The challenge atomic weapons pose for today’s navies may well influence the future of sea power as radically as the nineteenth century’s shift from sail to steam. Consequently, the Secretary of the Navy’s announcement that our Midway class carriers are prepared to handle atomic bomb carrying planes, that a “true guided missile ship” has been launched, focuses an encouraging spotlight upon a vital question, deserving more attention than it has hitherto received. What will be the impact of atomic warfare upon the Navy’s vital mission to secure and retain absolute command of the seas?
As long ago as 1949 the Army Chief of Staff warned that “if called upon to fight tomorrow, the Army will have to rely upon World War II equipment,” not as good, he asserted, as some Russian matériel, notably tanks. The Finletter commission earlier described an equally dangerous condition in the Air Force. Only for the Navy was national policy complacently proposing that a future war be fought mainly with a past war’s equipment, the extensive moth ball fleet skillfully preserved after V-J Day. The Secretary of the Navy’s public statement is encouraging evidence that neither resignation to, nor acceptance of, American complacency reigns in his department. Planning to fight the next war as a repetition of the last could be as disastrous for a supposedly overwhelming fleet as it is obviously so for an outnumbered army and air force.
We cannot safely assume that the same fleet which drove Japan and Germany from the seas will, unreinforced, be assured of dominance against a new foe relying upon different tactics and weapons. But, in the event of another war, control of the sea by the United States will be no less imperative than it was in 1942-45.
The demise of surface navies, prematurely announced upon the advent of atomic weapons, will prove as false as earlier “deaths” forecast because of submarines and, later, because of bomb-carrying airplanes. Neither subs, planes, nor the combination of the two decreased the influence of sea power upon history, described seventy years ago by Alfred Thayer Mahan. Yet both appreciably altered naval tactics, equipment, and organization. The potential of atomic missiles, already added to that of the airplane and sure to be extended to the submarine, postulate further changes in procedures and materiel.
What rôle will nuclear fission play, to endanger or abet, American sea power? Although fundamentally an instrument of offense, can the atomic weapon be used with telling results by the defender? How soon will atomic energy be harnessed to power ships, not merely to destroy them?
New weapons, however powerful, do not invalidate the principles of war on the high seas or cancel them in land warfare. But they necessitate equivalent innovations in the application of those principles, innovations proportional to the importance of the new weapons. Wars have been won less frequently by “secret weapons” than by astute employment of combat instruments known to both contestants but adequately appreciated by only one, the one who emerged a decisive winner.
Sometimes both sides fail to appreciate the means at their disposal. Armor for ships provided such an instance. Had the Confederacy concentrated its efforts upon seaworthy armored cruisers instead of unwieldly steelclad rams, restricted to coastal waters, the North’s strangling blockade might have been irreparably broken; unless of course the Federal Government’s greater resources had spurned monitors for seagoing ironclads.
Similarly, in two world wars, Germany dwelt upon the words of Mahan without understanding his meaning. Attempts, impossible of success, to build up surface navies to fight Britain impelled the neglect, on two occasions, of the submarine. Not until too late were either Tirpitz or Doenitz allowed to concentrate on the one weapon which might have brought success, the more so because twice Britain initially underestimated the subsurface crafts’ menace.
The most recent example of achieving decisive results by an unprecedented employment of new but not secret weapons was the Nazi blitz built around land armor. That success overran Western Europe with unbelievable ease. It might have defeated Russia in 1941 had Hitler wholly accepted Guderian’s advice and provided more tanks. Yet all Germany’s opponents possessed armor. They made the simple error of employing it under the tactics of a previous war.
Today a similar situation exists with respect to atomic weapons. Britain and Russia have them although their stockpiles are reputedly small compared to ours. Atomic weapons were employed in the last war on a small scale compared to what may be expected in a future conflict. Who will make the most effective use of these new weapons—- and what will that employment be in another world struggle?
