allowing him to oppose all his own forces to a fraction of his enemy's and to beat them in detail.
Now let us suppose that victory remains doubtful, or leans to the side of the one who has saved for himself a reinforcement. There can be no doubt that the arrival of the latter will contribute to finish the work already begun; but the question is whether the same result would not have been more easily obtained, and more completely, by bringing into action from the beginning all the ships so as to break down the enemy's resistance at a single blow.
In one case, as in the other, the efficiency of reserves is not manifest.
When large fleets meet, there will doubtless be a tendency to bring vessels onto the battlefield in successive groups in order to give to the battle a fixed orientation in which the various groups will act in concert. The ships that arrive last will not form a reserve properly so-called ; their delay in coming into action will be of short duration and will depend only upon the soundness of judgment and promptness of decision of those in command.
The formation of a reserve that holds itself outside of the battlefield is a conception -evidently inspired by combats of troops. It would take too long to investigate here the difference that exists in this regard between land and sea operations. We will merely remark that the object of the reserves of armies is to secure economy of force and that this principle is not applicable to ships on account of their different environment.
It has been proposed to form a reserve of armored cruisers. That would be a means of utilizing them. Too frail to endure the fire of battleships at the opening of an action, they would be given the duty of finishing the wounded. This duty would suit the coast-defence vessels better, for it is the heavy armor that will resist longest, and the cruisers have no means adequate to pierce it.
Whether we consider cruisers or coast-defence vessels, their utilization as a reserve corps in the 'actual case would not arise from any tactical need, but from the wish to give these vessels something to do.
It would be an error to believe that there are no instances of the rational employment of a reserve in naval actions. It is known that Villeneuve, before Trafalgar, had formed a squadron of observation that was to hold itself to windward of the line so as to be able to bring assistance rapidly to the point attacked. In the opinion of distinguished critics this was the only way to reply to the English flank attack that Villeneuve had foreseen with a sailor's sense, for which he has not been given enough credit. 39
Nelson had planned to fight this same battle by dividing his forces into two columns; while the first (the most numerous) would constitute the main force under Collingwood, Nelson, with the second, was to protect it from renewed attacks.
We therefore see the theory of a reserve manifested under two different forms in the same battle. The first plan, that of Villeneuve, was justified by the leeward position of his fleet,
39 Unfortunately, Admiral Gravina, who was at the head of the squadron of observation, seems not to have understood his chief's instructions, and took the head of the line as soon as signal was made to form order of battle, which in fact destroyed the special role of the forces he commanded. Jurien de la Graviere believes that Villeneuve himself decided not to have a reserve. Nevertheless the squadron of observation cruised to windward of the line after the departure from Cadiz, and no signal was made to it to quit its post.
which obliged him to receive the attack and to wait until it was developed. It can still find an application to-day. We can imagine a reserve corps, held back from the main body and intended to reinforce immediately the point against which the enemy makes his principal effort; but it is preferable to impose one's will upon the enemy rather than to submit to his. We shall, therefore, only retain the second plan, which is always correct.
This second plan assigns to the reserve the task of preventing counter-attacks. At Trafalgar, Nelson did not carry out his project because the feebleness of the breeze rendered useless the role that he had reserved for his column; but he had already illustrated the principle of reserves at Saint-Vincent, when the Captain, which he commanded, stopped the Santissima Trinidad. Suffren had had the same idea at the battle of Madras, when he placed the Heros so as to prevent the head of the enemy's line from putting about to carry aid to the rear guard. 40
On these two occasions the Captain and the Haros played the part of a reserve.
Small in numbers, since the principal effort is made elsewhere, the reserve must make head against superior forces, and this seems to be a manifest contradiction. The contradiction, however, does not really exist because the immediate object of the reserve is not to fight, but to contain the enemy; well, it is possible to hold back numerically superior forces during a very short interval of time.
For that it is needful not to engage fully41 and yet enough to compel the enemy not to neglect your presence. Moreover, to turn a column, it is enough to turn the leading vessel; the rest follow.
In spite of all, the reserve will have a difficult task to accomplish, and usually the commander-in-chief will himself lead it. It may suffer losses; that is the fortune of war. In all great battles, troops have been seen to support the weight of overwhelming forces, and it is necessary to accustom ourselves to the idea that
40. . . . At 4 o'clock I made signal to double on the rear, and to the squadron to approach within pistol shot . . . . I did not set the example in order to hold in check the three leading ships that by putting about would have doubled me. ." (Suffren's report to the Minister of Marine.)
41 Considerations of range may then come into play.
it is often necessary to make sacrifices to secure victory, but one must know how to make them at the opportune moment. 42
The formation of a reserve can scarcely be thought of except in the case when the fleet is composed of several squadrons, but it in no way implies the idea of the separation of forces. Although the position that the reserve will occupy cannot be laid down in advance, since it will depend upon circumstances, it may be said that the best means of making sure of mass is to keep it in one's neighborhood until the enemy's intentions have been made known. In this position of waiting, the reserve will not merely look on at the combat; it will utilize all the guns that are able to fire and it will not be of any less avail because of the fact that the enemy's fire will be turned upon the vessels engaged in the thick of the action.
It is well to establish a clear distinction between the services required of the reserve and those that are attributed to the order of battle. In a formation, vessels are protected by the positions they occupy relative to one another. They, therefore, have a double task: to fight and to afford each other mutual support.
These two requirements are contradictory. Moreover, the protection is passive.
The employment of reserves, on the contrary, divides the roles. A part of the vessels fight without regard for anything else; the rest protect them; and the latter, free to move as they will, furnish the former a protection all the more efficient that it is active and conforms to the exigencies of the moment.
42 “When," said Napoleon, "shall I find an admiral who will consent to lose four or five ships to win a battle." And elsewhere: "Where have French admirals learned that war can be made without running any risk."
X.
PURSUIT.
Up to this point we have seemed to turn aside from the object that we originally set before ourselves (the destruction of the enemy), since we have reduced our pretentions to attacking only a part of the hostile forces. The pursuit brings us back to it.
When a fleet has lost ships and despairs of retrieving the contest with those that remain to it, and whose morale has been affected, it yields the field of battle and seeks to escape, usually under cover of the night. Such a decision may even be arrived at much sooner by those in command, if a sudden attack has thrown their ranks into confusion and destroyed the cohesion of their forces. For the victor, this is the decisive hour; the results that can be obtained on the battlefield are necessarily limited, unless there is such a disproportion of forces as to transform the action at its outset into a pursuit. It is almost impossible to make an end to an adversary who possesses the same arms as ourselves and knows how to use them; as a rule only sufficient harm will be done him to lead him to abandon the struggle and take to flight. The results of pursuit, on the contrary, are without limit.
On land, the material losses that occur during battle are never very great, but as soon as the enemy turns his back, he is picked up in batches on the roads.
At sea the situation is the same from the moral point of view; materially, it presents itself under a different aspect; losses have a more considerable importance on account of the restricted number of fighting units, and, although the respective positions of the combatants may themselves imply a manifest state of inferiority for one of them, it is usually the one who has suffered least who will be the victor.
In the old navy, pursuit was the exception and not the rule. This arose from the fact that the motive power of ships was unprotected and always suffered damages during the battle. The victor having all his forces closely engaged, his ships all had repairs to make to their masts and rigging, while the vanquished, abandoning his wrecked ships, fled with the rest, a part of which sometimes had not fired a single cannon shot. Nevertheless, whenever circumstances have permitted pursuit, we observe that it has produced results that, the same as on land, have been much more important than those given by the battle itself. Thus at Beachy Head, Tourville sank only two enemy ships, while he destroyed ten during the fortnight that followed. La Hogue did
not cost us a single ship, but the subsequent pursuit made us lose fifteen. When M. de la Clue, with seven ships, had to encounter Boscawen's fourteen, he only lost the Centatire; only two ships were able to escape in the chase that followed the battle.
The consequences of pursuit are not limited to the destruction of a certain number of vessels; it disperses those that succeed in escaping and thus realizes the object of battle, the complete destruction of the adversary as an organized force. Let us see what became of Tourville's fleet after La Hogue. We have already said that, out of forty-four ships, fifteen were destroired; Three went directly to Brest; four entered the Strait of Dover and went around England; the remaining twenty-two took refuge in Saint Malo. France had only lost fifteen ships, but her fleet was annihilated, and it took more than a year to form a new one. On October 20, 1759, the twenty-one ships under M. de Conflaus are attacked at the entrance to Quiberon Bay by thirty-three English ships. Fighting in retreat, two ships are sunk and a third captured on the 20th; the Juste is lost on a reef on the 21st; the Heros and Soleil-Royal are burned on the 22d. Total, six ships lost. Of the fifteen remaining, eight succeeded in reaching the island -of Aix; the other seven take refuge in the Vilaine, whence they go out only much later and separately. Until the end of the war, France was unable to get to sea a force sufficient to hold in check the enemy, who devoted himself without interference to a series of depredations on the coasts.
