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The Treaty Navy: The Story of the US Naval Service Between the World Wars

by James W. Hammond Jr.; co-published with Wesley Press

280 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0278; ISBN 1-55212-876-8; US$26.50, C$36.95, EUR24.10, £16.70

No serious student of the war in the Pacific can ever understand it without knowing what went on in the Naval Service in the 1920s and 1930s. The Treaty Navy tells all.

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about the book      about the author      Table of Contents and Preface      catalogue info

About the Book The Treaty Navy: The Story of the US Naval Service Between the World Wars tells how the U.S. Navy, despite treaty limitatiosn, pacifist opposition, a parsimonious Congress and public neglect, prepared for the War in the Pacific it had known was coming for more than 20 years. Reviews The Treaty Navy is te history of the Naval Services from the beginning of World War I to the end of World War II. The reader must keep in mind that the U.S. Naval Service is the combination of the Navy and the Marine Corps. This book is as much a story as it is a history. There is a minimum of references and few footnotes. The story is told in a very accurate and interesting manner. It is well documented in spite of a minimum of footnotes. In lieu of much documentation, points are made by the liberal use of the description of the main military characters, governmental officials, and foreign dignitaries who made history. The telling of such a long and complete history can only be done by an author who is first an excellent writer, and, more importantly, one who is expert in the field in which he writes. James Hammond Jr. is well qualified to write such a book. As an author, he has published more than 50 articles, mostly in professional military journals. While on active duty he was editor of the Marine Corps Gazette, the professional journal of the Marine Corps Association. In retirement he was editor of Shipmate. Was Hammond '51 entered the Marine Corps after graduation and retired after a brilliant career as a colonel. He commanded a platoon in Korea and an infantry battalion in Vietnam. He has an M.A. in international law from Catholic University and another M.A. in journalism from the University of Nevada. He was the subject of a profile in Military History. The author gathered first-hand knowledge regarding the Navy and the Marine Corps on active duty. He has also spent his lifetime studying the military history of the world and the peoples of the major nations and they built, fought, and scrapped their ships, submarines, and aircraft. The major nations of the world struggled, fought, and changed the limits of their forces under various treaties. The Treaty Navy is an important work that will be studied by historians, naval strategists, and military persons of the future. Vice Admiral William P. Mack U.S. Navy (retired) Writing in Shipmate (Naval Academy alumni) magazine May 2002 An excellent book which fills out the, to some, unexciting era of the Navy between the wars. Good breakdown of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1921, and its subsequent modifications - not to be found elsewhere outside of scholarly doctoral-type theses. reader from Temple Hills, Maryland Colonel Hammond has produced an extremely readable narrative of the Naval Service between the wars, free of academic jargon and literary pretense. He draws out the lessons learned and illustrates them with a healthy dose of anecdotes, stories from real life which make it easy for the reader to understand how what went on in this critical period of American naval history led to successes in World War II. Many of these same lessons apply today. The naval professional and the armchair strategist alike will enjoy and benefit from this important work. Vice Admiral Robert F. Dunn USN (Ret.) President, Naval Historical Foundation Wes Hammond's The Treaty Navy is an incredible encyclopedia of the components that brought the Navy through those lean years. My husband and I grew up in those years while our fathers worked for a strong Navy as followers of the Sim's school of thought. Betty Carney Taussig Authoress of Warrior for Freedom A biography of her father, former Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Robert B. Carney, Jr. USN Keys to victory never emerge full blown when the dogs of war are unleashed. They are the result of the clash of ideas and concepts painfully developed during preceding inter-war years. Also, they are not just products of research and technology. They are the products of vision by men of action who divine their nation's security needs and fight for them. In short, revolutionary warfare is ultimately the story of men. This is amply exemplified in The Treaty Navy. The author tells the fascinating story of how the Navy that won the Pacific war came to be. It is not a pretty picture, intrigue, egos and politics abound. Replete with fascinating anecdotes, many from the lips of the players in the pre-war drama, it is an exciting story. There are no genuine villains in the story. All were human beings who in their own, frequently questionable ways, were trying to do the right thing for the nation. Happily, the angels came down on the right side in the internecine struggle. In the end the angels had reason to smile as they hovered over the quarterdeck of USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay. Lieutenant General Bernard E. Trainor USMC (Ret.) Co-author of The Generals' War Former Military Editor, The New York Times

