In this chapter you will get a small taste of the Navy’s heritage while learning about the Navy’s missions. From the Revolutionary War on, the Navy you are now a part of has a long, proud history of successfully carrying out the missions assigned, when Sailors like you have been called upon to contribute to the defense and well-being of our nation. The time will come when you will be called upon to do the same.
MISSIONS
The United States, fourth largest nation in the world in terms of land area, has always been a maritime nation. Throughout the nation’s history, interaction with the sea has played an important role in America’s economy, defense, and foreign policy.
During the colonial period and in the early days of the Republic, it was much easier to travel from colony to colony or state to state by ship or boat than by horse or on foot. Fishing, whaling, and overseas trade were among the fledgling nation’s most important businesses.
The War of 1812, fought just a few decades after the Revolution, was in no small part affected by a series of stellar U.S. naval victories over ships of the British Royal Navy, then the world’s foremost sea power. A naval blockade and riverine warfare were essential elements in the Civil War, and the war against Spain at the end of the nineteenth century began with the sinking of the battleship Maine and was decided by American naval victories in Manila Bay and the waters off Cuba.
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American commerce would never have thrived without open sea lanes. Two world wars could not have been won without the lifelines maintained across the world’s oceans, and American control of the sea was an essential element in the triumph over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Today, the United States of America continues to look to the sea for these same things and relies upon its Navy to preserve and further the nation’s maritime interests.
Being a maritime nation means having a comfortable relationship with the sea, using it to national advantage, and seeing it as a highway rather than as an obstacle. World War II provides an excellent example. By 1941 German dictator Adolf Hitler had conquered much of the land of Europe, but because Germany was not a maritime power, Hitler saw the English Channel (a mere twenty miles across at one point) as a barrier, and England remained outside his grasp. Yet the Americans and British were later able to strike across this same channel into Europe to eventually bring Nazi Germany to its knees. And in that same war, the United States attacked Hitler’s forces in North Africa with ships, Sailors, and embarked soldiers, sailing clear across the Atlantic Ocean—a distance of more than three thousand nautical miles.
The navy of a maritime nation must be able to carry out a variety of strategic missions. Currently, the U.S. Navy has six important missions, all of which have been carried out effectively at various times in the nation’s history and continue to be as important as ever in today’s challenging world:
All domain access
Sea control
Deterrence
Forward presence and partnership
Power projection
Maritime security
All Domain Access
When the U.S. Navy first began defending the nation, the water’s surface was the only naval domain. Armed ships capable of moving about on the waters of the world to defend the nation’s interests carried out the Navy’s missions. But as technology advanced, new domains opened up, requiring Sailors to go beyond the realm of the sea’s surface into equally challenging new environments under the sea and above it. Today’s Navy must maintain access to all of these domains in order to be able to carry out its vital missions.
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As early as the American Revolution, Sailors were experimenting with vessels that could go under the water to take advantage of being unseen by the enemy. As time went on, this capability was more and more developed, and by World War I at the beginning of the twentieth century submarines were a major part of the war at sea. By the end of that same century, submarines had become formidable weapons, powered by nuclear energy and able to remain hidden and deliver devastating nuclear-tipped missiles to virtually anywhere on earth.
In that same twentieth century, the Navy took to the air, mastering the ability to fly airplanes off of ships as well as from naval air stations around the world. Propeller-driven, fixed-wing aircraft pioneered the way into the skies and were eventually joined by incredibly fast jets and by helicopters that have the ability to hover in one place and land on relatively small ships. No longer limited to the range of shipboard weapons, Navy ships could now project power across vast expanses of ocean and far inland.
Jet aircraft technology was accompanied by the development of guided missiles. These in turn led to greater and greater heights and eventually into outer space, where today satellites give the Navy vastly improved navigation, reconnaissance, and communications capabilities as well as greatly improving our ability to effectively control weapons and other vital systems.
