Army & Navy And Civilian Defense - NAVY: End of an Argument

All over the U.S. armchair strategists still pound the table: the battleship is through, air power rules the seas.

But last week the evidence piled up that the armchair strategists, not the Navy, were behind the times—for the Navy has turned the corner while its critics still call for the corner to be turned. A profound reorganization of the Navy high command is under way—and the men coming up are airmen. Navy thinking recognizes clearly that sea power is in transition again, a transition as great and as clearly marked as that of a century ago, when steam revolutionized blue-water warfare. Pearl Harbor ended an epoch in naval history—an end to which the sinking of H.M.S. Prince of Wales and Repulse were only extra footnotes. The Navy now has put its full wartime emphasis on airplane carriers and on airborne attack. Blue-Water Men. The works of Alfred Thayer Mahan, for half a century, were the Navy's Bible.

Tactician Mahan had taught that a nation with a good navy was a nation able to protect its trade routes. A nation with protected trade routes was a prosperous nation, able to support a good navy. The one thesis upheld the other in a solid arch. But now the flat-topped, hound-fast carrier had suddenly become sea power's capital ship. Unregenerate airmen, in the hearing of brooding seadogs, said the carrier outmoded the battleship. Air-power partisans supported them.

Senators galore said the usefulness of battleships had be come "limited," advocated building only carriers.