Navy, United States

NAVY, UNITED STATES

NAVY, UNITED STATES, dates its existence from 13 October 1775, when the Continental Congress voted to purchase a small number of warships in defense of American liberties, then being abused by the British colonial power. In the course of the War of Independence, the Continental Navy operated more than fifty warships, including thirteen frigates Congress ordered built. Their mission was to protect trade and to prey on British commerce. John Paul Jones, captain of warship Bonhomme Richard, brought the war to the enemy's shores when he led daring raids on the English coast. When asked to surrender his ship during a fierce battle with Royal Navy warship Serapis in 1779, Jones answered, "I have not yet begun to fight," and led his sailors to victory. In October 1781, combined American and French land and sea forces finally compelled the surrender of British Lord Cornwallis and his army at Yorktown, Virginia. American independence followed this decisive victory.

A New Nation's Navy

During the next twenty years, corsairs controlled by the Barbary powers of North Africa repeatedly sortied from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli to seize the merchant ships and cargoes of the new and energetic, but virtually defenseless, American nation. In the last years of the eighteenth century, Congress established a Department of the Navy, which soon included a U.S. Marine Corps, and authorized construction of six fast, powerfully armed frigates and other vessels to deal with overseas threats. USS Constitution and the other warships of the United States eventually convinced the rulers of the Barbary states that preying on American overseas commerce could be disastrous to their fortunes.

The navies of France and Great Britain also interfered with American trading vessels. U.S. and French warships fought pitched sea battles during the so-called Quasi-War of 1798–1800 over maritime trade and other issues (see France, Quasi-War with). The British often angered Americans by stopping their ships and seizing or "impressing" into the Royal Navy American merchant sailors and even U.S. Navy bluejackets. In 1812, impressment and other contentious issues finally led to war. The U.S. Navy was heavily outgunned by the Royal Navy, but the speed and firepower of the American frigates and the professional skill of their sailors routinely brought victory to the American side. Commodore Thomas Macdonough won an impressive victory on inland waters in the Battle of Lake Champlain. Peace in Europe removed the principal irritants that had led to war between the United States and Great Britain, prompting an end to the last war between these two nations. American success in battle ensured a peace treaty in 1814 that protected U.S. interests.

During the next forty-five years, U.S. naval vessels sailed in all the world's oceans while charting new lands and seas, promoting U.S. diplomatic interests, and protecting American merchantmen. The navy fought Caribbean pirates, established a patrol off the coast of Africa to stop the transportation of slaves to the Americas, and played a prominent role in the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848.

Civil War and Postwar Decline

The focus of the U.S. Navy turned toward home during the 1860s, as the issues of slavery and states' rights brought on internal conflict. Soon after eleven Southern states seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America, President Abraham Lincoln directed the navy to blockade Norfolk, New Orleans, and other key ports.

To counter the blockade, the Confederate navy launched steam-powered ironclad warships, including CSS Virginia. In March 1862, the vessel boldly attacked the Union squadron off Norfolk and in a matter of hours destroyed two wood-hull sailing ships. With disaster looming, the North's own revolutionary ironclad, USS Monitor, arrived on the scene and fought a pitched battle that prevented the Virginia from destroying more Union ships. The Battle of Hampton Roads heralded a new era of naval warfare.

In addition to blockading Southern ports, the U.S. Navy mounted combined operations with the U.S. Army on the Mississippi and other major rivers to control those waterways and divide the Confederate states. David Farragut led naval forces that won the battles of New Orleans and Mobile Bay while David Dixon Porter helped General Ulysses S. Grant seize Vicksburg on the Mississippi. In short, the U.S. Navy was vital to Union victory in the long, bloody Civil War that ended in April 1865.

The absence of a threat from overseas and the small size of the post–Civil War merchant marine convinced Congress that funding for a large, modern fleet was not warranted. By the 1880s, the huge, powerful wartime fleet had declined to a small force of obsolete, rotting sailing ships and rusting monitors.

Emergence of a Sea Power

The navy's prospects began to change in the 1880s, when Congress authorized construction of the fleet's first steel-hull cruisers—USS Atlanta, USS Boston, and USS Chicago.

