Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945

8. War and a Shifting Technological Paradigm: Fast Task Forces and “Three-Plane” Warfare

War and a Shifting Technological Paradigm Fast Task Forces and “Three-Plane” Warfare During the 1930s, naval aviation developed beyond the technological ceiling predicted in 1924. Yet the technological basis for an effective presumptive anomaly to challenge the dominant battleship technological paradigm did not exist until the end of the decade. The advances in naval aviation during the 1920s resulted in early elucidations of an aviation presumptive anomaly bolstered by the empirical data of fleet exercises. At the Naval War College in 1933, Commander Hugh Douglas, former executive office of the aircraft carrier Saratoga, sketched out the essence of what would occur nine years later during the Battle of Midway. Based on his experience in recent fleet exercises, Douglas predicted that if “an enemy carrier is encountered with planes on deck, a successful dive bombing attack by even a small number of planes may greatly influence future operations .”1 While Douglas was prescient, it is important to note that he was speaking in terms of intra-artifact combat—attack on lightly armored, vulnerable aircraft carriers, not on heavily armored battleships. Since the London Naval Treaty of 1930 extended the moratorium on battleship construction through 1936, the navy continued to build aircraft carriers up to its allowed treaty limits. The navy also constructed submarines , not in the image of the counterweapon of the World War, but improved “fleet” submarines to support the battle line. Both submarines and aircraft carriers became important supportive ships within the interwar battle fleet. P chapter 8 The development of the “task force” concept by the end of the decade marked a shift away from the battle line, but not the battleship, which remained the arbiter of war at sea. The transfer of three battleships to the Atlantic to bolster U.S. forces in May 1941 reflected its continuing dominance .2 The European naval war reinforced the battleship’s preeminence, especially the British operations which tracked, harassed, and sank the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the Pacific naval war remained firmly under the control of nonaviators until late 1943. Admiral Chester Nimitz, a longtime submariner and cruiser captain, and the former rear admiral commander of Battleship Division One, became The value of airships to the battle fleet was their ability to serve as effective scouts. In good weather an airship and its aircraft could search 62,500 square nautical miles in five hours. Here, two Curtiss F9C-2’s approach Macon’s recovery trapeze in July 1933. (Official U.S. Navy photograph, courtesy of the National Museum of Naval Aviation ) the Pacific Fleet commander on 31 December 1941.3 Nimitz’s support for nonaviator commanders, such as Admiral Raymond A. Spruance, became the focus of aviator complaints. These criticisms came to a head when the escort carrier Liscome Bay was sunk, with 644 dead, while assigned to a defensive position off Makin Atoll in November 1943. Many senior naval aviators, such as Vice Admiral John H. Towers, were ardent supporters of carrier-based aviation as the new technological foundation for the navy’s guerre d’escadre strategy. They criticized Spruance’s use of carrier aviation and advocated more offensive operations. According to his biographer, Thomas Buell, Spruance “believed the Japanese would be defeated primarily through amphibious warfare.” Aviators, however, saw themselves as the new offensive warriors of guerre d’escadre and resented the “cost and drudgery” of protecting amphibious forces. Prior to operations in the Gilbert Islands in 1943, aviator Vice Admiral John S. McCain advocated carrier operations into Japanese waters to force a fleet engagement . Spruance advised Nimitz that the logistics requirements were too great, Japanese air power too strong, and the chance of a fleet engagement unlikely unless the Japanese saw a clear chance to win.4 The Japanese would not be complaisant enough to “come and be killed,” to paraphrase the French minister of marine Admiral Jackie Fisher had been fond of quoting. The post–Liscome Bay furor eventually led to a dual command structure in the Pacific in which aviators and nonaviators were teamed in the top two positions in every major Pacific naval command. The destruction of a significant portion of the battleship navy at Pearl Harbor offers a seductive, but false, demarcation between the battleship and aircraft carrier-technological paradigms.5 Clark Reynolds, in his history of the rise...