The sea stands for liberty. Nations of the sea have been liberty’s outstanding champions; witness Athens in antiquity, Britain for centuries, and the United States today. Complex reasons enter into this basic truth. Key among these reasons certainly is the fact that vast oceans reaching around the globe offer free access to every land. The seas in truth join those in every nation who seek a better world.
The seas join so long as men of good will remain strong on them. Otherwise they separate. Control of the sea has always meant control of the world’s future, on the balance for good. President Kennedy said recently aboard the USS Kitty Hawk:
I think all of us have been impressed by how vigorously and successfully the United States Navy has applied all of the modern advances in science and technology to this age-old struggle of maintenance and control of the seas.
. . . Events of October 1962 indicated, as they had all through history, that control of the sea means security. Control of the seas can mean peace. Control of the seas can mean victory. The United States must control the seas if it is to protect our security and those countries which stretch thousands of miles away that look to you and this ship and the sister ships of the United States Navy.
The affinity of the sea to man, and to freedom, nowhere more clearly shows than in the phenomenal increase of the influence of sea power in furthering national policy. This has been true of steam, of electricity and internal combustion engines (that helped give navies the giant new strengths of aviation and submarines), of electronics, of nuclear power, of space.
Fundamental changes in navies came slowly before the Industrial Revolution. Since then, the time between successive changes has been shortened from centuries to decades and from decades to years. Many of the most significant developments have taken place during my own naval career. When I entered the service in 1923, our Navy operated effectively under steam but it was even then in transition, as it must always be if it is to serve the growing future of the United States. My first cruise at sea as a Midshipman was to Europe in the USS Arkansas, a coal burner. The first naval aircraft I flew was built of wood, wire, and fabric, and was propelled by an engine whose horsepower would not now propel one of our tow tractors. We have progressed from coal burners to nuclear power, from deck guns to guided missiles, from reciprocating engines to jet propulsion, to computers, radar, and the innumerable mechanisms responsive to steam, electricity, hydraulics, high pressure air, and electronics. The transition has been a staggering one by any standard. The past 40 years of my naval service, and particularly the last two decades, have wrought unprecedented changes in the tools of sea power. The changes in equipment are impressive because they are visible, but the most remarkable change is that our new equipment has produced a new kind of sea power.
In the classic tradition the Navy exists to control the seas: to keep them free in peacetime, to deny them to enemy use in war, and to project and support forces overseas. Because of this basic capability, we can support forces overseas. Because of this basic capability, we can support U. S. foreign policy, protect U. S. lives and property, preserve the salt water link between the free people of free nations, and contribute to the growth of underdeveloped areas, as this hemisphere once was. The Navy has always carried out these tasks, with sailing ships, coal burners, oil burners, and now with high speed, long range, nuclear-powered ships carrying unimaginable power.
We have crossed, without being fully aware of it, the threshold of an entirely new form of national power at sea. Our missions are still carried out with ships, planes, and submarines, but the effect of the parallel and simultaneous improvements in these vehicles has been multiplied by improvements in weaponry, fire power, logistics, and communications. Naval power has always been essential to national greatness even when it was slow-moving and limited in its range and striking power. If, in the past, any one of these limitations could have been removed it would have been counted as a most significant breakthrough. But we have today removed all of these limitations. The pace of technological advance has been such that the significance of our achievements has been underestimated. We have today a sea-based national power system in which the endurance of the nuclear power plant is combined with the speed and range of the jet aircraft, with the speed and range of the missile, and with the power of nuclear weapons. We are freed of previous limitations of speed, range, and power; we are presently limited primarily by our imagination and ingenuity in their use.
We have retained all of our other capabilities in the transition. What we could do before, we can still do—whether it be a show of, or an application of, force. Sea power, in its new forms, has become truly the embodiment of the “big stick” policy so eloquently described by Theodore Roosevelt. If we wish to speak softly, use sea power; if we wish to brandish a big stick, use sea power. No other segment of U. S. power speaks with so many voices.
And no other segment of U. S. power depends so completely upon the dedication of its people. In both peace and war the Navy man and his family undergo hardships and endure long and frequent separations which are unmatched by any other part of our society. We must constantly recognize that the loyalty of our Navy people is and always will be the sine qua non of our incomparable power at sea, for it is their loyalty which bestows on us the benefits of their talent, and it is their talent which makes and keeps the Navy great.
This is not to say that we in the Navy have no problems or challenges, nor is it to say that we have travelled or will travel an easy road. So long as we have resourceful and determined enemies, we will face military and technological challenges. Here at home we find that newsworthy events are frequently not praiseworthy events, and that some cynical writers with an eye on the box office or the best seller list will always be ready to ridicule the best and magnify the worst. But our challenges and our critics do not and can not alter the fact that the power of sea-based forces is vastly increased and that we have abdicated none of the traditional roles of sea power.
It is fortunate, moreover, that we have attained these new capabilities not at the expense of our sister services, but through a sensible exploitation of their special capabilities in conjunction with our own. We do not deride the missile or the manned aircraft; we have instead given these vehicles a new operating dimension which complements and enhances their intrinsic potential. We—who put Marines ashore at Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Inchon, and Lebanon—do not disparage the rifleman, the artilleryman, the armor. We have integrated the unique attributes of the ship, the landing craft, the helicopter, and the fighting man to produce an amphibious force unrivaled anywhere, anytime. The virtues of sea power do not negate those of the splendid components of the U. S. Army and Air Force. On the contrary, the Navy of 1963 matches and exceeds the value of a “fleet in being”; it is not only a fleet in being, but it is also on station and ready, a fact which complicates the defense against other U. S. forces and therefore renders their missions more likely of success.
These magnificent U. S. forces are essential to our security, not to solve the problems which beset us, but to provide to our statesmen, economists, educators, clergy, business men, and citizens from all walks of life the platform and the opportunity to cope with critical situations and to make a better world for our children and grandchildren. Nothing will change the fact that the Navy today has broken through the barriers of speed, range, and power. Whether or not this fact is used to its full potential in achieving a better world is a grave responsibility of the officers and men of the U. S. Navy, whose devotion to duty and will to win are second to none—as I well know.
This technological breakthrough, however, is also the responsibility of all our citizens and their leaders. They must comprehend that sea power not only retains its ancient blessings, but has crossed over the threshold of phenomenal advances. This is a change of profound significance which all citizens must understand, and use, for it is filled with promise. Given wisdom and integrity of leadership, the Free World will surely prosper if it holds the sea, die if it loses it.