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Within the framework of America’s total military strength, the offensive as well as the protective potential of our seapower has, in recent years, emerged in clearer perspective than ever heretofore. The mobile offensive power of the U. S. Navy, built around fast carrier forces and logistically sustainable for indefinite periods in any area of the globe, is coming to be recognized as the most effective and quickly available military instrument of the national interest and prestige. It is an instrument whose very presence in a foreign harbor can exercise an enormous though unacknowledged restraining and stabilizing force among the inhabitants of the area.
The modern carrier has, therefore, in addition to formidable military power, a distinct and unique capability in the field of diplomacy, through which our ideology and attitudes can be projected abroad by peaceful means. Modern carrier forces may then be regarded as combining the diplomatic persuasive force of troops on the ground with the awesome authority of the ultimate weapon, having, as they now do, the capability of delivering the atomic bomb with high speed jet aircraft. Thus they are, in effect, the vehicle of widely diverse military capabilities, the bridge, so to speak, between the traditional and the ultramodern instruments of military power. As ground troops are withdrawn from tension areas throughout the world, or disengaged from front-line service (and this is certainly coming to pass) our carrier forces must be all the more ready to fill the ensuing power vacuum, so as to sustain continuity in the degree of psychological or moral pressure, the “show of force,” appropriate to the local situation. It follows that the mobility of these forces on a global scale becomes increasingly vital. This mobility must be augmented by every possible means.
The number as well as the power of our modern carriers is growing apace. Six carriers of a World War II class have been modernized by the strengthening of their flight decks to accommodate high speed jet aircraft and the installation of the means for carrying and delivering the atom bomb. Three carriers of a later class, already possessing the atom bomb capability, are now scheduled for further modernization. Newly authorized carrier construction and continuing modernization of existing classes will increase the offensive potential of this force to formidable proportions and its number to more than twelve vessels. The growth and development of this immense seaborne strength is, however, accompanied by a paradoxical limitation of its capabilities. These modern carriers with their vastly extended potential suffer from a loss of mobility between the widely separated strategic areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. This situation arises from the fact that none of these vessels is able to transit the Panama Canal. Thus we are denied the fullest effectiveness in the employment of our primary seaborne weapon through the obsolescence of a vital supporting component of our seapower.
The dynamic concept which led to the construction of the Panama Canal was basically one of naval strategy. It was the implacable determination of President Theodore Roosevelt that a trans-isthmian waterway be constructed to provide the Navy with a degree of mobility between oceans, which was in that day a utopian dream. That such a waterway would at the same time become an everlasting benefit to intracoastal and worldwide shipping was of course recognized, but this idea lacked the compelling urgency of the strategic motive. The scheme was bold and revolutionary. The obstacles to be surmounted were fantastic, and the ordeals of the construction period are now recorded history. Since the official opening of the Canal in 1920, it has been the Navy’s connecting link between oceans and has been so used freely and continuously by naval vessels. Through the years of unrestricted use, the Panama Canal has, however, come to be taken somewhat for granted by the Navy, so much so that for planning as well as operational purposes it is regarded in much the same light as any free and open waterway or navigable strait. This attitude has developed almost into a habit of thought until today, when we find the Canal suddenly closed (as if it had never existed) to our large carriers. The very waterway whose primary strategic purpose was to afford mobility and flexibility in the disposition of our fleet now denies those same advantages to its most potent units. A realization of this stark fact seems to call for a reassessment of the basic nature of this vital and complex installation. The closing of the Canal to our large carriers highlights the fallacy of the rather complacent and detached presumption whereby this waterway has come to be viewed as nothing more than another geographical feature. It is, in fact, a mechanism which enables oceangoing vessels to cross the Isthmus of Panama by successively raising and then lowering them a vertical distance of eighty-five feet. It is a masterpiece of engineering and precision, whose physical dimensions as well as operating capabilities are of the most vital concern to the Navy, to such an extent that our strategic planning must always be in some measure conditioned by these factors. This installation must be regarded as a vital adjunct to our seapower. Indeed, it would not appear unreasonable to recognize the Panama Canal for what it is in fact, an auxiliary of the fleet, and this to at least the same degree as any other major shore facility, shipyard, or naval base.
