 Well, thank you. I don't usually get that at Henry Ford College in Dearborn, Michigan from the 18 and 19 year olds I try to teach history to so this is quite a quite a nice change for me. This is This is the second book in a trilogy on the Naval War College right after World War two 1945 and 1947 This entire trilogy was originally supposed to be Maybe a chapter a part of a chapter of the second book of my first trilogy And the first trilogy was about the U.S.'s consolidation of control over the Pacific Basin between 1945 and 1947 where I was looking at the strategic rationale for building a base system in the post-war U.S. and how exactly the military services meant to Defend and administer the islands in the entire basin from what the Joint Chiefs of Staff like to call a Resurge a potentially resurgent Japan or quote-unquote any other power Which you can figure out who any other power was in 1945 46 and 47 So this that's my area in 1945 to 47 the rationale is I like to look at that early time period where containment is just starting to come into existence and Just starting to gel into the containment doctrine and I like looking at the Pacific In particular with the Naval War College because of course after 1945 The switch was to the Atlantic and once the Soviet Union becomes the primary hypothetical enemy The reorientation is on the Atlantic, but I wanted to see what the Naval War College was doing with the Pacific In this transition time period In spite of the Soviet Union obviously starting to become the primary hypothetical enemy For those not familiar blue I was asked blue what's blue versus orange blue is the color-coding for the United States Orange is the color-coding for Japan In the fall and winter of 45 and 46 Japan was still the primary hypothetical enemy The reason for that is The war had ended so quickly The curriculum I'm not sure about what goes on today But the curriculum at the Naval War College then was set the year before The war ended so quickly they could not change the curriculum Therefore they went with the 44 45 curriculum. They changed things throughout the year when they could But the primary hypothetical enemy was still orange You see about March April of 46 You start seeing purple being brought in and purple of course was the color code for the Soviet Union And the next book is entitled blue versus purple And that's about the Soviet Union becoming the primary hypothetical enemy So here we're still looking at Japan Which I decided to call the old enemy in the Pacific given this transition Another another reason for covering this time period There's not a lot written about the Naval War College After 1945 there there are a few things especially done by John Hattendorf And David Allen Rosenberg But most of the history of the war gaming at the Naval War College has to do with the interwar period and so I wanted to look at some detail in in the post-war period and Obviously this is far from a comprehensive Cold War history Of the Naval War College that still has to be done But I wanted to look again to this early time period in order to Mouse somewhere in order to look at this Sort of formative time period. That's of course a picture of the Naval War College about 1946 By the way, if you're wondering why I'm not using PowerPoint It's because I like to do things sometimes in old ways I was born in late 1965 I Increasingly become convinced that I was born about 40 years beyond the time period when I should have This happens to historians a lot. They start figuring out. They really should have been born the time period They study and write about rather than one of the actually came into existence I am I am as I advance more and more in the middle age. Yes, I am I am learning these things Things my things my now deceased parents said to me make more and more sense all the time The difficulty of course is trying to communicate it to the 18 and 19 year old so they have some perspective on all of this Wargaming starts in 1886 under then lieutenant later on captain William McCarty little Who got the idea for naval wargaming? By the fact that the British French and German armies Had been doing wargaming For quite some time in the 19th century and I was just able to tour thanks to mr. Kennedy One of the modern facilities And to see that to see that evolution to the electronic age This is a this I apologize for the graininess of the picture. This is actually a picture from 1955 But it gives a good idea of what was going on in 1945 and 1946 One of the things that I realized I was doing with this trilogy of books is really communicating a pre-electronic a Pre-computer way of wargaming Which I think is one of the values of of the book as well as the one that's going to be coming out Hopefully pretty soon This is really just an entirely different way of having to look at how you do wargaming because you have no computers So you can't do any of the visual or sound simulation That can be done. I would think fairly easily today Everything has to be made up a ship-making smoke Bad weather you have to come up with all of this in a sort of analog way rather than Anything electronic Little bit about the college at the time 45 46 It's obviously just coming out of World War two and World War two was rather tough on the Naval War College Because in May 1941 the secretary of the Navy said we're not cycling enough officers through We're going to turn the annual course into semi-annual into a six-month course Because there were so many officers coming into the Navy that they had to be Educated and trained However, the Naval War