>> Good afternoon, everyone. Archivist of
the United States, David Ferriero, was supposed
to make the opening remarks for today's program,
but unfortunately he has been called out of
town on business. So on behalf of the Archivist
of the United, States, I'd like to welcome
you, and all of our friends from C‑SPAN,
to the McGowan Theater located in the National
Archives building in Washington, DC. I am
Doug Swanson Visitor Services Manager for
the National Archives Museum, as well as the
producer for the noontime lecture series.
Before we begin today's program, I would like
to mention a couple of other programs that
will be taking place at this location. Thursday,
May 17, at 7 p.m. we will present a panel
discussion, Before the Freedom Riders: The
fight to integrate Glen Echo Amusement Park.
This program will also include clips of a
new documentary film Ain't No Back to A Merry‑go‑round,
which is going to be released in 2019. Then
on Tuesday, May 22nd at noon, Donald Rumsfeld
will discuss his book, When the Center Held
Gerald Ford and the Rescue of the American
presidency, and offer us a look at the life
behind the scenes in the oval office and the
administration of Gerald Ford. To find out
more about these programs, our exhibits, please
visit our website at www.archives.gov/calendar.
You will also find some printed materials
about upcoming events in the theater lobby.
Our topic for today is, World War II at Sea:
A Global History, by acclaimed Naval historian
Craig L. Symonds. It is being brought to you
in partnership with our good friends the United States
Navy Memorial. To introduce our guest speaker
is president and CEO of the Navy Memorial,
Rear, Admiral Frank Thorp.
(APPLAUSE)
>> Thank you Doug, and welcome to the Archives.
It's truly my honor today to be able to introduce
Dr. Craig Symonds, a person who I have known
since I came into the Navy service in 1977.
And with a long and distinguished career of
Naval expertise, being a Naval enthusiast,
and expertise about the Navy. Currently Dr. Symonds
is the Ernest J. King Distinguished Professor
of Maritime History at the Naval War College,
which is a very proud chair to be in. But
more importantly, to me, Professor Symonds
was a history ‑‑ was a professor of history
at the Naval Academy, now professor of history
Emeritus. He taught for 30 years, and served
as a chair of the history department. I live
in Annapolis now, and I try to stay in touch
with things that went on at the Naval Academy,
and I will tell you the most important thing
I can tell you about Dr. Symonds today is
not his incredible knowledge and passion for
the service and the country, but he has a
reputation of being a teacher who is much
loved by the midshipmen at the Naval Academy.
Now I was one for four years, and there are
not many professors that get that reputation
from a very cynical group of 4,000 young men
and women who are the top of their game. And
I will tell you that I spoke to several people,
and to a person, the glow of the reputation
of Dr. Symonds was very clear. I spoke to
a couple professors, and one of them described
Professor Symonds as, the best of colleagues.
Not a bad thing to be described as. The best
of colleagues. Another professor said, quote:
A great lecturer, dynamic, engaging, passionate,
challenging and inviting, all at the same
time. Another professor described Dr. Symonds
as: Highly influential leader in the history
department, setting a high bar for everyone
in teaching, scholarship and service. As you
all know from your program he is the author
of countless military history books, many
of them Navy. I want to touch on them and
focus on the awards. I am going to read them
fast, because to a guy like me they mean ‑‑
each of them are important, but in total is
what is so impressive. He has written: Decision
at Sea: Five Naval battles that shaped American
History which won the Theodore and Franklin
Delano Roosevelt prize. Lincoln and His Admirals:
Abraham Lincoln, the U.S. Navy and Civil War,
which won the Lincoln Prize, the Barondess
Prize, the Laney Prize and Lyman Prize and
the Abraham Lincoln Institute Book Award.
Other works include, Civil War at Sea, the
U.S. Navy and others. And most recent works
are on the second world war, most notably
The Battle of Midway, which we will commemorate
the anniversary here on June 5, and NEPTUNE:
The Allied Invasion of Europe and the D‑Day
Landings, which won the Barry Prize and Samuel
Eliot Morison Prize. And Dr. Symonds doesn't
always write about the Navy, sadly.
(LAUGHTER)
>> No, he is quite a historian, having written
about the Battle of Gettysburg, as well as
General Johnston and others. But Dr. Symonds
is really a Navy guy having a significant
impact on the men and women who have served
in the Navy for the last three or four decades
and will serve for decades more. As a matter
of fact, his Historical Atlas of the U.S.
Navy is still in use in the core of Naval
history class in the Naval Academy today.
His impact on the Navy is simply immense,
along with all the books and numerous awards,
Dr. Symonds also received the Navy Meritorious
Civilian Service Award and the Superior Civilian
Servant award, not once, not twice, but three
times. And he is a Veteran. He served as a
lieutenant in the early '70s. So I have to
say, as the CEO of the Navy Memorial, across
the street, our mission was to honor, recognize
and celebrate the men and women of the sea
services past, present and future and to inform
the public about their service. So today,
Dr. Symonds, I would like to task the audience
here to join me as we honor, recognize and
celebrate you for everything you have done
to inform us about the United States Navy.
