Background on the Revolt Part II
WHEW...damn these briefs are taking their toll. Just finished for the night but my vehicle is out of commision so instead of going to the "back to school social" thought I'd drink a few beers and finish the background.
Results from the hearings were mixed and historical interpretation of the events of 1949 have mainly broken along partisan lines. The primary investigators and subsequent students of these events have typically been military officers and most have found it difficult to approach the subject objectively. Air Force accounts, written by active officers or sympathetic civilians, normally acquit the Air Force of any serious wrongdoing and laud the leadership of Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington. These studies accuse the Navy of obstructionism and refer to its admirals as “unreconstructed” crybabies “dragged kicking and screaming into the National Security Act of 1947” because they refused to accept the authority of a “strong” Secretary of Defense. Conversely, naval officers praise the “admirals” aggressiveness and are exceptionally critical of Johnson and Symington. Jeffrey Barlow’s latest attempt to examine the revolt, an exhaustive opus of research, yielded the same results. As a historian at the Naval Historical Center he faulted absolutely no one in the Navy for allowing the public’s perception of the service to decay and even dedicated his efforts to the naval aviators, all innocent victims, he argued, of a vindictive Air Force. Consequently, in order to understand the revolt of the admirals effectively, a moderate approach that utilizes methodologies typically absent from a purely military perspective is called for.
Military history typically breaks into three separate types: popular military history, a top-down approach which normally focuses on battles, heroic leaders, and grand campaigns; academic military history or the often styled “new military history,” which examines broader aspects of war such as combat motivation, the lived experiences of “common” soldiers, and more recently other social, cultural, and gender issues; and finally military history for the security/defense professional, who are typically interested in the subject for a “lessons learned” context. Sadly, historians, be they academic or “amateur,” have rarely combined these methodological approaches and the “Revolt of the Admirals” has been no exception. This failure has occurred in academic circles due to a number of circumstances.
Unfortunately for the everyday consumer of history, in the present academic climate, popular history is slowly dying because historians have retreated from the public realm and the art of the narrative has been abandoned. Popular history remains an anathema to academics. Most choose to write history purely for their own auspices and engage with “outsiders” only on rare occasions. Ivory tower culture, consumed with careerism, demands this practice. Academic historians, the reasoning goes, should write for the academy; a “good” historical work should influence historiography, be grounded in methodological theory, reflect en-vouge paradigms, and should always be published by an academic press. To violate these principles, unless soundly tenured, is to risk one’s career. Yet adhering to this strict intellectual outline often stifles the slowly-dying art of the historical narrative because accepted structures and methodologies are allowed to eclipse the story of individual actors caught up in seminal events.
Academic military historians have traditionally been an exception to this rule. Often confining themselves to the study of combat, military historians have relied heavily on the narrative in order to tell the story of war. However, in attempt to answer New Left and postmodern criticism, many historians have attempted to broaden the field of military history by turning to culture and gender analysis. Yet many of these “war and society” historians often overemphasize these methodologies to such an extent that they become the subject of analysis rather than another tool utilized to understand a separate aspect of the narrative story. Historians write books on War and Gender rather than studying why masculine or feminine constructs influence individual decision-making in a given situation. Therefore, the narrative is also disappearing from the academic military history vernacular.
The narrative’s disappearance from academic circles has meant a deprofessionalization of the historical field by outsourcing readable historical literature to writers outside the Academy. Often bored and/or confused by the disjointed prose and indiscernible jargon employed by academic historians, the average reader has become skeptical of the “new military history” because it fails to employ a sound narrative that still tells a “good story.” Conversely military officers and defense professionals, interested in strategy, civil-military relations, and other aspects of war for career development, shy away from “war and society” studies because they proclaim little interest for bottom-up history and believe New Left methodologies to be academic exercises unimportant to their profession.
