Civil War Ironclads: The U.S. Navy and Industrial Mobilization (review)

In this impressively researched and broadly conceived study, William Roberts offers the first comprehensive study of one of the most ambitious programs in the history of naval shipbuilding, the Union's ironclad program during the Civil War. Perhaps more importantly, Roberts also provides an invaluable framework for understanding and analyzing military-industrial relations, an insightful commentary on the military acquisition process, and a cautionary tale on the perils of the pursuit of perfection and personal recognition.

Roberts begins by tracing the origins of the ironclad program to the "monitor mania" of the early months of the Civil War, when the Union needed vessels to counter Confederate ironclads in order to maintain its blockade of Southern ports. U.S. Navy officials subsequently embraced John Ericsson's Monitor design more for political and psychological reasons than for technical ones. To oversee the construction of the monitors, they created the Inspectorate of Ironclads, a unique management program that prefigured the Special Projects Office that developed the Polaris Fleet Ballistic Missile. The new organization initially appeared effective, and several Passaic-class monitors were commissioned in late 1862 and early 1863.

Later classes of ironclads, such as the harbor and river monitors and the light-draft monitors, were far less successful. An inexperienced and undercapitalized Western shipbuilding industry, an inadequate contracting system, and a policy of continuous improvement in ship design delayed production substantially. Roberts's examination of ironclad construction along the Ohio and Mississippi River Valleys provides a fascinating look at a little-known subject. The long delays, combined with the inability of the light-draft monitors to float when equipped for combat, led to the dismissal of General Inspector of Ironclads Alban Stimers and the discrediting of project office management. When the war ended, the Navy's contracting procedures regressed and the naval industrial base declined, due in part to the costs imposed by the ironclad program.

While detailing the rise and fall of the Navy's ironclad program, Roberts suggests that nontechnical factors, such as the industrial base, management system, and contracting procedure, are at least as important as technology in shaping military-industrial relations. After describing the disastrous effects on the program of the gradual accretion of design changes, he also concludes that the most important lesson for military acquisition is that "better is the enemy of good enough" (p. 176). Lastly, he recounts how Stimers's pursuit of technical elegance and professional recognition contributed to the light-draft monitor fiasco and his personal downfall. Civil War Ironclads will be the standard work on the Union's ironclad program for years to come and occupy a prominent place on the bookshelves of those interested in not only Civil War and naval history but also American business history, the history of technology, and the history of military-industrial relations.