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reported that “the importance of U-boats has considerably decreased compared to 1915. One can assume that England has good submarine detection gear, which makes torpedo attacks on a secured unit or convoy impossible.” It is one of the ironies of the prewar period that, for the most part, the Germans believed British obituaries on the submarine. For the Germans, the submarine’s major role now became battle fleet reconnaissance and attacks on surface forces. This was a curious reading of the last war’s lessons because U-boats had rarely been successful in these roles. Admiral Rolf Carls, Baltic naval commander, actually urged the Navy to build artillery and mine-laying submarines as the most effective commerce raiders.
The high command’s preference for mine-laying and reconnaissance submarines led the naval staff to urge the construction of large submarines. On the other hand, Admiral Karl Donitz, commander of the submarine force, wanted small submarines, so that Germany could have the maximum number on Atlantic station. He argued that the more submarines there were on the trade routes, the more damage to Allied shipping, and that speed was not a necessity because submarines would attack on the surface at night. This conflict almost entirely halted submarine construction in 1937. The design controversy finally ended in a compromise in which seven 500-ton and eight 740-ton boats were included in the 1938-1939 program.
When war came in 1939, the Germans possessed only 26 oceangoing submarines. In the war’s first year, only 35 boats capable of use in the Atlantic entered service, while 28 were lost at sea. This slow rise in U-boat totals resulted from the Navy’s failure to grasp the submarine’s importance. The submarine situation became so difficult that in December 1939, the Germans attempted to buy submarines from Lithuania and Estonia for training vessels.
Nevertheless, in doctrine, training, and leadership, the submarine force was admirably prepared for war. Donitz was a first-class trainer and planner who recognized the limitations as well as the advantages of his weapon. The near victory of the U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic was almost entirely the result of his efforts.
The emphasis in planning for attacks on commerce remained on surface ships. World War I successes by the auxiliary cruisers Mowe and Wolf; and the light cruisers Emden and Karlsruhe gave the Germans an exaggerated belief in surface vessels as a weapon against trade routes. Admiral Erich Raeder’s comments at the war’s beginning indicate a firm belief that surface vessels made the best commerce raiders.
Yet the course of the Bismarck chase, from her dis covery by Coastal Command aircraft in a Norwegian fjord to the torpedoing by a Swordfish aircraft, fe vealed the bankruptcy of such a strategy.
Another glaring weakness in naval planning was a failure to recognize the importance of aircraft car riers. Some German historians have blamed the Luftwaffe for the lack of carrier aircraft and for die failure to complete Germany’s first aircraft carrier- This is at best disingenuous. Before the war, German naval strategists completely underestimated carriers- Raeder characterized them as “only gasoline tan ers.” Admiral Carls’s remarks on the subject wefe similar to Air Staff arguments in Great Britain against construction of more carriers:
_The Bismar^
'istory has a way of providing situations
from
I I which lessons can be learned. Using the B*5 marck, Hood, and Prince of Wales engagement of 17 as a starting point, some thoughts come to mind- In May of that year, the German Navy embark on an operation designed to assist in the interdict*011 and strangulation of the supply lines feeding Gre*1 Britain. Boiler problems and the Royal Air F°rce disabled the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and GneisM1^' so the battleship Bismarck and the heavy cruiser P'"1* Eugen steamed into the Atlantic without them.
In 15 minutes, the Bismarck blew up the bat cruiser Hood, the pride of the Royal Navy, with r° salvos and caused such serious damage to the bat ^ ship Prince of Wales that she had to break ott action. The Prince of Wales, only two weeks from ^ builders and without any shakedown, did well herse^ in inflicting three hits, two of which affected the ^ timate outcome of the chase. The Bismarck was e'en tually caught and reduced to a wreck by lesser sh*P^ bad luck, and an incredible mistake on the PatCj; her admiral. He made lengthy, unnecessary transmissions after the ship had been brilliantly h*1(1 died and had escaped from the pursuing British.
