[semi off topic] Fleet in Being

When responding to ReFlame in a recent post, I brought up the strategic concept of "Fleet in Being". Last night, I found this article on the concept - it's mainly on a new Iranian take on the strategy, but it does speak to the traditional concept, and a couple historical examples of it's use.

https://warontherocks.com/2023/07/irans-proxy-fleets-in-being/

Unfortunately, they don't mention one of my favorite takes on the subject - the 13 uncompleted 1st, 2nd and 3rd rates and 27 Frigates built by the US and immediately placed in ordinary after the War of 1812. It was found that any ship, prior to a voyage, requires 4-6 months to repair and fit out - So America built over a dozen liners and over 2 dozen modified Humphry Frigates and got them to the fitting stage - and placed them in ordinary along with their masts, spars and other long lead items. Several of the ships were broken out for service over the next 40 years, but the majority of the hulls were still kept in a preserved state in case of war with a European power - until many were burned by Union forces who was forced to vacate Norfolk naval yard at the start of the US Civil War.

Yes, the US had to burn an entire navy kept in storage in it's own dockyard to protect it from being captured by enemy forces - sound like Grendlesbane, anyone?

The "Fleet in Being" concept here is the US believed that it would know about any diplomatic Bru-ha ha in time to activate the stored fleet before a European power could decide it needed to attack the US, form the fleet and fit it out, and then send it across the Ocean. While a dozen or so liners isn't enough to fend off a European Power's navy, it will:
1) fend off smaller navies on it's own
2) Any European Fleets couldn't afford to take damage from an American fleet without a nearby base to repair damage
and
3) American ships can be spread out in groups or based in any of the numerous ports on the American Coasts, so any blockade of the US coast will take numerous, individually superior forces,
so:
4) Any European fleet sent to fight the US would need to be a vastly superior force to limit it's damage and loss, and cover the vast coasts with superior taskforces, so would probably need to be at least 3-4x the size of the American Force.
and
5) Other European nations may smell blood in the water if any of their rivals send too large of a fraction of their fleet to the Americas for months on end, and take the initiative to pounce and destroy the remaining Fleet.

I almost forgot, the Norfolk Naval Yard burning resulted in another "Fleet in Being". The Merrimack, Scuttled and burned, had it's hull protected by the mud and water, and along with the undestroyed granite dry dock, was able to be rebuilt into the CSS Virginia Ironclad Ram.

Progress of the rebuilding was watched from Washington and resulted in General McClellan postponing his Peninsula Campaign offensive for 3 months in fear that the ironclad could be launched and used to cut off this forces from Supply.

This time the "Fleet in Being" was only a single ship, but changed the course of the war (and ship building priorities) for nearly half a year at a critical junction.

Theemile wrote:4) Any European fleet sent to fight the US would need to be a vastly superior force to limit it's damage and loss, and cover the vast coasts with superior taskforces, so would probably need to be at least 3-4x the size of the American Force.
and

In the ARW both Britain and France did sent forces 3-4x the size of the American Force across the Atlantic.

66 Ships of the Line fought at the Battle of the Saintes
(April 1782)

edgeworthy wrote:

Theemile wrote:4) Any European fleet sent to fight the US would need to be a vastly superior force to limit it's damage and loss, and cover the vast coasts with superior taskforces, so would probably need to be at least 3-4x the size of the American Force.
and

In the ARW both Britain and France did sent forces 3-4x the size of the American Force across the Atlantic.

66 Ships of the Line fought at the Battle of the Saintes
(April 1782)

True, but the idea was that such a force would be the minimum needed to bottle up the Full American Fleet when afloat - don't look at me - That was the plan in 1816, be it a good one or a bad one.

Really the best part of the plan was the navy was able to rotate their frigates in and out of Ordinary easily. So while some hulls got no hours on their hulls, others got rotated frequently, and having the spares allowed ships to be replaced in service quickly, and spare parts like masts and spares were readily available from the warehouses of the unlaunched sister ships.

Don't disregard the internal American political leanings of the time.

Large standing forces were an anathema to many of the early political leaders of the United States. Jefferson, in particular, felt that a small professional force fleshed out by militia was the answer to the need for ground forces for national defense. This conviction held sway all the way up to the American entry into WWI. After the War Between the States, the Army was drawn down to a shadow of itself both in number of regiments and in the manning of the units. Companies the size of modern platoons weren't unheard of.

The Navy was a different creature since the vessels and skills required were unique (hitting a target moving in 3 dimensions while you are movoing in 3 dimensions, too, is as much art as science during the Age of Sail). Therefore, it made sense to uave the ships built and held in ordinary ahead of need.