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About the Author     Wes Hammond, a 1951 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, retired from the U.S. Marine Corps in 1975. In addition to a B.S. from the Naval Academy, he has a M.A. (International Law) from the Catholic University of America and a M.A. (Journalism) from the University of Nevada.     During more than a quarter of a century of active duty, he was wounded in action as an infantry platoon leader in Korea; twice, he was a tactics instructor at the Marine Corps Basic School in Quantico, Va.; commanded a company in an infantry battalion afloat in the Mediterranean; was aide-de-camp to MajGen. D.M. Shoup (later 22nd Commandant of the Marine Crops) on Okinawa, where Wes met and married Miss Donna M. Selby of Brighton, Colorado. He deployed with the forces afloat for the Cuban Missile Crisis. He commanded the 2nd Battalion, Fourth Marines ("The Magnificent Bastards") in Vietnam until wounded in action and evacuated. He returned to duty as Plans Officer of the 3rd Marine Division until wounded again. Then he was Head, Command Dept., Marine Corps Command & Staff College in Quantico. There he taught Research and Writing; Command and Staff Organization and a future concept of amphibious operations called "Sea Base." He was transferred to Hawaii and promoted to colonel and assigned as Protocol Officer and Aide to Commanderin- Chief, Pacific, Adm. John S. McCain, Jr. USN. He retired from Camp Pendleton, Calif., and returned to Reno, Nevada.     While on active duty (1964-67) he was Editor and Publisher of the Marine Corps Gazette, the professional journal of the Marine Corps Association. Eight years after retiring from the Marine Corps, he moved to Annapolis, Maryland, to be editor of Shipmate, the monthly magazine of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association. After a dozen years there, he again retired and returned to Reno. He is the author of more than 50 articles in professional military journals as well as popular publications. His Poison Gas * The Myths versus Reality (Greenwood Press, Westport Conn. 1999) is a plea for common sense lest we be held hostage to fear of the unknown.     The Hammonds make their home in Reno but travel extensively. They have three children and seven grandchildren. A collaborator in this volume was LtCol. James W. Hammond, III USMC, who while still a Midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy, traced down the answers to many queries from his father by searching the stacks of the Nimitz Library at the Academy.

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Table of Contents and Preface

CONTENTS
Preface
Special Appreciations
Part I
Before 1924
I Prologue 1
II After the War 18
III The Washington Naval Conference 31
IV The Denby Years 1921-1924
Part II
The Wilbur Era and Beyond
V 1924-1927
VI The Geneva Naval Conference of 1927
VII After Geneva
VIII The Interregnum
IX The London Naval Conference of 1930
X The Watershed
Part III
Mr. Vinson's Navy
XI The Beginnings
XII The Pre-New Deal Years
XIII Naval Construction Spurs the Economy
XIV The Vinson-Trammel Act of 1934
XV Life in the Treaty Navy
XVI Aviation and Aviators
XVII Events, Public Relations and Personalities
XVIII The Marines
XIX London Conference of 1935 and Treaty of 1936
XX More Vinson Acts
XXI Innovation and Innovators
XXII War and Neutrality
Part IV
Epilogue
XXIII The Treaty Navy Holds the Line
XXIV Reflections
Appendices
1 The COLOR Plans and RAINBOW Plans
2 Hull Designations and Name Sources
3 FLEET ORGANIZATION 1923, 1935 and 1940
4 Ships Sacrificed to the Treaties
5 Fleet Problems I-XXI 1923-1940
6 Pay Scales
7 Naval Aviation Designations and Markings
8 Shipboard Routines
9 CinCLant on Command
10 Fifty Destroyers for Bases
11 Ship Losses of The Treaty Navy
Bibliographical Essay
Index
The Author
DEDICATION
To Donna
My Bride for more than 40 years;
Severest Friend and Dearest Critic

