A Lesson of Two World Wars: Protect the Ship, not the SLOCs

Abstract

Protection of the United States' vital, irreplaceable sealift assets and/or merchant shipping in time of hostilities presents a formidable challenge for a theater commander, especially when considering the threat posed by today's state-of-the-art diesel-electric submarines and the next generation of closed-cycle, air-independent propulsion submarines that are now, or soon will be, in the hands of the United States' potential adversaries. The enduring lesson of both World Wars was that it took time for the Allies to realize that technology was not the anti-submarine panacea it had been hoped to be, and it was the age-old practice of escorted convoys that provided the only real security for the merchant ships that supplied the war effort. This lesson remains relevant today, at a time when the United States military is more reliant than ever on sealift. This paper describes a number of operational and logistics challenges associated with implementing a convoy system today and offers some possible solutions.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 17, 2001
Accession Number
ADA392773

Entities

People

  • James E. Pillsbury

Organizations

  • Naval War College

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Boats
  • Command And Control
  • Command And Control Systems
  • Detection
  • Detectors
  • Materials
  • Merchant Vessels
  • Military Operations
  • Naval Operations
  • Naval Warfare
  • Navy
  • New York
  • Second World War
  • Signals Intelligence
  • United States
  • War Colleges

Readers

  • Maritime and Naval Warfare Studies
  • Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering.
  • Strategic Security Studies