SEVENTY-FIVE YEARS OF PROGRESSIVE NAVAL THINKING
(A Review of Some Outstanding Articles Published in the PROCEEDINGS)
By LIEUTENANT COMMANDER W. H. RUSSELL U. S. Naval Reserve (Inactive)
Every naval generation thinks of its predecessor as the “Old Navy,” and people have spoken of a “New Navy” at quarter-century intervals ever since the declaration of our independence. But our naval development is marked by only three changes so sharp that they justify the use of “New Navy.” The first was in 1775-76, the second took place in the 1790’s, and the third during the Civil War.
From the 1790’s until 1860 the Navy’s recognized mission was protection of our flag wherever merchantmen chose to carry it. The Civil War brought a sharp change. Ships were withdrawn from protecting whaling and commercial fleets for blockade duty, a sudden shift from world-wide cruising to river and harbor operations. At the close of the war, most naval vessels were laid up. An inward-looking United States, suddenly so absorbed with industrialization that there was no surplus for foreign trade, felt that it had no need for naval protection. Congress was not interested. What few ships and guns remained were obsolete. And the merchant sailors, on whom the Navy used to depend for its enlisted men, had left the sea for farm and factory.
The “Old Navy” was really dead. By nature the service was decentralized. There were only nine shore establishments. The basic administrative unit was the single ship, and it was established policy for Washington to leave as many decisions as possible to individual commanding officers. But in 1866 there were not only no effective fighting ships, there were not even plans for new ships, guns, and machinery, There were neither enlisted men nor any visible source from which to draw them. And the passing of sail had taken with it not merely a comfortable, uncomplicated routine of shipboard life, but even the customary practices on which the decentralized service leaned so heavily. It is no wonder that most of the older officers (many had begun active duty in the 1820’s) simply lived out their time, and that so many of the rest resigned. To build a world-ranging, steam and steel navy from such material must have seemed impossible.
Yet that is exactly what was done. Fortunately, a few senior officers saw (or hoped) that the situation was temporary. Understandably, most younger officers remaining in the service were anxious for any improvement, and so were more than willing to follow the lead of aggressive seniors. Admiral David Dixon Porter was an early exponent of the progressive spirit, and it was natural that when be became Superintendent of the Academy, he and his Commandant, Captain Stephen B. Luce, surrounded themselves with officers unwilling to see their service dry up and completely blow away.
First Steps
The Porter-Luce influence soon spread beyond the Academy. There must have been several efforts before 1873 to formalize it, but written records are so sparse and scattered that it has been difficult to trace preliminary correspondence, discussions, and j meetings. The record states simply that the United States Naval Institute was organized at the U. S. Naval Academy, October 9, 1873. A constitution adopted December 11th defined its objective as “the advancement of professional and scientific knowledge in the Navy.”
Commodore Foxhall A. Parker (his active' service dated from 1837) was elected chairman of the first Executive Committee, and /Professor James Russell Soley, U.S.N.A. became the first Secretary. In 1875 there were seventy-four members, ranging from Rear Admiral A. A. Harwood, who entered 1 active service in 1818, to Master Alexander McCrackin of the Naval Academy Class of 1866. The constitution provided for a meeting on the second Thursday of each month “for the discussion of professional and scientific subjects,” and directed that whenever the papers read and the record of “discussion growing out of them, shall accumulate in quantities sufficient . . . they shall be prepared for issue in pamphlet form....” Those “pamphlets” became the Proceedings. Papers piled up so rapidly that Professor Soley distributed the first issue in 1874.
It is difficult to point to one man and say with assurance, “There is the intellectual father of the Naval Institute.” But it is hard to overestimate the influence exerted by Stephen B. Luce on both the Institute and the Proceedings during their first thirty years. Fully identified with the rebuilding movement, he was always active behind the scenes and spent his later years constantly pressing for developments he considered necessary. His contributions to the Proceedings from 1873 to 1911 show that he kept abreast of the needs of the service, and I was a consistent leader in its development.
In the leading article of the first Proceedings, Luce tackled the new Navy’s most pressing problem. He forcefully endorsed apprentice training as a means of replacing foreign enlisted personnel (more than 60% of our sailors were not citizens) with active, young Americans. Apparently such progressive ideas brought results, for work on the apprentice program began immediately. In 1874 Congress passed an act encouraging state-sponsored merchant marine training, in ships and under officers provided by the Navy. In 1875 Congress authorized the enlistment of 750 new naval apprentices; a J program which marks the beginning of enlisted training as we know it today. Many of the fine “old Chiefs” remembered by senior officers from their early days at sea, were products of Luce’s training ships.
