World War I was a classroom for our naval aviation, as it was for flying corps of many nations. Before the war, our naval flyers had already developed flying boats and catapult float seaplanes for scouting and gunfire-spotting. They also had scored historic firsts in landing on and taking off from vessels. But the British Royal Navy, menaced by Germany’s High Seas Fleet, had moved several steps farther along the road. They had armed a good many vessels with aircraft and developed comparatively advanced types to perform naval air missions. Our people brought home valuable lessons from service alongside the British.
Immediately following World War I, Rear Admiral W. A. Moffett, U. S. Navy, who became Chief of the Bureau of Aeronautics, undertook to speed development of U. S. naval aviation. He put forth a general program covering all aspects of an integrated naval air force, with special emphasis on the carrier. He converted the ex-collier Jupiter into the experimental carrier Langley and salvaged the ex-battle cruisers Lexington and Saratoga from the fate decreed by the 1922 Washington Limitation of Arms Conference. They became first-line carriers. This program, founded on a true understanding of air as well as sea power, added up to creation of a wholly new weapons system, complete with novel types of aircraft, new tactics, new strategy, new organization and administration. Only the broad outlines of the over-all blueprint were clear to Admiral Moffett in the early days of the program, of course.
Even as he proceeded in the field of weapons development, Moffett made a contribution at least equally significant in the field of national policy. In 1925, Brigadier General William Mitchell, U. S. Army, proposed an independent air arm with control over all branches—military, naval, and commercial. Moffett ranged naval influence against him. In so doing, he sided with legally-constituted authority in the Army, Navy, and Coolidge Administration.
The great naval aviation pioneers did not take this position in the “Mitchell case” because they were “arch conservatives.” Neither did many other military and civilian leaders who opposed General Mitchell, although in the years since there have been efforts in some quarters to picture this very important controversy in cartoon terms—General Mitchell the high-flying pilot being dragged to earth by a group of men in top hats riding one- horse shays.
This was not the case. I was one of the naval officers involved. All of us, from Admiral Moffett on down, were quite as dedicated as anyone else to aviation progress in general and military and naval aviation progress in particular.
The Mitchell demand for independence, which echoed similar proposals by some land airmen in Europe, was advanced on the ground that it was essential to rapid development. The fact that it was coupled with a demand for monopoly, however, compromised it on that very score. Moffett proposed a co-operative-competitive system in consonance with U. S. political philosophy.
The President referred the controversy to an impartial commission. It adopted the Moffett Plan. As a result, military, naval, and commercial air activity remained respectively under direction of the War, Navy, and Commerce Departments, with air mail a responsibility of the post office. Research and development were to be coordinated through the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (now the National Aeronautics and Space Administration) and appropriate joint boards.
An essential part of the Moffett Plan was provision for a strong, competitive private aircraft manufacturing industry organized for rapid expansion in time of emergency. Private industry, which has contributed much to aviation development, naturally enough lent its warm support. Admiral Moffett’s proposals won congressional approval. Implemented by specific long-term programs supported by necessary appropriations, the Moffett approach paid off handsomely in World War II with a full complement of advanced types of aircraft suited to any conceivable requirement. All elements of industry were also ready for a crash effort.
The revolutionary carrier weapons system, in the wake of these policy developments, was pushed ahead in accord with a plan prepared by Captain H. C. Mustin, U. S. Navy. This listed specifics across the board, materiel and personnel. It called for a line of new aircraft— superior in performance, sufficient in numbers, flexible in mission-capabilities.
The power plant is the heart of the airplane. Carrier-plane requirements dictated development of a radically new, air-cooled, radial aircraft engine that was both durable and dependable. Undertaken in the face of many doubts, this development was prosecuted by private competitive industry under general Navy direction. It moved American aviation in a period of three years from a position of dependence on foreign designs into one of world pre-eminence.
This writer, as the officer in charge of BuAer’s engine section at the time, can testify to the fact that this pre-eminence resulted in large measure from Admiral Moffett’s ardent competitive spirit and his implicit loyalty to country, service, and associates. It is noteworthy that he had served under Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, the distinguished scholar and practical naval officer whose works have served his country so well.
