Current US Navy gun support for amphibious landings has a
capability gap – we have none! The
question is, is that due to a belief that naval bombardment as a vital element
of an amphibious assault is not needed or is it due to mere neglect and
stupidity? In other words, is our utter
lack of gun support due to philosophy or neglect? One would be tempted to say that it must be
due to neglect because the value of naval bombardment is so incontestable as to
be self-evident. However, historically,
this has not always been the case. Naval
bombardment has not always been seen as necessary for the success of an
amphibious assault.
The largest amphibious assault in history, Normandy,
employed only brief and perfunctory pre-assault bombardment that was intended
only to suppress the defenses, not destroy them. (2) Contrast that to the Pacific assaults on Iwo
Jima and Okinawa where the Navy conducted non-stop bombardments for weeks prior
to the actual assault. There you have
the two extremes – nearly none and almost unlimited. Which philosophy is right? They can’t both be right, can they? Let’s look a bit closer at the historical
basis for the two different philosophies and, with that understanding, try to
assess our current naval bombardment needs, if any.
As noted by historian and former naval amphibious planner,
Christopher Yung, in his book “Gators of Neptune (1), which documented the
naval amphibious planning for Normandy,
Another
point of departure with Pacific amphibious doctrine was the Mediterranean view
of the purpose, effectiveness, and duration of a naval bombardment of coastal
defenses just before an amphibious assault.
Admiral Cunningham [Command in Chief, Mediterranean Fleet, First Sea
Lord] … stated that, “the Americans in the Pacific placed a high value on naval
bombardment in support of amphibious assaults, particularly by battleships,
much higher than I thought was really justifiable.” (1, p.38)
However, Yung further notes that Admiral Cunningham changed
his mind.
Following
the war, Cunningham felt he should have given greater credence to the value of
naval gunfire support for an amphibious landing … (1, p.38)
Based on their experience with various Mediterranean
assaults, the US Army believed that pre-assault bombardment served only to
alert the enemy and ruin the element of surprise. (1, p.38) The Royal Navy’s RAdm. L.E.H. Maund seconded
this philosophy but ascribed it to the British military’s deficient resources.
(1, p.39) We see in this thinking the
belief, potentially correct, that if the attackers have less than overwhelming
force that the element of surprise may be more important than pre-assault
destruction. Of course, one could ask
why anyone would attempt an amphibious assault with less than overwhelming
force but that’s a separate issue.
Supporting this minimal bombardment belief was British data
on artillery effectiveness against hardened defenses which led the British to
conclude that naval gunfire could, at best, provide suppressing fire which
might temporarily neutralize the defenses but would be ineffective at destroying
them. (1, p.39) It should be noted, however, that there is a world of
difference between artillery fire and very larger caliber battleship and heavy
cruiser fire with up to 16” guns. The
British did not appear to take that difference into consideration.
Yung notes, however, that this ‘Mediterranean’ minimal
bombardment philosophy was not unanimous.
VAdm. Hewitt (commander US naval forces, Mediterranean) noted that
pre-assault bombardment was an essential precursor for a successful assault.
(1, p.39)
It is also noteworthy that the Mediterranean philosophy was
derived from early war experience with less accurate and less lethal artillery
and naval guns. As the war went on,
naval gunfire accuracy and lethality improved immensely
Eisenhower, himself, weighed in on the value of naval
bombardment, stating that,
Pre-assault
and support naval gunfire on beach defenses and pre-arranged targets was so
devastating in its effectiveness as to dispose finally of any doubts that naval
guns are suitable for shore bombardment. (1, p.39)
His thoughts did not, however, wind up dictating the extent
of the Normandy pre-assault bombardment which was, by Pacific standards,
minimal, at best.
RAdm. Hall (Commander, 11th PHIBFOR, Force
Omaha), expressed his dissatisfaction with the pre-assault bombardment after
the Normandy operation was over.
