Within each of these chapters, they do a commendable job of producing a pleasingly readable condensed history that compares development success and failure across several nations including the United States, United Kingdom, Russia (and the USSR), Italy, France, Germany, Japan, and the Ottoman Empire, although not all of them in each case. This book focuses on six technologies grouped loosely into three broad categories. The categories are weapon, a technology designed to damage a target; tool, one to assist in using a weapon; and platform, one to deliver a weapon. Each of the technologies we examined transformed the practice of naval warfare in its own way. They include Radio and radar. Radio expanded the volume and range of naval communications, while radar allowed platforms to see at great distances and in poor visibility. Both tools aided navies in bringing weapons to bear on their opponents and (generally) increased the amount of available information.

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O’Hara and Heinz have now collaborated in writing Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars, an innovative comparison of the world’s major combatant navies through three significant major conflicts (Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II – the Russo-Japanese War has an occasional appearance) illustrating how nations incorporated – or failed to incorporate — new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrines. The authors examine six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new weapons (mines and torpedoes), new tools (radio and radar), and particularly new platforms (submarines and aircraft). They demonstrate how technology influences naval warfare, and vice versa. An “Introduction” and “Chapter 1: Use, Doctrine, and Innovation” provide appropriate context to the six chapters in which they examine the technological advances. The authors’ stated goals for this volume is (pp. 3-4): 1) briefly consider the nature and history of each of the six technologies; 2) consider the state of the technology when it was first used in war and how different navies expected to use it; 3) explore how major navies subsequently improved or modified their use of the technology; 4) examine the development of countermeasures; 5) discuss how navies developed doctrine and incorporated ancillary technologies to improve the core technology’s effectiveness. O’Hara and Heinz do point out that their book is “not intended to be a complete history of naval technology in the period covered” (p. 4).

Schools and hospitals were among the first to adopt Victory’s technology, followed by an increasing number of other businesses and industries, from airlines and hotels to gyms and professional sports. Victory smiles upon those who anticipate changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur.Technology is constantly evolving, and the navies of the twenty-first century are juggling innovations that are likely to revolutionize naval warfare as profoundly as did the introduction of steam and steel in the nineteenth century or electronics in the twentieth. Forethought, strategic vision, and technical acumen might drive technological development in periods of peace, but it is a thesis of this work that navies learn the best use of new technology only through the medium of peer-to-peer combat. And within the chaos of combat, only those navies that innovate successfully discover the best uses of their own technology and the best counters to those of the enemy. To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, while the concept of innovation is simple, innovating under enemy fire is difficult. Obviously, radio, radar, and aircraft are not technological developments exclusive to naval warfare so the authors found it necessary to discuss the development of these key innovations in broader terms that included the development of land-based systems. Those cases readily showed the complications that arose from politics, interservice rivalry, national competition, and policy decisions—particularly on the priority of capital investment. These human factors all contributed equally, or more so, than the science and engineering did in developing these technologies into effective weapon systems. By 1914, with combat governed by caution, the capital ship’s strategic function had come to dominate its tactical function. Basically, because cost had escalated to the point where relatively few nations could afford to construct capital ships in any quantity, their primary function became to exist rather than to fight. Their very existence in superior numbers was enough to guarantee sea control. There was no point in fighting. This strategic aspect of the dreadnought revolution, as expressed in World War I, caught navies by surprise when it was recognized at all.

