WWII

                        6 DECEMBER 1922

                   THE “UNITED STATES FLEET”

Since the Revolution, our national security interests had concentrated on the Atlantic Ocean, and our Navy operated the majority of her warships in those waters.  Only a handful of frigates or cruisers patrolled such far-flung locations as the Pacific, the Mediterranean, or the West African coast.  The Atlantic-based operations of subsequent conflicts, such as the Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and World War I, reinforced our Atlantic orientation.  By the decade of the 1920s, 180 of our Navy’s finest ships, including 16 battleships, were in the Atlantic Fleet.  The titular Pacific Fleet was squadron-sized at best, with vessels nearing the end of their service life.

But Japan’s post-WWI mandate over Germany’s former Pacific island possessions, indeed their militarization of these islands, spurred US planners to consider a threat from that direction.  The opening of the Panama Canal eight years earlier facilitated rapid movement between the two oceans, and strategists decided to shift our naval defenses whence they could readily address what was then conceived to be our most credible threat.  On this day, CNO ADM Robert Coontz merged the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets into the “United States Fleet,” and the bulk of our warships were moved to bases along our Pacific coast.  The single fleet mentality prevailed–only a small cruiser/destroyer training squadron remained in the Atlantic.

At the time, our major west coast facilities were in San Francisco and Puget Sound, but neither was robust enough to service the entire US Fleet.  San Pedro, near Los Angeles, offered a harbor deep enough for battleships, while San Diego’s shallow, curving channel could accommodate destroyers and gunboats.  This latter harbor, by virtue of its position as the first American port north of Panama, received immediate improvements and would eventually grow to its modern size.  San Pedro persisted as a base for battleships into the 1990s; the last Pacific battleships in active service during Vietnam and Desert Storm were homeported at nearby Long Beach.

But Germany’s aggressions in the late 1930s forced American planners to consider simultaneous threats from two directions.  On 17 June 1940, CNO ADM Harold R. Stark introduced the (then) novel concept of a “Two-Ocean Navy” to Congress, and a month later President Franklin Roosevelt signed a $4 billion Naval Expansion Act into law.  On 1 February 1941, the Pacific-based United States Fleet was re-divided into separate Atlantic and Pacific Fleets, this time of more equitable strength.  This dual fleet orientation is that which we take for granted in the 21^st century.

Watch for more “Today in Naval History”  13 DEC 22

CAPT James Bloom, Ret.

Baer, George W.  One Hundred Years of Sea Power:  The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990.  Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1996, p. 106.

Love, Robert W.  History of the US Navy, Vol 1  1775-1941.  Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, 524-26, 541-43.

Sweetman, Jack.  American Naval History:  An Illustrated Chronology of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, 1775-Present, 3^rd ed.  Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 2002, pp. 133, 142, 143, 146, 149.

ADDITIONAL NOTES:  Despite this re-division of the fleets on 1 February 1941, the “United States Fleet” continued as an administrative umbrella overseeing both arms.  ADM Ernest J. King was the last independent CINCUSFLEET, appointed on 20 December 1941 after Pearl Harbor.  Then on 12 March 1942, the duties of CNO and CINCUSFLEET were combined under ADM King.

The Naval Expansion Act of 1940 also expanded the 1^st and 2^nd Marine Brigades into the modern 1^st and 2^nd MarDiv’s, headquartered in Camp Pendleton and Camp Lejeune, respectively.

Though in hindsight one might criticize the single fleet mentality, it had one under-appreciated benefit.  The shifting of the single fleet from coast to coast required robust basing facilities on both coasts.  As a result, the infrastructure necessary to support the dual fleet re-organization, and indeed the “Two-Ocean War,” was already in place in 1941.