Isegoria

The phenomenal shift in tactics during World War II took almost everyone by surprise, Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations explains:

Even the airpower zealots, who professed to have foreseen the tactical revolution, had been too conservative in their predictions.

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To illustrate: in 1940 two German battleships caught the British aircraft carrier HMS Glorious in the open sea and sank it; by 1944 U.S. Fleet anti-air warfare (AAW) defenses were so impregnable that Japan had to abandon bombing attacks and instead resort to kamikaze missions. Land-based horizontal-bomber attacks against warships—the original mission of the B-17—proved not to be effective. The torpedo bomber, while scoring successes, came to be a kind of unintentional kamikaze. In the end only the dive-bomber spelled the difference.

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For one thing, aerial bombing tests in the early 1920s against the old U.S. battleships Indiana (BB 58), New Jersey (BB 62), and Virginia (BB 64), and the new but uncompleted Washington (BB 56), along with Billy Mitchell’s rigged attacks on the Ostfriesland, proved not so much that heavy bombs could sink warships as that the aircraft of that day would have great difficulty sinking a moving, well-defended, buttoned-up warship.

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Between 1922 and 1925 the budget for naval aviation held steady at 14.5 million dollars while that for the Navy as a whole shrank 25 percent. From 1923 to 1929 the naval air arm increased by 6,750 men, while Navy manning overall decreased by 1,500—and those figures do not include the crews of the manpower-intensive USS Lexington (CV 2) and USS Saratoga (CV 3).

In an astonishing sleight-of-hand, all five major signatories of the Washington Disarmament Treaty of 1921 were permitted to maintain substantial total carrier tonnage—135,000 each for the United States and Great Britain; 81,000 for Japan; and 60,000 each for France and Italy—at a time when “no naval power … possessed a single ship that could be applied against the allowed carrier tonnage.”

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In sum, the Washington Treaty and those that followed it over the next several years did not impose a constraint on airpower, but rather provided an incentive for expanding it.

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In the delicate balance of interactions it is noteworthy that the greatest swing factor in the battleship versus carrier issue may have been the actual performance of the newly introduced technology of radar. If [radar] had proven more effective in directing heavy AA guns [or if, as others have said, the proximity fuze had come along a few years sooner], the effectiveness of tactical strike aircraft might have been largely neutralized. If it had been markedly less effective for early warning and fighter direction, carrier vulnerability might have been too great to bear. In either case, the fleet would have been dramatically different in 1945.

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Aircraft were essential as scouts and—not to be overlooked—acted as spotters for gunfire in those days before radar.

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“Opposing carriers within a strategical area are like blindfolded men armed with daggers in a ring. There is apt to be sudden destruction to one or both.”

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In large measure the fleet tactics anticipated for World War II were similar to those that had been used in the previous war, except that aircraft, the new mad dogs of their day, would finally fight one another in the air. This outlook prevailed in all navies. After the war actually broke out, tacticians had to adapt so extensively that by the end of the war every major category of warship that the U.S. Navy was deploying—except for minecraft—was being used for a different purpose from the one for which it had been built. The striking and supporting roles of battleships and aircraft carriers were reversed; heavy cruisers, designed in part for fleet scouting, did almost everything but that; light cruisers, designed as destroyer-leaders, became AAW escorts for carriers; destroyers, conceived for defending the van and rear of the battle line against torpedo attacks from other destroyers, were adapted to function as antisubmarine warfare (ASW) and AAW escorts; and submarines, designed for forward reconnaissance and attacks on warships, were diverted to attack merchant ships and the sea lines of communication.

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The Japanese solution was three-fold—to seek qualitative superiority in battleships, naval aircraft, and submarines; to outnumber the U.S. Navy in cruisers and destroyers; and to develop complicated but coherent tactics that would whittle down the American battle line before the decisive battle, which would then be fought in the western Pacific.

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Thanks to prewar experimentation, both U.S. and Japanese naval aviators understood the advantages of the circular formation for the defense of a carrier.

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The increasing maximum range of attack aircraft opened up the possibility of mounting joint sorties from two or more carrier formations that were physically separated by hundreds of miles. In practice, the need for radio silence hampered—perhaps even spoiled—this possibility, and the United States never entertained it.

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Carriers dominated the daylight hours, but they were sitting ducks for gunfire at night.

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Typical American planning before the war would have held that the U.S. battle fleet steaming west to relieve Guam and the Philippines would be met by the Japanese battle fleet and a great decisive action would take place. It is true that as logistical considerations intruded, this simple tactical paradigm was complicated by the need for bases and the fleet train. But guarding the train or an invasion force was not yet a mission about which fleet tacticians worried much.

The airplane changed that. Until there was a threat of invasion by the navy on the strategic offensive, a weaker battle fleet on the defensive could not be induced to fight. But an invasion force had the responsibility of protecting amphibious assault ships, and with aircraft in the offing this presented new and complicated problems. Aircraft had to cover the transports as well as attack the enemy.

