Not long ago an intelligent acquaintance of mine who takes great pride in the fact that he is a responsible and well informed citizen startled me with a simple but smug question.
“Precisely what,” he asked me, “will be the function of the Navy if we should happen to go to war in the future?”
My immediate reaction, of course, was that he was in jest, but when he fixed me with a challenging eye it became evident that he was in earnest. Accordingly, I answered him in the same spirit, and we spent the better part of the evening in a friendly but nevertheless heated argument.
Actually, the thesis of his argument—a by-product of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—was that the new atomic weapon had made sea power obsolete. The Bikini tests had in no way altered his convictions, because, he maintained, he had already concluded from his readings that air power had made sea power obsolescent even while World War II was in progress. To him, the atomic bomb merely represented the final straw, the difference between an obsolescent Navy and a completely obsolete Navy. And with a crackling snap of his fingers he did in an armchair what could never be done on the high seas: he disposed of the entire United States Navy.
Under other circumstances, perhaps, it would be better to ignore such assertions, but it is hard to ignore comments which have become alarmingly more and more prevalent during recent months. Even inanities must be answered when they constitute a threat to our intelligence. A hundred men determined upon a lynching can overrule the common sense and judgment of a handful of law-abiding men, and the fallacies of the ignorant are sometimes more potent than the wisdom of the wise. In regard to erroneous ideas about the Navy we must be particularly careful, for the menace of such misguidance is not to the Navy but to the security of our entire nation.
In view of the facts, then, it is important that we consider the arguments and clarify the issues involved. The three which seem to be most pertinent at the present time are: (1) that the atomic bomb has made the Navy either obsolete or relatively insignificant as a major fighting unit; (2) that air power has greatly reduced the value of the Navy and has superseded it in importance; and (3) that, in any event, we must keep our Navy as small as possible if we are sincerely interested in peace.
In considering the atomic bomb, of course, we are handicapped by the element of secrecy involved, but for purposes of a general discussion of the weapon’s effect on the future of the Navy certain facts derived from the Bikini tests should be introduced.
To begin with, the statement issued by the Evaluation Board for the Atomic Bomb Tests after the first test made it apparent that although the original blast damaged more ships than were ever before damaged by a single explosion, the test did provide “adequate data of a sort necessary for the redesign of naval vessels to minimize damage to superstructures and deck personnel. . . . ” Judging from conversations with dozens of people, it would seem to me that this latter comment has apparently been lost in the general shuffle of more exciting data—in spite of the fact that it is of the utmost national and international significance. The sensational fact is that the explosion devastated a number of ships; the critical facts are that a stationary target was involved and that redesign is definitely possible. To what extent naval architects can actually utilize the findings of Operation Crossroads remains to be seen, but we at least have the assurance that “adequate data” exist, and it is only reasonable to assume that the Navy will do its utmost to build its fleet accordingly.
Of further significance is the fact that the first Bikini test, an air burst, was damaging to superstructures but not to hulls, and that the second, or sub-surface, burst was damaging to hulls only over a limited local area. If this information is considered in light of the fact that the Bikini target was stationary, it is at once manifest that the atomic bomb would undoubtedly be most effective as a weapon against land targets having a limited radius rather than against naval units intelligently dispersed on the open sea. Discretion may be the better part of valor, but it seems safe to predict that the atomic bomb, if used at all in the future, will be used chiefly against congested industrial areas.
This last possibility—that the atomic bomb will be employed against civilian cities —brings us face to face with another grave issue: whether it would actually be to the advantage of any nation to use the atomic bomb for such a purpose. Such a question may appear absurd on the surface, but in reality it involves several important considerations.
Let us assume, for example, that in spite of our nation’s best and sincerest efforts to maintain peace in the world, we finally find it necessary to go to war against Glud, a country situated at a great distance from us overseas. Let us assume, too, that two of our allies, Nig and Erf, and several neutrals are situated within a reasonable distance from Glud and its satellites. Now, if by virtue of its strategic geographic position and dint of arms, Glud managed very quickly to overrun other territory and to fix its military boundaries several thousand miles short of its own key cities, would we be willing to use the atomic bomb to dislodge Glud? I doubt it. We would be exceedingly reluctant to kill hundreds of thousands—perhaps millions— of allied and neutral civilians.
