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Winning a Future War: War Gaming and Victory in the Pacific
"To win in the Pacific during World War II, the U.S. Navy had to transform itself technically, tactically, and strategically. It had to create a fleet capable of the unprecedented feat of fighting and winning far from home, without existing bases, in the face of an enemy with numerous bases fighting in his own waters. Much of the credit for the transformation should go to the war gaming conducted at the U.S. Naval War College during the pre-war period."--Provided by publisher.
- GenresWorld War II
276 pages, Paperback
Published February 1, 2019
About the author
Norman Friedman
103 books32 followersNorman Friedman is a prominent naval analyst and the author of more than thirty books covering a range of naval subjects, from warship histories to contemporary defense issues.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
April 1, 2023
Naval historian extraordinaire Norman Friedman describes the role of the US Navy's War College between the World Wars; more specifically how the War College utilized war games to examine how a future war (the hypothetical enemies were Japan and the UK) would be fought, as well as the number and types of ships the Navy could build or adapt under the various Naval Treaties between the
maritime powers that characterized that era. The War College was unique amongst Navy schools in that it was under the command of Naval Operations and was utilized as a research center. The school, in fact, stressed war games as the primary training method for it's students, and the men who would go on to lead the US Navy to victory in WWII (such as Nimitz, Spruance and Lockwood) would speak highly of the preparatory role of the school. As for predictions, never an easy task in a time of rapidly changing technologies, such as aviation, submarines, electronics, etc., the War College did fairly well, and the games demonstrated early on that amphibious forces, a huge fleet logistical train and an unprecedentedly massive industrial mobilization would all be necessary as well, to say nothing of the training of thousands of air-crewmen. Interestingly, the role of allies such as Australia was never examined, nor was Japan ever invaded in these games. As the 1930s passed, the War College concentrated on education and abandoned its role as a think-tank. Not exactly a ripping great read, but still a valuable portrait of how a military organization used games to help prepare for a war it was not yet equipped to fight.
maritime powers that characterized that era. The War College was unique amongst Navy schools in that it was under the command of Naval Operations and was utilized as a research center. The school, in fact, stressed war games as the primary training method for it's students, and the men who would go on to lead the US Navy to victory in WWII (such as Nimitz, Spruance and Lockwood) would speak highly of the preparatory role of the school. As for predictions, never an easy task in a time of rapidly changing technologies, such as aviation, submarines, electronics, etc., the War College did fairly well, and the games demonstrated early on that amphibious forces, a huge fleet logistical train and an unprecedentedly massive industrial mobilization would all be necessary as well, to say nothing of the training of thousands of air-crewmen. Interestingly, the role of allies such as Australia was never examined, nor was Japan ever invaded in these games. As the 1930s passed, the War College concentrated on education and abandoned its role as a think-tank. Not exactly a ripping great read, but still a valuable portrait of how a military organization used games to help prepare for a war it was not yet equipped to fight.
May 29, 2020
Admiral Nimitz is famously attributed to have said that everything the US Navy experienced during the Second World War, with the exception of kamikaze attacks, had already been experienced in table top exercises at the Naval War College. The war games of the 20s and 30s are a subject that deserves serious study. One could approach the war games as elements of professionalizing the officer corps during peace time, or approach them as instruments of futurism to handle rapid advances in naval aviation. They're also interesting as the progenitors of modern war games and military futurism, as explained in Perla's The Art of Wargaming. This style of serious wargaming also seems unique American, at least compared to the other major naval powers of Japan and Britain*. There's a lot of meat in the subject, worthy of a good book. Sadly, it is not this one.
Winning a Future War commits two major errors, it's disorganized and repetitive. Histories can be oriented either chronologically or thematically, or at best both. This book manages to confuse the details of how a culture of wargaming was inculcated at the Naval War College, and the people involved. Interwar military bureaucratic infighting is hardly riveting stuff, but it's hard to piece out who in naval leadership picked wargaming, and how they sustained it as a central curriculum element against what surely must have been a skeptical Washington establishment.