College took on a rather different mission During the war during the war. It was not educating mid-grade officers who were destined for flag rank It instead became An educational establishment for teaching the fundamentals of naval warfare. That's what they called it to Army Marine Corps State Department Foreign and Naval is junior Naval Reserve officers So it took kind of very different mission between about the fall of 1941 And the spring of 1946 it did not go back to the full year of instruction Until the 46 47 academic year so for five years. It was five to six month courses Where they're trying to cycle through as many officers as possible through these fundamentals of Naval warfare for example June 43 to September 45 337 officers Cycle through the Naval War College only 77 of them are naval officers and most of those were lieutenants So they were not they were not being educated about Strategic decision-making as commanders of task forces or fleets They were being taught the fundamentals before they were being sent out to the fleet or back to their service The president of the Naval War College Admiral Kelpus Was in fact so concerned about the Naval War College being downgraded I think he was also concerned about his rear admiralcy being downgraded to captain He he was able to convince the Navy to give him several other commands So during the war he not only commanded the Naval War College. He commanded the the NAS Naval Air Station the hospital The net depot the torpedo station about a dozen different commands were brought under The auspices of naval operating base Newport So the book starts off where they're just trying to come out of that. They're still going to be six month courses One in the fall of 45 the other in the winter in spring of 46 But they're just trying to come out of that Really significant Transition If you haven't read the book yet one of the things you'll need to slog through are the maneuver rules These are several chapters where I in detail Summarize and describe really describe more than anything How they operated and the maneuver rules were these long and very detailed Rules about how you simulated everything How do you simulate an air strike? How do you simulate a submarine operating? including things like How long can the periscope be above water before it's discovered I Mean these really really extraordinarily detailed kinds of rules There were also two kinds of maneuvers there was a chart maneuver And a board maneuver chart maneuvers were strategic scenarios They were played out by what was called the senior class And I'm not sure if the Naval War College still has senior and junior classes senior-class students were usually full commanders or captains or their equivalent rank and other in other Services the more junior officers were lieutenant commanders or very junior commanders And they were given board maneuvers, which were tactical scenarios So very different kind of focus and obviously sometimes they were allowed to wargame together Sometimes the more senior students were allowed to be What was called the maneuver staff that would supervise the exercise where the operations problem it was was called and Surprisingly, I found out that some of the students were allowed to to do lectures Because given the experience they had from the war sometimes they had specialties that perhaps someone on staff didn't And this came about by talking with Dr. Chirpac very often because I'd run into names that I knew were students But were somehow titled on the lectures and I found out from her that some of the students were allowed to do this When you conducted a maneuver or an operations problem, there was a maneuver staff This was heavily heavily populated usually in fact almost always dominated by the naval war college staff themselves There was a director of the maneuver and the director of the maneuver had Fairly in fact dictatorial powers over making decisions about What was allowed during a maneuver and what wasn't right a ship being sunk aircraft being shot down Someone being able to carry off say a communications deception Anything that had to have a decision made as to whether it was really legitimate or not Had to be had to get the permission of the director of the maneuver There was also an assistant director usually for both sides and these game organs were usually two sides in this case blue versus orange So there was an assistant director for each and then there were umpires Lots of them and very often there were assistant umpires. There was a move umpire a communication umpire An air umpire a submarine. Sorry about that and submarine umpire And very off a torpedo umpire a gunfire umpire and very often they had assistant umpires And in fact if you look where mr. Kennedy is standing back there There is a display of a war game board back there You can take a look at later on if you haven't seen it already and it shows several of the people positions that would be positioned around it There was a historian who recorded every single move during the maneuver Unfortunately while they'd have critiques of the maneuver afterwards No one wrote down the critiques So that would that would have been gold for me as the historian to see written critiques But dr. Chopin told me they were all verbal in that time period But they wrote but the historian wrote down every single actual move during the maneuver itself There was a plotter and an assistant plotter there were liaison officers and messages were sent either by Marine Corps orderlies Or by pneumatic tubes from one part of the building of Pringle Hall to