U.S. Defense Unification and the U.S. Navy 1945–
PhD research resulted in not only a revised history of the creation of the U.S. Department of Defense and it's impact on strategy-making but the revelation of how close the US Navy came to abolition.
Abstract: In this short paper, I provide an overview on the arduous campaign to declassify records and work extensively with the U.S. government to enable research on the process of the creation of the U.S. Department of Defense 1941-1964 for my PhD.[1] The process of creating unified defence impacted strategy-making and strategic thought but critically the PhD research revealed resulted in showing how close the U.S. Navy avoided abolition.
PAPER: At the zenith of the U.S. Navy’s power towards the end of the Second World War, its influence at the heart of national defense, policymaking, and American culture was collapsing. The purposeful process to place American maritime power at the heart of national defense policy and American culture was promptly under question by political and Prussian guided, land-based military officers after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The political and populist response to the attack demonstrated again to any serious strategic minded thinker of the threat to sound defense debate when reactionary panic overtakes well laid plans. It reaffirmed American navslists concerns that defence debate could be twisted and guised with a political agenda which itself was emboldened by ideologically driven interservice squabbles.
Discussion and debate in the years after 1941 quickly turned to promises by politicians of ‘reform’, ‘reorganization’ and the creation of a new military service–later the U.S. Air Force. Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Ernest J. King (1878-1956) reminded the Joint Chiefs and political leadership that promises, and decisions born out of panic and ideology rarely deliver, the more important task was to focus on the war effort rather than tinkering with things that had taken generations to develop and yet to be proven solutions to equally questionable problems.
After the war’s conclusion, the assault on the future role of American sea power emerged with such ferocity that there was little time to reflect upon the fact that American seapower had delivered the promise of victory and security that the US Navy had always wanted to fulfil for the American people. The British had their immortal memory of Lord Horatio Nelson (1758-1805) and the Battle of Trafalgar (1805), now the U.S. Navy and American people had their own naval achievements to celebrate. But this meant little in the corridors of power in Washington DC who had at the end of the Second World War returned to the question of the future shape and scope of defense complicated by unsurety to exactly what American leadership of the ‘free world’ entailed. Politicians were particularly interested in how defense was organised, the roles of each military service, command and control, civil-military relations and where decision-making power resided. Power was key to financial control.
Historians have explored and even some politicians given attention to some of the events of American defense policy in the post-war decades. Part of the task of my PhD research was to revisit, research and tell the story of the American sea power and the Department of the Navy between 1945 and 1964, a useful benchmark in the work to the British narrative. Instead by exhaustively declassifying records (something that needs a blog in itself to the state of research in the United States and its archival system) over years I was met with the startling revelation to the very future existence of the U.S. Navy rested on the actions and agendas of the period 1945-1964.
Much of the attention of researchers has focused on technological change to the US Navy, like the rise of the nuclear navy. However, in doing so ignoring that this change and criticism of its architects was as much about survival of the service as it was about facing new realities in warfare. Post war, it was a period of geopolitics that proved the centuries of the great powers had ended by 1941, replaced by the super-power league of America and the Soviet Union.
The reality the research revealed was a question of how the US Navy was going to survive, mere years after the zenith of its power and influence was reached. Something unknown until now. This can be seen that even research on events like the mis-titled ‘The Revolt of the Admiral’s’ that took place 1947-1949 avoided an understanding of the broader picture and beyond tactical and technological debates. The event saw the most senior naval leadership locked in a struggle with defense civilians and air force leadership over the future of military air power and the role aircraft carriers in the broader make up of defense policy. Although events of 1945-1950 encapsulated the trend of toxicity and inter-service competitiveness that ran throughout 1945-1964–a period which saw the fear of nuclear weapon induced mutually aided destruction and of a hostile global scale communist takeover–a superior title would be the ‘unification battles’.