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Fiske envisioned a mutual exchange of salvoes that would erode the residual strengths of both sides simultaneously. His aim was to show the cumulative effectiveness of superior firepower; how a small advantage could dominate the action if it could be exploited with coherent maneuvers; and how the inferior force would inflict disproportionately scant damage no matter how well the battle was handled tactically. Gun range was a matter of indifference to Fiske because both sides faced essentially the same range. He felt free to disregard (at least for purposes of illustration) the possibility that one side could out-range the other and maintain a significant advantage. In effect, the pace of the battle would accelerate as the range closed, but the final ratio of losses would not change.

His model took into account the “staying power”—that is, warship survivability—in accordance with the assessments of his day: a modern battleship would be reduced to impotence in about twenty minutes by unopposed big guns within effective range.

The gunfire model of simultaneous erosive attrition does not work for the World War II carrier offensive force. That force is best represented as one large pulse of firepower unleashed upon the arrival of the air wing at the target.

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So in carrier battles, the crucial ingredients were scouting effectiveness and net striking power.

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The wisest conclusion is probably that in 1942 single-carrier screens were best because defenses were poor, aircraft could be launched and landed more efficiently when carriers had their own screens, and attacking first was the primary objective. Single carriers separated by even as little as ten or twenty miles might escape attack, as the carriers Zuikaku in the Coral Sea and Saratoga in the eastern Solomons did.

By 1944, however, U.S. tacticians had concluded that they could give up something in offensive efficiency to exploit the potentially withering defenses of the tight AAW circle. U.S. formations enclosed three or four carriers, and the entire disposition was kept close enough so that the entire fleet could be protected by a massed CAP.

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As the war progressed, the U.S. Navy strengthened its carrier defenses. First, it increased the number of fighters at the expense of bomber totals. Second, it steadily added AAW batteries, it began using the Atlanta-class AAW cruisers, and, starting with the Battle of the Eastern Solomons, it integrated fast battleships into carrier screens. Third, it emphasized and improved damage-control procedures and equipment on its warships. As a result, defensive considerations came to dominate and ultimately the destruction of aircraft became more significant than the destruction of carriers.

By 1944 the simple but elegant model of the carrier battles in use for the two previous years was beginning to fail. It asserted that one carrier air wing would, throughout 1942, sink one enemy carrier if and when it found a carrier:

CVs out of action = Attacking airwings

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In 1944, when the U.S. Fleet swept across the Pacific from Pearl Harbor to the Philippines in less than twelve months, it was so strong that it could accompany the landing force and dare the Japanese to come out. It had a two-to-one numerical advantage in carriers, decisive in itself, and an even greater advantage when the quality of pilots and screening ships was factored in. Moreover, it no longer was necessary for U.S. forces to attack first. Mass and unity of action were the keys to effective application of force.

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Although we are not likely to see the Pacific war over island air bases reproduced, we can anticipate the recurring tactical problem that a commander with superior forces faces when pitted against enemies who know their own inferiority and decline battle. When mounting an attack on a land target is the decided-upon way of drawing out an inferior enemy, it is too easy for planners to permit the land attack to become the end itself and to forget that the attack is but the means to a greater end—in this instance that of destroying the enemy’s seagoing forces.

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The Japanese had to attack effectively first. A simultaneous exchange of attacks with similar losses on both sides would ruin them in the long run because they could not afford to exchange carriers on a one-for-one basis. They had to attempt stealth, deception, and divided forces as a calculated risk. They gambled, likely even believed, that one carrier could sink two. Even though they were wrong, it was still a good gamble at the beginning of 1942; by the end of 1942, it was a very bad gamble.

There were many reasons for the resurgence of defense. True, AAW guns alone could have been enough to cause it, but the final and decisive factors responsible for the success of American defense were two factors that the Japanese could not possibly fold into their early planning—radar and cryptanalysis. Except in the Battle of Britain, nowhere was radar more quickly put to decisive use than in the Pacific carrier battles. Cryptanalysis for its part almost eliminated the chance of the Japanese achieving surprise. Stealth and deception were foredoomed.

For the world’s navies, Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations explains, the years from 1865 to 1914 marked a golden age of tactical thought, without parallel before or since:

One cannot read letters and papers of naval officers such as Ambroise Baudry, Bradley Fiske, Romeo Bernotti, William Bainbridge-Hoff, and Stepan O. Makarov, and naval journals around 1900 without being inspired by the tremendous outpouring of technical and tactical creativity.

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In the end, tactical analysis erred in only two significant respects: it too often overvalued the impact that greater speed would have on fleet actions, and it failed to foresee the limitations that poor visibility would continue to impose.

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With the exception of modern methods of fire control and the self-propelled torpedo, all of the elements for the transition from sail to steam warships were conceived between the Napoleonic Wars and the American Civil War. The list included steam propulsion and screw propellers; iron hulls and armor; bigger guns with greater muzzle velocity and more penetrating power; breech-loading guns; effective shells and their necessary companions, fusing and rifled gun barrels; and gun turrets.