At sea, naval aviation, operating in close co-operation with other elements of the fleet, developed two major concepts. One was administrative and organizational, the other strategic. This took place under the general direction of still another distinguished officer schooled by Mahan, again strongly competitive in spirit and a born leader. This man was Rear Admiral Joseph M. Reeves, first Commander Aircraft Squadrons Battle Fleet and later Commander in Chief. The writer served, also, as Admiral Reeves’s chief of staff.
Concentration of carrier squadrons at the Fleet Air Base at San Diego for training afforded Admiral Reeves a unique opportunity to try out numerous innovations. Among these was extension into the fleet of a principle already established with the Office of Chief of Naval Operations in the Navy Department. Admiral Reeves, as Commander Aircraft Squadrons, assumed only command functions. He left administration in the hands of commanding officers of vessels and air bases. This left him free to concentrate on tactics, strategy, and doctrine, areas yet to be explored by naval aircraft.
The result was a strategic concept the admiral called “The Long Range Striking Force.” This grew into the familiar task force doctrine of later years.
The doctrine of carrier striking power, discounted by those who tended to discount the Navy as a whole, also met opposition within the Navy itself. But, year by year, task force strategic and tactical experience grew.
In Army-Navy exercises in 1928, Langley launched a pre-dawn surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a for-drill evolution repeated with live bombs by Imperial Japan 13 years later.
Off San Diego, Reeves experimented with the tactic of detaching his carriers from the main battle fleet and concentrating their efforts against the enemy line.
Shortly thereafter, in another joint exercise with Army forces, Reeves sent Saratoga on an unannounced 30-knot end run past the Galapagos Islands for a pre-dawn sneak strike that “smashed” the Panama Canal. This was perhaps the most dramatic demonstration of carrier potentials through this period.
The most convincing carrier evidence came some years later with World War II. Carrier doctrine, with variations, was under development in Britain and Japan as well as the United States through the between-war years. The British effort had been organizationally strangled, as we shall see. Even so, British carrier planes took the war to the enemy.
A British fleet air strike crippled the Italian fleet at Taranto. Carrier planes were instrumental in sinking the German battleship Bismarck and played a key role in getting supplies through to the island of Malta.
Across the world, Japan and her carrier- oriented fleet sailed to war. Pearl Harbor was the initial result.
Fortunately, the nucleus of a U. S. carrier fleet remained after the sneak attack on Pearl. U. S. “fighting ladies” steamed through the rest of the war on a course set by Moffett, Reeves, Mustin, and others who fashioned our Navy’s air arm. Since then, our proud flattops have fought with distinction in Korea, played effective non-shooting cold war roles from Taiwan to Lebanon to the Dominican Republic—to the next brushfire that flares in our troubled world.
The carrier fleet has functioned through the decades in traditions of sea power established long, long years ago. It has been a flexible, usable, credible element of strength tempered to the national interest in peace and war. To friends, it has showed the flag. To enemies, it has showed power that has not been unwieldy, that has not been embarrassing, but has always stood ready to mete out “punishment that fits the crime.”
Early in World War II, a bitter struggle took place between two British scientists. They were confidential advisors to Sir Winston Churchill. The issue was strategic aerial bombardment. British author Sir Charles Percy Snow recounted the story most recently.
One scientist was Sir Henry Tizard. He had played a major part in development of the radar stations that helped turn back the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Tizard’s voice in this case was drowned out by a second scientist, F. A. Lindeman, who persuaded the Prime Minister to undertake strategic bombing of working-class homes.
The issue actually lay in the type of strategic bombardment. Churchill had two choices: military installations or heavily populated areas. Under rules of civilized warfare, the first was lawful, the second unlawful. Churchill, despite Tizard’s vigorous objection, adopted the second course.
Churchill acted under great provocation. Britain was poorly prepared to fight a war that he had anticipated with great foresight. The enemy was well-armed, ruthless. After France’s fall, Britain stood alone, capable of striking back solely through the air or in scattered naval and commando raids on spots along the coast of occupied Europe. Churchill’s isolated, beleaguered countrymen placed him under tremendous pressure to take dramatic, even decisive, action. Psychologically even more than militarily, they “needed” a victory or a reasonable facsimile thereof.