Two major thrusts make interwar naval development particularly interesting. First is the rapid advance of technology, particularly naval aviation. The second were the political limits powers operated under due to the Washington and London Naval Treaties, and a desire to maintain naval parity while avoiding an unaffordable arms race. Naval war games had interesting mixed roles here. They showed that armored 10,000 light cruisers armed with 6" guns were superior to similar ships armed with 8" guns, and an equivalent tonnage of 6,000 ton 6" cruisers. The flight deck cruiser was revealed to be a poor compromise of guns ship and aircraft carrier. Seaplanes and seaplane tenders were heavily overweighted in gaming analyses, compared to their actual role in battle. Though seaplanes served vital scout, anti-submarine, and search and rescue roles, they were dead meat in a stand up fight.
Wargames revealed that ability to launch and recover planes quickly was the key determinant in aircraft carrier effectiveness, and suggested lightly built flight decks that could be easily repaired as compared to armored structure. American carriers were better handled than the British equivalents, but it took painful months to match the effectiveness of the razor-sharp Kido Butai. Perhaps the most import strategic revelation was that the Philippines could not be adequate defended or reinforced without taking Pacific Islands first. The direct 'ticket to Manila' strategy would give Japan good odds of inflicting enough attrition en route to decisively defeat the US in the Western Pacific. Army Chief of Staff MacArthur signed plans that would doom his future command to a ignoble surrender based on Navy wargames. And it's fascinating that the games managed to teach useful lessons about naval aviation, despite being full of elaborate guesses about air and ship combat that were wrong on almost every particular.
But the interesting bits are buried under a trudge of bad writing, even for an academic history. Some odd editing choices in the Kindle version are another blow, even if the pictures of ships are always appreciated. This book doesn't really get at the games themselves, or the culture of serious games.
*Famously, Yamamoto's staff gamed out the Battle of Midway. What happened was the Japanese carriers were ambushed from the northeast and took several disabling bomb hits. Yamamoto fudged the dice hits and refloated his ships. And then the battle played out a lot like the wargame, except that the Japanese carriers were sunk for real.
Winning a Future War commits two major errors, it's disorganized and repetitive. Histories can be oriented either chronologically or thematically, or at best both. This book manages to confuse the details of how a culture of wargaming was inculcated at the Naval War College, and the people involved. Interwar military bureaucratic infighting is hardly riveting stuff, but it's hard to piece out who in naval leadership picked wargaming, and how they sustained it as a central curriculum element against what surely must have been a skeptical Washington establishment.
Two major thrusts make interwar naval development particularly interesting. First is the rapid advance of technology, particularly naval aviation. The second were the political limits powers operated under due to the Washington and London Naval Treaties, and a desire to maintain naval parity while avoiding an unaffordable arms race. Naval war games had interesting mixed roles here. They showed that armored 10,000 light cruisers armed with 6" guns were superior to similar ships armed with 8" guns, and an equivalent tonnage of 6,000 ton 6" cruisers. The flight deck cruiser was revealed to be a poor compromise of guns ship and aircraft carrier. Seaplanes and seaplane tenders were heavily overweighted in gaming analyses, compared to their actual role in battle. Though seaplanes served vital scout, anti-submarine, and search and rescue roles, they were dead meat in a stand up fight.
Wargames revealed that ability to launch and recover planes quickly was the key determinant in aircraft carrier effectiveness, and suggested lightly built flight decks that could be easily repaired as compared to armored structure. American carriers were better handled than the British equivalents, but it took painful months to match the effectiveness of the razor-sharp Kido Butai. Perhaps the most import strategic revelation was that the Philippines could not be adequate defended or reinforced without taking Pacific Islands first. The direct 'ticket to Manila' strategy would give Japan good odds of inflicting enough attrition en route to decisively defeat the US in the Western Pacific. Army Chief of Staff MacArthur signed plans that would doom his future command to a ignoble surrender based on Navy wargames. And it's fascinating that the games managed to teach useful lessons about naval aviation, despite being full of elaborate guesses about air and ship combat that were wrong on almost every particular.
But the interesting bits are buried under a trudge of bad writing, even for an academic history. Some odd editing choices in the Kindle version are another blow, even if the pictures of ships are always appreciated. This book doesn't really get at the games themselves, or the culture of serious games.
*Famously, Yamamoto's staff gamed out the Battle of Midway. What happened was the Japanese carriers were ambushed from the northeast and took several disabling bomb hits. Yamamoto fudged the dice hits and refloated his ships. And then the battle played out a lot like the wargame, except that the Japanese carriers were sunk for real.