another and this is what I found most fascinating Uh, you probably heard that in the late 19th century women who worked on typewriters were called typewriters Well in this time period we had damage recorders and damage computers In fact each maneuver had a staff of damaged computers And the senior one was called the chief damage computer, which I thought was just fascinating This is a time period where the machinery is the person rather than the machinery So it gives you some indication of how things were changing Everything was done by filling out sheets and cards Torpedo fire cards, right? I'm going to fire a torpedo during this move in the maneuver gunfire sheets Aviation flight forms I'm going to move my aircraft in this way during move one mod two Rules for damage and there was essentially two kinds of damage rules for above water damage and underwater damage Gunfire torpedoes mines depth charges bombs rockets torpedoes machine gun cannon fire all of this was taken into account There were all kinds of ways and rules in which you multiply damage Okay, uh, and mathematically I am completely illiterate Uh, so I recorded things as well as I could in the book. I didn't always understand what I was actually writing about Uh, I hate to admit But you know if you were mathematically inclined, uh, and I think the board shows some of those instruments that they used back there as well Um Go down one more Here's another this is from 1946 Uh, and if you there are pictures in the book showing Uh, the maneuver room floor in Pringle Hall Uh, if you haven't seen those pictures yet, it basically looks like a big college basketball auditorium Uh, but it's all grids And, uh, you would set up The two sides on different parts of the maneuver room floor You would put up black curtains To indicate where one side was supposed to go or not supposed to go Uh, you would, uh Use various kinds of devices to simulate smoke Uh, you would instruct the students That where where and when it was safe to discuss what they were doing For their strategic or tactical scenario Uh, because if you're in the same room You had to be careful about whether the other side was hearing what you were talking about or not Uh, and there were rules about not talking in the hallways Of Pringle Hall and things like that. Uh, again, it's all analog. It's all pre-electronic So you didn't have to worry about bugs and viruses But you had to worry about eavesdropping Um, let me give you an example of some of the maneuvers That were carried out In uh, in 45 and 46 Uh, and again, this is this is literally September 45 to February 46. I stayed within that Time period because after that they reoriented to purple In the Atlantic, um And I like to stay in the Pacific Uh, but there was one strategic scenario Where a blue strike was going to be carried out in the north pacific For one of two purposes and this is orange trying to figure out what blue is going to do Uh, blue was going to strike in the north pacific either to assist in an amphibious assault on Hokkaido Uh, or to seize a base in the southern curile islands Uh, I found that interesting because For a little while during the pacific war The u.s. Was considering invading japan Through the curiles in Hokkaido. They eventually decided against it by 1943 or so Because of rabbi's reasons climate and weather But someone I think had had sort of dug up that old idea and turned it into a Chart maneuver and operations problem There was another scenario where a blue amphibious force Uh, was being sent to seize Hainan island off the southern coast of china To establish a forward base from which an invasion of japanese held mainland china could be carried out And i'm not sure if that was ever a scenario entertained during the war But obviously there were there were ideas during the war about How to get more assistance to the nationalist chinese as they were fighting Uh The japanese and seizing hainan is not too radically different than seizing formosa Which was the primary naval strategy for when you got close closer to japan In the fall of 44 the choice was do we invade the philippines or do we invade formosa? The navy wanted to take formosa And turn it into a base from which to interdict japanese sea lines of communication Uh between their sources of raw materials in southeast asia and the japanese home islands President roosevelt decided for the philippines Um I think in part because he didn't want to deal with general macarthur But also there were political reasons for not leaving the philippines further under japanese occupation And if you capture the philippines you can interdict those same lines of communication As you can from formosa, but seizing hainan is not too radically different Um In one of these scenarios there is a blue move toward the philippines Uh, and again the idea here is to interdict The slacks that orange, uh is is moving its merchant ships up From places like the dutch east indies to the japanese home islands If you can interdict those Sea lines of communications Uh blue in this case wants to do that as a way of trying to draw the orange combined fleet out from japan into battle so it can be decisively defeated in detail There is another one, uh where an orange force Strikes east toward hawaii from micronesia, which are the islands in the western pacific In order to carry out raids Uh on the blue pacific fleet And i found that one interesting because Uh before admiral yamamoto started talking about bringing japanese carriers down from the northwest to strike pearl harbor The japanese were all about moving from micronesia