Preface

    How the Navy won the sea war against Japan from 1941 to 1945 has been told so many times it would seem that was all the Navy ever did or was. But that's not true. The wartime Navy grew from a small and proficient Naval Service of the previous two decades. Unfortunately the deeds of that Navy and Marine Corps of the '20s and '30s have been overshadowed by their deeds of the early '40s. Those deeds of World War II had their roots in the prewar Navy. It was that Navy, despite treaty limits, low pay, slow promotions, congressional underfunding and apathy, public opposition and pacifist attacks, that was the foundation of the fleet which beat Japan in the Pacific. Because of treaties limiting navies and the U.S. Navy in particular, the prewar naval service was "The Treaty Navy."
    This is the story of The Treaty Navy. It is the men and ships between the two World Wars. Strictly speaking, the era of The Treaty Navy began at 10:39 a.m. on Sat., Nov. 12, 1921, when Secretary of State (SecState) Charles Evans Hughes addressed delegates of nine powers in Washington, D.C. They were there to discuss naval limitations and other matters concerning the Pacific and Far East. The Treaty Navy could have ended abruptly just before 8 a.m. local time, on Sun, Dec. 7, 1941, when the first Japanese bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii (T.H.) The era lived on, however, in the men, ships and spirit that fought across the Pacific to ride victoriously at anchor in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945.
    In reality, The Treaty Navy began before Hughes' proposal for scrapping what would have been the most powerful navy afloat. And concomitantly, its legal end preceded that first American defeat of World War II.
    The era goes back to the struggle for supremacy at sea by the belligerents in World War I before U.S. entry in 1917. Its roots are found in the accusations by the U.S. against both Germany and Great Britain of violating international law by interfering with neutral American ships a sea. The difference that led to American entry on the side of the Allies was that while the British were seizing and searching U.S. ships, the Germans were sinking ships and killing Americans with unrestricted submarine warfare.
    The legal end of The Treaty Navy can probably be set at Mar. 31, 1938, when SecState Cordell Hull notified the remaining parties to the Washington Treaty and two later London treaties that the U.S. was invoking the "escalator clause" because of Japan's non-adherence. Thus, the U.S., with a genuine fear of Japanese supremacy in the Pacific, was releasing herself from agreements to keep her Navy within treaty limits.
    The U.S. was finally admitting what a few far-sighted naval officers had been saying for more than a generation - Japan was the potential enemy. It wasn't always so stated. There was a dichotomy of assessment among naval officers. The older, more senior, who were at the helm until about 1930, viewed Britain as the traditional naval rival. She was more of a threat than Japan. Younger officers, many of them disciples of RAdm. William S. Sims, a protégé of Theodore Roosevelt, envisioned a different type of war with a different enemy than one speaking the same tongue.
    One of the disciples of Sims was a Marine who had attended the Naval War College with him in 1911. Maj. Earl H. "Pete" Ellis had served in France as a lieutenant colonel but reverted to his permanent rank. RAdm. Sims (who had reverted from four stars) returned to be President of the Naval War College. Ellis was there temporarily. He went on to the Planning Section of Headquarters, Marine Corps (HQMC) and produced a document that was the Marine version of Sims' Naval War College scenario. Significantly, it opened, "In order to impose our will upon Japan, it will be necessary for us to project our fleet and land forces across the Pacific and wage war in Japanese waters." It was approved by MajGen. Commandant (MGC) John A. Lejeune on Jul. 23, 1921. Ellis was dead less than two years later while on "leave" in the Japanese Mandates. His mysterious death has never been adequately explained.
    It was the dichotomies of conviction that provided the background for The Treaty Navy. The older traditionalists, reared under the influence of Capt. Alfred T. Mahan USN, stood for the supremacy of the battleline in a major sea engagement to eliminate the enemy's main force, permitting subsequent destruction of his defenseless sea trade. Loss of commerce would force an enemy to sue for peace. The Sims' school saw the efficacy of the new weapons growing out of World War I. The submarine and airplane posed significant threats to the unarmored bottoms and unprotected decks of battleships. Torpedoes exploding under the keel or bombs plunging from above practically doomed battleships. Costly modification would come at the expense of performance. Moreover, the submarine and airplane could possibly skip the showdown battle and go right to the heart of the matter - destruction of the enemy's commerce. Thus evolved the myth of "battleship admirals" and "carrier admirals" that dominated the pens of every pseudo-military "expert" who wrote during the '40s. The real rivalry was not based on traditional versus newer weapons as much as it was based on who would be the enemy and where would be the arena. "Battleship admirals" saw Britain as the yardstick of naval power. If you could defeat the Royal Navy (RN), you could defeat anybody. That was the essence of Plan RED, the possible war at sea against Great Britain. The "carrier admirals" (with the submariners) saw the enemy as ORANGE, viz., Japan. To them it would be a long-range war across the Pacific, a Pacific, after 1919 dotted with islands (north of the equator) mandated to Japan by the League of Nations. At first, it required U.S. defense of positions, fortified bases were banned by treaty, in the Western Pacific, viz. Guam and the Philippines, while the fleet moved to a position to interdict Japanese trade routes from the Home Islands south. Battleships were needed as a deterrent to Japanese battleships, not necessarily as a means of forcing a decisive engagement. Submarines and aircraft operating from bases or carriers, astride the Japanese trade routes would strangle her economy. Such a strategy required a long, arduous trek across the Central Pacific. In subsequent ORANGE Plan evaluations, it was determined that the Philippines would have to be recaptured because they could not be held. The path to the Japanese north-south trade routes led west through the Japanese Mandates. The Ellis plan was the blueprint for the drive across the Central Pacific that was executed in 1944.
