Learning war: the evolution of fighting doctrine in the U.S. Navy, 1898-1945

摘要

The implications of this well-researched history of how US naval officers responded to developments in naval warfare—the transition from sail to steam, the rise of carrier aviation and the introduction of radar and other twentieth-century technological accoutrements—are sobering indeed. The glacial pace of 'navy-time' innovation, where each beat approximates from a long decade to about 30 years, is found everywhere in the narrative. For instance, the navy personnel system was forced to allow engineering officers to do more than supervise the 'black gang' (i.e. the sailors manning the engine room) following civilian intervention in the form of the 1899 Personnel Act. They were only then given the opportunity to command a ship at sea alongside more traditionally inclined line officers. The fact that naval officers had to be forced to take this action nearly forty years after the steam-powered ironclads Monitor and Merrimack locked horns in the American Civil War reflects a recurring theme in Trent Hone's narrative. Innovation in the navy takes a long time and sometimes the innovators are overtaken by events. The US Navy entered the Second World War with the latest technology, but it generally was a day late and a dollar short when it came to puting that technology to good use in the first years of the war. Its peacetime estimates of the future battle environment, command concepts, doctrine and tactics tended to be mistaken or woefully inadequate.