Pursued, harried, and increasingly bloodied a ^ five days of almost continuous action and strain,
the
. „
major-caliber rounds had been fired at the from the battleships and cruisers with about ^ hits. At times, the King George V had, as the Pfinie Wales had also experienced, only two of ten rifleS
f
rad*0
unmaneuverable Bismarck was brought to bay
two battleships, the middle-aged Rodney and new King George V. In 90 minutes, nearly 2,
A
/N
44
Proceedings / Apr**
190*
Aircraft carriers: 1) for the home fleet: no remarks on existing planning. Carriers are actually undesirable as their justification lies only in the ■nsufficient range of naval aircraft necessitating launching them at sea instead of on land. Limitation of aircraft carrier building is to be advocated as soon as the range of land based aircraft correspondingly rises. This is already the case, as far as I know.”
'T’i
e Naval High Command (.Seekriegsleitung) thought a,rcraft carriers would be useful against other aircraft f°d kght naval units, but not against the enemy’s attle fleet. That task would be for battleships.
The Navy received little support from the I U'affe in developing aircraft for ocean use. Bicker
ing between the Luftwaffe and the Navy continued from 1936 through 1939. Hermann Goring claimed that air operations required a unified command under Air Force control, while the Navy argued that only naval air units could operate effectively over the ocean. Hitler settled the conflict by deciding that all aircraft would remain under Luftwaffe control. Naval bitterness over the inadequacies of the system are reflected by the naval war diary of December 1941:
“. . .in more than two years our own independent air force in attacks against large battleships, that is, the backbone of the enemy’s naval power, has not achieved what the Japanese naval air force was able to achieve in the course of a fleet operation in two days.”
sson
-By Commander Strafford Morss, U. S. Naval Reserve (Retired)
COl,
her main battery operational. The Rodney came as close as 2,750 yards, firing full nine-gun 16-inch salvos. The Bismarck did not sink until scuttled and then torpedoed.
A large number of good ships had overcome a very good ship.
The United States, with its smallest fleet since the 1930s, is facing a very much larger force of a potential enemy. While this has been recognized for some time, the assumption has always been that the quality of the U. S. ships more than made up for their numerical inferiority. However, Soviet designs, experience, and tactics have improved. The U. S. Navy has now been put in the position of numerical inferiority and questionable qualitative superiority. It will be argued that the U. S. Navy should not be considered alone but as part of the overall NATO navies force structure. However, history shows that British allies at the beginning of World War II were later neutralized for a large part of the war.
The Bismarck action included the waters of the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland-Iceland-United Kingdom gap. In the 1980s, these waters take on increased importance. Carrier battle groups will be the primary means used as the United States tries to block the exit of the Soviet Northern Fleet from the Norwegian Sea. The British used carriers in these waters with varying results during World War II:
► HMS Glorious, caught with her aircraft on deck, was sunk by gunfire from the Scharnhorst.
► Aircraft from HMS Victorious and HMS Ark Royal stopped the Bismarck.
Pl'°°eedi
nKs / April 1981
45
When World War II broke out in 1939, the German Navy was completely unprepared for a major conflict. It could not maintain a significant number of submarines on station in the North Atlantic; its surface units could only carry out tip-and-run raids against Allied commerce. Raeder’s mournful testament of September 1939, underlines the situation all too clearly:
“Today the war against England-France broke out—a war which the Fiihrer assured us would not break out before 1944, and which he believed he could avoid up to the last moment. . . . It is selfevident that the navy is in no matter sufficiently equipped in the fall of 1939 to embark on a great struggle with England. It is true that in the short time since 1935 ... we have created a well
trained submarine force which at the present time has 26 boats capable of use in the Atlantic, but which is, nevertheless, much too weak to be decisive in war. Surface forces, however, are still so few in numbers and strength compared to the English fleet that they . . . can only show that they know how to die with honor and thus create the basis for the recreation of a future fleet.’