    The dichotomy of opinion lasted until about 1930. Up to then the traditionalists had prevailed. They had influenced ship construction and fleet size. They even influenced the Fleet Problems that were the annual exercises when the Scouting Fleet (Atlantic-based) joined with the Battle Fleet (West Coast-based). In regard to construction, differences led to another conference on limitations. The Geneva Conference of 1927 foundered on the demands of Britain for additional smaller cruisers while President Coolidge had asked for the conference to reduce the numbers of such "combat auxiliaries." An amusing sidelight of that conference was the claim by a charming charlatan and selfstyled "naval expert" to having wrecked it at the behest of American shipbuilders. The watershed year for the Navy was 1931. After that things began to improve. Several things happened. The new carriers began to demonstrate their worth with the fleet. The Democrats gained control of the House and a landlubber lover of the Navy from Georgia became Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee. Carl Vinson later allied with the Navyminded President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was to use the treaties as a legal upper limit to which to build the Navy. Also, a new Chief of Naval Operations was announced. Adm. William V. Pratt was a Sims man from the days of the Atlantic Torpedo Flotilla where Sims, its commander, had trained a breed of cocky, innovative destroyer skippers. After 1931, things got better in the fleet - but not rapidly. Vinson and Roosevelt put into operation a construction plan that had been advocated by former (1924-29) Secretary of the Navy (SecNav) Curtis D. Wilbur since 1925. Unfortunately, Wilbur, the first Naval Academy graduate to be SecNav, had fought a stingy Congress and lost. Still, it was the ships of Wilbur, created by the ingenuity of Vinson and Roosevelt, which were available to stem the Japanese tide in 1942.
    This is why I set the informal end of The Treaty Navy at Dec. 7, 1941. Ships, even destroyers, take time to build, especially in the business-as-usual attitude of peace. All the ships in commission on that "date of infamy" were either legacies from World War I or recent construction of The Treaty Navy, i.e., authorized between 1916 and 1938 and completed before 1941. They were built under the restrictions of the treaties. They were The Treaty Navy. It was these ships, manned by officers and men who were mostly regulars (it takes longer to train good seamen than it does to build ships) of the period between the wars, who kept the United States from defeat in 1942. It was, of course, the ships and men of the post-1942 era which reinforced the remnants of The Treaty Navy to "impose our will on Japan."
    Those are some of the facts and reflections that are paraded on the following pages. Even with a deep love for my subject, however, I realize that any dry recitation of events can be dull. The story of the past is a narrative of events. It is also the story of personalities. To be readable to more than desiccated academics it must be replete with personalities and their actions.
    That is the story I bring to the reader - The Treaty Navy with its yarns, anecdotes, and sea stories, the tale with the tragedies and personal triumphs, with the opponents and the heroes, but most of all with the ordinary guys and their long-suffering families. It was the officers and men who manned such ships with the affectionately bestowed nicknames of Arky, and Okie, of Prune Barge and Blue Goose, of Lady Lex and Sara and even Swayback and WeeVee who made The Treaty Navy real.
    It is a story of contrasts and contradictions. There were many ironic turns of evens. In 1921, the Naval Academy Class of 1881 were guests of their Classmate, Adm. Uriu Baron Sotokichi, in Japan. Two years later, men and ships of the U.S. Navy won the admiration of the Japanese people by bringing humanitarian relief during the great earthquake. (The same year that Pete Ellis died mysteriously in the Mandates.) In 1938, the heavy cruiser, Astoria, returned the ashes of the Japanese ambassador to a sincere welcome in Japan. Four years later, she succumbed to the guns and torpedoes of the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) off Savo Island.
    Other personalities abound. There is the epic of a turret explosion and the young turret officer with his dead hand on the magazine flooding valve that saved the battleship. The stump of the charred arm was identified from his Naval Academy Class Ring. Or there is the tragic drama of the faint tapping from the after torpedo room of a rammed submarine on the bottom off New England. As rescuers were thwarted by a violent storm, they promised the entombed men they would be back. They were but it was too late. On the brighter side is the tale of Cdr. John Rodgers, scion of a Navy family reaching back to the Revolution, being overdue on the first San Francisco-Honolulu flight. His seaplane crew rigged sail and paddled to Kauai to compete the mission. We look at the Wardrooms of the '20s and '30s to see some of the major characters of World War II as young men who enjoyed a bit of horseplay to break the routine of life at sea.