Those facts wouldn't have stopped the 'militia first' theory from seeping into the Navy problem. They envisioned manning with professional civilian seamen (which the US had in huge numbers) as short term volunteers like they during the Barbary pirate campaigns with a core of long service professionals servingas training cadre and in leadership roles.

jtg452 wrote:Don't disregard the internal American political leanings of the time.

Large standing forces were an anathema to many of the early political leaders of the United States. Jefferson, in particular, felt that a small professional force fleshed out by militia was the answer to the need for ground forces for national defense. This conviction held sway all the way up to the American entry into WWI. After the War Between the States, the Army was drawn down to a shadow of itself both in number of regiments and in the manning of the units. Companies the size of modern platoons weren't unheard of.

The Navy was a different creature since the vessels and skills required were unique (hitting a target moving in 3 dimensions while you are movoing in 3 dimensions, too, is as much art as science during the Age of Sail). Therefore, it made sense to uave the ships built and held in ordinary ahead of need.

Those facts wouldn't have stopped the 'militia first' theory from seeping into the Navy problem. They envisioned manning with professional civilian seamen (which the US had in huge numbers) as short term volunteers like they during the Barbary pirate campaigns with a core of long service professionals servingas training cadre and in leadership roles.

To expand - Starting after the war of 1812, the peacetime US army was formed into 9 regiments: 3 of Infantry, 3 of Calvary, and 3 of Artillery. The Artillery was the fortification command and normally manned the forts and would only roll out small units to support the infantry as required. Total manning - ~18,600 men, limited by Congress, including the army leadership and the detachment at West Point and the army arsenals. Usually between 300 and 1000 positions were not filled at any time. This number swelled during the Mexican American war, then returned after the war, and remained until the assault of Fort Sumpter in 1860.

jtg452 wrote:Don't disregard the internal American political leanings of the time.

Large standing forces were an anathema to many of the early political leaders of the United States. Jefferson, in particular, felt that a small professional force fleshed out by militia was the answer to the need for ground forces for national defense. This conviction held sway all the way up to the American entry into WWI. After the War Between the States, the Army was drawn down to a shadow of itself both in number of regiments and in the manning of the units. Companies the size of modern platoons weren't unheard of.

The Navy was a different creature since the vessels and skills required were unique (hitting a target moving in 3 dimensions while you are movoing in 3 dimensions, too, is as much art as science during the Age of Sail). Therefore, it made sense to uave the ships built and held in ordinary ahead of need.

Those facts wouldn't have stopped the 'militia first' theory from seeping into the Navy problem. They envisioned manning with professional civilian seamen (which the US had in huge numbers) as short term volunteers like they during the Barbary pirate campaigns with a core of long service professionals servingas training cadre and in leadership roles.

A 'naval militia' is one reason the Democratic–Republican party liked gunboats for local defense, and privateers and letters of marque to incentivize commercial shipping to act as a temporary naval force in time of war.

The gunboats were cheap, didn't require large crews, and could be kept for long periods by pulling them out of the water during peacetime (slowly rotating through the fleet of them). And, again, in times of war volunteers could provide crews to man them in defense of their harbor.

Mind you that didn't really work out, because you usually need large numbers of gunboats to threaten a proper warship; they can't go far enough out to sea to break a blockade of their port (much less coordinate to break the blockade on another of your ports), and they can't concentrate but instead are scattered in smaller numbers across each of your ports (which allows the enemy to deal with them piecemeal). And privateers may inflict some economic losses on enemy shipping, but are generally countered by convoys with even relatively weak escorts -- as a privateer is looking for a payday, and there's no economic upside to tangling with even a somewhat weaker warship; as even if the privateer can win the fight it's very unlikely to do so quickly and decisively enough to carry on to seize any of the convoyed ships as prizes.

(In theory a wolfpack of privateers could take a convoy with the most powerful ships tying down or defeating the escort while the others snatched up the scattering ships -- but in practice that doesn't seem to have happened. And even that relies on luck of the concentration of privateers stumbling across a convoy -- yet a significant part of the convoy advantage is that dozens of ships in formation are only marginally easier to detect than a single ship. So with dozens fewer targets to find its all to easy to cruise and cruise and never spot a single one - and concentrating your privateers into a powerful formation further reduces your search coverage; amplifying the difficulty of spotting a target in the first place)

In 1865, there was more than a million men in the US Army. It was dropped to 57,000 after the war in 1867 and even further to 26,000 in 1876 (including the Gemeral Staff, various fortification garrisons and cadre at places like West Point). It consisted of 5 regiments of artillery, 10 of cavalry and 25 of infantry. Infantry regiments were 12 companies that were chronically undermanned. Roughly 13,000 were enlisted infantry and 6,000 were cavalry troopers.