Defense unification saw the traditional free-standing service departments like the Department of the Navy (DoN) abandoned in favour of centralised civilian authority with the 1947 National Security Establishment,[2] revised in 1949[3], and again in the 1950s. [4][5] It was a process that arguably is not finished today, even after major controversial amendments such as the 1986 Goldwater Nichols Act.[6] Legalisation in the 1940s and 1950s eventually forced defense organisation into a bureaucratic Defense Department, controlled by an all-powerful Secretary of Defense. Unification was one of, if not the defining change in British and American defence and government. In either country it was the primary mechanism that led to the devaluation of a national defence strategy and ended the established influence of navies while the role of service departments in US policy-making process changed. In the American case, arguably the foundations to why the Department of the Navy existed was related to if the US should choose to ‘go to the sea’. A concept that matured by navalists––and the odd maritime minded civilian or military personnel––and was something that had been developed more seriously since the founding of the U.S. Naval War College in the late 1800s.
The debates and arguments that flowed from the politically-led upheaval over unification saw no limits or bounds, it resulted in the White House and Congress bitterly at odds with one another and at times, the military services, over the future of defense policy and how to fund projects. As is so common in defence, the question of how funding is allocated to projects and the military branches was further inflamed by ideologically and technocratic driven service rivalry who had little care to think about strategic experience but sought technological absolutes and short-term solutions.
One example was the use of the term ‘revolt of the admirals’, something created by New York based journalists who were in the pocket of fanatical U.S. Air Force personnel. Sadly, the term is repeated too often––and needs a whole paper itself–– to this day not only by those who should know better or those too naive to new research. Research that proves these events as a matter of unification first, the debate a product of unfinished business from the National Security Act 1947.
The fierce rivalry of the post war decades between the services became akin to a self-fulfilling prophecy as it convinced the branches of the US Federal Government to further tighten civilian control of defense at the cost of ease of access to military expertise. Manipulation of fear of another ‘Pearl Harbor’ was a tactic that was used to great extent by journalists, politicians, and misguided prophets of one particular weapon system or another, something seen before Pearl and long after. The use of ‘fear’ of another national military disaster to further debate on defense reform was a process started under Senator Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) and continued during his Presidency (1945-1953).[7] Truman as President did little to stem the Army-Navy disagreements, ignoring warnings that the creation of the U.S. Air Force in 1947 would fail to resolve issues over future defense policy and strategy while potentially complicating the situation further that many issues would never be resolved. Truman’s judgement was questionable as he was keen to uproot defense organisation during wartime, something CNO King defeated.
The declassification of records was vital to this research. Never before seen records proved that unlike the U.S. army and U.S. Air Force in the late 1940s, for the first time since a standing navy has been Constitutionally enshrined in the summer of 1788 through Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution:
The Congress shall have Power To . . . provide and maintain a Navy . . . make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces.[8]
that the future existence of America’s Navy was in serious doubt. Its existing role and function prior to the 1947 National Security Act in every regard was challenged or cast aside.
The wartime successes of the Navy and in the U.S. Marine Corps (USMC) were an effective messaging tool against those who wanted to sweep the Department of the Navy away, particularly when a fledging Air Force wanted to guarantee the longevity of its existence. There was an irony in the dispute that while army and Air Force propagandists sought to displace the Navy’s influence, they themselves wanted to dominate instead. They missed warnings for the military services to work together from Capitol Hill who had become exhausted with the bickering and rightfully sought to neuter the ambitions of military officers who wanted to reduce civilian oversight. The stakes were high as everything from doctrine to technology to command and control were in question in Washington DC as world events rapidly fluctuated along with the pace of change in technology and the race for space entering the fray. The level of change bought by unification and disagreements between the services, resulted in the political establishment growing concerned that Americans and more so, potential adversaries would wonder if American defence was up to the task not just for defending continental America and its interests but increasingly its global allies.
