Europe and were quite familiar with the principal ideas underpinning industrial-
age warfare. The exigencies of modern warfare were thus not entirely a surprise,
except with regard to logistics. American ground operational doctrine, which
stressed conducting offensive operations and massing overwhelming combat
power at the decisive point, was not inconsistent with the attrition-based strategy
of the Allies, and it did accord with the strategic and political objectives of the
United States. 18 However, the operational doctrine was not adequately supported
by the AEF’s logistical system. As a result, several logistical and communication
problems were evident from the AEF’s first operation to its last: transportation of
troops, materiel, and casualties between and among command echelons; delivery
of orders; and coordination with adjacent units and higher headquarters. 19 These
were shortcomings that experienced armies tend to work out over time; but the
war would end before the US army had time to identify and correct them.
The US navy found that the doctrines of Mahan were not entirely sufficient for
the operational tasks it had to perform during the war. It had been built and
trained, and had developed an operational art, for the mission of defeating
another navy. Instead, it found itself cooperating with the Royal Navy to hunt
down and destroy German submarines. This required mental reorientation on
the part of US naval officers, as well as the construction of many more destroyers.
When the US navy entered the war, it had 70 destroyers, only 44 of which were
modern, with which to execute its anti-submarine mission; by war’s end, it had
248 destroyers, 60 large subchasers, and 116 small ones built or being built. 20
Within eighteen months, the US navy had essentially changed the entire balance
of its force structure from one designed to defeat a surface enemy to one capable
of neutralizing a sub-surface threat. A substantial, if temporary, intellectual
reorientation was necessary, and it had to be accomplished without a corpus of
theory, such as that offered by Mahan, to pave the way.
THE INTER-WAR PERIODThe US armed forces were rapidly demobilized after the Great War. During the
1920s and 1930s, the active-duty strength of the army—once well over two
million officers and men—rarely numbered more than 135,000. The navy was
also reduced in size, and even the Washington (1922) and London (1930)
Agreements, which allowed it to maintain a force equal in strength to that of
the British Royal Navy in terms of capital ships and cruisers, did not seem to help.
No new battleships were built until 1937, but Congress did authorize the con-
struction of sixteen armoured cruisers, and the conversion of two older battle-
ships into aircraft carriers. The Japanese imperial navy did pose a credible threat,
and that clearly slowed the demobilization of the US navy. Like the army, the navy
was not sufficient to carry out the contingency plans developed during the
inter-war period. 21 The Great Depression also contributed to the severity of fiscal
constraints, slowing the development and adoption of new technologies, and
American Operational Art, 1917–2008 141