Something more than one dollar in every seven spent in the Navy, and approximately ten per cent of our total commissioned and enlisted strength, is devoted to aeronautical activities. We have all seen the airplane in the short period of ten years grow from a position where it was almost totally unknown as a practical factor in fleet tactics at sea, to a position where it is now fully accepted as a vital element in successful fleet operations in war—to a position where already it has compelled important changes in ship armaments, in ship structures, and in ship and fleet tactics. The Navy Department has urged Congress to authorize the construction of five new 13,800 ton aircraft carriers, and additional aircraft which will nearly treble the present effective air strength of the fleet.1 From all operating forces afloat and ashore comes a continuing and insistent demand for more extensive aircraft equip-ment; and in response to that demand, aviation activities are constantly growing in extent and importance. Why this growth? Where is it leading?
We have been largely accustomed to consider aviation as purely an addition to other naval activities. In a restricted sense that view is justified, because with the adoption of airplanes we shall not abandon existing weapons; but speaking broadly, airplanes must inevitably partially replace other weapons, because in the final analysis our total naval strength must be measured in terms of total dollars allotted from the budget. Whether we like it or whether we don’t, the budget controls. There is no indication that the total budget allowance will be substantially increased in the near future. Every dollar we spend in one direction is a dollar we cannot spend in another direction. If we would have more airplanes and more aviators we must be prepared to get along with fewer guns and fewer turret officers; if more guns and torpedoes, fewer airplanes and bombs. So long as the budget must balance, we cannot, in reason, consider battleships or submarines, or 8-inch gun cruisers, or aircraft carriers, or guns, torpedoes, or airplanes, in the abstract; we must consider each in terms of the other, and weigh the relative value of each in comparison with the others. Our problem is so to proportion our total expenditures that the greatest over-all effect in war at sea will be gained per dollar spent.
What effect will aviation have on future naval operations? Are our present and contemplated air activities as large as they should be? Are they perhaps too large? Are we so directing our air activities that we are deriving the maximum practicable over-all naval strength?
These are not aviation questions; they are naval questions, because aircraft operations, in one form or another, partake of the nature of all classes of naval activities.
II
In a recent statement before the naval affairs committee of the House of Representatives setting forth the formal attitude of the Navy Department, the chief of naval operations outlined the uses of aircraft in the Navy as follows:
Airplanes would be used for bombing combatant ships, strafing attacks against light forces, torpedoing capital ships, laying smoke screens, tactical scouting, observation of gun fire, destruction of enemy planes, early information of the enemy even at great distances from the fleet, locating and attacking enemy combatant ships operating on our lines of communication, in attacks on shore objectives.
There you have a resume of practically every function called for in combatant naval operations, a close parallel to the basic functions required of every type of combatant vessel in the Navy, not excluding battleships or submarines.
All our experience in aircraft operations at sea leads to the inevitable conclusion that wherever we desire efficient aircraft operations with the fleet, there we must have surface ships to support those operations; and that brings us back to the surface ship as the fundamental basis for aircraft operations, just as the ship is the fundamental basis for gun operations or torpedo operations.2
In considering this naval aviation problem, the airplane as a somewhat unique mechanism, and flying as a specialized and comparatively new art, loom large in our minds and tend to lead us into the basic error of looking upon aircraft operations as largely set apart from surface ship operations, causing many studies to be based on the false premise that the solution of the problem of aircraft operations in fleet operations involves the application of unique basic principles. One still hears much more talk of “airplanes versus surface ships” than of “airplanes as weapons of surface ships.” Airplane carriers are still unique in our minds. Their outward appearance is so unlike that of any other ship that it is easy to conclude unthinkingly that their functions must be unlike those of any other ship. In reality there are no new basic principles involved. Aviation is not an addition to naval operations, it is an inseparable part of naval operations. Speaking broadly, the basic functions of an aircraft carrier are exactly parallel to the basic functions of other combatant ships.
Consider the role of the various classes of airplanes in detail:3
Gunnery observation planes serve merely as advanced high observation posts for gun spotters. When so engaged they are an integral part of the fire control system of the ship whose fire they largely control.
Scouting airplanes are advanced mobile observation posts for whatever vessels may be employed in scouting forces. Whether the scouting vessels be aircraft carriers, battle cruisers, light cruisers, or other specific types, their missions are identical— to gain information.
Smoke laying aircraft permit the carrying vessels to project smoke screens to a distance from the carrying ships. The basic purpose of all smoke screen laying is the same, whatever may be the type of ship or apparatus used.