But before I turn over the microphone to you,
I have a quick sea story that I think the
audience will enjoy. Dr. Symonds is, in fact,
a true Naval enthusiast, but he is not only
a great professor, and an engaging author
and a true Naval enthusiast, but he has been
played by a character on the silver screen
that you may not know about. And he ‑‑
I have to admit, when I talked to him earlier,
he didn't want me to tell this story, so I
am violating his request. But not bad to be played
by none other than Harrison Ford, also known
as Jack Ryan. If you recall in the movie, Patriot
Games, Jack Ryan is giving a lecture on Thucydides,
as Dr. Symonds frequently does. The filmmakers,
when they came to the Naval Academy, they
asked for a professor that Harrison Ford could
follow around to give them an idea of what
Harrison Ford would do. Now, remember, Harrison
Ford had been in the UK, he had been a CIA
agent, he was a former naval officer, and
as I understand it, the Naval Academy leadership
said, you have got to follow Dr. Symonds
around. So the filmmakers appropriated his
office, they appropriated his classroom, and
they appropriated his class. Although he denies
it, I think we have seen his face in that
movie. So, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Symonds'
newest book, and what he is here to talk about
today, is World War II at Sea: A Global History.
It is my honor, ladies and gentlemen, to introduce
to you today Dr. Craig Symonds.
(APPLAUSE)
>>Well nobody can live up to that introduction for crying out loud.  Thank you very much,
I appreciate it. I am going to tell a quick story as well about just how incendiary this book is. You need
to know this because I spoke this morning
over at the treasury institute on I Street
in Washington, and there are a number of copies
of the books, three boxes full I understand,
had them sent down to the Institute for distribution
to their audience, and when they arrived.
They arrived without insufficient specificity
in terms of their intended audience. It was
a general address rather than a specific
individual listed on the address label. So,
this being a government institution well guarded
with the usual screeners at the door, these
three packages arrived, looking very suspicious.
And so ‑‑ I am not making this up, this
absolutely happened. And so they were sequestered
and surrounded by C4 and blown to smithereens.
(LAUGHTER)
>> Now I have had bad reviews before.
(LAUGHTER)
>> But never one quite like that. I appreciate
your being here today on a beautiful day outside,
giving that up to listen to me talk about
World War II. I want to begin by making perhaps
a challenging statement, that World War II
was the most gruesome, traumatic, transformative
event in all of human history. It literally
changed the world. And for many Americans
of my generation and perhaps yours as well,
it became the template of what we think of
as war itself. That assumption I put to you
is not correct. In fact, of all of the wars
fought in the world history, World War II
was virtually unique. It had a very specific
beginning. It was fought by mobilizing almost the entire
population of the countries that were involved.
The foe was unrelievedly evil,  I know there is and effort
by propaganda ministers in every conflict to paint your foe as an evil enemy, but in this particular case it was absolutely
the truth. And it ended with what FDR famously
called, unconditional surrender. For the generation
who lived it or remembers it there is a tendency to measure other wars by that standard, by that template. And Because war since then lacked the clarity
and decisiveness of World War II, it led to frustration and public unrest. In fact, however, World War II
was not the template of war, it's the only
war that meets all of those conditions. Now,
I am going to talk this afternoon about the
Naval side of that war. Which was quite literally
a global conflict. I am trying to cover all
of it in a single book or in a single talk
is somewhat challenging and a little bit humbling
as well, that said, I will give it my best
shot. For Americans, World War II began on December
7, 1941. For the British, French, Germans
and especially the Polish, it began two years
earlier on September 1st, 1939. For the Japanese
and Chinese it began two years before that
on July 7th, 1937. And in my book I try to honor all
of these participants, my goal was to write
about World War II at sea. All of it. Including
those theaters Americans do not pay much attention
to as a rule the Indian Ocean, the Bering
Sea, the Mediterranean until 1943. The most
famous book about the war at sea is this
one and rightly so. In 1941, Samuel Elliott
Morrison was a professor of history at Harvard
University with half a dozen very good books
under his belt, including a classic biography
of Christopher Columbus. When the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor he asked the President
for commission as a Naval officer to go to
sea. Travel with the Navy and record that
war for posterity as it was happening. He
saw a lot of action as a lieutenant commander
and later as a reserve Rear Admiral, so that
it's possible to refer to him as Professor
Morrison and Admiral Morrison. He saw a lot of action, he was on the cruiser Brooklyn during the invasion of North Africa, he was on several aircraft carriers
during several of the iconic battles in the Pacific.
He watched the landings at Okinawa. He also
had other officers that sent him information,
eyewitness accounts, from other sources. He
put together after the war in the early 1950,
he is a 15‑Volume history of World War II
at sea, which he supervised as general editor.
Because some readers were daunted by taking on a 15 volume work he later on
authored a one volume version‑‑ which is
the one here (indicating). Don't get me wrong,
I am here to flog my book not Morrison's,
so let me explain how mine is different. Note
the title of Morrison's book. He said it was
a two‑ocean war, Atlantic, much of the confrontation
between the transatlantic convoys and Hitler's
wolf pack of U‑boats, and the Pacific where
the action was marked by the gigantic carrier battles and the amphibious operations from Guadalcanal to Okinawa. It was excellent
account of the U.S. Navy in two oceans.  But a total of 72 nations were belligerents in the second world war. Either voluntarily or in many
cases involuntarily a dozen of those had substantial
Navies, Navies important enough to have impact
on the trajectory and arguably even the outcome of
the war the U.S. Navies was the largest,
it was not the only one. Not only that, but
in addition, Naval war was fought not in two
oceans but at least six, plus of course the
Mediterranean, Caribbean and other important
bodies of water that explains the subtitle
of my book, which is a global history. I wanted
to deal with those theaters of war where American vessels seldom appeared, as Franklin Roosevelt said
in the first of his famous fireside chats, the oceans of the world for this war constituted one gigantic battlefield.
