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World War II
Naval Theory in the Atlantic: During World War II the United States Navy fought a "Two-Ocean" war in response to the expansionist and warring Axis powers. While the Two-Ocean war of the Atlantic and Pacific had fundamental strategic and tactical differences, a thorough evaluation reveals similarities based on theory. All the major post-World War I world powers adopted a naval theory that placed tactical emphasis on the battleship. In Europe and the Far East, these enormous seagoing dreadnoughts of World War I symbolized the wealth and power of a nation. The battleship was the decisive mechanisms for control of the high seas and domination on land. Both operational theaters were witness to the concepts of concentrated and decisive engagements, based on the writing of the American naval theologian Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan. His theories proved to be historically very applicable and guaranteed their future adoption. With the emergence of underwater vessels that were designed to augment the battleship tactically, their role was broadened by Imperial Germany in World War I to starve Britain into submission. Germany's use of the Unterseeboot (U-boot), or submarine, was actually an adhoc substitute for the battleship that Germany was unable to produce in large enough quantities to effectively challenge Britain for naval superiority. Applied in the same fashion and for the same purpose during both wars, Germany employed the U-boat to strangle her cross-channel enemy. An identical battle ensued until America rallied her forces and entered the war; most notably with the aircraft carrier. This study seeks to establish several facts. Unlike in the Pacific, the Battle of the Atlantic was fought without battleships. Germany applied the same theories of surface warfare to its subsurface war, and aircraft carriers were the decisive weapon in both theaters. Finally, the US Navy utilized defensive and offensive naval tactics that evolved during World War I. The influence of Mahan on naval thought cannot go without notice. His most consequential works, The Influence of Sea Power on History, 1660-1783 and The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, 1793-1812, were histories dedicated to the British Navy. His works served as supreme examples of sea power at its best.1 Mahan's conclusions define the effects of sea power on nations through "...command of the sea through naval superiority and the combination of maritime commerce, overseas possessions, and privileged access to foreign markets that produce national wealth and greatness.2 Tactically, Mahan was influenced by the Swiss military philosopher Antonie-Henri Jomini, who stressed the importance of concentration, the value of a central position and interior lines, and combat logistics. These factors would lead to a decisive engagement that Mahan professed would be fought with capital ships. According to Mahan, "... the concentrated fire of the battle fleet is the principle means by which naval power is asserted, the preferred target of such fire is the enemy's fleet."3 In Europe, German Kaiser Wilhelm II had read one of Mahan's books and endorsed it as the bible of the German Navy. Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Secretary of State of the Imperial Naval Office in 1897, had also read Mahan but advocated the construction of a large battleship fleet well before having read Mahan.4 In 1892, two years after the first of Mahan's influential books were published in America, Adm. Tirpitz authored and submitted to the Kaiser a tactical treatise that emphasized the use of eight battleships on line. Four years later, Tirpitz gave the Kaiser a memorandum that called for two squadrons of eight battleships each, plus one flag ship.5 One year later, as the Navy Minister, Tirpitz prepared a secret second memorandum that outlined the status between Germany and Britain,
Equally important in directing German strategy was the Tirpitzian theory. With financial limitations that curtailed the German race for naval construction, Tripitz hoped to build a small fleet but powerful enough to damage the British Royal Navy (RN). Once the RN was crippled and vulnerable, other navies could attack the fleet. The latter proved to be a big miscalculation, as Germany faced Britain alone while Austria's insignificant naval forces were unable to make a difference.7 As a result of Germany's inability to close the arms race gap with Britain, the Imperial Navy remained tied to port that sortied only on limited patrols along the coasts, and occasionally reinforced the Baltic area to receive raw materials for economic survival. Most engagements, the few