That was the Army that fought the Indian Wars. It was underpaid (privates made $21 a month) and poorly supplied. The black cavalry regiments were issued Civil War leftover saddles initially, for example.

The only reason the Navy got the support it did was the hugely influential (rich) whaling and shipping industries demanded it.

jtg452 wrote:In 1865, there was more than a million men in the US Army. It was dropped to 57,000 after the war in 1867 and even further to 26,000 in 1876 (including the Gemeral Staff, various fortification garrisons and cadre at places like West Point). It consisted of 5 regiments of artillery, 10 of cavalry and 25 of infantry. Infantry regiments were 12 companies that were chronically undermanned. Roughly 13,000 were enlisted infantry and 6,000 were cavalry troopers.

That was the Army that fought the Indian Wars. It was underpaid (privates made $21 a month) and poorly supplied. The black cavalry regiments were issued Civil War leftover saddles initially, for example.

The only reason the Navy got the support it did was the hugely influential (rich) whaling and shipping industries demanded it.

And even then, the US Navy didn't get much support for a couple decades after the Civil War. Shrinking drastically from its wartime high of about 700 warships, and living off those Civil War leftovers (despite being ever more obsolete as warship technology evolved).

The US Naval History and Heritage Command has tables of US Ship Force levels going back to 1886, right to the start of building the steel navy. By that year the USN was down to just 38 active ships, fewer than it had just prior to the Civil War. And only 2 being modern steel vessels; 4 being pure sailing ships, and most of the rest being wooden screw steamers and screw sloops.

Jonathan_S wrote:

jtg452 wrote:In 1865, there was more than a million men in the US Army. It was dropped to 57,000 after the war in 1867 and even further to 26,000 in 1876 (including the Gemeral Staff, various fortification garrisons and cadre at places like West Point). It consisted of 5 regiments of artillery, 10 of cavalry and 25 of infantry. Infantry regiments were 12 companies that were chronically undermanned. Roughly 13,000 were enlisted infantry and 6,000 were cavalry troopers.

That was the Army that fought the Indian Wars. It was underpaid (privates made $21 a month) and poorly supplied. The black cavalry regiments were issued Civil War leftover saddles initially, for example.

The only reason the Navy got the support it did was the hugely influential (rich) whaling and shipping industries demanded it.

And even then, the US Navy didn't get much support for a couple decades after the Civil War. Shrinking drastically from its wartime high of about 700 warships, and living off those Civil War leftovers (despite being ever more obsolete as warship technology evolved).

The US Naval History and Heritage Command has tables of US Ship Force levels going back to 1886, right to the start of building the steel navy. By that year the USN was down to just 38 active ships, fewer than it had just prior to the Civil War. And only 2 being modern steel vessels; 4 being pure sailing ships, and most of the rest being wooden screw steamers and screw sloops.

I was reading the National Interest's article on the USS Olympia last week, and it's take on the Navy in this period was interesting (in light of this conversation).

When President James A. Garfield took office in 1881, the new Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt found that of the 140 vessels on the active list only fifty-two were actually in an operational state, and only seventeen of those were even iron-hulled ships. In fact, fourteen of those seventeen ships were aging Civil War-style ironclads. Most military historians agree that at the time the United States would have been incapable of fighting a naval war with a European power and probably would have faced difficulties with many of the Latin American powers such as Peru or Chile! If the United States was to be a player in world trade, it needed a world-class navy.

In March 1883, the United States Congress appropriated $1.3 million for the construction of four new vessels known as the “ABCDs”—Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, and Dolphin. Unlike the ironclad warships of the Civil War, these were to be fabricated not from wood and iron but steel. It would truly be a first-rate, modern navy.

The ABCD experiment was followed by the next step in naval modernization, which included the construction of the battleships Texas and Maine; as well as six-light, or so-called “protected,” cruisers. These cruisers would feature an armored deck but still be able to maintain an impressive speed faster than most warships of the day. Protected cruisers actually formed a new category that fell between the unprotected versions of the warships with no armor and those later stylized as “armored cruisers” that were almost as heavily armored as true battleships of the era.

These efforts to modernize the navy paid off. By 1889 the United States Navy ranked second only to Great Britain in terms of warships that could exceed 19-knot speeds while displacing 3,000 tons or more. The British had a total of ten ships and a total of 56,000 tons, while America’s eight ships displaced 32,010 tons. That exceeded the French Navy’s five ships and 24,630 tons and notably Spain’s three ships and 14,400 tons.

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/uss-olympia-last-surviving-pre-dreadnought-protected-cruiser-196035