"At the present time," we added, in the first edition of this study, "the motive power of warships is the object of a special protection. It may, therefore, be foreseen that the victor will have more ships available than the vanquished, contrary to what formerly occurred, 43 and pursuit, therefore, assumes a capital importance in our time. Even in case the battle has not given
43 Vessels unprotected forward are the exception; they will only be able to give a reduced speed, even if their machinery is intact.
any decisive results, nothing is lost if one is in condition to follow it up with an energetic pursuit."
Let us apply these principles to the two great battles of the Russo-Japanese War that have occurred very opportunely to reinforce our argument.
On August to, the battle had no material result; but the Russian squadron, which was without any specific orders, was dispersed in all directions. The Japanese, surprised at their easy success, did not think of organizing a systematic pursuit until the following day. They thus allowed the main body of the fleet, composed of five armored ships, to re-enter Port Arthur; but they forced the Tsesarevitch, Bezpostchadnyi and Bezotrachnye to disarm at Tsing-tao ; the Askold and Grozovoi to disarm at Shanghai; and the Novik, which they could reach, to be sunk at Korsakov. Such were the results of even a tardy pursuit.
Doubtless Admiral Togo taught by experience, promised himself that another time the Russians should not get off so easily, and he kept his word. The battle of Tsushima was already a magnificent success; but the pursuit procured still more surprising results. Four battleships surrendered with Admiral Nebogatov in the vicinity of Liancourt rocks; the Svietlana and Bystryi were sunk near the Corean coast; the Admiral-Nakhemov, Vladimir-
Monomakh and Gromkii were sunk to the east of Tsushima ; the Sissoi-Veliki was sunk to the northeast of Tsushima; the Admiral-Ouchakov was sunk south of Liancourt rocks; the Dimtri-Donskoti was sunk near Matsoushima ; the Biedovyti surrendered with Admiral Rozhestvensky; the Izouniroud was lost at the entrance to Vladimir Bay; the Oleg, Aurora and Yemtchoug disarmed at Manila; the Bodryti and Bouinyi sunk at sea; the Korea, Svir and
Blestiatshii disarmed at Shanghai.
In brief, of thirty-six vessels, only two torpedo-boat destroyers and a small cruiser reached their destination. Thanks to a splendidly planned pursuit, the battle of Tsushima occasioned unprecedented losses to the vanquished.
Pursuit has a different character from battle in retreat, such as we have imagined it. In the latter, the enemy adopts this method of fighting of his own choice; he preserves his unity; he is ready to face whatever may happen; in a word, he fights. In the pursuit, he abandons all idea of resistance; his principal aim is to escape, and he will only fight to the extent that is necessary- to help his evasion. If he stops, he lessens the range; if he tries to succor laggards, he risks being, himself caught, which is precisely what he is seeking to avoid. Forced to assume his highest speed, the chase puts his means of locomotion under a tension that risks breaking them down; the sailing ship carried away masts and yards and tore her sails; the steamer will have hot bearings. In all sorts of ways he has to meet contradictory requirements, and the situation that arises from them puts him in a critical position that is the prelude of a disaster. It offers so few chances of safety that it may be asked whether it would not be cheaper to pay with one's life than to fly, unless evasion is favored by darkness. To our knowledge there is but a single example of a naval force having been able to escape unhurt. 44
The pursuer's line of conduct is plain to be seen; it should be such as will tend to arrest the progress of the enemy by harassing him with the fastest ships; but one should act with relative prudence if the pursuit is not the sequence of a battle and results simply from numerical inferiority. In the latter case the enemy has all his ships intact and is capable of giving hard knocks.
This consideration ought not to prevent pressing him hard, but the leaders should take advantage of their freedom of movement (which the enemy does not possess) to place themselves in the sectors least swept by gun-fire. If the chase wishes to shake off the clutch of his pursuers, the latter have only to fall back on their supports, and they will thus have made the chase lose ground.
On the contrary, when the pursuit follows upon a lost battle, the enemy will be more or less in disorder; his ships will have suffered to different extents. There should then be no hesitation in casting aside a prudence that might permit the chase to escape, and in always pressing on, the fastest leading, each ship passing the laggards without stopping to engage them so long as there are other ships behind it to pick them up.
Nothing should stop the pursuit. Everyone knows to what unforeseen damages engines are subject, and by persevering the ground lost dtiring several hours may be made up in a few
44 On June 17, 1785, Cornwallis, with five ships, was chased by Villaret-Joyeuse's whole squadron without losing a single ship. This exception explains itself when the details of the affair are read, and when the respective states of the two navies are taken into account.
minutes. The night itself, which, according to the saying, separates the combatants, ought not diminish the pursuers' ardor; the enemy may be found again at daylight; even if left alone on the horizon, one should continue in the direction of the line of fugitives. Only in the vicinity of the enemy coast should the pursuit be given over, in order to avoid contact with ships that have not suffered the demoralization of a lost battle; and on the return route there will still be opportunity to pick up booty that has slipped through the meshes during the night. 45
45 It may happen, when the disproportion of forces is not sufficient to destroy all chance of fighting with honor, that a naval force will retreat with the sole object of causing the enemy to divide and extend his forces. It will then be in a good position, by a rapid turn-about, to engage with advantage. This is a snare that must be avoided, but there is no rule that can help out good judgment.
XI.
NIGHT BATTLES.
It is difficult to believe in the possibility of fighting in the darkness without the occurrence of unfortunate confusions. How maintain unity of control at night? How recognize the enemy's position? It would seem that a night action must occasion a mere melee in which it will be difficult to distinguish friend from foe, or -end in an artillery duel that will be very much lacking in precision.
In history we find but a single night battle between important forces: Aboukir. And it was fought at anchor and begun in daylight. Later we find the battle of Gibraltar, in which
Admiral Saumarez, with five of his ships, attacked four belated ships of the combined fleet, without the main body daring to do anything to extricate its rear guard.46 Outside of these two battles, there have been quite a large number of night encounters between ships cruising alone or in couples.
Fighting has, therefore, only been done at night when the circumstances permitted the avoidance of a confusion of ships. We should not conclude from the foregoing that this sort of battle will only take place under similar conditions, but merely that it is necessary to be wary of rashly entering an impasse. The day when a man who understands war succeeds in overcoming the difficulties that we consider insurmountable, he will not hesitate to engage in battle at night because he will find a new element of success in. the possibility of masking the movements of his forces.
In any event, it will always be possible to take advantage of darkness to throw a numerous fleet into disorder with a few well-
46 The battle of Gibraltar is particularly instructive. It shows that an enterprising mind always finds favorable opportunities, however weak his forces may be. It also teaches us never to despair of fortune, for Gibraltar was only a striking revenge for the combat of Algesiras where Saumarez, a few days before, had lost a ship. Cosmao showed still greater strength of character when, after the disaster of Trafalgar, he set sail from Cadiz to snatch from the English the remnants of our fleet.
disposed vessels, and thus to give favorable opportunity for torpedo-boat attack!47
It must be added that the night is reserved for the attacks of torpedo-boats, and that is a reason why, in present-day fleets, there are no nocturnal encounters between large vessels; for the latter should leave the field free so as not to expose themselves to the risk of being taken for enemy ships.
If there had not been torpedo-boats in Admiral Togo's squadron, the battle of Tsushima might have been followed by a night action.
47 See the Indefatigable's maneuver in the night of December 16, 1796, during the sortie of Morard de Galle's squadron (Hoche's expedition to Ireland).
XII.
SIGNALS.
There are signals and signals. Some have only a conventional interest, such as those that indicate the beginning and end of an exercise; others have a character of absolute necessity and are used in cruising; finally, there are battle signals, the importance of which is fundamental. We shall concern ourselves only with the latter.
It makes very little difference, in the ordinary routine of service, whether our signal books are more or less thick, more or less complicated. It is a very different matter where battle is concerned.
A useless signal produces uncertainty in the minds of the combatants; a signal misunderstood leads to disorder; a signal impossible of execution denotes, on the part of the one who makes it, a wish to put the responsibility on others. It is therefore necessary to use every endeavor to make as few signals as possible. Moreover, they will have so much the more force as they are infrequent.
This is not to say that the code of battle signals should be suppressed or diminished. Unless he is to abdicate all authority, the admiral must have means of making all the communications that he judges useful. He will try to reduce them as much as possible because the enemy's fire will soon disintegrate the sets of flags and he may find himself powerless to communicate his thought; but so long as the means are not lacking to him, he will make use of them.
