Sidebilder
PDF
ePub

ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF OUR NAVY

TRAINING THE PEOPLE

During the past fiscal year ending June 30, 1944, the Navy trained 1,303,554 personnel, manning 4,063 new vessels or 11 ships each day-plus more than 20,000 landing craft and keeping pace with the naval air arm which doubled the number of planes on hand.

The magnitude of the Navy's training task stems from the necessity of manning the world's greatest naval force predominantly with men who have had no previous seagoing experience. Of a total of 2,987,311 personnel in the Navy on June 30, less than 12 percent were in the service prior to Pearl Harbor and 2,478,002, or approximately 83 percent, are members of the Naval Reserve.

In addition to continuing the extensive training of personnel now in the service, the Navy will be required, in the current fiscal year, to train approximately 600,000 new personnel who are expected to be drawn into the service from civilian life by June 30, 1945. The collapse of Germany will result in no curtailment of the Navy's training program. The continued successful prosecution of the war against Japan will require, according to present estimates, that the Navy continue to expand until it reaches a strength of 3,389,000 by June 30, 1945.

The complexity of the Navy's training activities is reflected in the fact that new personnel must be trained to proficiency in more than 450 enlisted specialties and petty officer ratings which are indispensable to man, fight, and maintain the highly complicated mechanism of a modern Navy.

The measure of the Navy's training accomplishment depends upon whether men are ready and trained to man the ships and planes as they come off the ways and out of the factories. The evidence of success lies in the fact that no vessel or unit has been delayed in commissioning through lack of trained personnel. In 2%1⁄2 years the Navy has trained the greatest citizen naval force in history. And it has produced seasoned reserve personnel with extensive combat experience.

The training of the Navy of 1944 has been achieved by a great expansion of the naval training establishment, the channeling of aptitude by careful selection and classification of previously acquired civilian skills and abilities, standardized curricula, practical instruction, the use of training aids, and intensified team training of groups. ashore prior to duty afloat and abroad.

Prior to the inception of the Navy's intensive shipbuilding program in 1940, the Navy had in operation a training establishment which consisted of approximately 75 schools, with an average attendance of 10,000 personnel. In addition the Navy operated 2 air training

schools, with an attendance of 865 men, which produced an average of 350 pilots a year.

The Navy now has a total of 947 schools, with a daily average attendance of 303,000 personnel.

Up to the end of 1943-44 fiscal year, of this number 136 were basic and advanced air training schools, with an average attendance of 35,000 and a monthly output of 1,700. It is estimated that the Navy spends close to $30,000 on the training of each naval aviator who is in training for 18 to 24 months.

The Navy's schools for training officers and officer candidates fall into two groups.

1. Six Naval Reserve midshipmen's schools have sent a total of 41,689 deck and engineering officers to duty assignments throughout the Naval Establishment. These schools, established since 1940 for the training of officer candidates from civil life and from the enlisted. ranks, are the Navy's principal source of young seagoing officers, and 95 percent of their graduates are serving at sea.

2. With the knowledge that Selective Service would in time sharply diminish or eliminate the supply of young men between the ages of 18 and 21 years upon which the Navy would have to depend for additional officer candidates, the Navy on July 1, 1943, instituted the Navy college program (V-12) for the preliminary training of young officer candidates. At this time the Navy college program (V-12) is operating 264 units at 202 colleges and universities and has a current attendance of 65,000 officer candidates. Since the establishment of the V-12 program, it has delivered more than 23,000 qualified officer candidates to the Reserve midshipmen's schools, Supply Corps schools, and Marine officer candidates' schools. In addition to this number, 2,600 officers were commissioned directly from Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps, now a part of the V-12 program, and the medical and dental schools have supplied the Navy with 1,400 doctors and dentists.

Of the Navy's training schools, 310 are devoted to the instruction of enlisted personnel. These schools also fall into two groups.

1. Recruit training or "boot" training-is provided to new enlisted men at 7 of these training activities which have a total attendance of 219,387 and which in the past year passed 1,046,912 into service or into advanced enlisted training schools.

2. For the purpose of providing advanced instruction for enlisted specialists, 305 of these schools are maintained with an average capacity of 168,482 men and an output last year of 383,689 specialists.