    The mores of the period are recalled in perspective. The episode of Marine BGen. Smedley D. Butler (son of the Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee) court-martialing his host, a colonel for drinking (not illegal) during Prohibition is an example. We see Marines guarding the mails with orders to shoot to kill. They did and the robberies ceased. The same Marines spent a half dozen years being bushwhacked by sandinistas (a term not new but more than 75 years old) while other Marines mounted two major expeditions to protect American lives and property in China.
    Technical innovations, e.g., dive-bombing, spotting of aircraft on carrier decks for rapid turnaround, refueling underway, amphibious operations with naval gunfire support, advance mobile bases and more, all came about during this era. These were to revolutionize naval warfare in the Pacific. By the time war came, these were well-defined evolutions in the Navy.
    There is a nostalgic side as well. Hollywood discovered the Navy. Wallace Berry was great in Hell Divers. Likewise, Pat O'Brien, George Brent and Wayne Morris (to be a Navy fighter ace with seven kills during the war) demonstrated modern submarine rescue techniques in Submarine D-1 while Americas followed the real drama of snatching part of the crew from the sunken submarine Squalus. The Naval Academy was the scene of several movies. One, with the singing of Dick Powell and dancing of Ruby Keeler, Shipmates Forever (a William Randolph Hearst production), drew storms of protest from those who deemed it warmongering. Less troublesome was Navy Blue and Gold with Jimmy Stewart, Robert Young, Tom Brown, Lionel Barrymore and Florence Rice (daughter of noted sports writer, Grantland). We look at several other Navy films of the '30s.
    Sports were part of the period too. Twice, Marine Corps teams appeared in the Rose Bowl. So did a Naval Academy team in 1923. Three years later, undefeated Navy met once-defeated Army for the national champion ship. More than 102,000 watched the struggle in Soldiers' Field, Chicago, as a Navy field goal tied it 21-21 to secure the title by default. Navy's tailback on that team, incidentally, swam away from burning Arizona at Pearl Harbor and survived to command a Marine regiment on Okinawa and retire as a lieutenant general.
    Magazines from Sunday supplements to Scientific American and National Geographic featured stories of the Navy and its men. Saturday Evening Post and Colliers sang the praises of the Navy. Life devoted several photo essays to life in the fleet.
    Not all Americans were favorably disposed to a Navy that was expensive and not of immediate use. (They were glad it was there when needed, however.) Naval appropriations had strong opponents. Some said ship money might be better spent for relief (welfare) as the nation emerged from the Great Depression.
    The story of The Treaty Navy is the story of an era that we shall see no more. Social, economic and political changes since the watershed of 1941-45 have confined it to the past forever. Yet, we can vicariously relive those days of the peacetime naval service as it prepared for a war it wished would never come but that it knew would. That is my purpose in writing its story - to give the reader a taste of what things were like in a small but efficient (necessarily because of a paucity of appropriations) Navy and Marine Corps.
    If the reader chooses to make comparisons with events of today, so be it. All I ask is that the reader have just as good a time reading it as I have had in telling it. To this end I have avoided notes and citations. I want this story to be read and enjoyed and not be the basis for academic niceties. Readers wishing to know more specifics about such events are invited to the annual The New York Times Index and other readings outlined in the Bibliographical Essay. Incidentally, I found that The New York Times was a more informative source about the Senate investigation of Mr. William B. Shearer and his "wrecking" of the Geneva Conference of 1927 than the 735-page official report of the investigation. The latter omitted much testimony by direction of the chairman to "strike that from the record" while the newspaper included all.
    This is usually the place where an author acknowledges the help and assistance of many. Much of the material, particularly that of personalities and little known events, which would be sidebars in a news story, are the result of conversations over the years with those involved. These run from cocktail party conversations to sea stories oft retold, to reminiscences of members of The Treaty Navy most of whom are long since gone. During my tenure as editor of Shipmate, the Naval Academy Alumni Association magazine, I had many old salts and even some of their ladies share their memories of The Treaty Navy with me. To dignify a conversation with say, Adm. Jerauld Wright while "killing a few snakes" (his term for a libation) at the Alibi Club as an "interview" would be a bit pompous on my part. Likewise, a monologue at a Wardroom table or a discussion among senior officers in the mess about their days in Nicaragua could hardly qualify as the basis for a citation. Much of the personal material herein is tradition in the ecclesiastical sense. I am providing heritage not history. Thus, my thanks and gratitude is extended to all those who served in and made The Treaty Navy what it was and what it did for the nation.
    My only moralizing is in the Epilogue. There the message is that if we hadn't had The Treaty Navy, which was partially preserved after World War I and created in the '20s and '30s, some fat samuari would be affecting an Al Capone attitude and demanding, "Whom are you buying your saki from?" Now, at least we have a choice between Zenith and Sony or between Buick and Toyota. The question is "For how long?"

