U.S. Naval Planners Meet the Reality of War

 

Return of the Mayflower
Painting by Bernard F. Gribble. U.S. Naval Academy

By Paul Halpern

The United States Navy entered the First World War in the process of unparalleled expansion. The days of a fleet configured solely for coast defense and the guerre de course against a far stronger foe, such as the Royal Navy, were long gone. Moreover, the most likely enemies had changed. They were now Germany, reflected in War Plan BLACK, and Japan, covered by War Plan ORANGE. In 1903, the General Board of the U.S. Navy had set as its goal for 1920 a force of 48 battleships with a set ratio of support ships. For every two battleships there would be one armored cruiser, three "protected" cruisers, four scout cruisers, three destroyers, and two colliers, making a total of 370 ships, not counting repair vessels and store ships. But Congressional funding for this program was not always assured. Only a single battleship, instead of the planned two per year, had been laid down in 1913 (the USS  Pennsylvania) and 1914 (the USS Arizona). The General Board repeatedly called for more scout cruisers, only to find that Congress preferred battleships and destroyers. Consequently, the navy was far from its goals when war broke out.

The war in Europe made War Plan BLACK highly unrealistic. That plan anticipated the American fleet operating from an advanced base at Culebra, Puerto Rico—presumed to be a German objective—meeting a German invasion force attempting to seize an island in the West Indies. While Culebra had indeed been an objective in German war planning in the event of conflict with the United States, such action became less likely once Germany was at war with Great Britain.

U.S. Battleships of the Period

The outbreak of war in Europe saw increasing emphasis on "preparedness," culminating in the Naval Act of August 1916, just two and one-half months after the Battle of Jutland. The Act authorized the laying down of ten battleships and six battlecruisers over a three-year period. The battleships were to be as large or larger than any foreign equivalent: the first four, the Colorado-class, to be of 32,000 tons with eight 16-inch guns; the next six, the South Dakota-class, to be 42,000 tons with twelve 16-inch guns. The capital ships were to be supported by ten scout cruisers, 50 destroyers, nine fleet-type submarines, and 67 coastal defense submarines. The construction was to commence by July 1919 and be completed by 1922 or 1923.

This program, though, was not specifically aimed at American intervention in the war. It reflected, rather, the desire to be ready for any and all eventualities whatever the outcome of the war, to include a hostile coalition led by Germany in the Atlantic and Japan in the Pacific. The navy had to be ready to fight in the Caribbean, the Pacific, or, in the worst case, in both at once. The result was a planned fleet top heavy in capital ships, even though the Battle of Jutland had sent mixed signals regarding the role of capital ships in future war. And the naval war in Europe was demonstrating the need for smaller ships to counter the submarine threat.

The eventual American intervention in the war came in April 1917, in part as a response to German resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. April 1917 was the worst month of the war for the Allies with respect to losses from submarines. Had that rate of sinking continued, it is possible that the Allies might have lost the war. This fact was made clear to Rear Admiral William Sims, president of the Naval War College, who had been ordered to Britain to liaison with the Admiralty on the eve of America's entry into the war. In fact, the ship he traveled on, the American Line's New York, had been damaged by a submarine-laid mine approaching Liverpool. When Sims met with his counterparts at the Admiralty, the First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, was shockingly frank about the crisis. The Admiralty, in desperation, was being forced to implement the convoy system. This, though, was easier said than done, for it could only be commenced gradually and required large numbers of smaller ships—primarily destroyers—as escorts. While an erroneous overestimation of the number of escorts required had been one of the reasons for delaying implementation, there was still a considerable shortfall. The Admiralty said they needed thirty-two additional destroyers to begin convoying inbound traffic in the North and South Atlantic.

Sims, who was subsequently named commander of U.S. naval forces in European waters, was an early advocate of the convoy system. On 14 April, he cabled Washington his recommendations that the maximum number of American destroyers be made available at once. Sims argued that the timely arrival of even a modest number at this critical moment of the war might exert some strategic leverage, given the fact that it would take time for the United States to mobilize sufficient military resources to have any impact on the war. The destroyers could work out of Queenstown, on the southern coast of Ireland, with an additional advanced base at Berehaven (Bantry Bay). Sims recommended that the destroyers be accompanied by other antisubmarine craft, support and repair ships, and the staff to man the bases. He added further recommendations that were less welcome in Washington, even if they were patently obvious. Under the present circumstances, he claimed, American battleships would have little effect. And naval resources should not be held back, he said, to counter possible German submarine activity in the Western Atlantic. Any such activity was likely to be little more than minor raids intended to influence public opinion and divert resources.