Dawning interest in machinery, construction, and armament, as well as personnel, appears in other articles of the first Proceedings. Chief-Engineer C. H. Baker wrote on “Compound Engines.” Naval Constructor T. D. Wilson discussed “Experimental Determination of the Center of Gravity”; and Captain W. N. Jeffers, Chief of the Bureau of Ordinance, wrote on “The Armament of Our Ships.” Jeffers began by illustrating the sort of problems imposed on professionally sound administrators by the decentralized conditions. He wrote, “Reasoning from the numerous applications made by commanding officers to the Bureau of Ordnance, as soon as they join their ships, for some change of battery, it must be the general belief that the total weight and character of guns is determined by hap-hazard, and without any reference to known principles.” Later he intimated the existence of widespread resistance to any change—even the substitution of modern, broadside pivot mounts for obsolete gun carriages. “I have approached this subject.. . very gingerly,. . . fearing the critical eye of a smart executive, whose snowy gundeck or quarterdeck, the pride of his heart, is encumbered by such troublesome companions.” Imagine an Executive Officer considering improved guns as troublesome companions!
Widespread developments still in the “think” stage during the Institute’s early years, are illustrated by four early Proceedings articles. In 1875 Lieutenant Theo. Bailey Myers Mason made thorough, caustic, concrete suggestions for completely overhauling battle tactics and battle communications to meet new requirements of steel and steam. Two of his specific recommendations were for fully coordinated fleet maneuvers directed by solid symbol instead of flag signals. In 1878 Rear Admiral Daniel Ammen, a former Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, submitted a paper with the significant title, “The Purposes of a Navy and the Best Method for Making it Effective.” In 1880 Lieutenant John C. Soley made a well-supported (and still valid) plea for the elimination of all nonfunctional elements from military drill. Specifically, he recommended an absolute minimum of manual of arms, company, battalion, and brigade drill, with the time thus saved devoted to skirmishing and similar exercises which are performed under fire by naval landing forces in either wartime or civil emergencies. In 1882 an entire number was devoted to an excellent series of articles covering “The British Navy and Transport Service during the Egyptian Campaigns of 1882.” A curiously worded footnote on its first page reads, “The material for this article has been kindly supplied from the files of the Office of Naval Intelligence, Bureau of Navigation, Navy Department, where it has been compiled from apparently creditable sources.” Apparently ONI had not achieved its present standing in 1882.
In June, 1878, with Commander Alfred Thayer Mahan, Vice President of the Annapolis Chapter, in the chair, the Institute announced its first Prize Essay contest. The winner got a gold medal, life membership, and a cash prize of $100. Among the early Prize Essay judges were President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard, Secretary of State William W. Evarts, former Secretary of State Hamilton Fish, and President D. C. Gilman of Johns Hopkins University. In the early years there was a specific subject for each contest. Today we would consider all the early subjects controversial.
The 1883 Proceedings climaxed the Institute’s first decade by showing clearly that the new Navy was well launched. The third number that year devoted its 230 pages to a thorough and well-illustrated discussion of “The Development of Armor for Naval Use” by Lieutenant Edward W. Very. The fourth number was entirely devoted to a profusely-illustrated, detailed description of “Our New Cruisers” by Assistant Naval Constructor F. T. Bowles, Secretary of the Naval Advisory Board. The cruisers, of course, were the Chicago, Boston, Albany, and Dolphin—the famous ABCD Cruisers whose design and construction climaxed fifteen years’ uphill struggle to give our service its first steel ships. The Cruisers article was so newsworthy that electrotype plates of its illustrations (specially engraved for the Institute by Maurice Joyce of Washington) were sold to daily papers in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, Boston, and Washington, as well as to the Navy Department.
In a day when the Bureaus lacked the publishing facilities they now possess, the Proceedings was the only media for spreading such important professional information throughout the service. In the issue following the Cruiser number, Luce wrote, “The Institute has flourished now for ten years, and in that time has been a medium of dissemination throughout the service of much that is of permanent value.” Its publications make an “exceedingly interesting and valuable contribution to our professional literature, . . . which is a gratifying indication . . . of a tendency towards higher and broader fields of investigation. This is a healthy and hopeful sign of the future, and must lead to some systematized effort by means of which this evident desire for professional improvement may be gratified and encouraged.”