I also explore a bit about the culture and
background and circumstances of those other
participants in the war to illuminate their
motives and objectives. All of these Navies
mattered in no small part because they all
shared a common resource base. Especially
for shipping. When national leaders had to
construct a policy to fight this war, they
had to take the entire globe into consideration.
Since committing resources to one theater
necessarily meant not committing those resources
to another theater. Here is a slide I will
let you wonder about for a moment. I put this
up of the so‑called butterfly effect. You
probably heard of this butterfly in one part
of the world flapping its wings have impact,
small as it is, over the large face of the
globe, changes circumstances in such a way
that it might help spawn a typhoon in the
other part of the world. But it's indisputable
committing ships resources and manpower to
one theater meant not committing them to a
theater elsewhere. So that the global Naval
war between 1939 and 1945, and especially
after the United States entered the war in
1941, illustrates this particular phenomenon.
In 1942, in particular, there were demands
for allied resources everywhere in the Atlantic
against the U‑boats in the Pacific to slow
down the Japanese and the arctic to bring
supplies to the Soviet Union Red Army bearing
the brunt of the war against the German ground
machine in the Mediterranean where the British
were attempting to hold together the sea line
of communication between Gibraltar and Suez
Indian Ocean where a Japanese Naval strike force the same
one that had attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941
attacked the British Naval forces in Cylon
and India and essentially drove them out of the sea of the bay of Bengal. All of those flapping butterfly wings
meant strategic decision‑makers couldn't
do a single line of approach, they had to
parcel out scarce assets here and there, hoping
the world didn't collapse on them entirely.
They did try to address these conflicts one
at a time. This man is Harold Stark, who you
can see had the curious nickname of Betty.
He came by the nickname when he was a Plebe
at the Naval Academy. In those days, less so now, I don't know if you had one at the Naval Academy, but the traditional
in the 20s, 30s, in particular the upper class
would give a nickname to the Plebes when they
came in it stuck with them for life. When
I was a flight lieutenant, I would help draft
letters, and I would begin Dear Admiral Jones,
and I would bring them in to sign he would
cross out the salutations and write in Dear
Stinky.
(LAUGHTER)
>> I wondered how Stinky got his nickname.
We know how Stark got his nickname. He was standing in formation one day as a plebe when an upperclassman noticed his name tag on his uniform.
Stark he said. Are you related to General John Stark? To which midshipman 4th class Stark answered, I don't know
who General John Stark is, sir. That was not the right answer. So the upperclassman informed him that Stark was a hero of the American
revolution who prior to the Battle of Bennington, had told his men that he will win today or Betty Stark will
be a widow. And he ordered midshipman Stark to shout out that phrase every time
he encountered an upperclassman throughout his Plebe year, virtually everyone called him Betty.
(LAUGHTER)
>> This is a letter I stuck in here for fun. This is a letter from the
Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Stark in 1941, can you read the salutation?
Dear Betty. That's not the punch line. The punch line is that General Stark's wife was named Molly. But be that
as it may, Stark was Chief of Naval Operations,
became Chief of Naval Operations on the first
of August 1939, exactly one month before German
troops crossed the Polish border to inaugurate
World War II. His principal contribution
to the allied strategy in the war was a memo he wrote
in November of 1940 after France capitulated
and the British were driven off the beaches at
Dunkirk, it was, the recent film suggests,
the darkest hour. It looked very much like
the Germans were going to win the war, the
United States would be isolated in the western
hemisphere. Given that, Stark laid out in a
memo four options for American grand strategy
we could he said defend the western hemisphere, this was the goal of the isolationists, who made up the vast majority of the American public.
They had had it, with international wars, they thought WW I was a mistake, we don't want to get
into another one let's hunker down and stay
where we are. We could focus on a possible war
with Japan, this had been the Navy's primary
interest since about 1911 for 40 years really the United States had focused on the defeat of Japan as a most
likely foe in the future, or, third, we could try
to fight against both foes at the same time.
You don't want to fight a two‑front war if you can avoid it. Or option D, we could reorient our strategy program entirely and focus instead on
the defeat of Germany first. That fourth option,
plan D, or plan dog in Navy lingo, was the
one that Franklin Roosevelt accepted. Germany, Roosevelt believed, was by far the most dangerous foe not because
of the perverse ideology, the position it
held in Europe after the fall of France in
1940, but because of its economy. The gross
domestic product in Germany 1940 was greater
of that of France and Britain combined and
six times bigger than that of Japan. So, this
is the real enemy in Roosevelt's mind it was
essential to American national interest to
defeat Germany, first make sure Britain could survive so it could be the launch of the eventual invasion of Europe and the suppression of Germany
should it come to war. Most historians have
followed suit, Germany first. Treating the
war as two connected but separate conflicts,
a chapter on a war in Europe and then a chapter
on the war in the Pacific. A two‑ocean war.
That, however, is not the way it was fought.
When American and British admirals and generals met as they did several times to hammer out allied
strategy for the war. They paid lip service
to the concept of defeating Germany first.
