Decision at Sea
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Thach (U.S. frigate), 293, 294
“Thach weave,” 243–44
Thames battle (1813), 74, 78
Theobald, R. A., 223
Thirty Years’ War, 324
Ticonderoga–class cruisers, 314
Tiffany, Cyrus, 47, 65, 67
timing in battles, 229–30
Tippecanoe battle (1811), 33
Tokyo, Japan, 220
Tomonaga, Joichi, 235–36, 255
Tone (Japanese cruiser), 229, 231, 233, 236, 237, 238
Tootle, Milton, IV, 254–55
torpedo bombers. See aircraft
torpedoes (non-self-propelled), 91, 148, 172. See also mines
torpedoes (self-propelled, not mines): Mark 13 torpedoes, 216–17, 232
Mark 14 torpedoes, 208–9
at Midway, 208–9, 228, 245, 259
Tracy, Benjamin Franklin, 157
trade: Berlin Decrees, 32
economic leverage of the South, 88–89
Trafalgar battle (1805), 3, 6, 13, 15n, 31, 59
transponders, 316
Treaty of Ghent (1815), 78
Treaty of Paris (1783), 23–24, 32
Treaty of Westphalia, 324
Tredegar Iron Works, 96, 101
Trenton (U.S. helicopter carrier), 300
Trost, Carlisle, 318
Truman, Harry, 272, 273
Turner, Frederick Jackson, 78–79, 142
Twitchell, Charles H., 171–72
Two Years Before the Mast (Dana), 54
U-boats, 3, 199, 278
Ukagi, Matome, 222
unilateralism, 338, 339, 340
Union (in Civil War). See also Monitor
Battle of Hampton Roads, 85–87, 107–17, 122–31
and Civil War, 83–85, 88–93
at Hampton Roads, 132–33
ironclad construction, 97–101, 102
Navy of, 90–91, 92–93
Tennessee (ironclad), 134
United Kingdom. See Great Britain
United Nations, 327, 334, 336
United Nations Resolution 598, 317
United States: as global power, 262
industry of, 91, 141, 199, 261, 262, 322
Revolutionary War, 7–19. See also policeman of the world
United States (U.S. frigate), 40
U.S. Air Force, 319, 328
U.S. Army, 36, 319
in Battle of Midway, 226, 237, 257n
in Civil War, 84, 90, 108, 118–19
in Cuba, 11, 175, 193
in Philippines, 184, 185, 186, 190
relationship to Navy, 118–19
soldiers recruited from, 25, 54, 58, 108. See also militia
U.S. Army Air Corps, 209
U.S. Army Rangers, 319
U.S. Army Reserve, 36n
U.S. Army Special Forces, 290–91
U.S. Census Bureau, 142
U.S. Department of Defense, 296
U.S. Marines, 237–38, 300, 300–301, 319, 329, 331
U.S. Naval Institute, 282–83
U.S. Naval War College, 142, 151, 157, 160
U.S. Navy: budget, 157
development of, 34
dominance of, 325–26
fleet, 34, 141–43, 151, 157, 193–94, 208–9, 261–62
“New Navy,” 3, 142–43, 145, 151, 166
ports, 193
and race and nationality, 53n, 164–65
raising of Monitor, 134
and war on terror, 340–41. See also specific battles and ships
Van Brunt, Gersham, 121, 122, 130
Van Rensselaer, Stephen, 42, 44
Vargas, Reuben, 302
VB-3, 217, 248–50, 249
VB-6, 248
Versailles Treaty, 199
VF-3, 215–16, 243–45, 244
VF-8, 239
“victory disease,” 222
Vietnam, 266
Ville de Paris (French ship-of-the-line), 10
Vincennes (U.S. guided missile cruiser), 276, 314–17, 315
Virginia (formerly known as Merrimack): Battle of Hampton Roads, 85–87, 107–17, 109, 111, 119–21
construction of, 95–96, 97, 98
designer of, 94–95
destruction of, 134, 135
Maine compared to, 154
and Monitor, 109, 120–21, 122–32, 125
name change, 104
in naval history, 137
range of engagement, 203
seaworthiness, 118
Virginius incident, 150–51, 153, 323
VS-5, 217
VS-6, 247
