One Hundred Years of U.S. Navy Air Power (34 page)

To support the aviation expansion, new bases needed construction and older facilities upgraded. Funding for such public works projects came from the various appropriations. Illustrative of the cost is the estimate provided by Chief of BuAer, Rear Admiral John S. McCain, in May 1943 requesting approval for additional public works projects at naval air stations totaling $16,598,636. For the period from 1 September 1943 to 30 June 1944, the new chief, Rear Admiral D. C. Ramsey, proposed $93,834,500, a stunning figure by contemporary standards.
⁵¹
Increased pilot training followed aircraft acquisition, a dynamic also funded in the various appropriations. Illustrating this dynamic, then-Captain Arthur W. Radford reported the status of flight training as of 30 June 1942 showing 6,901students in the training pipeline, including a number of British officers.
⁵²
Fortunately for the Navy, Vinson and Congress accounted for the massive overhead cost of fielding and supporting a robust fleet and air expansion, without which the new force could not be sustained.

Naval expansion and, in particular, the growth of naval aviation, intensified after the Pearl Harbor attack of 7 December 1941; authorization and appropriation bills
became common throughout the first three years of the U.S. war effort. Representative Vinson remained the centerpiece of naval legislation until his eventual retirement in 1964. Nonetheless, the single most important legislative and ultimately far-sighted action for America's ability to win the maritime struggle with Japan and sustain the beleaguered British and Soviet allies was the Two-Ocean Navy Act of 1940.
⁵³
The Act provided the forces with which Admiral Nimitz executed the Central Pacific campaign to the Japanese home islands as envisioned in the Navy's War Plan Orange and supported the SOPAC/SOWPAC campaigns with overwhelming carrier-based air power. By the time of Japan's September 1945 surrender, sixteen of the seventeen Pacific Fleet carriers resulted from Vinson-sponsored legislation.
⁵⁴
And, it allowed the U.S. Navy to fight a two-ocean struggle against the German Kriegsmarine in the vital Atlantic Theater. Finally, the Two-Ocean legislation, when combined with the various other appropriation and authorization bills in the late 1930s and early 1940s, vaulted the United States Navy into the world's pre-eminent maritime force based on command of the sea through command of the air, a continuing dynamic guaranteed by the flourishing of naval aviation since 1940.

NOTES

    
1
.
  
Proceedings of the Special Board and Records of Evidence
(Eberle Board), United States National Archives (hereafter NA), Record Group (hereafter RG) 80. Rear Admiral Fullam observed over two hundred aircraft based at Rockwell Field near San Diego as they performed fly-bys for over three hours to celebrate the end of World War I.

    
2
.
  
Lord Chatfield, First Sea Lord, Inskip Inquiry, 13 July 1936, London: National Archives of the United Kingdom, CAB 16/151.

    
3
.
  
Admiral Sims made these comments in an address to the Naval War College class of 1921 at the college on 19 November 1921.

    
4
.
  
Clark G. Reynolds,
The Fast Carriers: The Forging of an Air Navy
(Huntington, NY: Robert E. Kreiger, 1978), p. 1; NA, General Records of the Department of the Navy, 1798–1947, Secretary of the Navy General Correspondence (hereafter SECNAV): 1940–42, RG 80, 370/19/27/17, Box 20, Morrow Board Report Summary dated 12 July 1944 and Resume of Report of Morrow Board, Vol. 3, dated 30 November 1925.

    
5
.
  
NA, Department of the Navy, Records of the General Board Transcripts of Hearings, 1917–1950, Vol. 2, 1919, RG 80, Box 4, Vol. i–iii.

    
6
.
  
Letter to SECNAV dated 23 June 1919, Bureau of Aeronautics, General Correspondence (hereafter BuAer), NA, RG 72, Entry #15.

    
7
.
  
Reynolds,
The Fast Carriers
, p. 15. The Morrow Board Report was printed in the USNI
Proceedings
52 (1926), pp. 196–225. In addition to the personnel requirements, the Board called for the acquisition of a thousand aircraft in the 1926–31 time frame.