The pressures were simultaneous in 1942, as
I suggested the Anglo American allies were
like a boy standing in the shadow of a dam
that was cracking and breaking in 12 or 13
place at the same time and trying to shut
off the leaks and keep the dam collapsing
on top of them. In addition to being a war
fought by a dozen Navies in six oceans, it
was also a war that took place everywhere
simultaneously. Let me try to demonstrate
this by offering a few examples. In August
of 1942, fairly early in the war still, a
single reinforced U.S. marine division splashed ashore
on island virtually no Americans heard of called
Guadalcanal, the tail end of the Solomon Island chain where the blue arrow is
 located, in the Southern Pacific. That in itself is
a violation of the Germany first principle
but Ernest King who by now replaced Stark as
the American Chief of Naval Operations, argued
this isn't really going on the offensive in
the Pacific. Because Australian coast watchers
had reported that the Japanese were building
an airstrip on Guadalcanal, if they completed
the air strip it would allow them to interrupt the line of communications
between Hawaii and Australia. If that happened,
we would be in desperate straits. This is
not an offensive, King insisted a defensive
measure to keep them from breaking our secure
lines, not entirely a bogus argument. King knew it was
would be the camel's nose under the tent.
If you started out in Guadalcanal, that inital division would have to be supported they would
have to be reinforced until it would suck
resources, supplies and manpower into its
vortex, which is exactly what happened.
And there was another complication, to return
to this map for a minute. You could see the
Pacific theater is divided into two command
areas by that blue line on the map. The reason
the Americans did this, was partly strategic,
it's enormous battlefield, logistically supplying all of
it through one command is awkward. Mainly
it's political. Franklin Roosevelt knew he
had to give a command to Douglas MacArthur.
MacArthur was MacArthur, the President did
not want to give him command of the entire Pacific nor did he want to give him control of the U.S. Navy. So,
like King Solomon he cut the baby in half,
MacArthur got command in the southwest Pacific or Sou
Wes Pac which contained continent of Australia, The Dutch East Indies, New Guinea, Borneo, Sumatra. As far as MacArthur
was concerned the object whole campaign, the Philippines islands, everything else, all of that blue
space outside of the southwest Pacific, the
Pacific ocean area this was to be under the
command of Chester Nimitz, there on the left, in the staged photograph. This too of course is a violation of a strategic
principle, don't divide your command in the
face of an enemy. MacArthur complained about it
constantly,even  suggested that Franklin Roosevelt had deliberately limited his command to a regional theater
because Roosevelt feared MacArthur would win the war
and come back and run for president in 1944
and replace Roosevelt in the White House.
Evidence suggested he did consider exactly
that plan. But the decision stood, and so
when the marines went assure on Guadalcanal
to begin a six‑month campaign in the tropical
jungles of the island, United States confronted
not two fronts in Atlantic and Pacific, but
three having divided the Pacific into two
commands now fighting a three‑front war.
The Americans landing on Guadalcanal was officialy called
Operation Watchtower, but so scarce were allied resources in 1942 almost everybody involved with it
called it something else. They called it Operation
Shoestring. And it very nearly fell apart the
very next day. On the evening of August 8th,
Japanese surface force came down from Rabaul,
through what was called the slot, in those parallel
lines of islands that characterize the Solomon
Island chain to attack allied war ships,  Australian
and American protecting the landing beach
at Guadalcanal. The result was the most lopsided American defeat at sea since Pearl Harbor or ever including
Pearl Harbor. Four allied cruisers went to the bottom,
the Japanese escaped utterly unscathed. It
led to a lot of hand wringing and finger pointing
in the United States. It could have been
worse. After their victory, instead of continuing
on to the landing site to sink the American transport ships off the beach,
the Japanese headed back to their base at
Rabaul satisfied with what they had accomplished.
Had they attacked those transports or continued on past victory to defeat them they would
have undercut the Guadalcanal operation, but allied operations worldwide because a shortage of shipping was the key
bottleneck in allied planning in 1942. Operation
Shoestring, remember? Now, with those butterfly
wings flapping in the Pacific, let me zoom
literally halfwayaround the world to another
island, this one in the Mediterranean, far
less known to American audiences than Guadalcanal,
Malta was a crucial British outpost smack
dab in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea,
its location made it essential to the British
sea lines of communication east to west Gibraltar
to Suez and Axis communications north to
south Italy into North Africa. Because it
provided protection for British convoys and
was a thorn in the side to Axis convoys
from its principal harbor, the allies, quite naturally, tried to takeit out. They did so from the air. Here is
the statistic somewhat astonishing more bombs
were dropped on Valletta on the island of
Malta in April of 1942 then all of the bombs
dropped on London throughout the blitz in
World War II. They hammered that place.
By mid summer it was in such extremis rations
for the population had been reduced to six
ounces of food per person per week. The spit
fires were virtually out of gas. The governor
of the island not identified London, if he
didn't get a supply convoy in the next week, he would have to capitulate.
So, they put together, the British put together
a convoy from Glasgow, consisting of 14 transports
and one absolutely essential oil tanker, the
ship that had been the Ohio. It was a Texas
oil company Texaco tanker that showed up in
Glasgow with a load of aviation fuel, exactly
what the Spitfires needed. And Churchill cabled
Roosevelt personally to beg it be turned over
to the Royal Navy for this operation. Roosevelt
agreed. The American crew went out the British
Merchant Marine crew came on board. And the Ohio joined the convoy to the south An argument
is made, well I guess I am going to make it
now, that the Ohio was the single most important
ship afloat in the world in August of 1942.
If that cargo of aviation fuel didn't make
it to Malta the Spitfires would be grounded and the island would fall, the axis would control
the Mediterranean, that would be the end of
that theater. Dubbed Operation Pedestal, the convoy
set out the first week of August, the same
week the marines went ashore in Guadalcanal
halfway around the world. They had the largest
escort of any convoy during the entire war.
