Navy Combat Branches: Surface Forces

This entry is a subentry of Navy Combat Branches.

Until the twentieth century, surface warfare was naturally the focus of the U.S. Navy. The navy's force structure was built around major surface warships: the frigates of the 1794 program, the ships of the line after the War of 1812, the monitors of the Civil War era, and, beginning in the 1880s, the cruisers and the battleships. Missions for these naval vessels included commerce raiding, trade protection, coast defense, and sea control. In the 1890s, a smaller type, the destroyer, emerged to shield larger vessels from enemy torpedo boats; it soon undertook myriad other tasks.

Following the turn of the century, radical technological advances embodied in the aircraft and submarine began to challenge the primacy of the surface combatant. Although the navy incorporated both innovations into its fleet structure by the end of World War I, the battleship remained the “backbone of the fleet.” For able officers, the swiftest path to advancement remained duty aboard large surface warships. Top midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy took seriously the aphorism, “Get behind the big guns and stay there.”

World War II overturned this long‐standing system. The successes of submarine forces, while serious enough, paled in comparison with the rising challenge of the aircraft, whether sea‐ or land‐based. The navy's building programs, initially centered around the battleship and cruiser, were redirected in mid‐course to emphasize aircraft carriers. Although surface warships still proved quite useful, both in sea control and in a variety of subsidiary roles, the carrier by 1944 was unquestionably the single most important type of combatant. Many ambitious junior officers of the surface line put in for flight training.

The drawdown following V‐J Day reflected these changing priorities, with most of the battleships and cruisers going to the breakers or into “mothball” storage; destroyers remained operational in substantial numbers, principally for their utility in the antisubmarine mission. For the next decades, the carrier ruled supreme within the navy, although the Korean War showed again the indispensability of surface warships for shore bombardment and blockade work. Surface warriors also found a champion in Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) from 1955 to 1961. Burke, a former destroyer officer, advanced an ambitious program to update the surface navy by a large building program of new ships equipped variously with antiaircraft missiles for the defense of carriers, with helicopters for anti‐submarine work, and with nuclear powerplants for propulsion.

Despite these gains, the 1960s dealt harshly with the surface navy. Early troubles with this costly new technology rendered the new combatants of questionable worth; at the same time, Vietnam deployments wore out older warships and deprived the fleet of funding for replacements. More ominous, the lethality of Soviet antiship missile, as demonstrated by proxy in the 1967 six‐day Arab‐Israeli conflict, threatened—as had torpedoes and the aircraft in earlier decades—the very survival of surface warships.

In 1970, another surface warfare officer, Elmo Zumwalt, Jr., became CNO. Zumwalt began or accelerated a number of initiatives: innovative warships propelled by gas turbine engines; the Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles to give cruisers and destroyers extended reach against sea and shore targets; and advanced air defense capabilities (such as the Standard air defense missile, the Phalanx point‐defense gun, and the computerized Aegis weapons control system).

Mirroring the renaissance of surface warfare in the 1970s was the creation of a distinctive branch insignia and an organizational restructuring within the Navy Department to give surface forces an institutional voice equal to those of the aviation and submarine branches. Additionally, the navy's mine, amphibious, and service elements were fused with the cruiser/destroyer/frigate forces; the establishment of the Surface Warfare Officer School at Newport, Rhode Island, enhanced professionalism.

The surface navy continued to prosper during the Reagan and Bush years. Returned to active duty were the four Iowa‐class battleships armed with cruise missiles. New cruisers and destroyers of the Yorktown‐ and Arleigh Burke‐classes went to sea equipped with the Aegis system. During the Persian Gulf War, surface warships demonstrated their versatility by conducting long‐range missile strikes, shore bombardment, and blockade duties. In 1999, the surface navy launched missiles from the Adriatic Sea as part of NATO measures against Yugoslavia during the Kosovo Crisis.

At the close of the century, surface warfare, lost for much of the century in the shadows of the air and subsurface specialties, had been rejuvenated. With the navy's new emphasis on littoral warfare, surface warships promise to remain an essential and viable component for the foreseeable future. Thus, the oldest branch of the navy has learned to cope with a host of threats; its motto, “Up, Out, and Down,” succinctly describes the capabilities that surface forces continue to offer the nation.

Bibliography

• Vincent Davis, The Admirals Lobby, 1967.
• Norman Friedman, The Postwar Naval Revolution, 1986.
• Frederick H. Hartmann, Naval Renaissance: The U.S. Navy in the 1980s, 1990.
• George W. Bear, One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990, 1993.
• Malcolm Muir, Jr., Black Shoes and Blue Water: Surface Warfare in the United States Navy, 1945–1975, 1996