Key West Conference
11 MARCH 1948
KEY WEST CONFERENCE
The years following the end of WWII were tumultuous for the US military. The atomic bomb that ended that war fundamentally changed strategic thinking. Why bother with conventional forces when the answer to world conflict was the atomic bomb? Weren’t the millions of dollars spent every year to maintain a Navy, a Marine Corps, and even an Army, wasted? Primacy belonged to the Air Force, whose strategic bombers held the evil of the world at arm’s length. Our Navy was still wincing from the National Security Act of 1947 that challenged Navy independence by combining the Navy and War Departments into the Department of Defense. The Marine Corps was about to be relegated to the status of the Royal Marines–a police force able to conduct only small-time commando raids. Land-based Naval air capability faced extinction. Clearly, to insure future Navy viability, she was going to have to get into the atomic weapons business. But funding for the new generation of aircraft carriers represented by the flush-deck (no island) United States (CV-58), deploying nuclear capable aircraft, was being questioned. Against this backdrop, newly appointed Secretary of Defense, James V. Forrestal (the former SecNav), asked a former business associate, Ferdinand Eberstadt, to lobby Congress to coordinate foreign policy and military planning under a National Security Council. The effort stalled however, over the role of the Air Force. Forrestal now recognized that the survival of the Navy and Marine Corps depended upon compromise.
On this date, Secretary Forrestal convened a conference of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at Naval Station Key West to work out an overarching compromise military strategy, one of our first runs at “jointness.” A reasonable accord was reached. The Navy agreed to allow the Air Force exclusive domain over “strategic air forces,” and assured all that the Navy would not, “develop a separate strategic air force.” The Navy would continue to, “attack inland targets” however, and UNITED STATES, when finished, would still deploy aircraft with atomic weapons. The Marine Corps’ lead role in amphibious operations was reaffirmed, but they were limited to four divisions in size, and they were not to comprise another “land force.” To the Army was given the mission of ground operations. Rocketry and operational ground support was doled to the Air Force. Despite this agreement debate continued, and when Louis Johnson succeeded Forrestal as Secretary of Defense in 1949, he canceled the UNITED STATES project on 23 April 1949, shifting resources into more Air Force bombers. Excepting a flirtation with sea-based bombers, Naval atomic defensive air power awaited the commissioning of USS FORRESTAL (CVA-59) on 1 October 1955.
Watch for more “Today in Naval History” 15 MAR 23
CAPT James Bloom, Ret.
Goodspeed, M. Hill. U.S. Navy: A Complete History. Washington, DC: Naval Historical Foundation, 2003, p. 538.
Hoopes, Townsend and Douglas Brinkley. Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal. Annapolis, MD: USNI Press, 1992, pp. 372-74.
Love, Robert W. History of the US Navy, Vol 2 1942-1991. Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 1992, pp. 314-15.
Millis, Walter, ed. The Forrestal Diaries. New York, NY: Viking Press, 1951, pp. 392-94.