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Naval strategists Theodore Roosevelt and Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan argued that the new industrial power and maritime commercial interests of the United States demanded a modern fleet capable of winning a major sea battle against any European naval power.

Their sea power theories passed the test in the Spanish-American War (partly ignited by the destruction of USS Maine on 15 February 1898 in the harbor of Havana, Cuba). U.S. naval forces under George Dewey and William T. Sampson destroyed enemy squadrons in the battles of Manila Bay and Santiago de Cuba.

American expansionists and navalists stressed anew that the United States needed a first-rank navy to protect its newly won overseas empire. As president, Theodore Roosevelt championed construction of a battle fleet of heavily armed and armored battleships, propelled by coal-fired boilers and capable of seizing and maintaining control of the sea. During this period, the U.S. Navy and its foreign counterparts also developed two weapon systems that would revolutionize twentieth-century naval warfare—the submarine and the airplane.

Naval leaders recognized that to operate the machinery of the new steel warships they needed more technically skilled bluejackets, professionally prepared officers, and a more rational naval organization. This era witnessed the creation of technical schools for enlisted personnel and establishment of the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. In 1915, in response to the efforts of reformist naval officers, Congress established the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations to improve direction of the battle fleet.

The U.S. Navy's most important accomplishments during World War I were two fold. First was the provision of warship escorts to Allied convoys bringing supplies and American troops to the European theater. Second was the laying of a massive minefield in the North Sea where German submarines operated.

With international agreements restricting the construction of battleships during the period between the world wars, the navy focused on developing improved weapon systems and battle tactics. The future of naval aviation got a boost when aircraft carriers USS Langley, USS Saratoga, and USS Lexington entered the fleet. Almost yearly during the 1930s, the navy refined its battle tactics in "fleet problems," or exercises. The Marine Corps, tasked in war plans with establishing advanced bases in the vast Pacific Ocean, developed a doctrine for amphibious warfare.

The surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941 heralded a war in which sea power would figure prominently. As the naval, air, and ground forces of Japan seized U.S. and Allied possessions throughout the western Pacific in early 1942, the Kriegs-marine of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany unleashed U-boats against merchant ships all along America's East Coast. The U.S. Navy defeated both threats with decisive victories against the Japanese at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and against the Germans in a long antisub-marine campaign in the Atlantic Ocean. Allied codebreaking and other intelligence units played key roles in both victories. The start of operations on and around Guadalcanal Island by U.S. Navy and Marine Corps units in August 1942 marked the opening of a major Allied counteroffensive in the South Pacific.

Meanwhile, U.S. and British naval forces had deployed Allied armies ashore in North Africa that went on to help destroy German and Italian forces in the combat theater. Following on this success, U.S. Navy and Royal Navy amphibious assault forces put American and British troops on Italian soil with landings in Sicily and on the mainland at Salerno.

To strengthen the Allied advance on Japan, in November 1943 Admiral Chester W. Nimitz launched his Pacific Fleet on a major thrust across the central Pacific. The bloody but successful marine landing on Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands was followed by the seizure of the Japanese-held Marshall Islands. The Japanese fleet tried to prevent Allied capture of the Marianas in June 1944 but lost hundreds of first-line aircraft in the attempt during the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

On 6 June 1944—D-Day—the U.S. and British navies executed one of the most masterful amphibious operations in history when they deployed ashore on the Normandy coast of France five combat divisions. The Allied armies that followed them ashore in succeeding months joined Soviet forces in bringing about the defeat of Nazi Germany and the end of the war in Europe in May 1945.

Admiral Nimitz's fleet helped pave the way for the defeat of the Pacific enemy with its decisive victory over the Imperial Japanese Navy in the October 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf. The elimination of enemy forces in the Philippines and on the islands of Iwo Jima and Okinawa during the first half of 1945, combined with the destruction of the Japanese merchant marine by the U.S. submarine force, foretold the demise of the Japanese empire. That end, hastened when American planes dropped atomic bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, came with the Japanese surrender onboard battleship USS Missouri on 2 September 1945.

