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An Introduction Despite the reluctance of many traditionalist naval admirals to accept a change in their well-established battleship strategies, the aircraft carrier was able to rise to become the queen of the seas in World War II, and to take the leading role in almost all naval strategies from that time to the present. The reasons for this change in naval strategy are many and varied, but mainly center around the early experiments conducted with aircraft carriers, naval exercises and war games carried out with them, and the enthusiasm of advocates of air power. These advocates carried out many experiments, tests, and exercises that eventually led to the change of naval strategies from the Mahanian ideals of battle fleets centered mainly around the battleship to new fleets centered around aircraft carriers. The process, however, was hindered by many admirals and some even more highly ranked individuals who insisted on retaining an age-old strategy despite massive changes in technology during the time between the two world wars. As evidenced by our modern naval fleets, the carrier advocates eventually triumphed. After World War I, Mahanian theories and doctrine were still dominant in naval strategy. In fact, a US Naval report in 1947 still quoted Mahan in saying “The warime mission of the Navy is control of the sea” (Office of the CNO 1). Mahan defined three crucial elements for dominance of the sea in his book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History. In this text, Mahan examines the major battles between two large naval powers (Britain and France) from 1660 to 1783. The three elements that Mahan stresses are the geographical position of a nation, the physical conformation of a country (meaning the shape of its coast and its deep harbor availability,) and the extent of the country’s territory (Mahan 29-42). Even more so, Mahan stresses the need for a great fleet of battleships, and a good network of harbors and bases to supply them. Indeed, he argued that since the US had a difficult geographical position (two very distanced coasts) than the need for a large fleet was crucial. Mahan’s theories, however, never took into account any aerial warfare. Indeed they could not, as Mahan died years before the Wright Brothers took flight. These theories set forth by Mahan dominated naval theory before World War II almost as much as the Battle of Jutland; the only major naval engagement of world War I navies. This battle showed several of the necessities of battleship warfare. First, and most importantly, it stressed the need for a cohesive battle line and for fluid change in formations in that battle line. It also showed that battleship movement needed to be coordinated, and battleship firepower must be very densely concentrated (Trent Hone 1108). The other major idea that this battle demonstrated was that battleship warfare would generally be carried out at ranges more than twenty thousand yards. This would come very much into play when navies chose to extend their gun ranges and required new means with which to sight their guns. This battle, along with the theories of Alfred Thayer Mahan set the traditionalist admirals’ stance on naval strategy for the next twenty years, and were a prime reason as to why naval aviation had a struggle to be accepted
Early Days In 1910, Eugene Ely decided that he wanted to fly a plane off of a ship, but many, including Wibur Wright advised him against it. Nevertheless, he managed to fly off of the cruiser USS Birmingham on 14 November of that year, proving to all of his detractors that he would be able to fly off of a ship. Later, on 18 January 1911, he landed on a 120-foot ramp on the USS Pennsylvania, and took off again (Reynolds). The proof that an aircraft could be flown off of a ship stagnated in America, however, until after World War I. During the early days of naval aviation, the drive towards aviation was mainly for the advantage of long-range gunnery sighting. Commander Logan Cresap, a naval officer who was able to observe numerous British fleet actions during World War I, reported upon the efficiency of their aerial sighting for their long-range battleship guns. Since aircraft could fly out and spot ships over the horizon at great distances, the British ships could increase the elevation, and thereby the range, of their largest guns. Upon returning to America, Cresap testified before the General Board of the Navy—the primary advisory counsel for the building and development of naval forces in the United States. Cresap stated, “One thing is certain; if an enemy develops along these lines and we do not, he will smash us before we get into action” (Wildenberg 698). Cresap’s testimony sparked debate in the board over whether it was valuable to pursue this new form of sighting weapons. On 17 February 1919, the first experiment took place. In the morning of 17 February 1919, a Sopwith 1 ½ Strutter, purchased by Admiral William Sims for the US Navy sighted the guns of the USS Texas. After a first round of test firings, the plane was able to accurately sight the ship’s guns, increasing their accuracy by more than 200 percent, even when a smokescreen was laid in front of the Texas and they were forced to rely only on the plane’s sighting (Wildenberg 699-700). After this experiment the Navy Board agreed, albeit grudgingly, to construct an aircraft carrier out of the collier Jupier, to become the USS Langley on 20 March 1922 under the command of Commander Kenneth Whiting (Grossnik 51). Later, a war game at the Newport Naval Academy in 1924 showed the importance of aerial spotting. The “Blue” fleet—a weaker force, fought the “Red” fleet- a force far superior numerically. The only way, it was postulated, for the Blues to win the war was to deny the enemy aerial spotting and to retain that ability for themselves. Indeed, after the Red fleet had a smokescreen lain in front of them and losing much of their air superiority, the Blue guns were able to decimate their ships. The importance of airpower in naval gunnery was obvious, and led to the General Board classifying airpower as “a necessary auxiliary” (Wildenberg 705). After the experiments in aerial spotting and the extreme success thereof, the General Board of the navy faced the issue of gun elevations. Of the battleships in the navy, “only the five ships of the Colorado and Tennessee classes were able to fire beyond thirty thousand yards” (Trent Hone 1117) and were thus able to take advantage of the new ranges offered by aerial spotting. Though the