There is one important caveat here. A paradox can exist with technologies that help us do more with less: they can increase consumption of the very resources one is trying to conserve. By an effect known as Jevons Paradox, they can increase greenhouse emissions. For example, a technology that reduces demand for fossil fuels will apply a downward pressure – at least in the short term – to the fuel’s price; this incentivises other players to buy the fuel – and use it inefficiently. For this reason, technological solutions to global warming will need to be coupled with international laws and taxation schemes that ensure that fossil fuels and trees stay in the ground. The value of technological solutions arguably lies in making the transition to a low carbon economy politically feasible. Clearly, synergy is involved, and all six of these technologies were deeply intertwined by 1945. Case studies will show how this synergy affected actual combat. The narrative will focus on the technologies of the first three waves. Fourth-wave technologies—that is, technologies invented or developed since the end of World War II—will be treated very lightly as they remain largely untested in peer-to-peer combat. It is not our intention to judge how such technologies might fare in a future war; instead, the purpose of this book is to consider basic principles. Submarines and aircraft. These platforms allowed navies to operate in new environments below and above the surface of the sea, confounding existing weapons and tactics and expanding the scope of naval warfare. The book is organized into eight chapters. The lead chapter, “Use, Doctrine, Innovation” provides an overview of the previously mentioned human factors. This is followed by six chapters exploring the historical development of mines, torpedoes, radio, radar, submarines, and aircraft. The closing chapter, “Conclusions,” lays out what the authors discovered as principles. Based on the scope of the bibliography and the well-documented endnotes, it is apparent that the chapters are thoroughly researched. The bibliography is well-organized, showing that the authors made liberal use of official histories and primary documents and hundreds of articles, chapters, and books by well-respected scholars. Moreover, the chapters are provided with useful illustrations, pictures, and graphics that emphasize the authors’ points.This book employs certain conventions. Distances over sea are stated in nautical miles and over land in statute miles unless otherwise specified. Displacements are given in long tons of 2,240 pounds. The authors prefer the U.S. customary system of measurement and do not convert measurements given in one system to another, assuming the reader can navigate the metric and customary systems. A conversion table is included. Where the text refers to aircraft, it includes both aircraft relying on engines to remain airborne (airplanes) and aircraft relying on buoyant gases (airships). Seaplanes encompass floatplanes—airplanes kept afloat by attached pontoons—and flying boats—in which the airplane’s fuselage acts as the float. Vincent P. O’Hara is the author or co-author of more than 10 books, mainly on topics of World War I and II naval warfare. In this latest book, Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars, O’Hara has teamed up with Leonard Heinz, an experienced designer of wargames and simulations with emphasis on tactical naval problems. The authors use their expertise to explore six case studies that analyze technological developments in the twentieth century. discuss how navies developed doctrine and incorporated ancillary technologies to improve the core technology’s effectiveness. Identifiers: LCCN 2021052331 (print) | LCCN 2021052332 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682477328 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781682477335 (epub)

Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world’s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio). Each chapter considers the state of a subject technology when it was first used in war and what navies expected of it. It then looks at the way navies discovered and developed the technology’s best use, in many cases overcoming disappointed expectations. It considers how a new technology threatened its opponents, not to mention its users, and how those threats were managed. Innovating Victory shows that the use of technology is more than introducing and mastering a new weapon or system. Differences in national resources, force mixtures, priorities, perceptions, and missions forced nations to approach the problems presented by new technologies in different ways. Navies that specialized in specific technologies often held advantages over enemies in some areas but found themselves disadvantaged in others. Vincent P. O'Hara and Leonard R. Heinz present new perspectives and explore the process of technological introduction and innovation in a way that is relevant to today’s navies, which face challenges and questions even greater than those of 1904, 1914, and 1939. There’s an old saying that necessity is the mother of invention. That sentiment was definitely the case during World War II, a massive global conflict that presented the United States with a variety of tactical and logistical challenges. At every turn Americans seemed to need more of everything—more supplies, bigger bombs, faster airplanes, better medical treatments, and more precise communications. In response, scientists, technicians, and inventors supplied a steady stream of new products that helped make victory possible. Many of these innovations transformed the very nature of warfare for future generations and also had a significant impact on the lives of civilians as well. anxieties regarding possible conflict with China.” —RADM Michael McDevitt, USN (Ret.), author of China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power “In our current era of artificial intelligence/machine learning, Cover: Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars by Vincent P. Ohara and Leonard R. Heinz INNOVATING VICTORY This book looks at how selected world navies incorporated certain technologies into their ships, operations and doctrine. It examines six core technologies which were fundamental to twentieth century naval warfare. The technologies examined in detail are: mines, torpedoes, radio, radar, submarines and aircraft.

The admirals who developed fleet tactics were busy men with little time to explore the possibilities of untested technology. They used their platforms in the way they knew best. Accepting new technology and integrating it into the naval tool chest were neither natural nor easy processes; doing so was risky and took conscious effort and dedication from advocates and supporters in the highest places. The ruthless pressures of war brought out the true capabilities of technologies. Under wartime conditions, apparently weak technologies such as mines could completely transform the use and even the raison d’être of an alpha technology, the dreadnought battleship. Even an alpha technology must be open to innovative use if it is to remain relevant. valuable.” —Norman Friedman, author of U.S. Submarines Through 1945: An Illustrated Design History “O'Hara and Heinz are to be congratulated on a fine book about A point that O’Hara and Heinz make to explain this differential in development time is that there is an emotional current to developing technology. Mines, mine layers, and mine sweepers do not evoke the emotional attachment that flow to aircraft, ships of the line, and submarines with crews admired for their bravery and exploits. This emotional preference influences which technologies receive priority for development. Exciting technology garners the most attention and investment. This can create a blind spot for older technology that is used in a novel way. A technology might be boring but that does not mean it is ineffective.