east toward the hawaiian islands To engage the u.s. Pacific fleet and in fact the u.s. Pacific fleet was all about moving west toward micronesia To do the same to japan so someone took really the interwar doctrine or the interwar exercises And put an interesting Sort of post war spin on them Tactical scenarios when i when i first encountered some of these strategic and tactical scenarios I was a bit at sea No pun intended until dr. Hatendorf Really clued me in on To an even greater extent what the purpose of these exercises was Uh being a historian i thought the purpose of the exercises was to replay history Uh and learn from that It is it is ultimately what we hope for right? That's not the purpose of the operations problems the operations problems was to create scenarios Where the student officers were put under such stress That would it would simulate What was going to happen if they were commanding fleets or task forces In strategic scenarios So as he said to me in a long email when i was writing The the draft of this the scenario doesn't matter The the historical setting the the specifics of the specifics of the scenario don't matter What matters is that you create a situation where the student officers are put under stress And have to make decisions while they're under that kind of stress And the whole idea of the of the operations problem is to simulate that stress as much as possible And he even said and this comes out in the book You don't have to play the game out to any logical conclusion One side or the other doesn't have to win. There are some scenarios where they do The game only goes on until the director of the maneuver Assumes or knows that any further learning isn't going to take place In other words have all the lessons been learned that can be learned And then you can stop the game So that was that was a bit of a really a very different mindset because I kept encountering What I thought at first were very strange kinds of tactical scenarios for example In the orange strike toward Hawaii Uh There are more orange battleships cruisers and destroyers than orange carriers And in fact carrier air power in the scenario Is being used to support a large orange surface striking force. That's also operating west of hawaii And then and then covering the withdrawal of that surface force back toward micronesia Uh in the blue move To uh interdict orange shipping in the south trying to see Orange repeatedly Annunciates concern about three blue Alaska class battle cruisers All right, there are carriers involved and so forth, but they but they keep coming back to these battle cruisers In most of the scenarios in this book You usually have a blue force that consists of somewhere between One and five fleet carriers fleet or light carriers A larger number of battleships in almost all of these scenarios. There's a larger number of battleships Then there are carriers And then you've got cruisers destroyers and submarines some submarines The orange force usually consists of one or two carriers. There's almost always fewer orange carriers than blue And then they also have a larger number of surface ships than carriers Right now When I got into this before I got into the primary sources, I thought okay They're going to be replaying 1944 1945. So I'm going to see 15 or 20 blue carriers Going after about half that number of orange carriers and absolutely clobbering them And instead what happens In a very typical scenario Is The carriers go at each other And they in almost all cases pummel each other into non-operational capability And what's stressed very often is All you have to do to get a carrier out of combat is knock out its flight deck If the flight deck doesn't work The carrier's got to be sent back. So in a lot of these scenarios carriers aren't sunk They're just knocked out of action by having their flight decks demolished But in most of the cases The smaller number of carriers pummel each other into non-operational capability So that you are left with by the ends of the operations problems A blue surface force Fighting an orange surface force And it's almost always during the day There are almost no submarines operationally In these scenarios I'm not taking it. I first had to take into account what dr. Hattendorf told me All right, the specifics of the scenario don't matter as long as What's being the stress it's being created But I couldn't help but thinking Hmm Is the naval war college in 1945 and 1946 replaying or Still stuck to In a war doctrine where the battleships Are the main force well Then I had to start reading some other historians who were looking at wartime doctrine Because if you look at the plans by both admiral spruance and admiral halsey I remember admiral spruance is a surface officer But admiral halsey as a surface officer turned naval aviator both of them had doctrinal documents very similar to this in other words They were come they were practicing what's called combined arms naval warfare In 43 44 45 In almost all the operations they conducted They didn't assume the carriers could perform all the missions They assumed there were missions for heavy surface striking forces Beyond just being anti aircraft escorts Or amphibious gunships They assumed Or they thought They might have to fight Japanese heavy surface striking forces At some point in time When I took that into account These things didn't seem to be so strange Then this is a picture of the Yamato being sunk Then some other things happened. I had some more conversation. They had a conversation with a friend of mine Retired commander named Dennis