STRATEGY: Naval Policy, 1940

Official bible of naval officers is their U. S. Naval Policy. The Navy’s sacred General Board periodically compiles and revises this document, requires officers to follow it religiously in their public utterances. Issued last week was Naval Policy, 1940. Officers and informed civilians eagerly scanned it, looking for any changes in Navy thinking since the last revision in 1937.

Only important new statement of policy was “to organize and maintain the Navy for major operations in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.” In 1937 few dreamed that British sea power might be endangered by German air power, and the U. S. Navy’s chief interest was in the Pacific alone. In that same year the British debated whether to put less emphasis on battleships, more on air power. They decided to concentrate on battleships and lesser surface craft, left naval aviation a sickly second. Last week the U. S. Navy in its new statement of policy took the same tack, backed it up by contracting to spend $700,000,000 on seven new, 45,000-ton battleships. Also ordered (for delivery by 1945) was the rest of the $3,900,000,000 second-ocean navy: eight aircraft carriers, 27 cruisers, 115 destroyers, 43 submarines. Changed not a whit was the Navy’s basic conception of air power (“to maintain and develop naval aviation as an integral part of the naval forces”). Translated, this meant that in the perennial war for supremacy between officers of the Air and of the Sea, the Sea did not mean to give an inch.