While we alone had an atomic stockpile, the guiding tenet of this country’s plans to resist aggression remained tied to the capability of our strategic air force to deliver knockout blows against an enemy heartland. That day is so far past that newspaper discussion by eminent authorities emphasizes the tactical use of atomic weapons in warfare. New means of delivery include a gun firing an atomic shell. Missiles have increased manyfold in power, yet “fractional missiles” are also discussed. When Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Bradley stated that “the atomic bomb will make a formidable defensive weapon” against aggressor troop masses. The new weapons are now an accepted tactical tool.
During our short lived atomic monopoly the principal question facing sea power was whether or not carrier aviation should be included in the plans for retaliatory strategic bombing of an aggressor who violated the peace. That argument is now a dead issue. The certainty of atomic weapons’ employment in land and sea battles has stripped it of even academic interest. Our present, and ever growing stockpile, our definite NATO and Pacific ANZUS treaty obligations, together with Soviet progress in nuclear weapons make it inevitable that in a future war atomic missiles will be delivered by every agency which can develop the capability.
The naval carrier along with the strategic and tactical bombers of the Air Force already pack a nuclear punch. Now we have atomic artillery. Guided missiles and free rockets with atomic warheads are forecast. Atomic torpedoes are at least a possibility. What is the impact of these new developments upon the mission of the U. S. Navy?
What is the menace for fleets at sea as well as in harbor; what for individual ships? Are not submarines more vulnerable to underwater atomic explosions than the surface vessel? Are amphibious operations possible against a foe possessing atomic missiles together with the means of delivery? What are the dangers to ports and bases for ship repair and maintenance in the shadow of such mighty blasts of destruction? How will huge, impossible-to-conceal, shipyards continue to construct the millions of replacement tonnages every major war has demanded? Will atomic power release large warships, perhaps even submarines, from the apron strings of fuel supply?
It might appear that the United States would be the one nation which could view the progress of an atomic age with assurance. Our surface fleets are unchallengeable as is our naval air arm. Below the surface we are, at worst, not lagging. Our atomic stockpile exceeds by some large factor that of any opponent; our scientific resources are superior. Surely it would be reasonable to assume that we can maintain our commanding lead in naval supremacy, atomic or otherwise.
Yet, if there be any flaw in our sea power prospects today, that flaw appears only in our peculiar national psychology, our tendency toward extremes, either of complacency or alarm. The alarm is concentrated upon the threat to metropolitan areas. The complacency manifests itself in our attitude toward naval armament. Because Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made object lessons, we dwell too heavily upon local, close-in defense of our centers of population. Because we ended the last war with fleets superior to those of any two nations combined, we are prone to ignore manifest changes in the problem of naval supremacy today.
Are Navies Underestimated?
Is it not possible that a navy prepared and equipped for offensive action in atomic warfare will be those cities’ best protection— just as an offensive fleet was an infinitely superior instrument of coast defense compared to fortifications and monitors when Mahan expounded his principles?
Naval power, unlike land armies, can combine offensive with defensive operations. By control of the sea, “dominant fleets can simultaneously protect their (and an overseas army’s) lines of communication as well as its nation’s coastal centers while striking at key points along hostile shores.” Bernard Brodie’s prophecy, at the outbreak of World War II, applies with equal force today. We overemphasize nuclear fission’s threat while ignoring the tremendously enhanced striking power of the “dominant fleet” able to deliver atomic missiles. Principles remain valid— but is U. S. policy geared to exploit to the utmost its precious possession of “dominant fleets”?
Logically we must combat the complacent belief that invincible sea power of 1945 remains mistress of the seas after eight years in which tactical as well as strategical employment of atomic missiles have wrought their profound alterations, when the identity, armament, and location of our probable opponent have changed. Little in fact remains unaltered—only the Navy’s mission and an aggressor’s objective. The U. S. Navy must retain its absolute control of the seas. Its opponent, like those of the last war, will be bent upon world conquest which predicates the prior shattering of our Navy’s capability to perform its mission.