Conclusion: Today, we can easily see where the British and the Germans went wrong. However, the significant point, which we may be all too willing t0 ignore, is that both the obvious tactical lessons as well as the composition of a fleet at the end of a may emphasize precisely the wrong direction towat which a country’s naval policies should procee •
► On several occasions off the Norwegian coast, carrier strikes against the Tirpitz were scrubbed because of sea conditions.
British ships were much smaller than present-day 80,000 to 90,000-ton U. S. carriers, but so were their aircraft. Modern 40,000-50,000-pound aircraft whistling aboard at 110-135 knots to a wet, slippery, heaving deck in Force 6 winds and seas, or above, in a high-threat environment, lead me to wonder how long a carrier air group could remain effective.
During certain periods of the year, there is a high proportion of the time when carriers cannot be expected to operate effectively in these waters. At any given time, and most likely in the poorer times of year, the United States could find itself trying to contain the Soviets from breaking out and interdicting the ports and convoy routes to NATO Europe. This might include attacks on Soviet home ports and antisubmarine warfare operations against both attack submarines and Soviet fleet ballistic missile submarines in an attempt to localize and neutralize, particularly the newer ballistic missile types, for which these northern seas could be a secure patrol area.
To accomplish this mission, proper resource allocation is vital. The United States has an authorized force strength of 13 carriers. At the risk of oversimplification, an analysis shows three carriers normally in the midst of multi-year overhauls, five carriers deployed to the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Western Pacific, leaving a total of five, divided between the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in various
stages of upkeep and training available for depl0^ ment. Perhaps three of these ships might be assigne to the Atlantic.
It would be a major strategic victory if, >n a
vance, we could be made to deploy our most capa
ships to an area where potential enemy interests
ble
are
M
less. The Indian Ocean appears to be such an area- the outbreak of hostilities, U. S. priorities will dra matically shift from maintaining open supply l<neS ■ the United States and the West, to the dua
priorities of trying to contain the Soviet Northern
Fleet and successfully move vast amounts of men
material to Europe. This will take place within
an
a
the
1IUU.V.11U1 IU I_,LilV_»|_'V_ . 1.1110 Will LO.rv.V_ place
framework of then available equipment and sup!
resources; the first five or six weeks will
wi11
make-or-break period. Three aircraft carriers form the nucleus of this effort. If any or all t>eC°
ineffective because of weather or enemy actiom ^
carrier’s roles of both attack and fleet defense wifi
upon the remaining surface and submarine forces
as-
foReS
signed to the carrier battle group. The surface will be called on to protect both the carrier ^ themselves and to try to conduct standoff atta with the means at their disposal. j
At present, I suggest, the availability of °aV
and
weapons needed to fight and defend our ships o ^
any period of time is inadequate. The British
World
almost 2,900 rounds at the Bismarck. A
than
II U. S. battleship would normally store more ^ 100 main battery rounds per barrel with a maxu11 capability of about 1,350 rounds. Contrast this
les
present ship loads of eight Harpoon antiship rmsSl without reload capability. The situation does
46
Proceedings / AprO
J0'
Moreover, the inherent bureaucratic tendencies of any military service combined with a fundamental Ur"viIlmgneSS to question accepted doctrine can lead t0 ossification and strategic obsolescence. The warn- ,nS is clear.
Dr. Murray was graduated with a B.A. degree in history from Yale University in 1963. He served in the Air Force as a flight line maintenance officer in California and as a field maintenance officer in Southeast Asia. He received a Naval War College Fellowship in 1973 and a Ph.D. in history from Yale in 1975. He then became acting dean ly J°nathan Edwards College at Yale, and lectured in military st°ty there. He is an assistant professor of history at Ohio State ^"'versity and is presently a research associate at the Air Power search Institute, Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama.
