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
Owing to the enormous mechanical power made available in ships
by the floating properties of water, machinery is more used by
navies than by armies; but this does not mean that machinery can
take the place of men more successfully in navies than in armies,
except in the sense that navies can use more mechanical power.
The abundant use of machines and instruments in navies does not
mean that machinery and instruments can take the place of trained
intelligence--but exactly the reverse. Under the guidance of trained
intelligence, a machine or instrument can perform wonders. But
it is not the machinery that does the wonders; it is the trained
intelligence that devised the instrument or machine, and the trained
intelligence that operates it. Let the trained intelligence err,
or sleep, and note the results that follow. The _Titanic_, a mass
of 40,000 tons, moving through the water at 20 knots an hour, a
marvel of the science and skill of man, crashes into an iceberg,
because the trained intelligence directing her errs--and is reduced
at once to an inert mass of iron and brass. The mighty fleet of
Russia meets the Japanese fleet in Tsushima Straits; and because
the trained intelligence that directed its movements seriously
erred, in an engagement decided in less than an hour, is stripped of
its power and glory, and transformed into a disorganized aggregation
of separate ships--some sunk, some sinking, some in flight. The
Japanese fleet, on the other hand, because it is directed with
an intelligence more highly trained than that which directs the
Russian fleet, and because, in consequence, the officers and enlisted
men perform their various duties not only in the actual battle,
but in preparation for it, with a skill greater than that used in
the Russian fleet, suffers but little damage in the fight--though
the advantage in number and size of ships is slightly with the
Russians. As a consequence of that battle, the war between Russia
and Japan was decided in favor of Japan, and terms of peace were
soon agreed upon. Russia lost practically all the ships that took
part in the battle, and several thousand of her officers and
sailors--and _she lost the whole object for which she went to war_.
The difference between the Russian and Japanese fleets that gave
the victory to the Japanese was a difference in trained intelligence
and in the relative degrees of preparedness which that difference
caused.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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