Battle of Midway Was Won in the Shipyards

welcome to the proceedings podcast I'm Bill Hamlet the editor-in-chief of proceedings here at the U.S naval Institute with me in the studio today is Commander Matt Wright U.S Navy he's a Navy helicopter pilot and he is the winner of the 2022 CNO Naval History essay contest Matt great to have you on the show yeah thanks Bill it's great real honored to be here thanks so uh just start a little bit of your background your graduate from the Naval Academy in 2002.2 that's right it's really hard for me to say 2002 but 2002 that makes me feel old uh you're a helicopter guy you commanded helicopter C combat Squadron 22. pretty good that good job in Norfolk Virginia and so you finished up your o5 command and now you're in Millington Tennessee at Navy Personnel Command what's your job there I'm the deputy director for Aviation distribution so purse 43 on the I'm the deputy so I'm the I'm the EXO of the detailers and Manpower retention getting people to do department head tours how's all that going yeah well it uh and Aviation is interesting it's um it depends is the short answer so some communities are struggling uh with retention with department head Fields other communities not as much um and it depends breaks down between um 1310s pilots and and Naval flight officers 1320s and then Aviation sessions as well and the pipeline it's constant churn and it takes a lot of real Focus from smart people and purse 43 is all of Aviation so you're not just seeing helicopters you're seeing all of it Growlers p8s Hilo squadrons super Hornets the whole thing yeah all Aviation officers uh is who we detail uh to include the Ground Pounders ldos and maintenance Duty Officers wow okay good good well you're really here to talk about your essay from the CNO Naval History essay contest so that is a a big contest uh started in 2018 I think was when we when we kicked off the first iteration of the contest uh so CNO level attention on Naval History Admiral Richardson uh asked nhhc they asked the naval Institute he asked the Naval Academy and naval war college to get together and and put together a history a contest focused on history but not just on history for history's sake but history for the lessons that apply to today so a lot in the challenge question about you know the rise of great power competition or the re-emergence of it about Russia China about you know what are some lessons particular things that we can draw upon from Naval History to apply to how we deal with today's challenges so your article is published in the January issue of proceedings it is titled just in time production and you look at the Battle of Midway specifically you look at the three aircraft carriers that the US committed to that battle you look at Admiral nimitz's strategic calculus in a you know through a lens of of uh the production of of ships right and and getting ships ready for for battle early in the war and the decisions that had to be made in peace time to allow those decisions to be made talk a little bit about maybe a hundred thousand foot perspective just start us off sure uh I guess the the reason why I started thinking about this is kind of where I am in in my life I'm still an active Naval aviator I expect to go back to see and I'm looking what is that going to be like a year two three years uh down the line and I found myself reading a lot about uh the first year of World War II in the Pacific um there's those officers the men that thought that that war on the on the ships that we're talking about were in the peacetime Navy just you know six months prior a year prior uh and and that's really where we find ourselves today so I I saw some of myself potential future version of myself uh in the men and women I was reading about and the article that certainly you know I'm an aviator so obviously I talk about aircraft carriers in Midway but um it's not really about the bat the Battle of Midway itself it's much more on how did we build the ships that won the Battle of Midway the three aircraft carriers Yorktown Enterprise and Hornet uh how and why were they built uh and and when were those decisions made I thought was really interesting as I was kind of reading and getting getting ready to write and and go into that but it it's nice to say a lot of those decisions were made well in advance of uh any indications of World War II On Their Eyes in 1933 is when the first two were purchased that's you know well in advance of any sort of threat uh direct threat that this the World War II might actually happen so yeah I recognize Romans today uh so um Yorktown Enterprise Hornet those are the U.S carriers that were at Midway so you just mentioned a little bit 1933 was the decision to purchase the first two right when were they built when were they brought online and and when did they um you know first see Fleet use so that they were ready for you know for 1941 1942 we're we're looking now at it's been what 20 something years since the decision to purchase the USS Gerald R Ford right uh so these are decisions to make Capital ships they take they they have to be made long time before you need them yeah absolutely and it's you can timestamp these and see what was going on in the world 1933 uh first year of the Roosevelt administration part of the part of the New Deal initiation National industrial Recovery Act Nira is what paid for versus Yorktown and Enterprise simultaneously and the act itself was not focused on building aircraft carriers is focused on the New Deal alphabet soup and works progress administration and talked about collective bargaining rights the the purchase of these ships was just part of a larger whole and it was it was driven by by President Roosevelt largely uh who always saw himself as a Navy man and as a navalist and he understood they had to make these Capital Investments while in advance of whatever risk might be on the horizon if you don't know what specifically it was so the timeline um the first two ships Yorktown and Enterprise were essentially built simultaneously both purchased shortly within months of the uh the appropriation of the money and