Spanish American War At Sea Analysis

When one decides to embark on the general study of the history of the United States becoming a world power, the primary topics typically consist of the Spanish-American War, the Cold War, and America’s participation in both World Wars. While these wars indeed augmented America’s status as a world power, often many focus on the land battles and neglect war at sea. However, war at sea had an influential role in the formation of American history. In battles at sea, opportunities to demonstrate leadership, improve technology, and struggle with chance arise. The outcome of the wars at sea determine a nation’s sea power. Mahan was the first to coin this term and defines it as a country’s ability to utilize the seas in order to combat enemies. When …show more content…
Pacific Fleet, attained all of this information from Rochefort, he was now faced with America’s technological dilemma. The submarines were poorly designed and were armed with malfunctioning torpedoes. In addition, Nimitz had a small number of cruisers and destroyers in comparison to the Japanese. Furthermore, he lacked battleships and only had three carriers, which included the damaged Yorktown (Symonds. 208-209). Given the circumstances, it would be custom to remain defensive in battle until the United States fleet was able to compete with the superior Japanese fleet. However, Nimitz decided to trust the intelligence Rochefort gathered and would compete against the Japanese attack on Midway with all of his power (Symonds. 209-210). Nimitz determined that the United States’ prior knowledge of the attack would balance the odds. He was cool and calculating and came to the conclusion that the odds were balanced very carefully. He anticipated that the United States would win (Symonds. …show more content…
During the exercises they set up to emulate the battle, Rear Admiral Ukagi essentially cheated by overruling the judge and insisting that the war plan would be successful (Symonds. 222). His arrogance put his men’s lives and Japan’s chances of winning the battle in jeopardy because the Japanese would enter battle at a high risk of damage. Countless assumptions were made by the Japanese leadership, none of which had solid evidence supporting them. In addition, the Japanese did not have all of the United States ships accounted for. This contrasts with Rochefort’s intelligence and decisions he makes based off of verifiable