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The British, slow as they were to adopt iron hulls, never built another wooden-hulled ship after they launched the formidable nine-thousand-ton HMS Warrior in 1860; instead, the Royal Navy was replaced from scratch. Strategy, too, was overturned. The advent of reliable steam propulsion set off a worldwide race to provide for coaling stations—a move made necessary by the spread of colonialism; in turn, the construction of more coaling stations made it easier for countries to support still more colonies.

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Not only could a superior fleet now attack directly into the wind, but it could close an enemy in the lightest wind and run the gauntlet of opponents’ fire at double or triple the former speed.

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At this stage armor was ahead of armaments in the race for technological superiority, so the attractiveness of the ram was linked to tactical mobility, kinetic energy, and the ability to close an enemy whose effective range and rate of fire had not kept pace with ship speed.

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Ironclads, not very seaworthy, nonetheless demonstrated their ability to stand up to forts and land batteries—a capability that hastened their development over the next several years and in the U.S. Civil War. In 1853 the Battle of Sinope was seen as the proving ground for the explosive shell. Six large Russian ships descended out of the haze on 7 hapless Turkish frigates and smashed them all, killing or wounding nearly 3,000 Turks with the loss of only 266 Russians.

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The U.S. Civil War was almost devoid of fleet-on-fleet battles. Almost all fleet actions were what we call today littoral operations—inshore work—undertaken to control seaports, harbors, and rivers.

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The ascendancy of armor plate over gunshot and early shells was so fleeting that some analysts are prone to make light of the ram. But writings of the 1870s and 1880s extolled the ram. For some twenty-five years the mobility of steamships enabled them to “charge”—a common description at the time—through a gauntlet of effective fire that was short, only a half mile deep at most. A fleet of rams could run eight hundred yards in three minutes or less and (it was thought) devastate a column that was armed with guns. And it could steam right into the wind. The more a defensive column closed up to concentrate its fire, the more vulnerable it was to ramming. The bigger the fleet was in single column, the longer the column and the easier it was for a ramming fleet to concentrate on a single segment.

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Between 1877 and 1879, just before the end of the ram’s perceived dominance, there were some engagements on the west coast of South America that indicate what might have happened had major fleets engaged in battle. In four drawn-out fights between one or two ironclads and other warships, there were several attempts to ram the opposition force, and nearly all of them were unsuccessful. The performance showed that it had been underestimated how difficult it would be to hit a moving target, especially in engagements where ships were freer to move than they would have been in larger fleet actions.

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It is widely thought now that gunnery usurped the ram, or that the ram was never an effective weapon at all. A better conclusion is that the torpedo superseded the ram. The Whitehead torpedo was a ram with reach: if it hit, it was almost as lethal and was a lot safer to use. As a result, the study of gunnery became as obsessed with countering torpedo boats as it had been with regard to penetrating armor.

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The Spanish-American War proved that even when gun shells had the potential to penetrate iron and steel plates, in at least two navies the gun could seldom hit a target in motion.

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Admiral Fiske presented three rules of thumb:

A 6-inch gun fired eight times as fast as a 12-inch gun.

A 12-inch projectile carried eight times the energy of a 6-inch-gun projectile.

A 12-inch-gun system weighed eight times as much as a 6-inch gun.

Therefore, on equal ship displacements, 6-inch guns delivered eight times the projectile energy of 12-inch guns.

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A significant break point occurred at the 6-inch gun, because its 100-pound projectile was the heaviest that sailors could handle.

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Small-and medium-caliber gunfire could inundate an enemy at short range, as the Japanese amply demonstrated at Tsushima in the Russo-Japanese War (1905), where their gunnery ranges were maintained at four thousand to six thousand yards. To dominate the battle, big (10-or 12-inch) guns needed accurate fire control at ranges beyond the reach of medium (4-or 6-inch) guns.

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Around 1910, when continuous-aim fire and director control replaced local gunlaying, the all-big-gun ship was certain to dominate.

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By World War I, a mere ten years after Tsushima, big guns of the 12-to 15-inch class were the weapon, hitting repeatedly on a clear day after a few ranging salvoes out to eight miles and more.

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Battleships did not defend themselves against torpedoes; light cruisers and destroyers were built for that purpose, and they would be responsible for fending off enemy destroyers and torpedo boats. Scouting cruisers were the eyes of the fleet and would remain so until airplanes or dirigibles were sufficiently advanced to do the job. Battle cruisers, a vestige of the late nineteenth-century influence of land combat on naval thinking, would be a heavy cavalry in support of the scouting cruisers and able in theory to outrange or outrun any opposition. Mines were a wicked and ungentlemanly threat in shallow water, but they were largely defensive and had to be planted by surface ships. Submarines, like mines that had a deep-water offensive potential, were worse—an instrument of the devil. The wireless radio was a new tool of command, above all useful tactically to speed the results of scouting.

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When the big gun dominated, it was weapon range that made “crossing the T” so advantageous; instead of a single ship of the line in raking position, the whole fleet could concentrate fire on the enemy van.

