Читать книгу Mr. Roosevelt's Navy - Patrick Abazzia - Страница 13

1. Bending the Pencil

THE MAJOR FUNCTION OF THE NAVY of the thirties was training.

The service enjoyed high-quality personnel because the Great Depression allowed its recruiters to exercise an unprecedented selectivity. For example, between July 1938 and June 1939, 159,409 volunteers were examined, but only 14,512—9 percent—were accepted. The average recruit had 2.9 years of high school education. Reenlistment rates were extremely high: 72.2 percent in 1938, 80.8 percent in 1939, and 73.0 percent to the middle of 1941; desertions were negligible, averaging only about sixty a year. The result was an experienced, thoroughly professional service.¹

Because of the stability of personnel and economies necessitated by the Depression, the rate of promotion was very slow. Men were occasionally sent home on payless “furloughs,” Naval Academy classes were cut back, and in 1933, only part of the graduating class was commissioned. Nevertheless,

While reduced appropriations forced the Navy to cut down on personnel, the lack of civilian jobs . . . increased the desirability of getting into the Navy and staying in.

Economically, the naval officer . . . was very well off compared to his civilian contemporaries. In many of the principal “home ports” . . . the average lieutenant lived in a rented two or three bedroom house and employed a full-time maid . . . . At the same time civilian graduates of good colleges were manning the pumps at gas stations . . . .²

The slow tempo of promotion kept men in grade for a long time, giving them ample experience at their job and resulting in highly efficient crews. But the desire of men to stand out in order to qualify for promotion thus intensified the significance of competitive training exercises.

The Navy was able to use a large proportion of its funds for training, unlike the Army, which had to spend excessive amounts on maintaining obsolete posts and bases due to Congressional pressure. And it was generally understood that the Navy would have to fight immediately in event of war, perhaps before it called up its reserves, digested masses of recruits, or acquired more modern equipment. Hence, training was conducted with greater flavor of urgency in the Navy³ than the Army.^a

There were various competitions to measure the performance of men and ships.

In the engineering competition, each ship was assigned an annual fuel allowance; her “score” was the ratio between the amount of fuel allocated and the amount consumed. But ships that did well found their allowances lowered each year until even prodigies of economy could not produce a low enough ratio of consumption to win an efficiency pennant. In certain vessels, use of fresh water, light, and heat was restricted. In one ship, a young officer suggested that the running lights be turned off at night, thus risking collision in order to save an amount of fuel so small that the engineers could not even measure it. Captains gave prizes to those watches during which the least quantity of oil was burned; others toured the ship, unscrewed all standard light bulbs, and replaced them with bulbs of lower wattage.⁴ Arrivals and departures, alterations of course and speed, and other routine activities were often governed by a desire to raise engineering scores.

Engineering officers not only worked hard at engineering efficiency but also at ways to “beat the competition” without breaking the rules. They became the corporate tax lawyers of their day—it was called “bending the pencil.”⁵

But the mandate to save fuel restricted innovative exercises and useful steaming—in practices, battleships were usually limited to a speed of 15 knots and other warships to 24 knots: thus, savings and material upkeep were often purchased in another coin and at too high a price, tactical creativity.

The most important of the competitions were the gunnery exercises. The reputations of men and ships were at stake in these contests, and feelings of rivalry were intense; but the activity was inherently pleasing, and a holiday atmosphere attended these occasions. Practices were held in good weather in a southerly clime, the idea being that a crew could learn more from a successful “shoot” than a poor one, although many felt such training limited the quality of naval gunnery under more realistic battle conditions. Still, eccentricities of wind or sea, or a busy operating schedule that precluded preliminary range-taking, might serve to hamper an unlucky vessel and impair her crew’s chance for recognition and promotion.