There are indications that a war against a continental land mass may require an expansion of the command of the sea concept beyond that acceptable in World War II. Sound judgment and the experiences of a prolonged cold war demonstrate the inability of blockade alone to strangle, or even seriously handicap, a landmass. Yet the very definition of land mass rightly implies a vast extent of seacoast; a complexity of narrow waters, inland seas certainly, and navigable rivers probably, as fields for sea power’s offensive employment. Unless we rashly insist upon the costly, logistically back-breaking attempt to invade a landmass heartland, such narrow waters are our only avenues for offensive action.
Doubtless the conservative mind revolts at the prospect. Fleets committed in waters where land based air can assail them? Insanity; like matching the guns of wooden frigates against the stone bastions of shore defenses in ancient days! Now that land forces possess atomic missiles as well— super insanity!
Yet the idea is far from novel. Von Clausewitz’ famed plan for a “future” (in 1820) European war contains one of the few recorded appreciations of sea power by that apostle of land combat. Assuming an alliance of Prussia and England, he insisted upon retaining half the British army in England because “dominant sea power and the expanse of French coast line would result in this force tieing down more than twice its strength in French armies, devoted to the defense of their shores.” Is our strategy today taking cognizance of the striking parallel?
Whatever the apparent difficulties of offensive naval action in narrow waters, at least the study must be made by unbiased strategists and tacticians. We cannot overlook Mahan’s considered axiom: “Whatever the tactical difficulties involved, the strategic necessities compel a diligent study of how to meet them.”
What then are the tactical difficulties? Are they insuperable or merely seemingly so? Viewed in the light of atomic weapons, as they must be viewed, viewed in the light of highly coordinated Joint Operations, sea, air, airborne, and amphibious—are they insanity—or brilliant daring?
First it is encumbent upon the planner to divest himself of the shibboleths and fantasies that surround these newest tools of war. The atomic bomb is by far the greatest explosive force yet harnessed by man. It adds the destructive effects of intense flash heat and the unnecessarily mysterious radiation hazard to its super blast. But, if “the strategic act” consists of the “delivery of organized firepower from a base to a target” as Stefan T. Possony logically postulates, actual employment of the bomb involves all the difficulties encountered by strategists in planning the use of so-called conventional weapons.
Mere possession of the big boom does not guarantee the foe’s destruction. There remain the age-old problems of providing the base, plus insuring the delivery on the target. But, ignoring these for a moment, let us concentrate upon the bomb’s unvarnished capabilities.
Atomic Fallacies
A considerable amount of unclassified data on atomic weapons is now available to refute the scare headlines of recent years. The comparatively small damage to the target fleet at Bikini by atomic blast and heat received little attention. Yet we accepted as fact, sensational exaggeration of the awesome, because unknown, dangers from ionizing radiation, which resulted from a new phenomenon, the underwater explosion. Public announcement was never made of the intensity of radiation on the ships, materially undamaged, that were scuttled after those tests.
Now, years later, sound scientific data make the thoughtful wonder if they might not have been continued in service. We have learned that radiation measurement in milliroentgens, requisite in laboratories to protect workers who incur repeated daily exposures, is a superfluous precaution under battle conditions. Every chest x-ray exposes the patient to several thousand milliroentgens, every dental x-ray to several hundred. We have also learned that the intensity of lingering radiation diminishes rapidly with the passage of hours.
Reliable meteorologists have cast serious doubt upon the universality of the overtouted “base surge.”* Climatic conditions of moisture and temperature peculiar to equatorial regions may be prerequisites to its formation. The “deadly radioactive rain” that allegedly accompanied that surge may be, in fact, harmless to human life. Sufficient unclassified scientific data have been released to prove that sea-borne fleets will not be destroyed, or rendered poisonous death traps for their crews, by single bombs as were, allegedly, the “sitting ducks” in Bikini lagoon.
Radiation hazards shrink to their true, though by no means negligible, proportion when we assess the percentage of the bomb’s power, about 15%, that goes into ionizing radiation. Moreover, just as tank crews behind their armor are the most protected soldiers on battlefields, so the majority of seamen have far greater armor to shield them. Any thickness cuts off the menace of flash heat, each inch and a half of steel reduces by one half the degree of radiation which penetrates it.
