One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (79 page)

A U.S. Navy carrier today represents the ability to bring considerable sustainable firepower near to an adversary or enemy's borders without the constraint of being subject to the political sovereignty of a nation providing a land base of operations. It can sortie considerable punch from a piloted aircraft, thus retaining the ability to cancel an attacking sortie before it strikes its targets. Moreover, if ordnance is expended, there remains sufficient capability to reload and attack again and again. Even if no strike is executed, a carrier can linger in proximity to an adversary for extended periods in a deterrent role. Thus a Navy aircraft carrier and her Air Wing gives the ability to execute immediately available options, unencumbered by the political objectives of even America's closest allies in time of national crisis.

In the preceding pages the evolving nature of the threat a carrier represents has been presented. In World War II for instance American carriers started the war in primarily a defensive posture, but moved to the offensive quickly on 4 June 1942 by sinking four of Japan's large carriers in the Battle of Midway and in the process adjusting the naval balance in the Pacific to near parity. This enabled contemplation of offensive American operations at sea and amphibiously on a limited basis. The carrier battles of the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz ensued on 24 August and 26 October 1942, which in large part made it possible for the Marine Corps' 1st Marine Division to land amphibiously on Guadalcanal, hold the island with support from the 164th U.S. Army Infantry Regiment of the Americal Division, and enabled Major General Roy Geiger's 1st Marine Air Wing to attrite a critical number of Japanese carrier pilots and their airplanes in the process. Moreover, it threw the Japanese back on their heels for long enough for forces generated by the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940 and associated appropriations to expand the U.S. Navy beyond Japanese ability to defend.

Holding Guadalcanal was critical to enactment of a two-pronged naval offensive through the Upper Solomons, Gilberts, Marshalls, Marianas, and Volcano Islands
toward the Japanese home islands. So too was the expansion of the U.S. Navy and fielding of a second generation of wartime aircraft critical to the offensive. Splashing over four hundred Japanese aircraft and sinking three carriers (two by submarine attack, admittedly) in the Battle of the Philippine Sea/Marianas Turkey Shoot opened the back door at Saipan and Tinian to Japan itself.

Once the tide irrevocably turned against the Imperial Japanese Navy in the Pacific the American Navy transformed its carrier force to the role of attacking land targets. The versatility of carrier aviation, its destructive capacity, and assistance from land-based Navy aircraft in the reconnaissance and anti-submarine roles enabled the Navy gradually to move close enough to Japan to unleash the final destructive capacity of the Army Air Forces directly against the Japanese home islands.

So too was American Navy aviation critical in conflicts in Korea and Vietnam. It has remained so through countless conflicts and contingencies up to this very moment. The history of Navy aviation demonstrates its flexibility and ability to adapt in support of multiple and varied missions from a world war environment down to precise and limited missions in an evolving contingency. What remains constant through the range of military applications is that Navy aviation—land-based, helicopter, and carrier alike—gives the greatest flexibility to American presidents and political and military leaders of any form of military power available to them. From search and rescue, long-range surveillance, anti-submarine warfare, area defense to land attack, amphibious warfare, special operations, warfare at sea and nuclear strike, Navy carrier aircraft and their land-based counterparts excel at accomplishing their missions rapidly and precisely. But, as the chapters on aircraft and carrier developments over the last century point out, forethought and planning have to precede their use. Congressional and presidential support of programs that will continue the utility of Navy aviation in achieving a range of American goals and interests is essential to the continuation of the leading role the United States has played in world politics over the last century.

The question then becomes, What type of structure should U.S. Navy aviation take over the next century? Some might contend that aircraft carrier and antisubmarine operations will no longer be useful in crisis situations and are therefore costly additions to other options—such as unmanned drones—that are now available in the U.S. arsenal. The fact remains that of all existing options available to the national leadership only a carrier offers the combination of rapid response, considerable deliverable ordnance, sustainability, and above all the ability to gain air control rapidly over an objective area and maintain it. Then where and under what circumstances are carriers likely to be necessary?

