Naval Act of 1916

Naval Act of 1916
Other short titles	Big Navy Act; Naval Construction Act of 1916; Naval Expansion Act of 1916;
Long title	An Act making appropriations for the naval service for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and seventeen, and for other purposes.
Nicknames	Naval Service Appropriations Act of 1916
Enacted by	the 64th United States Congress
Effective	August 29, 1916
Citations
Public law	64-241
Statutes at Large	39 Stat. 556
Legislative history
	Introduced in the House as H.R. 15947 on May 29, 1916; Passed the House on June 2, 1916 (363-4); Passed the Senate on July 21, 1916 (71-8) with amendment; House agreed to Senate amendment on August 15, 1916 (282-51); Signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson on August 29, 1916;

Last updated June 18, 2022

The Naval Act of 1916 was also called the "Big Navy Act" was United States federal legislation that called for vastly enlarging the US Navy. President Woodrow Wilson determined amidst the repeated incidents with Germany during the First World War to build "incomparably, the greatest Navy in the world" over a ten-year period with the intent of making the U.S. Navy able to defend itself against any European power. The bill called for the construction of ten 42,000 ton battleships, six battlecruisers, ten scout cruisers, fifty destroyers, and sixty-seven submarines.^[1] The plan was to start construction in 1919 and have the fleet completed by 1923.^[2]

The bill, signed in the middle of the First World War was not to prepare the United States for entry into that war, but rather to guarantee the security of the United States in what seemed an increasingly dangerous world. It was paralleled by the National Defense Act of 1916 that saw a similar expansion of the Army and National Guard.^[3]

History

Opposition to heavily armored and thus expensive "Dreadnought" ships was strong in the House, but was overcome by the results of the one great naval battle of World War I between the British Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet, the Battle of Jutland (31 May–1 June 1916). The battle was evidence that a great tonnage Navy armed with large guns was necessary to defend U.S. shores and merchant ships on the seas in the event of war. President Wilson told Col. Edward House that he was anxious to hasten the day when the U.S. Navy was larger than the United Kingdom's, proclaiming "Let us build a Navy bigger than hers and do what we please."

The Senate passed the "Big Navy Act" on July 21 although it specified that five of ten battleships specified would be replaced with battlecruisers. Not until August 8 did Rep. Lemuel P. Padgett, Tennessee Democrat and Chairman of the House Naval Affairs Committee, confer with President Wilson and agree to support the Senate bill. Democrat Rep. Claude Kitchin of North Carolina despaired: "The United States today becomes the most militaristic naval nation on earth."

With the entry of the United States into the World War in 1917 the battleship program was paused in favor of the smaller ships that were more urgently needed to deal with the threat of German U-Boats. ^[2]

At the end of war the Navy Department's General Board recommended in addition to the sixteen capital ships called for in the initial act, that an additional twelve battleships and sixteen battlecruisers be built. By 1922, the U.S. Navy, if all the ships had been built, could have surpassed the Royal Navy in size and strength. However the expectation of a ruinous arms race with the British and the Japanese led to the Washington Naval Conference of 1921–22 and the tonnage limit ratio agreements with the US having parity with the Royal Navy.

Footnotes

↑ Symonds, C.L. (2016). The U.S. Navy: A Concise History. Oxford University Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-19-939494-4 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.
1 2 Baer, G.W. (1996). One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-2794-5 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.
↑ Muehlbauer, M.S.; Ulbrich, D.J. (2013). Ways of War: American Military History from the Colonial Era to the Twenty-First Century. Taylor & Francis. p. 295. ISBN 978-1-136-75604-7 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.

Related Research Articles

A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The battlecruiser was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attributes. Battlecruisers typically had thinner armour and a somewhat lighter main gun battery than contemporary battleships, installed on a longer hull with much higher engine power in order to attain greater speeds. The first battlecruisers were designed in the United Kingdom, as a development of the armoured cruiser, at the same time as the dreadnought succeeded the pre-dreadnought battleship. The goal of the design was to outrun any ship with similar armament, and chase down any ship with lesser armament; they were intended to hunt down slower, older armoured cruisers and destroy them with heavy gunfire while avoiding combat with the more powerful but slower battleships. However, as more and more battlecruisers were built, they were increasingly used alongside the better-protected battleships.

The Battle of Jutland was a naval battle fought between Britain's Royal Navy Grand Fleet, under Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, and the Imperial German Navy's High Seas Fleet, under Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer, during the First World War. The battle unfolded in extensive manoeuvring and three main engagements, from 31 May to 1 June 1916, off the North Sea coast of Denmark's Jutland Peninsula. It was the largest naval battle and the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war. Jutland was the third fleet action between steel battleships, following the Battle of the Yellow Sea in 1904 and the decisive Battle of Tsushima in 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War. Jutland was the last major battle in world history fought primarily by battleships.

A naval ship is a military ship used by a navy. Naval ships are differentiated from civilian ships by construction and purpose. Generally, naval ships are damage resilient and armed with weapon systems, though armament on troop transports is light or non-existent.

The Washington Naval Treaty, also known as the Five-Power Treaty, was a treaty signed during 1922 among the major Allies of World War I, which agreed to prevent an arms race by limiting naval construction. It was negotiated at the Washington Naval Conference, held in Washington, D.C., from November 1921 to February 1922, and it was signed by the governments of Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, and Japan. It limited the construction of battleships, battlecruisers and aircraft carriers by the signatories. The numbers of other categories of warships, including cruisers, destroyers, and submarines, were not limited by the treaty, but those ships were limited to 10,000 tons displacement each.

