Revolt of the Admirals

This policy involved deep cuts in the Navy, while making the United States Air Force and strategic nuclear bombing the primary means of defending American interests.

The cancellation of the aircraft carrier USS United States and accusations of impropriety by Johnson in regard to the purchase of the Convair B-36 Peacemaker bomber led to an investigation by the House Committee on Armed Services chaired by Carl Vinson.

While the dispute was settled in favor of the Truman administration, the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 demonstrated the shortcomings of a defense policy primarily reliant on nuclear weapons, and many of the proposed cuts to conventional forces were ultimately reversed.

They opposed the idea of a single secretary of National Defense, which they felt was too much responsibility for one man, and it interposed a civilian head between the JCS and the President of the United States, which might diminish the Navy's power and influence.

[3][6] The Act left the Navy with the autonomy it sought, and control of its own Naval and Marine Corps Aviation, effectively legitimizing four military air forces.

[10] As the Navy had wanted, the Secretary of Defense had a coordination role and lacked the authority and resources to exercise effective control over service departments and their chiefs.

Deficit spending had lifted the United States out of the Great Depression, but now Truman and his economic advisors were concerned about the prospect of inflation, which rose to 14.4 percent in 1947 after wartime price controls were removed, and embraced austerity.

He noted that abandoning Western Europe without a struggle ran counter to the US Government policy of building up the democracies there, and it meant accepting the loss of the Mediterranean Sea as well.

[24] Colonel Dale O. Smith, USAF, wrote that:[T]he most effective air siege will result by concurrently attacking every critical element of the enemy's economy at the same time.

When our bombs were constructed of puny TNT this concept was questionable because we did not have sufficient power and we were forced to look for panacea targets, Achilles' heels, and short cuts ...

[37] Many Air Force officers were skeptical of the value of the B-36,[38] but in tests conducted between April and June 1948, the B-36 outperformed the Boeing B-50 Superfortress, the improved model of the B-29, in long-range cruising speed, load capacity and combat radius.

The B-36 could cover 97 percent of targets in the Soviet Union from bases in North America, and in the conventional role it could carry 43 short tons (39 t) of bombs over medium distances.

Between 1890 and 1945 its doctrine had been based on the teachings of Alfred Thayer Mahan, who stressed the importance of control of the sea in securing the lines of communication through which maritime commerce traveled and argued that the main objective of a Navy was the destruction of the enemy's battle fleet.

The characteristics of nuclear weapons were not widely known at the time, but the Navy did have some expertise in officers who had served with the wartime Manhattan Project, principally Deak Parsons, John T. "Chick" Hayward and Frederick L.

He dropped a pumpkin bomb on the Salton Sea test site near El Centro, California, and then flew back across the country to land at NAS Patuxent River in Maryland.

[62] Navy leadership doubted that wars could be won by strategic bombing alone, and some naval officers had a moral objection to relying upon the widespread use of nuclear weapons to destroy the major population centers.

[63] The Gallery memorandum led some senior leaders in the Air Force to fear that the Navy wanted to take over the strategic bombing mission,[54] but the real agenda for naval aviators was to justify their own existence.

Its principal proponent was Admiral Marc Mitscher, Radford's predecessor as the DCNO for Air and the skipper of the USS Hornet during the 1942 Doolittle Raid, when USAAF North American B-25 Mitchell bombers were launched from that aircraft carrier.

He wanted a flush deck so that it could operate 16 to 24 large bombers weighing up to 100,000 pounds (45,000 kg), and carry enough fuel and bombs for 100 sorties to be flown without rearming or refueling.

[75] Johnson sought the opinions of General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower, the three service secretaries and the Joint Chiefs on the advisability of continuing the construction of the United States.

[84] A research group, OP-23, a naval intelligence unit formed in December 1948 by Denfeld to advise him on unification and later headed by Captain Arleigh Burke, had been gathering information to help defend the Navy's position, including material critical of the B-36's performance and capabilities.

Carl Vinson, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee had concerns about the ongoing publicity campaigns of the Navy and Air Force, particularly the leaking of classified information.

With the influential Tydings unwilling to act, Congressman James Van Zandt introduced a resolution in the House of Representatives on 25 May 1949 calling for an investigation of contract awards and cancellations.

The remainder of the testimony before the House Armed Services Committee was from former President Herbert Hoover, Johnson, and Generals of the Army George C. Marshall, Dwight Eisenhower and Omar Bradley on the merits of unification.

[108] Bradley made no attempt to hide his contempt for the Navy's methods during the case, and he accused senior naval officers of poor leadership and disloyalty: Our military forces are one team – in the game to win regardless of who carries the ball.

On cancellation of the supercarrier, the committee questioned the qualifications of the Army and Air Force chiefs of staff, who had testified in support of Johnson's decision, to determine vessels appropriate for the Navy.

[112] Denfeld retained his rank, and was offered the post of Commander in Chief of the Naval Forces in the Eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean,[113] but he declined and elected to retire instead.

One of Sherman's first actions as CNO was to disband OP-23, but not before the Naval Inspector General's office seized all documents in search of evidence tying it to Crommelin's disclosures or breaches of security.

This act is a blow against effective representative government in that it tends to intimidate witnesses and hence discourages the rendering of free and honest testimony to the Congress; it violated promises made to the witnesses by the Committee, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Secretary of Defense; and it violated the Unification Act, into which a provision was written to specifically prevent actions of this nature against the Nation's highest military and naval officers.

[126] Faced with public criticism of his handling of the Korean War, which opened with a series of setbacks and defeats, and wishing to deflect blame from the peacetime defense economy measures he had espoused, Truman decided to ask for Johnson's resignation on 19 September 1950.