Two battleships, four aircraft carriers, seven
cruisers and 32 destroyers, all to protect
14 transports and a tanker. The escort force
for the operation was bigger than either of
the operational forces that fought one another
at Midway in June of 1942. It's a testimony
to not only the importance of Malta, but the
scarcity and value of transport shipping to
the allies in 1942.The convoy entered the Mediterranean on August 10th and over the next six days it was attacked
literally every one of those days. Aircraft
from Sardinia surface ships from Italy, German
U‑boats, the force lost two carriers, four
cruisers several destroyers and 9 of the 14
transports. (Far worse than allied losses off Guadalcanal in the Pacific, but four of the transports and critically the tanker Ohio remained afloat,
though barely. The Ohio was bombed repeatedly
and torpedoed as well. We have a photograph
the moment of torpedo struck the Ohio, several
near misses by German bombers buckled her hull plate. One bomber shot down by AA fire
crashed into a superstructure and pieces of
it hung there like a discordant Christmas
ornament straddling the bridge. Not long after another bomb penetrated the Ohio's deck and exploded
in the engine room, without power now low
in the water, taking on water rapidly, the
Ohio appeared doomed. To keep her afloat two British destroyers
lashed themselves port and starboard to hold her afloat and push her along at about 3 knots. More bombers
arrived, one hit her mid ship and broke her
back. The destroyers kept her afloat. With
the decks awash, the back broken, no steering,
engine or compass, pieces of a German bomber
hanging in her superstructure, she stayed afloat long enough to make it into the harbor where cheering crowds lined
the waterfront and a band played Rule Britannia.
Malta remained in British hands the rest of
the war. My point is telling you this story,
not only because it's a cool story, one that
few Americans know about, but demonstrates
in a dramatic way how global this war was.
The war did not proceed separately in the
Atlantic and Pacific or the Mediterranean,
for that matter. It took place everywhere
and all at once. And, again, underscores just
how precarious the allied shipping was in
that difficult summer of 1942. The 18 transports
at Guadalcanal, the Japanese missed the 14
involved in Operation Pedestal formed a pool
of shipping resources so limited that it restricted
what the allies could do. This particular
problem would gradually go away, especially
because of American shipbuilding capability.
This is most evidence in the battle of the Atlantic between German U‑boats and allied convoys.
You can see in this chart, how the number
of ships built by the allies and mostly by
the United States over 90% by the United States.
The columns in red grew exponentially through
1942 and 1943, while the numbers of ships
sunk by German U-boats, the columns in black declined in those
same years. So, new technology, better escorts,
better protocols in the convoys allowed us
to fend out the U‑boats, but it was shipbuilding
in the United States that really allowed
the allies to get ahead of this issue. We
out‑built them. We built ships faster than
the submarines could sink them. There is a
particularly dramatic illustration, I like
the photograph, it's a building way the Bethlehem
shipyard in Baltimore, April 1943. April of
'43 is when the acceleration of American shipbuilding
really takes off. They are setting up the
wooden framing for the keel of a new liberty ship, a transport ship I call your attention
to the head gear. What would OSHA have to
say about men wearing fedoras instead of hard
hats in the workplace?
(LAUGHTER)
>> Here are some other images of the same ship. This is day one we are looking at. Here is
day two, a lot of progress in one day. Three
shifts, 24 hours a day, that's one reason
why. Here is day 6. Day 10. Day 14. Day 24.
Ready for launch. And there she goes. The
very next day, men would lay the keel of another
liberty ship, in December 1942 the production of new shipping
in American shipyards surpassed a million
dead weight tons for the first time and it
went up from there. After that it didn't matter
how many ships those U‑boats sunk in the
North Atlantic, it mattered to the men on
the ships, the supplies it carried. It would
not avail the Germans of their strategic goal which is
cut the vital lifeline to Britain. They couldn't
get ahead of American production. With this
dramatic infusion of maritime assets, the allies
went on the initiative in 1943 and never let
go of it. Here is another example of how World War II
at sea was a global phenomenon. Just as most
of you have heard of Guadalcanal, I suspect
all of you have heard of D‑Day. Steven Spielberg
and Tom Hanks had a lot to do with the fact
that a new generation of Americans had been
introduced to the horrors of Omaha Beach and
the D‑Day landings. But the naval armada that
carried Tom Hanks and his men to the beach provided naval gunfire support and most importantly
not only carried them to the beach but reinforced
and resupplied and the armada necessary to
do that was unprecedented in size. Counting armed
landing craft those ships numbered over
6,000 hulls. And they had to operate for months. The invasion of Nazi occupied Europe did not assist consist of
a rush on the beach on June 6, 1944, a total
of 132,000 allied soldiers went ashore that day,
132,000 men are not going to drive to Paris
and Berlin, eventually tens hundreds of millions
would come ashore, almost all of them and
their supplies and their equipment and the
tanks and the Jeeps and the planes and the
trucks and the fuel that kept them moving
all came by sea. All that had to cross the
English channel in ships.
By and large a lot of it came in a particular
kind of ship that was known as the landing
ship tank, or LST. Sailors, by the way, who
served on board these awkward vessels claim
LST actually stood for large slow target.
They were, indeed, large. Their commodious hold could accommodate 20 Sherman tanks‑‑, 30 2.5 ton trucks,
the famous deuce and a half, fully loaded. 40 Jeeps another 30 Jeeps or artillery pieces on the weather deck since ground combat in World War II clearly meant the
use of armor and tanks, without the LST, it's hard to see how the allied could have mounted an
invasion of Europe at all, they were big.