Ringel Who taught for my college for a little while after he taught of all things high school for 10 years Commander Ringel, if you don't know, wrote a book in the late 90s called Life in Mr. Lincoln's Navy It was the first social history of sailors in the Union Navy during the Civil War And Dennis fortunately reminded me as we were talking about this Sorry about that That it's 1945 and 1946 and the major thing happened to the military beyond demobilization Are drastic, drastic budget cuts Because during the war the military was about 80% of the federal budget And Harry Truman was a fiscal conservative, a real fiscal conservative, not like the kind we have around the day And he was drastically cutting the budget because he was worried about the national debt And so Dennis reminded me that the Navy wasn't going to have all the money in the world Like it had had during the war And that perhaps that had to be taken into account when you go into these scenarios And of course less money means less ships Then I started thinking about some other things and I started reading historians like Trent Hone Who again has done a lot of research into the war time doctrine And some other things started to become rather apparent to me or that I was reminded of One, it's 1945, 1946 You don't know how long the occupation of Japan is going to last In fact in my first book I covered a series of memorandum between General of the Army Eisenhower and Fleet Admiral Nimitz They were debating in 1947 Whether the occupation of Japan was going to last three years or five years But they assumed the occupation of Japan was going to last no more than five years In fact, they also assumed that Japan was going to go communist as soon as the U.S. withdrew All right But if it is 1945, 1946 and you don't think the occupation of Japan is going to last very long Then is it entirely ludicrous to think that perhaps Japan might rebuild And part of that rebuilding might be building a navy again By the way in 1945 and 46 the Joint Chiefs of Staff typically Referred to future potential enemies as a resurgent Japan Or any other power Which of course meant the Soviet Union If you then start laughing and saying well the Russians didn't have a navy no they didn't have much of a navy but Stalin had been trying to build one since the mid 1930s So if it is 1945 and 1946 and you've just been through World War two Can you assume the Russians are never going to build a fleet And never going to have a navy that could potentially challenge the U.S. Navy At least in the Pacific or in the North Pacific Then I had to start thinking there were some other things too Again the idea of being short of money and being short of ships When the Korean war started There were only two fleet carriers. In fact, there were only two carriers period in the Pacific Basin There was one in Japan and there was one in Hawaii. There were more carriers But most of them were in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Because that's where the strategic focus was by that time Now I then had to remind myself That in 1942 specifically in 9 November 1942 There were only two fleet carriers left in the entire United States Navy And there were only two fast battleships in commission There were there were others in the pipeline Okay The Essex class carriers were going to come but not till about the summer of 1943 And there was a slow trickle of of the fast battleships out of the yards But in the fall of 1942 and right around the end of the naval battles of Guadalcanal U.S. Navy had really really minimal forces. In fact by early 43 U.S. Navy and the Salamans was using the destroyer as the main combatant Because they had lost so many cruisers in the fall. They really didn't have that many left So that brought up another idea Maybe the war games are the way they are Because the naval war college is putting the students in a situation where they don't have all the ships they really need To carry out their mission Some other things came up The focus on surface warfare what in the world is going on Uh well a historian from Hofstra University named James Levi came out with an interesting article a few years ago I think in the naval war college review He pointed out that of the 17 naval battles in the salamans campaign 42 to 43 15 were surface battles In fact in the entire pacific war there were only five carrier on carrier battles Two of them were fairly lopsided right midway in the philippine sea the other three in the fall of 42 were all fairly evenly matched carrier forces coral sea eastern salamans Uh in santa cruz. Oh and in those three carrier battles The carrier forces on each side pummeled each other into near non operational capability Another factor admiral spruins takes over Uh as president of the naval war college in march 1946 from uh vice admiral pie Who'd been president from 42 to 46 pie as a battleship admiral in fact He was the battleship commander of the pacific fleet on the morning of december 7th And uh and of course spruins was a surface officer, but it commanded combined arms naval forces Spruins would throw things at the students like What if we're up in the north pacific? And the weather's so bad Your aircraft can't fly And in march 1946 the navy sent some carriers up to the north pacific in an operation called frostbite Yeah, right the nickname is great They wanted to test carrier operational capability in arctic warfare and they found the carriers were about 50 capable Okay, and march. I mean that's a pretty bad month, but it's not probably not as bad as like january So spruins would say to