the aircraft carrier club 61
When the inevitable naval arms race between Britain and Germany
accelerated, the Germans indeed followed the British prediction by con-
structing the infamously colossal Bismarck and Tirpitz. Erich Raeder, Hit-
ler’s naval commander, saw the main utility of the Bismarck as political
rather than strategic: it represented a challenge to the Versailles treaty.
German planners were well aware of the great ships’ limitations and vul-
nerabilities, and their prewar studies clearly foretell the vessels’ ill- fated
demise. The chief of fleet operations, Staff Captain Herman Boehm, stated
these objections forcefully: “From a purely military standpoint, the build-
ing of 10 , 000 - ton armored ships is quite unwanted, as they are inferior in
every way to ships- of- the- line and battle cruisers of other naval powers....
The construction of armored ships rests not on our own choice but as a
consequence of the chains binding us by the Versailles Treaty” (Mulligan
2005 , 1020 ). Yet even such sober analyses could not diminish the appeal
of procuring a mammoth ship. For his principled objection, Boehm was
removed from his position, and the Bismarck and Tirpitz were later sunk,
taking with them thousands of German seamen.
The internal debate within the British and German navies regarding
the usefulness of large battleships is important. It demonstrates that the
preference for large vessels is not simply a reflection of bureaucratic pol itics
(Allison 1971 ). Following the logic of bureaucratic models, it is certainly
reasonable to assume that navies would always prefer more resources
and additional ships. However, this is not the same as stating that navies
should always prefer larger ships. This was precisely the crux of the debate
within these bureaucracies. The logic of bureaucratic politics cannot tell
us why the admiralty would repeatedly favor larger ships to more ships
and surface ships to submarines. This is reminiscent of the F- 20 example
that opened this book. A bureaucratic model can tell us that the air force
would prefer more resources but cannot tell us why it would prefer one
F- 15 over several F- 20 s. Indeed, in the case of Britain and Germany, officers
in both navies recognized that larger ships are often a handicap rather
than an asset. The procurement of larger ships was promoted not because
it offered the best operational choice but because it was the best political
choice. If the navy was to obtain more resources, it needed to secure po-
litical support. It is this intersection between the professional judgment of
the admiral and the political reasoning of the government that opens the
door to conspicuous consumption. The result, to use Zahavi and Zahavi’s
terms, is a vessel that balances the pressures of natural selection, in this
case the dictums of battlefield functionality, with those of signal selection,
in this case the political role of the ship as a conspicuous status symbol.