The revolt of the admirals, however, presents the historian with a unique opportunity to engage academics, military professionals, and popular audiences alike. The events make an enticing story, as Jeffrey Barlow so aptly states: “It contained many of the elements of human passion that make a good story: secret (and perhaps sinister) dealings by individuals and organizations; anonymous charges of malfeasance and financial corruption in connection with an important defense contract; and an openly aired rivalry between two powerful military services, the Navy and the Air Force.” For the academic audience and especially the “new” military historian, the events of 1949 present ample opportunity to broaden the field of military history. The Air Force as well as the Navy went to great lengths to impress their opposing views upon American society. Both parties actively sought to tailor public perception by working aggressively with newspaper editors, movie producers, and other makers of popular culture to create a public image of their service that would yield popular support during the intense competition of the acquisitions process.
The revolt also provides important teachings for the defense community. Despite teaching valuable lessons in civil-military relations, the revolt also indicates that military officials should rethink their ideas about the irrelevance of culture. Most military officers and defense professionals are convinced that the cultural overlays of the “new military history” have no place in the defense profession. They frown upon “war and society” studies because most believe these methodologies provide no concrete lessons for modern security studies. Yet the revolt of the admirals seems to indicate the contrary, a lesson the United States Navy learned in 1949 with bitter tears. Public perception of the military establishment, normally determined through popular cultural, matters greatly to the military profession, especially in a democracy. Combat operations in Korea, Vietnam and present-day Iraq have all shown that the most powerful military force in the world can easily be subdued if public support turns sour. In the case of the “revolt of the admirals” this same public support became vital for the appropriations process. If American society smiled upon a particular branch of the armed forces, then imposing that services strategic views upon American policy and acquiring funds from Congress, the governmental embodiment of the people, became all the more easier. The United States Air Force understood this fact in 1949, the Navy did not. Secrecy became a Navy watchword while the Air Force operated much more openly.
In March 1947 Admiral Forrest Sherman unveiled a new naval strategy for combating the Soviet Union. Grounded in traditional Mahanian principles, Sherman argued that the Soviet submarine threat, the greatest threat to American control of the seas, could not be controlled by traditional methods of antisubmarine warfare (ASW). Escort vessels and aircraft, the traditional weapons of defense against submarines in World War II, could not detect the new Soviet boats and in order to neutralize the threat Sherman advocated hitting Soviet naval bases with carrier based aviation, attacking the submarines at their source. Yet while this new strategy provided a sound rationale for spending a large amount of money on carrier aviation, the Navy failed to share Sherman’s strategy with the public and kept it locked away fearing it would be discovered by the Soviet Union. Therefore, without proper schooling in the strategy’s merits, neither Congress nor the American public understood the Navy’s rationale for building a large carrier program.
Passage of the National Security Act placed the naval service on the defensive as it fought the Army and Air Force for their preferred organizational concepts. With these animosities created, the armed services, now forced to share an ever-decreasing defense budget, were thrown into an intense competition for funding. The strategic concepts of each particular service became dependent on receiving a large share of the defense budget in order to acquire a force structure capable of carrying out these particular strategies. In this culture of competition a bitter debate over proper roles and missions ensued. In order to convince the American people that their views were best, the services needed every avenue of public approach.
Following the National Security Act, the Air Force implemented a brilliant public relations campaign. The air service worked closely with newspaper reporters, magazine editors, and even Hollywood to convince Americans that strategic bombing, the Air Force’s preferred operational concept, could assure an American victory in a war with the Soviet Union. Yet the Navy ignored the public and chose to argue its case through less-public channels. During the tenure of Defense Secretary Forrestal, a pro-Navy man, the sea service could get away with these techniques. Its weak public relations campaign was largely irrelevant because Forrestal essentially emphasized the same strategic concepts as the Navy and listened carefully to the ideas of each service. Yet after his dismissal, the Navy’s poor PR work became blindingly apparent. Louis Johnson cared little for Forrestal’s compromising style and took it upon himself to start “banging heads together” at the Pentagon. After the pro-Air Force Johnson decided to cancel the USS United States, the Navy received little sympathy from the public. The resignation of Navy Secretary John Sullivan compounded these difficulties and deprived naval officers of a sympathetic civilian voice in the Truman administration. Faced with an Air Force-minded public and a civilian leadership united against them, all products of a brilliant public relations campaign conducted by the Air Force, a congressional hearing became the Navy’s only recourse and the revolt of the admirals ensued.