they took about four years to build and were commissioned in 1937 and then if you so if you look at look at the Timeline 1937 to battle midways 1942 that's just five years that's a pretty short time right for these ships to be uh to be worked up for the air crew and the and the ships crew to learn how to fight them and they were just barely ready um once World War II kicks off with Pearl Harbor of course uh in the Pacific and then and then Hornet is even even closer talk about just in times kind of what got me thinking of it it was purchased with the naval expansion Act of 1938 uh second Benson acts also called um and it was it was commissioned a couple just a couple months before Pearl Harbor so wow so Pearl Harbor happens it's pure side in Norfolk all right we got to get this thing uh ready to go and get into the Pacific uh they picked up the Doolittle Raid aircraft did the Doolittle Raid and then it was time for Midway it was it was really that quick for for the Hornet uh and then but once again take it backwards in time 1938 as before World War II starts in Europe uh that's before the Japanese and they much of French Indochina and and the southern south in the South Pacific um so World War II you know there's threats of it then but yeah so it's certainly not a definite thing uh and and it was just ramping up and I talked a little bit about that New York I like the fact that in your article you you mentioned Yorktown and that often in the discussion about Midway that the discussion gets to Yorktown and its battle damage uh from Coral Sea and getting it back and the you know the oh my God we got to get this ship ready to get underway to be part of the Battle of Midway but your article goes back before that not the repairs but the decision to to build it right so it's the it's they're not you know what would happen if Yorktown hadn't been ready to get underway but what if Yorktown and Hornet and uh Enterprise had never been built right had never been built or went even just waited wait to build until you know World War II was on the horizon say 1938 or the two ocean Navy Act was 1940 what if they had waited until then that those three ships would not have been a Midway uh it would have been a completely different uh situation and and you know to the clear detriment of the the country uh you you mentioned some shipbuilding statistics from World War one as well and how how some of those decisions came late and the fleet that we needed for World War One really wasn't ready until 1919 right talk about that for a second right yeah so if you look at the the U.S Fleet at the end of World War uh one literally in 1919 time to over 700 ships almost 800 ships it's on par with the British Navy uh and then comes uh disposed I don't think they caught at that time but we call it a peace dividend now uh you start talking Naval arms limitation treaties Washington and London and then some isolation of sentiment and restriction of of Naval shipbuilding budgets and that that fleet was either decommissioned or aged very quickly from from 1919 to until 1933 when once again it starts being built we start rearming in the naval fashion but the if you if you look at so how did at the end of World War One 774 ships I think how did it attribute down to about 300 and that it was in 1933. uh it was it was a lack of investment and it was um a lack of understanding for the importance of the Navy as a as a capital investment in future security and it really was um President Roosevelt who was the assistant Secretary of the Navy during World War One uh during the Wilson Administration he under he had seen the failure of American Naval shipbuilding uh during the war to ramp up quickly so that was part of his calculus and to get the train started early and to get the pump Prime for the future uh allocations to buy bigger fleets so Salient points for what we're facing now in terms of great power competition in terms of you know I've been to the submarine League event in November I was at the surface Navy Association event just last month in in Crystal City in in January uh a lot of conversations at both of those about industrial capacity about shipbuilding capacity the CNO on record has sort of goaded the shipbuilding industry if you will to to produce more ships produce them faster uh there's at the sub League there was an amazing conversation very candid about the goal of being able to build two plus one so two virginia-class submarines and one Columbia class sub ssbn by the end of this decade to get to that capacity and and sort of a amazing that you know right now we're at one one and a half maybe ssns per year uh plus we're trying to add in the ssbn capacity but getting the two plus one is going to take some time and there was a discussion it ranged all the way from um you know from uh Vocational Technical Training for welders and pipefitters and electricians and you know Engineers all the way up to you know the the impacts of the budget right and the impacts of what happens when you have continuing resolutions and and you can't actually buy what you want to buy or you delay um you know the shipbuilding so I'm curious from your your perspective um on Industrial capacity Shipyard capacity what are some of those you know specific lessons from the interwar year period that you studied for this uh for this essay there are some similarities in numbers and in years um so if you look back to 19 1933 we had the same number of private shipyards in 1933 that we do now with seven seven private children and actually they had slightly more capacity then because the public shipyards would do new construction whereas now we focus primarily on nuclear and maintenance right of the existing Fleet um but with the appropriation of the money the shipyards came was essentially uh what I came to the realization I came to and I'm going to run out of my expertise very quickly so I look forward staff uh tell me all the things I got wrong in the pages of proceedings however uh the allocation of the money and the shipyards uh matriculum free market of society and and uh our industry met the need such that I mentioned in the