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How to Use a Fleet. Rear Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who is in charge of naval personnel, told a House Committee last week:
". . . Naval fleets probably never again will fight in full force. . . . No government today can afford to run the risk of staking its entire naval force on a single battle. Therefore, it is probable that in the future fighting will be done by special units. These will be organized according to the special requirements of the tasks assigned to them. One mission might require only a few cruisers, a number of destroyers, an aircraft carrier and some submarines. Another might require a battleship or two."
In plotting what its present and future fleets can do, the Navy thus no longer thinks in terms of complete battle lines opposing each other, as the British and the Germans did at Jutland. Around the battleship Bismarck the Germans had created a force whose job was to raid convoys or to hunt down such naval units as the Hood was leading.
First and biggest task of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet last week was one which required all its strength, left it no surplus for special forces. The task: to patrol the Atlantic from Greenland's southern tip, outward and eastward to the Azores, then south and westward to Trinidad (see map). South of the Equator, there is no regular U.S. patrol. In the extreme North Atlantic, where the Hood and Bismarck met. the U.S. has only a thin and intermittent sea watch to augment the British strength. If the Wasp and Ranger were far at sea, carrier-based aircraft could roam at least up to if not beyond the eastern bounds of surface patrol. Westward, along the Atlantic coastline, land-based air patrol was much stronger. Possible Reinforcements. For any special tasks which he may have to take on, Admiral King can either weaken his regular convoy-patrol, or draw additional strength from Admiral Kimmel's Pacific Fleet. The second course would dangerously upset the balance of Japanese-U.S. naval power, would therefore be chanced only in extreme emergency. Yet the Navy has that chance continuously in mind.
At the maximum, extreme need in the Atlantic (subject always to the perhaps more expansive views of the President), the Navy conceivably might withdraw from the Pacific a division of three battleships, a carrier, some cruisers and destroyers. Even that limited transfer would amount to a fourth of the battleship strength in the Pacific, would seriously thin the winning bulge which the Navy now thinks it has on the Japanese. Thus Admiral King can hardly count on any such reinforcement of his Atlantic forces. Instead, he undoubtedly looks to New York City and Philadelphia.
In harbor there last week, almost ready for service, were the Navy's newest, biggest, fastest, mightiest battleships: the 35,000-ton North Carolina and Washington. Manhattanites last week got a good look at the North Carolina in the East River (see cut, p. 17), could judge that she was almost ready for duty. The Washington should be ready for sea by July.
Neither had been actually assigned to the Atlantic Fleet. But so long as they were on the Atlantic coast, Admiral King did not have to fret about paper designations.