In spite of all this, it will always be prudent to give sufficiently precise instructions for it not to be necessary to complete them by signals. The conduct of each during the battle can only be guided by exact knowledge of the situation, and if the admiral has not accustomed his captains to act on their own responsibility, according to his general plan, no signal will be able to remedy the faults and errors that will occur. More must not be required of signals than they are able to give.
The councils of war that have followed our great disasters put in evidence the inefficiency of signals. Unfortunate leaders always complain bitterly of the non-execution of their orders; they forget that orders are of no avail to retrieve a battle badly begun, and that, if they had led their vessels on the road to victory, they would not have been obliged to depend upon displays of signals. At Aboukir and at Trafalgar Nelson made but a single signal that clearly indicated the objective he aimed at; the conduct of each one followed from it as a matter of course. At Fou-cheou, Admiral Courbet likewise made only one signal, but it was misunderstood.
Among the orders that it may be desirable to give during battle, there are a certain number that are urgent. It would be well to collect them together in a special signal code, and to seek a simple and rapid means of transmitting them.
The question of signals is, however, intimately connected with tactics and command, and we shall have occasion to return to it incidentally.
XIII.
CRUISING TACTICS. BATTLE TACTICS.
We have examined the three phases of battle that result from the very nature of things: the approach, the battle properly socalled and the pursuit. Each of them calls forth one of the three military virtues that constitute the strength of armies. The first requires skill; the second, vigor; the third, tenacity.
In the course of this study we have attempted to bring out the general laws revealed by actual occurrences. What we have to do now is to apply them with the means that the actual navy furnishes. We, therefore, open the tactics, and we find in it a complete collection of naval geometry; but a rapid examination will suffice to convince us that the duration, precision and rigidity of the movements it contains could never endure the atmosphere of the battlefield.
Evolutions necessitate speeds laid down in advance, known turning circles, a distance measurer and, above all, a compass. During battle the compass is out of use, the distance measurer leaves the bridge, and the commander shuts himself up in a conning-tower, where the space allotted to him is about as much as that of a sardine in its box. It will therefore be impossible to maneuver.
Formations, although less methodical, require none the less the same elements, and line ahead is about all that remains capable of being employed.
The worthlessness of our official code arises from the endeavor to make it at the same time a tactics for cruising and a battle tactics. It more than satisfies its first purpose because, as there is much cruising and no fighting, cruising tactics has quite naturally taken precedence over battle tactics. Yet, since conditions are not the same, there cannot be a common means without one of the objects being sacrificed to the other.
To cruise is to conduct vessels from one point to another with the order and method that alone assure their safety. During battle, order (geometric) matters less than unity of control; method, which entails delays, interferes with rapidity of execution. Finally, the capital point is that the enemy has to be taken into account, and that, while endeavoring to impose one's will upon him, one is, nevertheless, subject to the influence of his presence; whence arise movements that are neither formations nor evolutions, and to which it is impossible to assign a geometrical or symmetrical form. In a word, we cruise alone, and there must be two to fight.
Cruising tactics exist, function and meet all requirements. They can therefore be kept as they are. It would certainly be possible to make them less extensive by doing away with a certain number of movements that constitute merely an exercise of naval haute ecole; but that is an unimportant matter!48
Battle tactics should have quite another character. They are merely an instrument that, in the hands of the chief, must play true, that is, must conform to the necessities of the battlefield. One cannot do as he wishes under the enemy's fire, and the number of movements is limited; but that of combinations is not, because each is composed of parts common to several others!49
Moreover, it is less the means that differ (on condition that they are appropriate to the circumstances) than the opportuneness of making use of them. Furthermore, whatever the means may be, if they do not suit the object that is proposed, they paralyze the action of the best equipped leaders.50
Tactics does not give victory, for it creates nothing (genius alone is creative) ; but it furnishes to those who make use of it the means of obtaining victory. On the other hand, it can avoid defeat by furnishing useful indications. In any case, it does not direct battle; otherwise it would be like those Barbary organs that always play the same tunes.
The characteristics of battle tactics are simplicity and rapidity. Simplicity, because the field of battle is not suited to such a disturbing element as complication; rapidity, because that is the only way of getting ahead of the enemy. These two conditions fix
48 What is more serious is confusing the minds of officers whose heads burst with the effort of memory that is necessary for finding one's way in the labyrinth of everlasting essays.
49 Just as with ten figures all numbers can be composed.
50 Example: Suffren, whose genius shattered itself against the wall of the old tactics.
bounds that tactics can never exceed without departing from the right path.
Battle tactics can only be constituted on the field, under conditions approaching reality as closely as possible, that is, by the maneuvers of opposing forces. That is the sole manner of avoiding hopeless errors. It frequently happens, in fact, that creations of the mind are found to be impossible of realization when it is wished to embody them in act. In general, they are inspired by an attractive idea the application of which brings out obstacles that had not been foreseen. Well, what would happen if battle were based upon movements that had not received the confirmation of practice? Insurmountable difficulties would be encountered, and the battlefield would become a field of experiment. In war it is especially important not to have the right idea that comes too late; in war one must not have to say when all is over, that is what ought to have been done.
Battle is a problem that contains a great number of unknown quantities. By exercises carried on systematically for years and years we will succeed in determining some of them. This labor will to a certain extent lighten the superhuman task of the leader; it will relieve him of a part of his anxieties and allow him to bring the whole power of his intelligence to bear upon other unknown quantities that can only be elucidated on the spot. There are many situations that are not susceptible of an indefinite number of solutions;51 yet it is necessary to study them so as to recognize them. They will then serve as a bond between the commander-in-chief and his captains when the latter are left to their own inspirations. Most attacks are only valuable from their suddenness; the agitation that it causes prevents recovery. If there is no surprise, the return stroke may be fatal to the aggressor. Therefore, whether attacking or defending oneself, it is needful to know" in advance the risks that one runs.
We have a natural tendency to repel everything that is new, because novelty involves a certain amount of uncertainty. We forget thus that the field of possibilities increases constantly with progress, and we continue in ways the reasons for which have
51 Example: When the rear of a line is threatened, there are two ways of succoring it: by bending the head back upon the rear or by turning head to rear. The latter method seems preferable, but it makes a difference which way one turns.
long ago disappeared. Moreover, the commonest maneuvers, such as those that consist of entering a port or going through a passage, always offer a certain difficulty when executed for the first time; they cause a mental strain that prevents paying attention to something else. On the contrary, difficult maneuvers (we do not say complicated) are carried out so easily, when frequently repeated, that one asks himself how they can ever have been found trying. In the beginning of steam navigation, the line ahead was thought to be the most dangerous order for cruising; to-day there is no more handy formation.
When cruising at night without lights was first tried, it seemed like inviting accidents; to-day all apprehension concerning it has disappeared.
Let exercises be surrounded with all desirable safeguards; let us pass from simple to complex, meeting difficulties as they arise; but there is Ta need of recoiling from difficulties that are often more imaginary than real.
Double-action exercises have had but little development in our navy. In the present state of our armaments, it is seldom possible to constitute two forces sufficient to be opposed one to the other. It could only be done at the period of mobilization when our squadrons are brought together.52 But each time that these exercises have taken place, they have brought out points that were in obscurity. If it had been possible to do them over again at once, each side would have modified its method of action. They teach something therefore. Are they not obligatory, moreover, under all circumstances where one has an active force opposing him? Is fencing practiced without an opponent? In the case of the army, is not the enemy represented?
We sometimes hear it said that double-action exercises would only give rise to a limited number of movements, and that their interest would soon be exhausted. That is an error. The mere fact of one force being opposed to another brings out new ideas;
52 The resources of tactics, in fact, increase very rapidly in proportion as the number of vessels increases. In contests between single ships or detached divisions, they are very feeble. We must take care not to wish, at any cost, to secure from tactics more than it can give, under penalty of falling into fantasies. Nevertheless these exercises are useful, for if they do not teach what should be done, they at least show what should not be done.
one finds himself faced by situations of which he had not thought; on both sides it is sought to derive advantage from it, and again the unexpected is created. Then each man does not use the same methods, and it is the aggregate of all preceding observations that constitutes the tactics. The latter is a book that is never finished.
Double-action maneuvers play in tactics a part similar to that which history plays in strategy. The study of wars, in fact, makes us see events in their true light and in their varied aspect: it reveals to us all the combinations that the fertile minds of men have brought forth in the course of centuries.
XIV.
ON COMMAND.
The object of command is to unite and concentrate all the scattered forces that are represented in each individuality, and to bind them together. It manifests itself by the subordination of all wills to a single will.
Command is not the logical product of our military regulations; it is a social necessity. When it does not exist, it creates itself and imposes itself.