They were also slow. They had official top
speed of 10 knots, and given critical importance to the invasion they were prime targets, the sailors weren't
wrong. The most important thing about the LSTs,
they could steam right up on to the beach.
Notice the seams right in front of the anchor, on the bow of this, they are covered doors, they could open up and
the tanks, trucks, Jeeps, artillery pieces
could drive right out in the sand. The problem was in the
spring of 1944, the allies did not have enough
of them. There were several reasons for this.
First, though the American industrial production
was awesome, even unprecedented, it was not
infinite. Priorities had to be set. Setting
those priorities the allies had to address
the most immediate need the boy putting his finger
in the dike, in 1942 that meant producing Liberty ships and escort ships necessary to
protect them as the crossed the Atlantic. Late in 1943, with the U‑boat threat not suppressed but at least manageable.
Only then did the allies switch construction
priority from escorts and transports to LSTs.
Changing a shipyard from building liberty
ships to building LSTs is not throwing a switch.
There are 30,000 component parts that go into
the making of an LST. The entire supply chain
had to be reoriented to make that possible.
By spring of 1944 it was evident Eisenhower,
the Supreme Allied commander of the invasion force,
I love this particular photograph of him talking to the
soldiers. It is duplicated by the montage
of photos at the entrance of this theater.
Eisenhower was not going to have enough of them‑‑ he wrote the joint chiefs in Washington to say. He needed 271 more
landing craft, including 47 of the essential
and scarce LSTs. He wrote George Marshall,
without the LSTs, if you had to make the landing
with those he had in hand and those currently
in the construction pipeline, if you add it
up, and you assume 90% effectiveness capability,
which is kind of unrealistic even then the
troops on the beach, and I quote him here:
Will have no, repeat, no LSTs reaching the
beaches after the morning of D‑Day plus
one until the morning of D‑Day plus 4. In
other words, the troops on the beach would
have no supply reinforcement, God forbid the
ability to extricate themselves for three
days on the beach. Unacceptable. So D‑Day
was postponed. Originally scheduled for May
1, it was moved to June 5. Eventually it would
happen on June 6. As Ike put it in another
message to Marshall, one extra month in landing
cost production including the LSTs should
help a lot. Even then it was near-run thing. Churchill
recognized where the bottleneck was. Everything
turned on the landing craft, he wrote, which
held our strategy in a tight ligature. All
plans were in a straight jacket. And yet,
that same week that allied soldiers came to
shore in Normandy, eleven thousand miles away in the middle of the Pacific ocean an American invasion force nearly as large as D‑Day Armada, including
84 of the scarce LSTs was heading to the island of Saipan in the Marianas. The fact the Anglo Americans could mount
two enormous invasion armadas on opposite sides of the world at the same time shows, first, how the American industrial dynamo changed the
calculus of war from 1942 to 1944. 1942 when the loss of a dozen transports in Pedestal or the salvation of 18 of them off of Guadalcanal  of might have made
a difference in the war, now it's 1944, when
we had thousands of ships to mount two operations
at the same time. But second, it illustrates
dramatically how the Naval war was global
simultaneous and interconnected. Ike would have
salivated over those 84 LSTs. He could have gone
in May after all but they were in the Pacific.
Instead of Germany first, instead of fighting one war at a time,
the allies by 1944 were so strong they could
fight in the Atlantic, Pacific and the Mediterranean
and Arctic and the Indian Ocean and the Caribbean
all at the same time. In short, the second
world was a global war involved a dozen national
Navies which contested the seas, six oceans,
everywhere except Antarctica . While fully acknowledging all wars, including this one, are eventually
won by boots on the ground. In constructing
this book I gained enormous appreciation for
how much the course of that war was charted
and steered by maritime events. Now, you may
have noticed that in this rather lengthy talk,
I have not mentioned Bismark, Midway, the
Philippine  sea, laity gulf, Iwo Jima, a
lot of topics to talk about. Maybe we can
talk about that in the Q and A period which
begins right now. Thank you very much.
(APPLAUSE)
>> Okay. Who is first?
>> Folks, if you have a question, you need
to come to the microphones in the aisle.
>> Yes, sir.
>> Thank you sir, very interesting. Appreciate
it before reading the book. Can you talk about
production from the perspective prior to the
U.S. entering the war, liberty ships or other
ship quantities being shipped to the British
forces and other forces in the world and how
that was distributed across a global perspective?
>> Yes I can. I mean, it's almost an American
tradition that we enter wars under prepared.
And then gin up dramatically during the war to overwhelm the enemy with our productivity. That's a fair
template. But I think President Roosevelt
saw this coming. It was clear he saw it coming
in the 1930s, keeping an eye on Japan, trying
to fend off Japan while he supplied Britain, not only lend lease, which we all know about  and the deal where by we gave British 50 World War I destroyers in exchange
for 99‑year leases for Caribbean bases. In all of those ways Roosevelt could see that the United States
was likely to become involved. He could see
shipping was going to be crucial. And he created
what he called a limited national emergency
in 1939, before Pearl Harbor. He appointed
Emery Scott Land, a retired admiral, to take
charge of the war shipping administration
to ramp up the number of ships built. The
United States never built more than a million tons
of shipping in its history in a year. He told
Land he wanted 7 million tons. This is before
the war. Then he wanted 13 million tons after
the war. George C. Marshall said, that's not
going to be enough if you expect us to launch
this invasion of occupied France we need more
than that. He told him he needed 15 million
tons of shipping in 1943. That number was
so huge he was almost called a laughing stock.