VT-3, 216–17, 243–44
VT-6, 232, 243
VT-8, 239–40, 242–43
Waddell (U.S. guided missile destroyer), 270
Wainwright (U.S. guided missile cruiser), 301, 302, 304–9, 309, 318
Wake Island, 192–93
Waldron, John C. “Jack,” 239, 239–40, 242, 246, 319
Waller, W. L. T., 190–91
War Hawks, 33–34, 35, 84, 87, 92
War of 1812, 31, 78, 87
war on terror, 340–41
Warrior (British ironclad), 94n
Washington, George, 9–10, 18, 35, 70, 335n
Washington Post, 325
Wasp (U.S. carrier), 209n, 210, 261
weapons of mass destruction, 336
weather gage, 5–6, 26, 27
Webb, James, 292
Weinberger, Casper, 280–82
Welles, Gideon, 86, 97–103, 120–21, 136
Weyler y Nicolau, Valeriano, 152, 189, 190, 191
Wheeler, Joe, 157
Wilde, Oscar, 141
Wildes, Frank, 162–63
Williams, O. F., 180–81
Williamson, William P., 95–96
Winbrown (U.S. barge), 287
wind, 5–6, 26, 27, 214, 233, 245
Wolfowitz, Paul D., 334–35
Wolfowitz Doctrine, 335n, 336
women, 323n
wooden warships, 23–79
Worden, John L.: Battle of Hampton Roads, 122–31, 125
career after Monitor, 135, 136
command of Monitor, 101–3
at Hampton Roads, 120–21
and Jones, 119
at sea, 103–7
World Trade Center attacks, 155n, 157, 161
World War I, 199
World War II, 4, 200, 260, 261, 262. See also Midway battle (1942)
Yamaguchi, Tamon, 238, 256, 257
Yamamoto Isoroku: command of, 221, 221n
damage assessments, 258
end of Midway operation, 257
and Nagumo, 227
and U.S. carriers, 219
war games, 222
Yamato (Japanese battleship), 221, 222
Yanagimoto, Ryusaku, 250
Yarnall, John, 69, 74
yellow ribbons, 276
Yeo, Sir James, 60
Yonkers, Dave, 283, 287
Yorktown (U.S. carrier, CV-5): air wing, 214–17, 232
attack on, 250–55
attacks launched from, 243, 248
Battle of the Coral Sea, 205
and Enterprise, 234
Japanese damage estimates, 219
loss of, 258–60, 259, 261
preparations for battle, 213–14
reconnaissance, 231
repairs, 201, 202, 203, 209, 210, 213
Yorktown (U.S. carrier, CV-10), 261
Zafiro (U.S. supply ship), 162, 182
Zeros: compared to U.S. fighters, 215, 216, 227–28
defense of carriers, 237–38, 239–46
and diver-bombers’ attacks, 249
F2A-3 Buffalos interception, 234–35
and torpedo bombers, 247
Zuikaku (Japanese carrier), 211, 218
* For their part, the French were often happy to accept the lee gage because frequently their objective was not the destruction of the enemy fleet but rather the protection of a convoy, and holding the lee gage allowed them to break off the act
ion when their immediate goal had been achieved.
* The use of signal flags to issue orders to a fleet under way was still evolving in the late eighteenth century. Not until 1790 did the Royal Navy adopt Lord Howe’s system as standard. Even then it was sometimes necessary to spell out nonstandard orders. At Trafalgar, in 1805, Nelson kept his signal officers busy during the long approach to battle by ordering them to spell out the now-famous order “England expects that every man will do his duty.”
* Eventually the Intrepid lost its weakened mainmast and the captain of the Terrible reported that his pumps could not keep up with the water, which was rising at the rate of eight feet per hour. On September 11, six days after the battle, Graves decided to abandon the Terrible, and after the crew was removed, it was burned.
