The Emergence of American Amphibious Warfare, 1898–1945. David S. Nasca
geostrategic importance, since it was less than one hundred miles from Florida’s southern coast.
While Central America and the Caribbean were practically the “backyard” of the United States, the geographical, political, and military uniqueness of the region presented several obstacles in using American military forces in the region.67 These conditions combined to push America’s military to develop and experiment with new technologies, especially in the realm of amphibious warfare, that later served as the basis for how it would fight wars in the first half of the twentieth century. However, the United States’ military had atrophied while fighting scattered, disorganized American Indian tribes, and its perception of fighting wars overseas was conceptual and based on how it had fought the American Civil War, as well as its limited observations of how the other major powers waged war. When the Spanish-American War began, the United States used whatever practical equipment and weapons it had on hand. To make up for the military shortfalls, Americans had to adapt and overcome the difficulties they faced when fighting against the Spanish. Herbert Sargent points out, “The [American] volunteers had to accept an inferior rifle and use black powder; a number of regiments could obtain no tents; the entire army was short of transportation; and many soldiers had to go to the tropics and fight in winter clothing.”68
Military Mobilization and Adaptation for the Spanish-American War
When the United States entered the Spanish-American War in 1898, the American armed forces were still woefully behind in their organization, professionalism, and technology.69 Despite the United States not having a powerful, modern military that could potentially challenge the larger, more powerful major powers such as Great Britain, France, Russia, or Germany, Theodore Roosevelt anticipated a war with Spain and, as a result, applied his immense energy as Assistant Secretary of the Navy to modernize its power projection capabilities by focusing on building up its naval forces. Roosevelt also issued an extensive memorandum to the Secretary of the Navy about a possible war with Spain and in which he insisted that American cruisers, gunboats, and other warships be concentrated at strategic points for possibly blocking the Spanish in Cuba and the Philippines. In addition, the memorandum also ended with demands for more ammunition, men, and colliers to be ready to support the American fleets if war was declared.70
While the Union victory at the conclusion of the American Civil War restored legitimacy and confidence in the United States and scared off most European encroachments in the Western Hemisphere, the American military declined in power and influence. It spent the latter half of the nineteenth century overseeing reconstruction of the American South while also protecting settlers along the western frontier. During this time, the United States’ recovery seemed miraculous and led to the steady development of its industrial, food, and resource production.71 With the continent secured against potential external enemies, the American military became more of a police force that focused on maintaining law and order. Since the military dealt primarily with hostile American Indians and the occasional group of outlaws or bandits, its capabilities atrophied. Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy focused on protecting American commercial vessels from pirates and generally contributing to maintaining security of the global commons.
After an international incident involving American sailors in Santiago, Chile, and avoiding being potentially embarrassed in a naval war by a militarily more advanced and powerful Chile, the United States invested funds to modestly modernize its naval forces.72 In order to encourage continued American political support for naval modernization and military preparation, according to Kenneth Hagan, junior officers within the U.S. Navy, such as Lieutenant Charles Belknap, argued that battles on land and sea should not be left to chance, but instead be recognized as essential for America to achieve dominance. In a potential war, the destruction of the enemy’s fleet, followed by campaigns “involving combined naval and military operations against assailable portions of an enemy’s territory,” was chiefly important.73 In addition, Mahan’s writings on sea power and its impact on geopolitics within the international system further convinced the United States to accelerate its naval modernization program and increase the size of its fleet. In doing so, the American political and military leadership realized that it also needed to increase the size and professionalization of its armed forces. Increased allocation of funds toward growing the education and training of both its ground and naval forces was realized with the establishment of the new Army Command and General Staff College and the Naval War College. These premier military institutions served as the foundations for not just the study of warfare, but also allowed the Army, Navy, and later Marine Corps students to practice and experiment with planning and conducting amphibious operations with units trained and equipped with modern weapons and equipment.
Although these measures helped the American military, they were not enough to initially prepare its military forces for war with Spain. According to Allan R. Millett, the Department of the Navy concluded that the U.S. Navy would be the primary instrument that the American republic would use to end Spanish colonialism. While the Naval War College and the Office of Naval Intelligence drew up a series of war plans for naval action against the Spanish Fleet, the Navy War Board envisioned offensive operations in the Caribbean and Pacific. A defeat in the Caribbean would isolate Cuba and blockade the Spanish ground forces, while a victory in the Pacific would allow the American government to hold the Philippines hostage.74 Despite being a young, large country, the United States had a poor military record of fighting against other major powers. The American Revolutionary War and the War of 1812 were mostly a string of tactical and operational defeats against the British interrupted with an occasional American victory, while the Quasi-War with Revolutionary France was inconclusive, resulting in the French Fleet continuing to harass American shipping and the United States’ commerce taking a major hit during the course of the Napoleonic Wars. To make matters worse, with the exception of its war against the Barbary States in the early nineteenth century, the United States had almost no experience fighting overseas. While American naval forces were familiar with operating long distances from the continental United States, they faced the challenge of transporting and deploying large American military forces in order to remove Spain from Cuba and its various colonial possessions in both the Caribbean and the Pacific.
Regardless of their military shortfalls in the upcoming war with Spain, the Americans had the advantage of having a more modern navy than the Spanish. The United States had spent the years since its confrontation with Chile well. When Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt came into office, he continued the rapid growth and modernization of the naval force, while directing American warships to key locations around the world in order to be ready for a war.75 In addition, while the American ground forces were small in comparison with the other major world powers, they served as a small professional military core for the United States to quickly mobilize and then expand the size of its all-volunteer military force for action. Although military weapons, supplies, bases, and infrastructure were lacking, by 1898, the United States had a well-developed industrial base and transportation system.76 With the technological and organizational instruments in place, the United States’ difficulty was mobilizing its potential military strength quickly enough to defeat the Spanish forces before they could dig in and prepare against the anticipated American offensive.
Military mobilization and organization during the Spanish-American War greatly varied between the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Army. Once war was declared, telegraph messages were quickly sent from the Secretary of Navy’s offices in Washington, DC, to move against Spain’s Pacific and Caribbean colonial possessions. The U.S. Navy Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey quickly steamed from Hong Kong to Manila Bay, where it quickly made short work of destroying Rear Admiral Patricio Montojo’s squadron, while still in harbor, with its quick-firing five-inch guns, and eliminating Spanish naval power in the Asia-Pacific Region. Soon afterward, American military ground forces, in conjunction with Filipino insurgents, quickly captured Manila and seized control of the Philippine Islands.77
Even though the American forces made short work of Spain’s colonial possessions in the Pacific, the main theater of the war was concentrated primarily in Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Caribbean. Facing significantly larger, better prepared military forces on those islands, the U.S. Navy quickly positioned itself to cut off all communications with Spain as well as to neutralize Spanish naval power to prevent any