The Naval War College: 1883-1893
Luce was not alone in wanting a more “systematized effort. ... for professional improvement.” Most of the Prize Essayists had advocated an advanced school for officers. So, now that we had the beginnings of an enlisted force, armor, powerful machinery, effective naval rifles and steel ships, he felt it was time to qualify our officers to handle them in battle. He devoted the balance of the article cited above to describing the three advanced schools for army officers, and concluded with the blunt suggestion that a naval school be established to prepare officers “for the great business of their lives— the practical operation of war.” He recommended Coasters Harbor Island, Newport, as its site and specifically suggested that the course cover “the Science of War, Ordnance and International Law. ...” As a direct result of the article, Secretary of the Navy Chandler issued a general order (October, 1884) establishing a Naval War College at Coasters Harbor Island, Newport, R. I., with Commodore S. B. Luce as its first President. The first class reported in 1885. The following year Luce was relieved as President by Captain Mahan.
If we may trust the evidence of the Proceedings, the struggle to win for the War College recognition as a sound arm of the service was more bitter than the struggles for modern ships and material. As it developed, the controversy hinged first on whether there should be a War College at all; and then on whether its teaching should follow the traditional college system of required reading and lectures, or whether the problem method (since so widely advocated by Progressive educators) should be adopted. Mahan won on the first issue, but, in spite of his skill as a propagandist, failed to make his highly-disciplined brand of teaching a permanent feature.
The order establishing the War College was issued reluctantly, and top official opinion disapproved for ten years. As Mahan expressed it, “in the race for material and mechanical development, sea-officers as a class have allowed their attention to be unduly diverted from the systematic study of the Conduct of War, which is their peculiar and main concern.” But despite the general apathy, he made the course both interesting and outstanding. Professor Soley became a regular lecturer, and Mahan chose the visiting officer and civilian lecturers with great care. In 1888, for instance, Theodore Roosevelt spoke on “The True Naval Conditions during the War of 1812.” Although he continued Luce’s practice of contributing selected lectures to the Proceedings, Mahan demonstrated his adherence to what he considered “correct action” by refusing to authorize publication of all the College lectures. In a letter published in 1889, he pointed out that such a move would destroy the College by changing it from a disciplined course of reading supplemented by sound lectures (in which a critical audience kept speakers on their toes) to a mere correspondence course in which no one was on his toes. He said most of the officers then in the Navy were not students and would not, “if left to themselves, initiate any independent study of the principles of the art of war.” They can be induced to make such a study, he said,“only by an organized effort of the Government.”
In spite of Mahan’s efforts, the War College was discontinued from 1889 to 1892. During those years Mahan published The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660- 1783, and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 17931812. In the Preface to the second work, he wrote, “The cordial reception given [my previous work] . . . is . . . not personal. . . . For, if the commendation bestowed be at all deserved, it ... is due, wholly and exclusively to the Naval War College, which was instituted to promote such studies.” He had previously expressed the same idea in the Proceedings. Comparison of his articles there with his books reveals that much of the fundamental material of both books cited above, as well as of his Naval Strategy (published in 1911), first appeared in the pages of the Proceedings.
Enthusiastic reception of Mahan’s writings abroad, his continued devotion to the War College, and personnel changes which ; included the appointment of Professor Soley as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, all led to the re-opening of the College in 1892. In a Proceedings article that year Mahan announced the introduction of a war game problem as the central core of the curriculum. The games became so popular that Captain H. C. Taylor, President of the College in 1895, wrote in the Proceedings, “It is the governing principle of the system to encourage the creative faculty in the minds of the officers in matters concerning warfare, and to dispel that passive condition of receptivity. . . .” Creative lectures like Mahan’s were discarded along with the “passive condition of receptivity” and the war games became the central feature. It is interesting to note that as late as 1916 Instructor Allan F. Westcott, U.S.N.A., in a Proceedings article referred to the lecture system as “generally discredited.” In the same year, Captain William S. Sims in his “Cheer Up! There Is No Naval War College,” attributed 'what he considered its weakness to the dearth of non-fleet personnel. Without quite saying so, he suggested that a return to Mahan’s lecture system would produce sounder results.
