No great corporation in preparing to begin operations would arrange its personnel in advance in groups so organized that at the commencement of business it would be necessary to form entirely different groups and make an entirely - new arrangement of the personnel. Yet this was the exact condition in which the Naval Reserve found itself upon the passage of the Naval Reserve Act which became effective on July 1, 1925. No reserve organization had the slightest resemblance to a crew or any part of a crew for a naval vessel of any type. If mobilization had been ordered the complete break-up of the reserve organizations would have been necessary.
The Naval Reserve Act gave the Department an opportunity to remedy these conditions and to base the organization and administration of the reserve on sound principles. It was decided to give the reserve a new deal all around and to start with a fresh slate on July 1, 1925.
The first principle decided upon was that the reserve should be built up to the highest possible degree of war efficiency and readiness. On the other hand, it was recognized that the naval duties of a reservist would nearly always be secondary to his earning of a livelihood. A compromise had to be struck between this aim and its limitations. Both the interests of the Navy and the Reserve had to be guarded.
The Naval Reserve was divided by law into three component parts:
a) The Fleet Naval Reserve
b) The Volunteer Naval Reserve
c) The Merchant Marine Naval Reserve
Because of provisions of the law and for other reasons each of these three reserves had in it personnel of different categories. Where these existed it was agreed to be a correct principle to subdivide them into classes and to give each one a distinctive designation. At first the many classes of the Reserve may appear to the person unfamiliar with them to introduce an element of confusion and complication. It is readily admitted that the Reserve is complicated, but is there any large organization that is not? If one of us accepted an important job in the Pennsylvania Railroad it would doubtless require a few weeks for us to find our way about. If different classes of personnel exist surely it is not an element of confusion frankly to recognize them; if on a battleship we called all the men of the ninety-six ratings seamen, would this tend to simplify the organization of the ship?
While it will not afford particularly light reading it will now be necessary to give a brief description of the various classes of the Reserve.
The personnel of the Fleet Reserve may be grouped as follows:
a) All the officers and the men of Class F-1. Previous naval service is not required, although it is desirable in the case of the officers and sometimes of the men. This personnel is required to perform drills and training duty, for both of which it receives liberal pay. The allowed quotas are 1,188 officers and 8,070 men; these can be filled with the highest caliber of men and are being carefully built up.
b) The men of Classes F-2, F-3, F-4, and F-5. Class F-2 is composed of men who have served at least one enlistment in the Navy; in the other classes at least four enlistments are required. These classes of the reserve do not perform any duties, but receive pay in consideration of their naval service and their obligation to service in war.
The personnel of the Volunteer Reserve may be grouped as follows:
a) All general service officers and the men of Classes V-1 and V-2. Previous naval service is not required although desirable. This personnel may perform drills without pay and, with some restrictions, training duty with pay. The quotas total 2,300 officers and 9,780 men. It will be some time before they are filled.
b) All special service officers. These officers do not perform drills, but may perform training duty without pay. The quotas of these officers are now being fixed; when this is done they will be built up gradually so as to obtain the best material. Very few of these officers will have had naval experience but may take courses in naval communications. Its quotas authorize 6,000 men; as procurement has just recently been commenced this reserve numbers now only a few hundred men; a considerable proportion of them have had naval service, but this is not a requirement for entry.
Men of Class V-4, who enlist within four months of the expiration of their enlistments in the regular Navy and do not desire to join other classes of the reserve. This class performs no duty and receives no pay. No quotas are assigned.
e) Student Aviators, Class V-5, who become eligible for appointment as ensign in the Reserve upon completion of the prescribed course of training, which at present is ninety days in duration; while performing this duty they hold the rating of seamen second class. The yearly training quotas are seventy-seven students.
f) Men of Class V-6, which includes men transferred to it from all other classes of the reserve. This personnel receives no pay and performs no duty.
The personnel of the Merchant Marine Naval Reserve is all in one group; it receives pay only when serving on certain designated vessels; it does not perform drills, but may perform training duty with a subsistence allowance.
c) Men of Class V-3, who constitute a special communications reserve. Its personnel does not perform drills or training duty.
Having sorted out the reservists into these various classes, the greatest problem of all then confronted us, that of organization. Certain underlying principles were kept in mind and applied wherever it was practicable to do so.