Special Appreciations
    I have had the benefit of the memories and sea stories of many distinguished members of the Naval Service who lived in the era of The Treaty Navy. I met them over the years. They knew of my interest in the era and were happy to share their experiences with me. All of them have since retired from or left active duty. Most of them are deceased. Perforce, there are some inadvertent omissions but I am grateful to the shared memories of the following: Adm. Arleigh A. Burke, Mrs. Jean Carlson, Adm. Robert B. "Mick Carney, Jr., RAdm. Joshua W. Cooper. RAdm. John. G. Crommelin, Maj. Donald Dixon, VAdm. George C. Dyer, RAdm. Henry C. Eccles, RAdm. E.M. "Judge" Eller, RAdm. William F. "Dolly" Fitzgerald, RAdm. Francis D. Foley, Cox. Joseph A. Glacken (my uncle and coxswain of Capt. E.J. King's gig), Capt. Paul H. "Growler" Grouleff USN, Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr., MGen. Sam Jack, VAdm. Frederick N. "Nappy" Kivette, MGen. Francis M. McAlister, RAdm. A.B. Metsger, RAdm. Harold B. "Min" Miller, Capt. Elias B. "Benny" Mott USN, RAdm. Joseph H. Nevins, Jr., RAdm. Schuyler N. Pyne, RAdm. Paul H. Ramsey, Capt. Paul R. Schratz USN, Capt. William B. Short USN, Gen. David M. Shoup (I was his aide-de-camp), LtGen. Julian C. Smith, Capt. Roy C. Smith, III USN, Capt. John D. Spangler USN, Mr. John A. "Tex" Underwood (a Classmate of Tom Massie) RAdm. Harvey T. Walsh and Adm. Jerauld Wright. J.W.H., Jr. Reno, Nevada

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Catalogue Information

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