Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars

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Given the limitations of the cases presented here, the authors did a commendable job of creating an accessible and readable volume that points out some potential pitfalls to avoid and techniques for developing technological advantage in wartime. In most cases this occurred after the war in which discovery took place, although submarines passed through both a discovery phase and an evolution phase during World War I, and radar did the same in World War II.

By 1945, within the span of a Jutland officer’s service career, basic naval technologies included radar and guided weapons. We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others. As technologies matured, their potency multiplied—compare the first gasoline-powered submarines that went to sea with one torpedo, no radio, and no periscope with the nuclear-powered and -armed boats of today. But history tells us that, with the right investments and organisation, things could be very different. Because the uses of new technology are rarely straightforward, establishing doctrine can be a tricky business.

The tactical function of the dreadnought battleships that fought the Battle of Jutland, 111 years after Victory’s triumph at Trafalgar, was essentially the same.

The continued planning and construction of super-battleships in World War II (the Japanese completed two of four planned, the Germans began building two of six, and the Americans planned a class of five) illustrate it better. The fourth wave has lasted the longest, not because the pace of invention has slowed—it has in fact accelerated—but because since 1945 there has been no major peer-to-peer naval war—that is, a total war between opponents with similar technological resources—to prove these new technologies in all-out combat. The Confederate armored ship Virginia, a platform, destroyed the wooden vessels of the Union navy at will. The matter of reducing and narrowing industrial capacity is particularly concerning at present for western democracies.Victory smiles upon those who anticipate changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur. Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world's navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. O’Hara and Heinz studied the development of weapons (mines and torpedoes), tools (radio and radar), and platforms (submarines and aircraft).