As Sailors—aided by civilian scientists and engineers—ventured into the domains of sea, undersea, air, and space, these explorations and achievements led to further developments in other, less tangible, realms: the electromagnetic spectrum and cyberspace, impressive terms associated with more familiar things like radios, radars, and computers.
In little more than two hundred years the Navy has gone from sailing ships with limited capabilities to vastly more powerful ships, submarines, aircraft, missiles, satellites, electronic systems, and computers that carry out our nation’s vital missions around the world.
Sea Control
Because navies are expensive, the newly created United States tried to do without one in the years immediately following the American Revolution. Within a year after the termination of hostilities with England, Congress ordered all major naval vessels sold or destroyed. The men who had fought for independence as Sailors in the Continental Navy during the Revolution were left high and dry by the new government’s decision. Even John Paul Jones, our most famous naval hero during the American Revolution—recognized by many as the “father of the U.S. Navy”—left America and served as an admiral in the Russian navy. No money was allocated to the building of naval vessels in the first ten years following the Revolution, and George Washington, who had shown a keen understanding of the importance of naval power during the war, relied as president upon his secretary of war to oversee both the Army and the limited Navy we had retained. Thomas Jefferson viewed a navy as not only expensive but provocative and, when he became the nation’s third president, relied on an inexpensive fleet of defensive gunboats to guard the nation’s shores.
But these frugal measures did not last long. World events and human nature conspired to prove that a maritime nation cannot long endure without a navy. Almost immediately, the so-called Barbary pirates—the North African states of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, ruled by petty despots whose main source of income was derived from the seizure of ships or the extortion of protection money—began preying on defenseless American merchant shipping in the Mediterranean Sea. Additionally, the ongoing struggle between France and England made American ships and their crews tempting targets, and both nations began taking advantage of the helplessness of the Americans by seizing merchant ships and sailors on flimsy pretexts. Under these provocations, the cost of not having a navy soon outweighed the cost of having one. Spurred to reluctant action by these costly and insulting blows to U.S. sovereignty, Congress approved the reestablishment of a navy and the building of several ships.
In a series of engagements on the high seas in the next two decades, the fledgling U.S. Navy successfully defended the nation’s right to use the world’s oceans. During the Quasi-War with France (1798–1800), the frigate Constellation defeated two French frigates in separate engagements, and other American ships, including the feisty little schooner Enterprise, managed to capture more than eighty French vessels of various sizes and descriptions. In the War with Tripoli (1801–5), a band of American Sailors and Marines led a daring raid into the enemy’s home harbor that earned them respect throughout much of the world. At the beginning of the War of 1812, the U.S. Navy had only seventeen ships while the British had more than six hundred, yet the Americans won a number of ship-to-ship battles. Considering the relative inexperience and small size of this new navy, American Sailors fought far outside their weight class. Naval leaders such as William Bainbridge, Oliver Hazard Perry, and Stephen Decatur, and warships such as Constitution, Essex, and Niagara, achieved enduring fame, and the motto “Dont Give Up the Ship” was etched into history. The new nation secured its rights and proved its ability to use the oceans of the world. Never again would the United States be powerless to defend itself at sea.
Ever since those early days, the U.S. Navy has been on station, ensuring America’s right to use the sea for trade, for security, and for its growing role as a world power. As the nation grew stronger, the Navy also grew in size and capability. The early frigates that performed so well in battle with the French and British Navies during the Quasi War and the War of 1812 gave way to the ironclad monitors of the Civil War, and these were superseded by the big-gun, armored battleships and high-speed cruisers that won the Spanish American War in 1898.
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In time, the United States emerged as a world power and the Navy’s mission of preserving freedom of the seas became more vital than ever. New technology led to the development of new kinds of ships, such as destroyers and submarines, and the invention of the airplane and the aircraft carrier brought about the rise of naval aviation as a whole new component of the Navy. In the first half of the twentieth century the U.S. Navy was called upon to fight the greatest sea war in history when Germany and Japan challenged America’s freedom of the seas. Maintaining that freedom was a major factor in the victory over the Soviet Union in the Cold War. Today the Navy continues its role of preserving our free use of the global oceans, and that is where you come in.