Bombing is equivalent basically to gun fire. The bombing airplane is to the ship which carries it fundamentally the same as the gun is to the ship which carries the gun—a tool to project destructive agents against an enemy at a distance. The bomb propelled by an airplane engine is designed to accomplish the same end as the projectile propelled by a gun—to destroy enemy surface forces. Heavy bombs are virtually equivalent to major caliber gun projectiles, light bombs to minor caliber gun projectiles. Bombs used against submarines are depth charges. Bombs which drop near ships and explode below the water line are virtually mines.
Torpedo planes are virtually mobile torpedo tubes which the torpedo-carrying vessel may project to a distance from her own decks. They serve to extend greatly the effective striking range of the torpedo-carrying ship.
Fighting airplanes have exactly the same mission as have antiaircraft guns—to destroy enemy aircraft.
The airplane in naval operations is at once a vehicle, a high observation post, a gun, a torpedo tube, a depth charge projector, a mine layer, and a smoke screen layer. The field of naval aircraft operations at sea is as wide as the Navy itself, no wider. Aircraft have an important application in the operation of all ships, and all forces afloat —in all classes of service. We may speak of aircraft carriers in much the same comprehensive sense that we speak of gun carriers or torpedo carriers or mine layers.
What is an airplane carrier? One may use the conventional definition that “an aircraft carrier is a ship designed to carry and operate aircraft.” But what does that mean in terms of fighting strength? What kind of airplanes? In what kind of operations? Where? How? Why?
It is entirely possible for a battleship to become an aircraft carrier, or an aircraft carrier a battleship; possible for a cruiser to become an aircraft carrier, or an aircraft carrier a cruiser. The Langley, fourteen knots, no guns, 400 officers and men—a converted collier—is an aircraft carrier. The Saratoga, thirty-three knots, 8-inch guns, three times the size of the Langley, with three times as many men—a converted battle cruiser—is an aircraft carrier. The British Argus—a converted passenger ship—is an aircraft carrier. The Japanese Hosho, a converted cruiser, 9,800 tons, is an aircraft carrier. “Aircraft carrier” may mean almost anything.4
When we ask an airplane carrier to deliver a bombing attack against battleships, we ask her to throw heavy charges of high explosive against battleships in an attempt to destroy them. We ask no more of battleships.
We ask the aircraft carrier to go out on the scouting line or along lines of communication, to find the enemy, and we ask her to attack enemy light forces. We ask no more of light cruisers.
We ask aircraft carriers to lay smoke screens, to deliver torpedo attacks against the enemy battle line, to search for and attack submarines. We ask no more of destroyers.
One cannot draw so close a parallel between aircraft carriers and submarines as in the case of other combatant vessels, yet even here we find many elements of similarity, in that both are able to strike directly at a convoy of non-combatant ships even though they be escorted by powerful surface escort. Both rely principally for protection on their ability to strike effective blows from a position where defending gun fire cannot reach them. Both may gain information of enemy dispositions behind powerful surface screens by evading the screen.
We hear it said over and over again, “but carriers must at all times be amply protected by cruisers or destroyers, or both.” Even if that be entirely true in all that it implies, can we say any more or any less for battleships? Would any commander-in-chief in his right mind today send one, or a dozen battleships to sea without “ample” protection by cruisers or destroyers, or both? May we not say truly that cruisers must be protected by other cruisers; destroyers by cruisers or other destroyers, or both? Are not cruisers and destroyers, on occasion, protected by battleships? And may we not say truly, in these days of air spotting, bombing planes, torpedo planes, and scouting planes, that battleships and cruisers, and destroyers, and train vessels, must be "amply” protected by aircraft carriers? The protection is mutual.
These conceptions are perhaps far-fetched if we look at the matter from the restricted viewpoint of the actual composition of the fleet of today, with but three aircraft carriers, one an old converted collier of fourteen knots speed, the other two great expensive ships which have not yet finished their trials (May, 1928). But are they farfetched if we remove those restrictions and squarely face the inherent power of aircraft carriers if built and used in considerable numbers? One finds everywhere in discussing the matter a strong tendency to think of aircraft carriers in the singular instead of the plural, as single independent units which to be effective must combine in one ship all the characteristics which will permit her single-handed to attack battleships, or light cruisers, or other carriers; to protect and refuel spotting planes of battleships; to defend herself against destroyers and submarines; to defend the rest of the fleet against aircraft attack; to operate with other ships as a part of the main body, or singly on the scouting line or along lines of communication. In short, the demands on an aircraft carrier are so many and so varied that one might almost think we expect one ship to be a whole navy in herself.