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Tactical discussions centered on how to cross the T. In tabletop tactical studies, the only means of achieving this concentration by maneuver was speed, and speed along with armor and armament was in every tactical and technological discussion. As events transpired, the tabletop would prove to be misleading.

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Greatly increasing weapon range and effectiveness was also having a profound influence on the need for reconnaissance. The commander of a large fleet in World War I had to have information about the enemy’s force well before he could see it.

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At Jutland both the British Grand Fleet and the German High Seas Fleet committed 20 to 25 percent of their heavy firepower and 35 to 45 percent of their supporting cruisers and destroyers to scouting forces.

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The scouting line, which covered about 35 degrees on either bow of the battle fleet, was sufficient to sweep out a wide swath of ocean and protect against an undetected approach. No enemy could make an end run past the scouting line as long as the fleet was steaming ahead smartly. Reorienting the axis of advance of such a disposition was a tense and prolonged experience for every flag officer and ship captain.

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The wireless made scouting lines feasible and enabled commanders to alter the cruising and battle dispositions of fleets themselves.

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First, experience is the best way for a crew to learn the intent of its commander; teamwork is the result of a lot of work as a unit. Second, developing a set of simple, clear signals, used navy-wide and practiced frequently, is the next best technique for avoiding ambiguities and misunderstandings. Third, some messages will be lost, delayed, and misunderstood anyway; no human system can eliminate communication errors—they are to be expected and as far as possible hedged against in tactical doctrine. Finally, the more commanders plan in advance, doctrinally and operationally, and the simpler the plan, the fewer the communication gaffes will be and the more smoothly the action will flow.

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And as for the execution of some theoretical tactical initiative on the spot, it would have been impossible. Only today’s game-players, who have the magical power to move whole fleets on video screens with buttons, can carry out such unpracticed maneuvers. An admiral of a fleet does not expect to exploit opportunities with tactics that have not been inculcated.

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A handful of tactical surprises, however, did arise. Prominent among them was an almost total disregard before World War I of the importance of deception. Every major engagement in the North Sea, the cockpit of the naval war, was part of an effort at seduction. Both sides knew the advantage of numbers and the N-square law (described in footnote 11). Neither fought voluntarily when it was outnumbered ever so slightly; as a result, trap and counter-trap became the method of war, and more often than not the schemes backfired—even at the Battle of Jutland.

If planned surprise through traps did not work very well, unplanned surprise resulting from failures in scouting abounded.

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A dominant feature of Jutland was poor visibility, caused by the gun and engine smoke of 250 warships. There is something about the game floor or video screen that deludes the tactical planner, who may forget that circumstances can drastically foreshorten opening ranges and change the whole nature of the battle. Certainly that is what happened to the Americans in the night actions around Solomons Island in 1942–43, when, unlike the rehearsals of the 1930s, the battles often opened at point-blank range.

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Prewar writers thought, correctly, that gunfire would work very quickly once forces were within effective range. As a result, they envisioned elaborate maneuvers beyond effective range to achieve an advantageous position. In practice, however, it usually was futile to use engineering speed to achieve tactical advantage. The practical speed of a fleet was the speed of the slowest ship in formation.

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The speed that mattered was in the realm of decision-making: decisions had to be made quickly and transformed into simple, correct maneuvers.

Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations starts with “the Age of Fighting Sail”:

Since it was natural for sailing ships to fire abeam, the practice of positioning ships in a straight line in order to fight an enemy was entirely logical for that day. At the same time, because the admiral’s signal flags—then the only effective way of communicating orders within a squadron or fleet—were difficult to see for vessels arrayed in a single line, command-and-control was more reliable if the admiral placed his flagship in the center of the column.

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His objective was to bring all of his force against the enemy, “well ordered, well knit, and simultaneously,” and with no unengaged reserve. Training at sea improved captains’ seamanship skills, enabling fleet commanders to place a tightly spaced column alongside a raggedly disposed enemy line—a step that could significantly bolster the squadron’s collective firepower, especially in cases where enemy ships were spread thinly or where they overlapped and masked each other’s fire.

Indeed, it took skillful seamanship to bring the firepower of even two ships simultaneously against a single enemy. To be fully effective, guns had to be well within three hundred yards of the enemy, firing essentially at point-blank range. The maximum significant range for naval guns was eight hundred or nine hundred yards; beyond this the probability of hitting the enemy was remote and round-shot would barely be able to penetrate a hull. The firing arcs of broadsides were limited to about 25 degrees forward and aft of the beam. Training a gun was a slow and awkward process, so that, by and large, it was easier to train a ship’s guns by maneuvering the ship herself than by trying to turn her cannon to one side or another. As a result, it was rare for two consecutive ships in a column to enjoy the advantage of directing fully effective fire at a single enemy simultaneously.

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The most effective method of massing force and increasing the density of firepower was to stack cannon vertically—hence the logic of building two-deckers and three-deckers.