The great majority of men have need of being governed, and a small minority have received special gifts for directing the masses. Under the ordinary circumstances of life, this need does not make itself felt, and the instinct of independence incites us to free ourselves from all tutelage; but when danger appears, the crowd abdicates in favor of the most worthy and command shows itself then in its true light, very much more a protection than a trammel. Each one of us has been able to note it in those situations, so frequent in cruising, that are, if not dangerous, at least difficult. The whole crew looks towards the commander, calling upon him to get the ship out of the tight place in which it finds itself; at this critical moment the strongest willed scarcely think of contesting the leader's authority.
It may be useful to inquire what resources superior men who have been invested with command have known how to derive from it. They generally had at their disposal only the same means as their adversaries, and yet they have gotten more out of them. The explanation appears to reside in the fact that they look at things from a point of view peculiar to themselves.
In all epochs, mathematical speculations, which are based upon fixed and known data, have influenced ideas in military matters. When they have assumed a preponderant importance in the conception of war, they have ended by fixing it in a rigid mold. It is always so in the long periods of peace, because the causes that modify the value of the factors do not manifest themselves, while the physical data are always before our eyes. The result is the creation of a system of war that is deduced systematically from absolute calculations of the strength and number of weapons.
Great captains proceed differently.
For the ballistic value of weapons, they substitute the real value. The latter is affected by the special conditions of the battlefield to a degree that varies according to the circumstances of each occasion. At the same time they draw upon the human machine to its utmost, and make use, as from a veritable reserve, of the property that the strong man possesses, by the concentration of all his faculties, of doubling and tripling his strength at a given instant. It is only a straw fire; it is necessary to make it flare up and to use it at the opportune moment. It may be seen, therefore, that they operate in a field much more vast than that of common mortals, and that the scope of their plans puts to rout all previsions. It is for that reason that we often consider operations bold and rash the success of which, far from depending upon chance, has had for origin an exact estimation of the situation.
The method of great leaders has this other peculiarity that they have never sought to be sparing of their forces, and that the greatness of the result concerns them much more than the losses they may suffer. On the contrary, it is this latter phase of the question that regulates our conduct, and the thought of the sacrifices to be made influences our determinations and makes us recoil a priori from certain eventualities. So it is that we constantly hear it said that torpedoes make the entrance of harbors inviolable; nevertheless, Farragut forced many passages and he did not escape without some losses; he had ships sunk by torpedoes. But who can therefore assert that Farragut did not succeed or was wrong in undertaking to force passages?
Let us say, finally, that the simplicity of the plans of genius proves that the difficulty consists less in defining what it is needful to do than in having the energy necessary to carry out successfully what has been decided upon.
In our future wars the exercise pf command will be particularly difficult. The contest will be begun with a new material whose power is not exempt from disadvantages; nobody will have that sense of what it is possible to do which is only acquired by practical experience. Such a situation is without precedent. Until the present epoch the men who have left a name had passed through the different grades of their profession during periods of war, and it was this continuous contact with the enemy that gave them the exact idea of their strength and revealed to them the weakness of others; in a word, they had an experience that alone enabled their genius to take its flight.
We have the recent naval wars to guide us, to be sure; but we did not take part in them as actors, and it is quite a different thing to read an account of a battle and to have been in it.
In fact, there is scarcely anything available except the results of firing-ground tests; we know the power of a gun, the number of rounds that it can fire per minute, the thickness of the plate it can pierce. All of which constitute the elements of power and not those of efficiency. It is not enough, for the latter alone are of use in carrying on war. There is a hiatus here that everyone is aware of and that hitherto has been filled up with considerations upon the capacity of the personnel. Well, it won't do to suppress anxiety about the future by drowning it in a flood of bombastic phrases, for though a leader may estimate the strength that he draws from the feeling of his personal worth, he can only measure that of the weapons put at his disposition if he is furnished with means of doing so. Evidently exercises and experiments that could be made with a view to determining the efficiency of the weapons and the strength of resistance of the vessels would give rise to conclusions that would not be beyond appeal; they would be full of errors from the fact that the enemy does not fire back; but they would give an indication from which the judgment of a leader will know how to draw profit.
It may likewise be remarked, concerning the difficulties that command will encounter, that all the great warriors have appeared upon the world's stage at epochs when the military art was passing through periods of stagnation and was so conventional that it was always known just what the enemy would do. This certainly furnished a point of departure that will be totally lacking to-day.53
Let us now view command in its relations towards subordinates.
The medium of centralization, it can be exerted in two different manners. The first tends to bring all the machinery under the direct control of a single person who acts in stead and pace of the rest; the second blends all wills in a single one by impressing upon them a uniform conduct, while leaving to each the free disposal of his means in his proper sphere.
53 Military men of genius have invented nothing; they have simply brought war back to its true concept.
The first system is suitable for cruising, where individual initiatives would cause confusion, and where the unexpected seldom happens; each vessel has only to carry out orders passively and to keep its position.
During battle the situation is reversed. The unexpected becomes the rule and requires immediate decisions. Well, whatever the authority of the chief may be, he will never have more than mortal sharpness of sight; from his post he will not know exactly what is going on at the extremities of the battlefield; his attention may be occupied elsewhere. On the one hand, the perspective is deceptive; on the other, signals are only formulae the general meaning of which tends to ambiguity when it is wished to apply them to a concrete case. Under these conditions it is materially impossible to control vessels at a distance, as if with reins, without making mistakes; directions will have to be substituted for routes, and for the rest it will be necessary to trust to the intelligence of the captains.
Nevertheless, there are not wanting people who think that the initiative takes away from command a part of its authority and prerogatives. That is a narrow view to take of things. Command is, above all, a moral affair, because it is exercised over men who think and act; it does not consist in the substitution of the action of one for that of all; it subjugates the wills that engender acts and not the acts themselves, in such a way that each acts as the leader would have acted. Command gives the impulse, it determines unity of action, but it neither thinks nor acts for everybody.
In all battles individual initiative has had to intervene, and it has sometimes decided the victory. Has a leader the right to deprive himself of the aid that it may afford him? Will it be necessary, in order to satisfy considerations of self esteem or of sentiment, to condemn Nelson's maneuver at Saint-Vincent and that of Captain Foley at Aboukir? There are those who would have us think so. Yet individual action, however brilliant, in no way diminishes the glory of the leader, since it is to him that the honor of it reverts. No one has thought of denying to Nelson the merit of the victory of Aboukir under pretence that Foley, by doubling the head of the enemy line, made a decisive movement. The latter acted on his own initiative, but, although inspired by a situation of which the admiral could not judge, he was only making application of Nelson's proposition that wherever an enemy ship had room to swing at anchor one of his ships could find space to anchor.
How many defeats would have been avoided, or at least minimized, if the captains had had the least initiative! And it was not a matter of their having to execute some brilliant maneuver, but merely of their going where duty called them.
The admiral will most often be ignorant of the enemy's intentions; he will therefore be able to give to his instructions only a very general meaning. If one finds himself face to face with an unforeseen situation, will it be necessary to wait passively for directions? If a ship finds itself without an adversary, ought it keep the same station? There can be no doubt; it is necessary to go where the fighting is.
But the admiral has made no signal!
What matters it! Do you know whether he can see what is going on? Do you know if he is still able to hoist a signal?
Yet many a ship, in many an encounter, has afforded the desolating spectacle of an absolute passivity. The captains hesitated, were irresolute, asked advice. Time passed; the situation grew worse and when finally a decision was reached it was too late.
What were Villeneuve, Decres and Trullet doing at Aboukir while three-quarters of the French fleet was being beaten? Trullet, impatient to get under fire, hoists his topsails, waiting an order from Decres. Decres waited for an order from Villeneuve. And Villeneuve? Was he waiting for a night signal from the Orient that already was in the throes of death under the attack of three enemy ships? Under these critical conditions, was it needful to seek to retrieve a compromised situation or to save a few remnants from the disaster? The question is debatable. But the need of reaching a decision one way or another, and of deciding immediately without waiting for the morrow, is not debatable.
And Dumanoir at Trafalgar! It was three o'clock when he went about to go to the assistance of the center and rear. It was not at three, nor even at noon, that he ought to have decided.
It was at the instant when the attack developed and it became evident that he was to be left without adversaries. To await the transmission of a signal would have been losing time; the destinies of a squadron ought not to depend upon flag halliards.
But there was no breeze.
There was enough for Nelson's column that passed so close to the French van that they exchanged shots; there was still enough an hour later for the English ship Africa that passed along the whole line to go under fire.
Leaders who stifle the initiative of their captains should never complain of having been abandoned on the battlefield.
The duty of command is, therefore, above all, to instruct each one in advance what he will have to do in order to start the battle in the right way; thoroughly to instill into all the subordinate admirals the principle that they must never regard the situation from their individual points of view, but that they ought solely to concern themselves with the effects that their personal actions will have upon the result of the battle. Whatever may happen afterwards, the impulse given will not cease to act. Who would dare to assert that while Nelson was dying in the hold of the Victory his squadron was no longer commanded?