that did occur, ended in German defeat. Tirpitz's risk theory was tested, in part, when Admiral Reinhard von Scheer attempted to ambush a portion of the British Grand Fleet at Jutland, thereby facing the British in a more evenly matched battle.8 The ensuing battle was the largest naval engagement of World War I. One hundred seventy ships engaged in a decisive and concentrated battle consistent with the Mahanian and Tirpitzian theories.9 As impotent as the German Navy was, the Unterseeboot would become their last hope to break the British blockade and simultaneously counter blockade the British Isles. During World War I the German merchant fleet ranked second in the world but remained corralled in neutral ports and was unable to sail as a result of the British blockade. The U-boat became Tirpitz's solution in breaking the tight noose that would eventually asphyxiate Germany unless some drastic measures were taken. According to Admiral Karl Dönitz, the U-boat during World War I was a great success until the Allies adopted the convoy system. His memoirs reveal his early appreciation for the concentrated effort. "Against the massed ships of convoy, then, obviously the only right course to engage them with every available U-boat simultaneously."10 One of his fundamental objectives in creating the new U-boat arm for Hitler in 1935, was to mass an attack with the greatest strength possible by means of coordination and tactical leadership.11 Dönitz was, furthermore, very clear as to which approach would be necessary to defeat Britain. He understood the vitality of Britain's geographic position and dependence on sealanes in order to survive.12 The Z Plan, developed for Hitler in 1938 by Admiral Raeder, Commander-in-Chief, German Naval Forces, emphasized a surface fleet that gave Dönitz reason for consternation. Correctly, Dönitz felt that the plan did not,
As Germany embarked on the U-boat war, their strategic disadvantages were obvious. Dönitz can be identified with the success of the U-boat war that employed his "Wolf Pack" tactic. This tactical principle is known as "economy of force." Economy of force was achieved at night on the surface; by concentrating and attacking with large numbers of U-boats. Known as the "Rudeltaktik", Dönitz's concept was to be as strong as possible at the right time and place. Moreover, the surface attack was designed to avoid sonar. The British referred to sonar as the Allied Submarine Detection Investigation Committee (ASDIC); a transmitter-receiver that was employed to measure the range of a submerged U-boat.14 Similarities between Dönitz, Tirpitz, and Mahan are found in their surface and subsurface theories. Nothing suggests that Dönitz was an avid student of any particular philosopher, however, Dönitz was exposed to Mahan's writing. In his memoirs, Dönitz discusses his own value of having absorbed both surface and subsurface training. Prior to his appointment as Befehlshaber of the U-boat arm, Dönitz sailed with the surface fleet aboard the SMS Breslau. His experience and appreciation for surface tactics may have the reason for his adoption and application of the Rudeltaktik.15 The same main concept for surface warfare, concentration, proved to be effective underwater. During maneuvers in 1937, Dönitz proved the value of the Rudeltaktik by directing large numbers of U-boats against a mock convoy; whereby command and control was directed by radio from a command center.16 On 29 November 1939, Hitler ordered the implementation of "Directive No. 9." This directive was designed to interfere and rupture the British economy, and was considered as the most efficient way to defeat Britain. To this end, an attack on her sea lanes would be the fastest way to subdue Britain. But after the fall of France in 1940, the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, rallied the U.S. Congress to support an American navy expansion program that eventually saved Britain and Western Europe from the Axis Powers.17 In 1916, President Woodrow Wilson adopted the greatest naval building program in America history. His goal was to build the world's preeminent navy, despite the Armistice of 1918 that ended World War I. By 1921, Wilson had relinquished the Presidency to Warren G. Harding who did not share his preprocessor's enthusiasm for naval building programs. Furthermore, naval limitations were considered politically essential that resulted in the international conference held in Washington that November. With delusions for world-peace, the U.S. forfeited a worldwide lead in naval power by agreeing to an American, British, and Japanese battleship limitations ratio of 5-5-3. The conference's major drawback was that no agreements were made concerning aircraft