his other staff and his students What if you're up in the north pacific and you're fighting somebody? Right or a surgeon japan or any other power and your aircraft can't fly What if you're up in the north and your radar doesn't work? How do you fight and when I started taking those kinds of things into account Surface battles Didn't seem so strange or anachronistic any longer Um What if as melka mirror talks about with surface warfare right after the end of the war What if the u.s navy and an opposing navy develop missiles? And do you get into a new kind of surface warfare? Missile on missile Especially if you are up north remember in the in the spring of 46 The enemy becomes purple And almost all the scenarios are up in the arctic circle whether in the atlantic or the pacific There's almost nothing Further south you know the pacific or the atlantic So it's really clearly sort of an arctic focus And then I started thinking okay the purpose is to put These guys and it was all guys then Purpose is to put these guys under stress What could be more stressful? Than resurrecting 1942 The worst year for the navy in the pacific war and and in fact Bring in elements of the fall of 1942 The battles around waddle canal Where forces were if not evenly matched the japanese had superior forces And create scenarios where these guys have to operate in those kinds of conditions No, you don't have 15 fleet and light carriers You've got two And then you've got these surface ships. How do you carry out your mission? Because what's going to come about i'm sure is the 64 000 dollar question Were the admirals refighting the last war? And now my answer to that is yes, of course they were Why would you expect them not to? The war had just ended That's what they were operating from that's all that that's all they were operating from And again if you think that's an agronistic understand it's 1945 and 1946 Nobody's predicting a korea at this time Nobody's talking about a vietnam Or a persian golf war They're sure not talking about a global war on terrorism I mean george kennins off talking about some operation brushfire operations, right? But george kennins not being listened to after about 1948 And he's the only one who's talking about those things the joint chiefs of staff In 45 and 46 and 47 think that the next war is going to be basically a repetition of world war two With atomic weapons If you look at the war plans and you look at the scenarios They're almost all along those lines Read steven ross's book On jcs plans between 45 and 50 and it's a really clear pattern So nwc Practicing interwar and wartime doctrine I don't think it's that out of the ordinary and I don't think I don't think it's out of the ordinary now if The generals and the admirals are looking at previous conflicts Um, I think I finished about two minutes before I was supposed to We've got about 15 minutes for questions. Yeah, I have a question. I've just I've often tried to picture this You know, you're talking about the fall of 42 is being kind of pivotal in terms of thinking and hard time Yeah, that's only what nine months after pearl harbor. Yeah Yeah, how long does it take today to make a battle ship or a carrier or a submarine? And what we're churning out and we go from every our pants down to fighting and winning the war In what four years? Yeah. Yeah, and in fact except for except for salvaging the era what was salvageable from the arizona and trying to Turn the oklahoma upright. I think it took about six months to repair the damage at pearl harbor I mean, obviously not all of it, but it took a good six months Even then Yeah, oh, yeah One of the major points today, I think is training people You know in world war two you could take anybody and run a liberty show. Yeah I'm not sure the liberty sailors would agree with that but okay Are there questions or comments or snipes or you know anything? Yeah I was with Navy back in the late 80s Navy reserve. Yeah, and we would train with NATO exercises over Naples and the siginella. Yeah, and I'm wondering if And we did a lot of exercises a lot of work If some of the naval war college trained Either they filled it through here to learn some of this or or it filled her the other way from there over into the main I'm sure it did. I mean, I don't know the details. Unfortunately. Dr. Hattenberg's not here. He would have The real details on that, but I'm sure there were in fact. I think one of my I was I joined the naval reserve in 88 as well Um, and I was I was uh in an intel unit. I was the personnel clerk um, but my last My second to last co was I think the first female Exo and then co of a reserve naval intel unit And I think she did some exercises here at the naval war college where she was a watch standard Yeah, so I wouldn't be surprised Yeah Input from world war two l8 officers or even enemy naval officers Japanese in particular Was that injected into this particular wargaming scenario? It couldn't have been directly. I think it was too soon after the end of the war Um, I mean certainly American officers coming back. I mean, they're their actual operational experience Uh, in fact, I would I would guess that the naval aviators Were really frustrated officers Because they had made the argument during the war. I don't think accurately But they'd made the argument during the war the naval carrier aviation can do it all I mean admiral admiral tower has just talked about no, you know Look at spruincy is playing games with the surface ships again So I would imagine those folks were pretty stressed frustrated because they had this idea that