PART 6

Postwar Years

1946-1949

The years following the greatest war in history were

highlighted by the problems of demobilization, organi-

zational readjustment and an uneasy international situ-

ation not in itself related to the outcome of the war.

Demobilization was rapid. Ships were retired to a

mothball fleet; aircraft were placed in storage. Shore

stations at home and abroad were deactivated. Within

a year after the end of hostilities the on-board figures

for the men of Naval Aviation fell to a mere one-quar-

ter of the World War II peak. Only a skeleton of the

wartime force remained to carry new operational

demands that arose before the forces required for

peace could be organized.

The unsettled international situation raised new, yet

old, problems for the Navy. Within months fleet ele-

ments assigned to areas for the purpose of supporting

occupation forces were given the additional and famil-

iar task of supporting the nation's policy in areas on

opposite sides of the world. A task force built around

one or two carriers cruised the Mediterranean and as

the years passed became a fixture in that sea. A similar

force in the western Pacific provided the same tangi-

ble symbol of American might and determination to

support the free peoples of the world.

Organizational readjustment took place at several

levels. At the top there were problems of adjusting to

a new departmental organization formed by what

was really only compromise agreement. At the

bureau and office level there were problems of

reducing staffs and of realigning the functional ele-

ments of technical and administrative units to meet

new requirements. In the fleet there were problems

of transition, partly in size but particularly in

weapons and tactics developed either as a result of

combat experience or of technological advances. The

introduction of jet aircraft posed special problems for

carrier operations, proving once again that after the

machine was developed navies had the additional

problem of finding the means of taking it to sea.

Superimposed were new concepts based upon guid-

ed missiles which had been introduced during World

War II, but which were still in embryonic develop-

ment and which required additional efforts in all

areas from design through operational deployment.

In all of these, the degree of difficulty was increased

by the need to complete the transition without even

a temporary loss of combat effectiveness.

It was a period in which changes occurred at an

ever accelerating rate and came to be accepted as nor-

mal. Technological and scientific advances built rapid-

ly upon each other, and, almost before they could be

turned to an advantage, new and greater advances

had been made. It was a period of constant readjust-

ment in plans, continual adaptation in force organiza-

tion, and repeated revision of tactical doctrine. There

was no time to sit back for deliberate study of the

lessons of war and the careful examination of the vari-

ous possibilities to determine the most favorable

course of action. There existed an urgency that was

not lessened by the realization of the truly destructive

power that was now available to mankind.

In other respects, however, the period was a repeti-

tion of the twenties. There was the same clamor for a

separate air force and for a merger of the services, but

this time both were successfully accomplished in the

unification of three services into a single department

of defense. The study of aviation and national air policy

by a president's commission and a congressional com-

mittee was reminiscent of the Morrow Board and

Lampert Committee of 1925. There was new agree-

ment among the services on their respective missions

and functions. There was also dispute. As the services

sought larger shares of a decreasing budget, old

charges of duplication were raised; navies were again

declared obsolete. This time the whipping boy was

not the battleship, but the aircraft carrier. They were

said to be too expensive and too vulnerable. Their

capability to perform so-called strategic missions was

supposedly a duplication of effort, and if they were

not used in that fashion their use was too limited to

warrant their existence. Carrier supporters retaliated

with criticism of the newest long-range bomber-the

B-36-which was equally vulnerable, expensive, and

entirely unable to live up to its billing. The Secretary

of Defense canceled the carrier already under con-

struction, designed to carry Navy long-range attack

159