* Technically, Barron was the commodore of the Mediterranean squadron and Charles Gordon was the captain of the Chesapeake. But Barron was the senior officer present afloat (SOPA) and therefore responsible for the decisions made during the encounter with the Leopard. Afterward it was Barron and not Gordon who was court-martialed and suspended from the service for five years for taking the vessel to sea in such an unready state.
* This symbolism survives today in the Army Reserve, which employs the silhouette of a Minuteman as its official emblem. The mythology of the citizen soldier survives in popular culture as well. A film of the 1980s entitled Red Dawn reflected the patriotic anti-Communism of the Cold War era by depicting a handful of high school students with shotguns and pickup trucks defending Colorado from a Soviet invasion.
* Two of the nine gunboats, the small schooners Ohio and Amelia, were used as supply vessels and did not participate in the subsequent naval action.
* Navies in the early nineteenth century, including both the U.S. Navy and the Royal Navy, made very little distinction about either race or nationality when it came to recruiting crews. In consequence, both navies had black sailors who worked alongside white sailors. Moreover, because quarters were crowded aboard ship, and because the nature of the work precluded segregated work teams, black and white sailors slept, ate, and worked together. There were, however, no black officers in the U.S. Navy until the Civil War.
* Of the ninety-six American casualties on board the Lawrence, thirty-seven suffered from splinter wounds, twenty-five from compound fractures, and ten from contusions. Surgeon’s Mate Parsons performed six amputations on board—none of the six survived.
* After the battle, the commander of the Kentucky militia, Colonel Richard Johnson, claimed that he had personally killed Tecumseh, and the fame he gained as a result helped make him presidential candidate Martin Van Buren’s running mate in 1836. The losing presidential candidate that year was Johnson’s commander at the Battle of the Thames, William Henry Harrison, who turned the tables on Van Buren four years later and became president in 1841.
* The feud between Perry and Elliott became an issue for historians as well. Two of the most distinguished of America’s naval historians, James Fenimore Cooper and Alfred Thayer Mahan, took opposite sides. Writing thirty years after the battle, Cooper took Elliott’s side, arguing that Perry’s orders compelled Elliott to hold his position in the line of battle and insisting that Elliott’s arrival with the trailing gunboats was as important to the eventual American victory as Perry’s breaking the British line. Mahan drew exactly the opposite conclusion, pointing out that Perry’s orders required every captain to follow the movements of the Lawrence (which Elliott failed to do) and noting that Perry had used Nelson’s phrasing at Trafalgar in declaring that no captain could do very wrong if he placed his ship alongside that of the enemy (which Elliott also failed to do). On balance, Mahan makes the more convincing argument. See James Fenimore Cooper, The Battle of Lake Erie (Cooperstown, NY: H. & E. Phinney, 1843), and Alfred Thayer Mahan, Sea Power in Its Relations to the War of 1812 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1918).
† Congress appropriated $255,000 in general prize money, plus an additional $5,000 for Perry.
* That vessel was the famous Confederate submarine Hunley, which sank the USS Housatonic off Charleston Harbor on February 17, 1864, but which herself perished in attempting to return to port.
* Unlike the French Gloire, which was protected by iron armor bolted over a wooden frame, the British Warrior was built entirely of iron. The Warrior remains in honorary commission today and is moored at Portsmouth near HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship at Trafalgar.
* For more than a quarter of a century afterward—indeed, until the day they died—Brooke and Porter quarreled about which of them deserved credit for the design of the CSS Virginia. In 1887 they each wrote articles for Century magazine emphasizing the centrality of his own role and disparaging that of the other.
* The Confederate Navy and southern railroads competed for scarce iron throughout the war. In January 1863 the Confederate Congress passed legislation that authorized the Navy to seize excess iron from railroads, but state governors protested and put so many roadblocks in the way that the Navy remained desperately short of iron.
* The Ericsson-designed Oregon gun did not explode, though because of the failure of Stockton’s Peacemaker, the Navy never fired it again. It sits now just inside the main gate at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis.
* In addition to Ericsson’s Monitor, the Ironclad Board also approved two other designs: the Samuel Pook–designed Galena, which proved a great disappointment, and the armored frigate New Ironsides, which performed satisfactorily if unspectacularly as the flagship of the South Atlantic Blockading Squadron.