Another loosely used term in connection with atomic warfare is “dispersion.” The prevalent error of acclaiming undefined dispersion as the unfailing atomic defense ignores the principle of mass and makes a mockery of logistics. Nonetheless, we can readily perceive that it will not be fleets or convoys at sea that are most endangered. Normally naval vessels can achieve, without sacrificing command control, a degree of dispersion impossible in ground warfare, a dispersion in fact which may limit atomic missile targets to a single highly mobile ship. Viewed in this light, which becomes the more vulnerable base: the permanent heavy construction of the airfield for modern bombers or the swift carrier on the high seas? Air cover is indispensable for both—just as it was in the era of TNT bombs—but once found, the airfield is forever located. The carrier must be located and tracked before it can be made a target of atomic missiles which are far too valuable to be carried by search planes.
Should either land or seagoing base receive a hit from an atomic missile, the results will probably be equally disastrous. It is true that the runways and any installations underground may survive in the former following an air burst but there is little doubt that that type of hit will make new construction at another site preferable to the effort to repair the land runways so attacked.
Especially significant to sea power—and floating bomber bases—is the fact that sheer weight of numbers, in bomber planes, is no longer important. Thousand plane raids become an absurdity when only a tithe of that number can carry the bomb. Fighter protection remains a function of mass (numbers available on the spot) as well as speed, maneuverability, and pilot skill; but in those features the mobile floating base is at less disadvantage than the fixed shore establishment. Clouds of fighters are still essential defensively and as escorts,-but for maximum hitting power very small indeed is the number of bombers required.
When long range guided missiles join the “family of atomic weapons,” the comparison is little altered. Multi-ton missiles are not set up and serviced for firing in a moment upon unprepared sites. Guided missile ships, perhaps in time the submarine able to fire a guided missile, will be more difficult for the land-locked enemy to locate. Short range guided missiles seem affairs for ground combat between armies rather than air force weapons, but they are already potential armament of great promise for sea power. How difficult it will be for a landmass power to ensure that no hostile vessel slips within range and looses destructive blasts at valuable coastal installations! In contrast consider the task of shore defenders, guided missile equipped, in locating, tracking, and hitting the elusive target threatening them from far off on the waters.
A third bottle-neck to sound thinking in atomic warfare is the term “profitable target.” The mere designation of a concentration or an installation in that category immediately panics all hearers into accepting its destruction. Ignoring the perennial military incidentals of hostile location and identification, of successful missile delivery, the term is foolish without quantitative definition. The process of definition must consider at the very least the missions of both forces (known or deduced), size of opposing stockpiles, delivery means, and whether the target can be neutralized by conventional weapons.
A “profitable” target for an atomic missile can be intelligently designated only for a specific situation. The capability of the bomb to destroy the proposed target has relatively little to do with that determination. For example, while an atomic bomb can destroy any single ship, stockpile limitations will necessitate some careful staff work to decide which ships are worth the expenditure of the missile.
The money value of the target is likewise no reliable guide. If a fleet is running short of fuel, low cost tankers bringing supplies are obviously more “profitable” points of attack than the most costly battleship or carrier. Carried to extremes the absurdity of the prevalent “profitable target” notion is best exposed by the remark of the British general that, had Montgomery’s army had a single atomic bomb in North Africa, their most profitable target would have been Rommel’s command vehicle, when Rommel was in it.
Finally, but perhaps most important of all, is the apparent fixation upon defense against the bomb. No successful military force ever devoted its principal efforts merely to warding off a hostile blow. This mental aberration looms the more illogical when we realize that United States’ stockpiles contain many more missiles ready for combat than those of any possible opponent. In the field of atomic weapons, as in naval strength, we enjoy a commanding superiority. Overemphasis upon atomic threats invites disaster no less than utter dependence upon atomic power to win a war without armies and navies. Since we tried to convince ourselves, while we possessed an atomic monopoly, that our strategic bombers could “destroy” any hostile combination, our shock at discovering a potential foe had developed his own atomic weapons leads us to credit him equal or greater powers to visit destruction upon us.