First, each part of the Reserve must be suitable to perform some important duty at mobilization. Just as no private enterprise would think of securing men, no matter how good they might be, unless there was important work for them to perform, so the department decided that personnel should not be procured for le Reserve unless it would fill some important requirement in the Personnel mobilization plans. This means that the Reserve, with exceptions, must be prepared for service in the United States Fleet and Naval Transportation Service. It was therefore logical at the Fleet and Volunteer Reserves should provide the personnel or the naval vessels out of commission destined to join the fleet and that the Merchant Marine Reserve should provide the officers and men for the merchant vessels to be taken over and commissioned by the Navy.
Second, individual men are comparatively easy to obtain and train; on the other hand, organizations can be built only in the course of years. It is not men we must have, but organizations of men, who are trained together, have confidence in each other, are bound together by an organization spirit and who, upon mobilization, can serve together. A mass of individuals scattered at random about the country will be of little value to us unless they have had such long naval service that they can fit into a naval crew of any type, being completely imbued with both the spirit and methods of the Navy.
Third, each organization of the Reserve must be trained for duty upon some distinct type of naval vessel. While naval officers are trained for general service on all types of ships, including submarines and aircraft, they can seldom be considered completely qualified except for duty on the type of ship upon which they are now serving or have last served. It is manifestly unreasonable to expect that reserve personnel, who can devote only a small part of their time to naval duties and then, with incomplete facilities, can be qualified for duty upon more than one type of ship. However, if all their training is concentrated upon a single type for each organization, it is not unreasonable to expect that they will reach a considerable degree of skill in its operation.
Fourth, a definitely named ship should be assigned to each reserve organization for the purpose of increasing the interest of the Reserve in providing a definite mission and to form a link between the community and this ship, so that the people of the locality will feel a responsibility for properly manning their ship or ships in war time.
Fifth, as has been the custom in all armies and navies, a nucleus of regular officers and men should be assigned to all ships at mobilization, except in the case of certain merchant vessels, commissioned by the Navy, where the war-time operation is practically the same as their handling in peace time.
In the practical application of these principles it was decided to provide the personnel mobilization allowances for a naval vessel out of commission as follows:
- A nucleus crew of officers and men from a naval vessel in commission, preferably of the same type, plus one or more especially selected regular officers from shore duty, usually for assignment as commanding officers or division or squadron commanders.
- A fleet reserve unit of men of Classes F-2, F-3, F-4, F-5, and V-4, all of whom have had previous naval service.
- A reserve crew of officers of the Fleet Reserve and Volunteer Reserve and men of Classes F-1 and V-1.
An effective comparison can be made between this method of building up a crew and the usual measures for building up a football team. Assume that September i is the first day of mobilization for the football team. Before this date the coaches and their assistants assemble and lay their plans for the building of their team for the coming season. They correspond to the nucleus crew, which provides the experienced personnel skilled in organizing, administering, and operating the vessel according to the latest practices, and arrives first after mobilization so as to be able to make the necessary preparations for the reception of the other parts of the crew, their berthing, messing, and training.
Every football team has veteran players who have served on the team for one or more years; these form the backbone of the new team. These men correspond exactly to the fleet reserve unit, which is composed of men who are veterans of from one to five enlistments, who are still physically fit for sea duty as determined by frequent examinations. just as a player who has had long experience as a tackle or end is brought back the next year to play in the same position, the men of the fleet reserve units for destroyers or light mine layers are selected from the men who have served longest in the Navy on these types of vessels. Due to the expert practical knowledge of these men, it is not necessary that they perform drills or training duty; the most important reason for such training would be to weld the men together into organizations and build up an organization spirit, but this is hardly necessary because the spirit of the Navy is so thoroughly implanted in them that they will easily fit into any crew. All that is necessary, therefore, is to carry them in carefully prepared paper organizations and to check their physical condition at frequent intervals. A complete physical survey of all the men in Class F-3, some 6,500, has just been completed with most satisfying results; 85 per cent were found physically qualified for sea service; 11 per cent qualified for shore duty only, and 4 per cent not qualified for any duty.
The football team also has additional candidates for the team; these men are only partly experienced; perhaps last year they were on the squad or perhaps on the freshman team; maybe they have never played before, but look like good material. These players correspond to the reserve crew; this is formed by a battalion or fleet division of the Fleet Reserve. These are composed primarily of officers of the Fleet Reserve and men of Class F-1. Some of this personnel may have seen service in the Navy or in the Naval Reserve during the World War; most of it, however, will not have had service in the Navy.
