Book Description

Between 1919 and 1941, the U.S. Navy transformed itself from a powerful if unsophisticated force into the fleet that would win a two-ocean war, from a fleet in which the battleship dominated to one based on carrier strike groups. The great puzzle of U.S. naval history is how this was accomplished. Norman Friedman trenchantly argues that war gaming at the U.S. Naval War College made an enormous, and perhaps decisive, contribution. For much of the inter-war period, the Naval War College was the Navy's primary think tank. War gaming was the means the college used to test alternative strategies, tactics, evolving naval aviation, and warship types in a way that the Navy's full-scale exercises could not. The think tank perspective taken by this book is a new way of looking at the inter-war Naval War College and the war games that formed the core of its curriculum. Although the influence of both the Naval War College's gaming and of the college itself declined after 1933, most of the key decisions shaping the wartime U.S. Navy had already been taken. In this historical book, you will find the two most important ones were on the role of naval aviation and the form the U.S. war plan against Japan ultimately assumed. As shown here, U.S. naval commanders successfully applied the lessons learned from war gaming to victorious operations in World War II.This compilation includes a reproduction of the 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community.1. Naval Transformation * Exercises: Full-Scale Fleet Problems and Games at Newport * Naval Aviation as a Driver Toward Transformation * The Inter-War Navy and Its World * The Strategic Problem * Naval Arms Control * Ships * 2. The Naval War College and Gaming * 3. War Gaming and War Planning * The "Applicatory System" * War Gaming * War Gaming at the Inter-War War College * Simulation * Some Limits of Gamed Reality * Using War Gaming * War Gaming and War Planning * 4. War Gaming and Carrier Aviation * Guessing What Aircraft Could Do * Gaming and Early Carriers * Reeves and Operating Practices * Putting It Together-the Yorktown Class * Aftermath * 5. The War College and Cruisers * Evaluating Alternatives * Cruisers at War: Three Years of Red-Blue Warfare * Postscript: The Fate of the Flight-Deck Cruiser * 6. Downfall * 7. Conclusion: Games Versus Reality in the Pacific * Appendixes * A: Playing the Games * B: War Game Rules-Aircraft * The Airplanes * Carrier Air Operation * Bombing * Bombs Versus Carriers * Torpedo Bombing * Air-to-Air Combat * Anti-Aircraft Firepower * Aircraft Navigation and Reliability * NotesTo win the Pacific War, the Navy had to transform itself technically, tactically, and strategically. It had to create a fleet capable of the unprecedented feat of fighting and winning far from home, without existing bases, in the face of an enemy with numerous bases fighting in his own waters. Much of the credit for the transformation should go to the war gaming conducted at the Naval War College. Conversely, as we face further demands for transformation, the inter-war experience at the War College offers valuable guidance as to what works, and why, and how. The fruits of this transformation are so commonplace now that we may easily forget how radical it was. The Navy emerged from WWI as a battleship fleet similar to other navies. The British had demonstrated that naval aircraft could be a vital auxiliary to the battleships, but anything more was a distant prospect. The war had demonstrated that an amphibious operation could be mounted in the face of resistance, but not that it would be particularly effective. In 1943-45, carriers were the accepted core of the U.S. fleet, and amphibious operations against enemy shore defenses were routinely conducted. Indeed, without them it would have been impossible to fight WWII.