It is the same in all the stages in which command is exercised. We see on our ships all the organs of control centralized in the conning-tower by means of speaking-tubes and electrical apparatus. It is quite certain that a commander has reason to be proud when he contemplates the size of his ship, the weapons that it carries, the men who man it; he feels a sentiment of pride in thinking that this colossus obeys his voice and that he regulates its least movements. During battle, this is but a dream. Fatal dream! If the commander pretends to concentrate in himself the duties of all the officers; if he pretends at the same time to command at the helm, to indicate the target, the shell, the vessel to torpedo, he will be unable to fulfill these numerous occupations; he will neglect part of them to absorb himself in the one that most urgently requires his attention, to the great cost of the general working.54
54 Here is the idea of the command that we find in an American work (Tactics of ships in line of battle, by Lieutenant Niblack):
"A commander ought to have four things under his immediate orders: the speed, the course, gun fire, torpedo fire. Moreover, he ought to be in a position to know at each moment by means of the interior communications: 1. The helm angle. 2. The number of revolutions. 3. The distance of the enemy. 4. The distance and bearing of the guide vessel. 5. If each division is ready to fire. 6. If each torpedo tube is ready to fire. 7. The hull damages. 8. The number of degrees of list."
The officer who has to meet all these requirements is nothing more than a registering apparatus.
Every officer habituated to obey automatically will cease to foresee and will lose all initiative. When circumstances compel him to come to a decision, he will decide wrongly or will not decide at all.
The drawbacks of this system will appear after the battle, when the time for recriminations has come; then it will be perceived that human intelligence is a better organ of transmission than an electric wire, and that a man's faculties, even though he be in command, are not unlimited.55
The work of times of peace is to train the personnel and to teach each one what he will have to do, in such a manner that during battle the officers of the various grades can devote themselves to the occupations that are born with war and only appear on the battlefield. The subordinate officers especially will have a role of general supervision to keep everyone at his post, to strengthen courage and to meet unexpected needs. As for the commander-in-chief and the captains, all their attention will be concentrated upon the enemy, whose movements they will follow in order to profit by the least sign of weakness. In war, it is the opportunity that makes the thief; to profit by it, it is necessary to have a free mind and not to be absorbed in details; it is also necessary for the machinery to be in such good condition that, once set going, it will keep on working.
55 Let us take as an example the torpedo service. There is a greater and greater tendency to make it dependent on an electric bell and to centralize it in the hands of a single officer who, himself, is only to fire when the target is pointed out to him. Torpedoes will only come into play when the action is at close range, and the commander will have so many things to do at this moment that he may very well neglect to indicate the target. Nor is it at all improbable that several objectives will present themselves at once and on different sides; so that the torpedo officer will not be able to direct all his tubes and will let chances escape. Is it necessary, then, to fire torpedoes only upon the captain's order, and cannot the latter give his instructions before the battle? Will not any torpedo that hits an enemy's vessel be good? Is it necessary to be a lieutenant to use the sighting apparatus? Should the death of the torpedo officer, the destruction of the central sighting station, or the breaking of communications entail a complete stoppage of the torpedo service?
That material centralization be submitted to as a necessary evil when nothing else can be done, may be understood, but all that tends to lighten the burdens of command, without taking from it a bit of its authority, ought to be considered advantageous.
Certainly it is easier to keep for oneself the solution of all problems than to train people to solve them. But that is not the question; it consists of knowing what is the best return that a squadron or a ship can make from the point of view of the organization of command, and where human faculties reach their limit. In forming an opinion on this point, we must not trust too much to observations made in times of peace; for in exercises each one only attributes to himself the part that he can assume, without its being proved that this part meets all the requirements, since there is no penalty. The best indication is still furnished us by the great seamen;56 of all chiefs of squadron, they are the ones who left the most initiative to their lieutenants, and it may be admitted that, since they acted so, they thought that they could not do otherwise.
There remain to be considered the physical and moral elements that are auxiliaries of command, in the sense that they give a better utilization to forces and facilitate operations.
The moral elements are the qualities of the personnel: moral strength and will power. The physical elements are the qualities of the material: speed, homogeneousness and nautical features.
56 Read on this subject Nelson's battle memorandum and Suffren's instructions to Tromelin.
XV.
MORAL FACTORS.
Though the methods of war are reacted upon by a material that is undergoing permanent changes, man, who puts in operation all this complicated apparatus, does not change. To-day, just as a hundred years ago, he keeps his susceptibility, passing from confidence to discouragement according to the influence exercised upon him by events and by his surroundings.
It is impossible to understand anything of military affairs if we do not bring into account the moral factor that destroys all combinations solely based on superiority of numbers or of strength.
Moral force is, therefore, one of the factors of battle; without it, the material is worth no more than old iron.
It is drawn from two sources: self-confidence and the situation (not as it is, but as it seems to be). Courage, in fact, is not a natural sentiment. Aside from some exceptional natures that danger excites and which are always ready to rush in, man seeks to defend himself before thinking of attacking. Among officers, courage is born of the sentiment of duty and honor; in the lower ranks, it is developed by artificial means, the chief one of which is the conviction of conquering. But a fortuitous circumstance, such as a repulse, is all that is needed for nature to take back her empire and to transform into runaways people who just before have accomplished deeds of heroism.
Self-confidence is only a consequence of the confidence that command inspires; for troops take very good account of the fact that there must be someone to lead them to victory. A leader who has the confidence of his soldiers can ask everything of them; his orders are accepted as infallible dogmas, and, no matter how perilous their execution may appear, each one marches with pleasure, confident of success and saying to himself: he has his idea. Under the influence of this confidence, man accomplishes acts of which he would be thought incapable. The efficiency of the human machine is, in fact, essentially variable; not only is it not the same in two different nations or in the different armies of any one nation, but it varies from day to day, from one hour to another, in one and the same force, according to the course of events.
This is because the moral factor is influenced by the local situation.
The same reason that deprives those on one side of all strength, multiplies tenfold the strength of the others because the situation appears in a directly opposite light to the two sides. A vessel that sinks in the midst of the battlefield compromises the battle, and the first one that hauls down the flag gives the signal for defection. Thus an affair badly begun is always difficult to retrieve. Nevertheless, the character of man is so mobile that very little is necessary to change the direction of his thoughts and to revive his hopes. "The battle is lost," said Napoleon at Marengo, "but we still have time to win another."
What a powerful lever moral force can be in hands that know how to exploit it may be understood. The great captains, one of whose qualities is knowledge of the human heart, have made constant use of it. Nelson knew what he was doing when he signaled to his squadron, "England expects every man to do his duty."
The prestige of the victor resides much less in his actual strength than in that which is attributed to him. Whoever has been fortunate in the beginnings of a war possesses a double strength: that which comes from the self-confidence given by first successes; and that ascribed to him by the enemy, which has the effect of rendering the latter cautious.
The superiority of the offensive over the defensive that has become an axiom in military circles is explained solely by reasons of moral order. Under most circumstances the advantages at first sight seem to be in favor of the defence. That is why designs that are wholly based upon material factors inevitably end in the development of defensive methods and discount results that are in flagrant contradiction with the teachings of history.
On land, turning movements, attacks in reverse and surprises have no more solid basis than a moral effect. Men attacked from behind will always be painfully impressed; when some begin to run they draw all the rest after them; and if, at this precise moment, the runaways could be shown the number and position of those who are putting them to flight, they would see that they yield before an imaginary danger.
As soon as a combatant ceases to have at heart the desire to conquer, his first impulse is to escape without defending himself. That is the secret of the fabulous results furnished by pursuit. Regiments have been seen to lay down their arms before a handful of men, and detachments of cavalry to make strongholds capitulate.
The moral factor dominates the field of battle. It exercises a greater influence than numbers, although numerical superiority contributes to strengthening morale and the whole art of war consists in knowing how to make skillful use of it.
In the navy moral effects are less apparent than on land because the crew is shut up within the walls of a vessel and cannot run away; but they exist none the less, entailing the same consequences. A ship is comparable to the human body. The captain is its head, the men who man it are its arms; the head may remain sound while the arms are paralyzed, and there are many chances that the gun-pointer whose heart is stricken with fear will not send his shot to the mark.