Results from the hearings were mixed and historical interpretation of the events of 1949 have mainly broken along partisan lines. The primary investigators and subsequent students of these events have typically been military officers and most have found it difficult to approach the subject objectively. Air Force accounts, written by active officers or sympathetic civilians, normally acquit the Air Force of any serious wrongdoing and laud the leadership of Air Force Secretary Stuart Symington. These studies accuse the Navy of obstructionism and refer to its admirals as “unreconstructed” crybabies “dragged kicking and screaming into the National Security Act of 1947” because they refused to accept the authority of a “strong” Secretary of Defense. Conversely, naval officers praise the “admirals” aggressiveness and are exceptionally critical of Johnson and Symington. Jeffrey Barlow’s latest attempt to examine the revolt, an exhaustive opus of research, yielded the same results. As a historian at the Naval Historical Center he faulted absolutely no one in the Navy for allowing the public’s perception of the service to decay and even dedicated his efforts to the naval aviators, all innocent victims, he argued, of a vindictive Air Force. Consequently, in order to understand the revolt of the admirals effectively, a moderate approach that utilizes methodologies typically absent from a purely military perspective is called for.
Military history typically breaks into three separate types: popular military history, a top-down approach which normally focuses on battles, heroic leaders, and grand campaigns; academic military history or the often styled “new military history,” which examines broader aspects of war such as combat motivation, the lived experiences of “common” soldiers, and more recently other social, cultural, and gender issues; and finally military history for the security/defense professional, who are typically interested in the subject for a “lessons learned” context. Sadly, historians, be they academic or “amateur,” have rarely combined these methodological approaches and the “Revolt of the Admirals” has been no exception. This failure has occurred in academic circles due to a number of circumstances.
Unfortunately for the everyday consumer of history, in the present academic climate, popular history is slowly dying because historians have retreated from the public realm and the art of the narrative has been abandoned. Popular history remains an anathema to academics. Most choose to write history purely for their own auspices and engage with “outsiders” only on rare occasions. Ivory tower culture, consumed with careerism, demands this practice. Academic historians, the reasoning goes, should write for the academy; a “good” historical work should influence historiography, be grounded in methodological theory, reflect en-vouge paradigms, and should always be published by an academic press. To violate these principles, unless soundly tenured, is to risk one’s career. Yet adhering to this strict intellectual outline often stifles the slowly-dying art of the historical narrative because accepted structures and methodologies are allowed to eclipse the story of individual actors caught up in seminal events.
Academic military historians have traditionally been an exception to this rule. Often confining themselves to the study of combat, military historians have relied heavily on the narrative in order to tell the story of war. However, in attempt to answer New Left and postmodern criticism, many historians have attempted to broaden the field of military history by turning to culture and gender analysis. Yet many of these “war and society” historians often overemphasize these methodologies to such an extent that they become the subject of analysis rather than another tool utilized to understand a separate aspect of the narrative story. Historians write books on War and Gender rather than studying why masculine or feminine constructs influence individual decision-making in a given situation. Therefore, the narrative is also disappearing from the academic military history vernacular.
The narrative’s disappearance from academic circles has meant a deprofessionalization of the historical field by outsourcing readable historical literature to writers outside the Academy. Often bored and/or confused by the disjointed prose and indiscernible jargon employed by academic historians, the average reader has become skeptical of the “new military history” because it fails to employ a sound narrative that still tells a “good story.” Conversely military officers and defense professionals, interested in strategy, civil-military relations, and other aspects of war for career development, shy away from “war and society” studies because they proclaim little interest for bottom-up history and believe New Left methodologies to be academic exercises unimportant to their profession.