Notes on Source Materials
This article was drawn from a number of archival as well as secondary sources. On the British side, the material in the Public Record Office was invaluable. The Cabinet minutes and papers indicated the impact of military advice on the highest level while the papers of the Committee of Imperial Defense, the Chiefs of Staff Committee, and the Deputy Chiefs of Staff Committee all cover the evolution of defense policy, while the Admiralty papers cover the naval side. Contemporary journals such as the Journal of the Royal United Services Institute reveal the debate over naval matters outside of the naval establishment. On the German side, the German Admiralty papers are largely available either at the German military archives in Freiburg or on microfilm in the T-1022 series in the National Archives in Washington. German military journals from the period are also useful. Memoirs from both sides of the war are interesting but must be used with care, particularly on the German side. In terms of the secondary literature, S. W. Roskill’s two-volume work, Naval Policy Between the Wars on the Royal Navy and Michael Salewski’s, Die deutsche Seekriegsleitung and Jost Diilffer’s, Weimar, Hitler und die Marine on the German side give the most complete picture.
1
that
only
°me Fleet at Scapa Flow. Less capable but re-
Centl
t0 get better with a recommended fiscal year and ^ Procurement °f 20 Tomahawk cruise missiles jc Phoenix air-to-air missiles. In November • che contractor celebrated the delivery of the Uth Harpoon. A reasonable estimate would be
’ at present, the total inventory of Harpoon, the th °Perational U. S. antiship missile, is no more an 1,500. It is also not difficult to conceive of a yeJl,er battle group under attack expending an entire s procurement of Phoenix air defense missiles in ^ short time.
6o |*rp00n is now deployed with the fleet in about aj n'Ps aH over the world, with certain shore-based hers C Sclua<^rons> ar>d with some allies. The num- yj available in any given location cannot be large. rP°°n is a small payload weapon. Considering the anal°gy> it will tahe several Harpoon hits to a^til-*2 C a S^'P’ a situati°n that remains desperate Mventories and delivery capabilities can be p, l UP- We cannot count on Tomahawk, a larger- Uj <a’ more-effective weapon. At present procure-
efjp rates, Tomahawk is not now and will not be
^ vely operational for a number of years, kreak^ ^ Possibilities of German heavy ship anj |)uts 'nto the Atlantic, the British recognized ea t with the resource problem by stationing
thp , chey considered their most capable ships with
c He
Modernized ships were assigned to the V/terranean- The least capable ships, the Royal fibal^” C*ass’ were used as convoy escorts to provide flnitej°Vera^e aSainst heavy ships. Similarly, the States must consider holding its own most
capable ships for the most serious threat. With too few ships required to be in too many places, several of the remaining Essex (CV-9)-cIass carriers should be considered for immediate activation, particularly for use in the Indian Ocean. If production and installation of standoff missiles cannot be increased, interim installation of such weapons as Exocet or Gabriel should be considered, and steps taken to provide on-board reload capability.
For a nation which relies on the importing of more than 100 strategic materials by sea to maintain its economy, there can be no substitute for the commitment of sufficient resources, hardware, and trained personnel to protect its ocean-borne interests and requirements. When faced with a larger number of very good Soviet ships, reliance today by the United States on a 35-year-old tradition of naval supremacy and on “qualitative superiority” can only result in an epitaph similar to that given HMS Hood: “She was a vastly overrated ship.”
Commander Morss was graduated from Harvard College in 1957 and commissioned a Naval Reserve officer after completing Officer Candidate School at Newport. During his five years of active duty through 1962, he served in the USS Eugene A. Greene (DDR-711), Norfolk Group Atlantic Reserve Fleet, and the USS Protector (AGR- 11). From 1962 to 1964, he was repair supervisor at the Boston yard of Bethlehem Steel Company. He served in various Naval Reserve billets, including commanding officer of Surface Division 1-2 (M) at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He retired from the Naval Reserve in 1977. Commander Morss is now employed as an engineering assurance engineer at Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation. He lives in Westport, Massachusetts.
47
tn8Ts / April 1981