Luce and Mahan are not the only prominent names to appear in the Proceedings. Lieutenant Commander Caspar F. Goodrich, who with Mahan won Honorable Mention in the first Prize Essay contest, retained his interest in the Institute and eventually became its President. He was a steady contributor until 1924. Master Carlos G. Calkins won Honorable Mention in 1882, and won first prizes in 1883 and 1886. He contributed regularly until long after his retirement as a Captain. In 1895 Assistant Naval Constructor Richmond Pearson Hobson won Honorable Mention with “A Summary of the Situation and Outlook in Europe”; one of the first articles in the Proceedings to reveal a consciousness of our development as a world power. Hobson predicted the Russo-Japanese War, and forecast the Franco-German struggle, but seemed more seriously worried by what he considered a Russian threat to world peace. Its issue, he wrote, “will determine whether western civilization, like the high civilizations of the past, has lost the ruggedness adapted to and necessary in this rugged world of ours.” He also wrote an excellent technical article on the use of aluminum in the yacht Defender, and in 1897 was a member of the Institute Board of Control. In 1901 the Proceedings announced the publication of Modern Seamanship by Lieutenant Commander Austen M. Knight, who for several years had been a member of the Board of Control, and who, as a junior officer, had contributed articles on the use of carrier pigeons for ship-to-shore communication. Among its civilian writers were William Gibbs McAdoo, Theodore Roosevelt, and Albert Bushnell Hart.
Prominent officers who appeared rarely or not at all in the early Proceedings are probably just as significant as their more literate brethren. Commanders Winfield Scott Schley and William T. Sampson appear on the first published list of Institute members. Each contributed one article: Sampson on “Naval Defense of the Coast” in 1888, and Schley’s “Official Report on the Behavior of the U.S.S Baltimore” in 1892.
Commander George Dewey appears on the list of Institute members published in 1878. His only contribution was practically a command performance. In June, 1899, Lieutenant Calkins submitted an article describing the action at Manila Bay. Shortly after its appearance the Institute received a letter in which Dewey said some of Calkins’ statements disagreed with his official reports, and that he “considered it necessary to ask that the Department will request the Naval Institute to publish in its next issue my official reports, which are correct in every respect.” Both the letter and the report appeared in the next issue.
A great many foreign writers contributed to the Proceedings in the 90’s and the decade following the turn of the century. William Laird Clowes, the distinguished British naval historian, won the Prize Essay in 1892 with “Torpedo-boats.” He was a frequent contributor during the next ten years. In 1894 Rear Admiral Luigi Fincati, Royal Italian Navy, who is still recognized as a leading authority on medieval ships, contributed an article describing Mediterranean war fleets in the 14th century, and one on “Ancient Naval Warfare.” In 1908 Captain Gabriel JDarrieux, French Navy, submitted a continued series entitled “War on the Sea.” The following year his countryman, Commander Rene Daveluy, wrote a continued “Study of Naval Strategy,” which he followed in 1910 with “The Genius of Naval Warfare.”
The Proceedings continued to print (and occasionally request) discussion of specific articles long after the turn of the century, but early in the 80’s its major contribution to naval development began to shift slowly from the stimulation of general discussion to publication of Professional Notes and technical articles. The first strictly technical articles were written in 1877 by Professor Charles E. Munroe, U.S.N.A. His regular contributions soon became the first Professional Notes. By 1883 reviews of articles in the Journal of the (British) Royal United Services Institute were a regular feature. Regular reviews of similar foreign naval and professional magazines increased steadily during the next ten years. Even the Russian M or ski Sbornik (Naval Compendium) was regularly read and reviewed by Lieutenant John B. Bernadou. One of the best indications of the standing of the Proceedings as a professional magazine is the fact that officers of practically all nations with navies (including Japan) appeared on the Proceedings subscription list by 1885.
Professor Rounsaville Alger is as fully identified with the Proceedings’ development as a technical magazine as anyone could be. Number One graduate in the Class of 1880, he specialized in technical aspects of gunnery and soon transferred to the regular Navy Corps of Professors of Mathematics. As an Ensign in 1883 he was contributing ordnance material to the Professional Notes. After long service as contributor, translator, and editor of the Professional Notes, he served as editor of the Proceedings from 1903 until his death in 1909. In addition to his technical writings, he was responsible for an improved format, introduction of color to the cover, and the use of advertisements in about the same proportion as today. (The first advertisement, for Royal Baking Powder, appeared in 1890.) He also secured a much wider readership inside the service, increased membership, and reduced dues.
Alger also introduced the practice of reprinting longer Proceedings articles as books for general distribution. Despite its growth since the Civil War, the Navy of the 90’s still lacked any regular machinery for preparing and distributing even the most elementary manuals and drill books. For many years the Proceedings had filled this gap by publishing discussions of training, and other routines, but, with the rapid expansion in the 90’s, this no longer sufficed. By reprinting its significant articles, offering them in cheap but serviceable bindings, and keeping them up to date, the Institute provided the service with books ranging all the way from manuals like The Landing Force and Small-Arms Instructions, Ship and Gun Drills, and Naval Electricians Text-Book, to texts for use at the Academy and War College.