Our concern should rather be how we employ our weapons against the enemy, only secondarily how we protect ourselves against his. This concept brings us back to the original thought-—offensive employment of sea power employing atomic weapons. Wherever our fleets can go and strike, wherever the atomic blows can hurt, that should direct U. S. strategy in the event war is forced upon us.
Exploitation by Task Forces
Three principles of war: surprise, mobility, and unity of command lend themselves especially to naval task forces with atomic capabilities backed by amphibious and airborne supporting elements. The initiative is held by such a force to choose its place and time of combat.
Expecting naval contingents to launch crushing blows against enemy installations from far at sea and thus paralyze his war potential is nothing but a variant of the old strategic bombing fallacy. Range is still an important element of bombing efficiency and victory by sheer destruction is hard, if not impossible, to attain. We now recognize it for what it is: the most costly form of triumph.
Hitting power must be exploited in order to reap the full results of that power. Sites subjected to atomic attack should be indeed “softened” for amphibious and airborne landings designed to exploit the shock effect. The airburst, for many reasons probably the normal use of the atomic bomb in the field, causes personnel casualties at distances where materiel goes unscathed. Equipment abandoned, little damaged, should not be left for a recuperating foe to collect and put back into use. Dazed survivors would be most easily made prisoners if quickly rounded up by assault troops following the explosions. Even though the mission were limited to a raid, landing forces from air or sea should be included to make the work of nuclear fission pay off.
There will be no radiation hazard after air bursts, no matter how fast landing parties can reach the proximity of ground zero. No obstacle exists to air landing or air dropping paratroops once the turbulence of the explosion is dissipated, a matter of a few minutes at most. Planes coming in down wind run no risk from radiation “fall-out.”
Of course such swift, powerful joint strikes cannot be left to haphazard selection by the task force commander, however brilliant. They must be closely knit elements in an over-all strategic plan to hurt the enemy to the greatest extent while we commit minimum forces; to make him dissipate his strength in guarding his expanse of water touched areas against such attacks; to keep him constantly anxious and off balance, unable to devote his huge mass armies to single purpose drives into the territories of our allies.
Map studies will show the wide field for such operations everywhere in the world. No “landmass” lacks the long expanse of coastline where inland seas, gulfs, bays—even navigable rivers—poke inquiring fingers of navigable waters far inland.
Even ideologically there is strength to be gained by actively exploiting American sea power. Almost universally, wherever lands border upon the sea, this country can count upon friends. The few exceptions are those nations like China which have never used the sea at their borders, which lack maritime interests along with the democratic influence those interests normally inspire. Can it be merely a coincidence of history that eventual sea supremacy has been won by the more democratic contestant, Athens over Persia, the Roman republic over Carthage, England over Spain and France?
But the narrow waters, already mentioned, must be included in the concept of twentieth century sea power or America will lose many friends and possible allies. Scandinavia, a democratic bulwark, can be saved from aggression only if the Baltic as well as the Atlantic comes under the sway of NATO navies—and supporting air. The north German ports, without which no major invasion of Europe from the east can be logistically supported, hang in the identical scales of balance. Denmark is an ideal point d’appui for sea power in the Baltic.
To the south, other inland seas, not only the historic Mediterranean where world contests between East and West have frequently been decided—by sea power—but the Adriatic and the Black Seas wash shores keenly alive to the vital import of which ensigns are flown by the ships approaching them, of the markings on the planes that fly over them from the—to them at least— wide waters.
Control of the sea lanes can and will defend the Western Hemisphere, but to aid the free world against aggression there must be terminals in many parts of the world, terminals firmly in the hands of our friends. Many such now exist, a majority of them in the narrow waters. American and NATO sea-air power must make certain that they remain free, or it will face the insuperable task of liberating them.
Narrow Waters and Joint Operations
Naval operations in narrow waters cannot be a uni-service task, like a clash with a hostile surface fleet. (Air power at sea being furnished by the naval air arm.) The essential principle goes back to Clausewitz, evaluation of Britain’s naval strength 130 years ago, to the principles of warfare in any element. Telling blows will not be struck at the locations where the enemy expects them, is massed and prepared to meet their impact. They must fall where and when he least expects, yet in proximity to his vital areas.