For lawmakers, it was no longer a question if America could stay out of world affairs, but if taxpayers believed defense was effectively and efficiently run and therefore could be relied upon for whatever challenges lay ahead. Central to these debates were how and if the navy and sea power supported addressing future challenges. Swaths of Americans far removed from coastlines were once again questioning funding for an expensive navy. A century prior, arguments were being made that the navy was no more than an instrument of foreign policy and designed to combat American isolationist tendencies. Similar voices appeared after the Second World War, justifying their criticism that the U.S. Navy was of little use as Soviet satellites flew overhead, and their homes came within range of foreign aircraft and nuclear missiles. It was a unique and distinct shock to a population who unlike the British and Europeans, had no experience of this or that no domain or border provided complete guarantee of safety. Experience of the Space Race quickly changed the perspective on the safety of continental America in Americans minds.
The once concept of an American seapower state where maritime and naval considerations were central to defence and foreign policy had drove Admiral’s Stephen B. Luce (1827-1917) and Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) in the founding of the U.S. Naval War College.[9] Its opening mission sought to educate naval and civilian personnel who would later ingrain and maintain seapower in the American political mind. Although arguably there was a certain American naval spirit to best its old adversary the Royal Navy, this aspiration was misguided and never achievable. Mahan was trying to sell seapower to an American continental audience, aware that unlike British seapower with the island nation culture behind it, that maintaining a navy in a continental nation was an constant uphill struggle. Answering the question of ‘why the United States has a navy and uses sea power’ needed to be solved once and for all. This process found powerful advocates in the first half of the 20th century. Commodore and naval historian Dudley Knox (1870-1960) in conjunction with President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882-1945) provided the arguments to secure understanding of seapower in American public and political minds.[10] The pinnacle of maritime thought came with luminaries CNO King and Secretary of the Navy (SECNAV) James Forrestal (1892-1947) who had embraced some of the key concepts from British philosopher of seapower and maritime strategist Sir Julian Corbett (1854-1922).[11]
SECNAV Forrestal, CNO King and Commodore Knox understood unification would fundamentally change the U.S. Navy. The stark realisation that the existence of the U.S. Navy, was jeopardised overrode all other priorities.[12] A confusing reality to face considering the successes achieved during the Second World War. Although the focus of historians has been on the changing post-war world, superpower competition, air power and nuclear weapons to changes in navies, it does not go far enough. Ambition for a fully-fledged maritime strategy as national policy, taking ‘America back to sea’ and ‘seapower as the world’s policeman’ after 1945 drove efforts by American navalists and naval officers alike to avoid and then minimise the impact of unification.[13]
By 1950, the overwhelming influence of the combined army and Air Force had delivered a functional Defense Department. It finalised the reality that maritime strategy as national policy would remain a feature of the past. It was the shock of this realisation that dominated Navy Department actions and thought 1947 to 1955 as it sought to mobilise a response to a problem it did not fully comprehend nor after unification had the authority to challenge and repeal. Forrestal who was appointed the first Secretary of Defense in 1947 was driven to suicide by 1949 as he observed naval experience devalued and the founding aspiration behind unification of a coherent national strategic doctrine which included a comprehensive maritime understanding of geostrategic and geopolitical realities was replaced by overbearing political interference. Instead, it favoured a continental Prussian style of warfare whose doctrine dominated the new Department of Defense. This was an easier position for high-policy decisions makers to embrace in a continental nation whose survival is not dependent on the sea and resource base allows it to choose its defense strategy. However, it pointed to a future where a more intellectually and nuanced understanding of military operations abroad and national-level strategy utilising applied history was uncertain. Learning from the useful past was a method that had enabled success and supported victory such as in the Pacific, and one that would point out that American national security interests remained interweaved with events at sea and its influence beyond from seabed to space.