The Proceedings’ predominantly technical period ended at about the time of Professor Alger’s death. One reason was the rapid expansion and centralization of our naval administration following the Spanish- American War. As the Bureaus developed more facilities of their own, they depended less on the Proceedings. A fair example of the extent to which a Bureau frequently depended on the Proceedings occurred in 1899. When the Bureau of Navigation wanted all ships to adopt a standard Watch, Quarter, and Station Bill, it submitted an article and invited general comment before issuing any directives. By 1910, similar problems were being handled through more official channels. A second reason was the development of security regulations. As naval equipment became more complex, its effective use no longer depended upon understanding basic principles, but rather on the maintenance of specialized machinery. So instead of profiting by open discussion and wide dissemination of basic knowledge, as had been the case, the best interests of the service forbade free discussion of new equipment— especially discussion in a magazine that anyone could buy.
There was also a more personal reason which showed that naval officers, like other American professional men, took rather a different attitude towards themselves and their work in the 20th century than they had in the 19th. The men who in the 70’s and 80’s built the first good naval rifles, steam engines, and steel ships, naturally became theorists. They were more concerned with the drafting board and slide rule than with operational problems. They felt that the latter could be most effectively overcome by concentrating on the former. But the Ensigns of the 80’s and 90’s, who had to go to sea in early steel ships, were shocked by both the inadequacies of the vessels and the archaic organization of the service. Thus there developed a sharp conflict between the officers ashore, whose problems were necessarily theoretical, and their juniors afloat, whose problems, by the nature of things, were practical. In 1902 Ensign Thomas C. Hart summarized the conflict excellently in his discussion of an article on “The Training of Seamen” by Lieutenant Dudley W. Knox (the first of many excellent Knox articles). He said it was entirely natural for the senior officers to be satisfied with the service they had built, and also natural that the juniors (who remembered none of the early problems) agitate for faster improvement. To Hart, the most serious phase of the problem seemed to be the fact that the juniors felt unable to express their dissenting opinions, but preferred to wait until they became sufficiently senior to act on them. This remarkable letter clearly reveals the sharp change since 1873 when sharp criticism had inspired the rebuilding, and so permitted our long- neglected Navy to come out fighting in 1898.
For all these reasons, then, the Proceedings’ appearance changed slowly after 1910. Budgetary statistics and newspaper material gradually replaced the technical information and reviews of foreign magazines. More historical material was contributed (the first John Paul Jones article in 1906), and foreign writers gradually dropped out. Articles on pay and fitness reports began to appear, and the editors began to ask for “sea stories.” Before many years, the Proceedings was the professional magazine of general interest to all officers that we now recognize. The transition was slow, however, and outstanding articles, like Marine Lieutenant W. T. Hoadley’s 1914 translation of official Japanese staff records, have never completely disappeared.
Gunnery, Ocean-Going Battleships, Submarines, and Aircraft
The clash between theorists and “practical” men underlay Mahan’s difficulty in winning acceptance for the War College. As Hart’s letter indicates, it was one of the facts of life in service at the turn of the century. It showed clearly in the Proceedings in 1904 when Alger, speaking for the Board of Control, publicly rebuked Lieutenant Yates Stirling, Jr., for exceeding the “proper limit. ... to freedom of discussion” when he referred to Bureau chiefs as “Rip Van Winkle” administrators. And, of course, it bristles all over the gunnery and big-ship-big- gun controversies sparked by Lieutenant Commander William S. Sims. —-
There had been ordnance articles in almost every issue of the Proceedings, but early pleas for accurate gunnery were confined to a persistent cry for the training of seamen- gunners. In 1896 Ensign Philip Andrews made more specific recommendations in “A System of Aiming Drill.” Two years later Ensign R. H. Jackson won Honorable Mention with “Target Practice and the Training of Gun Captains.” In 1900 Lieutenant J. B. Blish suggested “A Method for Scoring Target Practice in the Navy,” and Professor Alger discussed “Errors in Gunfire at Sea.”/ Alger won the 1903 Prize Essay with “Gunnery in Our Navy, the Causes of its Inferiority and Their Remedies,” and in the same year wrote “The Accuracy and Probability of Gun Fire.” Thus, when Sims’ explosive “Training Ranges and Long-Range Firing” appeared in the Proceedings, 1904, it had been preceded by eight years of consistent professional spade work. In his article Sims said, “I have attempted the following explanation of this important subject . . . [because] I hope ... it will be the means of changing certain opinions,” now impeding progress, “held by many whose present duties necessarily prevent them giving these matters close attention.” He went on to explain that our erratic gunnery resulted from using gun pointers as marksmen, and outlined a system for supplying them with accurate information which is the basis for present gunnery doctrine. Unlike his predecessors, Sims took direct action when his paper failed to change the opinions “impeding progress.” He wrote President Theodore Roosevelt a personal letter, repeating many of his points from the Proceedings article. Roosevelt was convinced, Sims’ suggestions were adopted as regulations, and Sims was appointed Inspector of Target Practice to see that the new rules went into effect.