Short-range gunnery was highly accurate, but as distance increased, precision declined dramatically. The major problem was inability to judge fall of shot accurately. To spotters, most shell splashes appeared to fall “just over the [target] raft”; so they called for minor adjustments in range instead of trying to cross and recross the target systematically. Constant personnel shifts also reduced gunnery efficiency. The annual turnover on most ships was about 85 percent; in one cruiser, for almost a year, “no two successive practices were fired with the same crew.” The vessels were undermanned by about 15 percent in order to keep as many as possible in operation; the result was an admirable versatility, but such specialized endeavors as gunnery suffered from the diffusion of talent. The system of frequent transfers had evolved prior to World War I when the Navy was small and its few ships were dispersed throughout the world; it helped to standardize practices amongst far-flung ships and stations and helped morale, as well, by limiting a sailor’s tour of duty on an undesirable station.⁶ But the policy was out of place in the large and concentrated fleet of the 1930s:

One of our ships fires a long-range battle practice in the spring and attains the highest score ever made. The officers and men participating are jubilant; the rest of the Navy rejoices because it proves we can shoot. What happens? Three months later probably half the officers and crew of that very efficient vessel are scattered to the four winds.⁷

For example, in the summer of 1938, the destroyer Simpson led her flotilla in short-range fire, with twenty-two hits in twenty-eight shots; in the spring of 1939, the Simpson was last in her flotilla in a long-range battle practice, scoring not a single hit in forty-five shots. The destroyer Tucker went from the worst gunnery score in her division to the best in the entire flotilla in fourteen months.⁸

In 1937 and 1938, in the highly successful short-range practices, the battleships averaged 87.7 percent hits; only once in the decade of the thirties did the percentage of hits drop below 80. But at more realistic ranges, the scores fell. In the summer of 1938, heavy cruisers fired 669 rounds of 8-inch at target sleds an average of 5,249 yards away, still reasonably close range; but only sixteen hits (2.4 percent) were scored.⁹

In July 1938, the results of an excellent cruiser “shoot” were:¹⁰

In March 1938, the battleships held a gunnery practice. Arizona suffered from poor spotting and worse luck; a powder charge misfired, causing five casualties. California lost sight of her sled in the haze of blue-gray gunsmoke and ignominiously bombarded the wrong target. Colorado displayed a rapid rate of fire and neat, tightly bunched patterns; four minutes of her fire would have disabled any ship. Idaho also sustained a rapid rate of fire, but her accuracy suffered as a result. Maryland spotted methodically and so had a slow rate of fire; a deflection error further lowered her score. Mississippi was unwilling to shoot while making a turn and had a slow rate of fire. Nevada’s first salvos were extremely wild due to a deflection error, but her gunners retained their poise under pressure and turned in a better-than-average performance despite the bad start. New Mexico straddled the sled with her first salvo, but poor spotting then lowered her score. Oklahoma took too much time spotting and thus had a low volume of fire. Pennsylvania fired rapidly, but poor spotting marred her accuracy. Tennessee was “unsatisfactory” because she had mediocre spotting and a low volume of fire; her third salvo straddled the target, but the next eleven salvos all fell well short. West Virginia shot wildly at times, but maintained a rapid rate of fire and showed some good deflection shooting. The report on the exercise noted: “Improper spotting is the outstanding cause of the majority of poor performances.” Admiral Claude Bloch, commander of Battle Force, penciled on the report the acid comment: “Isn’t it possible to insure more spotting training by demanding attendance of spotters at firings of all other divisions? Or would the ship’s service and the basketball team suffer too much?”¹¹

In combat, it was expected that warships would average about two hits for each hundred rounds fired.

Surface torpedo practices were somewhat artificial, especially after 1921 when Commander William F. Halsey’s destroyers in a clever close-range attack scored twenty-two dummy-warhead torpedo hits on four battleships, which cost over $1½ million to repair. Torpedo firings were done at excessive range versus vessels operating at moderate speeds, and computed scores indicated an improbably high level of accuracy; it was thought that a torpedo salvo from a destroyer would get a hit on a major target (a light cruiser or larger warship) in a ratio of about thirty-two out of seventy chances.¹² The Fleet did not know that its torpedoes were defective, a result of peacetime parsimony and the stupid complacency of bureaucrats and technicians in precluding effective testing.

