detection devices, weapons, and ship and aircraft systems had been developed to cope with the undersea threat.

Many of the World War II ships and craft would see service in the Vietnam conflict, along with the SEABEES. Concepts such as the Advanced Base Functional Component Systems would prove ideally suited to the establishment of support facilities during the period of American combat involvement with Vietnam. The naval officers advancing to positions of high command responsibilities during the Vietnam era would benefit from their combat experiences in World War II. They would draw upon the knowledge gained from that war both for combat and logistical actions, such as the establishment and operation of mobile support forces and advance bases.

Uncertainties as to the Future

During World War II, one unsettling note, at least insofar as the Navy was concerned, was the advocacy of fundamental revisions in departmental organization and responsibilities and in the control and support of military forces. The proposals were motivated, in part, by advances made in aviation and concepts of "strategic" air power. They also stemmed from differences between the Army and the Navy concerning the direction of the armed forces and the management of their support. The concepts proposed were, in some respects, an outgrowth of a sweeping reorganization of the War Department, initiated by the Army Chief of Staff, General George C. Marshall, shortly after America entered the war. Three commands were established: Army Ground Forces, Army Air Forces, and Services of Supply."

8

As early as 1916, 1917, and 1919, congressional bills had been introduced which would have established a Cabinet-level Department of Aviation to control both Army and Navy aviation and with civil air responsibilities as well. Other proposals were introduced in 1925; one would have abolished the Navy and reconstituted the War Department as a Department of Defense controlling a united Army-Navy Service; another would have placed civil and military aviation under a Department of Defense with undersecretaries for land, sea, and air; another bill would have established an Air Corps within the War Department, in a way similar to that of the Marine Corps in the Department of the Navy. Both the War and Navy Departments were opposed to the degree of autonomy being proposed for aviation under these plans. A summary of the legislative history of unification, beginning in 1921, is contained in Exhibit I of the report to Secretary Forrestal forwarded by Ferdinand Eberstadt on 25 September 1945, entitled Unification of the War and Navy Departments and Postwar Organization for National Security (79th Cong., 1st sess.) (Washington: GPO, 1945), pp. 241-51 (hereafter cited as Eberstadt Report).

D

Forrest C. Pogue, Ordeal and Hope, 1939–1942, Vol. II of George C. Marshall (New York: Viking Press, 1965), pp. 8, 81-86, 120, 289–301.

In November 1943, Marshall submitted, for consideration by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a recommendation that a single Department of War be created after the war. Marshall sought a prompt decision to facilitate planning for the postwar period. The justifications advanced for a single department were "real unity of command," centralization of "numerous functions" to eliminate "duplication and overlapping," and "centralized control of the supply of all Services in peacetime. . . ." The single department would be organized into "three major groups: the Ground Forces, the Air Forces, the Naval Forces, together with a general Supply Department." This proposal became the subject of study in the Navy Department and the Joint Staff.10

On 24 April 1944 a House of Representatives select committee, chaired by Clifton A. Woodrum of Virginia, began hearings on postwar military policy. The committee made the third agenda item a "study of the development of unity of command," the first order of business. Six Army general officers, the Secretary of War, the Under Secretary of War, and the Assistant Secretary of War for Air, presented well organized and mutually supporting testimony. All the witnesses from the War Department criticized the current organization of the armed forces under the Departments of War and Navy. What the Army witnesses proposed was the establishment of a single Department of the Armed Forces. Under a Chief of Staff, the military would be regrouped into four subdivisions: ground forces, air forces, sea forces, and a common supply and service force.'

11

One of the more significant aspects of the hearings was a recommendation for the consolidation, amalgamation, and centralization of authority of many functions for which each of the two departments were then responsible. If implemented, rather than being in control of all the means and activities essential to the readiness and effectiveness of the Fleet, the Navy would be dependent on others, in competition with the Army and the Air Force. A multitude of centers of functional authority and added complexities in the decision-making processes would result.

Later events would prove these recommendations to be forewarnings of changes during the Vietnam era when unity, elimination of duplication,

10 Memo, COMINCH to SECNAV, GB No. 446, ser 002416 of 4 Nov. 1943; ltr, Chairman, GB to SECNAV, GB No. 446, ser 269 of 17 May 1944.

11

"U.S., Congress, House, Select Committee on Post-War Military Policy, Hearings on a Proposal to Establish a Single Department of Armed Forces (78th Cong., 2nd sess.) (Washington: GPO, 1944), pp. 1-111 (hereafter cited as Single Department of Armed Forces).

and centralization would approach the status of primary objectives. Recommendations by the witnesses included consolidation of fiscal responsibilities, amalgamation of administrative services, and formation of a common legal service. Also included were unified control of research, development, and design; consolidation of research and development experimental establishments; consolidation of production and engineering supervision; combination of procurement organization under one head; and direct control of production. Other recommendations included a single organization for munitions loading, supplies, research and development, radar, guns, gasoline, textiles, raw materials and food, and auditing; consolidation of storage and issuance of parts and spares, and depot and warehousing functions; and a single petroleum agency. One agency for construction was suggested. Organizations to handle intelligence, weather, photographic work, air charts, and communications were proposed. Administration of medical matters, consolidation of hospitalization and evacuation, and real estate were recommended. A common personnel policy and procurement division, a unified personnel organization, consolidated training establishments, unified schools for intelligence, programming and control, aircraft engineering, and gunnery officers were included. The War Department witnesses proposed the restriction of naval aviation to carriers and ship-based aircraft, a single procurement agency for aircraft, and consolidation of ground organizations for the support of aircraft squadrons and groups.