The problem of building fast, seaworthy vessels to protect our greatly expanded possessions had become as pressing as the gunnery question. Designers of the ABCD Cruisers and their immediate successors were originally much criticized because their devotion to speed and firepower produced ships in which men could neither live nor work. Largely as a result of complaints from junior officers, they reduced armor and machinery to gain cruising range and living space. Like most compromises, it was not entirely satisfactory. In 1894 Clowes, the British naval historian, questioned the doctrine in a Proceedings article, “Considerations on the Battle Ship in Action.” In 1896 Lieutenant A. P. Niblack (a room mate of Sims at the Naval Academy) won the Essay Prize with a discussion of “The Tactics of Ships in the Line of Battle.” Both articles suggested the long-range ship, but the first to advocate a truly ocean-going battleship was submitted in 1903 by Lieutenant Homer C. Poundstone, another of Sims’ Academy room mates. In 1906 Lieutenant Commander Niblack won Honorable Mention with “Elements of Fleet Tactics”; and the same year Captain Mahan innocently brought the question to a head in a Proceedings article. After reviewing the available facts, he expressed the conclusion that lessons of the Russo-Japanese War suggested battleships of medium speed and range, and with mixed- calibre armament. That was too much for Sims. Leaning heavily on a Proceedings paper specifically describing Russian movements at Tsushima, he wrote a characteristically volatile article in which he insisted that results of the battle unequivocally supported all-big-gun, one-calibre battleships of high speed, large displacement, and gun- power. The big-ship big-gun aspect of the paper appealed strongly to President Roosevelt. His vigorous sponsorship of Sims’ ideas was an essential factor in the design and construction of the first truly ocean-going battleships in our post-Civil War Navy.
In spite of the known effectiveness of Sims’ article, and in spite of their full sympathy with his advocacy of the ocean-going battleship, editors of the British United Service Magazine could not resist ridiculing the facts on which he based his case. (For instance, he denied that Togo crossed the T.) An anonymous British writer tore his article apart. The reprinting of the British article in the 1907 Proceedings is probably the only time an American naval publication has circulated a foreign attack on a prominent American officer. The friendly British- American discussion continued when Niblack answered British Naval Lieutenant A. C. Dewar’s “Value of Speed in Tactics and Strategy.”
There was much early concern with torpedoes in the Proceedings, as well as excellent technical discussion of the Holland submarine. But the first discussion of the submarine as an effective weapon was contributed in 1912 by Lieutenant Chester W. Nimitz. He explained the difference between ' submarines (hulls specifically designed for underwater work), and submersibles (hulls designed for surface work which could be submerged), and listed as one of the great advantages of both types a radio with fifty mile range.
The first aviation article appeared in 1911; Captain Irving W. Chambers reported on recent aviation meets to which he had been sent as an observer. He described in detail an instrument flight from Belmont Park, New York, to Garden City, Long Island, and return—a distance of thirty miles flown through fog and rain. He reported an altitude record of 9,714 feet and “a phenomenal speed of 79.2 miles per hour.” He ingeniously made the aircraft of 1911 seem cheap by comparing their cost to the costs of Navy boats: 28 foot motor whale boat $1,635; 50 foot steam cutter, $25,037; aircraft, $1,675 to $10,000.
Also in 1911 there were excellent illustrated articles by Chambers describing the initial “carrier” flights made by Mr. Eugene Ely in 1910—his first, a take-off from an improvised, sloping flight deck at the bow of the Birmingham, and later a landing and take-off using a temporary platform over the stern of the battleship Pennsylvania. Original plans required the Birmingham to be underway so her speed would help Ely to become airborne, but he got impatient and took off with the ship dead in the water. As a result, naval aviation policy-makers concluded that both take-off and landing should be over the stern. In 1912 and 1913 technical aviation articles from foreign magazines and and excellent paper on “Maritime Aviation” by Captain Rene Daveluy, French Navy, were translated for the Proceedings. By 1915 there was a regular aviation section in Professional Notes, and the War College specially recommended aviation articles contributed to the Proceedings that year by Lieutenant R. C. Saufley and Commander T. D. Parker.