Deterrence
The most obvious reason for a maritime nation to have a navy is to ensure that no other nation attacks it by sea. Even when President Jefferson was trying to avoid having a navy in order to save money, he recognized this elemental need and tried to use his gunboat fleet as a deterrent to attack. One of the reasons for the United States building the Panama Canal in the early part of the twentieth century was to permit U.S. warships to move rapidly from coast to coast and thereby bring greater sea power and deter many a potential enemy from attacking our shores.
Improvements in technology—such as the development of high-speed aircraft, powerful missiles, and long-range submarines—gradually increased our vulnerability to attack, and the Navy continued to play a vital role in protecting the nation by deterring our enemies, both real and potential. In 1962 the Soviet Union placed offensive nuclear missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy, a former Sailor, imposed a naval “quarantine” around the island and threatened nuclear retaliation as deterrent measures to keep the Soviets from using these missiles against the United States and other nations in the western hemisphere. This ultimately forced the Soviets to take the missiles out of Cuba.
Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. Navy’s fleet of ballistic-missile submarines patrolled the oceans of the world, armed with nuclear weapons ready to be launched on very short notice against an aggressor nation. This massive firepower, coupled with the striking power of U.S. aircraft carriers, land-based missiles, and the U.S. Air Force’s long-range aircraft, effectively deterred the Soviet Union. Without this deterrence, the United States would have been very vulnerable to attack and would have struggled to stand up to the extremely powerful Soviet Union in moments of crisis.
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An example of America’s ability to deal with Soviet intimidation occurred during the Middle East War of 1973. Although neither the Soviet Union nor the United States was directly involved in that war between Israel and most of the Arab nations, the United States supported Israel while the USSR backed the Arab nations. When the Soviets began resupplying their clients by sending in massive quantities of weapons by airlift, the United States did the same for Israel. The U.S. Sixth Fleet took up station in the Mediterranean to provide protection for its aircraft flying into the war zone. When the war began going badly for the Arabs, the Soviets threatened to intervene. The United States responded by putting its forces on increased alert worldwide and by moving naval units into striking position. Faced with this deterrent, the Soviets thought better of their intervention and the war was ultimately ended and settled on equitable terms.
Several times the People’s Republic of China has threatened to attack the Nationalist Chinese on the island of Taiwan, and each time the U.S. Navy has moved into position to successfully deter the Communists from attacking. Today, China is behaving more and more aggressively in the South China Sea, threatening to take control of islands and adjacent waters that are claimed by several of its Asian neighbors, such as Japan and the Philippines.
There are many such examples when the Navy has been called upon to deter others from taking actions that were seen as dangerous to the United States or were not in the nation’s best interests. Just as an effective police patrol can deter criminals from committing crimes in a neighborhood, so the Navy preserves the peace and keeps our nation safe and prosperous by its mere existence and by its capabilities, forward presence, and its ability to patrol the waters of the world.
Forward Presence and Partnership
Another of the important missions of the Navy is based upon its ability to go virtually anywhere in the world. This capability allows the United States to be in a position to reassure our allies in a time of crisis, to intimidate potential enemies (a form of deterrence), to deliver humanitarian aid when disaster strikes, to rescue Americans or our allies from dangerous situations, or to be able to carry out offensive military action in a timely manner. This is called “forward presence” and explains why you may well find yourself serving on a deployment to a far corner of the world.
Sometimes the presence of a single destroyer visiting a foreign port is all that is needed to carry out this vital mission. On other occasions, a carrier strike group or an entire fleet moving into a region is used to send a stronger message of warning or support. If hostilities become necessary, having units already at or near enemy territory can be a major advantage.