The influence of events is felt by the command, moreover, just as it is by the men. History shows us Suffren hurling himself upon the enemy and laying himself open in consequence of his captains' lack of energy; yet Hughes never thought of drawing advantage from the disorder of the French squadron, because he submitted to the moral ascendency of his adversary. Far from seeking to take the offensive, he thought himself fortunate to have been able to escape without disaster from a bad situation. We note with astonishment that the English admiral saw concentrations of forces in what was only the consequence of badly executed maneuvers. During the wars of the Revolution and Empire, moral ascendency was on the side of the English, and they made large use of it to reduce the forces of their blockading squadrons, when they were short of ships, without the blockaded thinking of profiting by the occasion. If critics who amuse themselves by correcting the faults of others took account of the moral state of the opposing forces, they would spare themselves the trouble of fighting battles over again and changing on paper the face of things.
The most brilliant example of the potency of moral force has been given us, in our own time, by Admiral Courbet, whose name alone was a dread to the Chinese, and took the place of protection on our wooden cruisers.
War will send on board our ships reservists for a long time removed from the influence of their officers. Their state of mind ought to be the object of our solicitudes, and nothing should be neglected to keep up in them moral strength. At the battle of Santiago, the Americans kept the men below decks informed of the incidents of the contest. That has been thought silly by some; but its effect, none the less, was to keep each one at his station and to strengthen courage.
Discipline, self-esteem (especially among the French), the habit of winning, develop moral strength; but it is an inconstant that attaches itself to fortune and takes flight with her.
Battle is not merely an exchange of cannon shots; it is at the same time a contest of two wills.
Two ships are engaged one against the other. They are commanded by energetic captains, and manned by trained crews. The combat proceeds from stage to stage, but its issue remains doubtful. Fatigue comes over the combatants; each feels his strength waning and the need of making an end is felt; each has enough of it.
At this critical moment, victory no longer depends upon deadly weapons; it is in the hands of an invisible weapon that will decide in favor of the one who knows how to keep it on his side: it is the will to conquer.
Battle, from its nature, exacts of man a superhuman effort that strains all the fibers of his organism; and this abnormal tension can only be produced and maintained by the hope of victory. As soon as that disappears, the reaction at once sets in, and the worn out man gives up. If he had waited a minute more, his adversary would himself have reached the limit of his strength, for he is only sustained by the feeling that one last effort will secure for him the superiority.
And thus, most frequently, victory will rest with the one who forgets his own fatigues to think only of the adversary. "You are worn out with fatigue," said to us our professor of the military art at the Ecole Superieure; "the enemy is just as much so, and perhaps more." We sailors can say to ourselves: the ammunition is almost all gone; the ship is riddled with shot; but the enemy is no better off.
Battle is, above all, a reciprocal action, and however bad the situation may appear we have the right to think that it does not show itself to the adversary in any better light. The aspect of affairs would very often change if, instead of dwelling on our own evil condition, we sought to discover the ills from which the enemy was suffering. It is observed that the vanquished always attribute to the victor superhuman means, transcendent plans, while in reality he has no other superiority than that he exhibits more moral force. A battle is only definitely won from the moment when one of the adversaries manifests the intention of no longer continuing the struggle. Too frequently this resolution has been taken without giving enough weight to the state of exhaustion of the enemy, who thus finds himself victorious at the moment when he feared being beaten.
He who engages in battle with the fixed determination not to be the first to yield is already half victor.
Is it ever known what may happen? A resistance prolonged for a few moments may bring help and change the aspect of affairs; the last shot from the last gun will perhaps inflict the mortal wound. Therefore let us instill into our men the principle that they must hold fast, continue to hold, and never let go. Just as one nervous man (and not a coward) is enough to make a whole company turn tail, so one cool man in a turret or at a torpedo tube will keep the rest at their stations. Even in the most serious situations, man's self-respect always endures, provided there is someone to awaken it.
Beneath the inscription in letters of gold that adorns the fronts of our bridges, Honor and Country, there should be written in letters of bronze, it is the most stubborn who wins.
XVI.
PHYSICAL FACTORS.
Speed.—You often hear it said, as a commonplace, that speed is a strategical quality, but that in tactics it counts for nothing. Yet it can force an enemy to fight who would endeavor to escape; it will facilitate the shifting of forces, Nill give vigor to, attack; finally, it will make pursuit possible. It is, therefore, a tactical element.
It is also said that speed is a weapon. If speed is a weapon, its development will make up for inferiority of armament; and the Guichen can fight with the Deutschland. 57 We can hardly admit this. 58
Speed is not a weapon; but, other things being equal, it facilitates the use of weapons. It will be profited by, therefore, the case occurring, in the same way as advantage is derived from the sun and the sea; an element that is only an auxiliary to weapons cannot be substituted for them. Speed, in fact, does not procure an unmixed happiness; it weighs heavily and costs dear.
It weighs heavily; therefore, it diminishes the number of weapons or their power; it weakens.
It costs dear; therefore, it cuts into financial resources; it reduces the number of units.
Speed may be the principal element in scouts that are not built with a view to fighting, or in torpedo-boats in which it is intimately connected with the employment of the torpedo; but in
57 I refer to the old Deutschland.
58 The Guichen: 8277 tons; two 6.5-inch and six 5.5-inch guns; no armor belt. The Deutschland: 7800 tons; seven 10.3-inch, six 5.9-inch and nine 4.7-inch guns; a complete belt.
Speed could, to a certain extent, supplement an inferior armament, if it allowed holding the enemy in a position that would prevent his using all his means. But it diminishes notably maneuvering qualities on account of the long distances it requires. So that a slow ship will perhaps not be able to put its faster adversary in a bad position, but will always be sure of presenting to the latter its best equipped sector of fire, which will assure to it superiority.
fighting ships it ought to be subordinated to the destructive power that is the raison d'être of the ship.
Some writers have appealed to the authority of Suffren in support of the development of speed in our ships. They have neglected to say that Suffren never called for a reduction of battery to increase the sail area; he merely asked that vessels be coppersheathed, which would add to their sailing qualities without reducing their military strength.59 To-day a comparison between the Suffren and the Jeanne d'Arc, both built for fighting, shows what speed costs.
By seeking absolute superiority of speed we shall only add to our numerical inferiority an inferiority of strength, and all the resources of strategy will not succeed in bringing us onto the battlefield with favorable chances of success. It will be necessary to take flight, to traverse the seas without hope. What a depressing doctrine!
It is not even safe to count upon speed for escaping. The battle of Santiago has shown us the uncertainty of speed. The machinery of a fast ship is not a faithful servant in whom one can confide; it is rather a capricious mistress whose infidelities are frequent. Whoever shall be in the necessity of trusting to it the destinies of the flag will pass through all stages of anguish. Quite otherwise will be the state of mind of the commander of a ship on which guns take the place of speed; he will derive confidence from the knowledge of his strength.
If we wish to profit by the advantages of speed and to have fast ships, we must not put horse-power in the place of guns. We must seek a solution that costs neither in weight nor in money, by calling upon the national genius to perfect the efficiency and improve the design of our motors.
While waiting, let us be content with the same speed as that of our rivals, since we know that in strategy an inferiority of speed may have grave consequences, and let us concern ourselves, above all else, with endurance.
Let us utilize speed to fight; let us not fight to utilize speed.
59 See Suffren's report. The progress realized in the t8th century by the coppering of ships is of the same order as that which was realized in our time when the consumption of coal was reduced from 2 kilos to 700 grammes per horse-power per hour. But it must not be forgotten that gains of this sort are not monopolized by any one navy.
What is battle speed?
In principle, there would not seem to be any advantage in always moving at high speed; it would seem more reasonable to regulate speed according to the necessities of the moment, and to enter upon the battlefield at a moderate speed.
Nevertheless, practice demonstrates that in two-sided exercises the speed, at first moderate, is always increased progressively up to its maximum value. This fact results from the constant anxiety either to double the head of the enemy's line or not to be doubled by him. In one case as in the other, all one's resources are called for. Neither does it appear that one is ever embarrassed by the speed, and an urgent need of slowing down is rarely felt.
Alterations of speed always resulting in causing losses of position in the line, it is better to go into action with a well-kept formation, and at maximum speed, rather than to gradually increase speed.
By maximum speed should be understood the greatest speed that permits all the units to keep their positions and to rectify them at need. For a squadron of battleships of Patrie type, it would therefore be between 15 and 16 knots.
Homogeneity.—We have seen that in strategy homogeneousness, which gives the maximum efficiency to an assemblage of ships, is characterized by uniformity of speed and of radius of action. In tactics, in addition to speed, which we will not further discuss, we find a new element of homogeneity which is similarity of turning circles.60
Just as the speed of a fleet is that of its slowest ship, so its turning circle is that of the ship that has the greatest.