The blocking of the interoceanic link across the Panamanian Isthmus to our modern carriers has a profound and far-reaching effect on all naval operations and planning. Since these vessels are the core of today’s naval striking forces, it avails little that the logistic support and screening elements of such a force can transit the canal, if its very nucleus can make the equivalent movement only by steaming some 8000 miles around Cape Horn. The major striking force of the Navy must therefore be so disposed that any single element of it is virtually committed at any time to one ocean or the other. The flexibility of deployment of this force, then, if not actually denied us, is at the least drastically decreased. Tactically, if not strategically, we are faced with a divided fleet—a two-ocean Navy. The most astute planning and disposition of forces, based on the most infallible intelligence, cannot cure the basic weakness inherent in this situation.
It cannot be doubted that the enemy is fully aware of this paradoxical plight, wherein our offensive seapower has, in growing, divided itself. Having had, at the outset, the classical advantage of interior lines of communication within the Eurasian land ma he now finds this asset enhanced through the further attenuation of our already far-flung exterior lines. It can be expected that this advantage will be fully exploited under circumstances of the enemy’s choosing. In the sinister pattern of cold war technique, tensions can be created in any peripheral area of the Communist empire, ranging from internal strife or riots, to civil war, and finally armed intervention. In many instances such situations might be stabilized through the mere presence of a potent naval force. Armed intervention and open hostilities could in other instances be snuffed out and prevented from spreading by the swift application of naval air power in support of a vigorous diplomatic attitude. Such peripheral actions short of total war, “police actions” if you will, are a growing possibility of the future. The employment of naval air power for this purpose would preclude the need for the landing and supporting of ground troops. To be effective against quickly erupting situations in widely separated areas, however, such missions will require a high degree of mobility in the deployment of carrier forces. This flexibility of movement cannot now be achieved, owing to the loss of our own interoceanic link.
This same situation, which is a serious hindrance to our seapower under the requirements imposed by the cold war, would very likely become a disastrous road block in the crucial days following the outbreak of another world war. In the global climate of strategic power which prevails today, time, and therefore speed of movement over the earth’s surface, is of the essence. The urgency of the time factor is intensified by the very ideology to which our military power is dedicated, namely, that we, as a nation, will never commit unprovoked aggression. It follows then, that our first, our very earliest, blow will be retaliatory. The application of our might is unalterably committed to the counterblow—first the parry, then the thrust, but only if the parry has succeeded, and we are indeed able to make the thrust. In such an ominous climate, it is not enough that we possess the ultimate weapons and the means of delivering them at sea, if access between the two primary strategic ocean areas, within acceptable limits of time, is to virtually withheld from the only vessels capable of accomplishing the delivery. It is evident that any world holocaust of the future would erupt with shocking suddenness, and that in this event the two critical ocean areas of the Atlantic and the Pacific would lie within the northern half of the northern hemisphere. Let it be assumed that the ensuing global situation would be such as to render the transit of the Suez Canal, if usable at all, by carrier forces, an unacceptable risk. A shift, then, of modern carrier strength from one strategic theater to the other, in order to deliver overwhelming and decisive power to a critically threatened area or to strike offensively from a point of greatest vantage, would require a voyage of approximately 8000 miles more than that of the normal trans-isthmian route. At a speed of 25 knots, disregarding the limitations of a screening force, adverse weather conditions, and added logistical requirements, this distance of itself represents a minimum time loss of 320 hours or some 13 days! It has been written that in the event of total atomic war, the crucial interval in which the issue might be decided is in the order of the first 48 hours following its outbreak. Should it happen that our Strategic Air Command sustained losses during this crucial period which would preclude the full accomplishment of its mission, the Navy’s atomic capability would be needed to its fullest extent. This would be a situation of overwhelming urgency to the nation’s very survival. A preventable loss of time amounting to 13 days in the transfer from one theater to the other of all, or any element, of our seaborne air power could have tragic consequences. This loss of time might well become the nail for want of which the shoe was lost.