Exercises were important in the development of tactics, shiphandling, and a feel for the chaos of combat. For example, in February 1938, three groups of destroyers learned a lesson when they essayed a coordinated torpedo attack on the battleline. As they approached, the searchlight-simulated fire of the battleships forced the destroyers to take evasive action which resulted in crowding, producing confusion and the need to slow speed to 10 knots to avoid collision. In the attack, one division of ships did not bother to compute a base torpedo course, relying on the division leader’s signals to release their “fish” at the proper time. However, they misread a course signal from the flagship, fired at the wrong moment, and all eight torpedoes passed well ahead of the battleships, some as much as 7,000 yards ahead! One commander seethed: “Steps will . . . be taken to prevent the occurrence of any future incidents of this nature.”¹³

Most naval officers of the thirties sensed that the shape of their professional lives would be altered by the airplane; yet at the same time, many were repelled by the oversimplified claims of the advocates of air power, who promised “to sink all surface craft like tin cans under a shower of destruction from the skies.” It was understood that the airplane, because of its range, would be used first in major sea battles, and that the advantage in war would be on the side of the fleet that had command of the air, even if only for improved gunnery spotting. However, as the planes lacked speed and sufficient bomb capacity, many of them would be lost and they would be unable to halt the advance of the two battle lines.¹⁴ In exercises, when the contending air contingents were expended, the “preliminary round” would be over and “the championship bout between the heavyweight craft” could proceed, “or else money refunded.”¹⁵

Training exercises seemed to bear out the conventional analysis; generally, the airplane was not a decisive weapon in the mock naval battles. The planes were used too conservatively, partly to prevent accidents. Built for stability and durability in order to survive the operational hardships of carrier duty, naval aircraft were relatively slow and undergunned, with various performance limitations: Grumman biplane and Brewster monoplane fighters were slow and inadequately armed; the Vought dive bomber was acknowledgedly “obsolescent”; and the standard torpedo bomber, the Douglas Devastator, was slow and so vulnerable to modern land-based fighters that the fliers considered it “unfit for combat service.” The pilots were well trained and versatile, for the vicissitudes of carrier operations bred skill and lack of appropriations and the inherent limitations of the biplane configuration, which militated against aircraft specialization, forced the use of planes in every role, so that fliers became skilled in bomber and fighter tactics. However, since they had similar equipment and employed similar tactics, and practice odds were relatively even numerically, the normal result of the training problems was the mutual attrition of the participating air arms.¹⁶

The Fleet’s major defense against air attack was the antiaircraft gun. The new 5-inch dual-purpose gun offered excellent protection against high-altitude, horizontal bombing, a form of attack that was correctly thought to be wildly inaccurate against maneuvering warships anyway. But the ships were defenseless against dive bombers and torpedo planes. The old, reliable .50-caliber machine gun was adapted for shipboard use as an antiaircraft weapon; unfortunately, it could not hit anything at ranges beyond 600 yards. For example, in the summer of 1938, eleven heavy cruisers fired 5,824 rounds at target sleeves, but scored only three hits (0.055 percent). Few gunners could qualify for the cash awards offered for good shooting, and faith in the weapon declined as frustration mounted. About all that could be hoped for was that a heavy volume of fire might force attacking planes to release their bombs prematurely. The vaunted 1.1-inch pom-pom, introduced with such high hopes, increased the rate of fire, but was not much more accurate than the “50” and lacked the reliability of the older gun, jamming frequently. In one practice in March of 1939, five destroyers fired 623 rounds and scored no hits. Eventually, two foreign-made weapons, the Bofors 40 mm. and Oerlikon 20 mm., solved the problem prior to World War II.¹⁷

But some in the Navy understood that in defending against the airplane the ancient prescription for catching a thief was relevant: it took an airplane to intercept an airplane.

In the summer of 1938, Vice Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander Aircraft, Battle Force, decided to test the ability of fighters to defend ships against land-based bombers; many felt that the defensive firepower of modern bombers made them virtually immune to successful interception. Three squadrons of patrol bombers were ordered to attack the target ship Utah, defended by two fighter squadrons. Relying on visual contact, the stubby fighters were able to locate and attack the lumbering PBYs before they reached their release point; according to the evidence of gun cameras, the fighters scored about seven hits for every one they sustained.^b Despite artificiality in the test, King felt that “fighting planes may engage large bombers . . . with a reasonable expectancy of a favorable outcome.”¹⁸

The results of offensive bombing strikes by naval aircraft were misleading, because of the absence of defending fighters or hostile antiaircraft fire. For instance, attacks by torpedo planes on maneuvering ships indicated that a 30 percent hit factor could be attained, even at release ranges of 3,000 yards and beyond. This was recognized as being much too optimistic, and torpedo planes were urged to close to shorter ranges.¹⁹

