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...