Naval history as generally recounted is a story of battles at sea. However, it has to be admitted that since 1945 neither the United States nor any other contemporary naval power has had much of a naval history in this sense. Domination of the oceans by the United States and its allies, together with the fortunate failure of the Cold War to culminate in a test of strength between the American and Soviet navies, meant that classic naval battle gradually faded from center stage in the education and professional orientation of American naval officers. Beginning in the early years of the Cold War, the Navy became preoccupied largely with technology and the tactical proficiency that rapidly advancing naval and weapons technologies made increasingly necessary. At the extreme, of course, the advent of nuclear weapons seemed to many to leave the Navy little role in a major global conflict other than to provide invulnerable launch platforms for these weapons—and thereby a powerful deterrent that would, as it was thought, obviate their actual use. Beyond that, though, the switch to nuclear propulsion for the Navy's capital ships laid heavy technical demands on new generations of naval officers, with concomitant impact on their education and training. The result—or so contends Milan Vego in On Major Naval Operations, the thirty-second volume in the Naval War College Press's Newport Papers series—has been a long-standing neglect by the U.S. Navy of major naval operations and, more broadly, of the “operational” level of war or of naval “operational art.” The term “operational art” is apt to be unfamiliar to most Americans. American military officers encounter it routinely as a fixture of contemporary joint military doctrine, but even today the concept has substantially less traction within the U.S. Navy than it does in the other services. The reason is plainly that its origins are in land warfare—specifically, in large-scale land warfare as theorized by the German and (especially) Soviet militaries during the interwar period and practiced by these countries in World War II. From the latter, it migrated to the U.S. Army in the late 1970s, as the Army sought novel ways to grapple with the increasingly formidable prospect of a Soviet ground assault against Western Europe. Essentially, “operational art” refers to a level of command intermediate between the tactical and the strategic, one associated with ground command at the level of field army or corps and with the conduct of “campaigns” that unfold as a series of interconnected battles over time. That many naval officers remain unconvinced of its applicability to their own domain is not surprising, given the narrowly tactical focus of much naval warfare of the past. (Wayne Hughes's classic treatise Fleet Tactics, for example, begins by dismissing the utility of the concept of operational-level warfare for naval combat.) On the other hand, it is difficult to deny that naval command and control doctrine and practice today are insufficiently attentive to what in Army parlance would be called a “combined arms” approach to warfare. The tenuous relationship between the three principal naval warfare communities remains the strongest argument for a serious reconsideration by the Navy of major naval operations and operational art. Dr. Milan Vego is a professor in the Joint Military Operations Department of the Naval War College. He has published widely on the history of German and Soviet military doctrine, and he is the author of Operational Art (2001) and Joint Operational Warfare (2008), an authoritative textbook currently utilized in the department's curriculum. In this work, he looks back to the richly instructive experience of the U.S. Navy in World War II (as well as in more recent operations during the Korean and Vietnam wars and in the Persian Gulf) in order to develop a taxonomy of naval operational art that can help inform the thinking of the Navy as a whole today.

This new volume provides a comprehensive analysis of both the theory and practice of operational warfare at sea. The book is unique in using diverse sources and examples to present a comprehensive topical description and analysis of the key components of operational warfare at sea today. It opens with a survey of the emergence of operational warfare at sea since the end of the Napoleonic Wars, going on describe and analyze the objectives of naval warfare at the operational level and methods of employment of naval forces for accomplishing these objectives. The book explains the specifics of operational functions in a maritime theatre, discusses the personality traits and professional education required for successful naval operational commanders, and explores naval operational command and control in both peacetime and war, closing with predictions for the future of operational warfare at sea. This book serves as a primer of how to plan, prepare and execute major naval operations and campaigns for naval commanders and their staffs, but will also be of interest to advanced students of naval history, strategic studies and military history in general.

Fighting the Fleet recognizes that fleets conduct four distinct but interlocking tasks at the operational level of war--striking, screening, scouting, and basing--and that successful operational art is achieved when they are brought to bear in a cohesive, competitive scheme. In explaining these elements and how they are conjoined for advantage, a central theme emerges: despite the utility and importance of jointness among the armed forces, the effective employment of naval power requires a specialized language and understanding of naval concepts that is often diluted or completely lost when too much jointness is introduced. Woven into the fabric of the book are the fundamental principles of three of the most important naval theorists of the twentieth century: Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske, Rear Admiral J.C. Wylie, and Captain Wayne Hughes. While Cares and Cowden advocate the reinvigoration of combat theory and the appropriate use of operations research, they avoid over-theorizing and have produced a practical guide that empowers fleet planners to wield naval power appropriately and effectively in meeting today's operational and tactical challenges.

Many books and articles have been written on wars in narrow seas. However, none deals in any comprehensive manner with the problems of strategy and conduct of naval operations. The aim of this book is to explain in some detail the characteristics of a war fought in narrow seas and to compare and contrast strategy and major operations in narrow seas and naval warfare in the open ocean..

Aims to explain and analyze major naval operations as a method of combat employment of naval forces, as well as the types of major naval operations and their planning and execution.

During the six months covered by Volume 5: The Struggle for Guadalcanal, August 1942-February 1943, the U.S. Navy fought six major engagements in waters surrounding Guadalcanal, more bitter and bloody than any naval battle in American history since 1814. From the Solomon Islands campaigns to the courageous action of Edson's Raiders at the Battle of the Bloody Ridge, from the great three-day Naval Battle of Guadalcanal to the Battle of Tassafaronga, Morison describes the events of these excruciating months in thrilling, heartbreaking detail from the shipdecks, cockpits, and exposed ridge-tops where the fate of thousands of soldiers and sailors was decided.