Aircraft carriers and the capacity to mobilise US power across the Pacific, 1919–1929

Alison J Williams

doi:10.1016/j.jhg.2017.07.008

Abstract

This paper analyses how aircraft carriers were developed and positioned within US Navy planning for war in the Pacific during the first decade of the interwar period. Building on Caren Kaplan's framing of military mobility as a capacity, the paper contends that as carrier technologies advanced during the 1920s so recognition of their capacity to act as more than simply mobile islands tasked with supporting the big guns of the fleet emerged. The paper draws on a range of primary sources, specifically pertaining to War Plan Orange (the US's plan for war against Japan primarily developed during the 1920s and 1930s), and analyses US Naval War College documents that positioned carriers, often aspirationally, as key tools of US Pacific power projection. Inflected through discussion of two US Fleet Problems – naval exercises which took place in 1924 and 1929 – the paper contends that the emergence of a recognition that the capabilities of both ship and aircraft needed to be considered in tandem offered new and important strategic opportunities for US war planners during the interwar period.

Highlights

In considering the aircraft carrier components of War Plan Orange, and the mobility of the carriers, as represented in both planning documents and in actuality, this paper offers new perspectives on how the US Navy planned to mobilise its carrier forces to project its power across the Pacific in the event of war with Japan
Fleet Problem Nine probably raised as many questions and uncertainties as it answered, and deliberations along the lines of those illustrated above continued to affect the development of carrier design decisions, such that the US Navy remained largely battleship fleet focused well into the 1930s
Whilst the numbers of advocates of carrier aviation grew, and the deployment of carriers in War Plan Orange and further Fleet Problems enabled their potential capacities to act to be further tested, the US remained behind its Pacific rivals in the development of a viable and useful carrier fleet that could project its power across the region

Summary

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Aircraft carriers and the capacity to mobilise US power across the Pacific, 1919e1929. Williams / Journal of Historical Geography 58 (2017) 71e81 and war games and fleet exercises indicated their capabilities and limitations This material, supported by key secondary sources, provides significant insight into the development of US planning for war in the Pacific, and the role and place of aircraft carriers within those plans.[5] In considering the aircraft carrier components of War Plan Orange, and the mobility of the carriers, as represented in both planning documents and in actuality, this paper offers new perspectives on how the US Navy planned to mobilise its carrier forces to project its power across the Pacific in the event of war with Japan. The conclusion returns to the key conceptual ideas that frame this paper to note the utility of positioning mobility as a capacity to act when investigating the multiple and intersecting mobilities that influence how military forces plan for and operate power projection

Conceptualising the military mobilities of aircraft carriers

Placing the US Navy in the interwar Pacific

The emergence of carrier mobility and Fleet Problem Nine

Conclusions