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Victory at Sea

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This is an authoritative, summarized accounting with illustrations and maps of U.S. naval operations during the First World War. The reprint version was published by the Naval Institute Press (1984), with David F. Trask providing an introduction. Original publisher was Doubleday, Page & Company, Garden City, NY (1920). During the early 1920s, there had been no official U.S. Navy history of that world conflict released by the U.S. Government Printing Office. Therefore, this book is the first of its kind. I consider it a "must" for any civilian/naval historian, research scholar, coalition naval/military tactician, including those naval learning centers involved with independent and objective evaluations of operational effectiveness and/or suitability of naval weapons systems in littoral waters. Also, it will do well to have several copies available within every Army/ Navy/ Air Force/ Coast Guard ROTC library, including each military service academy.

"The Victory at Sea" was written by the U.S. naval commander of all U.S. forces in European waters, who was stationed in London to command all U.S. naval operations. Canadian-born William Sowden Sims (1858 - 1936), following this World War, with the rank of Rear Admiral, wrote this book between 1919 - 1920, during his assignment as President, Naval War College (1919 - 1922). In 1921, Admiral Sims won the "Pulitzer Prize for History of United States" for his work on "The Victory at Sea", in collaboration with Burton J. Hendrick. It should be noted that Burton would later win his "Pulitzer Prize for Biography" in his own work on "The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page" (1923).

For years known as an "insurgent" by Democratic leaders in Washington, Admiral Sims has been reprimanded by naval secretaries and U.S. Presidents. He has even been referred to as "the best British admiral in the American navy". During this same period in which Sims won the Pulitzer Prize, even the aide of the Army Air Service (Brigadier General William Mitchell) was being asked to resign by Major General Menoher, Chief of the Army Air Service. Controversies over weapons, tactics and operations were not restricted to any one service. This book presents a naval commander's personal viewpoints supported by factual and historical data.

Admiral Sims retired from his assignment at the Naval War College in 1922 with rank of Rear Admiral. This was a naval officer who refused the "Distinguished Service Medal" from Secretary of the Navy Daniels because he objected to the Navy's policy of awarding medals to undeserving officers for services during the First World War. Recognized for improving ship design, fleet tactics, and naval gunnery, Sims was also given to speaking his mind at meetings and ceremonies. For example, on 3 December 1910, as C.O. of USS Minnesota (BB-22) during a Portsmouth, England, port visit, then CDR Sims pledged to a British audience that included the Right Honorable The Lord Mayor of London Sir Thomas V. Strong, in "Guild Hall", London, "If the time ever comes when the British empire is seriously menaced by an external enemy, it is my opinion that you may count upon every man, every dollar, every drop of blood of your kindred across the sea". President Taft and Secretary of the Navy Meyer reprimanded CDR Sims for his "drop of blood & dollar" speech.

The Admiral explains the significance of submarine warfare in the World War, and the tactics used to defeat Germany such as the destroyer flotillas, convoy system and the armed "mystery" ships. Sims did everything in his power, supported by a great wartime staff headquartered at Grosvenor Square, London (i.e., LTCOL Dunlap, USMC; CAPT Knox, USN; CAPT Twining, USN; CAPT Schofield, USN; CDR Stark, USN), advocating to complete the construction of the great mine barrage in the North Sea. Inferences were made by Sims of the criticism he had of Navy Secretary Daniels and he blamed the democratic administration for having caused serious delays in navy operations, and for causing derelictions in directing naval warfare. Following release of his book, congressional majority leaders proposed an appointment of a professional commission of naval officers to study and apply to the American navy lessons of the World War, and for a presidential commission including civilians to study and recommend reforms throughout the naval organization. Admiral Sims' principal charge was that administrative delays were estimated to have cost 500,000 lives and $15 billion unnecessarily.

The political feelings during 1917 within the naval wardroom aboard U.S. ships was that the Navy Department was in a state of inefficiency; not prepared to take on the German High Seas Fleet. This is the focus upon which naval historians should approach this book. For it sets straight our actual capabilities in preparing to defeat such a fleet. It took from April 1917 to the summer of 1918 to get prepared. By then, our mine barrage was taking shape in the North Sea to bottle-up the German fleet in its homeports.

