Fleet Problem No. 14

(See front cover)

The lepers on Molokai gazed out to sea one day last week and beheld a long smoky line of ships smudging the Pacific horizon. Cut off from the world, few of the lepers knew that they were sighting the U. S. Scouting Force, assembled in Hawaiian waters to begin the Navy's annual war games. Normally based on the Atlantic seaboard, the armada was in Pacific waters for the second successive year. Economy had been the Navy's explanation for not sending the Scouting Force home. Japan urbanely ignored any darker reason.

From the mainmast of the new 10,000-ton cruiser Augusta flew the three-starred flag of Vice Admiral Frank H. Clark, the Scouting Force's commander. Astern steamed the Navy's newest and best men-o'-war--the heavy cruisers Salt Lake City, Chicago, Chester, Louisville, Northampton, Pensacola. Spread out in the van were 13 destroyers, their needle-like hulls wallowing in the long blue swell, their stacks belching inky smoke. The 33,000-ton aircraft carriers Lexington and Saratoga, each with fourscore planes on her flat back or in her cavernous belly, completed the procession. To Admiral Clark had fallen the assignment of pretending to lead his force as an enemy fleet to the capture of Oahu, from which a thrust at the U. S. mainland would follow.

Oahu Taken. At dawn the Hawaiian attack began. Into the mist, the Saratoga and Lexington launched a swarm of planes. On Oahu the Army, whose great searchlights had fingered the sky all night, was ready. Nine thousand men from Schofield Barracks were deployed in the underbrush. Anti-aircraft guns nosed up into the morning sunlight. From Luke and Wheeler Fields, Army planes took the air to repulse the "Black" attack. The bristling guns of the Coast Artillery held the "enemy" fleet out of range at 7 1/2 miles. Though not a shot was fired nor a bomb dropped to disturb the peace of the "Paradise of the Pacific," Oahu fell into hostile hands, and with it the Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Imaginative newsmen reported that the Black attack by air had left Honolulu "a shambles." If it had been real war, the Navy would have lost the famed tanks which Oilman Edward Laurence Doheny built as part payment on his fraudulent Elk Hills deal. The Doheny tanks hold four billion barrels of oil--enough to operate the U. S. Navy for eight months.

Black v. Blue, This mimic action was only a local prelude to the Navy's main maneuver. At midnight, Feb. 9, Admiral Clark was to deploy his Scouting Force off the California coast in an attempt to strike through the Navy's first-line defense, the Battle Force. Under every warlike condition except actual fire, he was allowed seven days to develop and execute his strategy.

Defending the U. S. in command of the Battle Force was Admiral Luke McNamee aboard his flagship California. His "Blue" fleet consisted of the battleships New York, Oklahoma, Texas, Arizona, Arkansas, Tennessee, Colorado and West Virginia, nine 7,500-ton cruisers, 40 destroyers, 15 submarines, the aircraft carrier Langley and miscellaneous tender and supply ships. Lighter and swifter, the Black fleet was to try to cut through this heavy-hitting cordon of capital ships and ravage the coast. No troops were to be theoretically landed from transports for a permanent military invasion. The Black strength was to lie chiefly in the air. The Saratoga's and Lexington's bombers were assigned a "constructive" radius of 300 mi. beyond which they were supposed to be unable to return alive to their carrier. Besides gun power, the Blue defenders relied on their destroyers and submarines (of which the Blacks had none lest real underwater collisions occur) to spot the "enemy's" advance at any point along a 1,500-mi. coast line. About 39,000 officers & men, divided among 212 ships, 236 planes, were to be engaged.

To Navy men this 1933 maneuver is known as Fleet Problem No. 14. It is the invention of the officer who will umpire the week-long engagement--Admiral Richard Henry ("Reddy") Leigh, Commander-in-Chief of the U. S. Fleet and highest ranking officer afloat. Last year before his top-notch promotion Admiral Leigh commanded the Battle Force when, in similar maneuvers, it was the "enemy" fleet trying to pierce the Scouting Force's defense of the same shoreline. This year he got the General Board's permission to reverse the problem, put the heavier fleet next to the land. As umpire aboard his flagship Pennsylvania he will follow the make-believe combat by radio, deciding which ship sinks which. When the engagement is broken off, he will summon all staff officers and ship commanders aboard the Pennsylvania for a critical discussion of Problem No. 14. He will announce no winner, no loser.