carriers that remained in their infancy and combat auxiliary vessels.18 Japan responded with a new and energetic building program that would significantly increase her auxiliary ship numbers and create an arms race with Britain and France. The U.S. government, however, was gripped with pacifism to appease the public. In 1930, a second limitations conference was held in London that restricted auxiliary vessels to a 5-5.2-3.25 ratio and further reduced American naval power. One year later, Japan invaded Manchuria and terminated all naval restraints that shackled her navy. In 1933 the mesmeric demagogue Adolph Hitler legally emerged as Chancellor of Germany and denounced the Treaty of Versailles and called upon Germany to erwache (awaken). For the nations who were embroiled in World War I, most governments considered it to be the "war to end all wars," and was followed by the general demobilization of their armies and a return to ordinary life. The U.S. Navy (USN)suffered greatly in demobilizing that brought the Navy ranks down to approximately 7,900 commissioned officers and approximately 100,000 enlisted men.19 In 1920, U.S. Navy vision was actually ahead of its time. According to Admiral William S. Sims, President of the Naval War College, the Navy's future aircraft carriers, "...would sweep the enemy fleet clean of its airplanes, and proceed to bomb the battleships, and torpedo them with torpedo planes. It is all a question of whether the airplane carrier, equipped with eighty planes, is not the capital ship of the future."20 In 1922, the Navy began operating the first commissioned carrier Langley. That same year saw the first seaplane tenders enter service, and flights off the Langley were made three years later. The Bureau of Aeronautics developed aircraft carriers under the Navy's capital ship construction program that netted in 1928 the cruiser-converted Lexington and Saratoga. They were followed in 1936 by the carriers Yorktown and Enterprise. The first escort-carrier Long Island (CVE) was a converted merchant ship that proved very successful and a foundation for the expansion of the carrier program. After the Japanese carrier-supported invasion of China in 1937, the U.S. stepped up its efforts to upgrade their sea-based air power.21 The first USN fighter aircraft appeared in 1938 and brought the carrier aircraft out of the biplane era. The transition in aviation throughout the services was a slow process. Eugene M. Emme, author of the article, "The American Dimension," provides a short and accurate observation that outlines American situation prior to the breakout of war, "In the fall of 1941, the Navy air arm, like the Army Air Forces, was not yet prepared or deployed for a global war in Europe or Asia. The naval battles to come in the Pacific would be fought most often in the air where surface fleets never saw one another."22 In the Atlantic, the USN was unable to deploy much of anything to fight off the Germans that had embarked on unrestricted submarine warfare. The Navy's inadequacy was based on the simple fact that it was preoccupied in the Pacific. In official postwar reports, submitted to the Secretary of the Navy by Fleet Admiral Ernst J. King, Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, the USN was forced to assume the defensive in both oceans. The defensive posture was an outgrowth of American domestic policies that advocated international neutrality. The U.S. was simply unable to launch an offensive. The strategy in the Atlantic, as reported by King, " ... involved maintaining the communications to Great Britain and to future bases of operations against our enemies in Europe."23 However, the Two-Ocean Navy Bill of 1939 would provide the Navy the needed expansion. The bill also placed the U.S. onto the offensive in both theaters of war and brought the Navy out of general unpreparedness.24 Franklin D. Roosevelt's adoption of the Two-Ocean Expansion Act laid the foundation for American naval supremacy across the globe. The increase in building was approximately 70 percent. The aircraft carrier expansion program was so phenomenal that by the end of 1943, it had produced over 50 carriers of all types and provided a large number to Great Britain. The influence of carriers on naval operations brought the most spectacular results in the Atlantic, ultimately defeating the U-boats and making victory in the Pacific possible. Baby flattops (CVEs), or escort-carriers, were designed with three purposes in mind; to serve as a antisubmarine escort for convoys; as aircraft transports; and as combatant carriers to supplement the main air striking force of the fleet. The advantage of the CVE was that production costs were a fraction of the larger carriers, and