In May 1938, planes from the carriers Lexington, Saratoga, and Ranger conducted bombing exercises. The scout bombers made horizontal attacks from an average height of 13,700 feet and scored 16 hits with 90 bombs, 17.8 percent. The dive bombers released at an average of 3,000 feet, hitting on 51 of 101 bombs, 50.5 percent. One squadron scored heavily with a formation dive, but it was recognized that this type of attack would be too vulnerable to AA fire to be used in combat. The Ranger’s deck hands did very well, recovering seventy-two planes in 37½ minutes, rearming seventy in 82 minutes and relaunching them in less than 24 minutes. By 1940, a squadron of planes could be launched from a carrier in 4 minutes and 57 seconds; recovery took 9 minutes and 53 seconds; speed in launching and recovering aircraft was vital, as carriers were most vulnerable during these operations. Carrier operations were the most dangerous activity of the peacetime Navy; aircraft were damaged at a rate of 5.79 per 1,000 flights.²⁰

It was thought that the patrol bombers would play an important offensive role in wartime,^c utilizing tenders to mount surprise attacks from advanced bases.²¹ However, later experience showed that the PBYs, while possessing excellent endurance characteristics which made them ideal all-weather, high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, lacked the speed to survive for long at altitudes at which effective bombing was feasible.

Thus, the Navy’s use of the airplane in the thirties was both limited and promising. In the operating forces, practical considerations outweighed conservative theory. The airplane was, and therefore it had to be thought about, lest an officer jeopardize his career by failing in a training problem that involved aircraft. And so, tough and astute men like Admiral King were able to shape the tactics and refine the techniques needed to bring about victories under enemy skies in the distant days of more and better planes.

A major failing of the peacetime Navy was antisubmarine warfare.

Most Navies in the thirties assumed that sonar and the convoy system had ended the menace of the submarine. But technology and tactics do not long remain stagnant; the range, speed, and durability of the submarine increased, and the night surface attack replaced the daylight submerged attack, restoring to underwater craft their former superiority.²²

American naval strategy was based on the concept of command of the seas: to destroy the main fleet of the enemy in battle, so as to secure the Western Hemisphere from attack and permit offensive operations elsewhere. A trade war seemed superfluous and timid. Hence, in peacetime exercises, submarines were employed as part of the main fleet, and considered, like the airplane, a tool for whittling down the enemy battleline before it could confront the American heavy ships. American submarine tactics developed for attacking fast and well-defended warships were too cautious, relying on submerged and even futile, “blind” sonar attacks. Escort tactics suffered, too; shepherding destroyers, trained to defend fast warships, whose high speeds were nearly proof against successful attack under normal conditions and whose turbulent wakes fouled sonar equipment, became complacent and inefficient in escort technique. Without slow, unruly merchant convoys to escort in peacetime, there could be little useful antisubmarine warfare and escort doctrine, for doctrine must be built on experience. Hence, there was no agreement on such basic matters as the most effective escort formation, the optimum distance between the screening ships and the convoy, whether the escorts should patrol station, when to leave the convoy unprotected in order to dog a contact, the efficacy of illumination, precise search and attack procedures, and many other significant points of escort technique.²³

Small escorts such as subchasers had been improvised during World War I, and many, including President Roosevelt, felt that the experience could be easily repeated, if necessary. Once Admiral King warned the President,” Nothing remains static in war or in military weapons, and it is consequently often dangerous to rely on courses suggested by apparent similarities in the past.” Admiral King was right. The World War I U-boat had been forced by its limitations to operate in the immediate approaches to the United Kingdom, where interception was easiest. Hence, escorts operated out of Queenstown on relatively short trips, not having to cross the ocean, and the strain on men and ships was small. In World War II, however, escorts had to have the size and endurance to fight in mid-ocean.

