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The Revolt of the Admirals refers to an episode where a number of retired and active duty United States Navy admirals publicly disagreed with the President and the Secretary of Defense in their emphasis on strategic nuclear bombing executed by the United States Air Force as the primary means by which the nation and its interests were defended. The episode occurred in 1949 during a series of congressional hearings in which the Congress asked Navy personnel to publicly disclose their frank opinion. In an effort to reduce military expenditures, the administration planned to markedly reduce the Navy and other service branches. The events occurred in the early post–World War II period, when the technologies of large jet aircraft and the nuclear bomb and its delivery were in a developmental stage. ==Background== Following the end of World War II, the Truman administration was concerned about the large deficit spending that had been necessary for the war effort. To reduce expenditures Truman instructed the services to draw-down their forces quickly and return to a peacetime military. The two main issues facing the services was the question of unification of the services under a single command, and the funding that each branch would have in the markedly reduced military budget. The discussion of the post-war military flowed from General of the Army George C. Marshall's call for unification of the Department of War and the Department of the Navy. Marshall believed that the services needed a unified overall command to better coordinate their activities and to minimize redundancy. He first advanced his general ideas on the subject in November 1943, and his proposals led to what became known as the "unification debates". The Army made a proposal of command structure which would unite the U.S Army, the U.S. Navy and a soon-to-be-formed U.S. Air Force under a single Department of National Defense. The Army accepted as a foregone conclusion that the Army Air Corps/Army Air Forces would emerge as a separate service. The commanding general of the Air Corps, Henry H. Arnold, was one of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, coequal with General Marshall and Admiral King. The Navy, however, was reluctant to accept these changes. The service did not want to lose its independence from the Army, and opposed both changes, arguing that what had worked well in winning the war did not need to be changed. The generals from the Army Air Force believed that with the increased destructive power they could now apply against potential enemies, big changes in the manner in which the nation was defended were warranted. With the advent of the nuclear age, the question arose as to what need existed for conventional military forces. The Air Force generals believed that much of the forces of the other services were unnecessary and could be cut. They held that the future for national defense lay with a long-range bomber force carrying nuclear weapons. This limited and ultimately flawed view was accepted by the administration as being correct, and the meaningful existence of the other services came into jeopardy. Said Secretary of Defense Louis A. Johnson: In this environment, each military branch believed their future depended on securing and defending a clear cut mission for themselves. However, the Truman administration saw these officers as answering to and serving the Truman administration, and believed that their attitude in public and in congressional testimony should be in support of the administration's position. Along these lines came the passage of the National Security Act of 1947 which reorganized the military, creating a means by which the various commands were coordinated under a military establishment of three equal executive departments, the Army, Navy and Air Force. The unified command establishment was named the Department of Defense, and was created along with the National Security Council (NSC), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and an independent United States Air Force. The Act left the Navy with the autonomy it had sought and the Act's passage seemed to end the debate, but soon after President Truman decided massive reductions in defense spending had to be made, and the nation's military budget was cut from $45 billion to $14.3 billion in a single year. This placed tremendous pressure on each service, and kept friction between the services at an edge. Soon, efforts were set in place by the Army and the Air Force to amend the Act. The generals of the newly formed air force propounded a new doctrine: that strategic bombing, particularly with nuclear weapons, was the sole decisive element necessary to win any future war, and was therefore the sole means necessary to deter an adversary from launching a Pearl Harbor-like surprise attack or war against the United States. To implement this doctrine, which the air force and its supporters regarded as the highest national priority, the air force proposed that it should be funded by the Congress to build a seventy air-group fleet of U.S. based long-range strategic heavy bombers. The air force generals argued that this project should receive large amounts of funding, beginning with an upgraded B-36 Peacemaker intercontinental bomber.〔Air Force insistence on their monopoly for this strategic role also helped kill the Martin P6M SeaMaster. Piet, Stan, and Raithel, Al. ''Martin P6M SeaMaster''. Bel Air, Maryland: Martineer Press, 2001, p. 148.〕 With four times the payload of the B-29 and twice the range, the Air Force planned to fly the B-36 on deep raids into enemy territory, using its ceiling altitude of 40,000 feet to protect it from interdiction. The Navy disagreed. Pointing to the impact the Navy's carrier arm had on the outcome of the war in the Pacific, they argued that naval power and carrier aviation were essential to maintaining national defense. Admiral Marc Mitscher, the former commander of the Fast Carrier Task Force, was one such officer who publicly commented on the value of the US Navy in winning the war, and its value in the future defense of the nation. The Navy leadership believed that wars could not be won by strategic bombing alone, with or without the use of nuclear weapons. The Navy also held a moral objection to relying upon the widespread use of nuclear weapons to destroy the major population centers of an enemy homeland. The Navy pointed out that with the ships they hoped to build in the future naval aviation would be able to continue in its tactical role of close air support using modern aircraft, and in addition would also be able to take on the role of nuclear deterrence. The was designed to handle aircraft up to 100,000 pounds, which were large enough to carry the nuclear weapons of the day. Plans for the ''United States''-class carriers called for them carrying up to 14 heavy bombers each, with enough aviation fuel for eight bombing raids per plane. With a capability to run 112 nuclear weapon drops before resupply became necessary, the ''United States''-class carriers would be capable of performing the nuclear deterrence mission. The admirals requested funding for the building of eight ''United States''-class carriers over a five-year period. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Revolt of the Admirals」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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