During peacetime an average of 4 years was required to train a petty officer, third class. A young officer was not usually assigned to take a deck watch under way until he had spent 2 years at sea following his 4 years at the Naval Academy. Today, by the utilization of civilian skills and by intensification of training, petty officers, third class, are sent to specialized duty as early as 7 months after their first enlistment, and young officers stand watch in the vessels for which they have been qualified in an average time of 6 months By the continuation of training at sea it has been possible to develop seasoned veteran personnel in a matter of months rather than years. Since Naval Reserve personnel must be essentially specialists the Navy's method of classification and selection is of primary importance to a highly geared training program. A series of tests, based upon the

[ocr errors]

type of duty to be performed in the Navy, is given to each recruit to determine his general classification, abilities, aptitudes, and any knowledge of specific work. Through a system of personal interviews these tests are supplemented by considering the background and experience of the individual so that the special qualifications of each recruit may be evaluated. This information, indexed and recorded, is used in establishing quotas for the detail of men to service schools or to any other duty for which they seem best qualified.

Class work study and workshop or laboratory application at training schools is in all cases augmented by the extensive use of training aids such as posters, graphs, pamphlets, models, photographs, strip films, recordings, and motion pictures. The wide use the Navy has made of training aids is reflected in the figures on motion pictures and strip films. The Navy has used more than 5,000 separate film subjects and has distributed more than 1,000,000 prints of photographic film. Most of the principal classes of naval vessels carry extensive libraries of basic training motion picture and strip filmsin the case of a major combatant ship as many as 500 separate titlesand instruction by use of these films continues until the vessel enters combat. Visual education is used to establish basic doctrine in such new fields as amphibious warfare. to standardize procedure and to save training time-in some cases between 25 and 50 percent-by visual presentation of complicated mechanisms and processes. The Navy considers motion pictures an invaluable aid, rather than a substitute, for training.

To give crews actual experience in shipboard and combat conditions without unduly drawing combatant vessels and equipment from the war zones, elaborate models, simulated battle conditions on typical beachheads, special devices for surface and air navigation, and hundreds of other aids are employed.

The magnitude of the shipbuilding program and the urgent need for crews with maximum team training before going to sea made advisable the establishment in January 1943 of operational and precommissioning training activities, a development unique in naval instruction methods. Instead of sending officers and men already skilled in a specialty directly to sea after, preliminary training at officers, and enlisted service schools, naval personnel are assigned to train as teams ashore at operational and precommissioning training activities

Prior to the commissioning of a new vessel the new crew is assembled and becomes a ship's organization on land. Composed of a nucleus of experienced personnel drawn from the fleet, and the remaining personnel direct from training schools with no previous sea or combat experience, the men of the crew live together and in all respects operate together as if in fact they were at sea. As members of teams who will later serve together in combat, officers and men are given advanced training in the scores of specialties required to master the complicated mechanism of the modern naval vessel. It is the responsibility of the veteran personnel to bring the new men, lately from indoctrination and training schools, quickly to the high point of efficient team operation which conditions in action require. As a result, when assigned to their new vessel, members of the crew possess far more practical training as fighting units than was possible under previous methods of instruction ashore.

At the outset of its program to build the greatest fleet in history the Navy had had no previous experience to indicate whether it was possible in limited time to train to expert proficiency the large number of civilian reserves necessary to man the great new sea and air force. But the job is being done. The trained competence of naval officers and men afloat and their ability to learn quickly and to work and fight together with skill and courage are reflected in the commendatory reports of commanding officers. Their quality is being demonstrated in combat. The Japs know it.

The success of the Navy in the war to date is a direct result of the high state of training of its officers and men. The Navy's training system has not only taught naval skill but in a greater accomplishment has produced seasoned fighting men.

BUILDING THE SHIPS AND PLANES

Day after tomorrow-September 1, 1944-is the fifth anniversary of the outbreak of war in Europe. In order to meet its obligations in the past 5 years of armed neutrality and war, the Navy has increased the size of its fleet and air arm until the United States has become, for the first time in its history, the greatest naval power on earth. During this period the Navy increased the number of warshpis in its fleet over 3 times, built a huge new fleet of supporting vessels and landing craft, much more than trebled its fire power and multiplied its air force 20 times.

