Admiral William A. Moffett
Admiral William A. Moffett

Author: William F Trimble

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2014-10-29

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 1612514286

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Naval aviation historian William F. Trimble provides a clear and detailed portrait of the man who took on the challenge of forming an aeronautical bureau within the U.S. Navy in 1921 and then nurtured the early development of naval aviation. Describing Admiral William A. Moffett as one of the first high-ranking naval officers to appreciate the importance of the airplane and the effect it would have on the fleet, the author contends that the admiral's strong background as a surface officer gave him a credibility and trust with his superiors that others could not match. The author attributes Moffett's desire to keep aviation as part of the fleet, along with his diplomacy, tenacity, and political and military savvy, to the success of the infant air arm during its formative years. In striking contrast to the tactics of Army Gen. Billy Mitchell, Moffett's handling of the loyalty issue and other politically sensitive topics saved the Navy's air arm, according to Trimble. The book is equally candid about the admiral's shortcomings, including his heavy-handed support for airships, a technological dead end that squandered millions and led to Moffett's death in 1933 when he went down with the airship Akron during a storm.

Billy Mitchell's War with the Navy
Billy Mitchell's War with the Navy

Author: Thomas Wildenberg

Publisher: Naval Institute Press

Published: 2014-02-15

Total Pages: 339

ISBN-13: 1612513328

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In the years following WWI, the U.S. Congress was more interested in disarmament than in funding national defense. For the military services this meant lean budgets and skeleton operating forces. Billy Mitchell’s War recounts the struggle between the Army and Navy air arms for the resources needed to define and establish the role of aviation within their respective services in the period between the two world wars. When Billy Mitchell returned from WW I, he brought with him the deep-seated belief that air power had made armies and navies obsolete. When Congress rejected the concept of a unified air service in 1920, Mitchell and his supporters turned on the Navy, seeking to substitute the Air Service as the nation's first line of defense. While Mitchell proved that aircraft could sink a battleship with the bombing of the Ostfriesland in 1921, he was unable to convince the General Staff of the Army, the General Board of the Navy, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, or Congress of the need for an independent air force. When Mitchell turned to the pen to discredit the Navy, he was convicted by his own words and actions in a court-martial that captivated the nation, and was forced to resign in 1925. Rather then ending the rivalry for air power, Mitchell’s resignation set the stage for the ongoing dispute between the two services in the years immediately before WWII.

Mahan Goes To War: Effects Of World War I On The US Navy’s Force Structure And Operational Planning
Mahan Goes To War: Effects Of World War I On The US Navy’s Force Structure And Operational Planning

Author: LCDR Brandon E. Todd USN

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2015-11-06

Total Pages: 84

ISBN-13: 1786252848

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A. T. Mahan’s 1890 book The Influence of Sea Power on History presented a theory of sea power that proclaimed the capital ship-centered battle fleet essential to any great maritime nation’s long-term prosperity. Mahan also formulated a beguilingly simple operational concept based on the teachings of Jomini. His ideas quickly became dogma in the world’s navies, including the U.S. Navy. In the decades before World War I, the U.S. Navy’s force structure and operational plans reflected Mahan’s emphasis on the battleship and fighting as a concentrated fleet. The naval conflict between Germany and Great Britain in World War I did not resemble Mahan’s vision for what war at sea between two great powers should look like. Rather than consisting of decisive battles between fleets of capital ships, the War involved distant blockade, raids, mining, and especially commerce raiding by German submarines. Mahan’s rival theorist, Sir Julian Corbett, better described the character of World War I. Despite the advantage of almost three years of observing the European conflict, the U.S. Navy did little to prepare for this new kind of war. It entered the War in April, 1917 with a “top-heavy” force of battleships, and operational plans completely unsuited to the anti-submarine conflict it would undertake. This monograph attempts to determine the effects of World War I, a decidedly non-Mahanian war, on the U.S. Navy’s force structure and operational planning. These variables manifest the Navy’s ends, ways, and means, and thus shed light on the theoretical underpinnings of the Navy’s policy.