III
Navies are not 16-inch gun battleships or submarines or destroyers or cruisers or aircraft carriers or any other specific type of ships. They are men, using those types of ships and those particular weapons which the existing state of the engineering art makes available, to gain and maintain physical occupancy of disputed territory for themselves, and to deny it to the enemy. To perform their mission effectively they should use those types of ships and equip them with that kind of armament which will enable them to do the most damage to the enemy with the least over-all effort or loss on their own part. We can arrive at a true picture of the role of aircraft carriers in naval operations only if we consider the airplane to be a fighting tool of fighting men on fighting ships, only if we clearly recognize at the outset that the aircraft carrier is just as surely a fighting ship as is a gun carrier or a torpedo carrier.
It must be clearly remembered that increase in striking range has always been the predominant factor in the development of all armament; that navies have adopted always as the principal weapons of their ships those weapons which permit them to hit the enemy effectively at the greatest ranges. As newer weapons are developed which give greater effective striking range, characteristics of ships, composition of fleets, and tactical conceptions have all progressively changed to permit the employment of these new and longer range weapons. Not even destructive power of individual hits has been so important a factor as effective hitting range. The advocates of the ram saw only destructive power; they forgot striking range.
Hit for hit the underwater blow of the torpedo does more damage than the above water blow of the gun projectile, but the gun has remained superior to the torpedo because the gun has longer range, because in normal circumstances the gun carrier has the potential ability, due to its longer range, to destroy the torpedo carrier before the torpedo can be brought within striking range. Yet in spite of its range handicap, the torpedo has already offered a serious challenge to the big gun as the principal weapon of ships in general at sea; the torpedo carrier has offered a serious challenge to the supremacy of the big gun battleship. Were it possible, with reasonable assurance of hitting, to launch torpedoes from beyond effective gun range, one wonders if the major caliber gun would still remain the principal weapon; one wonders even if the present massed tactics of the battle line would persist, or even if the big gun battleship as we now know it would still remain the capital ship.
Fleets today are divided almost equally into two major classes of vessels, the one built about the major caliber gun as the principal weapon, the other about the torpedo. In the former class is the battleship; in the latter class are the destroyer, the destroyer leader, and the submarine. The light cruiser lies in an intermediate position, neither wholly the one nor wholly the other, partly both. The steam-roller, mass tactics of the battle line still hold the balance of power over the skirmishing tactics of the light forces, principally because of the superior range of the big guns and the inferior mobility of the submarine. Ability effectively to outrange the enemy, to hit without being hit, is far better protection than armor.
As between gun ships the trend has always been toward greater and greater range. Old battleships become obsolete as heavier and longer range guns on newer battleships have appeared. In recent years increase in gun range came to a temporary halt when, due to inability to observe accurately the fall of projectiles, it became impossible effectively to control the fire at greater ranges. Then came radio and the spotting airplane, which permitted accurate observation from advanced positions outside the firing ship. Immediately the upward march in striking range has been resumed, and now back go our older battleships to the yards to have their gun elevations raised. Ability to observe fire effect from a position outside the firing ship leads naturally to a new phase of naval gunnery —the adaptation to ship-board use of the long established practice in land artillery of firing at targets invisible to the firing battery. If we can assure air observation to ourselves while denying it to the enemy we can in low visibility assure effective fire to ourselves while denying it to the enemy. Here is far better protection than armor. The use of artificial smoke in combination with indirect fire with air observation has truly enormous potentialities.
The increase in number of hits on the enemy, the increase in protection to our own forces, which comes with increase in effective hitting range incident to the use of aircraft observation, has the virtual effect of increasing the number of ships in our own battle line or of decreasing the number of ships in the enemy battle line; and today we accept it as a matter of course that as between two forces of comparable range and volume of gun fire, victory must go to him who can assure aircraft spotting to himself while denying it to the enemy. It is not the fact that aircraft are engaged that gives us advantage; that is merely incidental to the fact that the effective striking range has been increased through the employment of aircraft. And as always in the past superiority in striking range gives potential superiority in fighting effectiveness, regardless of the detailed implements employed. The advantages in over-all offensive power and over-all protection to be gained through air observation demand the expenditure of strenuous effort to assure uninterrupted air observation to ourselves while denying it to the enemy, even to the extent, perhaps, of replacing a part of our gun carrying ships with aircraft carrying ships, if by so doing we can assure undoubted superiority in striking range through air observation.
Here, in the advent of aircraft for gunnery observation alone, lies the necessity | for important modifications in ship characteristics and in the tactics of the battle line. The battleship may still remain the predominant agent in naval power, but the time has long since passed when she can concentrate all the essential elements of her striking power within the compass of her own armored citadel. The long range of her guns, which is the very essence of her power, has forced her to uncover an important, it may be a vital, part of her battery —her advanced spotting station—and to place it where it must depend utterly for its protection on forces exterior to herself. The guns themselves we may clothe with well nigh impenetrable armor, but the spotting airplanes which are necessary to full effectiveness of the gun must be left naked to the sky. Even though the guns themselves be made totally bomb proof, the striking power of the ship is by no means bomb proof, because it becomes possible through the use of bombing planes against carrier decks on which observation planes base or refuel, or against the upper works of the battleships themselves, if planes are carried there, to strike at the heart of the gun firing battle fleet—the fire control system of the battleships—while opposing forces are still far beyond gun range or sight touch. Never before have the guns of the battleships been so dependent upon exterior forces both for their striking power and their protection as they become when aircraft go to sea.