A Global Navy

The navy suffered severe cutbacks in ships and sailors during the post–World War II years but still mustered enough strength to oppose the invasion of South Korea by North Korean communist forces on 25 June 1950. In this first conflict of the Cold War, navy and marine units executed one of the most decisive amphibious operations in history with the landing at Inchon behind enemy lines. Aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, minesweepers, hospital ships, and supply vessels proved indispensable to success in this war, which ended on 27 July 1953.

Throughout the Cold War, powerful U.S. naval forces remained permanently deployed on the periphery of the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and other communist countries. Throughout the era, carrier task forces responded to threats and crises in the Mediterranean and the western Pacific. During the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, the navy was instrumental in isolating communist Cuba from outside support and monitoring the removal of Soviet nuclear-armed missiles from the island nation.

A vital national mission of the navy throughout the Cold War was to deter a direct attack on the United States by the Soviet Union. To that end, the navy developed nuclear-powered Polaris, Poseidon, and Trident submarines, carrying nuclear-armed, long-range ballistic missiles, and deployed those vessels deep under the surface of the world's oceans. Fast, quiet, and lethal attack submarines prepared to destroy Soviet naval vessels if it came to war.

During the long struggle for Southeast Asia in the 1960s and early 1970s, navy carrier aircraft struck enemy bridges, railways, and supply depots. Battleships and destroyers bombarded troops concentrations; patrol ships and "Swift" boats prevented coastal infiltration; and riverine warfare units teamed up with army troops to fight Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army units on the waterways of Indochina.

A new concern developed in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the Soviet Union increasingly put to sea heavily armed and capable warships and built a powerful military establishment in Russia. To counter the threat, the navy developed a new operational approach—a Maritime Strategy—that emphasized offensive action. If the Soviet Union started a war, the navy planned to launch attacks by powerful carrier and amphibious groups against enemy forces in northern Russia and in the Soviet Far East.

Even after the demise of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the need for international peace and order demanded that the navy remain on station in distant waters. The unprovoked invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein's Iraqi armed forces on 2 August 1990 signaled that naked aggression would continue to plague the world. As part of an international coalition, the navy deployed ships, planes, and troops to the Persian Gulf region to defend America's allies and to liberate Kuwait from the Iraqis. In Operation Desert Storm, which began on 17 January 1991, Tomahawk ship-launched cruise missiles and carrier aircraft struck targets throughout Iraq and Kuwait. A massive ground assault by U.S. Marine, U.S. Army, and coalition units, assisted by a naval feint operation, ended the short war on 28 February.

The end of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty-first brought the navy no respite. Ethnic conflict in the Balkans required navy carriers and cruise missile–launching surface ships and submarines to take part in strike operations against Serbian forces in Bosnia and Kosovo. The bloody terrorist attack on the United States on 11 September 2001 and the subsequent U.S.led war on terrorism involved aircraft carriers, missile-launching ships, SEAL special warfare units, and other naval forces in military operations from Afghanistan to the Philippines. In short, throughout its more than 225 years of existence, the U.S. Navy has defended the United States and its interests at sea, on land, and in the air all across the globe.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baer, George W. One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890–1990. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994.

Bradford, James C., ed. Quarterdeck & Bridge: Two Centuries of American Naval Leaders. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1997.

Godson, Susan H. Serving Proudly: A History of Women in the U.S. Navy. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 2001.

Holland, W. J., Jr., ed. The Navy. Washington: Naval Historical Foundation, 2000.

Howarth, Stephen. To Shining Sea: A History of the United States Navy, 1775–1991. New York: Random House, 1991.

Marolda, Edward J. By Sea, Air, and Land: An Illustrated History of the U.S. Navy and the War in Southeast Asia. Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1994.

Marolda, Edward J., and Robert J. Schneller, Jr. Shield and Sword: The U.S. Navy and the Persian Gulf War. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2001.

Millett, Allan R. Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps. Rev. ed. New York: The Free Press, 1991.

Morison, Samuel E. The Two Ocean War: A Short History of the United States Navy in the Second World War. Boston: Little Brown, 1963.

Spector, Ronald H. Eagle Against the Sun: The American War with Japan. New York: Free Press, 1984.

Edward J. Marolda

See also Battle Fleet Cruise Around the World ; Naval Academy ; Naval Operations, Chief of ; Navy, Confederate ; Navy, Department of the ; World War II, Navy in .