Organization and Centralization
As we have seen, the early years of the new Navy were too full of new ideas and new material to permit much attention to centralized—or even uniform—administration. The single ship long remained the largest effective unit, and there was no successful effort to standardize even its organization until the turn of the century. In 1899, when the Bureau of Navigation took the realistic step of inviting unofficial comment from officers on its “Ship Board Organization” (by submitting it to the Proceedings), Rear Admiral Fredrick Rodgers wrote, “there has never been imposed upon commanding officers of modern vessels of war a uniform system of organization approved by the Department.” He seemed to favor the change, but others, including Commander William Smith, vigorously opposed it. “The efficiency of the ship,” Smith said, “should not be seriously subordinated to any system of organization in matters of detail merely for the sake of uniformity.”
Even this first official move in the direction of centralized control came thirteen years after Lieutenant Calkins in his 1886 Prize Essay had asked “What Changes in Organization and Drill are Necessary . . . ?” In the same year Ensign W. L. Rodgers won Honorable Mention with “The Result of All Naval Administration . . . Finds Its Expression in Good Organization. . . .” In 1891 Ensign A. P. Niblack (already mentioned as a Lieutenant Commander) won first prize with a paper on “The Enlistment, Training, and Organization of . . . Our Ships of War.” It was the first of a distinguished series of contributions from him on organization and administration which suggest strongly that they are the basis for many sections of the current BuPers Manual. In 1896 Lieutenant William F. Fullam (later Naval Academy Superintendent) also wrote on shipboard organization. No wonder the Bureau began to do something about it in 1899.
After 1900, interest in administration shifted from the single ship to centralized organization of larger units both afloat and ashore. In 1901 Lieutenant John Hood won first prize with “Naval Administration and Organization,” and in 1905 Admiral Luce returned to action with an Honorable Mention Essay, “The Department of the Navy.” In 1906 Pay Inspector J. A. Mudd wrote the first of a long series of articles on purchases, storekeeping, pay, and general organization. He was joined in 1911 by Paymaster Charles Conrad with the Prize Essay, “Navy Yard j Economy.” The Proceedings articles of these two officers clearly foreshadow establishment of the Supply Corps, as well as many of its basic procedures.
Lieutenant Ernest J. King, 1909 Prize Essayist and 1912-14 Proceedings editor, endorsed the progressive thinking reflected in this long series of articles on organization. “It is universally admitted,” he wrote, “that the service is in need of reform in the matter of organization, and this is as necessary on board ship as in any other connection. The methods of handling personnel now obtaining in the service are largely due to accretion, combined with the primary disadvantage that there has never been any logical system founded on principles, on which to base anything. The result is that the Navy personnel has no semblance of organization, other than what exists temporarily; in the matter of personnel, the service leads a “hand-to- mouth” existence.” How many realized in 1909 that a career had begun which historians may consider the major influence upon the centralization of our naval administration? As Sims had done for gunnery and ocean-going battleships, King forced into practice much of the constructive organizational criticism of his early service years.
As a senior officer, and particularly in his dual position as CNO and COMINCH, he sternly insisted on centralization, teamwork, sounder personnel practices, and the elimination of overlapping jurisdictions. And certainly no one realized in 1909 that, more than thirty years later, Fleet Admiral King’s “logical system, founded on principles,” would bring our Navy victory in a tremendous, two-ocean war.
A Flexible Corps op Officers
Through all the build-up to ocean-ranging vessels and centralized administration, a persistent undercurrent of thinking centered upon creating a trained, specialized, but flexible corps of officers. All of the fundamental ideas which underlie the recent attainment of the goal, through the Holloway Plan, were expressed during the Proceedings’ first five years.
In the first Proceedings article Luce wrote, “The settled, well-established policy of our government is to maintain but a comparatively small standing army and a small navy, relying upon the patriotism of our people to swell either indefinitely as may be needed; but such reserves must be specifically provided for. This has already been done for the army most effectually. The agricultural-college bill . . . provides for . . . colleges where instruction in military tactics is made obligatory; and another statute . . . provides the means, by authorizing the detail of army officers ... as instructors . . . of military science. ... It is plainly seen that while the military ... is well represented in our legislative halls, not a single representative voice is heard in behalf of the navy . . ., but we, too, must have a reserve ... on which ... to draw in the event of a sudden expansion of the navy—- an expansion . . . that may be called for now any day.” In the first Prize Essay, Lieutenent Commander A. D. Brown foreshadowed the linking of officers training and reserve programs by attaching the same importance to naval education that Luce had attributed to an officer reserve. “The question of naval education,” Brown wrote, “is .one . . . fraught not only with the improvement of that branch of the public service, but, in event of war, with the honor of the entire country. ... In the same prize contest, Mahan brought forward the remaining basic elements of the Holloway Plan. His suggested program leaned heavily on the Naval Academy; he recommended an undergraduate course with the maximum emphasis on liberal arts, followed by two years indoctrination duty at sea; he proposed lineal standing based on both academic record and sea- indoctrination; and he strongly advocated regular tours of shore duty devoted to specialized professional study.