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In 1697 the highly respected Jesuit priest and French naval tactician Paul Hoste would write that the size of vessels contributed more than numbers to the strength of the fleet. Hoste cited two reasons—first, that larger ships had more and heavier guns, and, second, that a fleet of large ships would bring more and larger guns to bear in the same length as a column made up of smaller ships that were spaced more closely together.

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From combat experience the two-decker was known to have more than a two-to-one advantage over a single-decker (which later would be known as a frigate).

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Barring a lucky shot that landed in a magazine, ships were not often sunk by gunfire (although they later sank from hull damage, which is a separate issue). Ships were defeated by what today we would refer to as a firepower kill—by knocking out their guns and gunners and crushing the ships’ morale and their will to fight. As many ships were captured as were sunk. Since British seamen fought better and French ships had excellent sailing qualities, many of the ships sailing in the Royal Navy were rehabilitated French vessels.

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According to the computation, with simple continuous fire on both sides and no hull strength advantage for either, the two-decker would lose only five guns, at the same time destroying the frigate’s entire broadside of eighteen.

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If a two-decked seventy-four were matched against a three-decker rated at one hundred guns, then, using the same model and assumptions as before, the two-decker would be forced to capitulate before the three-decker had lost twenty guns.

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Admirals also learned, however, that keeping a close interval between ships could provide them with increased mutual support, so the distance specified in their Fighting Instructions could be almost unattainably short—as little as three ship lengths between vessels.

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A second reason for tight spacing was to prevent an enemy from breaking through the column and raking ships on either side with entire broadsides at pointblank range, and from an angle where the target ship was unable to return the fire.

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As a result, the tactician’s primary problem during this era was to concentrate firepower at sea at a time when effective gun range was very short—less than five hundred yards.

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The eighteenth-century French were such a reluctant enemy. Seeking to avoid a decisive action, they concentrated on improving their accuracy instead of on increasing the volume of their fire, arming their ships with more long-range guns, positioning themselves to leeward, and firing high into the rigging to cripple English ships, forcing them to slow, drop back, and weaken the line.

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Nelson stands out in memory because the Battle of Trafalgar, fought on 21 October 1805, was the last big fleet action for more than a century. Yet, his fame does not rest on an accident of history. The reason that there were no more fleet actions was that Nelson did what no one else had been able to do: he eliminated the enemy fleet, ending the need for further fleet actions and setting the stage for a hundred years of British naval dominance.

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The order of sailing will be the order of battle, he said. This notion, now a pertinent watchword for a modern fleet, was a stunning innovation in 1805.

One can learn the wrong lesson from Trafalgar. Had Nelson used his Trafalgar tactics against, say, Dutch Admirals Maarten H. Tromp or Michiel de Ruyter or France’s de Suffren, the result would have been disastrous. Every one of his ships in those light winds of October had to run a gauntlet of three or four unanswered broadsides, which would have guaranteed his defeat had his opponent been firstrate.

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For the Dutch, commerce via the English Channel was survival. With it they would prosper; without it they would wither into nothing. Neither side could decline battle and still achieve its purpose in the war. It either built up its navy and fought, or made peace and lost its objective. The wars had limited objectives, so the winner could indeed anticipate a net financial gain and the loser could anticipate financial and national ruin. As a result, the motivation to fight and fight to win was strong.

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It suited France’s strategic objectives to decline to engage in a decisive battle. For the French, the ocean was a flank to be held while the decision was fought out on land. Whenever they believed their war aim would be determined on land, they adopted one of two naval strategies: they either would maintain a substantial fleet to divert the British navy (not always successfully) and look for opportunities to do so, or they would conduct a guerre de course, raiding commerce in hopes of achieving a moderate gain at little cost.

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When the Royal Navy learned how to close and fight a decisive battle, the French, who wished to avoid fighting, were devastated tactically and therefore were severely hampered strategically.

Fleet Tactics and Naval Operations explains how naval combat differs from land combat:

For example, journalists who observed British and Argentine ships being sunk during the South Atlantic War of 1982 predicted there would be a dire future for surface warships because they had no knowledge of how deadly naval battles have been in the past.

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An abiding success has been our adoption of the inelegant turn-of-phrase as our central maxim of naval tactics, “Attack effectively first.” It has proven to be accurate, enduring, and much quoted.

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Another source of confusion is that substantial portions of modern “fleets” are land based. Much of the Soviet navy was made up of long-range bombers and missiles tasked with sinking American warships and shipping. The Chinese navy increasingly relies on those weapons as well.

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Prominent among the terms used here is scouting, which means reconnaissance, surveillance, code-breaking, and all other ways to obtain and report combat information to commanders and their forces. For all practical purposes the Russian word razvedka means the same thing. Screening, another navy word of distinguished lineage, is very similar to antiscouting, but screening includes the possibility of attacking a threatening enemy.

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Since a great constant of tactics is that there is never enough scouting capacity, these are some of a tactical commander’s most critical decisions.

