The “revolt of the admirals”
The separation of the Army Air Force from the Army and the establishment of an American Department of Defense structure shortly after WW II set up a series of serious conflicts that took decades to resolve and probably caused unnecessary casualties, especially in the Korean War. The conflict triggered a “Revolt of the Admirals”, as Time magazine1 and Jeffrey Barlow2 called it. It was of high interest during the Iraq Wars because, as Norman Denny conjectured in a 2004 USNI Proceedings article3, all the conditions were there for a “Revolt of the Generals.”
From the start, it is emphasised that this “revolt” never amounted to much more than a number of senior USN officers expressing views contrary to those of the mainly politically-appointed civilian leaders of a new bureaucracy, the “Department of Defence”. At no stage did it ever look like escalating into a “colonel’s revolt” involving firearms and bloodshed, as seen in many other countries.
The United States fought WW II and all its previous wars with just a Department of the Navy and a Department of the Army. Each service and the Marines had their own aviation branch. Following the lead of the Royal Air Force and similar services in other countries, the Army Air Force argued along with Douhet, Trenchard and Billy Mitchell, that airpower alone would determine the outcome of future wars and a professional Air Force should be a separate service independent of any Army or Navy control.4 The advent of the atomic bomb and the promise of their new Convair B-36 Peacemaker bomber added weight to the argument.
The six-engined (plus four jets by the H Model) B-36 Peacemaker bomber program competed directly for funds with the USN’s new carrier-building and aircraft replacement programs.
The Navy, particularly, argued against any interference with their naval aviation. They strongly challenged virtually everything, from the Air Force’s underlying “Victory through Air Power” philosophy to the ability of the new and expensive B-36 to meet its highly touted specifications.
Early in 1948 President Truman attempted to resolve interservice bickering by gathering his Chiefs of Staff at Key West naval base. That conference failed, as did another in Newport, Rhode Island, later that year. Major resolutions simply lost their meanings through multiple amendments.
James Forrestal, ex-Secretary of the Navy, was the first Secretary of Defence but he resigned and committed suicide two months later. His successor on 28 March 1949 was the politically-motivated and strongly pro-USAF Louis Johnson. Less than a month later, without consulting either the Secretary of the Navy or the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO), Johnson cancelled the building of the USS United States. This was a major blow to USN morale. Its 100-strong carrier force had been literally decimated since WW II, but the radical design of the new USS United States pointed the way ahead in the new nuclear age because it was designed to allow the USN to launch and recover aircraft armed with heavy nuclear bomb loads from its flight deck. The embryonic USAF saw this as a threat to their major role.
The Secretaries and Chiefs of Staffs
The Secretaries (left) in 1949: W. Stuart Symington (left, Air), Kenneth C. Royal (Army) Louis A. Johnson (Defence) and John L. Sullivan (Navy). At right are the first three Chiefs of Staff GENL Hoyt S. Vandenberg (left, Air), ADML Louis E. Denfield (Navy) and GENL Omar N. Bradley (Army).
Secretary of the Navy John Sullivan resigned in protest and Johnson replaced him with a fellow political appointee, Francis Matthews, who in stark contrast to Sullivan, had little government experience and even less knowledge of the USN. He admitted he “had never commanded anything bigger than a rowboat”.5
In a futile attempt to stifle growing criticism, Defence Secretary Johnson issued Consolidated Directive Number 1, that required all serving and retired personnel to route all policy comment, such as statements on strategy and the unification of the defence forces, through his office for review. When naval officers had the audacity to openly question Johnson’s decisions on weapons, unification and strategy, including the cancellation of the flush deck carrier, and to ignore his gag order, Johnson took that as a sign of “unparalleled insubordination”.6
The revolutionary USS United States, with her flush deck and large hull was seen as the way to the future by many in naval aviation.
The Navy attempted unsuccessfully to gather hard data to resolve issues. For instance, a Navy-proposed F2H-1 Banshee jet fighter versus a USAF B-36 bomber intercept exercise was vetoed on the specious grounds that there were too many variables to gain useful information. The cancellation, made by Johnson but announced by the CNO, ADML Denfeld, had a perceived effect of putting the ex-submariner CNO’s loyalties in doubt in the eyes of his aviation officers.
The “Revolt”
A very gentlemanly and subdued “Revolt of the Admirals” ensued, with the most overt sign being many senior USN officers disagreeing with some of their superiors and civilian counterparts.8 Then followed anonymous accusations of high level corruption in the B-36 acquisition program, some targeting the Secretaries of Defence and the Air Force personally.
Competition for funds for the B-36 led to the cancellation of the USS United States.
The keel of the USS United States before cancellation.