The current strategic communication that structures the threat environment for the U.S. Navy for the next decade and beyond is “A Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century.” The “Cooperative Strategy” articulates the areas of the world
where American—and by extension Allied—interests and goals lie, and the type of naval capabilities necessary to achieve and protect them. This document obviously focuses primarily on the Middle East and Western Pacific areas. Previous concentration on the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea is conspicuously missing from the “Cooperative Strategy.” However, possible emergent military requirements of a time-sensitive nature require American preparedness to respond. One can thus analyze the “Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century” and see that aircraft Carrier Strike Groups must be able to respond to crises on short order in the northwestern Indian Ocean, in waters of the Sea of Japan and adjacent areas, and in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

There has long been a paradigm of aircraft carrier availability based on the distance to sustain a Carrier Strike Group at sea in a particular crisis scenario; the proximity of the scenario to Underway Replenishment Group support; and the fact that, for every Carrier Strike Group on station, one will have just departed station for return to the continental United States and one will be in a U.S. port replenishing and resupplying. Given the two areas of vital U.S. concern delineated in the “Cooperative Strategy for the 21st Century,” and the obvious need for rapid crisis response in distant areas or European waters, the above paradigm indicates that America will need at least nine carriers to retain a rapid-response posture in only its vital areas of interest for the foreseeable future. One additional carrier should be added to support training of pilots in the Advanced Pilot Training Program and the Replacement Air Groups located in the southeastern United States and another to maintain continuous crisis reaction capacity in that at least one carrier will of necessity be in the yards for overhaul and/or nuclear core removal and replacement or some other maintenance cycle in an almost continuous basis. Assuming that one of the proposed three aircraft carriers in the Atlantic/Mediterranean could be dual-purposed to meet this requirement, a minimum of ten American carriers should be maintained to secure American and Allied objectives around the world. If a dedicated training carrier is deemed necessary—and as a hedge against a multiple-area response requirement or the sinking of a carrier—an eleven-carrier American Navy is seen as the minimum requirement to sustain U.S. and Allied interests over the next several decades and beyond. Similarly, a modernized and substantial aviation surveillance and anti-submarine capability (particularly one capable of responding to the very real diesel submarine threat possessed by many potential aggressors) is needed.

The history of U.S. Navy air power has left a proud tradition that has rightfully shaped America's history of success in wars and in preserving American freedoms, moral imperatives, and interests. This volume is dedicated to all those who have flown against capable adversaries and often tremendous odds in securing them. In the Centennial Year of U.S. Navy air power it is hoped that all Americans pause to
salute those patriots who have “carried America's flag into battle in pursuit of a just cause.” They have shaped American history and will continue to do so in the second century of U.S. Navy air power.

CONTRIBUTORS

DR. STANLEY D. M. CARPENTER

Stanley D. M. Carpenter is a Professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, and serves as the deputy Strategy and Policy Division Head for the College of Distance Education. He holds degrees from Florida State University (PhD in British Military History), the University of St. Andrews (Scotland) (MLitt in Scottish Military History), and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (AB with honors in History). Dr. Carpenter is a retired U.S. Navy Captain, having served for thirty years on active duty and in the Navy Reserve as a Surface Warfare Officer. Professor Carpenter's publications include
Military Leadership in the British Civil Wars, 1642–1651: “The Genius of this Age”
(Cass 2005) and editorship of
The English Civil War
in
The International Library of Essays on Military History
(Ashgate 2007).