IV
If we consider aircraft only from the restricted viewpoint of its effect on gun fire, the idea that the aircraft carrier is purely an auxiliary vessel, and not strictly a fighting vessel, is of course justified. But consider the functions of the aircraft carrier as an offensive fighting vessel in her own right. For purposes of illustration and to reduce the matter to tactical conceptions with which w*e are all familiar, consider the matter from the viewpoint of the popular conception of a major fleet engagement which begins, if ever, when two nice straight rows of battleships are set down in mathematical precision in the open sea opposite each other. Consider that we have a fleet comprised of conventional vessels, and deployed in the conventional manner, with all of the battleships, all of the light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, mine layers and aircraft carriers which we now have. Assume that the preliminary operations by the light forces, including present cruisers, destroyers, aircraft carriers, and submarines, have been going on in the conventional manner, and that the battleship divisions are now closing to big gun range, but are still 15,000 or 20,000 yards outside maximum gun range, maneuvering for an advantageous position. Conceive yourself to be the commander of our battleship divisions. Naturally, your great desire is to be able to open effective fire at a greater range than the enemy can, following the age-old maxim that ability to outrange the enemy is better protection than all the armor in the world. Now, while still well beyond the maximum enemy gun range, assume that you could by some magic pull the turret guns out of your ships, slice off the top hamper, and substitute on each battleship a flush deck which would permit you to put into the air some fifty bombers and torpedo planes. This number is quite within the capacity of a ship the size of a battleship. It is emphasized that all of the other elements of fleet strength, including screening destroyers, cruisers and existing aircraft carriers, remain exactly as before. You have made no change in the fleet’s immediate fighting strength other than that you have substituted a force of some goo bombing or torpedo planes, or both, for the 216 heavy guns ordinarily carried on your eighteen battleships. You have sacrificed big guns, but you are able to send in concerted action against each of the enemy battleships in the enemy line fifty bombers or torpedo planes, and thus deliver a powerful attack a long time before he can possibly counter with his guns. The substitution of planes for guns in no way changes the status or objective of your eighteen capital ships; it in no way necessitates the removal of the side armor, nor reduces the underwater protection of your ships; it need not reduce the size or power of your broadside batteries; and in no way reduces the effectiveness of your screening destroyers or cruisers or other light forces. It cannot be stated, of course, that the concerted attack of fifty bombers or torpedo planes against each of the enemy battleships will destroy those battleships, but it is suggested strongly, having in mind the very rapid advance which has been taking place in methods of bombing and torpedo plane attack, that such an attack delivered in such a manner may render the enemy’s entire force of battleships completely ineffective before he has ever had a chance to get off his initial gun salvo.
One does not advocate converting present battleships to aircraft carriers; nor that we give to aircraft carriers battleship armor or maneuverability. The matter is put in this way merely to emphasize the too frequently overlooked, but nevertheless fundamental truth, that airplanes at sea are naval weapons of naval ships on naval missions, that a capital ship does not necessarily cease to be a capital ship if she substitutes bombing aircraft for 16-inch guns as her major striking weapon. It is suggested for consideration that if at least a part of our battleships were so built as to permit effective use of weapons that can deliver destructive blows against the enemy at any range up to 200,000 yards, the ships so fitted might prove to be more powerful naval fighting units than are battleships which can deliver destructive blows at a range of but 30,000 yards. Not because airplanes are airplanes, nor that bombs are any more effective than gun projectiles, but because by using airplanes a fighting ship can send its projectiles against the enemy hours earlier and miles farther away than they can be sent by guns. In short the whole question is not one of the relative merits of aircraft versus surface craft; it is a question of the relative value of two methods of propelling projectiles from one ship against another ship. In other words, shall we put our projectile in the rear end of a steel tube we call a gun and propel it by gunpowder, or shall we hang it on a contraption called an airplane and propel it by a gasoline engine? Is the airplane or the gun a more effective fighting tool of fighting ships? Fantastic as such an idea may seem, it is worthy of more than passing consideration. Imagine yourself as commander of the battleship divisions of the enemy forces confronted by such an attack. What steps would you take to repel this attack? Have we any antiaircraft equipment which will effectively repel attacks from aircraft in really large numbers?
