Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945 James R

Naval War College Review Volume 55 Article 21 Number 1 Winter 2002 Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945 James R. FitzSimonds Follow this and additional works at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review Recommended Citation FitzSimonds, James R. (2002) "Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945," Naval War College Review: Vol. 55 : No. 1 , Article 21. Available at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol55/iss1/21 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Naval War College Review by an authorized editor of U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FitzSimonds: Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945 BOOK REVIEWS 155 failure of the Wehrmacht to prepare lo- campaigns. Although his points are oth- gistics support suited to the resulting erwise well made, on this issue he seems depth of the theater. to overreach a bit. If the book has a fault, it lies in the nu- In summary, Jonathan House has pro- merous maps and organizational charts duced a useful and readable text for any- that accompany the text. Though one who wants a better understanding of House’s prose is clear and straightfor- how modern armies fight. ward, the maps do not help the layman BARNEY RUBEL really grasp the dynamics of the battles. Naval War College Similarly, although House thoughtfully includes a key to the numerous symbols that soldiers use to depict units on maps and tables of organization, he leaves out a number of the more esoteric ones that McBride, William M. Technological Change and the inhabit the book. This is a minor irri- United States Navy, 1865–1945. Baltimore, Md.: tant—in general the book is well sup- Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2000. 352pp. $45 ported by a glossary of technical terms This is not a technological history of the and acronyms, liberal annotations, and U.S. Navy per se but rather an explora- an extensive bibliography—but it should tion of how the dominant culture of the be fixed in the next edition if the book is Navy’s leadership drove specific techno- to be considered a true introductory text. logical choices in the transition from the House has a clear thesis that permeates sailing ship of the line to the battle- his analysis: combined-arms structure ship and then to the aircraft carrier. (comprising tanks, artillery, infantry, heli- McBride’s thesis centers on two points: copters, engineers, etc.) should be inte- that the organization and culture of the grated at the lowest practicable level and U.S. Navy have traditionally been defined balanced to provide the most flexibility by its capital ships; and that new technol- to the commander. (In practice, this ogies challenging the relevance of the seems to occur only at the division or current capital ship are generally resisted sometimes the brigade level.) The com- by senior leaders, who seek both to main- mander can then select various types of tain control over change and to inhibit units to form combined-arms task forces any developments that suggest a transfer that can address the type of operations of power to individuals with the skills, planned. House’s discussion of the long functions, and organizational relation- and painful history of armies’ struggles to ships of a new “technological paradigm.” achieve this balance and flexibility brings These themes are familiar to those who to mind the equally painful attempts at follow the academic literature on tech- jointness among services. nology and culture, but McBride is un- House inevitably addresses the issue of doubtedly correct in his contention that air support as a piece of the combined- there is no widespread understanding of arms puzzle. He analytically describes the the specific impact of the dominant ser- objections airmen have to integrating vice culture on technology selection. A airpower into a combined-arms ground thorough appreciation of the full range organization, but in his conclusions he of forces that drive technological choices argues against separate, air-only would appear to be particularly Published by U.S. Naval War College Digital Commons, 2002 1 Naval War College Review, Vol. 55 [2002], No. 1, Art. 21 156 NAVAL WAR COLLEGE REVIEW important in the post–Cold War era, in nineteenth century (most notably the which the technological options are so French) to render the battleship obsolete. numerous and specific requirements for In contrast, McBride largely admits that the Navy are so uncertain. the adoption of the aircraft carrier was One of McBride’s major goals in this more a matter of fortuitous events than work is to refute the idea of technological of technological determinism. As he determinism and demonstrate instead points out, a narrow difference in timing the importance of culture in technologi- in the appearance of radar and the prox- cal innovation. He explores in some imity fuse might have doomed the air- depth the intense professional competi- craft carrier to irrelevance; it was not tion between the Navy’s line officers and until well into World War II that a car- engineers during the transition from sail rier could muster sufficient striking to steam, and between surface officers power to hold a combat-ready battleship and aviators in the transition from the at risk. Yet he condemns the Navy’s “bat- battleship to the carrier. He also offers tleship thought collective” as early as interesting historical insight into internal World War I for failing to move rapidly competition for control over the design to a sea-based air strike force—including details of capital ships during different early adoption of torpedo bombers eras, with an informative analysis of the (which actually took another twenty-five role of naval-industrial relations in the years to achieve technological maturity). early debate over the adoption of There have unquestionably been turbo-electric drive. Luddites in the Navy’s senior ranks Unfortunately, McBride’s argument throughout its history, but there is great against technological determinism tends cost and risk in abandoning major mili- to the opposite extreme, ascribing almost tary systems that have proven their every technological choice to single- worth. McBride is far too prone to con- minded efforts by the Navy’s leaders to demn the technological caution of past maintain the social and cultural status decision makers, who lacked the benefit quo. He characterizes the battleship “par- of our hindsight. adigm” at the end of the nineteenth cen- It is not clear whom the book was meant tury as a “pre-Copernican Ptolemaic to inform. McBride’s insistence on turgid cosmogony,” as if the battleship were not academic jargon like “intra-artifact com- only the wrong technological choice but bat” and “obdurate boundary artifact” to somehow a violation of natural law. He express fairly simple ideas suggests that castigates the U.S. Navy for rejecting a he did not intend this work for the reader cruiser-centric commerce-raiding strat- inside the military who might actually egy and attributes the choice to blind ad- make the best use of it. On the other herence to the “paramount status” of the hand, an academic audience unfamiliar battleship. Yet ultimately McBride does with naval operations might accept with- not refute the case that the transition out question McBride’s somewhat pre- from the sailing ship of the line to the posterous assertions that the “blip battleship was essentially a deterministic enhance” mode of the ULQ-6 was in- outcome, nor does he objectively evalu- tended as a suicide device, that an “old ate the failed efforts by others in the World War II–era destroyer” could sink a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, or that https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/nwc-review/vol55/iss1/21 2 FitzSimonds: Technological Change and the United States Navy, 1865–1945 BOOK REVIEWS 157 the cruise missile has long since replaced one-of-a-kind assignments, from being the aircraft as the primary means of in charge of President Calvin Coolidge’s strike from the sea. yacht to commanding a British subma- This volume does add some historical rine in World War II (though he was nei- substance to the important topic of mili- ther British nor a submarine officer). tary innovation, but the prospective Born in 1898 into an Army family, reader should be cautioned that it is nei- Wright adored his father, and clearly the ther a well balanced nor a comprehensive feeling was mutual. “Pop” took his son account of the impact of technological on hunting and fishing trips around the change on the U.S. Navy from the Civil world, and the young boy relished the ex- War through World War II. perience. When Wright was only thir- teen, then-Major William Wright, JAMES R. FITZSIMONDS Naval War College stationed in Luzon as commander of the Philippine Scouts, took the youngster, armed with his own shotgun, on a military expedition to Mindanao to suppress an uprising by the rebellious Moros, Key, David M., Jr., Admiral Jerauld Wright: Warrior Philippine Muslims. It was an adventure among Diplomats. Manhattan, Kans.: Sunflower Univ. from America’s brief colonial period, Press, 2001. 438pp. $22.95 more Kipling than Hemingway. For more than two-thirds of a century, a In 1914 Wright entered the Naval Acad- host of diplomats, military officers, and emy (at sixteen) because there was no ap- statesmen have been entertained in their pointment available at West Point. He wardrooms, clubs, and drawing rooms graduated in only three years, because of from London to Manila by Jerry Wright’s World War I.

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