The Navy as a Fighting Machine

by Bradley A. Fiske

If the enemy came along with no scouts ahead, and if we happened to have some scouts located along his line of advance, these scouts faster than his ships, and so heavily armed as not to fear to venture near, our scouts might proceed along the flank of the enemy in daylight, pass along his rear, go entirely around him, and then report to our commander-in-chief by wireless telegraph exactly what craft of all kinds comprised the force, what formation they were in, the direction in which they were steaming, and the speed. Such information would be highly appreciated by our commander-in-chief, as it would enable him to decide what he had better do. If, for instance, the scouts reported that the enemy fleet were steaming at a speed of 10 knots an hour, and that the train was proceeding behind the fighting fleet without any guards of any kind around them, our commander-in-chief might decide to keep just out of sight until after dark, and then rush in with all his force of heavy ships and torpedo craft, and destroy the train entirely.

But suppose the enemy fleet should advance with a "screen" consisting of a line 10 miles long of, say, 50 destroyers, 50 miles ahead of the main body; followed by a line of, say, 10 battle cruisers, 25 miles behind the destroyers; and with destroyers and battle cruisers on each flank—say, 20 miles distant from the main body. How could our scouts find out anything whatever about the size, composition, and formation of the enemy—even of his speed and direction of advance? The purpose of the "screen" is to prevent our ascertaining these things; and each individual part of the screen will do its best to carry out that purpose. All the vessels of the screen and of the main body will be equipped with wireless-telegraph apparatus and a secret code, by means of which instant communication will be continuously held, the purport of which cannot be understood by our ships. Any endeavor of any of our scouts to "penetrate the screen" will be instantly met by the screen itself, out of sight of the enemy's main body; and the screen cannot be penetrated in the daytime, unless we can defeat those members of the screen that try to hold us off. Now, inasmuch as all the considerable naval Powers of Europe have many battle cruisers, and we have no battle cruisers whatever, and no scouts of any kind, except three inefficient ones (the Birmingham, Chester, and Salem) the degree of success that we should have penetrating the screen in the daytime can be estimated by any lawyer, merchant, or schoolboy.

The Laws of successful scouting and of the use of "search curves" have been worked out mathematically, and they are used to find an enemy of which one has certain information; but they are also used by the enemy to avoid being found, and they aid the enemy that is sought almost as much as they aid the seeker. And the sought has the advantage that the use of force, if force can be employed, breaks up the application of the mathematics of the seeker.

It is true that two main bodies of two fleets may stumble against each other in the night-time, or in a fog or heavy mist. To prevent this possible occurrence, or to prevent a night attack by destroyers, no sure means has yet been found except examination before dark of a very large area around the fleet that is sought; but the area is too great for a search rigid enough to give complete security, and will probably be so until swift aircraft can scout over long distances at sea. Accepting for the minute the convention that the main body of each side goes at the cruising speed of 10 knots, and that darkness lasts 12 hours, each side will go 120 miles in darkness; and if the two main bodies happen to be going directly toward each other they will approach 240 miles in the darkness of one night. Therefore, a coming fleet, in order to feel entirely safe, would in daylight have to inspect by its scouts a circle of 120 miles radius. To insure safety against destroyer attack, the area would have to be much greater on account of the greater speed of destroyers.

Unless our defending fleet knew with reasonable sureness, however, the location, speed, and direction of motion of the coming fleet, so that it could make its dispositions for attack, it would hardly desire to meet the enemy at night, unless it were confident that it would meet the train and not the main fleet or the destroyers. Night attacks, both on sea and land, are desirable, if the attacker can inflict surprise on the attacked, and not be surprised himself. In the darkness a flotilla of destroyers may make an attack on the various vulnerable colliers and supply vessels of a fleet, or even on the main body, and achieve a marked success, because that is the rôle they are trained to play. But the tremendous power and accuracy of battleships cannot be utilized or made available in darkness; and therefore a commander-in-chief, anxious to defeat by superior skill a coming fleet larger than his own, would hardly throw away all chance of using skill by risking his main body in a night encounter. Every operation planned by strategy is supposed to result from the "decision" which follows the estimate of the situation; even if in some simple or urgent cases, the decision is not laboriously worked out, but is almost unconscious and even automatic. Now, it is hardly conceivable that any estimate of the situation would be followed by a decision to go ahead and trust to luck, except in very desperate circumstances. In such circumstances, when hope is almost gone, a desperate blow, even in the dark, may save a situation—as a lucky hand at cards may redeem a gambler's fortune at even the last moment. But strategy is opposed to taking desperate measures; and pugilists and even gamblers recognize the fact that when a man becomes "desperate," his judgment is bad, and his chances of success are almost zero.

While it is possible, therefore, that the main bodies of hostile fleets may come together in the night, we may assume that it will not be as part of any planned operations, and therefore not within the scope of this discussion; and that any combat which may result will be one in which strategy will play no part, and in which even tactics will yield first place to chance.

But while our defending fleet will have to base most of its decisions on guesses, the coming fleet, on the other hand, having accepted the strategical disadvantage of leaving its base far in rear, will advance with all the advantage of the offensive, especially in knowing where it intends to go and what it desires to do. Coming over on a definite mission it will have been able to know what preparations to make; and as the naval Powers of Europe understand the need of co-ordination between policy and strategy, the fleet will doubtless have had time to make those preparations; it will not have started, in fact, and war will not have been declared, until all those preparations have been made.

We may assume that the coming fleet will come across with all possible precautions for protecting itself against detection by the defender's scouts, and therefore against an unexpected attack, by night or by day. It cannot receive an unexpected attack unless surprised; and how can it be surprised, if it has more scouts, faster scouts, and more powerfully armed scouts than the defending fleet has?

The possession of the more powerful scouts, however, will be valuable to the enemy, not only for forming a screen as a protection against enemy scouts, but also for scouting and thereby getting information for itself. A numerous squadron of scouts of different kinds, sent out ahead and on each flank would see any of our scouts that saw them; and the scouts that were the more powerful would force the weaker scouts back to the arms of their own main body, toward which the more powerful scouts would, of course, advance. The weaker scouts, therefore, would have no value whatever as a screen, save in retarding the advance of the stronger scouts, and in delaying their getting information.