Against this background, the scientist Lindeman is believed to have tipped the scale in favor of trying to obliterate Germany from the air. Antiquity-conscious Britons might well have labeled the effort “Operation Carthage.”
Two additional factors were behind Churchill’s decision. First, he appears to have reacted in character. Various sources, including the diaries of Lord Allenbrooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff, show Britain’s man-of-the-hour as a courageous, inspiring leader, and a skillful professional politician. But he also comes through as a strategist prone to questionable innovation. Second, much Royal Air Force strategic thinking had leaned in the direction of this type of bombardment over the years. It had, in fact, been a mainstream of considerable air power theory between the wars in most major nations. General Billy Mitchell, for one, was a prime U. S. proponent of short-war, citybombing doctrine.
The Tizard-Lindeman debate revolved around the opinions of the scientists as to the probable effectiveness of a military tactic as yet untried on a major scale. In a sense, they spoke for opposing schools of military thought; it is strange, one notes in passing, that at this critical juncture it was not military leaders themselves whose views carried the day one way or the other. Be that as it may, the disputants agreed on the percentage of German working-class homes that had to be destroyed to finish the enemy. They disagreed, however, in their estimates of the damage that might be expected from a given amount of bombing.
The Prime Minister appears to have taken his action in the hope of swift, truly immense destruction as predicted by Lindeman. In this he was badly disappointed. Postwar surveys disclosed that Lindeman’s estimate had been ten times too high. The experiment simply confirmed the conclusion drawn from experience in the Spanish Civil War. There the tactic of population bombing incited such fanatical resistance that it defeated its purpose.
It is not clear whether serious consideration was given to the social-moral significance of now using this tactic against Germany, much less its ultimate consequences. This is the more noteworthy for the fact that Prime Minister Churchill was a historian. He was versed in the history of earlier civilizations, wherein decline and fall had been accompanied by, if not precipitated by, a sacrifice of ideals on the altar of expediency. He should certainly, in addition, have foreseen the more immediate result, that Hitler would answer with population bombing of Britain. This turned out to be a horrible experience for the British people— but Britain, sad to say, had begun this phase of British-German fighting.
So the results all around were dreadful. German civilians died, but Nazi Germany remained well able to fight. Britain suffered fearful retaliation. The fabric of Anglo-Saxon morality was rent. Worst of all, terror bombing of populations was here to stay on the world scene.
Further, this unfortunate decision, taken prior to our entry into the war, committed the United States in advance to the Casablanca decision on unconditional surrender and strategic air bombardment of Germany and Japan. The chain of events thus set in motion culminated at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Much that has followed, and could yet follow, may also be ultimately traced to such thinkers as Lindeman, for whom mass destruction almost seemed an end in itself. Indeed, such bombardment seems more rational, if even more terrible, when seen as an end in itself. As a war-winning military tactic, it has again and again been proved a self-defeating exercise in blood-red futility.
I heard Britain’s Admiral Sir David Beatty, World War I Commander-in-Chief and afterwards First Sea Lord, remark at the end of that war that the Royal Navy’s model young air arm was in danger of “emasculation.” He feared for the continued strength of the British fleet and its ability to defend the nation and the far-flung empire.
Admiral Beatty and a good many other British naval officers at the time were concerned at the British government’s decision to turn naval aviation over to the equally youthful and vigorous Royal Air Force. The Royal Navy did not protest quite hard enough, however, and the R.A.F. won out. In 1918, some 2,500 naval aircraft and 55,000 officers and men were transferred to the R.A.F.
This development came about through the interplay of a number of factors. The Royal Air Force argued for independent, centralized control of the air services. Many naval aviators were opposed. But a fair number of those in Royal Navy command positions, reared in a gunnery tradition that long preceded the advent of the flying machine, either were indifferent on the subject or felt privately pleased at the prospect of the fixed-wing birdies flying away. So there was no naval united front in opposition to the switch. To the civilian decision-maker, moreover, advantages of transfer understandably seemed clear enough: economy, pooling of resources, assurance that there would be no duplication in effort, equipment, operations.