It is realized that such a conception leads to very controversial questions as to the effectiveness or accuracy of bombing or torpedo plane attack on the one hand, and as to the effectiveness of antiaircraft gun fire on the other hand. It is unfortunate that discussions of this subject so often smack largely of the well known wardroom argument, which has been described as “a positive statement, a flat denial, and a bet.” Those who argue on the side of the effectiveness of antiaircraft gun fire point to the results of target practices where sleeves towed by aircraft passing overhead are shot down by antiaircraft gun fire from the surface, and largely neglect the fact that in practically all of these antiaircraft practices the plane is extremely restricted in its movements, that it is necessarily greatly reduced in its speed by the drag of the target, that there is usually but one target for the entire defending battery, that there is reasonably long advance notice of the direction and time of the approach, which permits the defending gunners to plot the position, course, and speed of the aircraft considerably in advance of its arriving at the point of bomb release, and greatly simplifies the fire control problem. That conditions which prevail in normal target practices of this nature are overwhelmingly in favor of the antiaircraft gun and are artificial in the extreme, is a fact which is largely slighted if not completely overlooked by the many antiaircraft gun enthusiasts. On the other hand it is a fact too frequently over emphasized by the aircraft enthusiast.
On both sides of the argument we find violent pros and antis, expressing extreme views. One says that he is willing to fly a plane over an antiaircraft battery and let them shoot at him all day. Another says that bombers can scarcely ever hit if the target is moving and that he would be willing to stand on the deck of a battleship and let the airplanes bomb him without much fear of the consequences. Both positions are, of course, quite untenable.
Only a careful study of actual firing results can lead to conclusions. That is beyond the scope of this paper. Suffice to point out that we find it necessary to station light forces on the bows of the battle line to ward off destroyer attacks because we have learned by experience that broadside gun fire is only partially effective. If gun fire will not effectively ward off destroyers moving at about thirty knots in one plane, how can we with gun fire alone repel aircraft which move in three planes at three times the speed of destroyers, which are unrestricted in direction of approach, and which offer a greater number of smaller targets, each of which is much more difficult to hit than are destroyers.
Study of this question in detail justifies the statement that there is no known method in existence afloat today, neither antiaircraft gun fire of ships nor fighting planes in the air in any but overwhelming strength, which is truly effective to prevent a large part of a properly directed, determined bombing attack from reaching its objective once it is in the air.
All experience thus far, both in actual war and in peace time exercises, appears to have established conclusively that the much talked of “control of the air,” is largely a myth. Control can be had, if at all, only locally, and then only so long as there remains an overwhelmingly superior air strength in actual flight in the immediate area under consideration. The only truly effective way to deny air operations to an enemy fleet is to seek out and destroy the flying facilities of the surface ships on which air operations at sea are utterly dependent.
There are those who have seriously counseled devoting our principal air effort to fighting airplanes designed primarily to combat enemy aircraft in flight. That is an attractive course from a superficial point of view, but it ignores the fundamentals. The bombing airplane is not the combatant ship, it is merely one of many “projectiles” which the combatant ship uses. The airplane can be quickly replaced, the ship cannot. The air is too high and too wide, airplanes move too swiftly and have too great flexibility in their operations, and concentration of dispersed screening forces in flight is too difficult, for one to hope to maintain an effective screen of aircraft in the air.
Obviously, then, the first concern of two opposing forces should and must be the destruction of the enemy’s aircraft service decks, whether they be the decks of specially designed carriers or the airplane launching apparatus of other types of ships. That is a necessary preliminary to free use of aircraft against other targets. Obviously, also, the first concern of each force should be to provide the maximum practicable protection against air attack. To a higher degree perhaps than with any other type of combatant vessel, the best protection for a carrier is offensive operations, and by all odds the most effective offense against aircraft carriers is long range bombardment with projectiles carried on aircraft.
V
Consider now the characteristics which make for an effective aircraft carrier. We must clearly understand at the outset that huge size is not necessarily a desirable characteristic of the carrier. Take the Lexington and Saratoga for illustration. It is fully realized that they were not originally designed for the purpose, that they are the heritage of the Washington Arms Conference of 1921-1922, and that they cannot now be corrected, any more than many other handicaps imposed on us by that conference can now be corrected. We were, in a manner of speaking, forced to take them in the present form, or nothing at all; and we must accept them as far better carriers than no carriers at all. Nevertheless they require frank discussion at this time, because failing such discussion we may fall into the grevious error of judging the potential value of aircraft carriers as a class, and of forming our doctrines for air operations, on the basis of the peculiarly unfavorable conditions which necessarily obtain in the special case of operating the Lexington and Saratoga.
