b Yet in his absorption with the war on commerce he lacked strategic insight. He was preoccupied with the ratio between tonnage sunk and U-boat losses, the so-called “integral tonnage theory.” But to those who thought of naval warfare in terms of command of the sea, there seemed a quantity-over-quality theme to Doenitz’ tonnage war; they could not make themselves believe that an empty 10,000-ton tanker was necessarily a more valuable target than an 8,000-ton freighter carrying tanks that might help decide control of the Mediterranean if they reached North Africa.
Also, Doenitz’ unwillingness to accept high losses meant that U-boats were shifted from vital, but dangerous, operating areas to low-risk patrol areas where sinkings could be maintained at low cost. To his critics, of course, all cargoes were not equal; to Doenitz, it was the ships, not the cargoes or destinations, that mattered, for if enough shipping were destroyed the enemy could not sustain his war effort.
The conflict was an expression of the classic confrontation in naval thought between war on commerce and strategic warfare for command of the sea. The submarine was a weapon to inhibit use of the sea; but it could not gain command of the sea.
ON THE EVE OF WORLD WAR II, Admiral Johnson assessed his refurbished command. He felt that his old battleships were “not well fitted for the battle line” in wartime because of age, old guns, and lack of speed; hence, he thought that their best use would be for screening convoys against surface raiders. In his opinion, only the Ranger, his newly arrived heavy cruisers, and the PBYs and submarines seemed
to have a logical place in an Atlantic Squadron in time of war, granted it is conceived as an instrument adequate to . . . turn back a sudden raid into the Caribbean pending the arrival of reinforcements from our West Coast. In fact, the Atlantic Squadron as now organized is not a logical task force. Rather it is a remnant of the former Training Detachment plus a division of heavy cruisers and a carrier, these latter ships the nucleus of a proper Atlantic Squadron.
After noting the continuance of such old problems as shortage of personnel, especially radiomen and signalmen, and lack of torpedoes for the destroyers and modern fire control for the old battleships, he added: “The real difficulty encountered in connection with enlisted personnel is the extensive turnover. The Squadron is used as a reservoir from which personnel is drawn for the entire Navy and is a repository for men awaiting transfer to newly commissioned units. This transiency is a serious bar to contentment. . . .”1
Meanwhile, the President was contemplating work for Admiral Johnson’s small command. The idea of an Atlantic Patrol was a favorite of the President. On 20 April 1939, he told the Cabinet that he intended to establish “a patrol from Newfoundland down to South America and if some submarines are laying there and try to interrupt an American flag and our Navy sinks them it’s just too bad. . . .” To the Secretary of the Treasury, this meant: “In other words, he is going to play the game the way they are doing it now. If we fire and sink an Italian or German . . . we will say it the way the Japs do, ‘so sorry.’ ‘Never happen again.’ Tomorrow we sink two. We simply say, ‘so sorry,’ and next day we go ahead and do it over again.”2
That summer, after two months of negotiation, the President prevailed upon the British to lease seaplane-base sites at Trinidad and Bermuda to Pan American Airways, which would develop the bases for use by the American Navy. In the thirties, the British Caribbean islands were racked by sporadic paroxysms of violence, bred by the vicissitudes of the Great Depression and racial animosities of long standing. The Colonial Office feared that the Yankees, with their recklessly high wages and unsettling notions of democracy, would subvert the authority of the Crown and pave the way for American annexation. But the Foreign Office, anxious to make powerful friends in parlous times, was more realistic, and the President’s overtures were accepted. However, the outbreak of war in September caused the plan to be dropped; to build bases on belligerent islands might involve the nation in war by accident.3
Shortly after the war began, on the morning of 6 September, the President’s press secretary announced that the Navy would establish a patrol two or three hundred miles off the East Coast to report the presence of belligerent ships. Designed to keep the war away from the Western Hemisphere, the project allowed the nation a sense of participation in grand events without committing it to grave burdens or risks. The President hoped to prevent German submarines and German merchant vessels refitted as auxiliary cruisers and submarine tenders from operating in the western Atlantic, for it was feared that the first wolves would come forth in the raiment of lambs. A line was installed between the White House and the desk of the Director of the Ship Movements Division, and a large wall chart was set up in the President’s office so that he could keep a plot of the Atlantic Squadron’s divided forces. Admiral Johnson’s old battleships and destroyers were still conducting summer training cruises, and the “order from the White House came as something of a shock” to the Navy.4
Immediately, the ships of Destroyer Squadron 10 rushed back from training cruises and were hastened out of upkeep status in the yards; the destroyers loaded fuel and provisions to capacity, took aboard live ammunition allowances, and, as the President’s press secretary, Steve Early, was announcing the Patrol, took up their stations along the major trade routes off the coast. The four-stackers were undermanned, having crews of 56, instead of their full peacetime strength of 106; 13 of the 17 destroyers had no torpedoes or warheads, nine had no AA machine guns, and one had no depth charges. On 6 September, about a hundred miles east of Nantucket, the British merchantman Aquitania was looked over by a four-stacker of DesDiv 21, thus opening the store for the Neutrality Patrol.5
A few destroyers and seaplanes operated out of Boston-Newport, Norfolk, Charleston, Key West, Guantanamo Bay, and San Juan, with two cruisers in local reserve at Guantanamo; the Ranger, three heavy cruisers, the old battleships, and several destroyers were based at Hampton Roads as a reserve striking force.6
The Navy Department issued only “broad and general” instructions to the patrol commanders, who were somewhat perplexed by the nature of their duties. Commander Bill Greenman, skipper of DesRon 10, told his men, “It is my opinion, lacking advice to the contrary, that our patrol mission . . . is to make every effort to contact, diligently trail and report fully on the acts of all belligerent and suspicious vessels within our areas.”7
Admiral Johnson limited the role of his ships to observation and reconnaissance. No one knew what action would be authorized if belligerent ships attempted to conduct active operations in the patrol zones, which were far outside the limits of American territorial waters. Franklin Roosevelt would decide that when the time came. Meanwhile, all that the Chief of Naval Operations could tell Admiral Johnson was, “. . . in all such matters obviously individual good judgment and common sense has to be exercised by the man on the spot.”8 With orders as flexible as these, the destroyer skippers feared that, in case of sudden trouble, they were indeed going to be “on the spot.”9
The Patrol was slow in getting under way because of lack of support facilities. Two of Greenman’s destroyers were sent to the Caribbean on one day’s notice and sustained themselves there for over a month without tender support. At Key West, the fliers had no messing facilities, no small boats, no gasoline-storage tanks, nor even moorings for their planes; there were no tractors, and the aircraft were manhandled ashore to be refueled from pump trucks which brought the gas in from Fort Lauderdale where it was purchased from private sources.10
Another problem was the shortage of ships. It took a long time for the reconditioned World War I destroyers to join the Squadron;