It would seem to be clearly in the national interest, if not in fact a compelling need, that the shackles which restrain the mobility of our seapower be loosed. To acquiesce in the continued presence of the surmountable barrier which now divides our fleet is, in a sense, to betray its primary mission and to abort the sensational growth in its offensive power. And this barrier is most certainly surmountable.
As a result of deep concern over the vulnerability of the Panama Canal during the last war, the need was felt to explore in detail all possible alternate routes across the isthmus and, as a result, there was published in 1947 a comprehensive study of some 27 possible trans-isthmian canal routes. This work, known as the “Isthmian Canal Studies, 1947,” was a detailed analysis of the relative feasibility of the various trans-isthmian routes extending from Tehuantepec to Darien, based on excavation and construction costs as well as operating characteristics, which were derived from actual surveys and the engineering of each route. Included in these studies was an analysis of three distinct concepts for the modernization of the present canal, each of which would combine, at the same time though in varying degree, the features of reduced vulnerability, increased lock capacity for larger vessels, and the ability to handle a greater volume of traffic.
Without attempting here to evaluate the merits of an additional canal across the Central American isthmus, it will nevertheless be of interest to examine briefly the three basic proposals for modernizing the present Panama Canal, any one of which would serve to eliminate the interoceanic roadblock to our modern carriers. Taken in order of lowest cost and greatest simplicity these are, first, the so-called “Third Locks Project,” which consists merely of a third set of locks paralleling the two originally constructed at each of three locations, namely Gatun, Pedro Miguel, and Miraflores. This third set of locks was to be located at some distance from the original installations, in order to reduce the vulnerability of the canal to bombing attacks, and the lock dimensions were to be such as to accommodate the largest foreseeable vessel. Excavation for this project was actually begun during the war as an emergency measure but was discontinued as the evolution of our two-ocean Navy, together with the withdrawal of the Japanese enemy into the western Pacific, diminished the urgency of the need. This excavation stands today in a state of partial completion. At this point it may be well to dispel the myth of vulnerability (or invulnerability) as it was conceived after World War II. The third set of locks, paralleling the original installations at three different points, would have been separated from them by a distance of something less than a mile. Since the ultimate bomb today virtually insures the complete obliteration of all installations above the ground within a radius of at least five miles of ground zero, it would appear that the item of vulnerability of the operating structures cannot be overcome in any single trans-isthmian lock canal.
The second scheme of modernization, called the “Terminal Lake Plan,” incorporated this same third locks concept; however, it went further, and proposed raising the level of Miraflores Lake to that of Gatun Lake (i.e., 85 feet above mean sea level), which would require raising the height of Miraflores Locks by the addition of one more chamber, thus making it the equivalent of the three chambered locks at Gatun, and eliminating entirely the single chambered locks at Pedro Miguel. The removal of the intermediate lift at Pedro Miguel and its substitution with an equivalent added lift at Miraflores would increase the depth of Miraflores Lake by some 30 feet and create a sizeable anchorage area for ocean going vessels. This would result in extending the Present level of Gatun Lake and Gaillard Cut to Miraflores Locks, which then with Gatun Locks would hold all the impounded waters of the canal, while at the same time providing a terminal lake at each end of Gaiilard Cut, i.e., at Gatun and Miraflores. The benefits to be derived from this feature of the plan are associated with more efficient dispatching of north and southbound traffic through Gaillard Cut, the delaying of disabled vessels, and other administrative matters internal to the operation of the canal. While these benefits would no doubt lead to an increase in the efficiency of operations and the traffic capacity of the canal, they are not related to the fundamental strategic capability of transiting our largest naval vessels, which would be achieved in any case. As a consequence, this plan offers no significant advantage to the Navy which would not accrue from the Third Locks Project.