Indeed, so serious is the matter of moral responsibility involved in this question that at least one distinguished writer, Walter Lippmann, has already presented the problem for public consideration. In an article, “Why We Are Disarming Ourselves,” in the September, 1946, issue of Redbook Magazine, he stated the following:
What would be the natural thing for the Russians to do if they had reason to believe that there would be a world war in which their own cities would be destroyed in a few days? It would be to overrun the cities of Europe with the enormous numbers of their infantry. The more certain it was that we could destroy the Russian cities behind the Red Army, the greater and more desperate the incentive and the necessity for them to occupy Vienna, Munich and Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp and Brussels, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo, Zurich and Berne, Venice, Milan, Turin, Geneva and Paris.
Would we use the atomic bomb against those cities? Lippmann’s answer is no. “We just could not do that. We would not do it. It would be criminal to think of doing it.”
The argument that the nature of war has changed and that total war means exactly what the term implies carries only limited weight. The United States cannot speak for the rest of the world, but we do know ourselves as a nation, and we would undoubtedly think the matter over a dozen times before we chose to employ the atomic bomb first. It is true that at Hiroshima and Nagasaki we did use the bomb first, but the justification for its use outweighed other factors. For one thing, Japan was already a thoroughly beaten nation doomed to a cruel pounding from both sea and air until it surrendered. Our use of the bomb made it possible to terminate a bloody war immediately. But an even greater factor—and I am certain that this must have provided an important index to the decision of our leaders—was the possibility that, by using the bomb, we could establish it as a deterrent against future wars. If we had not used the bomb but had merely described it for the edification of other nations, we would surely have been the object of considerable derision and disbelief. We ourselves had not been too impressed earlier by Hitler’s talk of secret weapons. It was a clear case of put up or shut up.
Thus, there would seem to be ample reason why it would be inadvisable to put all our eggs in one basket. For many years before the last war there was incessant talk about the types of gas, chemicals, and bacteria which would be used with devastating effect in any subsequent war, but, except to a limited extent in China, they were never used. In any event, the atomic bomb may alter our conceptions of navies but it will hardly do away with them.
The second argument—that air power has made navies obsolete—is so ridiculous that it should be ceaselessly exposed for what it is: a fanatic and narrow-minded concept of what warfare actually is. Its proponents should be sent at once to a war college—and if they have been there before, should be compelled to write the words “blockade,” “communications,” and “sea-borne invasion” a hundred times a day for the rest of their natural lives.
From an analysis of military accomplishments in the Pacific during World War II, it would seem incredible that there should still be among us any extremists who would develop air power at the expense of sea power and at the expense of a civilian public overwhelmed by confused and confusing judgments. Air power as an adjunct of naval power is infinitely desirable, but the thesis of the air enthusiasts is as yet only a theory unsubstantiated by the events of the last few years. To deny that the vast fleets of B-29’s, for example, played an important role in the defeat of Japan would be foolhardy and unjust, but the fact remains that victory in the Pacific was made possible by the Navy. No matter what our land, air, and productive potentialities, we could not have utilized that strength except through the medium of sea power.
Undoubtedly, to many, the dramatic accounts of huge bomber squadrons obscured the less thrilling details of maritime logistics and blockade. Indeed, during the early years of the war there were some even in Congress who heatedly questioned the wisdom of constructing ships of the line. The answer, of course, was quickly forthcoming again and again—but at sea, not in armchairs. The sight of B-29’s in the Marianas during 1945 was impressive, but so too were the great accomplishments of the Fifth Fleet in the Philippines Sea in June, 1944, and the subsequent struggle for Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. It was sea power which enabled us eventually to make use of our air power—and it Was sea power which maintained that air power at peak levels.
The air-power enthusiasts have consistently exaggerated the virtues of the modern airplane, and even their thesis that land- based enemy planes would spell sheer suicide for ships of the line which dared to venture within immediate range of hostile shores has been proven fallacious. Instead of having the effective range of naval units limited and their operations localized, as had been claimed, the Navy turned the use of its own carrier-based aircraft to such advantage that it was actually able to extend its operational range to the very heart of Japan. In other words, the fleet itself was made more mobile than ever before, and its intense concentrations of fast carrier forces protected by major fleet units made it possible to inflict exceedingly severe damage upon the enemy. In conversations with Japanese naval officers after the war, I found that nothing had impressed them more than that. As one Japanese admiral was quick to point out, the Japanese theory that American sea power could be limited by aerial operations was not only discredited but actually cost them an empire.