It
is believed that the time available for pre-landing bombardment was not
sufficient. German defensive positions
were well camouflaged and strong. It is
considered that these positions should be destroyed by slow aimed fire from
close range prior to the landing. Something
more than temporary neutralization is required when troops face beach mines,
wire, anti-tank ditches and similar obstacles after landing. (1, p.208)
Note Hall’s call for close range naval fire (enhanced
accuracy) as opposed to standoff fire (reduced accuracy). As it happened, there were instances of
individual destroyer Captains, on their own initiative and in violation of
planning, moving their ships very close in to provide effective and critical
point-blank gunfire. This illustrates
the element of risk in effective naval bombardment and the acceptance of that
risk in order to achieve objectives.
Contrast this with today’s exceedingly risk averse Navy culture!
In contrast to Hall’s deprecating view of the bombardment
effort, Adm. Ramsay (Allied Naval Commander, Expeditionary Force) thought the
minimal pre-bombardment was adequate and justified.
That
naval gunfire neutralizes rather than destroys is still considered to be true …
the policy of beach drenching [ed. short term suppressive fire] has been fully
justified. (1, p.208)
Ramsay, then, believed it preferable to momentarily neutralize
(suppress) enemy defenses rather than put any great effort into destroying
them.
In the actual event, post-assault observation and analysis
indicated that relatively few fortifications, gun housings, and casemates were
outright destroyed. This should come as
no surprise given the inaccuracy of fire control at that time and the minimal
amount of time the bombardments were conducted.
Pacific experience differed greatly.
The
use of high velocity guns at [Kwajalein] showed, at least according to the US
Navy, that this weaponry could be effective at smashing concrete pillboxes. (1,
p.77)
As the Army noted, pre-assault bombardment does, indeed,
notify the enemy of the coming assault.
At that point, it becomes a race between the attackers getting
sufficient force ashore to achieve their objectives and the defenders getting
sufficient reinforcements to the area to ward off the assault. For Normandy, where the potential pool of
reinforcement was vast, it was feared that a prolonged pre-assault bombardment
might have allowed the Germans time to reinforce beyond the point that the
assault force could overcome. In
contrast, in the Pacific, the Japanese forces on a given island had no source
of reinforcement. Hence, losing the
element of surprise was irrelevant – the defenders couldn’t reinforce and
couldn’t leave. They were fixed and
isolated and every additional hour of bombardment meant fewer and less
effective defenders and defenses.
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| Naval Bombardment |
While the concept of minimizing pre-assault bombardment in
order to minimize the enemy’s time for reaction and reinforcement has some
surface appeal and, indeed, logic behind it, the larger driving force of
overwhelming force ought to negate the concept.
If one has overwhelming force (and if you don’t, why are you attempting
the assault?) then the enemy’s reinforcement efforts can be interdicted with
air power, airborne infantry, and long range battleship gunfire. This presents the best of all worlds:
extensive pre-assault bombardment reduces the immediate enemy defenses and the
overwhelming force interdicts the reinforcement effort. Thus, both the immediate defenses and the
reinforcements are attrited before the actual landing occurs. To a large extent, interdiction of
reinforcements actually occurred at Normandy, thanks to overwhelming force,
although the interdiction was divorced from an extensive pre-assault
bombardment.
The British view that the element of surprise was necessary
to make up for a lack of resources – meaning, a less than overwhelming assault
force – was not an issue for the Americans in the Pacific as every US assault
did involve overwhelming force. Thus,
surprise was, again, irrelevant.
In contrast to the Mediterranean view that bombardment was
ineffective at destroying defenses, Pacific bombardments did achieve the
objective of forcing the Japanese to concede the actual landing and retreat to
inland prepared defenses in the form of caves, tunnels, and other
fortifications that could be hidden from easy observation and protected from
heavy bombardment. Shore defenses were,
in fact, found to be susceptible to prolonged bombardment, hence, the
relocation of the defending assets to inland locations.