you really didn't need surface ships much of anything or much of anything else So I would think some of these folks are frustrated, but I think a lot of them were bringing wartime wartime operations The could they couldn't have not been thinking like that um now With the next book when I was looking at the scenarios were purple Of course, it became fairly well known during the cold war, right? That how how are the soviets going to try to fight the u.s. Navy? They're going to use submarines with missiles and torpedoes and then they're going to bring in surface ship They're going to bring in naval aviation land based naval aviation with missiles and then bring in surface ships I think the soviets got that from the japanese because in a lot of these scenarios where the japan and where the orange is short of carriers How are they going to fight blue? They're going to use their small number of carriers backed up by land based aviation There was one point writing blue versus purple I started thinking Did oh, and I have a mole in soviet naval headquarters Uh getting information on doctrine Because because blue versus purple in 1946 looked an awful lot in some cases like a like a cold war scenario From the 70s or the 80s Where you where you've got primarily a submarine force backed up by land based aviation And then that's backed up by a surface force So yeah, I mean there had to be operational experience being brought into this I don't see how there couldn't be I'm not sure I always got into the primary sources Remember somebody's recording the primary documents. So they're They're probably being told what maybe what to include what not to include Yeah, I think I saw another yeah I was just curious in a comment you made earlier in your presentation that you You found no evidence of any debrief or how washed out for any of the results of the wargaming. There was no there were no written That's the main reason for gaming right if you put the forces together Make your moves and then decide what you did right and what you did wrong critiques were being done They were all verbal So I so I have in blue versus purple. I have documents Here's here's who's doing the critique and here's what You know how it's going to be run and that's it Now it's not that unusual if you think 1945 to 1947 Because demobilization is so significant A lot of things in the military weren't being done as they were being done at other period time periods Uh, for example, there's an entire year or two Of the list of commissioned naval officers that was never done There was no listing for 1946 They were too busy demobilizing And getting going with the cold war. So this might have been a time period where so many people were coming and going It's it's an extraordinarily difficult time period figuring out when I write the books I like to put in This is lieutenant commander so-and-so and he was doing this It's very difficult figuring that kind of information out because from 45 to 47 very often Office rosters weren't unit rosters were being completed. I mean there was all kinds of disruption. So I'm not sure of written critiques were the norm before the war But in this time period now, there's another problem too and this could explain it When I got here in in o3 to do the initial bit of research Dr. Chupak said, okay The archives are a little spotty here and there I said, okay, she said in the 60s There was a Mustang lieutenant who was the officer in charge of the archives He'd been in the navy for about 45 years. This was his last Duty post before retirement. He saw it as his mission to Clean up the archives So a lot of stuff from this time period was thrown out So Yeah And you know, I like mustangs. I mean there were some of the best officers I served with and in the reserve. So that was really difficult to hear so I hand some yeah Five years after well war two ended And we were the most powerful force in the world. Yeah, the Korean war started And we were probably pretty second by that time pretty We were in poor shape um Compared to 1945. Yeah, because the budget cuts had cut into the operating forces quite significantly But there was a pretty quick Partial remobilization anyway. I mean those those two carriers quickly I think became six or seven Once Truman had made the commitment to to defend south korea But today my question really is yeah today with atomic weapons and I ran down to supply Isis and other people Are we are we going downhill fast? I'm from Detroit So so if you want to talk about us going downhill, I'll give you all kinds of stories It's got nothing to do with the state of our military It's got to do with the state of our domestic situation 49 percent might my colleague who runs our pre-education program tells me that 49 percent of the american population is functionally illiterate Guess guess what? Sorry to get political folks. Guess what happens when you put all your resources into the cold war and you don't pay attention What's going on at home And and and my aunt I used to teach military officers part-time online for marine corps university They didn't understand money until 2008 And in 2008 they suddenly figured out oh money matters If you don't have money if your civilian economy goes to hell in a handbasket Guess what? You don't have much of a military So You know now also do I see Iran as a threat? No, I don't I see russia and china as threats Which will need some military force to deal with But we better fix detroit and 49 functional illiteracy and Transition to a global information economy and not wait for the factories to come back and You