In 1854 Commodore Matthew Perry used forward presence as a means to open diplomatic relations and, ultimately, trade with Japan, a nation that, until Perry’s visit, had shunned contact with the outside world. During the latter part of the nineteenth century, American naval ships patrolled the waters of the Far East to provide protection for our economic interests and the many American missionaries in that part of the world. When war broke out with Spain in 1898, the U.S. fleet already present in the Far East was able to strike a quick and decisive blow against the Spanish fleet in the Philippines. Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. Navy kept the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea and the Seventh Fleet in the Far East to reassure our allies in those regions that we were nearby and ready to respond in the event of a crisis. Today the Fifth Fleet makes our presence known in the Middle East and nearby regions.
Our modern American military forces also have great striking power through powerful armies and long-range aircraft, and some of those forces are maintained for quick response in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. But that kind of forward presence can only exist at the invitation of other nations who are willing to give us bases on their territory. The Navy allows us to have a presence wherever there is water—almost everywhere. In times of increased tension, naval units can be moved to appropriate positions where American presence is needed, without having to negotiate any complicated diplomatic arrangements and without requiring much time.
Today, you often hear the term “globalization,” which describes the increased interactivity of the world’s nations. Used most often as an economic term, it explains how trade and financial activities are conducted among various countries, where raw materials might be grown or mined in one part of the world, converted into usable goods in another region, and purchased in still another, all relying on transportation systems (primarily ships) and world banking institutions to tie it all together.
This interconnectivity and dependence upon interwoven economic systems has led to a degree of globalization among the world’s navies as well. Partnerships among nations with similar needs and interests are a natural offshoot of this global interconnectivity. The U.S. Navy maintains numerous partnerships with the navies of other nations through combined exercises, shared responsibilities, and special basing arrangements. These partnerships increase the effectiveness of the cooperating navies and contribute to the security of each nation.
Power Projection
Forward presence allows the Navy to be on station the world over, but just being there is not always enough. Sometimes, despite a nation’s efforts to remain at peace, the use of force becomes necessary. When that occurs, the U.S. Navy has always been particularly effective in projecting American power where it is needed.
As early as the American Revolution, an American naval squadron sailed to the British-owned Bahamas to capture needed weapons, and John Paul Jones furthered the American cause by conducting a series of daring raids against the British Isles themselves.
In 1847, during the war with Mexico, the Navy transported a force of 12,000 Army troops to Vera Cruz and played a crucial role in the successful capture of that port city, ultimately leading to an American victory in that war.
Union ships not only carried out an effective blockade of Confederate ports during the Civil War, they also attacked key Southern ports and opened up the Mississippi River to Union use, effectively driving a wedge right into the heart of the Confederacy.
By escorting convoys, U.S. destroyers projected American power across the Atlantic to aid in an Allied victory during World War I. In World War II, American aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, amphibious vessels, troop transports, oilers, ammunition ships, minesweepers, PT boats, and a wide variety of other ships carried the fight to the far corners of the world, slugging it out with powerful Japanese fleets in the Pacific, dueling with German submarines in the Atlantic, safely transporting incredible amounts of supplies to the many theaters of war, and landing troops on distant islands and on the African, Asian, and European coasts.
During the Korean, Vietnam, and Gulf Wars, naval power guaranteed our ability to project our power ashore, and naval aircraft, guns, and missiles inflicted significant harm on our enemies.
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[7.6] A U.S. Navy ironclad gunboat during the Civil War
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[7.7] A U.S. Navy swift boat on patrol in the South China Sea during the Vietnam War
When American embassies in Africa were bombed by terrorists in 1998, American cruisers, destroyers, and submarines retaliated, launching a Tomahawk-missile barrage at terrorist targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In the following year, naval electronic warfare and strike aircraft were vital components of the air war in Kosovo, and in the opening years of the twenty-first century the Navy has already played key roles in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Not only did the Navy launch some of the earliest strikes against the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan, but tens of thousands of Navy personnel augmented Army and Marine Corps ground units who were stretched thin over two operational theaters.
