The Navy as a Fighting MachineFiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
History
The Navy as a Fighting Machine
Fiske, Bradley A. (Bradley Allen)
Naval art and science; Naval strategy; Navies; Sea-power; United States. Navy -- Management
To do this successfully, it must be realized, of course, that the
greatest single factor in exciting interest is the personal factor,
since comparatively few men can get much interested in a matter
that is impersonal; a boy is more interested in watching a baseball
game in which he knows some of the players than in watching a game
between teams neither of which he has ever seen; and the men in
any ship are more interested in the competition between their ship
and some other than between any other two; feeling that _esprit de
corps_ by reason of which every individual in every organization
personifies the organization as a living thing of which he himself
is part.
_Strategic Problems_.--The training of the fleet, then, can best be
done under the direction of a trained staff, that staff generously
employing all the resources of competition, chance, and danger. The
obvious way to do this is to give out to the fleet for solution a
continual succession of strategic problems, which the entire fleet
will be engaged in solving, and which will be the starting-point
for all the drills of the fleet and in the fleet. (Some officers
prefer the word "maneuver" to "problem.")
The arranging of a continual series of war problems, or maneuvers
to be worked out in the fleet by "games," will call for an amount
of strategical skill second only to the skill needed for operations
in war, will deal with similar factors and be founded on similar
principles.
Naturally, the war problems, before being sent to the fleet for
solving, would be solved first by the staff, using strategical
and tactical games, and other appropriate means; and inasmuch as
the scheme of education and training is for the benefit of the
staff itself, as well as for the benefit of the fleet, certain
members of the staff would go out with the fleet to note in what
ways, each problem sent down was defective, in what ways good--and
in what ways it could be modified with benefit. The successive
situations and solutions, made first by the staff and subsequently
by the fleet, can then be photographed and made part of the history
of war problems, for the library of the staff.
In laying out the war problems, the staff will be guided naturally
by the ends in view--first to work out solutions of strategic,
logistic, and tactical situations in future wars, and second to
give opportunity to the various divisions, ships, turret crews,
engineers' forces, etc., for drills that will train them to meet
probable contingencies in future wars.
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