Key Authors/Books 7101-7103 Flashcards
Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear; Russia’s War with Japan
Connaughton
7102-1
Combined Operations in the Civil War
Rowena Reed
“HAD MCCLELLAN’S BRILLIANT STRATEGY BEEN FULLY IMPLEMENTED, IT WOULD HAVE ENDED THE CIVIL WAR IN 1862, AS INTENDED.” xviii
Combined operations - operations requiringstrategic or tactical cooperation between naval and land forces under separate command.
3 Parts
Part 1 - Explains the evolution of combined strategy from Lincoln’s proclamation of the blockate in April 1861 until McClellan’s removal as commanding general of the US Army in March 1862.
Part II - collapse of combined strategy incident to this change of command, its repercussions in the various military departments, and the split between the Army & Navy over strategic priorities
Part III describes the evolution of combined tactics, and the relation of amphibious operations ot Union war strategy from the naval attack on Charleston in April 1863 to the reduction of Fort Fisher in the early months of 1865
Basic Point: McClellan a “modern young soldier of seemingly inexhaustible energy and talent” had a war-winning idea & everyone else was not as good. Railroads were critical LOCs
“McClellan proposed using the great water highways of the South. Penetrating deep into the Confederacy along the Mississippi, the Tennessee, and the Cumberland rivers, Federal armies could seize the grat East-West rail lines connecting the Mississippi Valley with the Atlantic and Gulf seaboard, and with Virginia…disrupt Richmond’s lines…force Confederate army in Virginia to disperse for lack of supplies…to free themselves from this death grip, Southern generals would have to hurl their men against strongly fortified positions which could not be invested while protected by Union warships or gunboats.”
On Naval Warfare
Mahan
6 conditions of sea power
- Geographical Position
- Physical Conformation -
- Extent of territory -
- Number of Population
- National Character
- Character of Govt
Mahan, like Jomini, is big on concentration
242 - Fleet in being originated by British Adm Lord Torrington - kept fleet together and didn’t go out to challenge inferior French fleet - “While we had a fleet in being, they (French) wouldn’t dare take a chance (invade England)…”
- 243 “Force is ever on the flank and rear, threatening the lines of communication”
- 244 Napoleon “Don’t make pictures for yourself” was Napoleon’s warning to his generals (meaning don’t imagine the EN to be stronger / more capable than they are…”Every naval operation since I became head of government has failed, because my admirals see double and have learned - where I don’t know = that war can be made without running risks”
- 247 “The great end of a war fleet, however is not to chase, nor to fly, but to control the seas. Had Cervera escaped our pursuit at Santiago, it would have been only to be again paralyzed at Cienfuegos or at Havana.”
- 248 “Not speed, but offensive action, is the dominant factor in war…force does not exist for mobility, but mobility for force.”
- “248 “The safest move for weaker fleet is to lock it up in a safe harbor & force the other side to expend effort to continuously watch it
Some Principles of Maritime Strategy
Corbett
More of an Art guy like Clausewitz
“Dardanelles is a great study of Corbett…” Chris Harmon
90 “Command of the Sea therefore means nothing but the control of maritime communications, whether from commercial or military purposes. The object of naval warfare is the control of communications, and not , as in land warfare, the conquest of territory.”
134 - Arguing against fleet in being - “True, advocates of the mass entrench themselves in the plausible conception that their aim is to inflict crushing defeat. But this too is an idea of peace. War has proved to the hilt that victories have not only to be won, but worked for. They must worked for by bold strategical combinations, which as a rule entail at least apparent dispersal. They can only be achieved by taking great risks, and the greatest and most effective of these is division.”
162 - “Over and above the duty of winning battles, fleets are charged with the duty of protecting commerce…so vital indeed is financial vigor in war, that more than not the maintenance of the flow of trade has been felt as a paramount consideration…”
Guardians of the Empire
Brian Linn
Policy doesn’t equal implementation.
Both the U.S. & Japanese were regional powers with global interests.
Constant debate between potential and what we can actually do.