When power needs to be projected, American naval forces have always been ready, willing, and able to accomplish the mission. As an American Sailor, you will sometimes hear yourself being described as the “tip of the spear” with good reason.
Maritime Security
Threats other than those posed by hostile nations can emerge, such as piracy, terrorism, weapons proliferation, and drug trafficking. Countering these irregular threats and enforcing domestic and international law at sea protects our homeland, enhances global stability, and secures freedom of navigation for the benefit of all nations.
In 1819 Congress declared the infamous slave trade to be piracy, and in response the Navy established an African Slave Trade Patrol to search for these dealers in human misery. In the decades leading up to the Civil War, the frigates Constitution and Constellation and many other Navy ships relentlessly plied the waters off West Africa, South America, and the Cuban coast, capturing more than one hundred suspected slavers.
In more modern times, the “War Eagles” of Patrol Squadron 16, flying out of Jacksonville, Florida, played a vital role in the capture of forty-one tons of cocaine, and USS Crommelin, working with USS Ticonderoga, intercepted a drug shipment of seventy-two bales of cocaine with an estimated street value of $36 million.
These operations are not what first comes to mind when one thinks about a navy, but they are becoming more and more typical as economic globalization and asymmetric threats emerge from adversaries often known as “non-state actors” in the twenty-first century.
Other Missions and Feats
Evacuating U.S. citizens from dangerous areas or situations has been a long-standing mission of the Navy, and helping people survive the ravages of natural disasters, such as earthquakes and hurricanes, is an unpredictable but vital task the Navy is often called upon to carry out.
Because of a potato blight in Ireland and western Scotland between 1846 and 1849, two million people either died or emigrated. In 1847 two Navy ships carried food that had been donated by Americans to the relief of thousands. To show their gratitude for having been saved from starvation, some of the residents named their children after the two ships, Jamestown and Macedonian.
In 2005 Navy ships arrived off America’s southern coast to assist Gulf Coast residents in the aftermath of a devastating hurricane named Katrina. USS Bataan and USS Iwo Jima, ships designed and trained to conduct amphibious assault operations, instead used their Sea Stallion and Sea Hawk helicopters to conduct search-and-rescue missions, while Navy hovercraft evacuated victims and Seabees (Navy construction battalions) cleared debris and helped in many rebuilding efforts.
While combat operations are a well-known aspect of the Navy’s history, there have been and will continue to be many occasions when the Navy is sent to save lives and help large numbers of people in distress. The Navy’s expeditionary character and its great mobility make it uniquely positioned to provide assistance.
The U.S. Navy has also played an important role in other realms, such as exploration and scientific discovery. For example, a Navy exploration team led by LT Charles Wilkes took a squadron of ships around the world, exploring Antarctica and vast areas of the Pacific Ocean in the years 1838–42. His charts of the Pacific not only served mariners for many decades to come but were used in the invasion of Tarawa in the early part of World War II. Navy men Robert E. Peary and Richard E. Byrd were pioneers in polar exploration: Peary was the first man to reach the North Pole in 1909, and Byrd flew over the South Pole in 1929. When CAPT Edward L. “Ned” Beach Jr. and his crew took their nuclear submarine USS Triton around the world in eighty-three days in 1960, it was not the first time anyone had circumnavigated the earth, but it was the first time anyone had done it submerged for the entire voyage of 41,500 miles. In that same year, LT Don Walsh went deeper than any human being has ever been when he and Jacques Picard took the bathyscaphe Trieste to the bottom of the Marianas Trench, 35,800 feet down (more than six and a half miles beneath the surface). Astronaut Alan Shepard was in the Navy when he became the first American in space, and astronaut Neil Armstrong had been in the Navy before he became the first man to walk on the moon.
