Army & Navy – Air Power is Sea Power

There is no excuse for an aircraft carrier being sunk either by gunfire or submarine attack, and any carrier so sunk was poorly operated at the time.

So wrote Annapolis-trained, 34-year-old Lieut. Commander John Austin Collett, naval aviator, in the current issue of the United States Naval Proceedings. In the traditionally closemouthed Navy a young officer may speak his piece if it is technically sound.

The U.S. has lost a carrier to submarine attack: in Vice Admiral Robert Lee Ghormley’s command in the South Pacific the Wasp was nailed by a Japanese submarine off the Solomons. To submarines or gunfire the Royal Navy has lost no less than four (Courageous, Glorious, Ark Royal, Eagle). Naming none of these names, Flyer Collett wrote:

“If a carrier maintains a speed of at least 20 knots, the probability of a successful submarine attack is very low. Unfortunately some carriers in this war have been tied to ten-knot tankers and transports as if they had guns sticking out of every port and all the underwater protection in the world. It is remarkable that such ships have not been hit more often than they have.”

Britain’s loss of the Glorious by gunfire (in battle with Scharnhorst and Gneisenau) seemed also the result of bad handling, under the Collett doctrine. He found that only “extremely bad weather” or a lucky break could enable a battleship or cruiser to close with a carrier.

Carrierman to the core, Commander Collett probed deeper, came up with a doctrine in flat opposition to the conviction of most high-ranking naval officers that there is still substantial need for the battleship. Of Midway, one of the decisive battles of world history, he wrote:

“The American carriers proceeded to launch an air attack on the Japanese carriers which brought them to a standstill . . . and resulted in the crippling and eventual sinking of all four of them. Before this could be completed the Japanese had located the carrier Yorktown and put her out of action with a well-coordinated air-group attack.

“Seagoing air power . . . had accomplished what land-based air power had failed to do. … The picture which then existed was that of a greatly superior enemy surface fleet, which included battleships, helpless to advance in the face of a greatly inferior surface fleet, without battleships, which still possessed some seagoing air power. (This should dispose of the statement that we must have battleships if the enemy has battleships.)”

From the battle of Midway, Commander Collett drew these conclusions:

> “The aircraft carrier, not the battleship, is the backbone of the fleet.

> “The aircraft carrier is not in the fleet to protect surface ships but as the main offensive striking weapon.

> “The aircraft carrier enjoys a superiority over other contemporary surface ships which is greater than any previous type of ship has enjoyed over its contemporaries in all history.

> “Land-based air power, as exemplified by the big bomber doing high-altitude horizontal bombing, is ineffective against a fleet equipped with seagoing air power.

> “The role of the battleship as a weapon with which to win battles at sea a la Jutland has practically vanished.

> “Any attempt to say that naval battles will be fought by lines of battleships, once the carriers have been sunk, is wishful thinking. Somebody’s carriers won’t be sunk and he will have complete control of the situation.

>-“Air power has not displaced sea power—air power is sea power. The principles of naval warfare as laid down by Mahan still hold—only the weapons have changed.”