Two-Ocean Navy Act

The Two-Ocean Navy Act , also known as the Vinson-Walsh Act , was a United States law dated July 19, 1940 that allowed the United States Navy to grow by 70%. It was the largest enlargement in the history of the Navy.

background

In the interwar period the naval armament was through the various naval agreement limited between the major maritime powers. However, the United States made little effort in the 1920s to fully utilize its allotted fleet limits. This did not change until the beginning of the 1930s and especially under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1933. In 1934 and 1936 the US Congress had decided to enlarge the Navy moderately. The Naval Expansion Act of 1938 removed the limitations of the fleet contracts and provided for the US Navy to become the world's most powerful fleet within ten years.

With the beginning of the Second World War , the question of sea armament was raised again. On June 17, 1940, a few days after the Germans took Paris in the western campaign , the Chief of Naval Operations , Harold R. Stark , called for a new naval program worth $ 4 billion in a speech to Congress. This should finance 257 new ships with a total tonnage of 1.3 million tons and enable the Navy to wage war in the Atlantic and Pacific at the same time. A law to this effect was drawn up by House Naval Committee Chairman Carl Vinson and Senate Naval Committee member David I. Walsh and passed by Congress on July 19.

content

The law authorized the procurement of:

• 18 aircraft carriers (including 8 Essex-class )
• seven battleships (two of the Iowa-class and five of the Montana-class )
• six large cruisers of the Alaska Class
• 27 other cruisers
• 115 destroyers
• 43 submarines
• 15,000 aircraft for the Navy

300 million US dollars were made available for other purposes such as the expansion of facilities, procurement of equipment and ammunition, smaller ship types, etc. The program should run for five to six years.

consequences

None of the seven battleships envisaged in the law were actually built. Notably through the aircraft carriers and cruisers formed the backbone of the American fleet in the conflicts of the second phase of the Pacific War from 1943. The law also enabled the US Navy in the position 50 old destroyers to the British Royal Navy to submit, as the Destroyer-by-Base Agreement of September 1940.

Web links

• The Decline and Renaissance of the Navy, 1922-1944 at ibiblio.org

Individual evidence

1. ^ Robert C. Stem: The US Navy and the War in Europe. Seaforth Publishing, 2012, ISBN 978-1-84832-082-6 , p. 19.