The third plan is the much discussed “Sea Level Canal.” To many students of the problem this is the ideal solution to the question of a truly efficient trans-isthmian waterway. The basic engineering of this plan has been accomplished, and its results are both ingenious and dramatic. Gaillard Cut would, of course, have to be greatly deepened, and a corresponding increase in channel width is planned. All locks, in the sense that they are needed to lift a ship over land, would be eliminated. Owing to the phenomenal difference in the tidal range at the Pacific and the Atlantic sides of the isthmus, certain controlling mechanisms are required. Since the mean tidal range at the Pacific terminal is in the order of 16 feet, whereas that at the Atlantic is less than one foot, prohibitively strong currents for successful navigation of the narrow channel of Gaillard Cut would prevail at certain hours of the day. The plan therefore contemplates a set of tidal locks at Balboa, the Pacific terminal, which would be used to transit vessels during those hours when currents exceed a certain maximum for safe navigation. A free navigation channel, paralleling these tidal locks, would be open to all shipping during the hours when the tidal locks are not required. The sea level canal would thus be the nearest possible approach to an unrestricted strait between two continental land masses. While still vulnerable to the devastating effects of modern weapons, this canal would stand a vastly better chance of survival than would any other, which is dependent on impounded water needed for the lockage of vessels over a land barrier.
These three plans, together with the various alternate canal routes, have presumably been duly considered and set aside. As of today, no decision has yet been announced for the adoption of any of the modernization proposals, nor for a second trans-isthmian route. The global strategic position of our offensive seapower today demands that this whole problem be reexamined and that a decision be reached at an early date. The issue can no longer, in honesty or in logic, be postponed.
There is, moreover, a very real and practical operating feature of the Canal, which tends, of itself, to force the issue of modernization from the point of view of economical operation and maintenance. This feature is that all the heavy and intricate locks machinery requires an electrical power supply of 25 cycle alternating current. This means that the preponderance of electrical power generated in the Zone must be at this frequency, which must also serve the greater part of the community as a whole, the standard 60 cycle power being available only in limited areas. The periodic replacement then, of motor, generator, or control components in order to keep the present locks in operation, requires procurement of such items in the U. S. at exorbitant cost on a custom basis, since the electrical industry in this country no longer produces standard equipment designed for 25 cycles. The time must come, if it has not already, when such uneconomical maintenance can no longer be justified. The need for an early decision with respect to the modernization of the Panama Canal is thus further reinforced.
The Navy, apart from its basic and most vital interest in the Panama Canal, has actually had a degree of control over its day-today operations which is not generally known. Since the historic task of constructing the canal was completed under the direction of the U. S. Army Engineer Corps, it was not too illogical that the operation of the canal and the administration of the Canal Zone Government be continued under the Department of the Army, with a general officer of the Army Engineer Corps as Governor. Thus was the organization originally set up. In recognition, however, of the Navy’s vital interest in the waterway as a whole, there was established a Marine Division to control the transit operations through the canal and a Mechanical Division to operate the dry- docks and extensive ship repair facilities, both of these organizations being headed by a qualified U. S. Navy captain who reported directly to the Governor.
The Marine Division under the direction of the Marine Superintendent controls canal operations through two Port Captains, also captains in the U. S. Navy, at the terminal ports of Balboa and Cristobal. These two officers, assisted by a competent civilian staff of pilots, tugboat operators, admeasurers, dispatchers, and clerical personnel, exercise control over all harbor movements, and schedule all north and southbound traffic through the canal, thus in effect also directing the operations of the locks. Clearance is granted to vessels by the Port Captain at the terminal port of departure when it has been determined that the payment of transit tolls and other accrued charges has been made, and that the vessel is ready for sea. Transit tolls are based on the actual volumetric measurement of each vessel, as originally made, or subsequently verified by Panama Canal admeasurers before each transit, such measurement being made under an elaborate set of internationally accepted rules. In the event of an accident in the canal, which results in damage to a vessel, the Port Captain having jurisdiction is required to conduct an investigation to establish liability for the damage, as between the Panama Canal and the vessel’s owners or underwriters. The entire operation is broad in scope and complex in detail. It requires daily contact by the Port Captains with pilots, masters, steamship agents, consular officials, and others, in a variety of diverse situations. An additional function of the Marine Division is the maintenance and upkeep of all visual navigation aids, including not only the many lights and buoys in the canal and its approach channels, but also the outlying lights along both coasts of the isthmus, extending from the lighthouse on Jicarita Island in the Gulf of Panama, to Isla Grande Lighthouse in the Gulf of Darien. It is of interest to note that the jurisdiction of the Marine Division alone, in the matter of vessel clearances, investigation of marine accidents, and maintenance of light houses, is that of the Coast Guard in the continental United States.
