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The US Naval War College—The Navy’s “Home of Thought” by Evan Wilson he origins of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, can actually Tbe found in Charleston, South Caro- lina, during the Civil War. The war had begun in Charleston, and the city soon became one of the most active blockade- running ports on the Atlantic seaboard. For both symbolic and practical reasons, it became a priority target for Union naval forces. For three years, the Navy besieged and blockaded the city, involving more than sixty warships and 40,000 men. Yet in January 1865, Charleston still stood defiant, having resisted the Navy’s best The US Naval War College was established in 1884 on Coasters efforts. Why had the Navy failed? William Harbor Island, a 92-acre site in Newport, Rhode Island. T. Sherman thought he knew, and he told anyone who would listen. While occupying Luce later recalled that upon hearing great questions of war and peace. He was Savannah after his famous “March to the Sherman’s explanation of the military situ- one of the founding fathers of what today Sea,” Sherman met with the young com- ation, “the scales seemed to fall from my we call Professional Military Education, mander of USS Pontiac, Stephen B. Luce, eyes. … It dawned upon me that there were often abbreviated PME. What Luce want- to coordinate the coming operations in certain fundamental principles underlying ed was a place for mid-career officers to South Carolina. Sherman told Luce that military operations, which it were well to uncover the principles of war and strategy; the Navy had been going about attacking look into; principles of general application most of all, he wanted a place where officers Charleston all wrong. By cutting Charles- whether the operations were conducted on had an opportunity to think. ton off from the interior, he could cause it land or sea.”2 The search for these principles Luce’s innovative institution confused to fall into Union hands “like a ripe pear,” led Luce to establish the Naval War College many of his colleagues, and the college without a battle.1 To the amazement of in 1884. In the intervening two decades, encountered resistance in its early years. Luce, that was precisely what happened, Luce had traveled around the world, where Many naval officers preferred practical bringing an anticlimactic end to the longest he learned about other efforts to educate training to classroom study. The turn of siege in American military history. officers and professionalize the study of the twentieth century was an era of rapid war. Through correspondence with like- technological change at sea, as submarines, minded officers, he learned about the Prus- mines, torpedoes, aircraft, and radios were sian staff system and the first attempts to all introduced or substantially developed. study naval history systematically in Lon- Some officers argued that they should learn don. Sherman had provided the inspiration, how to handle these new technologies but the final product was Luce’s own. The rather than read about battles in the age of Naval War College was to be, Luce said, sail. Another avenue of attack on the college “a place of original research on all questions came from officials in Washington, who relating to war and to statesmanship con- disliked having an important hub of naval nected with war, or the prevention of war.”3 thinking and strategy so far away. Notably, the Naval War College was The Naval War College survived, not designed to train young naval officers though, in large part because of one of in the basics of their profession—that was Luce’s first appointments to the college, the job of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan, who took and navies had been educating officer train- full advantage of the opportunity to think ees like that for centuries. Before Luce, there and to write. He compiled the lectures he did not exist a plan for educating mid- had written for the students at the college level officers for the challenges of high com- into a book entitled The Influence of Sea mand as admirals. Luce’s idea was to broad- Power Upon History, 1660–1783. Published all images for this article courtesy of the us navy and the us naval war college en their minds so that they could tackle the in 1890, it became an immediate best- seller and one of the most influential works Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce of naval history ever written. It also vali- 2 Ibid. dated Luce’s vision for the Naval War Col- 1 Stephen B. Luce, “Naval Administration III,” 3 Stephen B. Luce, The Writings of Stephen B. Luce, United States Naval Institute Proceedings (Decem- ed. John D. Hayes and John B. Hattendorf (New- lege as a place of serious scholarship of use ber 1903), 820. port: Naval War College Press, 1975), 39–40. to the Navy. 34 SEA HISTORY 170, SPRING 2020 Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan War gaming has been an important compo- nent of the Naval War College curriculum Luce and Mahan demonstrated that since 1887. Its value in maritime leadership the Naval War College was viable, but it development remains strong; the Naval War was William S. Sims who led the college College conducts more than 50 gaming events into its most famous era. He became the per year, ranging in variety from complex, college’s president in February 1917, but he multi-sided computer-assisted games to simple, was soon dispatched to Europe to command single-sided seminar games. US naval forces operating there. After the war, he resumed his presidency and trans- that of a think tank: offering expert advice formed the college into a research labora- on matters of real-world concern. As Japan tory with a practical focus. Sims’s charisma grew ever more menacing in the Pacific, and fame helped encourage officers to -at naval planners began to consider how to tend courses in Newport, with the result fight a war thousands of miles from major that most of the Navy’s admirals at the bases. Students and faculty at the college outbreak of the Second World War were worked to identify the challenges and think graduates of the college. through the possibilities. Faculty members Newport was the home of the Navy’s were influential in developing the modern North Atlantic Squadron, and Sims saw practice of war gaming. Chester Nimitz, an opportunity to connect the college’s who attended the college in 1922–23, curriculum more directly to the needs of later said that because of the work he and the fleet. Today, we would call Sims’s vision Admiral William S. Sims his peers had done in Newport, “nothing that happened during the [Pacific] war was a surprise—absolutely nothing except the kamikaze tactics.”4 While Nimitz was play- ing to his audience—he said that in an address to the Naval War College in 1960—it nevertheless indicates that the college seemed to have found its raison d’être during the interwar years. 4 FADM Chester W. Nimitz, USN (Ret.), Address to the Naval War College, October 10, 1960, RG The Naval Training Station and Naval War College, 1923. 15, Box 30, Naval War College Archives. SEA HISTORY 170, SPRING 2020 35 As it matured, the college also settled the US Army War College in Carlisle, into a regular rhythm. Officers studied Pennsylvania, and the Air War College in naval tactics, participated in war games, Montgomery, Alabama. and listened to lectures from distinguished At the Naval War College today, there outside speakers. They researched in-depth are three core departments: Strategy and studies of classic naval battles, like Trafalgar Policy, Joint Military Operations, and Na- and Jutland, and produced theses on tactics, tional Security Affairs. The academic year logistics, and strategy. Faculty and staff is divided into trimesters; students move worked on broader issues of interest to the from one department to the next to com- Navy, leading to, for example, the publica- plete their JPME Phase I or Phase II cer- tion of the short book Sound Military De- tificates. Phase I students tend to be officers cision. A planning manual, it helped stu- with about ten years’ experience, while dents prepare for problems they were Phase II students usually are coming off of likely to encounter when they assumed their first command with fifteen to twenty command, and it was widely distributed years of experience. As a result of Goldwa- and read throughout the Navy during and ter-Nichols, students also increasingly come after the Second World War. from services other than the Navy. Only Raymond Spruance, the four-star ad- about a third of all students at the Naval miral best-known for his role in the Battle War College are US naval officers; there of Midway, served as the college’s president Admiral Stansfield Turner are substantial delegations of Air Force, in the postwar years, giving some indication College into a more academically rigorous Army, Marine, and Coast Guard officers, of the importance the Navy placed on it. institution, culminating in the tenure of as well as civilians from the State Depart- Stansfield Turner from 1972 to 1974. Turn- ment, intelligence services, the Department er, who later became the director of the of Homeland Security, the Department of CIA under President Carter, made extensive Defense, and other branches of the federal revisions to the curriculum, many of which government. are still in place today. In the Strategy and These American students, numbering History Department (now re-named Strat- usually about 500 per year, are joined by egy and Policy), students examined case international students—a third major in- studies like the Peloponnesian War that novation of the Cold War years.

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