* Selfridge later claimed that he returned to the Cumberland that evening and rescued the ship’s flag, which was still flying at the mizzen. According to his memoirs, he hid it ashore, but when he returned for it later, it was gone.
* Though Buchanan was certain that he was struck by a bullet fired from the shore, a Marine corporal on board the Cumberland later claimed that he had fired the shot, and even received a medal for it.
* In much the same way, the advocates of an American invasion of Iraq in 2003 argued that even if Iraq was not complicit in the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the wickedness of Saddam Hussein, by itself, was sufficient reason for war. The difference was that in 1898 a belligerent Congress pushed war on a reluctant president, while in 2003 a president determined on war secured a congressional resolution despite widespread doubts.
* Many Americans began to regret passage of the Teller Amendment almost at once. Congressmen who had voted for it in the enthusiasm of the moment repented their vote, insisting that they had supported it, in the words of Albert Beveridge, “in a moment of impulsive but mistaken generosity.” The subsequent Platt Amendment, inserted into the 1901 Cuban constitution, effectively repudiated the Teller Amendment by declaring that the United States could intervene in Cuba any time Cuba’s “security and stability” were imperiled.
* Secretary Long denied that Proctor, Roosevelt, or anyone else, for that matter, had had any influence on his decision. In his diary, Long wrote on October 9, 1898, that while he had received the usual letters of support on behalf of both candidates, those letters “had no weight at all” and that he made up his mind to appoint Dewey “before the receipt of any of them.” Perhaps. But Long’s pique at being manipulated is evident in his decision to withhold from Dewey the rank of rear admiral, which was traditional for the commander of the Asian Squadron. Instead, Dewey took command as a commodore and did not receive his promotion to admiral until after his victory in Manila Bay.
* After the battle was over, American journalists and some naval officers tried hard to suggest that the opposing squadrons had been roughly equal in strength; a few even declared that the Spanish squadron had been superior. Most such efforts involved adding the guns of Spanish shore batteries to the enemy total, or counting as part of Montojo’s squadron any vessel that might have been used for hostile purposes if it had been armed. But three stark facts demonstrate the disparity between the o
pposing squadrons: Dewey’s oldest ship was newer than Montojo’s newest ship, Dewey’s slowest ship was faster than Montojo’s fastest ship, and while the Spanish had no gun afloat larger than 6.2 inches, the Americans had three cruisers that carried eight-inch guns.
† This harbor, now the site of a major U.S. Navy base, was then called Subig Bay.
* After the battle, a British businessman claimed ownership of the wreck of the small boat that beached itself near Sangley Point and insisted that it had merely been trying to get out of the way of the fighting by running to Manila. Most Americans, however, continued to insist that it, or its consort, or both had been Spanish torpedo boats.
* Postwar analysis showed just how awful American marksmanship was. Out of 9,500 shells fired by ships of the American squadron, only 123 of them actually hit a Spanish vessel, an efficiency of about 1.3 percent. The best record was achieved by the largest guns. Of 405 shells fired by the eight-inch rifles on the three big American cruisers, 16 of them (nearly 4 percent) found their target. Spanish marksmanship, however, was even worse.
* Otis was subsequently replaced by Brigadier General Arthur MacArthur, who had won a Medal of Honor on Missionary Ridge in the Civil War and was the father of Douglas MacArthur. It was Arthur MacArthur who presided over much of the subsequent fighting with the Filipino insurrectionists.
* During the insurrection, Americans also began to refer to the Filipino opponents as “gooks.” Subsequently U.S. forces applied that term to the rebels in Nicaragua, to Pacific islanders in World War II, and to Korean and Vietnamese soldiers in those wars.
* The United States had three other carriers: the Ranger (CV-4) and the Essex (CV-9) were in the Atlantic, and the Wasp (CV-7) was on its way from the Atlantic to the Pacific, though it would arrive too late to participate in the Battle of Midway. Once it was repaired, the Saratoga (CV-3) also headed for Hawaii, but like the Wasp, it would arrive only after the battle was over.