article was over 40 by the time Harbor happens and and scaling up so it was that it was the allocation of the money for start that started with the Nira and then continued on with first and second Vin snacks and the tuition Navy acts that the prompted industry to to meet the need um so that that's the the parallel that I would draw and and then if you talk about 30-year shipbuilding plan and how many ships we're going to build a year I'm going to run out of expertise very quickly when you talk about the capacity of the workforce and things like that but uh we're building about the same number of ships as we did just before World War One and that failure and ramp up we were building just over 12 ships a year until the naval expansion Act of 1916. um I think I got that right but okay but the ramp up was slow as a result so there's about 12 ships a year and then the ACT happens in the slow ramp up and then now we're about 10 ships a year if you average it out over the last five years so it's it's rather similar so we haven't primed but we haven't primed the pump for the for the big ax that may follow yeah uh your article also points to the the uh the point I think it's a very telling one about the political necessity the the you know building a Navy maintaining a Navy uh it's a political decision right this is Congress has to act you know with with the backing of the American people uh it and and we we actually had John Layman on the podcast and he wrote in a year ago the January 2021 issue of proceedings for the American power project and he talked about the 600 chip build up the Reagan years and and so I I I'm drawn to the parallel between FDR being a navalist Reagan being a navalist so having somebody in the in the White House who understands the need for a strong Navy for the United States national security as well as the the backing you know on Capitol Hill right and and it has to be bipartisan it's got to be this there's just a recognition that you need a Navy to secure the National Security of a nation that is a two-ocean fronting Nation right and these elected officials are just representing representing us the citizenry so right the the American people have to believe that this is worth worth their taxpayer dollars uh to buy the Hedge against future risk future risk to their freedom to the economy et cetera and I'm glad you mentioned the American C power project because I know that's that's a big big part of that is educating the American people not just the the decision makers and I also mentioned BJ strong had an article that as I was getting ready to write this I just happened to read it then and I think it was American Naval dominance is not a Birthright or something along those lines exactly in fact there's a line in your I think it was the last paragraph of your of your article you you mentioned that right you say if American Naval dominance is or or if Naval dominance is not an American Birthright right so we have we have to invest in this is something we have to we have to pay forward for future Generations these are capital ships Capital Investments um and and that's essentially the argument that President Roosevelt Congressman Vincent would have been able to articulate and did articulate in the 1930s uh and then I think we're working towards articulating now and the I've heard this article as just like I should say that it's a cno's history essay competition Rising historian category I think it used to be called The Amateur historian category uh so that's kind of how I feel interacting with the with this level of dialogue but but that's that's how that as I was reading and thinking about this stuff that that's what came to my mind and um I should also mentioned Jamie McGrath Captain Jamie McGrath is written for proceedings and elsewhere as well I I valued his uh his contributions and kind of piggybacked on those that's terrific uh I will point out to our listeners that the CNO Naval History essay contest the allnav the all-navy message for 2023's contest is about to go out so we were looking at that the draft is being staffed among uh the director of the Navy staff nhhc the naval Institute so that all nav message will be out very soon if not you know by the end of this week and you can also find details about the Seattle Naval History essay contest on our website if you go under proceeding things and look at essay contests all the information is there and as you just mentioned there's now there's three categories so we have professional historian categories so if you're a PhD historian if you you know teach history Naval History if you've written books on Naval History or you're a published author you know book wise a Trent hone for example might be a good example then that's for the that you're you would fit in the professional historian category if you're a active duty Navy Reserve officer a part-time historian you love to read history you're interested in the impacts then you're in the rising historian category not amateur But Rising historian category and now we're adding to this year we're adding the midship and Cadets essay contest or the midship and Cadet category under the CNO Naval History so if you're at the Coast Guard Academy the Naval Academy midshipman and nrotc any other commissioning program headed to being an officer in the sea services you can write for this contest under the midshipman and Cadet category so look for that uh top prize is six six thousand or five thousand it's five grand when I want it five thousand miles yeah no it's our general prize at six thousand the CNO Naval History essay contest top prize five thousand second prize 2500 and third prize is fifteen hundred dollars and you'll get uh published in proceedings we we um congratulated you uh here at the Naval Academy at the naval Institute in October uh and the CNO was there for that uh so that was kind of a nice event we got a reception at the superintendent's house the night before and that's where you and I met for the first time you've written uh three or four other pieces four proceedings they've been published a couple years ago was your first time I'm just