There are 148 fleet divisions required to form the necessary number of reserve crews; certain other battalion headquarters divisions are also required as “overhead.” Thus the total of 8,000 men of Class F-1 allows an average of about fifty-two men per fleet division. This number is not sufficient to form a complete reserve crew, which usually numbers about eighty men. For this reason fifty men of Class V-1 of the Volunteer Reserve are allowed to be associated with each fleet and battalion headquarters division. This permits each division to have about too men, or twenty more than required to fill the reserve crew it is to form. It provides a reserve from which vacancies in the F-1 quota may be filled; if there are more men than required to bring the reserve crew to full strength, the excess men may be used to bring other crews to full strength or will be valuable for general detail to any vessel being mobilized, or to expand the recruiting and training systems.
While the quotas of officers of the Fleet Reserve are more than sufficient for all the reserve crews, unfortunately, at present, these officers are not always so situated that they can be assigned to divisions in the proper proportions; some have excesses and some deficiencies; time will remedy this condition, but as an immediate remedy general service officers of the Volunteer Reserve may be associated with fleet divisions for voluntary drills and training duty; this may be done even where the division has its full quota of Fleet Reserve Officers, so as to provide a body of partly trained reserve officers who may be used to join other reserve crews or for general detail.
The reserve crew is a closely knit organization; it performs drills and training duty as a team, not as individuals; each one is designated for a definitely named vessel of the United States Fleet: this fact and the constant association of its members should engender an esprit de corps, a spirit like that which puts the punch and fight into a crack football eleven.
A destroyer to be mobilized receives two officers and thirteen men ln the nucleus crew; one regular officer from shore duty; seventeen men in the fleet reserve unit; four officers and eighty-four men in the reserve crew; a total of seven officers and one hundred fourteen men. From these materials a moderately good crew should be built up in two months.
In addition to the air squadrons now operated by regular personnel or which could be operated by regular personnel moved from shore stations there will be other squadrons which must be manned by reserve personnel. Such an air squadron would receive its personnel mobilization allowance as follows:
- A complement of aviation officers of the Fleet and Volunteer Reserves and men of Classes F-1 and V-2 sufficient to man the entire squadron, with a 50 per cent excess of officers to provide for casualties. This corresponds with the reserve crew.
- One officer and five men from a regular air squadron of the same type. This corresponds with the nucleus crew.
- Such men of aviation ratings in Classes F-2, F-3, F-4, F-5, and V-4 who are attached to the district forming the squadron and are physically fitted for duty with it. These men correspond with the Fleet Reserve unit.
Each squadron is composed of one squadron headquarters division and three aviation divisions capable of manning six planes. A naval district organizes one or more complete squadrons or one °r more divisions of a squadron. The complements of reserve officers for an aviation division are based on three officers per plane for bombing or scouting squadrons and one and one half officers per plane for fighting squadrons. Due to the fact that in the past aviation divisions have not been composed of men who live in the same locality it is difficult to hold drills which the entire division performs together; the drills or duty in lieu of drills must unfortunately for the present be performed largely as individuals; it is hoped to provide a partial remedy for this condition by calling out the entire squadron for its fifteen days’ training duty at the same time and place and by training them to operate as a squadron.
The crew of a merchant vessel which is commissioned by the Navy will receive personnel allowances at mobilization as follows:
- A merchant marine reserve group which has either been formed on that vessel during peace time or is formed at mobilization, composed of officers and men of the Merchant Marine Naval Reserve serving on board.
- A small number of regular officers from shore duty.
- A number of reserve officers specially selected from naval districts.
- A fleet reserve unit similar to that for a naval vessel, provided by a naval district.
- Men enlisted after mobilization and available for general detail.
In accordance with the funds available reserve groups will be organized during peace time on merchant vessels which are essential for the Navy in war time. The master of the ship will be the senior officer of the group. Officers and men of the Merchant Marine Naval Reserve will receive pay only when attached to such a group; they are not required to perform any training, but it is hoped that the senior officer will conduct such voluntary training as may be practicable. It is planned to commence the organization of groups of carefully selected vessels in order to demonstrate their advantage to the merchant marine as well as the Navy.
For some particularly important merchant vessels a nucleus crew from a naval vessel in commission will also be provided, the number of men to be received from general detail being reduced accordingly.