The General Board of the Navy rejected various escort prototypes in the prewar years because they were almost as expensive to build as destroyers, yet nowhere as efficient or versatile. Corvettes were too slow; “Treasury”-class cutters and destroyer-escort types lacked the speed, ruggedness, versatility, and firepower of modern destroyers, and specialized escorts were not always economical—one modern destroyer could be built for less money, for example, than two proposed 875-ton antisubmarine warfare vessels. Hence, the Navy preferred to invest in the better ship, but lacked a cheap, easily produced, specialized antisubmarine type at the outbreak of war.²⁴

Also, antisubmarine warfare was dependent upon World War I weapons. Depth charges had rarely been lethal in individual patterns, most submarines having been sunk by accumulated damage over long periods of attack; evidence of World War I showed that 1,000 depth charges had been expended for each U-boat sunk. Experience indicated that about 2½ hours of persistent attack were required to kill a submarine, and that it would require a pattern of forty depth charges to ensure the destruction of a located submarine. But of course, lack of means to drop depth charges as fast as that or to carry a sufficient number on ships made such huge patterns impossible.

Not only was sonar gear affected by the salinity and temperature of the water, ships’ wakes, currents, fish, and debris, but the beam broke contact in the crucial attack run because the angle of the sound cone passed above the target as it was neared. Furthermore, the echo increased as the target was closed, causing the operator to believe he was on target when actually the submarine might be edging to the outer limits of the sonar beam.²⁵ But, as one officer noted:

Given a true contact and a skilled sound operator the problem is still only half solved. The conning officer of the destroyer must make an accurate “landing” on an object which he cannot see and which is attempting to evade him. He must “lead” the submarine about 15 degrees as he closes to 500 yards, then order flank speed, and decrease the lead as his speed increases. Conning and timing an accurate attack requires excellent teamwork between sound operator and conning officer, which can only be developed by practice against a submarine.²⁶

But destroyer practices with “live” submarines were rare; and the Key West Sound School could not adequately prepare men for the dismal water and weather conditions of the North Atlantic. As late as 1938, some destroyers had not been fitted with depth-charge racks, indicating the casual, complacent approach to antisubmarine warfare.²⁷ The CO of one destroyer division, noting that only two of his ships had depth charges and racks, observed, “The use of depth charges in time of war may assume great importance. . . . The theory of making depth charge attacks is well known . . . but until the practice is actually carried out, the details are usually not known and study of the problem is usually not attempted due to other more pressing work.”²⁸

Depth-charge battle practices usually ended with the destruction of the submarine, but these successes were artificial. They were based on certain “knowledge that a submarine was actually present in the near vicinity,” and often pitted a team of five destroyers, unhampered by an array of slow, vulnerable merchant vessels, against a single submarine. It was noted that in problems where surprise was possible, the destroyers “have not shown corresponding proficiency.”²⁹ In one practice, an attacking destroyer failed to measure the changing relative speed and bearing of the target and dropped depth charges well away from the submarine. Her companion destroyers dropped depth charges “apparently at random,” with one charge, the official report caustically noted, “accidentally dropped . . . on the submarine.”³⁰

One prewar tactical exercise will illustrate the problems of antisubmarine warfare. In the spring of 1939, seven destroyer divisions exercised off Guantanamo Bay with “live” submarines.

The ships of Destroyer Division 2 failed to locate the S-42. They searched at too high speeds and thus did not hear the submarine. After slowing down, the Dale passed only 900 yards to port of the submarine, but was echo-ranging in the opposite direction at the time and did not detect her quarry.

DesDiv 3 located the Perch, but the submarine increased speed after the sonar gear lost contact, and the destroyers made their attacks too far astern; one destroyer attacked too soon and steamed into a predecessor’s dummy barrage. Then the submarine turned away to starboard, creating wake-turbulence under water; the destroyermen echo-ranged on the wake, the Perch soon passed beyond the sound beam, and the destroyers lost contact.

DesDiv 4 picked up the Seal quickly and pressed home successful attacks. This was an excellent division, consistently scoring well in gunnery, too; the good ships were the Smith, Cushing, Perkins, and Preston.

DesDiv 7 found Skipjack quickly, but the submarine reduced speed, and Blue passed ahead of her; the next destroyer attacked Blue’s wake. The Fanning’s pattern was closer, and the Blue then attacked on target; the Mugford’s pattern missed astern, and Patterson could not get an attack off in time.

DesDiv 8 turned in an average performance. The Cummings found S-43, and the Dunlap and Gridley made competent attacks, but the Bagley depth-charged Gridley’s wake.

DesDiv 11 found the Stingray, but the submarine increased speed, sending out “knuckles” of water turbulence, which two of the destroyers attacked. The Henley underestimated the target’s speed, and attacked astern; McCall failed to “lead” the target sufficiently, neglecting to allow for the time it took the depth charges to sink.