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This volume uses the word littorals to describe “where the clutter is”—first, the sea side of the littoral, where islands and inlets, shoals and shallows, oil drilling rigs, commercial air traffic, coastal shipping and fishing, and electronic transmissions of many kinds abound to complicate combat tactics; and, second, the land side, where airfields, missile-launch sites, electronic detection systems, and dense populations complicate coastal warfare.

Technological advances have extended the lethal ranges of missiles, aircraft, and unmanned systems; and satellites or over-the-horizon radars now extend detection well beyond the clutter into blue water.

In narrow waterways such as the Skagerrak Strait, Taiwan Strait, Dardanelles, Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab el Mandeb, the littoral extends from coast to coast.

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The commercial airways of sea and land and radio broadcasts add to the clutter. Shoals and shallows affect underwater operations. A major factor in planning is the existence of so-called “moving clutter,” such as commercial ships and aircraft that are either transiting or operating in the region. In July 1988 the USS Vincennes (CG 49) mistakenly shot down an Iranian airliner in the belief that the plane was an attacking jet fighter. Again, in the confined Arabian Gulf during operations preparatory to Desert Storm, Iraqi ground forces fired two Silkworm missiles at the USS Missouri (BB 63), which was shooting 16-inch shells at Iraqi coastal emplacements. Although the Missouri was eighteen miles to seaward no U.S. escort vessel got off a shot, partly because in the coastal clutter that filled the area the Navy ships wanted to be sure they were not shooting at an innocent aircraft.

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One may infer what it takes to win a battle from ADM Arleigh Burke’s often quoted words: “The difference between a good officer and a poor one is about ten seconds.”

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Leadership, morale, training, physical and mental conditioning, willpower, and endurance are the most important elements in warfare.

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Sailors matter most.

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Doctrine is the companion and instrument of good leadership.

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The nineteenth-century Prussian army leader Helmuth von Moltke said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Nelson understood as well as anyone that doctrine is the glue of good tactics.

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Tactical and technological developments are so intertwined as to be inseparable. That is why ADM Alfred Thayer Mahan, USN, rejected (rather too readily) the constants of tactics while promoting the principles of strategy.

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To know tactics, you must know weapons.

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The seat of purpose is on the land.

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“A ship’s a fool to fight a fort.”

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The tactical maxim of all naval battles is: attack effectively first.

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There is no way to judge Napoleon’s assertion that “the morale is to the material as three is to one.” Although that may be true in ground combat, the ratio in naval warfare is probably narrower because in ships at sea the crews must go where the leaders go.

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Superior tactics may tip the balance, but in the latter stages of a long war the wit and ingenuity required for such tactics ultimately are overshadowed by sheer grit.

At sea the predominance of attrition over maneuver is a theme so basic that it runs throughout this book. Forces at sea are not broken by encirclement; they are broken by destruction. Over the years naval strategists have been careful about committing their forces to battle at sea because of its awesome destructiveness. Compared with land warfare, major sea battles have been few and far between. Partly this is because the estimation of material superiority is relatively easier to gauge at sea than ashore, and strategists in an inferior navy have tended to avoid battle until the jugular vein was threatened.

As a result, a superior navy with a modest force advantage often has been able to contain and neutralize a strong enemy and carry out many strategic objectives without fighting—up to a point. Considering the death and destruction wrought by naval warfare, it may be that the very decisiveness of battle at sea, which so often leads tacticians to try to avoid it, is actually a virtue for which the civilized world can be grateful.

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Doctrine is the commanders’ way of controlling their forces in writing before military action.

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Two points about doctrine must be remembered—that it is vital and that it must not become dogmatic.

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To a person, strong military leaders want freedom for initiative from their seniors and reliability from their juniors. Doctrine in the hands of able commanders will, at its most sublime, allow the achievement of both these things.

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The clearest evidence of doctrinal deficiency is too much communication—reams of orders and directives that in the planning stage are little more than generalities and exhortations, and which defer too much to the moment of decision.

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Doctrine is the basis for training and for measuring what training standards should achieve.

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Doctrine provides continuity of operations when captains are transferred or killed.

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Tactical doctrine is the standard operating procedure that the creative commander adapts to the exigencies of battle.

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Paradoxically, doctrine generates initiative: a trained subordinate can see from it not only what will be done but what will not be done and will know—as Nelson did at Cape St. Vincent—how to save the battle.

[…]

These two facts are universally recognized: that continual advances in technology keep weapons in a state of change, and that tactics must be designed to fit the capabilities of contemporary weapons. The U.S. Navy in particular has been fascinated with hardware, esteems technical competence, and is prone to trying to overcome its tactical deficiencies with engineering improvements. Indeed, there are officers in peacetime who regard the official statement of a requirement for a new piece of hardware as the end of their responsibility in correcting a current operational deficiency. This is a trap. Former Atlantic Fleet commander ADM Isaac Kidd Jr. was always a champion of the need to be prepared to fight with what you have. And no wonder: his father died fighting in the USS Arizona (BB 39) at Pearl Harbor.

