The Aircraft Carrier Yorktown and the Department of War
If we are going to enable future heroes, we must operate aggressively and effectively. If we do, the department’s name change will truly change history.
Many people do not understand why President Donald Trump renamed the Department of Defense the Department of War.
In fact, this was the original title established Aug. 7, 1789 by the First Congress and signed by President George Washington. There was a Department of War for the Army. Its seafaring counterpart, the Department of the Navy, was established on April 30, 1798 (although the America’s first naval forces were constituted by the Naval Act of 1794).
After World War II, which required constant cooperation between the two departments,
Congress passed – and President Harry Truman signed – the National Security Act of 1947 on Sept. 18 of that year. This created the Department of Defense.
President Trump and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth have indicated clearly that they want a more aggressive, war-winning focused system. In their judgement, the Department of Defense was a giant, passive bureaucracy that was inclined toward war avoidance rather than war-winning. It had adopted a psychologically bureaucratic, process-oriented system in which outcomes did not matter. As long as funding kept coming, the bureaucracy was comfortable. In fact, it had become an extraordinarily expensive behemoth which could fight wars for more than 20 years without winning – with no consequences or reforms.
To be clear: Avoiding unnecessary war is important. We do this with diplomacy, and that’s the Department of State’s responsibility. When war is necessary, the Department of War should be solely focused on executing and winning war swiftly.
If the name change is to have any meaning, it must involve bold, difficult changes. Nearly eight decades of bureaucratic culture and massive overregulation are not going away with a few speeches. Real change in the Pentagon will involve a constant series of fights with the bureaucrats (civilian and uniformed), the lobbyists, and significant parts of the Congress.
One step toward real change would be to reacquaint the people involved in national security with the drive, toughness, and results-driven focus which a war-winning department must implement. A good model for the kind of aggressive system we want to create is the saga of the aircraft carrier Yorktown (CV-5).
The Yorktown was built before World War II. It incorporated lessons learned from building earlier carriers. At the time, it was a state-of-the-art warship. At the battle of the Coral Sea (May 4-8, 1942) it helped stop a Japanese effort to invade Port Moresby in New Guinea. This was the first battle in history in which aircraft carriers fought at long distances without ever seeing each other.
While stopping the Japanese, the Americans lost the carrier Lexington, and the Yorktown was severely damaged. Experts estimated the ship would take three months to repair. For Admiral Chester Nimitz, the American commander in the Pacific, this was a potential a disaster.
His intelligence team concluded the Japanese were going to launch a massive attack to capture the island of Midway. It was an important steppingstone toward occupying Hawaii. Nimitz only had two carriers available, the Hornet and the Enterprise. American intelligence indicated the Japanese had six fleet carriers and four light carriers (we didn’t know for certain the extent of the losses they suffered at Coral Sea). Regardless, the Japanese could potentially swamp the two American carriers.
Nimitz was desperate to get the Yorktown back into action. So, he flew an entire team of salvage and repair experts to the carrier while it was 100 miles from Pearl Harbor. They concluded that by focusing on essentials, taking risks, and using quick solutions rather than the normal peacetime standards, they could get the carrier war-ready within two weeks rather than three months.
While the new estimate was better than the original, it still left Nimitz with only two carriers to defend Midway. As soon as the ship entered dry dock, he put on waders and got under the ship. Nimitz declared the ship had to sail within three days, not two weeks. He eliminated several time-consuming safety procedures. A team of 1,200 civilian workers spent 24 hours a day patching – but not really repairing – the ship. The Hawaiian Electric Company provided all the electricity the workers needed for welding, lighting, etc., by instituting a series of temporary blackouts around the island. Nimitz’s timetable collapsed three months of full repairs into 72 hours of temporary fixes.
Yorktown played a vital role in the ambush of the Japanese fleet, which Walter Lord described in his book “Incredible Victory.” This was the turning point in the war in the Pacific, and the Japanese never recovered from their disastrous losses.
The lesson of the Yorktown for the newly renamed War Department is that a war-oriented national security system understands achievement matters more than process. You must change the current rules, regulations, and attitudes to get the speed, effectiveness, and toughness which a war-winning system needs to succeed.
The saga of the Yorktown is a model of focus, speed, and getting the job done. The lobbyists, contractors, and Congress must be made to understand that the bloated, outmoded Department of Defense must be trimmed and reformed. Under the current, process-focused system, heroes such as Admiral Nimitz, Gen. George Patton, and Gen. Curtis LeMay, would never have emerged – and we likely wouldn’t have succeeded in World War II.
If we are going to enable future heroes, we must operate aggressively and effectively. If we do, the department’s name change will truly change history.