On 22 May 1919, Rear Admiral William S. Sims, President of the Naval War College, stated in his Graduation Address that the primary mission of the War College was "the development of principles, and training in the application of these principles to practical situations...It has been the object of the college not only to develop and define the principles of naval warfare, but to indicate the methods by which these principles may be applied with maximum success." Much of his war experience brought out in his book helped define naval warfare principles and training during the 1920s. At the Naval War College subjects in "command, strategy, tactics, policy, logistics" were incorporated into naval operations (reinforcing the requirements of destroyers and cruisers playing a supporting role for the main battleship divisions), and emphasizing, once again, the importance of the "Sound Military Decision" document (aka "Green Hornet" due to cover color). This was an era of the "Gun Club" in which the aircraft carrier was treated as a "scouting platform".

Upon his arrival in London, England (Friday, 13 April 1917), Admiral Sims, shortly after, reported to the Chief of Naval Operations Admiral William S. Benson that the German U-boats were winning the war; that Allied anti-submarine warfare was wholly inadequate (about 18 April). His report focused on the "submarine problem" and was strongly endorsed by the U.S. Ambassador to England Honorable Walter Hines Page and by the British First Sea Lord John Jellicoe who admitted that England could not go on unless the submarine was conquered "first". The report initiated the formation of a "special problems committee" (our nation's first documented joint U.S. Navy/ civilian engineers "Integrated Product Team" that included Thomas Edison) and acceptance of a U.S. naval policy for overcoming this submarine menace.

Admiral Sims provided in his book that even with the combined navies of the Allies (approximately one million men), they were still unable to offset the Grand Fleet's thirty submarines and 1,500 German submariners who came dangerously near achieving victory by simply cutting off England's food supplies. Also, Admiral Sims referred to the disasters that could have befallen the British Navy. He stated, "The world was preserved from all these calamities because the destroyer and the convoy solved the problem of the submarines, and because back of these agencies of victory lay Admiral Beatty's squadrons...The British Grand Fleet is the foundation stone of the cause of the whole of the Allies". Sims established naval strategy and breathed its theories into the Naval War College in which the might of U.S. and British naval forces would combine to safeguard democracy and the freedom of the seas. It would be the same strategy that would win over axis forces during the Second World War.

Additionally, Admiral Sims provided an extensive discussion about U.S. submarine operations. He also wrote of the conditions and hardships experienced by our U.S. crewmembers aboard these American-manufactured submarines. Lessons of the World War in which German submarines operated freely in the North Sea have not been lost. Today, we still face such threats as coalition naval leaders consider littoral water operations off the Asian mainland and in the Persian Gulf where third-world countries can afford to operate stealth-like diesel submarines in areas where huge, billion dollar coalition forces steam close-by. This is one of the reasons why naval architects such as Admiral Sims are often referred to in thesis, dissertations, and congressional studies.

Those who are interns to naval history should be aware that this book was presented during a period when opposing camps formed disagreements- something that is always expected following any police action or conflict. From this book it becomes inevitable that camp experts will speak out on subjects such as guns, armament, mines, submarines, and plans for new construction, or general naval policy. It was very unfortunate for Admiral Sims, as it was for Brigadier General William Mitchell of the Army Air Service, that through controversy carried on so aggressively they had little support among officers of similar high rank during the early 1920s. After all, it was a common practice for Army and Navy officers testifying before the Senate investigating committees (early 1920s) to give personal opinions. Such was the case of Admiral Sims and this book.

It is my opinion that the main issue presented throughout this book pertained to the "efficiency" of the U.S. Navy during the World War. I would like to point out that as a proof of it's efficiency the U.S. Navy eventually convoyed nearly 2 million American doughboys to Europe without suffering major loses to German U-boats. In that fact alone the American taxpayer has reason to remember Navy service during the First World War with pride- whatever mistakes of detail may have been made.

I thought it was a great book, I have his autograp