"Reddy." Admiral Leigh is no naval specialist. Admiral Frank Herman Schofield, retired, who preceded him as Commander-in-Chief of the Fleet, knew much more about seagoing strategy. Admiral Jehu Valentine Chase, who retired last week, was much better versed in ordnance. But "Reddy" Leigh has the all-around experience of the kind which made Capt. Alfred Thayer Mahan a magic name. He was born 62 years ago near the Mississippi delta. An Annapolis graduate, he served aboard a collier, later on a patrol boat, off Cuba during the Spanish War. He sat on the board of inquiry which failed to discover why the Maine sank. During the War he commanded all U. S. subchasers in European waters. He married his cousin, is childless. Ashore he putters around a flower garden, smacks over a dish of boned shad, keeps a voluminous scrap book. Afloat he is a strict but just disciplinarian. He talks in a low, melodious drawl, never raising his voice to match his temper. Slim of stature, smiling of face, he gets his nickname from his sandy red hair, his apple cheeks. He believes ardently in big guns and big navies but does not tactlessly preach his belief from public platforms out of working hours.

Professionally outranking the Commander-in-Chief of the U. S. Fleet is the Chief of Naval Operations at Washington. On March 1 Admiral William Veazie Pratt is automatically retired from that No. 1 Navy job. Ordinarily Admiral Leigh would hope to aspire to this departmental position, were it not for two facts: the appointment is for a four-year tour of duty; Admiral Leigh is due to be retired for age Sept. 1, 1934. Likely candidates for Chief of Naval Operations: Admiral McNamee who this week defends the U. S. from the Black "enemy"; Vice Admiral William H. Standley, commander of the cruiser division of the Scouting Force; Vice Admiral David Foote Sellers, commander of the battleship division of the Battle Force.

Small Navy. The Pacific concentration incident to Fleet Problem No. 14 emptied other U. S. territorial waters of first-line fighting craft. The only battleships left on the Atlantic coast were the New Mexico, Idaho and Mississippi and they were at navy yards being modernized. The brand new cruiser Indianapolis was to have joined the fleet in the Pacific after its shakedown run. Last week she was ordered to Philadelphia Navy Yard for repairs when it was found that her 8-in. gun fire had jarred loose some of her plates.

It is the condition rather than the disposition of the U. S. Fleet that makes Big-Navy men wring their hands in despair. Again & again has Secretary of the Navy Adams complained of "our already seriously impaired position relative to other signatories to the naval treaties." Fortnight ago the Navy Department reported to the Senate that 135 ships would have to be built in less than four years to bring the U. S. up to treaty limits. Last week Chairman Vinson of the House Naval Affairs Committee announced preparation of a naval building bill which would require $600,000,000 in ten years. Also last week the Navy began a survey of California's San Pedro harbor with a view to establishing there a base to accommodate the entire U. S. Fleet. Declared Admiral Leigh: "The need of base facilities should not be confused with a Navy yard. We already have too many Navy yards."

When the 1933 edition of Brassey's Naval Shipping Annual last month criticized the U. S. S. Colorado, Maryland and West Virginia as slow and underarmed, Admiral Pratt dolefully declared: "These battleships of ours are not the latest word, are not comparable to the Nelson and Rodney, but they are good for the time we laid them down. If we had to build new battleships now, we'd build them better."

Last week Britain announced that she is building cruisers as fast as the naval treaty allows--three per year. In the U. S. Navy's mind, the "Black" fleet of Problem No. 14 that sweeps east this week from Hawaii to the mainland, represents no fleet but Japan's. U. S. sea-dogs frankly expect to see a real Japanese fleet sail the same course, some day, trying to strike the same blow on the Pacific coast. All plans for defense are predicated upon that possibility--including the presence of the Scouting Force west of the Panama Canal. Japan, rattling her sword in Manchuria as never before, is in strained relations with the U. S. as a result of the Stimson doctrine of nonrecognition of Manchukuo. In Tokyo there was no popular doubt that the massing of U. S. warships in the Pacific was a naval gesture against Japan. But diplomacy still kept a smiling front. Last month when the question of the U. S. maneuvers was raised in the Japanese Diet's budget committee, Foreign Minister Uchida vetoed as "improper" a suggestion that diplomatic representation be made to the U. S. on that score.

Naval strategists outside the U. S. are inclined to think that Fleet Problem No. 14 is largely academic as a simulation of what a Japanese-American war would actually bring. Few can visualize a Japanese fleet capturing and holding Hawaii as a base after steaming 3,374 mi. from Yokosuka, much less driving on from there another 2,100 mi. to reach the U. S. and the teeth of a potent Battle Force. The Pacific seems too large and bases too far apart for such action.