The initial, limited response of the Navy Department was to order Commander Joseph Taussig and six destroyers from the Eighth Division, Destroyer Force, Atlantic Fleet, to Europe. Taussig, in the USS . Wadsworth, led Davis, Conyngham, McDougal, Wainwright, and Porter into Queenstown on 4 May, an event commemorated in the well-known painting by Bernard Gribble, The Return of the Mayflower [Above]. The omens were good. Taussig found a personal letter of welcome from the First Sea Lord awaiting him. The two had met in China in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. Taussig also made a good first impression on the British commander-in-chief at Queenstown, the redoubtable Admiral Sir Louis Bayly, reputed to be one of the most ferocious characters in the Royal Navy. When asked how long it would take his storm-battered destroyers to be ready, Taussig reportedly answered: "We are ready now, sir, that is as soon as we finish refueling. Of course, you know how destroyers are always wanting something done to them. But this is war, and we are ready to make the best of things and go to sea immediately." In fact, his destroyers had a long list of defects. Bayly allowed them four days to be fitted with depth charges and have the topmasts lowered to reduce visibility.

Destroyer USS Shaw (DD-68) Under Construction
 at Mare Island Shipyard

Six destroyers, however welcome, were not enough to turn the tide. Sims, supported by the American ambassador in London, asked for more. Similar requests were made by the Admiralty through the British mission in Washington. There were 51 modern destroyers in the American fleet, but Sims and the British had to counter strong reservations about stripping the United States of its destroyer force. Admiral William Benson, Chief of Naval Operations, was not an admirer of the British. The admittedly Anglophile Sims suffered from the charge that he was too much under the influence of too much under the influence of the English. In fact, Benson had warned Sims before his departure: "Don't let the British pull the wool over your eyes. It is none of our business pulling their chestnuts out of the fire. We would as soon fight the British as the Germans."

Benson was certainly aware of the immediate crisis and of the necessity to support the antisubmarine campaign, but he had his eye on the future as well. A memorandum prepared by his staff in February 1917 concluded:

Vessels should be built not only to meet present conditions but conditions that may come after the present phase of the world war... We may expect the future to give us more potential enemies than potential friends so that our safety must lie in our own resources." The General Board recommended: "Keep constantly in view the possibility of the United States being in the not distant future compelled to conduct a war single-handed against some of the belligerents, and steadily increase the ships of the fighting line, large as well as small, but doing this with as little interference with the building of destroyers and other small craft for the Navy and cargo ships for the Merchant Marine as possible.

USS Dixie (AD-1)

In May, another two divisions of destroyers arrived with the destroyer tender USS  Melville, designated flagship of the force. In early June yet another destroyer division arrived along with a second tender, the USS  Dixie. By the end of the month, 28 American destroyers were escorting convoys, rather than simply conducting patrols as had been the original plan. The Admiralty had gone fully to the convoy system. The Navy Department was somewhat reluctant to follow suit. Benson and Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels put more emphasis on armed merchant ships sailing independently, at one point even suggesting the already discredited method of patrolled sea lanes. Yet, Daniels and Benson continued to send all available destroyers; by the end of August, the number at Queenstown had risen to 35.

The results shown by the convoy system brought the Americans around. After considerable internal debate, in which the now-converted Benson reportedly "went to the mat," the American naval building priorities were changed. On 21 July 1917, Secretary Daniels ordered construction of new battleships to cease. Priority was to be given to destroyers and other anti-submarine craft. He authorized construction of what would eventually total 266 destroyers. A reluctant General Board grudgingly admitted that some change in emphasis was required, but reiterated that the battleship was still the principal factor of sea power and warned that a new realignment of powers after the war must not find the U.S. fleet unprepared to face possible enemies in the Atlantic or Pacific.

Once the yards were ready, procedures established, materials assembled or prefabricated, destroyer construction could be rapid. The record was set by the Mare Island Navy Yard, where the USS Ward was launched 1 June 1918, just seventeen days after the keel was laid. She was commissioned less than two months later. This was, however, something of a stunt; most destroyer construction took two to three times longer. Nevertheless, the rapid pace ensured that many of these mass-produced destroyers suffered defects such as leaky seams and loose rivets. Only a few of the newly authorized destroyers, the 1,090-ton "flush deckers" of the Wickes and Clemson classes, were completed before the end of the war.

The same was true of the 500-ton Eagle-class of patrol boats, "Ford boats," built at shipyards on the Great Lakes in assembly line fashion by the Ford Motor Company. One hundred twelve were ordered (including 12 for Italy that were never delivered); only 60 were completed, and most of those were after the war. Orders for the rest were canceled. A significant portion of the anti-submarine war was actually carried out by improvised craft: gunboats, converted yachts, Coast Guard cutters, and old cruisers.

The emphasis on construction of destroyers and other anti-submarine craft had another disadvantage. The navy had only a handful of what might be considered modern, fast scout cruisers, a class of warship that had repeatedly proven its value during the war. The first of the Omaha class, authorized in the 1916 program, would not even be laid down until after the Armistice. Had the United States fleet been forced to fight a major naval action on its own, the absence of those cruisers would have been significant.

Source:  Relevance, Spring 2004