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The Navy has often led the way or played a crucial role in many realms of scientific and technological development, such as electricity, radio communications, radar technology, computer science, and nuclear engineering. Among her many achievements in computer science, RADM Grace Hopper invented COBOL, one of the important computer languages that led the way in computer development. Today, a ship bears her name. The world of nuclear engineering has been forever affected by the work of ADM Hyman Rickover, and VADM Charles Momsen, a Navy man known to his shipmates as “Swede,” changed the deep-sea diving world by his inventions and his pioneering work.
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Another Navy diver, Carl Brashear, worked his way up from cook to master diver, salvaging a nuclear weapon from the depths of the Atlantic and losing a leg in the process. His inspiring story was the basis for a major motion picture.
Another modern, multi-million-dollar movie included a reenactment of the feats of another Sailor who won the Navy Cross at Pearl Harbor. Dorie Miller was different from you only in circumstance, but how he responded to the Japanese attack on his ship USS West Virginia, manning guns and saving lives, later earned him the honor of having a ship named after him.
Boatswain’s Mate James Elliott Williams left his southern rural home to join the Navy. In 1966 he was a petty officer first class in charge of a pair of patrol boats on narrow jungle waterways in Vietnam, when he found himself facing an entire enemy regiment trying to cross a canal. Without hesitation, Williams pressed the attack. Three hours later, more than a thousand enemy soldiers had been killed or captured and sixty-five enemy vessels had been destroyed. Williams was awarded the Medal of Honor and later retired from the Navy as its most decorated enlisted member, having earned the Navy Cross, two Silver Stars, the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, three Bronze Stars, the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, and three Purple Hearts. In a second career, he won the continued respect of his fellow South Carolinians by serving as a federal marshal.
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For more than two centuries, Sailors of the United States Navy have been recording an impressive history of courage, resourcefulness, sacrifice, innovation, humanitarianism, combat skill, and dedication to duty. Now it is your turn to follow in their wakes and, circumstances permitting, leave your mark on the pages of this impressive record.
HERITAGE
As one who has chosen to take part in this ongoing story and to do your part in carrying out the important missions described above, you would do well to read and think about the history of the United States Navy. Even in the best fiction, you will not likely find a better story than the one that makes up the true story of the U.S. Navy in action. It is full of excitement, adventure, and heroism. It is also a story of harrowing moments and great challenges, and there are times when those who served before you made mistakes or were not up to the challenges placed before them, providing important lessons to be learned.
By learning about yesterday’s Navy, you will be better prepared to serve today’s Navy. You will better understand why the Navy is so important to national security, you will be inspired by the heroic actions of other Sailors who served before you, you will learn from the mistakes of the past, and you will share the pride of a heritage that became yours when you took the oath of enlistment. All of this will help you to do a better job and to feel good about why you are doing it.
While there are many good books, some magazines, and a few movies that will help you better understand the legacy you have been entrusted with, there are other ways that you can learn about and grow to appreciate the proud heritage you are now a part of. When you report to a ship, find out why she has the name she does. You may learn that the name once belonged to someone much like you, a Sailor carrying out the missions of the Navy to the best of his or her ability. You may also be surprised to learn that there may well have been other ships that have had the same name and have passed it on to this latest bearer of the name. When ships are lost in battle or die of old age, their name is often given to a newly built ship to carry on the legacy of the name. This is similar to the ongoing process you are now participating in. As older Sailors move on to retirement, they pass the legacy on to younger Sailors who then are entrusted to carry out the Navy’s vital missions. This is obviously no small responsibility, but it is also a privilege that only a select group of Americans have had.
When you go ashore and notice a monument on the base, take a moment to read the accompanying plaque. It was placed there to honor some aspect of the Navy’s—and your—heritage. You may find yourself walking just a little taller as you move on.
History can be the most boring thing in the world if it is merely a list of names and dates, but heritage is written in a special ink that is a blend of the blood of sacrifice, the sweat of hard work, and the tears of pride that will likely be yours when you realize the importance of what you are doing. Learn your heritage, be proud of it, and work hard to carry it on. This is your Navy!