The Navy as a Fighting Machine

by Bradley A. Fiske

Now, these war plans could not, of course, be of such a kind that they would foresee every contingency and prescribe the conduct to be followed, so that a commander in the field could turn to page 221 of volume 755, and get directions as to what he ought to do; nor could they furnish the chief of staff, Von Moltke, with printed recommendations which he should offer to the King. In other words, the war plans could be only plans and, like all plans for future action, could be only tentative, and capable of being modified by events as they should come to pass. They were only plans of preparation, not plans of operation.

Yet there were plans of preparation for operations; plans prepared in accordance with the principles of strategy, and based on information as to the enemy's resources, skill, point of view, and probable intentions. They formed the general guide for future operations.

Since 1870, the invention and practical development of the wireless telegraph, and especially its development for use over very great distances, has modified the relations of commanders on the spot to home headquarters, and especially of naval commanders to their navy departments. The wireless telegraph, under circumstances in which it operates successfully, annihilates distance so far as communication is concerned, though it does not annihilate distance so far as transportation is concerned. It improves the sending and receiving of news and instructions, both for the commander at sea and for his department at home; but it does it more effectively for the department than for the man at sea, because of the superior facilities for large and numerous apparatus that shore stations have, and their greater freedom from interruptions of all kinds.

This condition tends to place the strategical handling of all the naval machine, including the active fleet itself, more in the hands of the department or admiralty, and less in the hands of the commander-in-chief: and this tendency is confirmed by the superior means for discussion and reflection, and for trial by war games, that exist in admiralties, compared with those that exist in ships.

The general result is to limit the commander-in-chief more and more in strategical matters: to confine his work more and more to tactics.

Such a condition seems reasonable in many ways. The government decides on a policy, and tells the Navy Department to carry it out, employing the executive offices and bureaus to that end, under the guidance of strategy. Strategy devotes itself during peace to designing and preparing the naval machine, and in war to operating it, utilizing both in war and peace the bureaus and offices and the fleet itself. And in the same way as that in which the bureaus and offices perform the calculations and executive functions of logistics, for furnishing the necessary material of all kinds, the fleet performs those of tactics. From this point of view, strategy plans and guides all the acts of navies, delegating one part of the practical work needed to carry out those plans to logistics, and the other part to tactics.

Operating the naval machine in war means practically operating the active fleet in such a way as to cause victories to occur, to cause the fleet to enter each battle under as favorable conditions as practicable, and to operate the other activities of the navy in such a way that the fleet will be efficiently and promptly supplied with all its needs. Strategy employs tactics and logistics to bring these things to pass; but this does not mean that strategy stands apart and simply gives logistics and tactics tasks to do. The three agencies are too mutually dependent for any such procedure and require for their successful working, both individually and together, the most thorough mutual understanding and support.

Flanking, T-ing, etc.—It being a fact that no nation can put a force upon the sea that is concentrated at one point; it being a fact that every naval force must be spread over a considerable area and made up of various parts, and that the efficacy of the various parts in exerting force upon a definite enemy depends on the unity of action of the various parts, it results that the most effective way in which to attack any naval force is not to attack all the parts at once, thus enabling all to reply, but to attack the force in such a way that all the parts cannot reply. If we attack a ship for instance, that can fire 10 guns on a broadside and only 4 guns ahead, it is clear that we can do better by attacking from ahead than from either side. Similarly, if 10 ships are in a column, steaming one behind the other, each ship being able to fire 10 guns from either side and only 4 ahead, the 10 ships can fire 100 guns on either side and only 4 ahead; and therefore it would be better to attack the column from ahead (to "T" it), than to attack it from either side.

It is curious to note how widely this simple illustration can be made to apply to both strategy and tactics; how the effort of each is to dispose our force so toward the enemy's force that we can use our weapons more effectively than he can use his. An extreme illustration might be made by imagining 1,000 soldiers standing in line and unable to face except to the front; in which case it is clear that, no matter how perfectly they might be armed, or how quickly and accurately they could fire, one man standing on the flank, or behind them, could kill one soldier after the other, until all the 1,000 were killed, and be in no danger himself.

In case of attacking a ship or a column of ships from ahead, or of attacking a line of soldiers on the flank, the effectiveness of the method of attack lies in the fact that a number of the weapons that are present in the force attacked cannot be used in reply.