It was true even before the war, I think Roosevelt
was something of a visionary to see that shipping ‑‑
not just war ships, not just the ships authorized
by the two ocean Navy act passed unanimously,
316 to nothing congress in 1940. I challenge
you to think of a bill that would pass congress
unanimously today. Those ships would be the
ones that came online in 1943 and formed the heart of
the invasions for D‑Day and Saipan in addition
to that the transport shipping that Roosevelt
thought would be necessary to carry out a
global war. Even before the war began, he
began laying the groundwork for that. That
required, of course, the acquisition of new
shipping yards and building ways and other
things down the line. Thank you. Who is next?
>> Hello. My question is: In all of your research
in the vast scale and you got all of the principle
countries the Navies, were there any ‑‑
when you are doing research head scratching,
why the Hell you guys did what you just did?
>> infinite number.
>> Can you break it down to individual Navies?
>> I think Americans tend to overlook, the important role was played by the Dutch. Most Americans say, wait
a minute, the Dutch had a Navy? Holland, of
course the Netherlands, had been overrun by
the German war machine in 1940 as part of
the great sweep westward when France fell
in the summer of 1940, but the government
of France queen Wilhelmina, Churchill used to joke, of all
of the crowned heads of Europe Queen Wilhelmina
was the only man among them.She escaped with her government to carry on a government in exile
And the Dutch East Indies, the colonies in south of the South China Sea had a pretty significant surface
force of cruisers and destroyers. Because
several nations were fighting against one
opponent, the allies cobbled together a unified
command,knonn as ABDA, Americans, British, Dutch and the
Australians and put a British general in charge
of it. Well, the Naval component of that,
the ABDA strike force was commanded by Dutch
admiral, who fought several critical battles
against the Japanese. This is not a laugh
line, he lost them all, but they were tragic
desperate attempts to slow down the Japanese
juggernaut. I think Americans overlook that.
I think the role of the Canadian Navy in doing
escort duty across the North Atlantic in these
tiny little flower‑class Corvettes, so small
they were less 1,000 tons, they bobbed around in the ocean like corks, you could hardly
step on board without getting sea sick. But
they carried a lot of the burden of the escort
duty on that convoy. That's unsung work. We
remember Midway, and Iwo Jima, the Dutch navy the Canadian escorts and others
like that, they sometimes don't get the credit
they deserve. I try to give them. That's the
response ‑‑ I am not sure if that's the
response to your question, that's what I am
going with.
>> I appreciate your emphasis on the industrial
might on the United States and the role it
played in World War II. I was talking with
a retired Naval architect, who told me when he was
designing ships, such as Enterprise back in
the 50s and 60s, everything was domestic,
all components. By the time he retired, we
couldn't build it with domestics, we had to
build it with imported goods. Does that concern
you at all?
>> It does not. I will explain why. When I
began this afternoon I said that World War II
was transformative. It changed the world.
One of the ways it changed the world, it made
it a global community, economically as well
as politically. The Bretonwoods conference
that did currency balancing, the general agreement on tariffs and
trade, they are all part of the post‑war
accommodation of the allies setting up the
world for the next many generations, in the
hope that there would not be a global conflict
like the two that had ravaged the 20th Century.
Because of that, the world became interconnected.
It is possible to look at World War II and say could we do that again? Could we ramp up in a crisis from a
million tons to 15 million tons in just a
couple of years. The concern was some of the
component parts would have to come overseas,
doesn't that create uncomfortable dependency?
It's interdependency, a global dependency.
That contributes to the unlikelihood there
will be global conflagration,involving 72 belligerent nations all at war everyone at war with one another at the same time. It
does not bother me. I am still confident America
has the economic resiliency to meet a crisis when it
emerges. So I guess I am going to stop with
that. I am less concerned than the mere fact
that many of our weapon systems have goods
that are not domestically produced implies
dependency and a weakness, that I think is
not accurate. We are pretty tough. I have ‑‑
I like to tell this story when I talk to the
audience about Navy today, that is if you
take one of the nuclear powered aircraft carriers,
like your friend worked on, and the accompanying
strike force, usually a couple of guided missile
cruisers and frigates, supports ships, tankers
to feed destroyers under the water as well
that strike force has more striking power
in itself than the entire Navy of any other
nation on earth. And we have 10 of them. So,
we are okay. All right? Yes, sir.
>> Yeah, I want to thank you for a very interesting
talk. I have to say I am not from the United States
but the Caribbean, you can figure out ‑‑
>> If I am glad I mentioned the Caribbean
then.
>> Thank you for that. Two things in the Caribbean
I am from the French Caribbean, but during World War II
there were two islands Aruba and Curaso in the southern part who had (inaudible). From the time I am small,
I am hearing the stories early on Germans
tried to (inaudible) these two places. So,
maybe you want to talk about that, and maybe
talk something more about the Caribbean. The
second issue would be: Is ‑‑ since World War II
we have had ‑‑ we really haven't had
a great Naval battle, right? I mean Falkland Islands etcetera What would you think coming out of World War II
was one two or three significant crucial lessons
that all of the big Naval powers in the world
learned from that war, and how do you see that
playing out going forward? You know, with
AI computerization kind of making, who knows,
ships eventually drive themselves.