    
8
.
  
SECNAV, RG 80, 370/19/27/17, Box 20, Morrow Board Report Summary dated 12 July 1944, and Resume of Report of Morrow Board dated 30 November 1925.

    
9
.
  
New York Times
(hereafter
NYT
), 3 December 1931, p. 12 and 5 December 1931, p. 2.

  
10
.
  
USS
Ranger
(CV-4), the first purpose-built carrier from the keel up proved inadequate for fleet operations due to size and stability limitations. However, follow-on designs using
the lessons pioneered aboard
Langley
and perfected by
Saratoga
and
Lexington
, came forward beginning with the
Yorktown
class.

  
11
.
  
Washington Post
(hereafter
TWP
), 9 January 1934, p. 9.

  
12
.
  
Congressional Record
, 72nd Congress, 2nd Session, in
Congressional Record
, 63rd Congress—88th Congress (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1914–1965) (hereafter
CR
), 22 February 1933, 4720–23.

  
13
.
  
Vinson's OPEDs in
NYT
, 23 January 1934, p. 2;
NYT
, 29 January 1934, p. 4; and
The Atlanta Constitution
, 28 January 1934, p. 7A.

  
14
.
  
CR
, 74th Congress, 1638.

  
15
.
  
Admiral Jonas Ingram, “15 Years of Naval Development,”
Scientific American
(November 1935), p. 234.

  
16
.
  
NYT
, 5 January 1938, p. 11;
TWP
, 26 January 1938, pp. 1, 7.

  
17
.
  
Many of these Naval Reserve aviators went on to form the core of experienced pilots upon which the huge personnel expansion of 1940 was based. But other capital ships were not overlooked in the 1935 legislation. For example, the
North Carolina
–class battleships
North Carolina
(BB-55) and
Washington
(BB-56), the first U.S. battleships built since World War II, resulted from the naval expansion legislation of 1935.

  
18
.
  
TWP
, 29 January 1938, pp. 1, 5;
NYT
, 29 January 1938, pp. 1, 4, 5.

  
19
.
  
Alfred Thayer Mahan,
The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783
, originally published in 1890 and based on Mahan's Naval War College lectures, profoundly altered naval strategic thinking in not only the United States, but in Europe and Asia as well. Previously non-naval states such as Imperial Germany, Japan, China, Austria-Hungary, and Italy raced to build larger and more capable capital ships in search of the decisive great battleship clash far out to sea.

  
20
.
  
USS
Massachusetts
(BB-59) and USS
Alabama
(BB-60). The original two BBs were USS
South Dakota
(BB-57) and USS
Indiana
(BB-58).

  
21
.
  
The early 1943 aircraft configuration of the
Essex
class consisted of four squadrons—36 fighters, 36 dive-bombers, and 10 torpedo bombers or 91 total aircraft with 9 planes stored and broken down in reserve. By the war's end, the typical air group complement stood at 36 Hellcat fighters, 36 Corsair fighter-bombers, 15 Helldiver dive-bombers, and 15 Avenger torpedo planes or 102 total aircraft.

  
22
.
  
Many of these new naval air facilities played prominent roles in World War II and beyond. Naval Air Station Pensacola is the basic training activity for naval aviation. Quonset Point became one of the original Naval Construction Battalion (SEABEE) training and headquarters sites and is now a Rhode Island Air National Guard facility. Naval Air Station Norfolk still supports Hampton Roads naval activities.

  
23
.
  
CR
, 76th Congress, 3rd session, 2731–33, 2750, 2752;
TWP
, 13 March 1940, pp. 5, 6.

  
24
.
  
For the pivotal role played by Rear Admiral Towers in the events of spring 1940 that resulted in the Two-Ocean legislation, see Clark G. Reynolds,
Admiral John H. Towers: The Struggle for Naval Air Supremacy
(Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1991), pp. 315–31.

  
25
.
  
TWP
, 19 May 1940, p. 1.

  
26
.
  
War Department, SECRET MEMORANDUM: Subject: National Strategic Decisions, WPD MBR dated 22 May 1940 (declassified 24 October 1973), NA, Records of the War Department Special and General Staffs, War Plans Division, General Correspondence, RG 165, 270/4175–77.