know all those kinds of things otherwise, we you know With 49 functional illiteracy, where are you going to get people for your military? That's another book it's now what I'm going to write it's too damn depressing and close to home Yeah I don't I don't think it will be I think what I think it's going to be I think it's going to be somewhat of a resurgence of a cold war With with russia. I almost said the ussr with russia and and the prc And so I don't think I don't think it's going to go hot But I think there's going to be a lot of posturing and and uh maneuvering And maybe even some bumping and shouldering Like like when the u.s Went into with the soviets it was territorial waters to carry out intel operations and the soviet warships would Would bump and try to shoulder out The the naval units so I don't see I don't see a war going hot because I think Atomic weapons nuclear weapons still exist and I think that's the case then Then the great powers won't Get into an actual shooting match. I could be wrong. Hopefully I'm not But I certainly see a resurgence of a cold war Of some sort on the eurasian remland Uh because I think the russians want their eastern european sphere back And I don't think we should allow that And I think the prc wants to push the us back to guam And I don't think the us should allow that Um, and I don't I don't think will but so Another kind of cold war Yeah Any emphasis on a particular arm like uh Say those especially that's accurate submarine campaign No But you do you do see certain kinds of arms being brought in more for instance in the next in the next book blue versus purple There's more of submarines Uh with purple using them to strike carrier forces Uh and and blue using them to to oppose purple surface forces Although I think again in blue versus orange I think maybe there aren't submarines because you know there were operations in the pacific war where the submarines were off Doing other things and they just weren't available to commanders So Yeah, yeah But they don't they don't really come into the actual scenarios because the scenarios are more tactical than that Um, all you know is they're not available to you and they're they're off doing other things Yeah Respective which is Interesting for us So much of warfare becomes really reactionary based on what you know. Yeah, and now what are we doing? We're introducing something new these drones. Yeah coming all over the place. Yeah And there's no reason why that can't go to sea Right. Well, they are there already are All right, and so there's a whole new area that can really Have quite an impact and that can get up to speed a lot faster than an aircraft carrier Yeah, you could even have robots fighting robots Which brings up some really interesting for me some really interesting star trek like scenarios. Well, you never know In the blue shirt. Yeah, I just recently read that some previous Blue versus orange war game in between world war one and world war two Okay, they discovered as they were trying to figure out the campaign against japan. Yeah. Yeah They discovered they had no way of landing Yeah craft so right right recently from some of these games they Came up with amphibious chapters, which I assume you know play heavily into world war two. Yeah Any insights from the period that you've been in rodent if they came up with any other, you know light bulb Things that they applied then to Here we go Not so much in the war games themselves in the lectures that were being done at the naval war college for the students You get a lot of either the instructors Or guest lecturers or sometimes even students coming in and talking about you know, this is what we learned from the invasion of tarawa That kind of thing Helicopters No, no and in fact In blue versus orange and in digesting history of the book they gave me there's very little on a topic weapons Spruance is talking about it a little bit. It was a thesis topic But you also emphasize when he had the staff and students try to tackle the thesis topic. There's almost no information It's too classified Yeah, right. No, but I was using I didn't see helicopters But I didn't see much in the way of nuclear weapons either not until not until 46 47 Then you start bringing them in because of course anything post july 46 you have photos from operation crossroads So you have some something to work on helicopters nothing yet nothing like that So the new technology is very very slow coming in because It's just too classified Yeah If you see any evidence of if there were discussions that would happen here at the college about compactor of the rules Or if they needed to be changed or they weren't really modeled in the same way as in lona One I think that wasn't their main focus Because again, I think the main focus was creating a scenario of stress Two in the maneuver rules they do try to they do try to Make everything equivalent, right? I mean there's there's maneuver time For instance versus what we would call real time. So I think there was an attempt to do that I didn't see any shenanigans being played like like the japanese before midway resurrecting Sunk and carrier. I think I might have seen that in one one scenario So I think there was a real consciousness of them not to try to Redo or rewrite things that way Um, but I think their focus was really entirely different which again surprised me I thought they were going to be re you know historically replaying things In great detail and that that didn't seem to be the focus at all Uh, it was it was a really a totally different kind of intellectual exercise