The Mechanical Division, on the other hand, operates an extensive installation of shops and ship repair facilities, including a drydock at each terminal port, which is nearly comparable in scale to a continental naval shipyard. This division under the direction of an E.D. captain, assisted by one other E.D. naval officer, performs all major and minor ship repairs required locally by naval or commercial vessels, as well as Panama Canal tugs, dredges, and other craft. Its strategic importance, particularly that of the 1000-foot drydock at Balboa, is highlighted by the fact that the nearest comparable naval facility is situated at Norfolk on the East Coast and Terminal Island on the West Coast, some 1800 and 2900 miles distant, respectively.
The Navy, thus, indirectly exercises a significant degree of control over the operations of the Panama Canal through the five naval officers assigned to key positions on the staff of the Governor, although no direct chain of authority exists between them and the Navy Department, nor does the Commandant, 15th Naval District have authority to intervene in any question pertaining to the administration of the Panama Canal.
As of June, 1951, the organization which operated the Panama Canal and administered the Canal Zone Government had developed, since the construction days, into an administrative anachronism. While the canal continued through the years to function most efficiently, there grew, like a plant in the humid tropical environment, a sprawling bureaucracy of pseudo-autonomous bureaus and divisions staffed with civil service employees, each reporting directly to the Governor. Superimposed on this organizational anomaly was a complex and highly compartmented system of fiscal accountability, operating on an annual Congressional appropriation, at the same time that all canal tolls and revenues were annually deposited in the U. S. Treasury. As operating costs through the years increased, while revenues accruing from toll rates established in 1938 remained almost static, a growing annual deficit began to appear. This situation led to a Presidential Proclamation in March of 1948 announcing an increase in the basic transit toll rate from $.90 to $1.00 per measurement ton. Such was the outcry from intracoastal shipping interests at this proclamation, however, that its effective date was four times postponed by subsequent proclamations, over a period of two and one half years, to await the recommendations of certain Congressional committees, whose representatives made repeated visits to the Canal Zone in an effort to resolve the matter. To audit such bewildering accounts in order to determine the advisability of increased tolls and tariffs proved, however, to be virtually impossible, and several Congressional groups, of solemn purpose and high resolve, became hopelessly bogged in this sticky morass.
Meanwhile, in an effort to reduce operating costs, drastic reductions in force and curtailment of activities throughout the entire organization were instituted. Hardest hit in the course of this retrenchment was the Mechanical Division, which had been waging a valiant struggle to finance its rising plant maintenance and overhead costs in the face of a steadily diminishing work load. Operating as it was, in its own sphere of fiscal accountability, the Mechanical Division was ultimately forced, with the Governor’s approval, to close the Balboa shops and the huge No. 1 drydock. Some several hundred skilled employees in the crafts category were discharged as a consequence and are no longer available in the Canal Zone. These facilities could, of course, be reactivated, but only at great cost, and subject to the time delay incident to inducing qualified skilled craftsmen to accept employment and establish residence in the Canal Zone. The Marine Division, while earning the preponderant percentage of the total canal revenues, was paradoxically not subject to the same arbitrary system of accountability and as a consequence was not hurt by the purge.