more escort carriers could be built in the same time as the larger carriers.25 During the ensuing battles between carrier aircraft and German U-boats, the submariner attrition rate soared to its highest level of the war. An excellent example that demonstrates the superiority of aircraft over submarines came in August 1943. Task Force 21.14 deployed and sailed with the escort-carrier USS Card. The offensive tactic was for Allied ships to sail into the center of an area suspected of high U-boat traffic. U-664 was sighted by a three-aircraft patrol 65 miles from the carrier. Ordered to attack, the U-boat was first strafed by a F4F Wildcat and then attacked by two remaining TBF Avengers. One Avenger dropped a 500-pound bomb that missed, and the other dropped two depth charges as the U-boat tried to submerge and escape. The two charges exploded under the stern of U-664, stopping the vessel from diving and causing it to resurface. Several crew members were strafed by the returning Wildcat. Failing to dive and escape, the U-boat drifted powerless as oil gushed from the vessel with the stern down. Six more aircraft arrived that strafed and bombed the U-boat until it sank.26 Of these types of actions, Dönitz reports in his memoirs that the "... convoy escorts worked in exemplary harmony ... which was provided by carrier-borne and long-range, shore-based aircraft, equipped with the new radar. With all this against us it became impossible to carry on the fight against convoys."27 The convoy battle of Task Force 21.14 was a classic example of how the Allies combated the U-boats menace. Additional Allied countermeasures to lurking U-boats included a variety of antisubmarine measures that could be employed to repel or forestall a U-boat attack through aggressive actions. After 25 U-boat radio transmissions were intercepted by SC-107's ASDIC, the convoy was ordered to attack. The five escort vessels, designed to safeguard 42 merchant ships, conducted systematic box sweeps and fired depth-charge patterns once radar signals were received. Fast-vessel-sweeps astern of the convoy were also conducted to deter the U-boat packs from closing on the convoy at high speeds on the surface. The possibility of catching a trailing U-boat was another advantage of this anti-submarine warfare (ASW) tactic. Patrolling tactics included zigzagging that was designed to throw off the submerged "listening" U-boats. In hopes of confusing the U-boats, convoy commanders could change the course of the entire convoy.28 As the convoy finally approached Iceland and made its way out of the Greenland Air Gap, an area where Allied aircraft were unable to provide air cover due to their limited range, the efforts of a single aircraft (three attacks in all) where enough to have an entire U-boat attack called off. After losing 15 Allied ships for a total of 81,000 tons, the lessons learned from the Battle of SC-107 were painfully obvious; the convoys attrition rate could be almost completely wiped out with the support of aircraft.29 During the first two weeks in March 1943, the Allies were faced with problems that reduced the effectiveness of convoy escorts. Since the beginning of the Battle of the Atlantic, the Allies were critically short of escort vessels. Repair requirements were frequently ignored in order to provide the most essential bare minimums for escort service. Equipment breakdown, as far as ASW devices were concerned, was also taking its toll due to the lack of preventative maintenance and servicing.30 After the middle of March 1943, the tide would turn to favor the Allies. The advantage was due, in part, to the greater availability of convoy escort vessels and improved tactics. Destroyer tactics were effective in keeping U-boats submerged and away from merchant ships by "sitting" on them. In this tactic, Allied ships chased down a sighted U-boat or responded to ASDIC or high frequency direction finder (HF/DF) signals. According to John M. Walters, author of "Bloody Winter", the HF/DF was second to radar that allowed the Allies to plot the position of a U-boat when it transmitted by radio. More importantly, the Allied advantage at sea was gained through the long-awaited introduction of escort aircraft carriers with long range aircraft.31 In the Pacific, experience had developed a mature Japanese Navy as an effective fighting unit, consistent with the early theories of Mahan and the classic sea battle. When Imperial Japan was at war with Russia in 1905, a concentrated and decisive engagement took place at the Battle of Tsushima. The Russian Baltic Fleet, commanded by Admiral Zinovi Rozhdestvenski, maneuvered into the Strait of Tsushima, located between Japan and Korea and led into Port Arthur. Under the Japanese