During a subsequent House Armed Services Committee hearing, Navy Secretary Matthews said Navy morale was good. This generated “loud and sardonic laughter” from naval aviators in the audience.9
Hammond goes on to describe one part of these hearings:
Matthews directly charged VADM Bogan and CAPT Crommelin with “faithlessness” and “insubordination” for their opposition to unification … He did not attempt to hide his disdain. The surprise witness for the Navy was ADML Denfeld. It was expected that the CNO would ally himself with the JCS (Joint Chiefs of Staff), of which he was a member, but when he took the stand, he sided with his fellow naval officers. He accused the JCS of making uninformed and arbitrary decisions. Everyone present was surprised at Denfeld’s testimony. Naval aviation supporters erupted in applause, Secretary Matthews hurried from the room speechless, and CJCS Bradley10 tore up his prepared statement in disgust when Denfeld finished speaking.
Bradley directly accused senior naval officers of poor leadership, disloyalty, and being “completely against unity of command and planning.”
CNO sacked
ADML Louis Denfeld, was fired shortly after this in a spiteful and humiliating manner. Despite being earlier recommended by Matthews, and approved by Defence Secretary Johnson, President Truman and Congress for a second term, and despite the House Armed Services Committee promising no reprisals for truthful testimony, he was sacked on Matthews’ subsequent recommendation and informally advised of his sacking by a naval aide to the President.11
A number of Admirals then refused the CNO position. At the same time the highly regarded Medal of Honor recipient, BGEN Merritt Edson, USMC, saw an even greater danger than the loss of naval aviation and even the entire US Marine Corps. He equated the proposed unification with a strong General Staff, not unlike that of pre-WWII Germany, with the concomitant risk of militarism and dictatorship. He resigned in order to present his views to Congress and the public.12
With no doubt the British debacle of RAF control of the 1920s and 1930s RN Fleet Air Arm in mind, and with the real probability of non-nuclear conflicts, senior USN officers in 1947-48 were aghast at the thought of a fledgling Air Force controlling their naval aviation.13 They strongly opposed the Air Force’s whole concept of nuclear-based “strategic air offensives” and pointed to the many WWII bombing surveys that repeatedly demonstrated severe conventional weapons limitations. The USAF’s primary reliance on sledgehammer nuclear weapons, they strongly argued, was costly, immoral and probably irrelevant in future limited wars.
Remarks by distinguished and influential USAF Generals about this time (cited by Demetrious Caraley14) exacerbated the USN’s unease.
MGEN C.A. (Tooey) Spaatz asked:
“Why should we have a Navy at all? We certainly don’t need to waste money on that.”
LGEN J.A. (Jimmy) Doolittle (of 30 seconds over Tokyo fame, courtesy of the new carrier USS Hornet) asserted:
“The (aircraft) carrier … is going into obsolescence … as soon as airplanes are developed with sufficient range … there will be no further use for aircraft carriers.”
BGEN Frank A. Armstrong said:
“The Army Air Force is tired of being a subordinate outfit … The Army Air Force is going to run the show … as for the Marines … we are going to put those Marines into the Regular Army and make efficient soldiers out of them.”
Marines justified
This infighting immediately preceded the Korean War, which in turn quickly and amply demonstrated glaring weaknesses in the USAF’s grand strategy and preparedness for non-nuclear war. USN and US Air Force aircraft reported many serious problems operating with each other and with the Army. Paradoxically, it was the lowly-regarded Marines who showed how well they retained their old WW II skills when they stopped North Korean forces from overrunning UN forces in the Pusan Pocket. Truman, who incidentally considered Marines were suited for little more than naval police, fired Defense Secretary Louis Johnson in September 1950, barely two months after the Korean war started.
Does any of this have relevance in modern days? The uniformed head of the US Army was publicly humiliated in 2005 after a stormy difference of opinion with his Secretary of Defence. He was due for retirement in any event but his planned relief refused the position, as did several other officers, until one could be retreaded from civilian life. Reminiscent of the USS United States disaster, another major Army procurement program, the Comanche helicopter, was axed in February 2004. A comment that year warned of the possibility of a “Revolt of the Generals”:
Today, as in 1949, we have a strong-willed Secretary of Defense willing to make radical changes. Donald Rumsfeld fired the former Secretary of the Army, Thomas White, in part over the latter’s opposition to the cancellation of a major Army procurement program and a resulting campaign of leaks … Not since the days of Robert McNamara has a Secretary of Defense brought such faith in technology and business practices. In business, redundancy is waste; in the military redundancy is depth. This conflict in approach might be the foundation for a future “Revolt of the Generals”.15
Meanwhile, to return briefly to 1948, the original B-36 contract specified flight above 40,000 feet, a 5000 nautical mile combat radius with a 10,000-pound bomb load at 400 knots. It never quite achieved those marks, despite adding four 5200 lb thrust jets. Only 383 B-36s were ever built and the USAF quietly phased out the expensive white elephant in February 1959, never allowing it to drop a bomb in anger. In contrast, the Essex class and larger carriers that the B-36 was supposed to make redundant remained in great demand. Better aircraft such as the 1800 B-47 Stratojets were built between 1946 and 1957 and they remained in service until the mid-1960s when they were relieved by 744 amazingly durable (the last was constructed in October 1962) and flexible B-52 Stratofortresses.
