In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

18 The Navy behind “Big Stick” Diplomacy in 1932 A quarter century before the Shanghai Incident , Theodore Roosevelt during an immigration crisis with Japan ordered the Atlantic Fleet of sixteen battleships to sail on what was billed as a practice cruise around South America to the Pacific. The spectacular movement proved to be the first lap in the still more spectacular World Cruise, 1907–1909. Although the president insisted that the cruise was a timely test of the fleet’s ability to move from one ocean to the other, this advocate of “big stick” diplomacy also boasted that the cruise was a knockout blow to mischief makers who were recklessly sowing seeds of ill will between the United States and Japan. As it happened, before the outbreak of the Manchurian and Shanghai incidents, American military and naval leaders were already planning similarly spectacular military and naval demonstrations in the Pacific, whose timing happened to coincide exactly with the Shanghai Incident. These were Grand Joint Exercise No. 4 off Hawaii during the first half of February 1932 and Fleet Problem 13 the following month, which engaged major elements of the U.S. Fleet in a war game that extended from Puget Sound to Magdalena Bay. President Hoover would surely not have permitted the exercises had their planning not been undertaken before the fighting in Manchuria and Shanghai. On the other hand, for a diplomat in the Theodore Roosevelt tradition , such as Secretary Stimson, the naval display must have been welcomed as a support for diplomacy. For Fleet Problem 13, the Scouting Force (formerly the Scouting Fleet) was brought from the Atlantic to join with the Battle Force (formerly the Battle Fleet) in the Pacific in perhaps the most powerful concentration of American naval power in the Pacific since World War I. It was planned that the Scouting Force would return to the Atlantic after the conclusion of the exercise, but uncertain relations with Japan kept both the Battle Force and the Scouting Force in the Pacific, except for a brief visit to the Atlantic, until after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. In the scenario for Grand Joint Exercise No. 4, Oahu had been captured by a hypothetical power, Black. But Black’s fleet had been defeated by Blue and forced to return to the Atlantic; Black land forces of occupation were thus left in Oahu to face a Blue Force that sought to recapture the island. The defending Black army force on Oahu included one infantry division of eighteen thousand men, a tank company, an antiaircraft regiment , and an Army Air component. Black’s naval defense was limited to submarines and light craft, including four Japanese “sampans.” The attacking Blue Force comprised the battleships (perhaps nine) of the Battle Force of the U.S. Fleet, the splendid new carriers Lexington and Saratoga, a division each of cruisers and submarines, one division of Marines , and one division of army, theoretically numbering some forty thousand troops total. As the New York Times noted, some of the twenty-five Blue transports were Blue print ships and many of the men, paper.1 Notably absent from the defending Black naval forces on Oahu was any provision of naval aircraft. This was in accord with The Navy behind “Big Stick” Diplomacy in 1932 / 279 an agreement the previous year between Admiral Pratt and General MacArthur, the Army Chief of Staff, whereby to the Army Air Force was left aerial coast defense, and naval aircraft were confined to operations at sea.2 In line with this policy, the Joint Army and Navy Board had ruled that the defense of Pearl Harbor against hostile air attacks was “a function of the Army.”3 Admiral Frank H. Schofield, Commander in Chief U.S. Fleet, accordingly decided to remove all naval aircraft from the Fleet Air Base at Pearl Harbor to Hilo on the island of Hawaii before Grand Joint Exercise No. 4.4 From Rear Admiral Yates Stirling, commandant of the Fourteenth Naval District (Hawaii), came a vigorous protest that naval air forces should be allowed to cooperate with the Army Air Forces in operations that would simulate “actual war conditions.” It was Stirling’s view that in wartime naval aircraft would be kept in the Hawaiian Islands for their defense, at least until the fleet had moved westward from the islands into the Pacific. Without the help of naval aircraft, Stirling argued, the Black forces would be pushed on the defensive, thereby rendering the exercise...

Share