12

Four days after the beginning of the congressional hearings in 1944, the first naval officer, Vice Admiral Richard S. Edwards, Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, testified. He expressed opposition to opening the investigation on the assumption that the answers to efficiency could be found only in a single department of defense. Edwards stressed that "the immediate need is to get along with the war," "the present organization is producing effective results," experimental organization "could but interfere with the progress of operations," decisions should be based upon experience in a war "not yet in its final phase," that "no one yet knows what part the United States would play in the peace," and that the services should not leap into a reorganization that might, while correcting some faults, introduce others more serious.'

13

After three weeks of hearings, the committee concluded that it did

12 Ibid., pp. 15, 16, 19, 34. 48, 50-52, 56, 71, 81-85, 91, 94–95, 98, 100-11.

13 Ibid..

pp. 137-38; see also Vincent Davis, Postwar Defense Policy and the U.S. Navy, 1943– 1946 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1962).

"not believe that the time... [was] oportune to consider detailed legislation which would undertake to write the pattern of any proposed consolidation, if indeed such consolidation is ultimately decided to be a wise course of action."

,, 14

As the hearings of the Woodrum committee drew to a close, the Joint Chiefs of Staff convened the Special Committee for Reorganization of National Defense. When Admiral King saw the special committee paper entitled "Point of Departure for Work of Special Committee," two months after it had been approved by deputies of the Joint Chiefs, he concluded that their approval "has set up a situation which bars an objective view of the whole problem of the reorganization of national defense.'

"15

The committee report, completed in April 1945, recommended organizing a single department of defense in which the Army, Navy, and Air Force and commanders of areas, theaters, and independent commands would be directly subordinate to a "Commander of Armed Forces." The latter would have his own budget officer and be Chief of Staff to the President. The senior naval representative, Admiral James O. Richardson, submitted a dissenting report."

16

A Senate bill which proposed a single defense department, a Director of Supply, and other significant features, had been introduced in January 1945, but was not considered until after the war.1

14

The Postwar Navy

During the first two years after World War II, the national defense

U.S., Congress, House, Select Committee on Post-War Military Policy, Report on Post-War Military Policy (78th Cong., 2nd sess.) (Washington: GPO, 1944), p. 4. According to his biographer, General Marshall was irritated with the President for opposing any proposal for consolidation and with the Navy for its influence on Roosevelt, but the general followed the example of Leahy and King in refraining from appearing before the committee; Forrest C. Pogue, Organizer of Victory, 1943-1945, Vol. III of George C. Marshall (New York: Viking Press, 1973), pp. 364–65.

15

16

Memo, COMINCH to VCNO, ser 5937 of 17 Aug. 1944.

U.S., Congress, Senate, Committee on Military Affairs, Hearings on Department of Armed Forces Department of Military Security (79th Cong., 1st sess.) (Washington: GPO, 1945) (hereafter cited as Department of Armed Forces), pp. 411-36; ltr, Chairman, General Board to SECNAV, GB No. 446, ser 284 of 15 June 1945.

"For a comprehensive discussion of organizational changes which took place in the Army, the Navy, and the Department of Defense from 1900 to 1959, the origins of these changes, and factors influencing the changes, see Paul Y. Hammond, Organizing for Defense: The American Military Establishment in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,

organizations and the relationships between them would be, in the main, those carried over from wartime. One of the few changes during this period concerned command authority within the Navy. President Harry S. Truman's Executive Order 9635 disestablished, on 10 October 1945, the billet of Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, whose responsibilities were transferred to the Chief of Naval Operations. King, now Fleet Admiral, provided for a smooth transition by transferring the main functions and key staff officers of the former command to the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations (Operations). The new Deputy CNO was Vice Admiral Charles M. Cooke, Jr., who had been Chief of Staff, United States Fleet, under King. In December 1945, when Admiral Cooke was given a well deserved major command at sea, as Commander Seventh Fleet, the new Chief of Naval Operations, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, logically chose for Cooke's relief the talented officer who had served in Pearl Harbor since November 1943 as his Deputy Chief of Staff for Plans and Operations, Rear Admiral Forrest P. Sherman.

18

Wartime experiences were reflected in the postwar "bilinear" relationships in the Navy Department organization. The Chief of Naval Operations exercised command of the Navy (ashore and afloat) and control of the bureau chiefs as related to determining requirements. He coordinated the shore establishment with the operating forces. Although reporting directly to the Secretary of the Navy for decisions on policy, the bureau chiefs were responsible to the under secretary and assistant secretaries for administration and logistic control related to procurement, production, and research."

During the postwar period, United States military programs were largely shaped by the objectives of liquidation of the war and reconversion to a peacetime economy. The American people characteristically viewed war and peace discretely; once the war was over, the need for military readiness tended to be underestimated. As a consequence, the nation shifted quickly from total war to what a relieved populace hoped was total peace. President Truman announced that the armed services were being reduced as quickly as

18

'COMINCH, "Commander in Chief, United States Fleet, Headquarters," 1946 in "United States Naval Administration in World War II," pp. 34-37; Furer, Administration of the Navy Department, pp. 167–68. The other offices headed by Deputy Chiefs of Naval Operations were Personnel, Administration, Logistics, and Air.

19 Ibid., p. 12.