Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars

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Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world's navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio). Each chapter considers the state of a subject technology when it was first used in war and what navies expected of it. It then looks at the way navies discovered and developed the technology's best use, in many cases overcoming disappointed expectations. It considers how a new technology threatened its opponents, not to mention its users, and how those threats were managed. Description: Annapolis, Maryland : Naval Institute Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Victory Innovations is a leading provider of cordless electrostatic spraying equipment for disinfecting surfaces. Victory Innovations is transforming the way businesses, transportation systems, hospitals and schools are cleaning and santizing using electrostatic technology. The chemical-agnostic product enables users to sanitize any surface area with the convenience of cordless portability, faster application time and reduced chemical usage. Founded in 2014, Victory has sales in over 40 countries. For more information, please visit www.victorycomplete.com. There’s an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. That sentiment was definitely the case during World War II, a massive global conflict that presented the United States with a variety of tactical and logistical challenges. At every turn Americans seemed to need more of everything—more supplies, bigger bombs, faster airplanes, better medical treatments, and more precise communications. In response, scientists, technicians, and inventors supplied a steady stream of new products that helped make victory possible. Many of these innovations transformed the very nature of warfare for future generations and also had a significant impact on the lives of civilians as well.

Victory smiles upon those who anticipate changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur. the technology for the purposes of ‘securing power at sea.’” —Dr. John T. Kuehn, professor of Military History, US Army Command and General Staff College and author of America's First General Staff: A Short History of the Rise and Fall of the General Board of the U.S. Navy, 1900-1950 “ Innovating Victory is a valuable augmentation of our A goal of this book was to set forth the principles that govern the successful development, introduction and use of naval technology. It concludes in this context that:Animals fight with horns, teeth, and claws. Humans can bite and scratch as well, but to win, they use technology. The word technology is a compound of two Greek roots, tekhne (craft) and logia (learning). In essence, technology is the practical application of knowledge expressed through the use of a device. Within each of these chapters, they do a commendable job of producing a pleasingly readable condensed history that compares development success and failure across several nations including the United States, United Kingdom, Russia (and the USSR), Italy, France, Germany, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire, although not all of them in each case. This book focuses on six technologies grouped loosely into three broad categories. The categories are weapon, a technology designed to damage a target; tool, one to assist in using a weapon; and platform, one to deliver a weapon. Each of the technologies we examined transformed the practice of naval warfare in its own way. They include Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars by Vincent P. O’Hara and Leonard R. Heinz. Naval Institute Press, 2022, 336 pp.

