The Navy's spokesmen will always support "the party line". That doesn't make it any less nonsense. We have the best Navy in the world. But that is totally meaningless if it is too small to handle the threat.
In WWII the U.S. Navy had over a million men and almost 1000 destroyers alone. It was structured to deal with two wars and one major regional conflict simultaneously.
Now our Navy has less than 300 warships and can barely deal with regional conflicts. And this is with naval supremacy, i.e. no naval threat.
Soon we will be down to a measly 200 warships while a regional asian superpower, China, is building her navy to challenge us and win. Gee, that sounds so familiar!
No. Our Navy, as with the rest of the Armed Forces, needs to expand. Sure they need to be lean, rapid, and flexible. That's not incompatible with numbers. But if we keep the current course, we'll become what Britian's Royal Navy is; excellent, but not a contender.
All the babble in the world can come out of the Pentagon. But it cannot disguise the fact we need size as well as quality. Now its a matter of national will.
A friend of mine is a naval reservist in his middle forties. He has been on active duty for about four years. He does that by requesting active duty cruises. He has had a heart attack and has an artificial hip.
He told me that not one of the vessels he served on was much over seventy five per cent manned. He does not paint a pretty picture of our naval ability.
"In WWII the U.S. Navy had over a million men and almost 1000 destroyers alone. It was structured to deal with two wars and one major regional conflict simultaneously."
"Now our Navy has less than 300 warships and can barely deal with regional conflicts. And this is with naval supremacy, i.e. no naval threat."
The U.S. Navy had 3.32 million men in service at the end of World War II, a bit more than the one million your post suggests. They also had around 738 destroyers out of 1,166 major surface and submarine combatants in August 1945.
As to your second assertion about our current Naval size, Right on! The US had 99 available carrier decks at height of its Naval power at the end of WWII. Sure only 19 of them were Fleet carriers, but they all contributed. Heck, even the Brits mustered 53 total (fleet and escort) carrier decks... Now we are arguing if maybe 10 carriers and reduced escorts will be enough (say a 250 ship Navy) in the future against China. Ah, but will all the capability expansion due to "network centric" warfare the combat effectiveness of the reduced number of ships will be so much greater than before that the reduced numbers will not matter... That is until to many ships are sunk in action, letting the U.S. Navy and the American public discover the algebraic fact that zero times a newfangled +250% effectiveness is still ZERO...
When WWII started in 1939 RN still was the strongest Navy in the world, also because it was the only Navy with a decent chance of deploying everywhere (which is a damned important asset for a great power navy). The RN could go straight to the Far East and fight there with a decent chance of success, but both USN and IJN were just strong regional navies. That changed very much for USN during WWII, but hadn’t yet in 1939.
I am not so sure they were the strongest Navy, they did have the most cruisers for their Empire before the War. I thought that the 5:5:3 ratio was to keep them in the game versus the US and Japan...
Type Pre-war Pre-war Aug 1945 Aug 1945
Royal Navy US Navy Royal Navy US Navy
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Carriers, Fleet 5 7 5 19
Carriers, Fleet Light 2 2 8 9
Carriers, Escort 0 0 40* 71
Battleships/Battlecruisers 15 15 15 25
Cruisers, Heavy & Light 66 37 67 72
Destroyers/Destroyer Escorts 184 171 308** 738
Submarines, Fleet 60 112 162 232
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Total Major Warships 332 344 605 1,166
Notes:
* = Includes 39 Lend-Lease Escort Carriers from USA
** = Includes 50 Lend-Lease Destroyers from USA
Source: Royal Navy and World War 2, Losses
Source: Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center, Prewar
Source: Department of the Navy, Naval Historical Center, Postwar
Source: Hazegray Naval History
Source: US Department of Defense FY 2005 budget PDF file, Table 7-5, DoD Manpower - 1945, page (212/227)
The August 1945 US Navy totals do NOT include ship classes such as Mine Warfare, Patrol(Corvettes, PT boats, etc), Amphibious (LST, LSD, etc), Auxiliary (tankers, cargo etc) in any way. If all the ships in commission in August 1945 were listed the the US Navy would have an end strength of 6,768 ships. The largest Navy which has ever existed in the history of the world.
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