Although the Japanese failed to ward off our naval assaults against their possessions, regardless of our operational range, an analysis of the role played by our land-based bombers against major Japanese combat vessels will hardly support the contentions of the air enthusiasts relative to such bombers. Figures, of course, do not tell the whole story, but according to a report by Fleet Admiral Nagano, Chief of the Naval General Staff of the Imperial Japanese Navy, about 36 per cent of Japan’s naval vessels larger than destroyers were lost to American submarines, about 11 per cent to naval gunfire and torpedoes, and 48 per cent to carrier planes—a total of 95 per cent.1
According to our own official estimates,2 of the ten Japanese battleships sunk in action, four were lost to fleet units, four to carrier planes, one to a submarine, and one to fleet units in conjunction with carrier planes. An eleventh, the Mutsu, was sunk by an accidental explosion in Hiroshima Wan. The one remaining Japanese battleship, the Nagato, was out of action at Yokosuka—-heavily battered by carrier aircraft and a sorry sight as it lay at anchor near our own majestic New Jersey.
Of the Japanese aircraft carriers, eleven were sunk by carrier planes, four by submarines, one by fleet units, and one by carrier aircraft in conjunction with a submarine. Another, the Amagi, was heavily damaged by carrier planes. Four of their five escort carriers were sunk by submarines, and the fifth by carrier aircraft.
Japan’s heavy cruisers were similarly battered by naval units. Eight were sunk by carrier-based aircraft, and another two were destroyed by carrier planes operating in conjunction with fleet units. Three were lost to submarines, and another two, the Takao and the Myoko, were put out of action by submarines. Another was sent to the bottom by fleet units.
Of the twenty Japanese light cruisers which were sent to the bottom, only one, the Abukuma, was sunk by a land-based plane— an Army B-24 from the Philippines which shared the kill officially with fleet units.
Long-range land-based bombers may constitute a threat to naval vessels, but the above figures would seem to indicate decisively that it takes a navy to beat a navy.
The argument that the airplane of the future will be vastly different from the airplane of today is provocative, of course, but it is far from conclusive. The same promise was heard during the first years of the war, and the cry of “Wait until next year” is far more suitably applied to the Brooklyn Dodgers than to the security of a nation at war. In any event, it is probable that ships of the line will be different too in the future. They had actually begun to be different even during the war. A plane can sink a battleship, declare the protagonists of air power. No doubt it can. But you have to hit it, and hit it hard, to sink it, and the anti-aircraft fire power of the modern Iowa's, for example, might prove a bit discouraging to enemy planes.
At this point it is reasonable, too, to question the extent to which the range of planes—in combination with increased bomb loads and protective armament—can be effectively increased. One increase necessitates another; one can’t, as the saying goes, put a piano in a hat box. Conversely, one can expand a balloon only so far—and then it ceases to be a balloon. In other words, at what point do the disadvantages of larger and larger bombers begin to manifest themselves more and more? Imagine the glee of a gun crew as its radar picked up something the size of the Graf Zeppelin sailing blissfully along through lovely white clouds. No, the problem of size is not as simple as it might seem. There are too many technical, military, and economic factors to be considered.
The further argument of the extremists that air power can be used to penetrate and shatter enemy territory directly is only partially valid—at least on the basis of what was experienced during World War II. The Germans didn’t prove it against England in 1940, and we ourselves still needed a seaborne invasion and tremendous land forces to overwhelm the Germans in 1944 and 1945. The same thing was true of General Mac- Arthur’s campaign in the Philippines— which, though brilliantly executed, was nevertheless effected and supported by sea power, sea power, and more sea power. And in the final analysis, it was naval bombardment and a sea-borne invasion of Iwo Jima which captured that vital base for subsequent use by American planes.
The third argument—that we reduce our military and naval forces in the interests of peace—has been sufficiently weakened by recent events on the political front to deserve little more than limited attention here. Let it suffice to state that the pre-war fallacy of small military forces as a manifestation of peaceful intentions was more responsible for the Pearl Harbor disaster than was the treachery of the Japanese or any gross neglect on our own part. The lesson, which we assured ourselves during the war that we had learned, must not be forgotten now in the days of uncertain peace. For it may well be that our military power and preparedness—or the lack of it—will mark the real future crossroad to peace or war.
1. United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 72, No. 517 (March, 1946), p. 475.
2. Cf. Appendix A, United States Navy at War, Final Official Report to the Secretary of the Navy, by Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King.