The strength of the U.S. Naval Institute has been the integrity of its open forum. At the 2011 Annual Meeting, its members rose up in indignation to the following proposed change to the organization’s mission statement: “The U.S. Naval Institute is an independent forum advocating the necessity of global sea power for national security and economic prosperity.” But the existing mission—“To provide an independent forum for those who dare to read, think, speak, and write to advance the professional, literary and scientific understanding of sea power and other issues critical to national defense”—carried the day.
Obviously Proceedings can publish only a fraction of the manuscripts submitted. What constitute grounds for rejection of articles that challenge the official views of the Navy Department—and thus perhaps cramp the forum—are clearly in the eye of the beholder. A manuscript submission from nearly 60 years ago offers food for thought.
In 1957 the USS Jonas Ingram (DD-938) commissioned. She was part of the Forrest Sherman class, the U.S. Navy’s first new destroyers built after World War II. Two members of her wardroom were Lieutenant Commander Richard G. Alexander, the exec, and Lieutenant William L. Read, the operations officer. They were bothered that the ship’s antisubmarine weapons—Hedgehogs and depth charges—were essentially the same as those in wartime destroyer types. As was the case in the war, tactics required a destroyer to be virtually on top of a submarine to achieve a kill.
To remedy a situation that they believed left the sea lines of communication vulnerable to Soviet submarines, Alexander and Read submitted an article to Proceedings in December 1957. The title—not at all subtle—was “Invitation to Disaster.” It was indeed a strongly worded submission. The two officers’ thesis was that the Navy was pursuing a flawed strategy that emphasized strikes on the Soviet Union by carrier-based attack planes armed with nuclear weapons—hitting the submarines at their source. Such a strategy, they wrote, would lead to the nuclear annihilation of the United States.
They argued that the role of nuclear deterrence could be left to the Air Force, leaving more resources for what should be the Navy’s primary mission: securing the seas. The words the authors applied to the Navy’s senior leadership included “apparent ignorance of the realities of the nuclear age,” “narrow mindedness,” “lack of imagination,” “provincialism,” and “responsibility is being discharged improperly.”
Their impertinence, expressed in the manuscript, led to their being summoned to Washington for a discussion of their views. The Jonas Ingram’s skipper, Commander Grover Rawlings, was directed to accompany them. The Atlantic Fleet Destroyer Force commander, Rear Admiral Edmund Taylor, was in their corner, as was Rawlings. In Washington, Captain J. C. Wylie, from the Chief of Naval Operations’ office, exhausted himself trying to persuade the pair to modify their views. Deputy CNO Rear Admiral Roland Smoot worked on them as well.
The CNO, Admiral Arleigh Burke, was the president of the Naval Institute. As president he was a member of the Institute’s Board of Control that had the power to prevent publication in Proceedings. Also, as Alexander recalled in later years, Smoot suggested to the skipper that he give the two destroyer officers unfavorable fitness reports, which Rawlings refused to do. Neither officer was hurt professionally by the experience.
For Burke the harsh words of the manuscript were only part of the problem. The coauthors were picking at some very sore scar tissue. In the late 1940s, as a captain, Burke was one of the leaders in the Navy effort to fight off unification of the services. At the time, the Air Force sought to take over naval aviation, and the Army wanted to eliminate the Marine Corps. In the mid-1950s environment, as CNO, Burke fought to ensure that the Navy remained relevant by having an important role in the nuclear strategy. That included development of Polaris ballistic-missile submarines and the carrier-based heavy attack mission. He did not want quotes from the article to give ammunition to the Navy’s critics.
In January 1959, after receiving lots of advice—both wanted and unwanted—Alexander and Read resubmitted their article to the Naval Institute. This time it had a much tamer title, “A New Naval Strategy for the United States.” The Institute’s Board of Control considered the revised version and rejected it. One board member commented: “If these facts are true, they should be put in a classified letter to CNO, not published for the comfort of the enemy.”
In later years, after Alexander had retired as a captain and Read as a vice admiral, both took a generous view of the opposition of Admiral Burke and Board of Control to the publication of their article in Proceedings. They concluded that the circulation given to their paper, even though it didn’t appear in the magazine, attracted attention and led to positive changes. In an unpublished 1996 letter to the editor of Proceedings, Alexander wrote of Burke: “When in charge, be in charge. When challenged, stand your ground. . . . [As] the head of the service he simply had to have the last say about what could be helpful to the Navy, or otherwise. . . . I doubt that he enjoyed having to be the censor for a journal that must have been high in his esteem.”
In retrospect, it is tantalizing to wonder what might have happened had the article been published.