Fleet Tactics and Coastal Combat by Hughes Wayne P

Author:Hughes, Wayne P. [Hughes, Wayne P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612518305
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC

(Source: McHugh, p. 4–15.)

Fig. 7-5. A Naval War College Comparison of Opposing Battle Lines, 1926

As suggested in chapter 4, both the Americans and the Japanese knew these relationships in the 1920s. American fears centered on the Japanese advantage in line speed (twenty-three knots against eighteen knots), the possibility of surprise, and the lurking danger that the U.S. Fleet would be too crippled after eliminating the Japanese to fulfill its mission (in war games, the relief of the Philippines). The Japanese hoped that their submarines would inflict initial damage, their aircraft and Long Lance torpedoes further damage, and that their Mogami-class light cruisers, retooled secretly with eight-inch guns, would significantly augment the battle line. There were, as we know now, catastrophic surprises to both sides after the war in the Pacific commenced. It is useful, nevertheless, to recall once more the coherence of planning on both sides, the legitimate American concern for the unexpected, and the lightning pace of decision. The kinds of force comparisons I have shown were familiar, and the games were played through to add dynamics to static plots such as that presented in figure 7-5. Though the pace of destruction rarely unfolded as rapidly as that figure foretold, still it was furious, and we may believe that the friction of war was not wholly discounted when these prewar planning aids were used.

In World War II defensive weapons assumed unprecedented prominence. By 1942 a flood of AAW weapons was being installed, with radar sensors, deadly proximity fuzes, and new, capable fire-control systems to lead and hit fast-moving targets. By 1944 attacking aircraft faced a veritable curtain of fire. In the last year of the war, modern surface combatants had redressed the balance of power they had lost to naval aircraft.

The ascendancy of the ship lasted a mere moment, for at the end of World War II it was eclipsed by the atomic bomb, and armor was obsolete against it. Cover and deception and the urgency of a first strike took on overwhelming significance. Air interceptors, AAW missiles, and ASW weapons were more than ever temporizing weapons. The American posture was all the trickier because the U.S. Navy could never attack first, certainly not with nuclear weapons. How to buy enough time to deliver a massive strike ashore was the tactical question. Judging from the enormous Soviet naval effort to counter U.S. carrier task forces, the Americans were eminently successful. But they paid a price: with nuclear war in mind they built ships without much survivability against conventional munitions. They concentrated on long-range defensive weapons—air interceptors and missiles—and neglected the guns and the modern close-in “point” defenses that were analogous to the twenty- and forty-millimeter guns of World War II. They also neglected the development of new soft-kill devices, short-range systems that could not reach out far enough against nuclear weapons. The Royal Navy followed a similar bent and neglected damage control and point defense. It suffered the consequences when its ships fought to retake the Falklands with conventional weapons.

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