Naval Strategy Quotes
Most Americans do not realize that our naval forces were disbanded after the Revolution and even the Constitution did not require a navy. We had some Federal revenue cutters to interdict smugglers but no warships and no permanent sailors or officers. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640850},86703,{640846} & {640848}
He was referring to attacking the Barbary States. The Barbary Pirates had an incredible extortion racket going in the Mediterranean. If nations would pay them an annual sum each year, they would not attack and seize merchant ships of that country and sell the ships and goods while holding the sailors for ransom. See {640846}.
Germany had a very small and insignificant navy. It was Tirpitz who persuaded the nation to develop sea power.
Without much fanfare, the United States was beginning to deploy naval power internationally.
He didn’t succeed until Mahan wrote his marvelous treatise.
At the time, most Japanese (and American and worldwide) Naval leaders and strategists believed that it was the battleship that was the critical naval weapon. Yamamoto proved to be correct and ironically, the American Aircraft Carriers and Planes were his undoing.
Military men tend to rely so much on military history that they are almost always fighting the last war. Soon air power would supplant sea power as the critical factor. Then nuclear power, and then nuclear weapons became too severe for actual use and yet wars still continued with no consensus as to that will be in the future.
This quotation illustrated a military phenomenon whereby leading military commanders are important as long as they have and control many military assets. Therefore, they avoid serious battles where the might lose. Preserving assets becomes more important than the war objectives and honor and reputation trumps contribution to the war effort. History remembers well military leaders who battle and win. It also remembers leaders who control many assets and who do not lose or win. But the losing military leaders are consigned to the “dustbin of history”.
The Persians arrived at an abandoned city and burned some of the major buildings. All the Athenian men went to the island of Salamis where he gathered Greeks from the other city states. They boarded ships and tricked the march larger Persian fleet into coming into the narrow part of the straits where it could not maneuver. The Greeks destroyed the Persian fleet with relatively few losses and with it went Xerxes dreams of conquest of the Greeks. The Persian navy could not feed their army and the Persians, the greatest empire of the day, retuned to Persia in defeat.