curious from your perspective you've commanded now your uh you know a more senior officer and you started writing for proceedings as a commander um you know how did it go what was your you know in terms of uh motivation to write and then also the reception what did your Jos think what did your colleagues think uh what did your chain of command think about you know what you've written in proceedings yeah um so I started reading proceedings and listening to this podcast so this is very cool thank you um for a number of years uh kind of as a new commander and then um as I was a commanding officer of helicopter Squadron um it was during the covet times and I felt like uh the Navy was making some mistakes we need to make some changes I felt very strongly about that I could see the impacts of covert restrictions on on my on my command mainly but but my Shipmates all around the Seawall so I felt pretty strongly that things needed to change and finally I decided I had to had to write the article and it was it was pretty scary honestly uh one because I hadn't read anything in a long time since you know School basically yeah um but two I thought I thought I'd get in trouble from you know from above and I thought my buddies would make fun of me uh and neither of those things happened I can honestly say um my channel command was incredibly supportive thank you Commodore meet Keys uh and then my buddies there there's nothing but support there turns out they're way more mature than I gave them credit for at the time um and uh through the act of writing that article which I only wrote honestly because I felt like I had to um I realized I like reading I like writing I like all the I started getting into the naval Institute and writing for proceedings and and the subsequent articles have kind of come from that motivation that's great I can say and this is a question you know you brought up the fear that that went into before you published right and we hear that from uh authors from time to time well somebody will say well sir I I'm worried about if I publish this or if I save that you know I could get in trouble it happens so rarely I've been here at the naval Institute now on the staff side for six and a half years I've never honestly heard of a substantiated case of somebody getting in trouble even when they write you know very controversial articles uh you know taking the Navy to task on certain things disagreeing with policy like you did with covid disagreeing with a programmatic decision disagreeing with you know even a you know a littoral combat ship is one where we've had certainly written a lot on or published a lot on that topic but it really doesn't happen you know when you write professionally you you get out there people that are are interested in the professional debate will debate you so sometimes you know the your your idea gets Tried by fire in terms of the you know made the best idea win um but rarely does anybody get in trouble rarely does I mean I I honestly can't think of a single example in six and a half years that I've been here and I wrote for proceedings and I served on the editorial board back in the 1990s I had never heard of an example now sometimes people aren't happy with it with with a particular article but in terms of uh you know professional retribution it really it just doesn't happen no I think that that's due to the naval Institute in large part right we have a culture where we we advocate for that sort of discourse an open an open discourse disagreeing with policy in my case uh inside of a military organization really is would naturally not be you know something we would Foster but largely because the naval Institute kind of protects there's there's you know protection over these authors as long as it's respectful and informed and then if it's wrong or someone thinks it's wrong they're welcome to take part in the open forum and accept all about why uh why whatever I wrote was it was completely off being so exactly yeah they opened for him that you know the idea that you're right is there's there's thesis there's antithesis there's synthesis I also often tell people that no proceedings article no one proceedings article is the Alpha and the Omega on any topic you know so if you have a topic in mind in fact we were just going through an analysis of all the different things we've published in about the last three years on on eabo and force design 2030. so big topics lots of debate within the Marine Corps especially on those and you know proceedings has published things that are pro that are con that are critical that say yes but or yes and but it's not one article that's gonna start and and finish the conversation it's an article that adds to a conversation starts a conversation and then more stuff comes and then you know it pays is out the conversation the ideas play out so yeah thanks for uh for pointing that out and and for being part of the open forum and for you know Having the courage to weigh in on the first thing that you did yeah thanks good cool good good good well the article is titled just in time production it looks at aircraft carrier production Naval production the ramp up uh in the 1930s to get ready for World War II uh the ships that would that did fight decisively at Midwife Midway not not just what they did at the battle but also the decisions the political decisions that had to be made to to build those ships and get them ready uh before the start of World War II before the the clouds were even on the horizon at the time my guess has been Matt Wright Commander U.S Navy and he's a detailer but we won't hold that I'm against it I'm a real person detailers are real people uh Matt thanks again for uh writing for the for the contest and thanks for stopping by the naval Institute it's my pleasure all right thanks Bill thank you

Channel: U.S. Naval Institute

Views: 6,022

Keywords: U.S. Naval Institute, USNI, history, Battle of Midway, USS Yorktown, USS Enterprise, USS Hornet, shipbuilding, navy, military, world war II, WWII, naval

Id: lULGQ_3HRlQ

Length: 24min 52sec (1492 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 09 2023