The Presidential Proclamation of March 26, 1948, establishing an increase in the transit toll rates, was finally, after four postponements of its effective date, revoked entirely by a Presidential Proclamation issued on September 29, 1950. At the same time the Act of September 26, 1950, Public Law 841, was approved by the President. This statute authorized a complete reorganization of the financial and administrative structure of the Panama Canal. Under its provisions, those units responsible for operating the canal proper and all its maintenance and repair facilities, together with the organization formerly known as the Panama Railroad Company, with its fleet of three large passenger vessels, are now incorporated as the Panama Canal Company. Those units engaged in certain community services as well as the functions of health, sanitation, schools, and matters of civil government, are now consolidated as the Canal Zone Government. Both of these major organizations operate under the direction of the Governor of the Canal Zone.
The Panama Canal Company is a government-owned corporation, which is to be self-supporting. It is intended that the cost of operating the canal, as well as approximately fifty per cent of the cost of administering the Canal Zone Government, will be met by the revenues earned by the corporation. The remaining cost of administering the government will be met by revenues accruing from such collateral business activities as hotels, commissaries, and clubhouses. In addition to meeting the above costs of operation and administration, the corporation is required to pay annually into the U. S. Treasury an amount sufficient to cover the annual annuity payment to the Republic of Panama required under the treaty of 1936, the interest on the original capital investment in the canal installations, as well as compensation for the salaries of officers of the Army, Navy, and Public Health Service attached to the corporation or the Canal Zone Government. As an offset against this requirement, military and other government vessels will no longer be entitled to toll free transit but will be charged transit tolls, which will not be paid in cash but will be entered as a credit on the books of the corporation. With the financial structure thus established, the Act further authorizes the Panama Canal Company, subject to the approval of the President, to prescribe and to change the transit toll rates from time to time as necessary to meet operating costs of the canal and to change the rules for the measurement of vessels.
It can be expected that under this new organization a state of solvency will eventually be achieved, and that the efficiency of management will in time approach that of any other business corporation. The reorganization has been accompanied by a drastic streamlining throughout and a considerable consolidation of divisions and bureaus. This is of interest to the Navy only to the extent that the naval or maritime functions of the canal are affected, and in this respect there has resulted a consolidation of the Marine Division and the Mechanical Division into a Marine Bureau of the Panama Canal Company, headed by the Marine Director. The former Mechanical Division, its internal organization still intact, is now the Industrial Division of the Marine Bureau. All transit, operating, and maintenance functions of the canal proper are thus vested in the Marine Bureau, which is composed of six subordinate units. These are: the offices of the Port Captains at Balboa and Cristobal, the Locks Division, the Dredging Division, the newly designated Industrial Division, and the Aids to Navigation Section. The five naval officers occupying the key positions in this key bureau of the Panama Canal Company are the Marine Director, the two Port Captains, the Chief of the Industrial Division (E.D.), and his assistant.
Whatever the organizational structure of this corporation, and regardless of its position in the executive branch of the Federal government, it is evident that the Navy’s interest in this strategic installation, this supporting component of the fleet, must transcend any other incidental consideration. Hand in hand with this overriding interest there must exist a corresponding degree of responsibility for (or at least participation in) policy decisions affecting its capabilities and operating characteristics. This being so, the question of initiative in such matters arises. Who, for example, should take the initiative in making recommendations with respect to the question of modernizing the Panama Canal, or reactivating its major ship repair facilities? Can matters of such scope and strategic significance properly be delegated to the Marine Director of the Panama Canal Company, a Navy captain whose views or recommendations, if any, would have to pass through the Governor of the Canal Zone before being considered at departmental level? Has not the time come when the Navy must take the initiative and press vigorously for action which will make the Panama Canal able once more to serve all of the fleet?
Graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy in the Class of 1931, Captain Fahle was the Executive Officer of U.S.S. Ludlow during the North African invasion and was Commanding Officer of U.S.S. Downes during the Marianas and Philippine Campaigns in 1944. In 1950-51 he served as Assistant to the Marine Director at Balboa, Canal Zone, and later as Captain of the Port, Cristobal, Canal Zone. At present he is the District Intelligence Officer, Headquarters, 13th Naval District.