The book is organized into eight chapters. The lead chapter, “Use, Doctrine, Innovation” provides an overview of the previously mentioned human factors. This is followed by six chapters exploring the historical development of mines, torpedoes, radio, radar, submarines, and aircraft. The closing chapter, “Conclusions,” lays out what the authors discovered as principles. Based on the scope of the bibliography and the well-documented endnotes, it is apparent that the chapters are thoroughly researched. The bibliography is well-organized, showing that the authors made liberal use of official histories and primary documents and hundreds of articles, chapters, and books by well-respected scholars. Moreover, the chapters are provided with useful illustrations, pictures, and graphics that emphasize the authors’ points. Cover: Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars by Vincent P. Ohara and Leonard R. Heinz INNOVATING VICTORY This book relates the development and use of six important and successful technologies, but to focus on success might give the false impression that every invention has a use, or that every use has a lasting purpose, or even that technologies with the strongest pedigrees and the most clearly defined uses will continued to be relevant. For navies, the ultimate criterion is whether the weapon/tool/platform effectively advances the task of securing power at sea and contributes to ultimate victory. The dreadnought battleship provides an example of how combat experience can confound expectations. The dreadnought battleship was, in 1914, the alpha naval technology upon which victory at sea was supposed to depend. In the event, the technology produced results far different than those envisioned by politicians, admiralties, and the public: dominance without decisive victory for the British, and the seedbeds of revolution for the Russians, Germans, and Austro-Hungarians. Within forty years of its 1906 introduction, the dreadnought battleship had been supplanted. The last few heavily modified examples of the type are thirty years out of service while submarines and aircraft carriers dominate the seas of the twenty-first century. Why was the dreadnought superseded? Because it no longer had a use that justified its cost. Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world’s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio). Each chapter considers the state of a subject technology when it was first used in war and what navies expected of it. It then looks at the way navies discovered and developed the technology’s best use, in many cases overcoming disappointed expectations. It considers how a new technology threatened its opponents, not to mention its users, and how those threats were managed. Innovating Victory shows that the use of technology is more than introducing and mastering a new weapon or system. Differences in national resources, force mixtures, priorities, perceptions, and missions forced nations to approach the problems presented by new technologies in different ways. Navies that specialized in specific technologies often held advantages over enemies in some areas but found themselves disadvantaged in others. Vincent P. O'Hara and Leonard R. Heinz present new perspectives and explore the process of technological introduction and innovation in a way that is relevant to today’s navies, which face challenges and questions even greater than those of 1904, 1914, and 1939.The twentieth century was a time of profound technological change. In naval terms, this change came in four major waves, with the first three climaxed by a major naval war. The first wave started in the mid-nineteenth century as coal-fired steam engines replaced sail, armor was developed, guns and mines were improved, torpedoes appeared, and radio was introduced. This wave peaked in the Russo-Japanese War. In the second wave, which started in 1905 and ran through World War I, naval warfare became three-dimensional with the development of practical submarines and aircraft. The armored gunnery platform reached its acme of power and influence and imperceptibly began to fade in importance. The third wave, which lasted through the end of World War II, moved naval warfare fully into the electromagnetic spectrum as technologies such as radar and sonar expanded perceptions beyond the horizon and beneath the waves, revolutionized the collection and use of information, and saw the introduction of practical guided weapons. The fourth wave is under way. Naval warfare has entered another dimension—starting with the splitting of the atom and progressing to satellites, computers, drones, data networks, artificial intelligence, and a new generation of weapons using magnetic and directed energy. The fourth wave has lasted the longest, not because the pace of invention has slowed—it has in fact accelerated—but because since 1945 there has been no major peer-to-peer naval war—that is, a total war between opponents with similar technological resources—to prove these new technologies in all-out combat. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. In their “Conclusion” the authors point out that the six different technologies had mixed military and scientific antecedents, hence, varied roots and evolution in different ways. Time and financial resources were critical ingredients in the genesis of technologies, which were mostly national secrets. One major exception was the Allied cooperation on the development of radar, while the competition for resources between air forces and navies played a significant role in both German and Japanese naval technological developments. Other summaries conclude that combat is the “acid test” for new technologies and the authors note important countermeasures such as the development of German guided weapons, how Enigma was compromised, and needs and uses such as radar in offense versus defense, as well as how aircraft limited the effectiveness of submarines. The book focuses on technological successes and the authors state four broad principles: 1) expectations do not determine best use; 2) users have valuable input; 3) needs influence use; and 4) new technologist bring new vulnerabilities. New technologies also affect tactics and new uses provoke countermeasures. Submarines and aircraft. These platforms allowed navies to operate in new environments below and above the surface of the sea, confounding existing weapons and tactics and expanding the scope of naval warfare.

New technologies do not materialize fully functional as from Aladdin’s lamp. History shows that a successful technology undergoes a process: invention, development, acceptance, deployment, and then a cycle of discovery, evolution, and exploitation. The capstone of this process is determining the technology’s best uses and then combining those with best practices for best results. In every case, the goal is a combat advantage. In 1904, 1914, and 1939, navies went to war with unproven technologies and experienced steep learning curves in trying to match expectations with practical and effective use. Should war break out tomorrow, the learning curve will be even steeper. Technology was hardly the only force that shaped naval warfare in the twentieth century, but it was a force that navies always had to take into account. It affected naval warfare from the most tactical level to the grandest national strategies. This study, then, looks at how six technologies facilitated and frustrated navies in their pursuit of victory.

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Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world’s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio). Each chapter considers the state of a subject technology when it was first used in war and what navies expected of it. It then looks at the way navies discovered and developed the technology’s best use, in many cases overcoming disappointed expectations. It considers how a new technology threatened its opponents, not to mention its users, and how those threats were managed. Victory’s tactical function as a capital ship was to maneuver in formation with her fellow capital ships to a position from which she could bombard enemy ships with her broadside of cannons. The tactical function of the dreadnought battleships that fought the Battle of Jutland, 111 years after Victory’s triumph at Trafalgar, was essentially the same. So too was the tactical goal of the commanding admirals: to concentrate their firepower through maneuver while preventing their opponents from doing the same. Naval professionals throughout the long decades of peace leading up to 1914 expended great effort trying to keep pace with the tactical implications of rapidly changing capital ship technology. Line-abreast formations were tried and discarded; ramming tactics went in and out of fashion; torpedoes and speed were heralded (by some) as revolutionary. Still, by 1914 fleets of gun-armed capital ships dominated naval thinking, much as the ship of the line had more than a century before. In terms of formations, objectives, and major weapons, John Jellicoe and Reinhard Scheer, the admirals at Jutland, essentially fought the same way that Horatio Nelson and Pierre Villeneuve fought Trafalgar. All sought to concentrate the power of their big guns. Jellicoe accomplished this by crossing in front of the German line and pounding its leading ships, while Nelson split the Franco-Spanish line and defeated it in detail, but both men had the same goal. The technical innovations in the capital ships of 1914 compared to those of 1805 were enormous, but the tactical goal was still to concentrate gun power more effectively than the foe.