Since the beginning of hostilities in Europe, the Navy added almost 65,000 vessels of all types to the fleet, or a total of over 9,000,000 displacement tons. Nearly 36 percent of the total represents combatant ships, 29 percent auxiliaries, and 22 percent landing craft. At the end of this period the Navy had on hand over 5 times the tonnage of all types that was on hand on September 1, 1939.

During the same period the Navy accepted a total of 57,600 planes. Monthly production of Navy airplanes 5 years ago averaged only 12 per month, as contrasted with recent acceptances of 78 per day. This total number of Navy planes on hand today is 20 times as great as the planes on hand at the beginning of the European war. The Navy aircraft-production job is far from complete. In the next 12 months the Navy requires and has scheduled for delivery over 30,000 planes, of which 93 percent are in the combat class, or more than half the number accepted during all of the past 5 years combined.

Production of ordnance material has been expanded immensely to meet the demands of arming the ships and planes of the Navy. The monthly production rate of torpedoes is now approximately 40 times the average rate in 1939. Depth charges are now produced at a monthly rate 60 times that of the average monthly production rate 5 years ago. In an average month the Bureau of Ordnance now expends almost 3 times the total amount expended in the entire first year of the period. New weapons have been developed to meet modern battle conditions so that our ships could repel enemy air attack. Over 125,000 1.1-inch, 20- and 40-millimeter antiaircraft guns have been produced. Production of ammunition for these guns has totaled over 1,000,000,000 rounds.

For every person serving in the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard in September 1939, there are over 24 today, and this figure will be increased when authorized strength is reached the middle of

next year. Combined strength has grown from 152,086 officers and enlisted personnel on September 1, 1939, to 3,717,000 today.

Congress has authorized the Navy during the past 5 years to spend over $118,000,000,000. Not all of this sum has been committed or expended. Commitments, or those sums which the Navy has had or will have to pay, now amount to over $91,000,000,000. Expenditures to liquidate these commitments have amounted to nearly $65,000,000,000. They are now running at an annual rate over 25 times the 1939 rate.

Lend-lease to our allies amounting to over $5,000,000,000 in materials and services has already been transferred by the Navy and requests are now in process for an even greater sum. Vessels account for approximately 40 percent, petroleum and coal products for 25 percent, and aircraft for 15 percent. The British Empire received 92 percent while the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics received 5 percent of all Navy transfers.

The expenditures remaining emphasize the point that the Navy program is only a little more than half finished. A substantial task still lies ahead. Planned operations are dependent upon the speed with which we obtain assault troop and cargo ships. These ships are the Navy's most urgent need, and rank in importance with a few of the other most vital military programs. Also needed are vast quantities of bombardment ammunition, 40 millimeter antiaircraft guns, and numerous special devices to make certain the final defeat of our enemies.

WILL WE CHOOSE NAVAL SUICIDE AGAIN?

(By James Forrestal, Secretary of the Navy)

(A distinguished Navy spokesman warns that we invite national disaster if we follow our unrealistic custom of destroying our own ships after the shooting stops. Originally appeared as an article in the Saturday Evening Post.)

On a hot, sunny morning in February I had the privilege of landing on the Kwajalein islets of Roi and Namur, one day after our amphibious forces had begun to get the situation well in hand. The islets were smoking, stinking heaps of rubble, with the blasted stumps of palm trees sticking out like giant toothpicks in disarray. For 3 days, Army, Navy, and Marine planes and Navy ships had plastered the whole 700-mile perimeter of the Marshall Islands, pinning down the Japs while the attack group prepared to strike at the heart of the Marshalls, the atoll of Kwajalein. Onto this atoll, and particularly onto its islets of Roi, Namur, and Kwajalein proper, we had poured during these same 3 days the heaviest concentration of bombs and naval shell fire that the world had ever seen.

To storm the Marshalls we had assembled the mightiest fleet of warships, transports, and landing craft ever floated on the Pacific; it was a new fleet, most of which had come off the building ways within the past 3 years. We had sent ashore gallant young Americans who, 3 years before, had never thought of storming a beach. Three hundred of them were killed at Kwajalein.

This is the price we paid for a coral atoll which, although it lay athwart our lifeline to the Philippines, we had allowed to pass from

« ForrigeFortsett »