The experience garnered from a decade of doubt over the future of American sea power between 1945 and 1955 rejected previous misplaced interpretations of British seapower. This created a cadre of elite veteran uniformed and civilian Navy Department problem-solvers influenced by this experience. Amongst these thinkers who observed events in the late 1940s was Captain Arleigh Burke (1901-1996). By the beginning of his tenure as CNO in 1955 it was clear that all the efforts to secure the U.S. Navy that had started with the founding of the service and creation of the Naval War College was consigned to history. He had no choice but to make hard decisions on the culture and doctrine of American sea power, mindful of broader debates on Capitol Hill over unification, intelligence and the apparatus of national security which constantly tested the value of sea power. It was clear, the form of seapower that drove the national security policy discussion prior to 1939 was all but gone. As a result, Burke developed a new continental navy, only possible due to a revised naval message where the American sea power and naval strength was carefully bound to national pride utilising and dependent on America’s newfound role as a leading technological, nuclear, and global power. Admiral Hyman G. Rickover’s (1990-1986) designs for a nuclear navy, fitted this vision. He, like Burke, understood the real threat to American sea power lay in the inherent vulnerability of counterarguments to sea power which was a status-quo in a continental nation. It was a matter of keeping the navy relevant, capable, and ready with a coherent sea power message that decision makers in Washington DC could easily understand. This remains the key to the future of the U.S. Navy and American sea power before any analysis of threats and new technologies.
The naval strategy and tactics of Mahan re-rose to prominence with the emergence of the new model navy, as a result understanding of maritime strategy declined in the United States. After the two postwar decades, future generations would have to address specific naval concepts like ‘sea control’ in the 1960s and 1970s and the scope of naval strategy in the 1980s. The latter, a naval strategy, that since the 1950s aggravated for one response which was seen in the hardening of the resolve of a defensive Soviet navy. However these were questions of naval policy, naval power, and naval strategy not maritime ones. Although Corbett had warned of Anglo-American navalism and its pitfalls, the struggle of the 1940s and 1950s underlined why American navalism, amongst over methods, needed to exist in a nation whose population were often disconnected from the sea and could not comprehend far off maritime-led campaigns. [14]
Navalists are as much a strength as a weakness as they often became reactionary to changes in national circumstance, foreign events and technologies, often forgetting that inwards conversations about naval matters are not easily understood let alone appreciated by Capitol Hill. They have a responsibility to support translating complex technical military and naval issues and ever-expanding jargon into something useful, understandable and practical. At the same time continually justifying how sea power benefits defence and foreign policy through a highly-trained and motivated naval service. Nevertheless, Burke had little choice in the 1950s; he delivered a professional naval response under the difficult circumstance of a navy reeling from calls from some quarters for its abolition. His only option was a professional naval interpretation of sea power, realigning naval power to the demands of continental American defence and foreign policy. Mahan and Corbett’s concerns that the question over national interpretations of complex naval strategy and maritime concepts could not be disconnected from how they were translated for decision-makers and politicians were universal.
The transformation of the US Navy and American defence that took place between 1945 and 1964 set in motion an entirely new culture of naval personnel and views of sea power within national defence and security policy. It was one that would be wrongly exported to the Royal Navy with lasting and costly repercussions to this day as British sea power in American form did little to protect it in the UK defence decision-making process.
The period also represented the most difficult peacetime challenge the U.S. Navy had ever faced. The answer, of an entirely new model U.S. navy is the one that endures till this day. It was one born out of necessity and both political crisis and international tension. It provided the basis for post-Second World War U.S. Navy through to the one of the 21st century. The post-war decades saw the once bastions of navies and seapower within national identity and policy crushed under the political drive for the central control of defence. If it was not for King, Knox, Forrestal, Rickover, and Burke the outcome could have been far worse for the U.S. Navy. Criticism of Rickover and Burke by historians have often ignored the wider themes of their actions underling the need for more nuanced understanding.
By comparison, the unification experience for the British Admiralty and Royal Navy was far more disastrous considering their established maritime national strategic culture, underlining the success of how the U.S. Navy reinvented itself at the opportune moment even in a moment of strife. As world events took over in the 1960s, there was sufficient political and competing service agendas aligned to force the creation of a new form of American sea power, one more suited to a non-sea dependent continental nation.
