page_title: Revolt of the Admirals
section_title: Aircraft carriers
hierarchical_section_title: Revolt of the Admirals / Background / Aircraft carriers
caption_attribution_description: English: The U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Midway (CVB-41) steaming off the Firth of Clyde, Scotland (UK), prior to "Operation Mainbrace" exercises, September 1952. Douglas AD-4 Skyraider, Vought F4U-4 Corsair, and Grumman F9F-2 Panther aircraft from Carrier Air Group 6 (CVG-6) are spotted on her flight deck.
context_page_description: The "Revolt of the Admirals" was a policy and funding dispute during the Cold War in 1949, involving a number of retired and active-duty United States Navy admirals. These included serving officers like Admiral Louis E. Denfeld, Chief of Naval Operations, and Vice Admiral Gerald F. Bogan, as well as Fleet Admirals Chester Nimitz and William Halsey, senior officers in World War II.
  The episode occurred at a time when President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson were seeking to reduce military expenditure. This policy involved deep cuts in the Navy, while making the United States Air Force and strategic nuclear bombing the primary means of defending American interests. The Navy sought to carve out a role for itself in strategic bombing, which the Air Force saw as one of its primary roles.
  Partly driven by inter-service rivalry, the debate escalated from differences over strategy to the question of civilian control over the military. The cancellation of the aircraft carrier USS United States and accusations of impropriety led to an investigation by the House Committee on Armed Services chaired by Carl Vinson.
context_section_description: The Navy had no theoretical framework with which to develop a post-war strategy. Between 1890 and 1945 its doctrine had been based on the teachings of Alfred Thayer Mahan, who stressed the importance of control of the sea in securing the lines of communication through which maritime commerce traveled, and argued that the main objective of a Navy was the destruction of the enemy's battle fleet. But the Soviet Union had only a small navy, and as a Eurasian power, it was not dependent on maritime trade, and thus was immune to the effects of a naval blockade. Being in third place for funding behind the Army and Air Force represented a major loss of status for the Navy, which had traditionally seen itself as the nation's first line of defense. The Navy's budget had exceeded the Army's for every year but one between 1922 and 1939. It enjoyed the support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and had its own secretary who reported directly to the him. The Navy had cultivated political patronage in Congress by dispersing construction and maintenance of its vessels around the nation, and the House Committee on Naval Affairs and the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs had supported the acquisition of expensive capital ships and the development of naval aviation.
  The US Navy had acquired its first aircraft carriers in 1922, when it commissioned a converted collier as the USS Langley. Carriers accompanied the fleet, and the aircraft had the roles of scouting, observation and attacking enemy vessels.  Between 1910 and 1930, around twenty percent of all naval officers went into naval aviation. These included Forrest Sherman, Arthur Radford, Gerald F. Bogan and Daniel V. Gallery, all of whom rose to flag rank in the wartime Navy. Crucially, and in contrast to the Army, the Navy inculcated the attitude that an officer was a naval officer first and a specialist second.  This was bolstered by a long-standing ethos of creating a "balanced fleet", in which all specialists played a part. While naval aviators, like submariners, increasingly became a breed apart, and some became zealous advocates of naval air power, they expressed no desire to separate from the Navy.    
  To operate from carriers, aircraft needed tailhooks and strengthened undercarriages, which made them heavier and less maneuverable than similar land-based aircraft, but fears that they could not compete against land-based fighters proved ultimately groundless; between 1 September 1944 and 15 August 1945, US Navy Grumman F6F Hellcat and Vought F4U Corsair fighters destroyed 2,948 Japanese fighters for the loss of 191 of their own. However, like strategic bombing, the record of aircraft carriers was not as clear cut as the enthusiasts suggested. Only two battleships were sunk by US carrier aircraft alone: the giant Yamato and Musashi. US Carrier aircraft accounted for 4 of the 18 Japanese heavy cruisers that were sunk, 6 of the 25 light cruisers, and 27 of the 127 destroyers. What they were particularly lethal against was other aircraft carriers, sinking 11 of the 19 Japanese carriers sunk in the war. In the post-war drawdown, the aircraft carrier fleet was reduced to the three Midway-class and eight Essex-class.
  One role the Navy could play in a conflict with the Soviet Union was participation in strategic bombing. In December 1947, Gallery wrote a top secret memorandum on the subject that was leaked to a syndicated newspaper columnist, Drew Pearson, who published it in the The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Bulletin. The idea was that instead of building a bomber with a range of 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km; 5,800 mi), Gallery argued that it was a better idea to build one with lesser range that could be launched from an aircraft carrier. Radford noted that any target in the world was within 1,500 nautical miles (2,800 km; 1,700 mi) of the sea. A carrier could be deployed quickly in a crisis, and did not require the establishment of expensive overseas bases. Gallery even went further than most Navy officers in arguing that strategic bombing with nuclear weapons should be t
caption: USS Midway in 1952
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