Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940 Timothy S. Wolters (bio) Testing American Sea Power: U.S. Navy Strategic Exercises, 1923–1940. By Craig C. Felker. College Station, Tex.: Texas A&M University Press, 2007. Pp. viii+193. $39.95. From 1923 to 1940, the United States Navy conducted twenty-one major fleet exercises in which it assigned all available ships to one or more opposing naval forces. Simulated wars, these “fleet problems” allowed the navy’s leaders to test doctrine, evaluate new technologies, and train personnel. In 1975, the National Archives compiled and microfilmed the formerly classified records relating to these exercises, and yet they have remained virtually ignored by historians. Until now, that is. In Testing American Sea Power, naval officer and historian Craig Felker provides a valuable examination of the interwar U.S. Navy’s efforts to integrate the airplane and the submarine into warfare at sea. He argues that portrayals of the service as backward and conservative are overly simplistic, and claims that “the fleet” actually functioned “somewhere between a monolith and a group of rival constituencies, each bargaining to enhance its position, and, in some cases, its survival” (p. 4).More broadly, Felker asserts that the navy’s interwar strategic exercises provide a useful perspective on how military organizations learn and transform. The shared experiences of the fleet problems greatly facilitated organizational learning, thereby allowing the sea service to transform itself in the face of untested principles and unproven technology. The legacy of Alfred Thayer Mahan is central to Felker’s exploration of the interwar navy. He begins with a discussion of Mahanian doctrine, focusing especially on Mahan’s concept of sea control. According to Felker, [End Page 1097] officers regarded “the employment of concentrated firepower from battleships in a decisive naval engagement” as the most prudent and efficient use of naval power (p. 24). Initially, the service’s leaders molded aircraft and submarines into this paradigm. Yet as technology and tactics improved, so too did the threat to the battle line. Increasingly capable air and subsurface forces challenged some of Mahan’s maxims, but on the whole Mahanian doctrine maintained its hold on naval officers’ strategic thinking. With respect to aviation, Felker supports previous scholars who have argued that interwar naval officers’ dedication to the battleship stemmed not from inherent conservatism, but rather from the practical difficulties of flight operations at sea. Regarding undersea warfare, Felker makes two interconnected arguments. First, he claims that the navy’s decision to employ submarines as independent attack platforms during the fleet problems resulted in an undersea force tactically ready to carry out unrestricted submarine warfare against Japan. Second, Felker asserts that American naval officers’ initial reluctance to implement a convoy system against German U-boats in World War II derived directly from simulation artificialities in the interwar fleet exercises. For various reasons, these artificialities obscured the dangers posed by a technologically sophisticated undersea opponent. The fleet problems thus led to a service that was tactically ready, but strategically unprepared, for unrestricted submarine warfare. Although well written and solidly researched, Testing American Sea Power has some limitations. Regrettably, Felker’s analysis fails to engage Mahan’s views on the art and science of command. For Mahan, sea control entailed more than just concentrating force in pursuit of decisive battle; it required leaders capable of exercising independent judgment in the face of difficulty and uncertainty. The study of history was one way to teach officers how to deal with the inherent complexities of naval warfare. Simulation offered another. Yet both methods sought the same end: improved decision-making under conditions of rapid and unpredictable change. Rather than being a constraint, as Felker portrays them, Mahan’s ideas actually may have enhanced naval officers’ willingness to draw important lessons from the annual fleet exercises. A second problem with the book is its inattention to the interwar U.S. Navy’s efforts to improve “command and control” technologies, most notably fire control and radio communications. Not only would such an examination have strengthened Felker’s argument that the navy generally was receptive to new technology, it would have added valuable perspective to his exploration of...