The process of defense unification also gave voice to some extremist views which often relied on guesswork and assumptions to their theories of forms of military power and use of equipment. The only methodology to avoid guesswork while protecting innovation was by sustained reflection of the past and intellectually minded debate for the national good at its heart, led by civilian and military professionals working together. The transformation that took place is crucial to remember today not just as a chapter in national and naval history, but an immutable lesson based on experience that the task to communicate the role of sea power and capability of naval force is an enduring one. One that comes before all others, because after all experience is all we have and freely available to harness guidance from, rather than running the tightrope of relearning the costly and hard way, with all the risks associated to it.
Today there are questions long avoided about the vast monolithic unified defense organisations. The challenge remains to deliver national strategy and security where all components work together rather than against themselves. This has before led to uncomfortable questions and remain often avoided to this day. For example:
How many armed services should there be?
What roles should the military services have?
Can defense be effective and efficient and budgeted?
What are the limits of ‘jointness?’
How does civil-military relations support service autonomy-centralisation or decentralisation?
How is workable and useful policy crafted that doesn’t devalue experience?
Those serious about a future for the U.S. Navy must be mindful that American sea power is consistently on the back-foot and heavily exposed to competing visions for the future of defense. The Constitutional safety to “maintain a navy" should not be taken for granted nor sought as a place of refuge, for it could also be interpreted in many different ways as political, financial and world events blow. In some regards it is a red herring from understanding the harsh realities of how continental nations and those who dwell in them view the sea and the threats from which will use the oceans to further their objectives.
The future of the U.S. Navy rests first and foremost not on the question of technology, the quality of its people and other aspects both new and long debated, although these are important conversations to have, but on the simple fact of how it is communicated why America has a navy and what sea power can offer. It was a hard lesson learnt between 1945 and 1964 and should not be easily forgotten. The future depends on the ability to translate why sea power matters, and how it fits into coherent national strategic doctrine suitably reflective and updated for the times in which the sailors and marines of today and tomorrow operate.
Remarks: The story of the U.S. Navy, Department of the Navy and revised history of the creation of the U.S. Department of Defense will be further detailed in a future publication. The declassification project remains ongoing after seven years.
I am grateful for the support and assistance for this research from the Department of Defense, U.S. Congress, U.S. Naval War College, U.S. Naval Academy, Naval History and Heritage Command, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Army, Library of Congress, and the U.S. National Archives.
[1] James W.E. Smith, “Deconstructing the Seapower State: Britain, American and Defence Unification,” PhD Thesis (King’s College London, 2021).
[2] The National Security Act of 1947, Pub. L. No. 253, 116 Stat. 49 (1947).
[3] The National Security Act of 1947 as amended by, Pub. L. No. 216, 63 Stat. 578 (1949).
[4] Reorganization Plan No. 6 of 1953, Pub.L. No. 18, 67 Stat. 638 (1953).
[5] Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, Pub. L. No. 85-599, 72 Stat. 579 (1958).
[6] Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, Pub. L. No. 99-433, 100 Stat. 992 (1986).
[7] Joint Comm. Report on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, S.Doc. 244-75. (1946).
[8] U.S. Const. art. I, § 8.
[9] A.T. Mahan, “The Principles of Naval Administration” and “The United States Navy Department” in Naval Administration and Warfare: Some General Principles (Boston: Little Brown and Co., 1908), 47-48, 80-85.
[10] Kohnen, David. 21st Century Knox. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2016.
[11] Corbett, Julian. Some Principals of Maritime Strategy. London: Longman, 1911.
[12] Report to the Hon. James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy, on Unification of the War and Navy Departments and Postwar Organization for National Security (Eberstadt Report). Senate Committee for Naval Affairs, 79th Cong. (Washington: GPO, 1945).
[13] Huntington, Samuel. 1954. “National Policy and The Transoceanic Navy.” USNI Proceedings 80 (5): 485.
[14] Corbett, Julian. The Spectre of Navalism. London: Darling & Son, 1915.