Crisis of Faith: Protecting the North Atlantic

• Main Author: O’Connell, Robert L
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University PressNew York, NY 1993
• Subjects: North Atlantic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780195080063.003.0008; https://academic.oup.com/book/chapter-pdf/52161806/isbn-9780195080063-book-part-8.pdf

Abstract The ‘ability of the U.S. Navy to adjust to the traumatic events that transpired in Europe after August 1914 had a great deal to do with the background and technological conceptions of the Annapolites looking on. Yet that ability was also a matter of pure partisanship. The most progressive element among the line officers, the insurgents, led by Sims, Fiske, and Fullam, had never hesitated to enter into civilian politics to get what they wanted, and for a time that strategy worked brilliantly. Yet-they had not experienced, or perhaps even thought about, the negative repercussions of becoming too closely associated with one side of the U.S. political process. In their own minds they were essentially interested in naval efficiency and naturally looked to those civilian politicians who were most sympathetic to their ideas. But they did not sufficiently understand that they had branded themselves in the eyes of the other side and when that side came to power, they would suffer accordingly.