ABSTRACT
At the end of the Second World War, the US fleet was victorious, new, strong and strategically obsolete. It was obsolete because it had not found a method to put to strategic use the new instruments of war: the fast, highendurance, deep-traveling submarine, jet combat aircraft, guided weapons, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles and the atomic bomb. In the hands of a determined enemy these could contest the navy’s command of the sea – and put the US homeland at risk. The navy’s challenge, which became urgent as the Cold War militarized, was to match these new weapons to navy needs to prepare to fight the country’s most likely foes.