command of Admiral Togo, the Imperial Japanese Fleet brought itself along side that of the Russians, allowing them to concentrate their fire. At the cost of 110 Japanese lives and three torpedo boats, the Russian Baltic Fleet was wiped from the map. All eight Russian battleships were either sunk or captured along with the remaining Russian Fleet.32 According to Russel Spurr, the British author and former member of the Royal Indian Navy during World War II, Japan opted for a navy of speed and firepower and remained a surface fleet, " ... dedicated to refighting the Battle of Jutland ... the textbook confrontation between the mighty British and German battle fleets. Admirals still dreamed of fighting a great sea battle which could win the war ..."33 The Pacific War, however, was not fought along traditional concepts of sea fighting. Even so, the Japanese Imperial Navy led the new age of naval air power into the Twentieth Century. This assumption can be validated based on the fact that prior to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, both the Japanese and American navies still considered the battleship as the capital ship and followed the same naval philosophy of Mahan.34 This theory was blown sky-high after the raid on Pearl Harbor that proved the effectiveness of carrier-based planes against sea-borne and ground targets. Historian Philip A. Crowl pities those who insist that U.S. victory over Japan was a principle of the Mahanian strategy. He explains that it was not "...conducted entirely according to the strict Mahanian canon, which prescribed a climactic battle between opposing fleets of capital ships. There was no such climactic battle, even between aircraft carriers..."35 Crowl's argument that has little depth. The strict Mahanian canon was not only a climactic battle between opposing fleets of capital ships, but rather, as we had established earlier, " ... command of the sea through naval superiority and the combination of maritime commerce, overseas possessions, and privileged access to foreign markets that produce national wealth and greatness."36 The climactic battle enabled a navy to control and protect their sea lanes. The word "climactic" refers to a climax or turning point, that in turn refers to the decisiveness of a battle. Several battles were in fact climactic, decisive, and should definitely be considered as turning points in the war. The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first major engagement between U.S. and Japanese carriers, where the adversaries never actually saw each other. Battles that took place after Guadalcanal were fought by the Japanese who were already suffering from pilot attrition. Japanese veteran pilots suffered such high casualties during the Battle of the Coral Sea that unfilled replacement gaps did not allow the Japanese carrier Zuikaku to participate in the Midway battle.37 The Battle of the Coral Sea did mark a turning point in the Pacific War. The total destruction of our battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor forced the carrier into the capital ship role. However, it would be wrong to assume that the USN was forced into carrier warfare by the destruction of its battleships. When Pearl Harbor was attacked, not only were the carriers at sea for their own protection, but the main purpose of the Japanese attack was to destroy the U.S. carriers, not the battleships. Had the battleship retained its high esteem as the capital ship, then it would be safe to conclude that a better form of defense would have been implemented to protect such great assets. The evidence proves that the carrier was the capital ship. Reconsidering Mahan's concept of maritime commerce, overseas possessions, and privileged access to foreign markets that are the basis for supremacy of the seas and national wealth, the carrier in the Pacific was also an instrument for cutting Japanese lines of communication and logistics. Operation CARTWHEEL is a prime example that illustrates how the carrier was employed to destroy Japan's privileged access to foreign markets, constituting overseas possessions and maritime commerce. Moving on the Japanese exterior lines of communications, U.S. carriers hit the overextended Japanese and gained air superiority. This allowed the Allies to seize existing airfields and ports. Strong enemy positions were bypassed such as those at Rabaul. At Truk, Vice Admiral Sprunance deployed his carriers to neutralize the Japanese concentration of air power, where approximately 260 aircraft were destroyed.38 These examples illustrate how carrier-based aircraft had revolutionized naval power projection. The tactical employment of carrier-based aircraft had evolved into an aggressive offensive