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
This double end will not be so difficult of attainment as might at
first sight seem, for the reason that the solution of any problem
which represents a situation actually probable will automatically
provide all the minor situations necessary to drill the various
bodies; and the more inherently probable a situation is, the more
probable will be the situations in which the various flag-officers,
captains, quartermasters, engineers' forces, turret crews, etc.,
will find themselves.
Of course, the prime difficulty in devising realistic problems is
the fact that in war our whole fleet would be employed together
against an enemy fleet; and as the staff cannot supply an enemy
fleet, it must either imagine an enemy fleet, divert a small part
of our fleet to represent an enemy fleet, or else divide our fleet
into two approximately equal parts, one "red," and one "blue."
_First Scheme_.--The first scheme has its usefulness in working
out the actual handling of the fleet as a whole; and considering
the purposes of strategy only, is the most important, though, of
course, "contacts" with the enemy cannot be simulated. From the
standpoint of fleet tactical drill, and the standpoint of that part
of strategy which arranges for handling large tactical situations
with success, it is useful, since it provides for the tactical
handling of the entire fleet. This certainly is important; for if
the personnel are to be so trained that the actual fleet shall be
handled with maximum effectiveness in battle, training in handling
that actual fleet must frequently be had; the fleet is a machine,
and no machine is complete if any of its parts is lacking.
It may be objected that it is not necessary for the staff at the
department to devise such training, because drills of the entire
fleet can be devised and carried out by the commander-in-chief;
in fact that that is what he is for. This, of course, is partly
true; and it is not the idea of the author that the staff in the
department should interfere with any scheme of drills that the
commander-in-chief desires to devise and carry out; but it is his
idea that the staff should arrange problems to be worked out by
the fleet, in which the tactical handling of the fleet should be
subordinate to, and carried out for, a strategic purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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