May 4, 2020
A great book, outlining the process of war gaming at the Naval War College in the 1920S-1930s and the uses of those war games by the US Navy prior to WWII. Norman Friedman, a prolific author with a deep understanding of the technical-tactical links in Naval Warfare, provides an interesting thesis with this book. Rather than merely resting on Nimitz’ off-quoted “the war in the Pacific was known through the games at the War College” explanation, Friedman demonstrates how gaming at NWC filled a needed role as an analytic center supporting various acquisition, tactics development, and strategic planning efforts up to the mid-1930s. Rather than an academic institution with a war gaming element, he presents the NWC as an analytic agency whose members engaged in academics to support their work. I’m sure both descriptions are true, each just provides a different perspective for the same ends. As with other recent books on the interwar Navy, Friedman gives a balanced view of the evolution of Aircraft Carriers and Amphibious Warfare. He continues the explanation that the Navy didn’t stumble into the new type of combat faced in 1942 but, rather, actively evolved their precepts through the interwar period. The demise of the “Through-Ticket” concept for War Plan Orange and the analysis undertaken to support the 1930 & 1936 Naval Treaties are the author’s foremost exponents of his analysis-centric thesis. The reason for a falling off of this analytic output in the late 1930s is never fully given. Though a more academic rigorous course load and a more powerful Naval Staff in DC are hinted at. All in all, a very readable study with much food for thought on the trinity of effort for in-depth examinations of future Naval Warfare (technical analysis, human war games, and Fleet exercises). Highly recommended for those wanting to better understand the US Navy’s preparations for great power conflict in the decades before WWII.
July 19, 2019
The Naval War College is the upper-level training institution for the United States Navy. The institution had (has?) a philosophy of learning-by-doing; that the way to learn command skills is to practice commanding. And that means exercises and war games -- or as they call them, "chart maneuvers."
This book isn't quite a history of War College gaming; rather, it is a sustained argument that this gaming was a major source of technical and strategic analysis for the navy between 1920 and 1935 and had important consequences for strategy and procurement. It also sheds new light on japanese tactics in the Second World War
The author points to four major examples of US policy shaped by gaming:
- The first strategic concept for war against Japan was to move the fleet to the Philippines and seek decisive battle there -- the "through ticket to Manila" approach. Gaming shows that this was unworkable. Attrition along the way from air, sub, and destroyer attacks from Japanese bases in the Mandate islands would leave major warships damaged in ways that could not be repaired in-theater. The US would have to seize the islands first and leave the Philippines to their fate.
- This meant that amphibious warfare was going to be essential, and the navy was thinking through tactics and equipment in the 1930s as a result.
- Almost anything in the games was easier with air superiority, and usually whoever launched the first big coordinated air strike against enemy carriers would get that superiority by knocking out enemy flight decks. Hence, carrier-versus-carrier combat was likely and was the carrier's top priority. Big strikes were important, fast aircraft turnaround was essential, fast deck repair was important, and carriers should be dispersed enough not to be all found at once.
- To run the games, the war college had to produce formulas and assessments of warship effectiveness, and those formulas influenced negotiating posture and cruiser procurement.
In addition the author observes that the students gaming the Japanese tended to adopt aggressive use of night torpedo attacks, which suggests that this wasn't a quirk of Japanese military culture but simply a response to circumstances.
I thought the author's thesis was plausible and I was persuaded.
The book has a bit too much repetition, but otherwise reads well. Friedman knows enough to tell the story, and tells it reasonably well.
This book isn't quite a history of War College gaming; rather, it is a sustained argument that this gaming was a major source of technical and strategic analysis for the navy between 1920 and 1935 and had important consequences for strategy and procurement. It also sheds new light on japanese tactics in the Second World War
The author points to four major examples of US policy shaped by gaming:
- The first strategic concept for war against Japan was to move the fleet to the Philippines and seek decisive battle there -- the "through ticket to Manila" approach. Gaming shows that this was unworkable. Attrition along the way from air, sub, and destroyer attacks from Japanese bases in the Mandate islands would leave major warships damaged in ways that could not be repaired in-theater. The US would have to seize the islands first and leave the Philippines to their fate.
- This meant that amphibious warfare was going to be essential, and the navy was thinking through tactics and equipment in the 1930s as a result.