The above organizations, with the slight exceptions noted, comply with the principles of organization. There are certain other officers and men who are not included in organizations, as follows:
a) Special service officers of the Volunteer Reserve; with the exception of a small number of officers slated for special service on the staffs of the United States Fleet and Naval Transportation Service, these officers will be assigned at mobilization to duties under the bureaus and offices of the Department or the commandants of naval districts.
b) Men of Class V-3, in communications ratings, who will in most cases be organized in groups directly under the commandant to continue at mobilization the operation of communication facilities when taken over by the Navy or to augment naval communications personnel on shore, particularly as telegraphers. The reservists of this class who are serving on merchant vessels will be continued on board. Additional personnel of this class will be available for general detail.
In order to build up the Reserve to a state of real efficiency the standards have been kept to a high plane, as near as practicable to that of the Navy. This should allow the personnel of the Reserve, and particularly of the Fleet Reserve, to consider themselves a picked body of officers and men. The appointment of officers in high ranks for political and propaganda value has been strictly avoided and each officer and man will be selected solely because of his ability to fill a position in the war organization.
On the other hand, the reserve point of view has been given constant consideration and every effort has been made to avoid unnecessary inconveniences and restrictions, because it frankly is recognized that reserve duties must be secondary to earning a livelihood.
In any business organization there must be a balance between what the employee obtains from the company and what services the employee gives the company in return. The Navy recognizes that this principle also applies to the Reserve, but hopes that patriotic spirit will induce the reservist to give his services somewhat more freely to his country than he would to his employer in a strictly business transaction.
It is believed that there must be uniformity in the administration of the Reserve and this principle is reflected throughout the regulations ; each district and each battalion and division cannot go its own way but must be guided by a common policy, which is broad enough to cover practically all cases which may arise; it is believed impossible and undesirable to attempt to cover every exceptional case.
If more common policy has been established by the Department than before, battalion and division commanders have been allowed much more authority and initiative in its execution than they have previously possessed, and the responsibility for building efficient organizations is placed squarely upon them. Their relations with the district commandant are entirely similar to those of commanding officers and division commanders of destroyers to their squadron commander. The relations of the commandant to the Department are similar to those of the squadron commander with the commander-in-chief. We want to consider the division as a ship and its commander as the captain of a ship.
Procurement and promotion of men, in accordance with specified complements, is a function of the division commanders; they also may recommend the transfer to the Volunteer Reserve of men who do not maintain their efficiency.
Division commanders also initiate the procedure for the procurement of officers in the Fleet Reserve; there is one list of precedence for line officers; one for supply officers, and one for medical officers of the Fleet Reserve. All new officers enter at the foot of the list, except in the case of ex-navy officers, who may enter in the rank held upon resignation; young blood is very much desired. Promotion is by seniority on the three lists. The total number of officers is limited by appropriations. There are now 12.25 officers of the line in the Fleet Reserve per 100 men, as against 6.7 regular officers per 100 men now actually in the Navy. The total number of officers are divided into ranks in accordance with the ratios used in the Navy, except that there is a lesser number of captains and commanders, as specified in the law itself. To the ranks of commander and captain the promotion is by selection.
The reason for organization and administration is to facilitate training; training is by far the most important feature of the development of the Reserve. An entirely new system will be employed.
First, each reserve crew will be trained for duty upon a definitely named ship; second, each officer and man will be trained for a definite duty on board that ship; third, each organization will be trained together, not piecemeal; training duty will be taken at the same time and on the same ship; fourth, this ship wherever possible will be of the same type as the one to be manned by the reserve crew in war time; fifth, the training should be conducted by the Navy and, wherever practicable, in vessels of the regular Navy; when destroyers are assigned to districts for training reservists, regular officers are ordered to command them. All training cruises will be announced well in advance and no changes in schedule will be made thereafter. Sixth, regular officers have been appointed inspectors of the Reserve in all districts and given orders authorizing repeated travel. Seventh, a Naval Reserve Inspection Board will be organized in the Department for the purpose of making an annual inspection of each reserve organization and giving it a relative standing. Rewards will be given the divisions showing marked efficiency in this competitive inspection.
These principles will be made applicable to aviation divisions and squadrons as well as to the reserve crews for vessels.
Not only should the application of these principles of training greatly increase the efficiency of the Reserve, but it should insure at personal contact between the Navy and the Reserve which is an absolute necessity; regular officers must see the viewpoint of e Reserve and we hope that reserve officers will gain that indefinable something which we call the navy spirit. We hope that le reserve officers and regulars will both unite in making the Naval Reserve a real component part of the United States Navy.