This entry is a subentry of U.S. Navy.
On V‐J Day, 1945, the U.S. Navy—the world's largest—had 105 aircraft carriers, 5,000 ships and submarines, and 82,000 vessels and landing craft deployed around the world, manned by experienced citizen‐sailors and led by aggressive and seasoned admirals. Arguably the most glamorous, tradition‐bound, and elitist of the American armed services, the navy had been given pride of place by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Now with no potentially threatening navy in existence, a new president, Harry S. Truman, who disliked the navy, endorsed the War Department's recommendation for centralization and reduction of the armed forces and ordered the process begun. Thus commenced the most bitter internal political struggle experienced by the U.S. government since the Civil War. On one side were the navy and Marine Corps and their congressional allies, and on the other the Truman White House, the army and the army air force, and their congressional allies. The army wanted the navy under the War Department and the marines integrated into the army. The air force wanted independence from the army and naval aviation put under the air force.
The battle for complete independence was lost by the Navy Department, which was moved under a new Defense Department. The air force gained independence from the army, but failed to obtain control of naval aviation, and the army failed to get the Marines. Largely through the leadership of Navy Secretary James V. Forrestal, the navy retained much autonomy and most of its roles and missions. To obtain the compromise, Forrestal was named the first Secretary of Defense. After Forrestal's suicide, he was succeeded by Louis Johnson, who set about reducing the navy with a vengeance. The triumphant 5,000‐ship fleet was retired wholesale, the 105 carriers were reduced to six, and the first supercarrier, the USS United States under construction at Newport News, was scrapped. That triggered the immediate resignation of Navy Secretary John Sullivan and the public protest in 1949 known as the “Revolt of the Admirals.” The lead role in the new nuclear strategy was taken from the navy and its carriers and given to the new air force and its B‐36 bomber.
The Korean War reversed the decline of the navy. Its reactivated carriers provided the bulk of allied air power after all land bases were captured or destroyed in the initial Communist attack. The dramatically successful amphibious flanking attack at Inchon renewed the important navy‐marine mission of “amphibious assault.”
Naval planning and procurement were centered for the next twenty years on the mission of projecting power ashore. Supercarriers were built and new aircraft procured to strike deep into the Soviet heartland from the sea around its periphery. The surge of the Cold War and adoption of the “containment strategy” launched the navy into a new (and classic) naval mission of “presence.”
By the mid‐1950s battleships and carriers were being kept permanently on station in the Mediterranean and were being deployed to trouble spots around the world. A small naval force was now kept permanently in the Persian Gulf in recognition of the new strategic value of oil in a region of volatile politics. Between 1946 and 1996, the navy was deployed in crises short of war 270 times. Crisis deterrence and crisis management have proved to be the most consistent and enduring naval mission throughout the last fifty years.
In pursuit of containment the direct U.S. combat involvement in the Vietnam War in 1964 began an intense decade of naval combat using virtually every dimension of naval warfare. SEAL team commandos and riverine gunboats engaged in bloody counter‐insurgent operations; destroyers, cruisers, and for a short time the battleship USS New Jersey provided massive naval gunfire supporting land forces; patrol aircraft and surface ships tried to prevent supply of the Communists by sea.
The overwhelming naval task, however, was the use of carrier aircraft to provide air support to land operations in South Vietnam, interdict supply routes to the south, and engage in strategic bombing in North Vietnam. The air war had an enormous impact on the naval service. All other naval missions were subordinated worldwide. Because the U.S. government wished to avoid “wartime” budgets, the navy consumed its capital, forgoing necessary maintenance of ships and equipment, much research and development, and quality‐of‐life expenditures. When combat operations ended in 1973, the navy was in very poor condition. Morale was corrosive, with mutinies breaking out on three capital ships, and the officer corps cynical about the constraints under which they had fought. Ships and aircraft were in disastrous condition after deferred repairs.
Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) Elmo Zumwalt and his successor James Holloway carried out a program of dramatic reforms to rebuild the navy for the post–Vietnam War era. Planning focus was shifted away from projecting power ashore to dealing with the enormous new Soviet blue water fleet that had taken shape during the 1960s under the forceful Soviet Adm. Sergei Gorschkov, who was intent on achieving maritime superiority over the United States and NATO. The post–Vietnam, post‐Watergate defense cuts made rebuilding the U.S. Navy a difficult challenge. Zumwalt decided to retire some 500 ships to save the huge deferred cost of maintaining them, and directed funding instead to new ships and weapons to regain sea‐control credibility. Zumwalt later expressed the considered judgment that had war with the Soviets broken out during this period, the United States would have been defeated at sea. The arrival of the administration of President Jimmy Carter further slowed the renewal effort, with adoption of a security policy, PRM 10, that relegated the navy to a secondary role.
Modernization was cut back, pay frozen, and in 1979 the president vetoed the defense bill because Congress had authorized a new nuclear aircraft carrier. There was very nearly a repeat of the “Revolt of the Admirals,” when the CNO, Adm. James Holloway, refused to testify that the navy could continue to do its mission.
President Ronald Reagan had campaigned on a promise to build a “600‐ship navy,” to restore “maritime supremacy.” Immediately after his inauguration naval shipbuilding and aircraft procurement were nearly doubled, pay was substantially increased, and weapons modernization was intensified. Navy Secretary John Lehman and CNO James Watkins led the development of an assertive new forward naval strategy to put the Soviet navy on the defensive and convince the Soviets they would lose a naval war decisively. Massive annual naval exercises were held annually in sea areas close to the Soviet Union. By 1987 the U.S. Navy had ordered more than 200 new combatants including 5 nuclear carriers and had 592 ships in commission, including 4 recommissioned battleships. During this period the navy was engaged in sustained operations in the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean, Lebanon, and Grenada. Three confrontations off Libya including the shooting down of four Libyan aircraft, and air strikes against Tripoli and Benghazi and the dramatic air intercept of the “Achille Lauro” terrorists. The culmination of this naval renaissance was reached with the unexpected collapse of Soviet communism, and the disintegration of the 1700‐ship Soviet fleet.
The aftermath of the Cold War victory once again brought difficult times for the navy. The disruptions of integrating women into combat roles, sharply reduced budgets, and leadership turmoil (from 1987 to 1995, five new secretaries of the navy were named and fourteen admirals were fired) made the navy a whipping boy for the media and Congress. Despite the political trauma, the navy played a vital role in shielding Saudi Arabia after Iraq invaded Kuwait, transporting the massive Desert Shield buildup and then conducting surface, submarine, and air operations during Desert Storm in the Persian Gulf War.
A new post–Cold War strategy was also developed that focused planning once again on projecting power ashore. The innovations were applied in peacekeeping operations in Somalia in 1993, Haiti in 1994, Bosnia in 1995, and Yugoslavia in 1999.
[See also Korean War, U.S. Naval Operations in the; Vietnam War, U.S. Naval Operations in.]
Bibliography
- Elmo Zumwalt, On Watch, 1976.
- Norman Polmar and Thomas Allen, Rickover, 1981.
- Edward J. Marolda and G. Wesley Pryce III, A Short History of the U.S. Navy and the Southeast Asia Conflict, 1984.
- John F. Lehman, Jr., Command of the Seas, 1988.
- Robert W. Love, Jr., History of the U.S. Navy, Vol.
II , 1942–1991, 1992
