This entry is a subentry of U.S. Navy.
The U.S. Navy matured from a respectable and growing fleet in 1899 to a navy that was incontestably the greatest in the world by the end of World War II. Built initially around the big‐gun ship, the navy during World War II shifted its primary focus to aerial warfare and also waged a submarine campaign of unparalleled effectiveness.
Emerging triumphant from the Spanish‐American War (1898), the navy enjoyed generous support early in the century from presidents and the Congress, which yearly funded battleship construction. By 1902, the U.S. Navy ranked third in the world in battle line strength. Its new ships were tested and America's naval might flexed with the cruise of the Great White Fleet of 1907–09. The navy's personnel expanded correspondingly, from 16,000 in 1899 to 60,000 by 1916. With its emphasis on battleships, the navy paid less attention to smaller craft, arguing that those could be built quickly in an emergency. Nonetheless, the service did commission its first submarine in 1900 and led the world in experiments with naval aviation, conducting the first flight from a ship in 1910.
To provide leadership for the growing force, the Naval Academy was completely rebuilt, and the system of officer promotion by seniority was replaced by merit. At the top, the Naval General Board was established in 1900 as an advisory planning body to link the navy's strategy with its force structure. In 1915, Congress established the office of the chief of naval operations to oversee fleet readiness and employment. The next year, Congress authorized the construction of sixteen warships of unprecedented size to give the nation a “navy second to none.”
Work on this ambitious program was hardly under way when the United States entered World War I. Because German U‐boats posed the principal menace, the navy, needing destroyers desperately, suspended the 1916 construction program. During the war, American warships sank few submarines, but the navy did make significant contributions to the Allied victory by advocating the adoption of the convoy system and by escorting over 2 million army and Marine troops to France without the loss of a single sailor.
Following the armistice, the navy reverted to its emphasis on the big gun, but soon found its building plans stymied when the Washington Naval Arms Limitation Treaty of 1922 mandated a ten‐year moratorium on battleship construction. Despite this setback, the navy worked hard on its long‐range gunnery in planning to fight in the Pacific. To that end, it placed great emphasis on aviation, which could provide the necessary spotting and air control. In 1921, the navy created a separate Bureau of Aeronautics, and in 1927 commissioned powerful aircraft carriers of the Lexington class. With almost 100 planes each, these ships possessed great striking power, and under the leadership of such air‐minded officers as Joseph M. Reeves, William A. Moffett, John H. Towers, and Ernest J. King, they became a potent force in their own right. Conversely, the threat of hostile aircraft caused such concern that navy planners made determined efforts to develop efficient antiaircraft defenses during the 1930s. The navy also experimented with radar for early warning and aircraft control, with dirigibles and seaplanes for long‐range scouting, and with at‐sea refueling and replenishment. Given its Pacific focus, the navy built fast long‐range submarines armed with an advanced torpedo, although lack of funding prevented adequate testing of this weapon. The Marines, studying the problem of seizing forward bases, focused on amphibious warfare, a mission that many military analysts deemed impossible.
Increasing tensions of the late 1930s and the outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to renewed warship construction; following Germany's defeat of France in 1940, the U.S. Navy won funds for essentially unlimited expansion. Before the new vessels entered the fleet, active belligerency brought crises in both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The destruction of the battleships at the attack on Pearl Harbor forced the navy to scrap its plans for an advance with the battle line across the central Pacific; a German submarine offensive along the eastern coast of the United States caught the navy unprepared. But the emergency moved to the fore officers who would guide the fleet to victory: Ernest J. King as chief of naval operations, Chester Nimitz to head the Pacific Fleet, and William F. Halsey and Raymond A. Spruance as commanders of fast carrier task forces.
After a slow start, the navy helped win the Battle of the Atlantic against the U‐boats with long‐range aircraft and blimps, large numbers of specialized antisubmarine ships such as escort carriers and destroyer escorts, radar in both ships and planes, and code‐breaking successes. The navy's victory in this vitally important campaign enabled the U.S. Army and air forces to bring their weight to bear in the European theater with the strategic bombing campaign against Germany and the landings in North Africa, Italy, and France.
In the Pacific theater, the navy recovered rapidly from the Pearl Harbor defeat. Relying of necessity on aircraft carriers, the navy struck back with raids on Japanese‐held territories and on the home islands themselves. Then, in the first carrier battles of the war, the navy fought the Japanese to a draw at the Battle of the Coral Sea and won a stunning victory at the Battle of Midway. Quickly going over to the offensive, the navy with its Marine component began at Guadalcanal in August 1942 a series of amphibious operations against a skillful and dedicated enemy defending terrain from jungle to atoll and from the Aleutians to New Guinea. Despite some heavy casualties, not a single American landing over the next three years was repulsed. Simultaneously, U.S. submarines were cutting Japanese lifelines. Once their formerly faulty torpedoes became effective, the submarines inflicted lethal damage on the Japanese war machine by sinking 56 percent of its merchant marine and numerous imperial warships.
In 1944, the navy crushed the Japanese Imperial Fleet in two of the greatest naval battles in history: Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf. Closing in on Japan, the navy and Marines secured bases in the Marianas and at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, thereby making possible the B‐29 aerial offensive. Despite grievous losses in men and ships to kamikaze aircraft late in the war, the U.S. Navy's triumph was complete. By the end of the conflict, its foes in both oceans had been utterly crushed, and it was bigger than all the rest of the navies in the world combined.
[See also Academies, Service: U.S. Naval Academy; Battle of Leyte Gulf; Philippine Sea, Battle of the; World War I, U.S. Naval Operations in; World War II, U.S. Naval Operations in: The North Atlantic; World War II, U.S. Naval Operation in: The Pacific.]
Bibliography
- William S. Sims, The Victory at Sea, 1920.
- Ernest J. King and Walter M. Whitehall, Fleet Admiral King, 1952.
- Samuel E. Morison, The Two‐Ocean War, 1963.
- Patrick Abbazia, Mr. Roosevelt's Navy, 1975.
- Robert W. Love, Jr., The Chiefs of Naval Operations, 1980.
- Clark G. Reynolds, The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy, 1992
