Army & Navy – COMMAND: War between the Services

The U.S. Army & Navy backed away from the war and squared off to fight each other. The new weapons were words, the battlefield the committee rooms and the lobbies of Congress. The issue: whether the two service departments should be merged into a single Department of Military Security.

The first shot for the Army, which is strong for the merger, was fired across the long, mahogany table in the Senate caucus room by sobersided Robert Patterson, Secretary of War. Like the first shot in a bombardment, it was to fix the range. The future peace of the world, said the Secretary, would depend not only upon the policies of the U.S., but also upon the strength which the U.S. maintained to back up these policies. Having fixed the range, the Secretary began to pepper the target with arguments to prove that unification of the armed forces was necessary for maximum strength, efficiency, economy.

General’s Drumfire. The Secretary’s reasoning was closely knit, but it was General of the Army George Catlett Marshall who laid down the most effective drumfire. Probably more than any other citizen, George Marshall is trusted by Congress. The members of the Senate Military Affairs Committee, who had stood as a mark of respect to the neatly turned-out, pink-faced Chief of Staff when he entered the room, were clearly impressed as the old soldier sent over his shots:

¶ National security is measured by the combination of land, sea and air forces, so that there must be an overall and not piecemeal appraisal “of what is required to solve the single problem of national security with the greatest economy.”

¶ War experience has shown that the “committee method” exemplified by the Joint Chiefs of Staff is no substitute for truly unified direction. Even under the stress of war, said the Chief of Staff, agreement among the Joint Chiefs was reached “at times only by numerous compromises and after long delays.”

¶ Although the Joint Chiefs setup still exists, Congress is now working to fix the postwar strength of the Navy and the Marine Corps, and “the War Department has been neither consulted nor informed.”

For Equals. George Marshall’s last shot was right on the target. It bore in upon the committeemen that the old Army-Navy game was still being played. The two services had separate approaches to separate committees of the House and Senate,.for separate funds to achieve overlapping objectives.

Like Patterson, Marshall was careful to emphasize that the War Department was proposing a merger of equals; there was no suggestion that the Navy should be swallowed by the Army. They also insisted that the air forces (except liaison and scouting craft) should become the third, co-equal branch.

The Senators were sympathetic, they asked only questions that gave George Marshall a chance to beef up his arguments. He conceded that victory might have come sooner if there had been a unified department “in the period when we were struggling to build up power.” He emphasized the waste inherent in a dual system, e.g., duplicate hospitals, one Army and one Navy, side by side on Espiritu Santo. General Marshall also anticipated one of the main lines of the Navy’s counterattack: he urged that Congress should not bother itself with details now, but should lay down the broad principle of a unified military department—the details would work themselves out by evolutionary process.

Counterbattery. The Navy was far from being caught unprepared by the Army’s offensive, but still it had to improvise a defense. Secretary Forrestal conferred time & again, sometimes until far into the night, with the top brass in his department—Admirals King and Edwards, Home and Mitscher—and was still working feverishly at week’s end to perfect a line which would fend off the Army without offending the public.

This week, Jim Forrestal went before the Senate committee and began his counterbattery fire. Conceding that unified command in the field was essential for operating efficiency, he still would not admit that the principle was valid in Washington. He feared that the proposed “departmental colossus” would be militarily unsound, and too much for one man to administer.

What Secretary Forrestal and the Navy wanted most was that Congress declare an armistice, and set up a civilian committee to study every detail and consequence of a merger. Like his admirals, Forrestal feared that Congress was being asked to rush the shaping of a single department without shaping the details which would make it workable.

The Navy was on the defensive, and playing for time. But the fight was out iri the open. So far, only the dignified rumble of the big shots had been heard. Soon the infighting would begin and Congress would have to make up its mind while the battle raged.