These two vessels stand as an excellent example of how not to build aircraft carriers. Their huge deck area is in itself desirable from the standpoint of ease of landing and taking off, but is far greater than is really necessary for safe landings or takeoffs. The ships are too expensive to build and maintain, they can operate too few airplanes in proportion to their cost, they are too unwieldy, too difficult to dock and maneuver in harbor, and they carry too many eggs in one basket, to persist as a type. They will not and should not be duplicated, ever, in any navy in the world. These are facts which we would best face at the very outset of their active life.
An aircraft carrier’s operating capacity is measured less in terms of total displacement than in terms of free area of deck space available. The smaller the displacement, the proportionately greater is the free deck space; that is to say, there is more total free deck space on three small ships than on one large ship of equal total tonnage. That is a geometric axiom. Provided only that the ship is large enough to provide a sufficiently stable landing platform, that she has sufficient beam to permit stowing planes with wings athwartship, and sufficient length for take-off run and arresting gear, the smaller a carrier is the better she is. Within the tonnage of the Saratoga it is practicable to provide three smaller carriers which will have all the necessary requisites for efficient operation of airplanes at sea. A greater total number of planes can be stowed and operated on the three smaller carriers than on the one large one. One of the principal limiting factors in all flight deck operations is how rapidly planes may be sent into the air, and how rapidly they may be taken on board at the end of their flight. Only one plane can take off at a time, only one can return on board at a time. When we combine a large number of planes on one large carrier we can operate them only in one line; but if we distribute them on three smaller carriers, we can operate three lines simultaneously. Generally speaking a small carrier can send off or take on board approximately as many planes in a given length of time as can a large one. The deck of the large one is scarcely, if at all, less resistant to the explosive effect of bombs or projectiles than is the deck of a small one; the small one offers a smaller target. Once the planes are in the air, each of the three small ones can in general take on board, re-arm and refuel, substantially as many planes in a given length of time as can the large one. For this reason each of the three small carriers virtually provides a spare landing deck for the planes of the other two, and it becomes necessary to destroy all three flight decks before stopping air operations. The three small carriers therefore are individually less vulnerable to air attack, and collectively far less vulnerable, than is the one large one; and obviously, therefore, a given number of planes operated from the three small carriers has far greater over-all offensive power and far greater protection than has the same number operated from one large carrier.
A point that deserves particular mention in this connection is that in carrier operations, concentration of striking effort does not require close concentration of ships. For example three carriers stationed at the points of an equilateral triangle whose sides are a hundred miles in length can with modern high speed airplanes quickly concentrate their striking effort at any desired point within the triangle while the carriers themselves still retain their original stations.
The essence of all aircraft operations is high speed. The essence of effective aircraft bombing operations is mobility, maneuverability, flexibility, the ability to concentrate striking effort quickly at any desired point over a wide area. These are essential desiderata in all other forms of warlike operations as well, to be sure, but with no form of operations can these factors be present in so high a degree as with aircraft operations. We must not confuse concentration of striking effort with concentration of base ships. When we are speaking of gun ships whose striking range is always within the immediate vision of the ships themselves, concentration of striking effort is inseparable from concentration of ships; but when, as with aircraft carriers, the striking range is measured in miles instead of yards, when the stowage and operation of striking weapons depend more on deck area available than on cubic space and weight carrying capacity. When protection is promoted by segregation of base facilities into small separate units rather than by concentration of large units behind armor, it is folly to concentrate more striking units or more functions in one ship than is absolutely necessary. “Bigger and better” is a fine slogan for big gun battleships. “Bigger and worse” goes for aircraft carriers.
It may be remarked that what goes for aircraft carriers goes also for the aircraft themselves. There is a mistaken idea widely prevalent that if we make airplanes bigger they will be more powerful and more efficient by virtue of their large size. This is a relic of old habits of mind acquired through long association with gun operations. There is no justification whatever for attempting to build combatant airplanes larger than is necessary to carry the largest single bomb or torpedo that is required for the particular objective in view. If the nature of the target requires the use of a 2000-pound bomb, we must of course build a plane large enough to carry that unit. But if the nature of the target is such that 500- pound bombs will do the work required, we shall obtain far better results in the long run by carrying four 500-pound bombs in
four small machines, then by carrying them in one large machine. The reasons for this are somewhat analogous to those which dictate the use of small vessels for torpedo attacks rather than a concentration of a larger number of torpedoes in each of larger vessels. Smaller planes mean smaller carriers, and within reasonable limits, smaller carriers mean enhanced over-all striking effort.
VI
There are other targets than battleships for bombing aircraft. Light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and train vessels are far more vulnerable targets than are heavily armored battleships. They have also far less powerful antiaircraft batteries; they may be attacked from lower altitudes with consequent increased accuracy; and lighter bombs, which permit use of faster and more maneuverable planes, will be effective.