“Where’s the nearest carrier?”
Over the same period, a number of WW II Essex class carriers were modernised with angled decks, steam catapults, deck landing mirrors and enclosed bows, giving them a limited but significant nuclear capability. Big new 80,000-ton USN carriers were constructed that had the potential to handle aircraft loaded with large nuclear weapons, a role the USAF tried to abrogate to itself. Then, as Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands and even more recent conflicts such as Iraq amply demonstrate, big carriers are worth their weight in gold. As President Bill Clinton said on 12 March 1993 aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, “When word of a crisis breaks out in Washington, it’s no accident that the first words that come to everyone’s lips is, ‘Where’s the nearest carrier?'”
Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld served as a naval aviator 1954-57, long enough to qualify as a pilot and convert to jet fighters, then transferred to the USNR and retired as a Captain in 1989.
As unmanned aircraft and other new weapons systems appear, the fundamental roles of the Air Force might well be in question. Carriers have demonstrated that they can launch and recover heavy unmanned fighter and bomber aircraft as well as the Army in the field.
“Revolt of the Generals?”
Finally, in an unprecedented “Revolt of the Generals” in April 2006, initially eight “retired Admirals and Generals” then a “widening circle” of “retired Generals” openly demanded the resignation of the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfield, over his mishandling of military planning and strategy16. Rumsfield retained the support of President G.W. Bush, but eventually resigned five months later, in a letter dated 6 November 2006, coincidentally the day before the general election that swept the Republican Party from power in Washington.
Because nearly all air offensive power today is flown in support of immediate Army or Navy goals, it may be argued that the only requirement for a separate Air Force will be to fly transport and supply sorties, a job that might well be relegated to civilian air lines.
Although the “Generals’ revolt” in 2006 was different in many ways to the “Admiral’s revolt” of 1949, it was also similar. Neither could be described as a true “revolt” that resulted in the deployment of an armed force but both were a clear expressions by senior officers of dissatisfaction with the leadership of a civilian Secretary of Defense. Both led, in time, to the replacement of that official and a realignment of major policies. Maybe the revolting Admirals and Generals had a point. Maybe BGEN Merrit Edson had a point when he forecast the possibility of a strong Department of Defence and General Staff influencing civilian departmental heads to the extent of acting like the pre-WW II German model, fostering militarism and dictatorship. The bottom line is that the theoretical “unification” of the defence forces through a single civilian-dominated Department of Defence is easier to achieve than the practical and effective “unification” of the uniformed Services.
References:
Barlow, Jeffrey G. Revolt of the admirals: The fight for naval aviation, 1945-1950. Naval Historical Center Department of the Navy: Washington, D.C. 2994.
Bowdish, Randall G. Between Scylla and Charybdis: Discussion and dissent in the Navy. US Naval Institute Proceedings, 130/5 pp. 42-45.2004.
Caraley, Demetrios. The politics of military unification: A study of conflict and the policy process. Columbia University Press: New York. 1966.
Cloud, D.S. and E Schmitt. More retired generals call for Rumsfield’s resignation. New York Times, 14 April 2006.
Denny, Norman R. The revolt of the generals is coming. US Naval Institute Proceedings, 130/5 p 78. 2004.
Douhet, Guilio. The command of the air. Tr D. Ferrari. Office of Air Force History: Washington, D.C. 1983.
Hammond, P.Y. Super carriers and B-36 bombers: Appropriations, strategy and politics, in H. Stein ed., American Civil-Military Decision. University of Alabama Press: Birmingham. 1963.
McFarland, K.D. The 1949 revolt of the admirals. Parameters 11/2 (June 1981).
Mets, David R. Airpower and the Sea Services: Revolt of the admirals. Aerospace Power Journal. Summer 1999.
Endnotes:
1. Time magazine: Revolt of the Admirals. Time 54/16 (17 October 1949): p. 23.
2. Barlow.
3. Denny.
4. Douhet is recognized as one of the first to advance the theory that air power alone could win a war.
5. Time magazine, op cit.
6. McFarland p. 56.
7. Hammond p. 38.
8. Barlow op cit.
9. Hammond op cit.
10. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley.
11. Barlow p. 274, Hammond p 38, Mets 1999.
12. Bowdish.
13. Caraley pp. 96-97.
14. ibid. pp. 100, 49, 151.
15. Denny.
16. Cloud and Schmitt.