Our friends, along the narrow waters, can provide the advanced bases for such strikes. Our amphibious and airborne capabilities must mesh with our sea power to make them count. Without question naval operations in narrow waters predicate Joint Operations, but nowhere can limited outlays of land and air power reap such rich return as along the shores of inland waters instead of flinging them headlong upon the foe’s strongest areas. Not even a colossus can be strong enough everywhere to oppose the swift concentrations possible under the aegis of an atomic era’s alert and offensive-minded American naval power.
The advent of atomic weapons into the realm of tactics presents sea power with a monumental opportunity, together with a terrific task. Once the former is appreciated the challenge of the latter can be met.
Revamping American naval strength for atomic warfare against a continental land- mass, it must be reiterated, involves no change in the principles of sea power, only their full offensive application as taught by Mahan and practiced in the Pacific in 1942-45, rather than the restricted “command of the sea lanes” concept prevailing in European waters during two wars.
Nevertheless, new procedures for applying immutable principles are inevitable and may be far-reaching. Their scope is inextricably bound up in three closely related aspects: changes in equipment (ships no less than armament); alterations in tactics; and organizational changes afloat and ashore. Lastly, operations against a land power spell out the emphasis upon Joint Task Forces which suggests suitable changes in amphibious techniques.
Guided missile ships and atomic bombs in carriers’ magazines are publicized steps in solving the total problem. Hints of future developments abound in unofficial sources centered upon “hardware” which ranges from friction-defying undersea navies to the opposite extreme of shallow draft, swift “skate-type” ships.
Final evaluation of prospective equipment -—and its integration with tactical and organizational alterations remain the province of experienced naval experts teamed with scientists. What they evolve will necessarily be shrouded by secrecy, but physical laws insure that changes will be gradual, not violent, and that atomic warfare opens more opportunities for sea power than it poses handicaps.
Sea transportation will not abandon the surface for the submarine any more than air transport can take over. It would not even be sound atomic strategy. Since water is a denser medium than air, underwater atomic explosions can destroy undersea craft more readily than any type of burst directed at surface ships. It is rather the fixed installations of ports which are the atomically vulnerable feature of sea power. Dispersion or protective construction can achieve only so much. Tankers will probably load from, as well as discharge into, floating pipelines remote from other port activities, for their own protection and to remove their fiery menace from harbors. Ingenious use will be made of beaches and small ports. Perhaps a sea-going equivalent of land transport’s economical tractor-trailer combination may ease logistic burdens of time in port.
Engineering problems of reenforced concrete docks and yards are so staggering that these installations may have to be restricted to distant points, as in Pacific campaigns. Scores of ships can no longer lie at anchor in one small compact area.
But, much the same was true in the last war, wherever enemy air could strike heavy blows. “Dispersion” and protective construction were the penalties paid by the unfortunate who could not keep his opponent’s bases, whether land or carrier type, beyond effective range.
Atomic warfare has raised the ante, not changed the rules. The sea power of the United States, skillfully employed on the offensive, is more than our “first line of defense.” In the atomic age, it is our chief reliance for victory.
Summary
American sea power has, in the past, mastered the challenge of new weapons on the seas, beneath their surface, and in the air. There is no cause for alarm because of atomic weapons’ impact upon our Navy or its mission. On the contrary, the addition of this potent weapon can enhance the Navy’s offensive strength at a time when the United States depends pre-eminently upon that strength.
As a nation we must avoid over-confidence regarding the Herculean task of commanding the sea against a potential enemy who has been proverbially weak in sea power. At the other extreme we must suppress excessive concern over atomic defense to concentrate (without neglecting sound protective measures) upon our readiness to strike atomic blows at concentrations of hostile military forces—and then to exploit those blows. Under world conditions today the joint actions of atomically armed sea power with air and amphibious elements constitute our mightiest deterrent to aggression aimed at our NATO and ANZUS allies, just as they also comprise the most effective defenses of the Western Hemisphere.
*Bulletin American Meteorological Society, Vol. 32, No. 7, September 1951.