- Almost anything in the games was easier with air superiority, and usually whoever launched the first big coordinated air strike against enemy carriers would get that superiority by knocking out enemy flight decks. Hence, carrier-versus-carrier combat was likely and was the carrier's top priority. Big strikes were important, fast aircraft turnaround was essential, fast deck repair was important, and carriers should be dispersed enough not to be all found at once.
- To run the games, the war college had to produce formulas and assessments of warship effectiveness, and those formulas influenced negotiating posture and cruiser procurement.
In addition the author observes that the students gaming the Japanese tended to adopt aggressive use of night torpedo attacks, which suggests that this wasn't a quirk of Japanese military culture but simply a response to circumstances.
I thought the author's thesis was plausible and I was persuaded.
The book has a bit too much repetition, but otherwise reads well. Friedman knows enough to tell the story, and tells it reasonably well.
April 11, 2020
Despite poor editing that was sometimes a minor irritant, this was a fascinating look into how wargaming helped the United States Navy prepare for World War II. Saddled with various treaties limiting naval strength, the US Navy used wargaming to determine the best use of warship tonnage, the right gun makeup of cruisers, and (the heart of the book) the ways in which naval aviation should best be used. The author lays out how gamers at the war college realized that carriers needed to be operated by themselves, away from the battle line, to be most successful. This belies the simplistic argument that the US Navy turned to its carriers only because the battleships were sunk or damaged at Pearl Harbor.
Of course not everyone in the navy participated in these war games, so those who knew had to convince those who didn’t. I found the jumping back and forth in time from treaty negotiations to treaty negotiation somewhat tiresome, but the information was solid.
I really enjoyed the chapter on cruiser development and had no idea of the amount of thought put into the best configurations for cruisers. The tension between the Royal Navy, which wanted cheaper cruisers with 6” guns, and the US Navy, which wanted cruisers with 8” guns, or at least larger (more expensive) cruisers with LOTS of 6” guns, shows the differing philosophies of what each navy wanted its cruisers to do. The RN viewed the russet as a commerce raider and as protection against commerce raiders, which would only need 6” guns to destroy armed merchants the Germans would use as commerce raiders. Their cruisers could this be smaller. The USN, following wargaming, wanted cruisers to be able to screen battleships and carriers from destroyer attacks. This also explains why most USN cruisers didn’t mount torpedo tubes - their proper use was screening BBS and CVS from torpedo attacks, rather than conducting torpedo attacks themselves.
Recommended.
Of course not everyone in the navy participated in these war games, so those who knew had to convince those who didn’t. I found the jumping back and forth in time from treaty negotiations to treaty negotiation somewhat tiresome, but the information was solid.
I really enjoyed the chapter on cruiser development and had no idea of the amount of thought put into the best configurations for cruisers. The tension between the Royal Navy, which wanted cheaper cruisers with 6” guns, and the US Navy, which wanted cruisers with 8” guns, or at least larger (more expensive) cruisers with LOTS of 6” guns, shows the differing philosophies of what each navy wanted its cruisers to do. The RN viewed the russet as a commerce raider and as protection against commerce raiders, which would only need 6” guns to destroy armed merchants the Germans would use as commerce raiders. Their cruisers could this be smaller. The USN, following wargaming, wanted cruisers to be able to screen battleships and carriers from destroyer attacks. This also explains why most USN cruisers didn’t mount torpedo tubes - their proper use was screening BBS and CVS from torpedo attacks, rather than conducting torpedo attacks themselves.
Recommended.
April 9, 2019
A very interesting book on a very interesting topic: how the Naval War College in the 1930s with its curriculum of wargaming based upon realistic technical parameters anticipated a number of the elements of the Pacific campaign in WW2. I am left with the impression that it could have been better. It is intrinsically a difficult narrative because of the intertwining theses: gaming technique (discussed at length in appendices but only alluded to in passing in the main text; the various treaties that limited naval construction in various ways during the interwar period; and the national politics of government expenditure and the intra-Navy politics of who controls what and what the priorities should be. The approach taken leads to a certain amount of redundancy. Also, the remarks in passing on elements and developments that were not anticipated by the games. How can a surprise attack like Pearl Harbor be anticipated by a war game when all the players know that they are about to fight a battle or war? It is unreasonable to expect a fact-based war game to anticipate future developments like improve radar, improved sonar and improved aircraft performance. The volume also neglects to discuss whether Navy planners undertook wargaming when the War College ceased to do so. Notwithstanding this matters, although the book is difficult in places, it is recommended.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews