Olympic Fan
12-13-2009, 01:54 PM
This is not a sports thread, even though it was inspired by watching Saturday's Army-Navy game. I will say that watching that annual game is almost a reminder of pure sports -- I know that there are a lot of places where football (and basketball) is played by real student/athletes, but Army-Navy is one of the few examples of this that get national exposure.
But what I really wanted to talk about was the suggestion brought up during the game about the mutual respect and cooperation between thre Army and Navy.
I happen to be a history buff -- especially military history -- and I don't think Americans realize how lucky we are or how unique it is ... how well our Army and Navy have worked together over the years. Sure, there is institutional competition between the services -- that has sometimes reached destructive levels -- but compared with what has gone on in other military forces around the world, it's astonishing how well America's Army and Navy have worked together.
I was trying to think back to where it started. You could go back to the earliest days of the Revolution, when General Washington took over command of the troops beseiging Boston and commissioned a number of privateers to prey on the shipping supplying the British in the protected harbor. He later wrote that his army only survived the harsh winter of 1775-76 due to the blankets and foods captured by his small navy.
He also wrote an amazing perceptive letter during this period, musing about the advantages that Britain's command of the sea gave to its army -- he realized that he could never destroy the British Army as long as the Royal Navy was there to evacuate any beaten or outnumbered force. His letter could have been almost an outline of Alfred Thayer Mahan's revolutionary thesis a century later (The Influence of Sea Power on History). I often think that as much as we praise George Washington, he's underrated as a military thinker.
More immediately, Washington's vision was justified six years later, when the French Navy momentarily gained control of the waters around Yorktown, allowing the American-French armies to secure the victory that won the war. The feeble British efforts to use its superior navy to rescue Cornwallis offer a perfect counterpoint to the Army-Navy cooperation that has marked American history.
Indeed, the British have often made good use of its Navy to support Army operations (for instance, the rescure of Moore's army at Corunna). But there are plenty of counter-examples -- not only Chesapeake Bay in 1781, but also the fiasco at Gallipoli in WWI, when lack of Army-Navy cooperation helped turn a promising and important operation into a disaster.
The Japanese had the same problem. The antipathy between the Army and Naval factions broke out into actual bloodshed several times between wars. Both services pursued their own separate compaigns when WWII started. Indeed, after Japan's initial run of success in the early days of the war, the Navy wanted to invade Australia, but the Army refused to provide troops. As a result, the Navy compromised on the Midway attack (which involved very few troops) and set up the battle that turned the tide in the war. The Guadalcanal campaign that followed in the fall of 1942 was marked by the difficulty the Japanese commanders had in coordinating Army and Navy operations.
On the other hand, unity of command -- and beyond that, personal cooperation between Army and Navy commanders -- has been a hallmark of American military operations.
Go back to the War of 1812 -- the relationship between Oliver Perry and General William Harrison had a lot to do with the successful American operations on Lake Erie. First, Harrison helped Perry prepare and man his fleet ... then after Perry's triumph on the Lake ("We have met the enemy and they are ours"), Perry used his fleet to support Harrison's drive into Canada. And while American naval forces played little role in the operations around New Orleans, the huge British fleet off the mouth of the Mississippi did almost nothing to aid General Pakenham's attempt to break Andy Jackson's defensive lines south of the city.
The British failure at New Orleans in 1815 stands in stark contrast to the brilliant Army/Navy operations in the same area during the Civil War. Indeed, the war in the west was almost defined by the relationship between General Grant and Commodore Foote -- first as they moved against the Confederate forts on the Tennessee River ... later as they worked together to seize the key points along the Mississippi.
I could name dozens of operations that feature Army/Navy coorperation, but I think the one operation that best exemplifies the intra-service cooperation of the American military is the Doolittle Raid in World War II. What an incredible improvisation -- Army twin-engine bombers launched off Navy aircraft carriers. It was something the Japanese -- where Army and Naval officers often wouldn't even talk to one another -- never imagined. Never could have imagined.
To the civilian mind, it seems simple that a nation's major military branches should work together towards a mutual goal. But we should realize how rarely that happens in the real world. We should be thankful that for all the Army-Navy rivalry over the years, America has largely overcome that curse.
But what I really wanted to talk about was the suggestion brought up during the game about the mutual respect and cooperation between thre Army and Navy.
I happen to be a history buff -- especially military history -- and I don't think Americans realize how lucky we are or how unique it is ... how well our Army and Navy have worked together over the years. Sure, there is institutional competition between the services -- that has sometimes reached destructive levels -- but compared with what has gone on in other military forces around the world, it's astonishing how well America's Army and Navy have worked together.
I was trying to think back to where it started. You could go back to the earliest days of the Revolution, when General Washington took over command of the troops beseiging Boston and commissioned a number of privateers to prey on the shipping supplying the British in the protected harbor. He later wrote that his army only survived the harsh winter of 1775-76 due to the blankets and foods captured by his small navy.
He also wrote an amazing perceptive letter during this period, musing about the advantages that Britain's command of the sea gave to its army -- he realized that he could never destroy the British Army as long as the Royal Navy was there to evacuate any beaten or outnumbered force. His letter could have been almost an outline of Alfred Thayer Mahan's revolutionary thesis a century later (The Influence of Sea Power on History). I often think that as much as we praise George Washington, he's underrated as a military thinker.
More immediately, Washington's vision was justified six years later, when the French Navy momentarily gained control of the waters around Yorktown, allowing the American-French armies to secure the victory that won the war. The feeble British efforts to use its superior navy to rescue Cornwallis offer a perfect counterpoint to the Army-Navy cooperation that has marked American history.
Indeed, the British have often made good use of its Navy to support Army operations (for instance, the rescure of Moore's army at Corunna). But there are plenty of counter-examples -- not only Chesapeake Bay in 1781, but also the fiasco at Gallipoli in WWI, when lack of Army-Navy cooperation helped turn a promising and important operation into a disaster.
The Japanese had the same problem. The antipathy between the Army and Naval factions broke out into actual bloodshed several times between wars. Both services pursued their own separate compaigns when WWII started. Indeed, after Japan's initial run of success in the early days of the war, the Navy wanted to invade Australia, but the Army refused to provide troops. As a result, the Navy compromised on the Midway attack (which involved very few troops) and set up the battle that turned the tide in the war. The Guadalcanal campaign that followed in the fall of 1942 was marked by the difficulty the Japanese commanders had in coordinating Army and Navy operations.
On the other hand, unity of command -- and beyond that, personal cooperation between Army and Navy commanders -- has been a hallmark of American military operations.
Go back to the War of 1812 -- the relationship between Oliver Perry and General William Harrison had a lot to do with the successful American operations on Lake Erie. First, Harrison helped Perry prepare and man his fleet ... then after Perry's triumph on the Lake ("We have met the enemy and they are ours"), Perry used his fleet to support Harrison's drive into Canada. And while American naval forces played little role in the operations around New Orleans, the huge British fleet off the mouth of the Mississippi did almost nothing to aid General Pakenham's attempt to break Andy Jackson's defensive lines south of the city.
The British failure at New Orleans in 1815 stands in stark contrast to the brilliant Army/Navy operations in the same area during the Civil War. Indeed, the war in the west was almost defined by the relationship between General Grant and Commodore Foote -- first as they moved against the Confederate forts on the Tennessee River ... later as they worked together to seize the key points along the Mississippi.
I could name dozens of operations that feature Army/Navy coorperation, but I think the one operation that best exemplifies the intra-service cooperation of the American military is the Doolittle Raid in World War II. What an incredible improvisation -- Army twin-engine bombers launched off Navy aircraft carriers. It was something the Japanese -- where Army and Naval officers often wouldn't even talk to one another -- never imagined. Never could have imagined.
To the civilian mind, it seems simple that a nation's major military branches should work together towards a mutual goal. But we should realize how rarely that happens in the real world. We should be thankful that for all the Army-Navy rivalry over the years, America has largely overcome that curse.