This book employs certain conventions. Distances over sea are stated in nautical miles and over land in statute miles unless otherwise specified. Displacements are given in long tons of 2,240 pounds. The authors prefer the U.S. customary system of measurement and do not convert measurements given in one system to another, assuming the reader can navigate the metric and customary systems. A conversion table is included. Where the text refers to aircraft, it includes both aircraft relying on engines to remain airborne (airplanes) and aircraft relying on buoyant gases (airships). Seaplanes encompass floatplanes—airplanes kept afloat by attached pontoons—and flying boats—in which the airplane’s fuselage acts as the float.

The twentieth century was a time of profound technological change. In naval terms, this change came in four major waves, with the first three climaxed by a major naval war. The first wave started in the mid-nineteenth century as coal-fired steam engines replaced sail, armor was developed, guns and mines were improved, torpedoes appeared, and radio was introduced. This wave peaked in the Russo-Japanese War. In the second wave, which started in 1905 and ran through World War I, naval warfare became three-dimensional with the development of practical submarines and aircraft. The armored gunnery platform reached its acme of power and influence and imperceptibly began to fade in importance. The third wave, which lasted through the end of World War II, moved naval warfare fully into the electromagnetic spectrum as technologies such as radar and sonar expanded perceptions beyond the horizon and beneath the waves, revolutionized the collection and use of information, and saw the introduction of practical guided weapons. The fourth wave is under way. Naval warfare has entered another dimension—starting with the splitting of the atom and progressing to satellites, computers, drones, data networks, artificial intelligence, and a new generation of weapons using magnetic and directed energy. 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. WASHINGTON and MINNEAPOLIS – Global investment firm The Carlyle Group (NASDAQ: CG) today announced it will acquire a majority stake in Minneapolis-based Victory Innovations, a maker of high-tech electrostatic sprayers used to disinfect offices, airplanes, schools and other businesses. Identifiers: LCCN 2021052331 (print) | LCCN 2021052332 (ebook) | ISBN 9781682477328 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781682477335 (epub)Victory Innovations is a leading provider of cordless electrostatic spraying equipment for disinfecting surfaces. Victory Innovations is transforming the way businesses, transportation systems, hospitals and schools are cleaning and santizing using electrostatic technology. The chemical-agnostic product enables users to sanitize any surface area with the convenience of cordless portability, faster application time and reduced chemical usage. Founded in 2014, Victory has sales in over 40 countries. For more information, please visit www.victorycomplete.com. O’Hara and Heinz have now collaborated in writing Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars, an innovative comparison of the world’s major combatant navies through three significant major conflicts (Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II – the Russo-Japanese War has an occasional appearance) illustrating how nations incorporated – or failed to incorporate — new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrines. The authors examine six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new weapons (mines and torpedoes), new tools (radio and radar), and particularly new platforms (submarines and aircraft). They demonstrate how technology influences naval warfare, and vice versa. An “Introduction” and “Chapter 1: Use, Doctrine, and Innovation” provide appropriate context to the six chapters in which they examine the technological advances. The authors’ stated goals for this volume is (pp. 3-4): 1) briefly consider the nature and history of each of the six technologies; 2) consider the state of the technology when it was first used in war and how different navies expected to use it; 3) explore how major navies subsequently improved or modified their use of the technology; 4) examine the development of countermeasures; 5) discuss how navies developed doctrine and incorporated ancillary technologies to improve the core technology’s effectiveness. O’Hara and Heinz do point out that their book is “not intended to be a complete history of naval technology in the period covered” (p. 4). Users have valuable input. Scientists and experts in general, believe that they know best and have a poor record of accepting user contributions. For a long time complaints from submarine and destroyers crews about torpedo performance were ignored, epecially in the US and German navies.

Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world’s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio). Each chapter considers the state of a subject technology when it was first used in war and what navies expected of it. It then looks at the way navies discovered and developed the technology’s best use, in many cases overcoming disappointed expectations. It considers how a new technology threatened its opponents, not to mention its users, and how those threats were managed. The transaction is subject to customary conditions and is expected to close by the end of September 2020. Innovating Victory: Naval Technology in Three Wars studies how the world’s navies incorporated new technologies into their ships, their practices, and their doctrine. It does this by examining six core technologies fundamental to twentieth-century naval warfare including new platforms (submarines and aircraft), new weapons (torpedoes and mines), and new tools (radar and radio). Each chapter considers the state of a subject technology when it was first used in war and what navies expected of it. It then looks at the way navies discovered and developed the technology’s best use, in many cases overcoming disappointed expectations. It considers how a new technology threatened its opponents, not to mention its users, and how those threats were managed. Innovating Victory shows that the use of technology is more than introducing and mastering a new weapon or system. Differences in national resources, force mixtures, priorities, perceptions, and missions forced nations to approach the problems presented by new technologies in different ways. Navies that specialized in specific technologies often held advantages over enemies in some areas but found themselves disadvantaged in others. Vincent P. O'Hara and Leonard R. Heinz present new perspectives and explore the process of technological introduction and innovation in a way that is relevant to today’s navies, which face challenges and questions even greater than those of 1904, 1914, and 1939. Technology is constantly evolving, and the navies of the twenty-first century are juggling innovations that are likely to revolutionize naval warfare as profoundly as did the introduction of steam and steel in the nineteenth century or electronics in the twentieth. Forethought, strategic vision, and technical acumen might drive technological development in periods of peace, but it is a thesis of this work that navies learn the best use of new technology only through the medium of peer-to-peer combat. And within the chaos of combat, only those navies that innovate successfully discover the best uses of their own technology and the best counters to those of the enemy. To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, while the concept of innovation is simple, innovating under enemy fire is difficult. This book relates the development and use of six important and successful technologies, but to focus on success might give the false impression that every invention has a use, or that every use has a lasting purpose, or even that technologies with the strongest pedigrees and the most clearly defined uses will continued to be relevant. For navies, the ultimate criterion is whether the weapon/tool/platform effectively advances the task of securing power at sea and contributes to ultimate victory.Each chapter begins with an account of the technology’s early development, including its first adoption by navies and initial expectations surrounding it. Next, the chapter discusses the discovery phase. For mines, torpedoes, and radio, this is the Russo-Japanese War; for submarines and aircraft, World War I; and for radar, World War II. Once the discovery phase is covered, the chapter focuses on evolution. 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. After evolution, the exploitation of the fully developed technology is examined. For five of the technologies, the exploitation phase occurred in World War II; radio was sufficiently developed by 1914 to be exploited in both wars. Countermeasures and further evolution are discussed where relevant. The section describing the exploitation of the technology in World War II is followed by a summary of postwar developments and a brief review of the technology’s current state. Each chapter concludes with lessons to be learned. Victory smiles upon those who anticipate changes in the character of war, not upon those who wait to adapt themselves after the changes occur. In their “Conclusion” the authors point out that the six different technologies had mixed military and scientific antecedents, hence, varied roots and evolution in different ways. Time and financial resources were critical ingredients in the genesis of technologies, which were mostly national secrets. One major exception was the Allied cooperation on the development of radar, while the competition for resources between air forces and navies played a significant role in both German and Japanese naval technological developments. Other summaries conclude that combat is the “acid test” for new technologies and the authors note important countermeasures such as the development of German guided weapons, how Enigma was compromised, and needs and uses such as radar in offense versus defense, as well as how aircraft limited the effectiveness of submarines. The book focuses on technological successes and the authors state four broad principles: 1) expectations do not determine best use; 2) users have valuable input; 3) needs influence use; and 4) new technologist bring new vulnerabilities. New technologies also affect tactics and new uses provoke countermeasures.