Challenge: Rommel in the US Military

Admiral Erwin Rommel, Part 1:

But if Rommel's parents immigrated to America would that mean that he joins the Army?

What about the Marines or the Navy?

Let's see:

Rommel was accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy in 1909. He was in the top 25% of his class academically, but chafed at the strict discipline of the Academy. He would have been a "century man" marking punishment hours, rifle in hand, except for his surprising skill as a quarterback/defensive back with the Navy football team. He had a remarkable ability to read the other side, guess their intentions, and exploit them to score. His play enabled Navy to beat Army in 1913 in the "Philadelphia Massacre," 45-0.

He passed as a midshipman in 1913 and was assigned as an assistant gunnery officer to the battleship Arkansas. He spent his free hours devising improvements to the ship's rangefinding and fire control systems, which attracted the attention of Rear Admiral Bradley Fiske, Aide for Operations. The senior officer in the Navy, who was also a technical innovator, recognized his abilities and Rommel was commissioned Ensign in 1915 and promoted to Lieutenant Junior Grade in 1916.

Following his promotion to Lt. (j.g.), Rommel, based on both his technical abilities and knowledge of German, was assigned to the Bureau of Ordinance to assist in the development of torpedoes. The torpedo was not a new weapon - it had been used in the Russo-Japanese War - but they were thought to be used from surface ships and submarines. Rommel proposed adapting the torpedo to aircraft. Although tests at Patuxent Naval Yard proved the concept would work, there was no aircraft in the U.S. inventory big enough to carry one. Rommel reluctantly put the papers aside, to await developments.

In Feburary 1917, he was promoted to Lieutenant and reassigned to ship duty as executive officer of the destroyer Wadsworth (DD-60), a Tucker-class destroyer. The Wadsworth was assigned to patrol duty in the North Atlantic. It was there that Rommel had a chance to observe the problem of the submarine. His correspondence back to the Bureau of Ordinance suggested using the new DeForest audion tube as an amplifier to listen to the sounds of submarines underwater.

This led to a transfer back to Washington (over the head of the Captain of the Wadsworth, who objected to losing a good XO) and from there an assignment to Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, where he worked on the "sound detector". His circuit designs for amplifiers were at first rejected by the Army Signal Corps on the grounds that Rommel was a navy man, but Armstrong himself used them with his superheterodyne radio design.

When the United States declared war on Germany. Anti-German feeling stood high in the U.S., but Rommel's relative obscurity prevented him from being hindered in the development of electronic devices to be used. He was reassigned to the Bureau of Ordinance in January 1918 and used his knowledge of radio to locate German transmissions. The Yankee Doodle signal direction finding system, used in tracking down German surface ships and submarines, was produced under Rommel's watch in 1918.
 
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In October 1918 Rommel was reassigned to the American Battleship Division NINE, stationed at Scapa Flow, as gunnery officer on the USS New York. Before he could arrive, however, the New York was damaged by an underwater collision. Rommel thus observed the Armistice abroad the USS Texas. He was present to watch the German High Seas Fleet interned on November 21 -- "an event that warmed his heart as a patriotic American, and chilled it at the same time as a son of a German officer." Rommel made some contacts with the Germans upon the order of Rear Admiral Hugh Rodman, despite the disapproval of British Admiral David Beatty, to assess technological advances in the German Navy. His initial reports noted the relative strengths and weaknesses of the German ships, but also the disaffection of the crews and low morale caused by lack of contact with home.
 
The Naval War College

One would expect by now that Rommel would have been returned to the Bureau of Ordnance, but his performance there and with BATDIV NINE led to an assignment to the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

The Naval War College was, and still is, a graduate school for both American and foreign naval officers, but also has been attended by officers from the Army and the Coast Guard. Its purpose, as Admiral Sims wrote in 1913, "is to study the principles of warfare, as enunciated by the great masters of the art, to develop the practical application of these principles to war on the sea under modern conditions, and then to train our minds to a high degree of precision and rapidity in the correct application of these principles."

Sims had returned to the NWC as commander after serving as the commander of naval forces in Europe during the Great War. Sims was not happy with the approach that had been made to naval strategy, tactics, policies, and administration; he blamed Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels for wasting $15 billion dollars and the loss of 500,000 lives. Daniels successfully defended himself against these charges. Sims' reputation was only slightly stained, but he was determined not to let this happen again.

The NWC lived by the war game. Sims used the analogy of football to naval officers:

<quote>If you want to teach your team to play successful football, you set it to work actually playing many games against other strong teams. The players themselves develop by experience new plays and devise methods of counteracting the plays of the opposing teams. This they do under the guidance of coaches, who are men who have made a special study of the subject, who are the experts in the art of football war.

In playing these games against other college teams, your men are getting ready for a football war that will be declared against West Point in November. </quote>

Quarterback Rommel appreciated the analogy.

The war game was played using models of ships on a large surface on the floor; tables were used to figure out accuracy of fire and the passage of time, among other things. (Writer Fletcher Pratt created a simpler version of the game in the 1930s). Rommel enjoyed the games very much and more often than not, his side came out giving better than it got. He got another nickname: "Fox Rommel" for his ability to use light forces effectively against cruisers and the occasional Orange battlewagon.

Sims encouraged innovative thought. Rommel, the master of spatial analysis, started to think about naval war existing in three dimensions. The submarine and the airplane changed the nature of the threat against the capital ship. How could a U.S. Navy use them in future?

A encounter with General Billy Mitchell, Director of Military Aeronautics, led to a "rather lively" war game in 1920...
 
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