tool that secured air supremacy and controlled the Battle of the Pacific and effectively crushed the U-boat war in the Atlantic. In this light, the aircraft carrier in the Pacific was used in the same form as the submarine in the Atlantic; cutting the lines of communications and raiding commerce. The U-boat was also employed in a concentrated fashion within a single decisive battle. The Battle of the Atlantic was a decisive battle between Germany and the Allies. Due to the limited role of the German Kriegsmarine and after the destruction of the German battleships Bismarck, Gneisenau, and Prinz Eugen, Admiral Karl Dönitz pinned his hopes of winning the Atlantic war on the U-boat. Albeit both oceans theaters were comprised of many battles, they constituted one significant battle. In itself, the decisiveness of Allied victory in the Atlantic had a tremendous impact on the eventual liberation of Europe. The Allied defeat of the U-boat allowed for the survival of Britain and ultimately the destruction of the German Luftwaffe. The Russian counteroffensives on the Eastern Front were supported through American Lend-Lease, and Operation OVERLORD was successful with minimal U-boat and aerial interference. While traditional naval theories prevailed in the Atlantic during both world wars, the capital ship had changed in form. The concentrated effort, decisive battle, and high seas supremacy through the control of sea-lanes and foreign bases dictated the eventual Allied victory in World War II. Notes 1. This section
is based primarily on Philip A. Crawl, "Alfred Thayer Mahan: The Naval
Historian," ed., Peter Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli
to the Nuclear Age, (Princeton, NJ: 1986), pp. 450-51. This study is
a short biography of Alfred Mahan. Interestingly enough, Crowl regards
Mahan to have failed as a naval historian with respect to his inability
to foresee amphibious warfare as a key aspect of shape the future of
Naval history. Selected Bibliography Asprey, Robert B. The German High Command at War: Hindenburg and Ludendorff Conduct World War I, New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991. Bear, I. C. B. Dear and M. D. R. Foot. eds., The Oxford Companion to World War II, Oxford, G.B.: Oxford University Press, 1995. Cramer, Peter. U-Boat Commander, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1984. Crowl, Philip A., and Peter Paret, eds. Makers of Modern Strategy: From Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986. Dönitz, Karl, translated by R. H. Stevens. Memories: Ten Years and Twenty Days, New York: The World Publishing Company, 1959. Fuchida, Mitsuo, and Masatake Okumiya, eds. Clark H. Kawakami and Roger Pineau. Midway: The Battle That Doomed Japan, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Publications, George Banter Publishing Company, 1955. Griess, Thomas E., eds. The Second World War: Asia and the Pacific, Wayne, NJ: Avery Publishing Group Inc., 1984 _____. The Great War, Wayne, NJ: Avery Publishing Group Inc., 1986. Harries, Meirion and Susie. Soldiers of the Sun: The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Army, New York: Random House, 1991. Hurley, Alfred F., Colonel, USAF, and Major Robert C. Ehrhart, eds., USAF, Air Power and Warfare: The Proceedings of the 8th Military History Symposium, "The Rise and Fall of the Imperial Japanese Air Forces," Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1978. King, Ernest J. U.S. Navy at War, 1941-1945, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1946. Mahan, Alfred Thayar. The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783, Boston, MA: 1890. Massie, Robert K. Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War, New York: Random House, Inc., 1991. Morison, Samuel Eliot. History of the United States Naval Operations in World War II: The Battle of the Atlantic, September 1939-May 1943, Volume I, Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1964. _____. The Two-Ocean War: A Sort History of the United States Navy in the Second World War, Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company, 1963. Runyan, Timothy J. and Jan M. Copes. Die Gallantly: The Battle of the Atlantic, Boulder CO: Westview Press, 1994. Syrett, David. Defeat of the German U-Boats: The Battle of the Atlantic, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1994. Spurr, Russell. A Glorious Way To Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945, New York: New Market Press, 1981. Von der Porten, Edward P. The German Navy in World War II, New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1969. Walters, John M. Bloody Winter, Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1994.
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