The Navy’s Admiral-To-Ship Ratio, Then And Now

Task & Purpose ^ | Tom Ricks

[Vermont Lt]

You would be incorrect.

[VietVet]

The problem may not be too many admirals, but too few ships.

In the 2nd WW, we had more *types* of ships than we have ships today. The ARMY had more ships than the navy does today.

The strategy of having large (supposedly hard to sink), multicapable (and therefore expensive), but fewer ships (because they are so expensive), may not have been the optimal plan, after all.

[VietVet]

“If we had light carriers, cruiser carriers, escort carriers, cruisers, and destroyers with guns and torpedoes....”

I tend to agree. Many missions the US Navy has could be carried out with smaller. cheaper, special purpose ships, even if said smaller craft would not be as useful against a major world power (such as China and Russia would like to be seen as) as larger, general purpose vessels like a super carrier, a SSNBM, or a heavy cruiser designated a ‘destroyer’. Other countries’ navies use them, and in multi-national war games they sometimes do shockingly well against bigger, higher tech, major units. Plus, a flotilla or squadron of small, cheap ships is harder to take out with one lucky (or high tech) shot than a single capital ship target.

But what do I know? I'm ex-Army, and only served on Navy ships for about 6 months. (Alto’, BTW, none of the current Navy's 280 ships could have worked with the Mobile Riverine Force, an ad-hoc collection of re-worked WWII ships, boats and small civilian craft, which I served with in 1969.)

[BroJoeK]

VietVet: "Many missions the US Navy has could be carried out with smaller. cheaper, special purpose ships, even if said smaller craft would not be as useful against a major world power..."

Some points: 1) Before WWIi the US had a significant navy, large & hi-tech by standards of the day, and most of what was built during the war was already on the drawing boards in December 1941.
But the capacity to add multiple units did not magically appear overnight, it took years.

2) In peacetime the Navy's first job is to keep the peace and nothing serves that better than big, powerful **intimidating** hardware.
In peacetime quality trumps quantity because it intimidates better.

3) Whether two smaller ships with exactly the capabilities on one larger ship would serve more effectively is an interesting question.
But it's unimaginable that those two smaller ships, if truly equal, would be cheaper to build, operate or maintain than a single larger ship.