[…]

Our ablest naval officers were tacticians who knew their technology. RADM William S. Sims, with his continuous-aim fire; RADM Bradley A. Fiske, with his host of patents, including one for aerial-torpedo-release gear, before aircraft were even capable of lifting a torpedo payload; and RADM William A. Moffett and other early aviators who foresaw the day when naval aircraft would be potent ship-killers and who helped develop bigger engines, better navigating equipment, and carrier arresting gear—all machinery to fulfill their visions.

The great historian of the Civil War, Douglas Southall Freeman, condensed the ten commandments of warfare into three: “Know your stuff; be a man; and look after your men.”

[…]

But what is true in ground combat, where machines serve human beings, is magnified at sea, where human beings serve machines.

[…]

For one thing, the study of maritime history shows that fleet battles have been rare; once again, the most common use of navies has been for the landing of ground forces, the support of operations ashore, and the protection of shipping at sea.

[…]

The reason a fleet did not choose to fight protected land batteries toe-to-toe was well expressed by a man who ought to have known—John Ericsson, the designer of the armored Civil War ship Monitor. “A single shot can sink a ship,” he said, “while a hundred salvos cannot silence a fort.”

[…]

When guns had far shorter ranges than they do today, a fleet could risk a run past to get beyond them. The gauntlet of fire usually was short enough to endure—if the reward were worth the price. The American Civil War is full of examples of subtlety and brute force, of success and failure. The many Union fleet engagements with fortifications along the Confederate coast and western rivers show that victory was difficult to achieve, and that it depended on preparation, choice of the moment, and well-coordinated execution, often in cooperation with land forces.

Strange to say, after the range of cannon had increased substantially, large guns ashore were no longer the sort of “forts” that frightened battleship captains the most. In World War I torpedo boats, minefields, and submarines held the Royal Navy at bay. In that conflict and again in World War II, the narrow waterways of the English Channel and North Sea were the domain of a flotilla of many small combatants. The flotilla threatened (yet could not stop) coastal shipping, dropped off spies and raiders, and rescued pilots who bailed out over water.

In missions involving an attack on a fleet that was anchored in a protected port, many commanders chose to approach from the rear. That was the tactical plan at Port Arthur in the Russo-Japanese War, Santiago in the Spanish-American War, and Singapore in World War II. The attackers landed ground troops against weak opposition and away from the center of gravity—the harbor—so that it could be overwhelmed by land, though sometimes at considerable cost, lives and time required. At Guadalcanal, where the airfield was still under construction and not yet operating, the American Navy was able to put the Marines so close to land that the leathernecks could walk ashore.

[…]

In the battle over the Falklands, when the British were planning for their own amphibious landing, they saw that the islands covered enough real estate to ensure that their ground forces could get ashore at San Carlos Sound, remote from Stanley, banking on the navy’s mobility to help surprise the Argentine forces.

[…]

In the few times when the opposition was weak and Marine Corps losses light, Nimitz used the Navy’s mobility to strike across vast distances before the Japanese could prepare a fortified response. A second advantage—and offsetting the punishment to an opposed assault—was that the tactic isolated the defenders so they could not be reinforced.

[…]

GEN Douglas MacArthur’s long strides up the New Guinea coast are often cited for skill at maneuver warfare and his landing against weak opposition at Inchon is regarded as a masterpiece almost without parallel. This is the essence of operational maneuver from the sea and its latest Marine Corps manifestation, ship-to-objective maneuver.

[…]

In World War II, carrier air strikes greatly increased the Navy’s potency from the sea. The British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto in 1940 and the Japanese destruction of American battleships at Pearl Harbor a year later were precursors of crushing attacks by American airmen during the remainder of the war. U.S. carrier strikes against the air bases and ships at Pacific islands such as Truk and Rabaul were spectacular successes because a fleet of aircraft carriers could run in at twenty-five knots under cover of darkness to surprise the unalerted—and immobile—defenders. But it was not until October 1944 that the American Third Fleet and Fifth Fleet were strong and supple enough to begin in-and-out raids against the large airfield complexes of Formosa and Japan. These were land bastions indeed. When the fleet came and stayed—in support of the landing and of extensive ground campaigns in the Philippines and Okinawa—it relearned the hard lesson that when ships fight forts (in this case “forts” in the form of kamikazes), the ships will suffer again as they have in the past.

[…]

The rule for ships is to move and hit from a place where a fort cannot hit back. If a “fort” is weak—whatever its composition—then crush it; if it is strong, avoid it. If a fortification itself is the center of gravity and is too resilient to be put permanently out of action from the sea—for instance, enemy bases, sensors, and a command-and-control system—then commanders should use the operational mobility that ships provide to gain a foothold ashore and then deploy Marines or special forces to attack the fortification from its metaphorical rear. If all these choices are foreclosed and the reward is worth the punishment, then mass against it in overwhelming numbers, assault it, and face the bloody consequences. Play the fool and fight the fort!

