Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945

3. Refining the Technological Ideal: The Simsian Uproar, Engineer Bashing, and the All-Big-Gun Battleship

Refining the Technological Ideal The Simsian Uproar, Engineer Bashing, and the All-Big-Gun Battleship Much like late medieval astronomers arguing over the significance of a new comet to the Ptolemaic universe, U.S. naval officers differed over what conclusions should be drawn from the Russo-Japanese War. The battleship paradigm, like the pre-Copernican Ptolemaic cosmogony, was intact but contained certain puzzles that required refinement, such as the size and type of battleship which best exemplified the paradigm.1 The resulting discussion yielded further ammunition for a continuing line-officer assault on the technical bureaus. In their struggle with the technical bureaus over definition of the battleship , some line officers, centered around William S. Sims, saw President Theodore Roosevelt as a potential ally. Roosevelt viewed naval expansion as an integral part of America’s transformation into a world power and the navy as a positive instrument of national policy: “If we build and maintain an adequate navy and let it be understood that . . . we are perfectly ready and willing to fight for our rights, then the chances of war will become in- finitesimal.”2 To Roosevelt, an “adequate” navy required warships that re- flected the “greatness of our people,” that is, modern battleships. The ships of the Connecticut class, despite the controversy over their gun battery and torpedo tubes, were on a par with the best foreign designs and mirrored the international battleship technological paradigm. Yet the Simsian rebels continued their attacks on the technical bureaus’ production of “inferior” battleships and endangered the Roosevelt naval buildup. P chapter 3 Guns, Armor, and Speed The shifting geostrategic realities of the early twentieth century placed great stress on the U.S. Navy. The historical, singular rivalry with Britain was replaced with concerns over the rise of Germany and the AngloJapanese Alliance of 1902 and a potential two-ocean war. The MahanianJominian dictum of concentration of forces forbade splitting the battle fleet between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The Panama Canal was one answer in the works, but its width later would place design limits on U.S. battleships .3 The acquisition of the Philippines from Spain had extended greatly the area of operations of the U.S. Navy and complicated strategic planning. It was quite difficult, as William Braisted observed, to “defend the interests of the United States in two oceans with a one-ocean navy.”4 Despite navalJust as the cannon had threatened the castle, torpedo boats such as Ericsson imperiled the battleship. As with the castle, defensive efforts focused on creating a “defensein -depth” using cruisers and torpedo boat destroyers to keep the threat away. (Naval Historical Center, NH 63744) ist efforts, appropriations for a two-ocean navy would have to wait until the summer of 1940 and the fall of France. Line officers and engineers in the technical bureaus had grown up in a service in which the geographic expanse of the Pacific dominated operations and was one of the most basic design criteria for U.S. warships.5 As in Vice Admiral Porter’s day, steam-propelled ships required fueling bases and ships that could carry sufficient fuel to steam long distances without replenishment . Acquisition of Guam from Spain helped, but the Philippines drew an even stronger U.S. naval presence to the Far East. Complicating the design problem was the finite volume and displacement of a ship’s hull that had to be apportioned among guns, armor, propulsion machinery, fuel, and provisions. Simply put, battleships for Pacific operations had to be much larger than the early “coastal” battleships of the 1890s. In an article in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings in 1900, the professional journal of the naval officer corps, Captain Asa Walker called for the construction of larger battleships to protect American imperial responsibilities in the Far East.6 To achieve a desirable level of “all-around efficiency ,” Walker argued that armament and armor should take precedence over speed. Walker wanted battleships with moderate speed (not to exceed 17 knots) and coal capacity to provide for 7,000 miles of steaming. His emphasis upon invulnerable armor designs and maximum gun power was in line with the brown-water Civil War experience that emphasized armor strength and gun power and harkened back to the same features in the 44gun Humphrey superfrigates of the 1790s. Far East operations...