One may with profit give serious study to the suggestion that at least a considerable portion of the total tonnage which our present program contemplates for 8-inch gun cruisers be devoted to cruisers of the same displacement having armament comprising principally light bombing aircraft instead of 8-inch guns; these aircraft carrying cruisers to be employed on exactly the same missions as, and in coordinated action with, the 8-inch gun cruisers. Such a suggestion was recently made seriously on the floor of the French Chamber of Deputies. It may not be without significance that the only aircraft carrier which Great Britain has designed specifically for aircraft service, the Hermes, has a standard displacement of 10,850 tons; all other British carriers are, like our own, conversions of ships designed originally for other service. The Japanese Navy has one carrier, the Hosho, of 9,500 tons displacement. A 10,000 ton vessel should be capable of efficiently operating in her own complement upwards of thirty light bombing aircraft, which may be used also for tactical scouting or observation if desired; and she may act as a refueling and re-arming station for additional planes from other ships. It is not argued that the airplane carrying cruiser is in all respects superior to, or that it should completely displace, the 8-inch gun carrying cruiser, but it can be asserted that a number of vessels which (considering the bombing airplane as a gun) can shoot heavier than 8-inch gun projectiles ten times as far as an 8-inch gun can shoot, and which have, through their airplanes, potential range of vision ten times as great as the gun cruiser, would be of inestimable value to any cruiser force, in any class of so called cruiser operations.
It must be remembered in this connection that the Limitation of Armaments Treaty places no restrictions whatever on the total tonnage of vessels of any class of less than 10,000 tons standard displacement with less than 8-inch guns.
The potentialities in aircraft bombing are endless in scope and variety. They involve problems of major importance in the tactics of all forces, both in attack and defense. We have developed tactical doctrines for battleships, light cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and train vessels. It requires but little imagination to find reasons to believe that bombing airplanes may force fundamental changes in the tactics not only of the individual types, but of the fleet as a whole. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss this matter in detail; it is beyond the power of anyone to predict its probable influence in any other than the most general terms; but if we are truly concerned for the ultimate influence which our fleet as a whole may exert in war, we can do no less than study the matter deeply in all its aspects, both in attack and defense, and in relation to every form of naval operations.
VII
The basis of all naval operations is information. There is no agent in naval forces so admirably suited to securing accurate and timely information as are aircraft carriers. This phase of air operations has been too widely discussed elsewhere to require extended discussion here. It must be remembered, however, in considering the other phases of air operations, that in the face of the long striking range of bombers and torpedo planes, information of enemy movements assumes a place of even greater importance than it has ever had before. Never has the service of information and security been so vitally important to success at sea as when aircraft carriers join the fleets of the world.
VIII
What effect will the airplane have on future naval operations? Who can say? The problem is too involved, practical flight operations at sea are yet too new and too elementary in nature, and conditions are changing too rapidly, for any categorical answer to be given. One can only say in general that an agent which enables a seagoing vessel—any seagoing vessel, not excepting a merchantman—to strike a destructive blow at a distance ten times greater than the range of the most powerful gun afloat; an agent which gives to any ship a range of vision upwards of ten times what is otherwise possible; an agent which adds greatly to the effective striking range of the gun, permitting a ship to launch effective torpedo attack from well beyond effective gun range; an agent which enables a ship to direct effective gun fire against an enemy completely invisible to the firing ship; an agent which contributes directly to the effectiveness of every class of vessel in every class of service, or reduces the effectiveness of all, depending on the point of view; such an agent cannot but have a profound influence on all naval operations, and a profound influence on the relative strength of nations at war.
The number of airplanes that may be carried in a fleet is practically unlimited. Every vessel, including vessels of the train, can be fitted to carry its quota of airplanes, and put them in flight from catapults in their initial effort; but planes so operated can be used only once during an engagement at sea, unless there be provided facilities whereby they may be refueled and rearmed. On the occasional days when seas are smooth these planes may be landed on the surface and recovered by the ships which launch them, but even on such days a fleet in the presence of the enemy dare not stop to recover planes. In peace time exercises near shore the planes may be launched to return to sheltered harbors where they may be taken on board their ships; but in war conditions in the open sea, planes from catapults may be used but once. To carry planes as we now carry them on our battleships and light cruisers, without full provision for refueling or re-arming, is equivalent to carrying guns without provision for reloading after the first salvo. Flight decks in considerable number are the sine qua non for truly effective air operations, of whatever nature, in war at sea.