[…]

At sea there is no high ground, no river barrier, no concealment in forests that requires what is often used as a rule of thumb on land, a three-to-one preponderance of force to attack a prepared position. As others have said, battle at sea and conflict in the open desert have much in common. Sun, wind, and sea state all affect naval tactics, but not to the extent that terrain affects ground combat. It is because of this that attacking has not carried the penalty at sea that is imposed ashore. Over the course of history, the central problem of naval tactics has been to attack effectively—that is to say, to bring the firepower of the whole force into battle simultaneously.

[…]

Since the range of action of carrier-based aircraft on both sides was comparable in 1942, the side with superior reconnaissance and intelligence—in other words, better scouting—was the one that launched the first effective attack.

[…]

Effective fusion of reconnaissance, surveillance, and intelligence information is so important that it must receive the same emphasis as the delivery of firepower. Contrarily, obstructing the enemy’s scouting by cover, deception, confusion, or distraction merits enormous attention, for successful scouting and screening are relative to each other and are a matter of timeliness.

The finest young battalion and company officers that S.L.A. Marshall knew, he explains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation) were men of this type:

They were sedulous in planning and preparation. They made their dispositions painstakingly. They insisted on personal reconnaissance to a point where it nettled their subordinates. Thus they had at all times the feel of their own situation, which is half of the battle. But at the opportune moment they were ready to shoot the works.

Knowing is half the battle. The other half is extreme violence.

S.L.A. Marshall explains modern supply chains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation) in 1950:

The greater becomes the mobility and carrying capacity of an army’s transport system, the stronger becomes the necessity for keeping the supply system fluid, for reducing surpluses all along the line from the factory to the front, and for G-4′s learning to sleep without dreaming of disaster because he has no strategic reserve.

In industry or in military organization, what is the final justification for putting more money into an improved transportation system? Simply that it is the best way to forestall the waste that comes of warehousing, stockpiling and deterioration of goods. To develop yet greater road speed and dependability in military transport serves a valid strategic purpose only in the measure that it enables us to reduce the supply burden. It simply defeats its own ends if it finally builds up supply volume until it chokes movement and drains the fighting line of needed manpower. Tactical strength depends on fighting power based on freedom to supply the combat troops. But oversupply will as surely stifle that freedom as overproduction will impair the prosperity of a civilian economy.

Only the matériel moved and used contributes to success in war. That which remains stored is a gift to the enemy.

He then veers into what’s coming militarily:

Highly mobile advanced bases, field bases that scarcely need to resort to dumping, ports that measure their capacity in the speed of the tum-around of the carriers in both directions, maintenance crews as adept with a Tommy gun as with a grease gun-these things mean the kind of strategic mobility the future requires.

It is said that we are entering an era of area warfare, and that at last the old alignments are gone forever. Fronts may be anywhere; guerrilla warfare will be the normal order. Any link in the communications zone will be in danger of being overrun.

[…]

The more fluid the form of war, the more necessary it is for flexibility to be the main characteristic both of the machinery and the lrainiPg doctrine. That is the logical counter to the increased range and killing power of today’s decisive weapons. As the threat rises against all rear installations, wholly new requirements will be imposed on military organization. And chief among them that all soldiers be trained for fighting — that the rear be supplied with mobile counteroffensive power — and that the structure of the rear avoid massiveness, and acquire a new mobility.

With the coming of the Age of Motor Vehicles
Unlimited, S.L.A. Marshall explains (in The Soldier’s Load and the Mobilty of a Nation), the pressing danger of supply shortage was exchanged for the evil of a continuing glut of supply:

Reversing the tale of the hoopsnake, the tail of the army began to swallow the head.

More mobile capacity meant that more supply could go forward more rapidly to troops-or so it seemed. But the end of it was that there were fewer troops in the combat area, and more vehicles had to be brought in to move greater quantities of supplies to the ever-increasing number of soldiers cluttering up the rear.

And by the hundreds of thousands these men felt more or less clearly that the duties they were doing, the time they were marking, wasn’t even incidental to the prosecution of the war, with the result that many became unwilling and malcontent.

So Special Services was brought in to relieve these men from boredom. But to make that possible came more troops, more supply, more vehicles to move the supply, more crews to maintain the vehicles-’and still more men to get bored. The net effect was to drain fighting power away from the force as a whole, not only through sapping its moral strength, but assigning tens of thousands of men — enough to have made a national combat reserve — to unnecessary duties in the rear areas.

On December 1, 1945, near midnight, I stopped to talk to a Negro sentry who was walking post around a mountainous dump of medical supplies at Carentan, France, a few minutes’ drive from Utah Beach. I asked him how long the dump had been there. “Since three weeks after the invasion.” How long had he been doing guard duty at this point? “Since three weeks after the invasion.” Had anything been removed from the pile in that time? “Maybe, but it was so long ago that I’ve forgotten.”

And there he was, one poor soldier who had started walking around a pile of pills and bandages while the war was still within hearing distance. And he had kept
on walking around it for a full year and a half-till long after the guns had at last gone silent on the plains of Bohemia.