DesDiv 17 did not locate S-43 at all, because of excessive speed, sporadic echo-ranging, and deteriorating water conditions.³¹

But such valuable practices were too rare, and fear of accident and personnel losses precluded realistic night destroyer-submarine training. When in January 1941 five old, slow, and cranky “S” boats “sank” three destroyers in an exercise off Panama, it was partly because none of the destroyers had ever worked with submarines before.³² After another practice, the CO of a destroyer squadron reported that because of lack of training with “live” submarines and the newness of his skippers to their ships, his destroyers

had not received . . . the very considerable experience apparently necessary to enable them to detect, maintain contact and attack a submerged submarine with a high degree of precision. . . . Inability of sound operators to distinguish between authentic and false contacts was an outstanding feature of the practice. . . . The procedure to be followed after the initial sound contact is made . . . appears to be highly important. Evaluation, authentication and maintenance of the contact, designation of the first vessel to attack, time of first attack and operations in connection with subsequent attacks are subjects regarding which more information and experience than now available are needed.³³

So, too much relating to antisubmarine warfare was left undone in the thirties. Such operations were difficult with the technology available, seemed unnecessary in light of World War I experience, and lacked glamour. As one destroyerman grimly remembered, “It was the Battle of Jutland. We spent too much time fighting the Battle of Jutland.”³⁴

In general, then, the training cycles of the thirties reflected the expectation that naval wars of the future would be decided primarily by clashes between opposing battlelines. Technical limitations, inexperience, and conservatism hampered greater stress on aviation and submarine warfare, but the importance of the airplane was increasingly accepted, and it was understood that it was vital to achieve command of the air over the battle fleet. Gunnery was adequate, although all ships could have used more practice; antiaircraft gunnery was impaired by lack of effective short-range weapons. Results of carrier operations were impressive, but bomb and torpedo effectiveness was exaggerated by the fliers. Engineering and shiphandling were excellent. Tactics were deficient because of reluctance to train intensively at night and inexperience; the Navy had seen very little combat in World War I, and this lack of experience made it difficult to plan realistically for future war.³⁵

Then, too, the promotion lag generated intense pressures in the various competitions and exercises, and the need to demonstrate efficiency sometimes took precedence over sound procedures. For instance, too many junior officers were assigned to battleships to help gun crews squeeze out a few extra hits for the ship, depriving enlisted gunners, who would have to do the job in wartime, of vital supervisory experience under pressure.³⁶

Once, a ship lost her gunnery efficiency pennant because sailors from another ship, acting as umpires at a “shoot,” chose to interpret the rules with unusual stringency. To balance accounts, a contingent of men off the aggrieved vessel ambushed their judges ashore and administered to them a rather severe lesson in the wisdom of tempering justice with mercy.³⁷

On another occasion, a senior officer made the skipper of a sister ship run an irregular course during firing practice, so that his own destroyer might compile a better comparative score.³⁸

The pressures produced two kinds of sailors: men who sought longevity in the avoidance of mistakes; and men who realized that their only security lay in maintaining a high level of professional competence, best fostered by pride and dedication. But peacetime training was only sufficiently rigorous to undermine the careless and patently unfit; it took active operations to distinguish between good shiphandlers and great captains.³⁹

If not always realistic, the peacetime competitions bred alertness, willingness, and a faculty for what Hemingway called grace under pressure. More than the careful statistics of technical accomplishment recorded by the Fleet Training Division, these intangibles of the professional were the legacy that the regular sailors of the thirties left for the young volunteers of the forties.

^a In the Air Corps in the 1930’s “. . . we were operating under the old Army principle: you never fight the outfits which you have in peace. You’re actually just a holding operation, to develop new tactics perhaps—new equipment, new training measures and aids. But when war comes . . . you will need to form your outfits from the Reserves, and build them up. Then, eventually, you . . . fight.”

^b The bombers sustained about 80 .50-caliber hits per plane, the fighters 12.

^c Lieutenant Commander A.B. Vosseller was one of those who believed in a significant offensive role for the PBY. In 1941, he would command a Patrol Squadron in the North Atlantic and discover that sometimes theory and practice are unfriendly companions.