The revolt of the admirals, however, presents the historian with a unique opportunity to engage academics, military professionals, and popular audiences alike. The events make an enticing story, as Jeffrey Barlow so aptly states: “It contained many of the elements of human passion that make a good story: secret (and perhaps sinister) dealings by individuals and organizations; anonymous charges of malfeasance and financial corruption in connection with an important defense contract; and an openly aired rivalry between two powerful military services, the Navy and the Air Force.” For the academic audience and especially the “new” military historian, the events of 1949 present ample opportunity to broaden the field of military history. The Air Force as well as the Navy went to great lengths to impress their opposing views upon American society. Both parties actively sought to tailor public perception by working aggressively with newspaper editors, movie producers, and other makers of popular culture to create a public image of their service that would yield popular support during the intense competition of the acquisitions process.
The revolt also provides important teachings for the defense community. Despite teaching valuable lessons in civil-military relations, the revolt also indicates that military officials should rethink their ideas about the irrelevance of culture. Most military officers and defense professionals are convinced that the cultural overlays of the “new military history” have no place in the defense profession. They frown upon “war and society” studies because most believe these methodologies provide no concrete lessons for modern security studies. Yet the revolt of the admirals seems to indicate the contrary, a lesson the United States Navy learned in 1949 with bitter tears. Public perception of the military establishment, normally determined through popular cultural, matters greatly to the military profession, especially in a democracy. Combat operations in Korea, Vietnam and present-day Iraq have all shown that the most powerful military force in the world can easily be subdued if public support turns sour. In the case of the “revolt of the admirals” this same public support became vital for the appropriations process. If American society smiled upon a particular branch of the armed forces, then imposing that services strategic views upon American policy and acquiring funds from Congress, the governmental embodiment of the people, became all the more easier. The United States Air Force understood this fact in 1949, the Navy did not. Secrecy became a Navy watchword while the Air Force operated much more openly.
In March 1947 Admiral Forrest Sherman unveiled a new naval strategy for combating the Soviet Union. Grounded in traditional Mahanian principles, Sherman argued that the Soviet submarine threat, the greatest threat to American control of the seas, could not be controlled by traditional methods of antisubmarine warfare (ASW). Escort vessels and aircraft, the traditional weapons of defense against submarines in World War II, could not detect the new Soviet boats and in order to neutralize the threat Sherman advocated hitting Soviet naval bases with carrier based aviation, attacking the submarines at their source. Yet while this new strategy provided a sound rationale for spending a large amount of money on carrier aviation, the Navy failed to share Sherman’s strategy with the public and kept it locked away fearing it would be discovered by the Soviet Union. Therefore, without proper schooling in the strategy’s merits, neither Congress nor the American public understood the Navy’s rationale for building a large carrier program.
Passage of the National Security Act placed the naval service on the defensive as it fought the Army and Air Force for their preferred organizational concepts. With these animosities created, the armed services, now forced to share an ever-decreasing defense budget, were thrown into an intense competition for funding. The strategic concepts of each particular service became dependent on receiving a large share of the defense budget in order to acquire a force structure capable of carrying out these particular strategies. In this culture of competition a bitter debate over proper roles and missions ensued. In order to convince the American people that their views were best, the services needed every avenue of public approach.
Following the National Security Act, the Air Force implemented a brilliant public relations campaign. The air service worked closely with newspaper reporters, magazine editors, and even Hollywood to convince Americans that strategic bombing, the Air Force’s preferred operational concept, could assure an American victory in a war with the Soviet Union. Yet the Navy ignored the public and chose to argue its case through less-public channels. During the tenure of Defense Secretary Forrestal, a pro-Navy man, the sea service could get away with these techniques. Its weak public relations campaign was largely irrelevant because Forrestal essentially emphasized the same strategic concepts as the Navy and listened carefully to the ideas of each service. Yet after his dismissal, the Navy’s poor PR work became blindingly apparent. Louis Johnson cared little for Forrestal’s compromising style and took it upon himself to start “banging heads together” at the Pentagon. After the pro-Air Force Johnson decided to cancel the USS United States, the Navy received little sympathy from the public. The resignation of Navy Secretary John Sullivan compounded these difficulties and deprived naval officers of a sympathetic civilian voice in the Truman administration. Faced with an Air Force-minded public and a civilian leadership united against them, all products of a brilliant public relations campaign conducted by the Air Force, a congressional hearing became the Navy’s only recourse and the revolt of the admirals ensued.
posted by Will at 7:44 PM
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