To measure the relative potential air strength of fleets on the basis of carrier tonnage alone, or on numbers of aircraft alone, is a dangerous fallacy. Neither tells the entire story. Numbers of landing decks is a no less important factor. To say that the 66,000 tons of carriers represented by the post-treaty Lexington and Saratoga constitutes substantial equality in air strength with the 67,500 tons of the three post-treaty carriers of the British Navy is to disregard the fundamental truths of practical air operations at sea. One must not forget the carriers which the Limitation of Armaments Treaty classes as “experimental.” Of these the United States Navy has one, the Langley; the British Navy has three, the Hermes, Eagle, and Argus, of 10,850, 22,600 and 14,000 tons respectively. These are pre-treaty ships, but the striking weapons, the airplanes which they carry, may always be kept abreast of modern developments. The date of completion of an aircraft carrier has no bearing on the effectiveness of the planes once they are in the air. Provisions for handling planes may be varied quickly at will. In the gun ship a change in the characteristics of its battery requires months in a navy yard; with the aircraft carrier the characteristics of the battery can be completely altered in a few minutes, without removing the carrier from its position in a steaming formation at sea, merely by flying one type of plane away and flying a new type on board.
In whatever field of seafaring war activities one may be engaged, be it battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, or auxiliary merchant vessels, wherever protection for oneself or destruction to the enemy leads one to seek for ways to see and to strike beyond the bounds of the immediate horizon, there one finds the high speed and unprecedented freedom of movement of the airplane an agent of tremendous potential importance which cannot be ignored.
To dismiss aviation as a problem for aviators to struggle with alone, to place aviation in a sort of separate niche in the scheme of war at sea, is supreme folly. One can no more separate air operations from general naval operations than one can separate gunnery or the service of information and security from general naval operations.
Here is a problem too large for any group of individuals to solve. It demands the most sserious study and the very widest discussion on the part of every person concerned with naval strength, from the commander-in-chief to the “plebe” at Annapolis, and in connection with every phase of naval operations, from battleship to “beef boat.”
We face a new armament conference in 1931. We cannot afford to enter that conference with any less than the best possible information as to the relative value of all types of naval vessels. The mass of our present fleet was built to meet the material conditions which obtained before and during the World War. Our ideas have changed in many important respects since then. How well, when the treaty of 1922 was signed, did we understand the true significance of 10,000-ton cruisers? The situation has changed greatly since 1922. Then the importance of aircraft as practical weapons of ships at sea was appreciated by only a very few individuals, and by them only dimly. What of the next few years? How well do we as a navy today understand the true significance of aircraft operations? We are entering now on a new program of ship construction. None of the new ships proposed can be completed for at least three years. The whole program now proposed can not be completed in less than eight years. The ships we build now will be with us for from ten to twenty years after they are commissioned. Our decisions of today, will affect the efficiency of our Navy for years to come.
There is in the airplane as a weapon of fighting ships, the possibility, even a strong probability, of important—even radical— change in the characteristics of ships, the composition of fleets, and even in our entire concept of war at sea. Not because airplanes are airplanes; but because by the use of airplanes our fighting ships can see farther and shoot farther than with any other weapon known; because superiority in information and superiority in effective hitting range spells superiority in battle.
We have in our Navy two aircraft carriers which can maintain fleet speed. Japan has three, Great Britain has six. Our declared policy is a navy second to none, not merely in tonnage of hulls, but in effective fighting power. Are we sure our present program supports that policy? We should be.
1. Final action on the proposed building program has not been taken by Congress. At present (May, 1928) it appears that only one carrier will be authorized this year. The House naval committee in deciding to reduce the carriers from five to one in the program, appears to have been actuated by a belief that aircraft carriers are so important that we should have more extended experience before definitely committing ourselves to building up our complete tonnage allowance in carriers all of I3,8co tons displacement, because the Limitation of Armaments Treaty prohibits replacements for twenty years. There has been no suggestion either in Congress or in the Department that we should not eventually build up to our full tonnage allowance in progressive steps. The Navy Department’s approved policy is to build up to the full tonnage allowed by treaty.
2. The chief of naval operations in the statement above referred to went on to say:
“To accomplish these functions planes must be re-serviced, and a large number of landing platforms in the battle area are required to prevent congestion and possible actual disaster to planes.”
3. The following paragraphs are a paraphrase of a statement made by the chief of the bureau of aeronautics (Rear Admiral William A. Moffett) outlining the role of aircraft in naval operations, in a report presented before the naval affairs committee of the House of Representatives. Certain other statements in the following pages are paraphrased from the same report.
4.Taking into consideration the proved fact that truly effective aircraft operations at sea are inseparable from aircraft carrier operations, an outline of aircraft operations is necessarily an outline of aircraft carrier operations. Read again the outline of aircraft uses quoted above from the statement of the chief of naval operations, and substitute the word “aircraft carrier” for the word "aircraft.”