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In World War II's Pacific Theater, the U.S. Army Air Forces (AAF) devoted a small percentage of its long-range capability to aerial minelaying against Japanese warships and commerce. Sea mines-- explosive underwater devices that damaged, sank, or deterred ships--were weapons that had difficulty gaining the same acceptance as guns, bombs, and torpedoes. Yet, with time, a small number of aerial mining advocates influenced wartime commanders to ensure the growth of minelaying doctrine, equipment development, and combat experience. Ultimately, aerial minelaying became one of the most successful AAF maritime missions of the war and signaled an important role in sea control for the future U.S. Air Force. Minelaying by the AAF had to overcome the absence of doctrine, serious questions of service autonomy, and preconceptions about naval and air force traditional roles. Though this initially unappreciated weapon gained considerable acceptance during the years of World War II, mines were not again dropped from aircraft in combat until the Vietnam War. During the Cold War, the U.S. Air Force gave little effort to its collateral maritime missions until concern grew over containing an expanding Soviet naval threat. Today, Air Force capabilities for aerial minelaying and other naval missions remain an important (though little appreciated) means for projecting long-range air power in support of "Global Reach--Global Power."
Details the submarine, surface, and aerial mining campaign against Japan in World War II. Includes statistics on mines laid, casualties, and aircraft performance.
This book explains both the strategic and the operational aspects of exercising control of the sea. The struggle for sea control consists of three mutually related and overlapping phases: obtaining, maintaining and exercising sea control. It is in the phase of exercising sea control when one’s strategic or operational success is exploited; otherwise, the fruits of victories achieved would be wasted. This work describes the strategy of a stronger side in wartime after a desired degree of control has been obtained, which is followed by a discussion on the objectives and main methods used in exercising sea control. The remaining chapters explain and analyze in some detail each of the main methods of exercising sea control: defence and protection of one’s own and destruction/neutralization of the enemy’s military-economic potential at sea, capturing the enemy’s operationally important positions ashore, destroying/weakening the enemy’s military-economic potential ashore and supporting one’s ground forces in their offensive and defensive operations on the coast. This book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, sea power and naval history.
After WWI, Army airmen like Billy Mitchell, in a bid for service independence, touted land-based air power’s dominance over ships. Later, airmen at the Air Corps Tactical School developed a theory of independent air power application based on strategic bombing. These airmen persuaded Congress to purchase the tools to implement strategic bombing-fleets of heavy bombers-by citing these aircraft as optimum for defending the US coasts against enemy ships. However, when the opportunity to test the efficacy of bombers against ships presented itself in WWII’s Pacific Theater, Army Air Force (AAF) leaders proved reluctant to throw their full support behind such an effort. A key aspect of the US Navy’s Pacific strategy was an intense campaign against Japanese commercial shipping. This blockade, primarily targeting oil after late 1943, was spearheaded by US Navy submarines. A blockade proved the most effective means of attacking Japan’s oil, although AAF leaders preferred strategic bombing of the Japanese home islands, including oil facilities, over blockade support. This preference was particularly true for the B-29. This thesis analyzes the campaign against Japanese oil to explore why an oil blockade was effective against Japan and, more important, to examine how service parochialism distorted the development of a rational military strategy in the Pacific Theater.
Environmental information is important for successful planning and execution of naval operations. A thorough understanding of environmental variability greatly increases the likelihood of mission success. To ensure that naval forces have the most up-to-date capabilities, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) has an extensive environmental research program. This research, to be of greatest use to the warfighter, needs to be directed towards assisting and solving battlefield problems. To increase research community understanding of the operational demands placed on naval operators and to facilitate discussion between these two groups, the National Research Council's (NRC) Ocean Studies Board (OSB), working with ONR and the Office of the Oceanographer of the Navy, convened five previous symposia on tactical oceanography. Oceanography and Mine Warfare examines the following issues: (1) how environmental data are used in current mine warfare doctrine, (2) current procedures for in situ collection of data, (3) the present capabilities of the Navy's oceanographic community to provide supporting information for mine warfare operations, and (4) the ability of oceanographic research and technology developments to enhance current mine warfare capabilities. This report primarily concentrates on the importance of oceanographic data for mine countermeasures.