It is easily understood that in a navy like ours ships have a speed and armament dependent upon the period of their launchings; it is more difficult to justify immense differences in maneuvering qualities. There is no doubt, however, that the latter play a great part in battle. It would suffice to oppose a squadron of small turning circle to another less well endowed to become con-
60 Uniformity of armament does not constitute a tactical advantage. There is more profit in having the most powerful guns, that is to say the most modern. The benefit of homogeneity of armament only appears after the battle, when it becomes a question of repairing and resupplying the ships.
vinced that the second will never be able to counter to the first's attacks because it will always arrive too late. Good maneuvering qualities are perhaps the best actual means that one can possess for getting the better of the enemy. It is therefore dangerous to disregard the value of homogeneousness by coupling together dissimilar vessels, which takes away from the mass the qualities of the various units.
Nautical Qualities.—To fire guns and launch torpedoes without regard (within reasonable limits) to the state of the sea; to have a steadiness of platform that increases the accuracy of fire: such are the two nautical qualities indispensable for a fighting ship.
Fighting will take place where it can, not where one would wish. Neither the time nor the weather will be subject to choice; they will be as happens. These two aphorisms are not absolute truths, since war does not allow of such; but we may say that the field of operations is enlarged when one is able to go in search of the enemy, wherever he may be, and to be independent of weather conditions. A turret that is too low will have its magazines flooded with water; a vessel that rolls 18° each way will be reduced to impotency. It is therefore necessary to attribute to the rolling and to the disposition of the guns an importance that has long been disregarded.
CONCLUSION.
We can sum up in two words: assimilate means to the end. Know what is wanted; pursue its realization with determination.
Naval war gives rise to two distinct problems. We can seek to look beyond the veil of the future and, when we have succeeded in creating for ourselves a doctrine, to forge weapons with which to put it into practice; or we can study the same question from an opposite point of view, and seek the best utilization of the weapons we have. This latter problem will arise when war breaks out; on that day regrets and recriminations will no longer avail; we will have to be content with what we have. It is nevertheless true that means ill suited to the conditions of war will singularly complicate its difficulties; and so long as peace lasts it is our duty to inquire in what way fighting will be carried on so that we may demand the necessary weapons. That is the sole chance of safety for a navy inferior in numbers; it is the best return for the sacrifices of money made by the nation.
Well, nowhere do we find precise rules that can serve us for guidance. The method generally adopted in the study of naval warfare doubtless contributes towards such a state of affairs. People insist upon asserting that war on the sea is a science, and, setting out from that principle, they treat it mathematically, dividing it up into an infinity of small problems without any connecting bonds. In order to arrive at giving to the diverse operations that are considered a form appropriate to the mold that is imposed upon them, the domain of convention is entered upon, and its true character is thus taken away from war. Moreover, the procedure being defective, nothing is learned from it. Despite the denials of those who would have war expressed by an equation, it is, has been and will remain an art, on land as well as on the sea.
Whatever may be the science necessary to give to ordnance its ballistic qualities, the action of pointing a gun on a moving platform at a target in motion can never be anything but an artistic manifestation. In the conduct of the fire, the art of the gunnery officer is felt, and the skill of which he gives proof has no science in it. All the products of modern science under the most various forms can be accumulated on board, and there will be needed none the less, to control the ship, a commander endowed with that artistic feeling that is called the seaman's sense. Finally, to lead a squadron under fire, the chief must judge the situation at a single glance, determine the advantage to be derived from it and the chances it offers: all of which is art. The scientific side of war manifests itself in the construction and equipment of ships, which, in fact, demand a greater and greater amount of science; but there is nothing to show that the qualities that are indispensable for forging a weapon are the same as those that should be possessed by the one who is to handle it.
Many people contend for the absence of all principle by saying that command ought to be left wholly free and its liberty of action not encroached upon. Everybody is in agreement on this point; but a precise regulation must not be confounded with the application of general rules. The laws of war cannot be a hindrance, for they are immutable and no one can transgress them with impunity. That which varies to an infinite extent is not the laws but the fashion of applying them that depends upon circumstances. The conceptions of command on the battlefield are only an application, appropriate to a particular case, of fixed rules. The tactics that serves to put them into effect is common to all; it requires long practice and constant exercise, and that makes it necessary to prepare it in advance. Well, on what foundation can a tactics be built if there are no well-defined principles available?
The diversity of opinions, consequence of the uncertainty of our doctrines, is revealed by .a certain uneasy feeling that a brutal fact brings still more clearly out: there is no new ship that is not the subject of numerous changes. It would be unjust to put the blame of this on the constructors. Is its explanation not to be found in the fact that we are unable to define exactly what we want, as well as the conditions that each organ of a ship ought to fulfill? Whence the constructors, left to their own inspirations, adopt the solution that seems to them reasonable without knowing its consequences. Thus they enter directly into the domain of the combatants by imposing their ideas upon the latter, while the seagoing corps, not finding what it wants, makes itself ridiculous by the diversion of designing ships. Such is the secret of that complication which makes the unenviable originality of our fleet; such is the reason of the fragility of our mechanisms; such particularly is the origin of the multiplicity of types.
We do not assert that it is only in France that things do not go as they should. Yet one thing strikes us: it is that we find in other navies a method that we vainly seek for in our own. England and Germany, for example, have pursued the realization of their particular objectives with more or less success, but with a tenacity to which we should render homage.
England, through her multiple interests, has in view the dominion of the seas; she has numerical superiority. For her, strategy is of greater importance than tactics: the English fleet is strategic.
Germany, on the contrary, is waiting to attain her development before pretending to anything more than the maintenance of the honor of her flag on the sea. She, therefore, limits her fields of operations to a restricted zone and develops the power of her not numerous units: the German fleet is tactical.
Here are two well-defined lines of conduct; the future will say whether they lead to the goal.
If we seek now to define the character of our fleet, we see that it is clearly defensive, in the sense that we find everywhere solicitude to ward off the enemy's blows instead of to seek to strike him. Some wish to shelter themselves behind immense walls of armor; others run like hares. Is that war? Can we not find a better use for our resources? Such are the problems that force themselves upon the minds of officers with an almost painful persistency. We have not pretended to solve them; we have simply discussed the means at our disposal, asking guidance of the past. Doubtless we have made mistakes. What matters it? Others will come, more competent and also of more authority, who will correct the errors and end by determining the true laws of war.
APPENDIX.
THE TACTICS OF TORPEDO-BOATS.
Torpedo-boats are special vessels whose characteristic is that their attack does not deprive the enemy of his means of defence. This peculiarity influences their tactics, which is wholly based on surprise. Darkness and speed are its principal factors.
Theoretically, the attack of a torpedo-boat comprises three distinct phases: the getting into touch, the maneuvering for position, finally the launching of the torpedo.
As it will be night for the torpedo-boats as well as for the other vessels, the view of the former will never extend very far, and a lucky chance alone can bring about the contact. Thus, whenever the enemy has to be looked for in an extensive area, failures are frequent. To make a meeting certain, the field of investigation has to be reduced to limits that deprive the exercises of a part of their verisimilitude.
Let us admit a fortunate occurrence: the enemy is perceived in the shape of a dark mass. The first care of the torpedo-boat is to approach so as to ascertain the direction followed by its objective; then, when that is done, it will draw off, without losing touch, however, so as to place itself in a position favorable for firing.
This succession of operations is very simple to define and very difficult to accomplish. In fact, the first condition to fulfill is to avoid being discovered so as not to lose the advantage of the surprise that alone can assure the success of an attack. Well, within what limits can one see without being seen?61 Then, to draw away, it is necessary to maneuver within sight, otherwise one does not himself see; in order not to risk losing touch, there is a tendency to approach during the whole time of maneuvering, which risks revealing one's presence while not in position to attack. Add that one's speed is high, that scarcely is the enemy seen when one is already right on him, that no conclu-
61 Has an effort been made to determine the width of the neutral zone in which a torpedo-boat sees without being seen?
sion can be drawn from the ratio of speeds because that ratio is unknown, and a faint idea may be formed of the width of the chasm that separates the theory from practice. Thus, unless the enemy is somewhat obliging, this second phase of the attack only affords chances of success when the taking contact occurs in a position favorable for firing.
For the second time, let us suppose that this is so: it remains to launch the torpedo.
The sighting apparatus, which has been constructed with a view to day firings, 62 can only be utilized at night on condition that the torpedo-boats have been supplied in advance with data which they cannot determine at night. By what method estimate the speed and course of a shapeless mass that can scarcely be seen? All that can be done is to steer so as to draw near, without seeking to estimate an inappreciable distance, without paying any attention to the quarter from which the objective is approached; then to fire at the forward part of the target, if it has been possible to determine which way it is moving. But there comes a moment when the torpedo-boat is discovered and illuminated by a
62 The principle of the sighting apparatus is correct; the application made of it is false. The data of the problem are: Speed of target, its course, speed of torpedo. Knowing two sides and included angle, it is always possible to construct a triangle; but in the case that concerns us an arbitrary value is assigned to two of the three data, and the accuracy of the process is thus reduced to nothing.