- 222 "Although in retrospect their emphasis was mistaken, the fault was not military incompetence, laziness, or an arrogant dismissal of Japanese capabilities. Rather it represented a plausible and reasoned response to the military situation at the time…"
226 Debate about whether Philippines could or should (tactical / strategic importance) be defended. MacArthur (now Army COS) wanted immediate 2 division relief force. Debate about manner of defense “defense of Corregidor is defense of Philippines…”
Illustrated History of the First World War
Strachan
Strachan -
Sir Hew Francis Anthony Strachan (/strɔːn/ STRAWN), DL, FRSE, FRHistS, FBA (born 1 September 1949) is a British military historian, well known for his leadership in scholarly studies of the British Army and the history of the First World War. He is currently professor of international relations at the University of St Andrews
Jomini
Wrote a ton
Art of War
Definition of Strategy and the Fundamental Principle of War: “The art of war, independently of its political and moral relations, consists of five principle parts; Strategy, Grand Tactics, Logistics, Tactics of the Different Arms, and the Art of the Engineer
* The Fundamental Principle of War
○ Concentrate/mass army at right place
○ Concentrate/mass at right time
○ Concentrate/mass within the battlefield at right place
○ Don’t let the enemy mass on you / mass on only a portion of EN Army
Focus on LOCs (threaten/seize EN LOC, secure your own), bases
The choice of lines of operation – being the primary means of bringing into action upon the decisive point of the theater of operations the greatest force possible, maybe be regarded as the fundamental idea in a good plan of campaign
Jomini isn’t just a rules/principles guy:
“War in its ensemble is not a science, but an art. Strategy, particularly, may be regulated by fixed laws resembling those of the positive sciences, but this is not true of war viewed as a whole”
Dynamics of Doctrine
Lupfer
1) elasticity - resist, bend, & snap back
2) Timely counterattack at all echelons
3) use of Arty - KT for arty observation was a/the key element of defense & counterattack
- Between Sept 1916 - Apr 1917, Germans developed and implemented new defense in depth
- Key regulation was “The Principles of Command in the Defensive Battle in Position Warfare” (Principles) p.12
○ Objective of defense was no longer retention of terrain - it was to “force the attacker to frustrate and expend himself.”
Timothy Lupfer is now a speaker, author, independent consultant, and “leadership contrarian.” He graduated first in his class at the United States Military Academy (West Point) and won a Rhodes Scholarship. At Oxford University, he read Modern History at Christ Church. His career in the army included commanding a tank battalion in combat in Desert Storm and serving as an Assistant Professor at West Point in the Department of History. In the 1990s he served as an executive at R.H. Macy and Company while the company emerged from bankruptcy, and then became a management consultant, retiring as a Managing Director of Deloitte Consulting in 2011. He now spends his time writing, speaking, traveling with his wife of over 46 years, and (unsuccessfully) chasing his seven grandchildren.
Military Power
Stephen Biddle
Operational force employment that has conditioned martial prowess in the 20th century…the resultant system of force employment…’a tightly interrelated complex of cover, concealment, dispersion, suppression, small-unit maneuver, and combined arms at the tactical level, and depth, reserves, and differential concentration and the operational level of war…provided adopters with a significant advantage over non-adopters…
30 - Central problem of modern tactics: how to survive the hail of metal long enough to perform meaningful military missions
Offensive tactics - combined Arms, cover, concealment, small-unit independent, dispersion, suppression,
Offensive Operations
- Breakthrough and exploitation
- Limited aims - limited payoffs, and risk (“Bite & Hold / Bite & Chew”)
○ Take a chunk, consolidate
Tradeoffs between breakthrough and exploitation
Def ops in Modern system
- Depth, reserve, & counterattack to thwart old & modern system
- "The new theory's dynamic structure sees continental operations as races between penetration and counterconcentration; the central purpose of defensive depth and reserves is to buy the time and wherewithal needed to counterconcentrate." 101
Stephen D. Biddle (born January 19, 1959)[1] is an American author, historian, policy analyst and columnist whose work concentrates on U.S. foreign policy. Currently, he is the Professor of International and Public Affairs at School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University.[2] He received recognition for his 2004 book Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle, published through Princeton University Press. He also has worked in groups under Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus forming U.S. counter-insurgency policy.
Steve Biddle - a great intellect, but tone-deaf a little bit b/c thinks he came up with stuff, and he did b/c he didn’t learn it in the service
Battle Tactics of the Western Front
Paddy Griffith
Dr. Morris, “Griffith’s basic argument is that by early 1917 the British had figured it out (solving tactical problem & restoring movement).”
Tactical problem = “storm of steel with no flanks” “Flank is un-get-at-able”
Brit Army’s tactical improvements & major ingredients for restoring movement:
- Better use of Arty, use of MGs, Better maps, all arms integration at lower levels (plt), heavier weapons, automatic weapons.
Capt Partridge & Doctrine -
○ 181-182 - Developed & disseminated training manuals…good and a lot of them
Field Artillery and Firepower
Bailey
- 240 “This review of the First World War will show how the pressures of combat brought about the radical revision of artillery tactics and countermeasures, resulting in a fundamental and revolutionary change in the manner in which warfare was conducted. Preoccupation with rifle fire and the maneuver of infantry gave way to a fixation on the firepower of artillery, machine guns, tanks, and aircraft. But it was developments in indirect fire in particular that gave artillery its ascendancy over the infantryman and his rifle. The art of C2 was soon seen to lie in the way a commander marshaled resources and applied the effects of firepower, rather than in the way he deployed foot soldiers.”
○ 247 - "Lifting / straight barrage" then 1916 "Piled-up barrage" later "creeping or rolling barrage" 253 "In 1914, infantry had determined the face of battle. By 1916, only the logistician carried more influence than the gunner, and the infantryman was reduced to carrying out such operations as these two deemed feasible."
The AEF Way of War
Grotelueschen
A Peace to End All Peace
Fromkin
Gallipoli: Command Under Fire
Erickson
Allenby
Wavell
Seven Pillars of Wisdom
Lawrence