  
27
.
  
TWP
, 22 May 1940, p. 4. The 11 percent bill included funding authorization for 21 warships, 22 auxiliaries, and 1,011 aircraft.

  
28
.
  
CR
, 76th Congress, 3rd session, 2750.

  
29
.
  
The bill authorized the increase in air frames from 3,000 to 10,000, billets for 16,000 pilots and funding for the construction of twenty new naval air stations, both in the continental U.S. (CONUS) and at various outside of continental U.S. (OUTCONUS) locations, particularly in the Pacific.

  
30
.
  
The Atlanta Journal
, 18 June 1940, p. 1.

  
31
.
  
The Atlanta Constitution
, 11 July 1940, p. 1;
NYT
, 23 June 1940, p. 1, 14;
CR
, 76th Congress, 3rd session, 9064–65, 9078, 9570. The bill provided for 385,000-tonnage battleships, 200,000-tonnage carriers, 420,000-tonnage cruisers, 250,000-tonnage destroyers, 70,000-tonnage submarines. Within two hours of the signing of the bill, contracts began going out from the Navy Department.

  
32
.
  
MEMORANDUM from Captain E.G. Allen dated 20 July 1940, NA, SECNAV, RG 80, A1-3/A18 (340213-17), 11W3/25/32/2, Box 2.

  
33
.
  
Letter from Chief of Naval Operations to Secretary of the Navy dated 30 JUL 1940, NA, SECNAV, RG 80, 370/19/14/1-2, Box 20 (Declassified IAW NNDD813002 by NARA on 17 September 2009).

  
34
.
  
NA, SECNAV, Aircraft Carrier Awarded, RG 80/11W3/25/32/2, Box 2; CVA Contracts List, RG 80/11W3/25/32/2, Box 2;
NYT
, 2 July 1940.

  
35
.
  
NA, SECNAV, RG80, CV-12/L4-3 Aircraft Carrier, 11W3/26/6/1, Box 324. USS
Franklin
(CV-13), USS
Ticonderoga
(CV-14), USS
Randolph
(CV-15), USS
Lexington
(CV-16), USS
Bunker Hill
(CV-17), USS
Wasp
(CV-18), and USS
Hancock
(CV-19).

  
36
.
  
CR
, 76th Congress, 3rd session, Appendix, 5721–22.

  
37
.
  
Ibid., 6130ff.

  
38
.
  
SECRET MEMORANDUM from Admiral E. J. King, U.S. Navy to Chairman, General Board dated 30 July 1941, NA, General Board Subject File, 1900–1947, RG 80, GB 420–2, 1941–42, Box 63 (declassified 11 February 1972).

  
39
.
  
For example of a contract award for CV-16/17/18 (
Lexington, Bunker Hill, Wasp
), see NA, SECNAV, CV16/L4-3 Bethlehem Steel, RG 80, 11W3/26/6/1 Box 325.

  
40
.
  
CR
, 76th Congress, 3rd Session; Letter from Chief of the Bureau of Ships to Judge Advocate General of the Navy dated 24 October 1940, para. 2, NA, SECNAV, CV12/L4-3 Aircraft Carrier, 11W3/26/6/1, Box 324, For example, the Vinson-Trammell Act required that at least 10 percent of all naval aircraft and engines be manufactured at the Naval Aircraft Factory in Philadelphia and restricted the profit margin of shipbuilders and aircraft manufacturers to no more than 10 percent.

  
41
.
  
NA, SECNAV, CV16/L4-3 Bethlehem Steel, RG 80, 11W3/26/6/1 Box 325.

  
42
.
  
Reynolds,
Towers
, p. 330.

  
43
.
  
Letter from Lewis Compton, Acting SECNAV to Bethlehem Steed dated 9 September 1940 and Letter from Lewis Compton, Acting SECNAV to Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, NA, SECNAV, CV16/L4-3 Bethlehem Steel, RG 80, 11W3/26/6/1, Box 325.