WSJ: “Spirit”, not Technology, Defines the USN’s Superiority
In an interesting column (subscription required) back on July 13th, the WSJ’s foreign affairs columnist, Bret Stephens wrote about his recent experience aboard USS Truman. In his concluding paragraphs, Stephens makes the following observation:
“The Navy operates 11 carriers like the Truman. No other navy in the world comes close. The Chinese, who would love to have one or more carriers of their own, recently sent their top admiral for a tour of the Truman. Adm. Gortney recalls that the Chinese were mainly interested in two things. The first was the ship’s arresting gear, the heavy cables that trap landing planes. The second was the way the Navy recruits, trains, organizes and motivates its sailors.
No doubt the Chinese will one day figure out the mechanics of landing planes at sea — and of catapulting them off the deck. I wonder if they’ll ever get the human element right. The men and women of the Truman are here as a matter of their own free will in order to defend our collective right to live freely. That’s more than a matter of mechanics. It’s a matter of spirit: the true source of the Truman’s awesome power, and of its beauty, too.”
Nicely reported, Mr. Stephens.
Posted by JAS
On July 28th, 2007 under Military.
Comments: 2
Comments
Comment from SJBill
Time: July 28, 2007, 7:45 pm
JAS
Good post. Of the MSM, the WSJ gives the most meaningful and least biased news of any outlet.
Thank you-
-SJBill
Comment from Steeljaw Scribe
Time: July 30, 2007, 6:36 am
Ok, guess I’ll play the crumudgeon. The IJN sailors and airmen were hardly present aboard the ships and aircraft of Kido Butai in the spirit of Western concepts of ‘free will.’ Yet they “got it right” for about the first 6 months and kicked our and our Allies’ tails across the western Pacific and Indian Oceans until a reckoning at Coral Sea and Midway. Despite starting late to the carrier game (sound familiar?) they borrowed liberally from the leading seapower’s efforts at carrier-based air (the RN/FAA, btw, in the late20′s and early 30′s) while adapting and developing their own. The IJN had superior tactics (they were the first to figure out massed firepower using carrier air and provided a front-row demonstration of the same @ Pearl on 7 Dec) and had superior technology (need I say anything about US torpedo tacics and terchnology?).
We, OTOH, had a superior strategy (Plan Orange), superior damage control, industrial technology, a vastly superior pilot training system and the luxury of time/distance to afford us the opportunity to recover from our initial setbacks via informed leadership. I strongly doubt such will be the case in a future conflict, especially one with China.
Look, this isn’t meant to denigrate the spirit of the American white-hat, heaven knows over the course of 26+ years there isn’t any other seaborne fighting force I’d want to fight alongside with. What I am saying is (a) don’t mirror-image the threat and (b) be careful in making assumptions about culture and fighting capacity – we’ve been wrong before, especially where Asian cultures are concerned…
- SJS
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