The difficulties of welding these originally diverse elements (reserve and regular training, lineal standing after practical experience, facilities for post-graduate training of all ranks) into a program for providing an effective, flexible officer corps, certainly justified sixty-six years of discussion and experiment. As early as 1879, prize essayist Goodrich recognized that the Naval Academy could not provide the necessary additional educational facilities. Within a few years the practice of assigning officers to the Newport Torpedo Station marked the first step in specialized post-graduate training. Establishment of the War College at Newport in 1884 was the second step, and its full recognition by 1894 completed the foundation of our present system of post-graduate study. Nor did the idea of an officer reserve die during these early years. In 1875 Lieutenant Mason included it in his “Two Lessons for the Future.” The 1882 prize essayists, Lieutenant J. D. Kelly, Lieutenant Commander F. E. Chadwick, Lieutenant Richard Wain- wright, and Calkins, all advocated an officer reserve. In 1888 Captain A. P. Cooke discussed “Our Naval Reserve and the Necessity for its Organization.” Lieutenant Sidney A. Staunton strongly recommended a reserve in a War College lecture published in the 1889 Proceedings. And two years later, Lieutenant J. C. Soley wrote on “Naval Reserve and Naval Militia.” In 1897 H. G. Dohrman (as associate member of the Institute) won Honorable Mention with “A Proposed Uniform Course of Instruction for the Naval Militia,” and during the Spanish- American War many contributors pressed for a realistic reserve program.
In 1899 a truly flexible program was too thorny a problem for a decentralized service just beginning to work out Line-and-Staff relationships. As a result of legislation which modernized officer administration and expanded the Academy, emphasis shifted to the narrower field of training regular officers. In 1906 Lieutenant W. T. Cluverius wrote “Annapolis: A Fair Show Wanted.” In 1912 Lieutenant Commander A. W. Hinds used the Proceedings to ask “What’s the Matter with the Naval Academy?” Later the same year Midshipman Ernest G. Small wrote “The U. S. Naval Academy, an Undergraduate Point of View.” In 1913 Commander Reginald R. Belknap described the new “Post-Graduate Department of the Naval Academy,” and in 1916 Lieutenant Ridgeley Hunt won Honorable Mention with “Education at the U. S. Naval Academy.” By 1916 threat of war shifted interest back towards the broader problem.' Instructor Westcott compared “The Colleges and the Naval Academy,” and Lieutenant Commander R. R. Riggs (retired) refocused attention upon the reserve with “Wanted! A Naval Militia Mission.”
Just as Spanish War developments had postponed an effective officer reserve, the rapid expansion-contraction pattern of World War I delayed sound integration of regular and reserve components. However, the trend toward centralized administration assured eventual success, and progress during the 20’s included the last of the necessary elements—establishment of an NROTC program like the one Luce had advocated. But depression and reduced appropriations pulled its teeth, so we entered another period of what Luce had called “sudden expansion of the navy,” relying “upon the patriotism of our people” to provide the essential junior and middle-grade Officers. Fortunately, this time neither lessons of previous wars nor progress of the previous period of peace were entirely forsaken. Late in the war, findings of the King and Pye Boards were turned over to the Holloway Board. And in November, 1947, seventy-three years after its first article advocated the program, the Proceedings devoted its leading article to a full description of the Holloway Plan, written by the Superintendent of the Naval Academy.
And now that the United States once more considers the Navy its first line of defense, seventy-five years of progressive thinking and action—often at the risk of official censure—have given our service not merely centralized control of world-ranging units with almost undreamed-of firepower; not only a flexible program for manning the bases, the ships, and guns with intelligent, young Americans; but also a program which promises to complete the new Navy’s basic working equipment by providing a flexible officer corps through the “employment of the short term commission, ... a continually replenished reservoir of . . . Reserve Officers . . . [and] the great number of junior officers needed in active service, without the forced attrition and accompanying waste ... of . . . highly productive years.”
Lieutenant Commander Russell is a graduate of Haverford College. He entered the Naval Reserve in 1942 and served in aviation activitis at Quonset Point, Chicago, and Gainesville, Georgia. Since June, 1946, he has been a civilian instructor in the Naval Academy Department of English, History, and Government.