In 1925, Brigadier General William Mitchell, U. S. Army (left) proposed an independent air arm, with control over military, naval, and commercial aviation. The martyrdom Mitchell achieved from his court martial clouded the issue and, says the author, distorted the motives of those who opposed him. (This photo shows General Mitchell before the Special Aircraft Committee of the House of Representatives. On his left is Representative Randolph Perkins of New Jersey.)
To Royal Navy aviation officers, however, there was deep irony in the transfer. They had, in large measure, initiated development of fleet aviation on the world scene. It was their baby. U. S. and Japanese naval personnel observed World War I British operations, then returned to their own services and emulated British air development. Now, under the control of the R.A.F., they suddenly found themselves looking across the seas for naval aviation progress.
In practice, the relationship between the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force that now controlled its aircraft and personnel appears to have been carried out in the reasonable sense of co-operation that one might consider characteristically British. But the arrangement did not work. The R.A.F. did not develop satisfactory new naval aircraft. It did not recruit and train the necessary body of naval aviators. It did not develop an alive and working doctrine for sea-air power during this germinal period for crucial concepts of carrier task force operations in the United States and Japan. It did not effectively develop tactics for air attack and air defense at sea.
Plainly, the Royal Air Force did not understand sea power. It had its hands full elsewhere. The importance of what R.A.F. officers must, in their heart of hearts, have continued to think of as “the Navy’s air force” seemed peripheral. No more should have been expected. Royal Navy officers would, in all likelihood, have done no better in solving the problems of the R.A.F. if they had suddenly been given command of the land-based air service. But, of course, no one would ever have thought of suggesting such a turn of events.
At any rate, by 1937, the British government was ready to call off the experiment. Naval flying went back to the Navy, which had maintained responsibility for designing and building aircraft carriers. These joined the fleet in reasonable numbers through the pre-World War II years.
War came all too soon. Britain’s proud naval air arm, with gallant, skillful seamen and airmen the equal of any in the world, was even less prepared than most other British and Allied forces. It had at its disposal a pitifully small number of inadequate aircraft, fearful deficiencies in experience and practiced doctrine. The Royal Navy’s official historian, Captain S. W. Roskill, Royal Navy (Retired), writes that British naval flyers did not have a really adequate plane until U. S. lend-lease machines including the Grumman Martlet and Avenger began to arrive.
As time passed, despite all, the British Navy’s air arm added heroic chapters to the lore of Britannic sea power. “Looking back today,” observes Captain Roskill, “the most astonishing thing about British naval aviation in the last war is not that it occasionally failed to meet the heavy demands made on it, but that the carriers and crews accomplished so much with the inadequate types of aircraft which they had to use.”
Consider events of World War II—the maritime crisis posed by German raiders, desperate antisubmarine warfare in the Atlantic solved only late in the day by hunter- killer operations, Japan’s waterborne blitzkrieg through southeast Asia and the islands of the western Pacific, and German operations in easy range of carrier air strikes in the Balkans, North Africa, Norway. You cannot help but wonder, with a heavy heart, whether a well-armed, aggressive Royal Navy air arm, building on foundations well laid between wars, might not have been able to play a decisive role for the cause of freedom in each of these cases.
And now today nuclear submarines and their Polaris missiles have extended maritime power, Western civilization’s unifying force and strength from the time of the Greeks, under the sea and into space just as naval aviation extended it over the sea and into the air. “It was an understanding of the importance of the seas,” significantly declared a statement from the Navy’s Office of Information not long ago, “that enabled us to develop the Polaris fleet ballistic missile system.”
This was an extraordinary, historic developmental achievement built on traditions of sea and sea-air power. It took place in the face of a host of technological obstacles and extraneous chatter that ridiculed development of a ballistic missile to fire from underwater as a naval pipe-dream to end all pipe-dreams. The result has been the closest thing to an “ultimate” weapons system that man has yet devised.
The nuclear submarine Polaris combination is not the nation’s only weapons system, nor the Navy its only armed service. Balance of capability among all weapons and services is our insurance of national strength. But there are few who do not recognize Polaris as the Free World’s number one weapons system at this point in history. It is safe to predict that something in line with today’s Polaris concept will be with us for many, many years to come as man explores and adapts himself to both inner and outer space.
Let us hope that, as these years pass, the Navy and the nation continue to read history.