board worried about considerations in the Washington Treaty limiting naval power, they found no specific prohibition in increasing the range of main batteries. Indeed, any ship that could not fire more than twenty-one thousand yards was seen to have a “grave defect according to the Commander-in-Chief, US Fleet” (Trent Hone 1117). The USS Langley was created specifically for the purpose of carrying planes to sight the main batteries of battleship guns. Put under the command of Kenneth Whiting, it originally carried only six planes. However, Admiral Joseph Mason Reeves was able to increase this number to 36 by 1928 (Grossnik 70). Though he was in charge of naval aviation, Reeves himself was still a traditionalist and stated that aircraft, while important, would never replace the large-caliber battleship guns. Nevertheless, Reeves was able to point out the many deficiencies of large-caliber guns (Wildenberg.) Overall, however, gunnery was not the only factor that started the navy’s slow turn towards aviation. Brigadier General William “Billy Mitchell” was a prime advocate of airpower in the twenties, and his enthusiasm was not only limited to army air power, but extended into the naval applications of the idea. In 1920, Mitchell described a three-fold attack by carrier-launched planes upon an enemy fleet. He stated that the first wave of planes would attack with machine gun fire and small bombs, followed by a second waves with one-ton bombs and a third wave of planes carrying torpedoes (Lincoln). Mitchell also explained the strategy of a “Water hammer” in 1921: “water impelled with great force cause an explosion under the bottom of a vessel,” which, Mitchell insisted, “would certainly cave in the bottom, spring the seams, and cause the vessel to sink.” He also stated that “Future control of the sea depends on control of the air” (Lincoln 150-151). In February of 1921, the Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels wrote a letter to Secretary of War Newton Baker that the Navy and the Army should jointly develop aviation weapons. In March, the joint army-navy board recommends that the Army Air Service help the Naval Air Service in experiments under the overall command of the Atlantic Fleet Commander (Beach). During the summer of 1921, under the watchful eye of the Navy and Billy Mitchell himself, both army and navy aircraft attacked numerous derelict or decommissioned ships on the Atlantic Ocean, including a submarine, a light cruiser, and two old battleships. The first four experiments were during late June and early July. On June 21, 1921, three bombs were dropped by naval aircraft on an old German submarine, U-117. After taking devastating damage, the sub sank in sixteen minutes. Seven days later, the USS Iowa had 85 dummy bombs dropped near it, but only 2 directly hit it. Aviators blamed the strange way in which the dummy bombs dropped and the poor sighting equipment they were provided with for the inaccuracy. Army aviators got their crack at attacking a ship on July 13, when they dropped two thirty-pound bombs on an ex-German Destroyer that sank the ship in two minutes. When the attacked the German cruiser Frankfurt with 250-, 300-, and 600-lb. bombs, they were able to sink the ship with Mitchell’s supposed “Water Hammer” (Lincoln). The biggest proof of the power of aviation, however, came in the experiment conducted on the “unsinkable” German battleship Ostfriesland (Cowburn 277). On July 21, naval aviators dropped five 1100-lb. bombs on the ship, with three hits, causing severe damage to her superstructure. The next day, they dropped three 2000-lb. bombs on the ship in a “Water Hammer” attack, and the second two of these were able to sink the ship, exactly as Mitchell had described. Not only was this a victory for supporters of naval aviation, but it was a personal victory for Billy Mitchell (Lincoln). While navy airmen tried to stress that this showed that battleships were obsolete, other high naval officials argue that the conditions for the tests were not combat conditions. The Joint Army-Navy Board report cited the ideal weather conditions, the stationary targets, and the lack of ack-ack fire as reasons for the experiment to not be taken at face value. They did, however, admit that it was “difficult, if not impossible to build a vessel strong enough to withstand a bombing.” Their conclusion however, was that the battleship was “still the backbone of the fleet—the aircraft has merely added to the dangers with battleships face” (Lincoln 152-154). The press, however, responded favorably to the tests and portrayed the image of an undefeatable air force defeating battleships. A final test of aerial bombing on ships was near the end of 1921, when aircraft dropped gas bombs on the USS Alabama. All of the dummy boxes on the ship were stained or scarred by the gas from the bombs, representing that the entire crew of the ship would have been incapacitated by the gas. Later, the Alabama was sunk by one 2000-lb. bomb. Philip Cowburn examines in his book—The Warship in History the effectiveness of sea-based aircraft against land-based aircraft. Indeed, he summarizes his view in saying “the usefulness of shore-based aircraft was often severely limited” (Cowburn 328). Indeed, due to their relatively small operating area these aircraft were not able to do much in the early days of aviation. Carrier aircraft, on the other hand, were mobile and able to attack in a wide variety of places, limited only by how far inland they could go. Mitchell and other airpower enthusiasts, including Admirals William Fullam, William Sims, Senator William Borah, and Admirals Moffett, Reeves, Nimitz, and Laning, had created a sort of duel between airpower enthusiasts and traditionalists, who included Admirals Benson, May, Taylor, Secretaries of the navy Josephus Daniels and Theodore Roosevelt, as well as the Navy and Army General Boards. Indeed, according to retired Admiral J. J. “Jocko” Clark, “The influence of Admiral Moffett was tremendous. . . his contributions to aviation are immesurable” (Clark 35). Senator Borah states that “The Experiment off of the Virginia Coast [the Ostfriesland experiment] shows that the type of battleship we are building will be obsolete in the next 2 or 3 years at most” (Ransom, 22), and Admiral William Sims declared that “the Fast Carrier is the capital ship of the future” (Ransom 26). By 1926, the navy had begun to become air-minded while the two sides of the issue debated in front of the Morrow Review board of Naval Aviation.
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