Admiral Luce in his campaign for a naval war college during the early 1880’s lost no opportunity to call attention to the professional pitfalls arising from the competition of gun and armor which was then effecting a revolution in naval technology. The “material” school appeared to dominate the service to the neglect of proper attention to strategic employment of the new weapons in war. This last Luce called “the highest branch of the profession,” and he pointed out that the Navy then had no war planning organization. Some years before, on the outbreak of the Civil War, Secretary Welles had convened three senior officers in the Committee of Conference to suggest operations plans, but this strategy “braintrust,” lacking both intelligence data and any organization for getting it, sat only from June through September 1861 and adjourned sine die. From that time on Assistant Secretary Gustavus V. Fox thought up projects as the need arose, suggested likely commanding officers, and wrote up the necessary orders for the Secretary’s action. Critics were silenced by results as successive campaigns terminated victoriously at New Orleans, Vicksburg, and Fort Fisher.
It was the 1870-1871 blitzkrieg against France that first demonstrated the power of modern technology when directed by an efficient general staff. The United States was first to adapt the lessons to naval organization. In 1882 it sent its first naval attaches abroad and established the first naval intelligence office. Four years later Luce fathered the Naval War College and hoped to create in it a war planning organization working on data furnished by the Office of Naval Intelligence. Scanty appropriations stunted the development of this scheme. When the Spanish American War began it was obvious that a professional body was needed to help Secretary Long direct the operations of the principal squadrons. The Naval War Board was accordingly set up and its principal members eventually comprised the Secretary, the Chief of the Bureau of Navigation, and Captain Mahan, especially brought back on the active list. Essentially the Board was an ad hoc body and, being quite without previously prepared plans, it attempted no more than the most tenuous control over Dewey and Sampson.
As a principal lesson of the war Secretary Long created the General Board by an order of March 3, 1900, and thereby provided the Navy with a general staff of great influence but possessing advisory rather than executive powers. There was urgent need for naval policy planning. For the first time in its history the United States found itself a world power with commitments in the Far East where it confronted a growing Japanese fleet. Rapid German naval expansion posed a threat in the Atlantic.
The Board set a precedent in that it included some of the ablest officers in the Navy. Admiral Dewey presided and worked closely with Captain Taylor who had commanded the Indiana at Santiago and was primarily responsible for persuading Long to establish the Board. Captain Clark had commanded the Oregon on her famous trip and at Santiago; Sigsbee, a noted hydrographer, had commanded the Maine at Havana. Chadwick, had been the first naval attaché at London and commanded Sampson’s flagship New York in 1898. The Board’s work was significant. Backed by President Theodore Roosevelt, himself a naval historian and leading expert, its recommendations strongly influenced the passage of the 1903 navy bill providing for five battleships, the largest number in a single authorization until the totalitarian era.