Since, whatever the system (and others can be imagined), there will always be unknown quantities, this would be as good as any if it had not brought about an increase of firing distance to the detriment of accuracy of fire. In fact, in enumerating the three elements of the triangle, it was seen that the angle of fire is independent of the distance; and everyone has been congratulating himself on having a firing method that permits increasing the range in proportion as the radius of action of the torpedo is increased. The most pleased, however, is the enemy, who is much less likely to be hit at 800 than at 400 meters, since the error made in the speed and course of the target is not independent of the range; it has no fixed value, but increases very rapidly in proportion as the firing distance increases.
Before thinking of increasing the firing distance, the speed of the torpedo should first be raised to a figure such as to make the error in speed and course of target negligible. The torpedo will then be a projectile of low initial velocity and horizontal trajectory. Until then all increase of speed must be taken advantage of without changing the firing distance. This applies solely to torpedoes fired from torpedo-boats; the problem is quite a different one for big ships.
searchlight; thenceforth it is blind, it perceives nothing more but a luminous shaft that dazzles it, . . . . and it fires badly.63
The difficulties that are encountered in the realization of the three phases of attack suffice to explain the great number of failures to which exercises give rise. Yet these occur under more favorable conditions than in time of war on account of the precautions that it is necessary to take to avoid the accidents that happen when they are neglected. In any event it is certain that the torpedo-boat's maneuvers, as they are laid down in certain treatises, are purely conventional. So long as this sort of vessel has to count on the assistance of darkness, it will be self-condemned not to see, and in that case maneuvers cannot be expected of it that, from their rigorous precision, require mathematical data.
Without doubt the efficiency of the torpedo-boat will always be small; but it would be wrong to feel astonished at this, since it compares favorably in this respect with other weapons. Has it been forgotten that at Santiago the efficiency of the gun was less than 3 per cent? It is irritating to think that the majority of torpedo-boats get within range of the enemy without hitting him; it is always imagined that new weapons possess an infallibility that the old ones lacked, because we do not have for the former the same means of appreciation as for the latter. Unfortunately, up to the present, the advantages of weapons have always been compensated by the disadvantages to which they gave rise, and
in time of peace we naturally only give importance to the advantages.
The best method of increasing the value of torpedo-boats is to make them act in mass. The effects of a group attack are not
63 For a target in motion, the tube with train would, therefore, appear preferable to the fixed tube; but it is then necessary to divide the duties in order to simplify each one's role, the captain directing the boat, the second officer or leading man taking care of the firing of the torpedo. Each one will thus have duties sufficient to take all one man's attention, and it would compromise the result to confide them all to a single person. The commanders of torpedo-boats won't be pleased to give up ordering fire, that being a privilege that is dear to them. But what is primarily important is to sink the enemy and to use the best method of attaining that end. Well, it was shown by systematic exercises carried out in the Mediterranean squadron some years ago that officers who try at the same time to direct the boat and watch for the moment to fire throw away more torpedoes than those who prefer to do less but do it better.
merely proportional to the number of units: each boat lends support to the rest by helping to multiply the objectives and turning upon itself a part of the enemy's fire. The pointer of a rapid-fire gun who holds a torpedo-boat at the end of his line of sight will never let it go; he will keep on firing at it furiously so long as a piece of its hull is afloat, and meanwhile he will pay no attention to others. When a boat is discovered and fires its torpedo, it concentrates on itself the attention of the whole ship; the crews of guns that are unable to fire cannot keep their attention off an occurrence upon which the fate of the ship depends; instinctively everyone wishes to see. 64 Then the torpedo-boats of the group that have not been perceived will take advantage of this situation; they will debouch so as to avoid putting themselves in the rays from the searchlights and will draw away from the boats that are illuminated; they will even seek, if conditions are favorable, to attack on the opposite side, guided by the blaze of the searchlights to determine the enemy's position.
In an attack in group, the maneuver of each torpedo-boat cannot, therefore, be laid down in advance. It depends on circumstances, on the way in which the searchlights are directed, on the number and position of the boats that are lighted up, on the enemy's movements. It differs radically from those methodic and geometric attacks that, under the name of simulated attacks, seem to embody the tactics of torpedo-boats, and whose progression ends with the final apotheosis of the attack in fan-shaped formation. 65
In the attack in mass, the leading torpedo-boats are sacrificed. It is an assault and the first who mount into the breech have few chances of returning unharmed. If the enemy is attacked by torpedo-boats singly, each of them will run as many risks as the first boat of a group.
64 The impression that the sudden appearance of a torpedo-boat causes is such that, in time of peace when there was no real danger, guns have been seen fired on the side away from the attack when the men on watch have given the alarm.
65 Exercises, those of torpedo-boats as well as of other vessels, will have a fictitious basis so long as it is desired to prescribe in advance the line of conduct that each must follow and so long as there is refusal to admit that, on the field, it is necessary above all to draw inspiration from the situation and to maneuver in accordance with broad principles rather that according to narrow rules.
The Russo-Japanese War has given us the measure of what could be expected of torpedo-boats. The bravery of the sailors being beyond question, it is the weapon itself that we must hold responsible for the insignificant results obtained; and we are obliged to confess that the efficiency was much inferior to what had been counted upon. Yet the torpedo-boats were constantly to the fore; they had a thousand opportunities to make good. The battle of Tsushima was needed to rehabilitate them, but it ought not to be lost sight of that their action was favored by the artillery contest that preceded the night attack and had deprived the remnants of the Russian squadron of a part of its means of defence.
We will not draw from this any conclusion unfavorable to torpedo-boats. We will merely say that it is wrong to consider that their action should be independent of that of the battleships. The two actions, instead of being necessarily simultaneous, would on the contrary gain by being carried on successively, the attack of the torpedo-boats being prepared by the ships' batteries just as, on land, infantry is supported by artillery.
The aid that the battleships are able to furnish to torpedo-boats is sufficiently effective for day attacks not to be repudiated a priori. In such an event it would be possible to place the torpedo-boats in groups abreast the head and rear of the battleships, on the side away from the enemy and out of range of his guns. The forward group would thus be in good position to attack when the slackening of the fire permitted; the rear group would throw itself upon injured ships that have been obliged to drop astern.
Finally, there is a third eventuality that must be faced. There are situations in war in which there must be no hesitation to sacrifice a part of one's forces to save the rest. In such a case, whether conditions are more or less favorable ceases to be a matter for consideration; it is necessary before all else to do what is most urgent. If an admiral believes that by sacrificing his torpedo-boats at the very beginning of the action, to stop a leading ship, for example, he will assure winning the day or will retrieve a dangerous situation, he ought not let himself be stopped by sentimental considerations. Unhappily, success alone can justify holocausts; since, if one fails, good reasons to explain one's conduct are lacking. Public opinion is easily influenced against an unsuccessful maneuver that would have been found to be a stroke of genius if it had succeeded. That is why there is often hesitation to employ decisive methods.
In closing, we will observe that, when torpedo-boats have an objective that is known to be in a determined zone, they ought always to take in in reverse; that is to say, they should always make their attack from the side where it is least to be expected. In reality all sectors of the horizon are equally dangerous when no material obstacles exist to stop the torpedo-boats; nevertheless, a squadron that is blockading a port will watch more closely the landward than the seaward side, and the opposite would be the case for a ship at anchor. There is an irresistible tendency to take the greater precautions in the direction which is reasonable, even though knowing that it is to the enemy's interest not to come that way. One thus has at least the satisfaction of having done all that is possible when means for opposing all dangers are wanting. The worst that can happen to torpedo-boats attacking in reverse is to find the enemy equally guarded on all sides.
The Japanese furnished us with a proof of this when their squadron escorted the convoy that was to operate against Weihai-Wei. In prevision of a possible attack by Chinese torpedo-boats coming from that port, Admiral Ito placed his fighting ships on the flank of the transports and on the side towards Wei-hai-Wei. Evidently there was no reason, on this occasion, to attribute to the Chinese any deep-laid plans; yet the attack might have taken place on the opposite side, or from ahead, without premeditation, on account of the uncertainty that always exists as to the point of meeting.
In case of blockade, the torpedo-boats ought not to be stationed in the blockaded port; for their operations would be complicated by the necessity of forcing a passage through the enemy destroyers. They ought to set out from a distant point, and even if their place of refuge is known their situation is better because they compel the enemy to watch two points instead of one.
Theoretically, the most favorable hour for an attack is the end of the night; attention relaxes little by little and the men on watch end by becoming persuaded that this time again nothing will happen. Practically, one hour is as good as another: since it is never easy to meet the enemy, it is necessary to take the time to seek him and to attack him where he has been found, in order not to risk missing him.