USS Florida (BB-30) was the lead ship of the Florida class of dreadnought battleships of the United States Navy. She had one sister ship, Utah. Florida was laid down at the New York Navy Yard in March 1909, launched in May 1910, and commissioned into the US Navy in September 1911. She was armed with a main battery of ten 12-inch (305 mm) guns and was very similar in design to the preceding Delaware-class battleships.

The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they are generally the larger ships when compared to other warships in their respective fleet. A capital ship is generally a leading or a primary ship in a naval fleet.

The Alaska class was a class of six large cruisers ordered before World War II for the United States Navy. They were officially classed as large cruisers (CB), but others have regarded them as battlecruisers. They were all named after territories or insular areas of the United States, signifying their intermediate status between larger battleships and smaller heavy and light cruisers. Of the six planned, two were completed, the third's construction was suspended on 16 April 1947, and the last three were cancelled. Alaska and Guam served with the U.S. Navy for the last year of World War II as bombardment ships and fast carrier escorts. They were decommissioned in 1947 after spending only 32 and 29 months in service, respectively.

Commerce raiding is a form of naval warfare used to destroy or disrupt logistics of the enemy on the open sea by attacking its merchant shipping, rather than engaging its combatants or enforcing a blockade against them.

A fast battleship was a battleship which emphasised speed without – in concept – undue compromise of either armor or armament. Most of the early World War I-era dreadnought battleships were typically built with low design speeds, so the term "fast battleship" is applied to a design which is considerably faster. The extra speed of a fast battleship was normally required to allow the vessel to carry out additional roles besides taking part in the line of battle, such as escorting aircraft carriers.

The Kii-class battleship was a planned class of four fast battleships to be built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1920s. Only two of the ships received names. They were intended to reinforce Japan's "eight-eight fleet" of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers after the United States announced a major naval construction program in 1919. However, after the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, work on the ships was suspended; one pair was cancelled in November 1923 and the other in April 1924.

The dreadnought was the predominant type of battleship in the early 20th century. The first of the kind, the Royal Navy's HMS Dreadnought, had such an impact when launched in 1906 that similar battleships built after her were referred to as "dreadnoughts", and earlier battleships became known as pre-dreadnoughts. Her design had two revolutionary features: an "all-big-gun" armament scheme, with an unprecedented number of heavy-calibre guns, and steam turbine propulsion. As dreadnoughts became a crucial symbol of national power, the arrival of these new warships renewed the naval arms race between the United Kingdom and Germany. Dreadnought races sprang up around the world, including in South America, lasting up to the beginning of World War I. Successive designs increased rapidly in size and made use of improvements in armament, armour and propulsion throughout the dreadnought era. Within five years, new battleships outclassed Dreadnought herself. These more powerful vessels were known as "super-dreadnoughts". Most of the original dreadnoughts were scrapped after the end of World War I under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, but many of the newer super-dreadnoughts continued serving throughout World War II.

The Number 13-class battleship was a planned class of four fast battleships to be built for the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) during the 1920s. The ships never received any names, being known only as Numbers 13–16. They were intended to reinforce Japan's "eight-eight fleet" of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers after the United States announced a major naval construction program in 1919. The Number 13 class was designed to be superior to all other existing battleships, planned or building. After the signing of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, they were cancelled in November 1923 before construction could begin.

A treaty battleship was a battleship built in the 1920s or 1930s under the terms of one of a number of international treaties governing warship construction. Many of these ships played an active role in the Second World War, but few survived long after it.

The Eight-Eight Fleet Program was a Japanese naval strategy formulated for the development of the Imperial Japanese Navy in the first quarter of the 20th century, which stipulated that the navy should include eight first-class battleships and eight armoured cruisers or battlecruisers.

<i>Lexington</i>-class battlecruiser US class of battlecruiser

The Lexington-class battlecruisers were officially the only class of battlecruiser to ever be ordered by the United States Navy. While these six vessels were requested in 1911 as a reaction to the building by Japan of the Kongō class, the potential use for them in the U.S. Navy came from a series of studies by the Naval War College which stretched over several years and predated the existence of the first battlecruiser, HMS Invincible. The fact they were not approved by Congress at the time of their initial request was due to political, not military considerations.

References

Baer, G.W. (1996). One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-2794-5 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.
Symonds, C.L. (2016). The U.S. Navy: A Concise History. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-939494-4 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.

External links

Naval Appropriations Act (Text) from Emergency Legislation Passed Prior to December, 1917. United States Dept. of Justice, Joshua Reuben Clark. Published by Govt. Print. Off., 1918
www.globalsecurity.org: Ship Building 1913-21 - Wilson, Woodrow

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[Symonds_2016_p._70-1] Symonds, C.L. (2016). The U.S. Navy: A Concise History. Oxford University Press. p. 70. ISBN 978-0-19-939494-4 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.

[Baer_1996_p.-2] 1 2 Baer, G.W. (1996). One Hundred Years of Sea Power: The U.S. Navy, 1890-1990. ACLS Humanities E-Book. Stanford University Press. ISBN 978-0-8047-2794-5 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.

[Muehlbauer_Ulbrich_2013_p._295-3] Muehlbauer, M.S.; Ulbrich, D.J. (2013). Ways of War: American Military History from the Colonial Era to the Twenty-First Century. Taylor & Francis. p. 295. ISBN 978-1-136-75604-7 . Retrieved 2021-05-24.

[1]

[2]

[3]