>> Okay. Thank you very much. This book is
800 pages long, I would have to write another
one to answer the question. Let me start with
the Caribbean. Aruba and Curacao were
not only sources of oil but had refineries, a lot of
ships in the North Atlantic convoys that carried fuel, particularly aviation
fuel hundred octane aviation fuel across the Atlantic originated at Curacao, including cargo carried by the
Ohio in Operation Pedestal. They were important sites and the Germans, of course, knew this. When the United States became
belligerent. Hitler gave permission to the
admiral, who passed it down, to release the
U‑boats to attack the United States which
they had been arguing for. United States
had been in violation of the neutral status.
Hitler said no, I have to defeat Soviets first,
after Pearl Harbor oh, go ahead. The German commander didn't have as many submarines as he would have like to have sent 9 over to the American
coast for a while early 1942. There was devastation
off the American coast particularly around
Cape Hatteras when the United States finally got the wherewithal to put coastal convoys together, the submarines moved further south to the Caribbean.
That became the central front in the U‑boat
war against the tanker trade. Not only those who were at Curacao, but those who loaded up In
Louisiana and East Texas.  There were not the pipelines in place that would carry the oil overland or the railroad or the capability to carry the
oil, almost all of the oil from East Texas,
Louisiana, where much of it came around the
east coast of the United States in tankers. At that was the target of German U-boats. The Caribbean was for in March and April of
1942. Probably one of the deadliest places
on the earth surface for tankers. So that
was one. What was the second one. No, there
was one before that. There was one.
>> (inaudible)
>> Yes, the big battles since World War II.
The biggest surface engagement since Laity Gulf
took place in the Persian gulf in 1988, April
18, 1988 when the Iranian Navy, the revolutionary
guard element of the Iranian Navy sortied against the United States navy two guided missile
cruisers and a gun boat were attacked by the
Iranian Navy in missile warfare. It's the
first confrontation about missile warfare. That is why I bring it up. You think of World War I Naval engagement was big guns,
huge guns fire 2,000‑pound shell 20 miles.
World War II the range grows further. Instead
of 20 miles you could fire from 200 miles
by bombs, torpedoes carried by aircraft launched off an aircraft carrier. In the Persian Gulf in 1988
the dominant form of warfare became missiles fired
500 miles away. Now you can sit in McDill Air
Force base with a set of controls and fire a
Hell fire missile from a drone at a target 14,000 miles away. The characteristic
change is the distance at which the opponents fight, in the age of sail you had to sail up to 50 yards, 60
yards away you come hull to hull and blast away with smooth iron cannon balls, but gradually over time
the range accuracy increased. The big difference
between World War I and II was guns from the
airplanes, and to now it's electronic and
missile warfare increasing the range. There
is almost no theater anymore. You can target
enemy from the Persian gulf or Mediterranean
Indian Ocean, you don't have to be in the
same ocean anymore to target the foe. They
are guided overhead and conducted by geosynchronous
units and have terrain following capability.
It's pretty awesome stuff. So, that's ‑‑
that's the future. That's what midshipmen
at the Naval Academy are studying now. They
created a knew major at the Naval Academy.
The admiral and I talked about selection of
a major as a Plebe back in 1977. The newest
major, you want to guess at the Naval Academy?
Cyber warfare, you bet. They are popular from
what I understand too. Who is next?
>> I think this discussion would have been
quite different if it was a British admiral
talking about the world at war at sea. He
would have emphasized heavily the British
Navy, the big battles with the German battleships.
By the time America actually got more involved
in the war, in 1942, a lot of those big battles
had already kind of happened. So, a British
admiral would have had a different perspective
on the world war at sea just because of how
much their Navy was affected by these big
German battleships. Of course we heavily bombed
them but they ‑‑ they really took a large
brunt of the war by the German battleships
and they just wanted to make that point. Because
‑‑
>> That's fair. Let's talk about the Royal
Navy. For fun I will tease you about there
is no British Navy, did you know that there
is a British Army, but's it's the Royal Navy
dates back to the English Civil War when the
Navy stayed loyal to the King, King Charles,
but the Army went to Cromwell. It's the British
Army, but Royal Navy. I don't know the excuse
of the Royal Air Force. In any case, the Royal
Navy plays an important role. We need to give
credit where it's due. Three things won this
war. The British willingness, ability to hang
in there from June of 1940 when France was
defeated they carried the burden of the war
until June of 1941 when Hitler stupidly invaded
the Soviet Union,for those 12 months Britain is the only ally for those months fighting alone against the
Whermacht and the German war machine. We
can't forget that. Absent the British, none
of this happens. Second, the Red Army. The
Red Army spilled its blood on the steppes of
Ukraine and Russia profligately, the Americans lost 350,000 killed in this war. That's a terrible loss.
The Russians lost 20 million. Let's not lose
sight of that. The third thing I emphasize,
American productivity. All these of these
affected the outcome. The Royal Navy's role
before the United States got into this the
key problem is not German battleships, they had two of them the Bismark and the Tirpitz.
Bismark got to sea, as we all know it never
got back. And never got back because the Royal
Navy chased it down, tracked it down, wounded it and sent it to the bottom. The Tirpitz got to sea but got chased back into
port and was bombed into submission by the Royal
Air Force. The German battleships, the two
big battleships were neutralized by the
Royal Navy, no help from the United States. And the British bore the burden of protecting
those north Atlantic convoys through that crucial first year of the war. And absent that, all the rest of this
is moot. You are absolutely right on that.
The point worth making. I will argue with
you in this respect, if the British Admiral got up here to tak
to American audience he would emphasize
the role of Americans too when I was teaching
at the British Naval Academy I emphasized
the British too.
>> We are out of time.
>> I'm sorry, we are out of time. Thank you
very much. I appreciate it.
(APPLAUSE)