DR. DONALD CHISHOLM

Donald Chisholm has been Professor of Joint Military Operations at the Naval War College since 2000. Previously he taught at the University of Illinois, Chicago; University of California, Los Angeles; The Ohio State University; and University of California, San Diego. He earned his AB, MA, and PhD in political science at the University of California, Berkeley. His research has addressed planning and executing Joint military operations; cognitive and organizational limits on rationality; organizational failure and reliability; and privatization of public activities. He is the author of two books,
Coordination Without Hierarchy: Informal Structures in Multi-Organizational
Systems
(1989), and
Waiting for Dead Men's Shoes: Origins and Development of the U.S. Navy's Officer Personnel System, 1793–1941
(2001), which received the 2001 Rear Admiral Samuel Eliot Morison Award for Distinguished Contribution to Naval Literature. He has published in
Joint Force Quarterly, Parameters, Journal of Strategic Studies
, and the
Naval War College Review
.

CDR. KEVIN J. DELAMER, USN

Commander Delamer is a career helicopter aviator and a qualified test pilot. He has accumulated over three thousand hours over thirty type model series aircraft including various models of the H-3 and H-60. In addition to operational deployments, he has served in a variety of staff assignments including a tour with NASA, responsibility for political-military affairs for the U.S. Navy in the Middle East, and Executive Assistant to the Commander, Naval Forces, U.S. Central Command. He is currently serving as a military Professor in the Strategy Department at the U.S. Naval War College, where he also serves as a lecturer for the Fleet Seminar Program.

DR. NORMAN FRIEDMAN

Dr. Friedman has been concerned throughout his career with the way in which policy and technology intersect, in fields as disparate as national missile defense, nuclear strategy, and mobilization policy. An internationally known strategist and naval historian, he worked more than a decade at a major U.S. think tank, and another decade as consultant to the Secretary of the Navy. He has consulted for many major defense corporations. Dr. Friedman has written more than thirty-five books on naval strategy and technology, including an award-winning account of the U.S. Cold War strategy, histories of U.S. and British aircraft carriers (in the latter case including their aircraft), an account of carrier and naval aircraft technology, and a two-volume history of British (and Commonwealth) destroyers and frigates. He contributes a monthly column on world naval developments to the Naval Institute's
Proceedings
magazine and writes articles for journals worldwide. Dr. Friedman holds a PhD from Columbia University, New York. He lectures widely on defense issues in forums such as the National Defence University, the Naval War College, and the Royal United Services Institute. His current focus is on network-centric warfare, about which he has recently published
Network Centric Warfare: How Navies Learned to Fight Smarter in Three World Wars
. This year he is publishing a book on unmanned combat air vehicles and their possible effect on carrier aviation and also a history of British and Commonwealth cruisers.

HILL GOODSPEED

Hill Goodspeed is the author or editor of five books, one of which was named by Naval Institute
Proceedings
as one of the Notable Naval Books of 2001. Named a George C. Marshall Undergraduate Scholar while attending Washington and Lee University, he is the historian and Artifact Collections Manager at the National Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola, Florida.

CAPT. JOHN EDWARD JACKSON, USN (RET.)

John Jackson has been a researcher and historian of lighter-than-air vehicles for over forty years. He has flown five different classes of modern commercial airships, as well as recreational hot-air balloons. He has authored numerous articles on the history and potential future of LTA platforms, and has contributed to a television documentary on the role of airships in the Battle of the North Atlantic. He served in logistics and education assignments over a twenty-seven-year career in the U.S. Navy, holds advanced degrees from Providence College and Salve Regina University, and is a graduate of the Management Development Program at Harvard University. He longs for the days when the phrase “Up Ship!” was exclaimed as Navy aviators took to the skies in buoyant flight.

TIMOTHY H. JACKSON

Timothy H. Jackson is a retired Navy officer, and formerly a special adviser to the President of the Naval War College, associate dean of Academic Affairs for Electives and Directed Research, and professor of Strategy and Policy at the United States Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. He is the former Director of Distance Education and Director of Academic Support, servicing more than 45,000 students from all branches of the military Services as well as students from other federal agencies. He is a published author of military studies and a guest lecturer at colleges and universities around the country. He was a guest speaker at the sixty-fifth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, when his “Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940” was first presented.