From the preceding discussion we see, then, the tension
between the two conflicting philosophies:
While both philosophies offer seemingly valid arguments and
rationales, it appears that the Mediterranean philosophy of minimal bombardment
is largely based on assault force shortcomings and failings such as the lack of
overwhelming force, limited resources, and doctrinally ineffective application
of naval gunfire. Thus, for a properly
resourced amphibious assault the Pacific practice of prolonged pre-bombardment
would appear to be the correct choice.
Having examined the issue of pre-assault bombardment, it is
important to note that the discussion has nothing to do with bombardment
support during and immediately after the assault landing. Regardless of whether the assault used
minimal or maximum pre-assault bombardment there is an undisputed need for
naval gun support during the actual landing and immediately after, until the
landing force can get their own artillery ashore and operating.
How does all this impact our views on naval gunfire today? As you might expect, the exact same
considerations and conclusions about pre-assault bombardment still apply. However, technology has introduced some
modifications into the methodology:
Range – Today’s
defenders can use cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges of hundreds or
thousands of miles. Even modern
artillery and rocket launchers have ranges of many dozens of miles. Thus, bombardment must not be limited to the
immediate landing area but must take into account defending ‘batteries’ located
hundreds of miles away. These remote
targets may need to be serviced by air power rather than naval guns but, regardless,
they must be accounted for.
Interestingly, the potential remote range of defenses might,
in some cases, mean that there are relatively fewer defenses/defenders at the
actual landing site as compared to the WWII scenarios of highly concentrated,
localized defenses and defenders. If
this is the case, the need for local bombardment may be reduced.
The effect of range, then, results in a modification of the
definition of bombardment to include not just naval guns but also missiles and
aircraft/bombs.
Interdiction –
The ability to defend from hundreds or thousands of miles away means that the
concept of interdiction has to be greatly expanded. Interdiction may have to occur hundreds or
thousands of miles away. This also leads
to the possibility that there may be no interdiction in the strictest sense of
the word since the enemy may have no need to physically move reinforcements to
the landing site. Still, there will
almost certainly be some movement of enemy defenses toward the assault site and
that movement, however far away, must be interdicted.
Precision Guidance
– Many observers mistakenly believe that massive bombardments are no longer
necessary thanks to precision guidance.
However, the reality is that precision guidance is a very limited
capability in a peer defended assault scenario.
For example, laser guided rounds are useless in bombardment
because there will be no assets available to laser designate. In a peer defended assault scenario, aircraft
laser designators will be unable to loiter over the battlefield providing
target designation and ground forces won’t even be available until well after
the initial landing and will be too busy surviving to calmly and casually laser
spot targets. Further, the ground forces
will be too localized and ‘compacted’ to designate targets more than a hundred
feet in front of them even if they were willing to lift their heads above cover
long enough to do so.
Ships can, if so equipped, provide their own laser
designation but that would be valid only for visible, line of sight targets and
a smart enemy is not going to provide many of those.
GPS guided rounds would be effective but only against known,
fixed, visible targets. The reality is
that a smart enemy will not provide many fixed, visible targets.
The reality is that unguided area bombardment is the only
generally effective method.
Conclusions
Today’s US Navy utterly lacks the capability to provide
amphibious pre-assault bombardment or supporting fires during the landing. If we continue to insist that we want and
have this capability, we need to procure bombardment capability. The Marines long ago gave up their battleship
gun support in exchange for a handful of magic beans and promises by the Navy that
never came to fruition and they are now left with no naval gun support,
whatsoever.
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(1)“Gators of Neptune”, Christopher Yung, Naval Institute
Press, Annapolis, Maryland, 2006, ISBN 1-59114-997-5
(2)Ibid. p.80-81,
From the Overlord Outline Plan: “As preliminary bombardment
compromises surprise, it should be confined to the shortest possible duration consistent
with the achievement of the required degree of neutralization.”