How matters might develop in a more practical direction was the theme of The Great Pacific War published eight years ago by Hector Bywater, foremost British naval commentator, critic and on-paper strategist. His book makes plausibly exciting reading in 1933, two years after the imaginary struggle was to have started. Declares Author Bywater in his preface:

"It has been my aim to keep well within the bounds of reasonable possibility and not to sacrifice reality for dramatic effect. It would have been easy, for example, to bring the Japanese battle fleet to Hawaii or even to the American seaboard. I might even have conveyed whole Japanese Army corps to San Francisco and allowed them to overrun the Pacific slope. But to do so would have been to expose the narrative to the well-merited ridicule of informed critics."

Hector Bywater's War:

Threatened with domestic revolution Japan turns to a foreign war to save the empire. A U. S. concession in China supplies the tinder. Before war is declared a huge Japanese freighter explodes in Culebra Cut, blocking the Panama Canal for months. A Japanese fleet quickly falls on the Philippines, annihilates the U. S. Asiatic squadron there, lands 100,000 troops, captures Manila in a month. The fall of Guam, after one heroic repulse, drives the U. S. from the western Pacific. A daring Japanese submarine bombards the U. S. coast. Los Angeles and San Francisco are peppered from the sky. Rounding the Horn, the U. S. Scouting force encounters two enemy submarines in the Straits of Magellan, losing two light vessels.

To force the fighting into the western Pacific for a clear decision, the U. S. suffers a severe and costly reverse when it unsuccessfully attempts to seize the Bonin Islands, 500 mi. south of Japan. From Samoa as a base it has better luck when it takes Truk Island in the Carolines. With dummy battleships it feints at Guam, later at Yap. The latter gesture, as planned, brings the Japanese Grand Fleet at top speed from Manila. The U. S. Battle Force cuts it off, forces it to fight. In a major engagement near Yap the Japs are hammered to bits, losing five capital ships to two for the U. S. With the enemy fleet swept from the sea the U. S. soon retakes Guam and the Philippines, forces Tokyo to sue for peace. Concludes Mr. Bywater:

"If the U. S. emerged victorious, it cannot be said she derived any substantial benefit beyond the elimination of that menace of war which had been for many years a perpetual source of anxiety to her statesmen."

"No Gesture." In the big Pacific, two can play as well as fight. Last month Japan revealed that she was at work planning naval maneuvers that match Fleet Problem No. 14 in size and importance, send cold chills down the spines of U. S. strategists. The Japanese Grand Fleet, Naval Minister Osumi announced, is going "southward of the islands composing the territory of The Empire" in August instead of October. This statement was taken to mean that battle practice will be held among the Caroline and Marshall Islands which Japan took under mandate from Germany after the War. In that event Guam will lie in the thick of the Japanese maneuvers as a possible target for simulated attack. Japanese warships will be operating on the direct route between Manila and Honolulu. Vice Admiral Osumi tried to soothe U. S. alarm at such a prospect:

"The Southern islands and even the mandated groups are our home coast. If we maneuver off them, we are only doing what the American Navy does when it maneuvers off California, Panama or Hawaii. Certainly no gesture of any kind is intended."

As Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Grand Fleet, stalwart Admiral Seizo Kobayashi, 56, will probably be on the bridge of his flagship Mutsu when next summer she leads nine other battleships, three aircraft carriers, eight heavy cruisers, 79 destroyers and 67 submarines to their rendezvous just north of the Equator. A trim, polite seadog who is fond of bridge, Admiral Kobayashi is well known in Washington where he once served as naval attache at the Japanese Embassy.

Japan's mandated islands got into the news last month when the League of Nations investigated rumors that Japan was building naval bases at Saipan and Pelew. Japan's representative at Geneva denied that his country was thus violating its mandate, explained that increased trade in sugar from the islands necessitated channel dredging and jetty building for commercial shipping.

The U. S. State Department, no less diplomatic than Tokyo's Foreign Office, averted its eyes from all this naval activity in the Pacific. What Japan did in the Carolines, either with dredges or battleships, did not concern the U. S. And last week word leaked out of the Navy Department that, as a friendly gesture to Japan, the Scouting Force will probably be returned to the Atlantic at the conclusion of Fleet Problem No. 14.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.