Challenge: The US navy a joke

Your challenge is, with a POD of no earlier than 1900, to make the US navy, by the end of the century, an ineffectual embarrassment. Nuclear war or other cheats are not allowed.
 
By 1900 America is the leading industrial power with oversea's commitments, by 1906 or so it is chucking out Dreadnoughts. I can't really see how this can be easily achieved.
 
There would have been needed a more strict Isolationist Policy in Washington DC, just to prevent the USA to construct anything larger than a small coastal Coastguard mainly. This would certainly mean a strict neutrality and withdrawal from any international agreement. In doing so the USA would not be a threath to anybody else, while also being not threatened by any other nation, as it was not intervening in international affairs.

In a shortlist, it would mean:
No participation in WWI.
No participation in WWII.
No oversea possessions, such as the Phillipines. (To be made independent immediately.)
No building of military outposts, outside continental USA. (No Pearl Harbor)
No participation in international institutes. (LoN, UN, NATO, etc,.)
Autarky as economic drive, with domestic economy only.
 
[67th Tigers]

The U.S. gets into a war over trade rights and China against an Anglo-Japanese Alliance in the 20s. The RN smashes the USN with its mighty G3s and N3s and imposes a blockade, bombarding the U.S. coastline and landing 40,000 troops at random points, easily driving the U.S. army before it. Heavy bombers based in Canada obliterate U.S. industry in the Midwest and New England in a matter of weeks. RN cruisers steam into the Great Lakes through a rapidly enlarged canal and bombard the U.S. Great Lakes Cities, while the vast Canadian Lakes shipbuilding industry rapidly cranks out light battleships. The final blow is struck when Japan lands 20 divisions on the U.S. West Coast and rapidly sweeps all before them. The U.S. is forced to surrender, with Britain and Japan partitioning its overseas territories and Alaska. The U.S. is reduced in one fell swoop to a 3rd world equivalent, and is forced to sign a Versailles style treaty forbidding ocean-going warships, which thanks to its sadly reduced economy, it can't afford anyway. By the end of the century, while the U.S. has recovered somewhat (though still far below the world-bestriding British Empire), Congress still refuses to fund any navy, believing it to be just the first step on another massive beating from Britain.

[/67th Tigers]
 
"The Village People" becomes a considerably more popular band. When under naval attack, everyone immediately plays it down US Navy frequencies, thus immobilising their crews with hysterical laughter, and enraging officers so much that they lose all capacity to make rational decisions. Thus, they revert to ram tactics, with fairly predictable results. Similarly, whenever the US Marines attack, "In the Navy" starts up again. Everyone soon knows how to counter this great fleet, and how to humiliate it.

Thus, it is made into an inneffectual embarrassment, with emphasis on the latter once the US Navy sets up adequate jamming equipment.

As an afterword, Dubya declares war on the band, having discovered that they may be doing a music video remake via intelligence, and with the assistance of a somewhat deceitful Tony Blair. They try desperately, with the full might of their armies, to hunt down this band, who are constantly on the run, and have managed to obtain the assistance of the NYPD, Construction workers' trade unions, and Native Americans. The war is still being waged.

I could go on. It is certainly about as likely as anything short of, say, the entire Pacific fleet being decimated in a rapid series of Pearl Harbouresque raids, which force the USA to their knees, and thereby prevent them from building much of a fleet to challenge the Japanese...
 
After 1900 I would think it is impossible.

Before the construction of the American Grand Fleet that toured the world visiting Australia in 1908 (where it was christened the Great White Fleet) the state of the US Navy was deplorable. It had from memory no first class vessel and only a handful of third class warships. These were also grossly underpowered. Without checking my sources this moribund state of the US Navy may have been the case a little earlier, in the mid 19th century.

At any rate, presumably the motivation for the construction of a modern navy by the United States was the rise of Japanese naval strength culminating in the war against Russia. The latter action strengthening American resolve to continue construction and modernization.

Before this period a continuation of neglect would be possible especially if there was no real rival in the Pacific. If you remove Japanese ambition, then the result is massive to OTL historical outcomes anyway.
 
For this to happen would require politics that truncates the size of the USN, which even for isolationist America was the 3rd largest in the world in 1914. It would also require absolutely the wrong technology decisions to be made, perhaps what was built were a bunch of Glorious/Corageous or someother misguided shitheap. And it would need some sort of disaster thrown in, perhaps like the Kobe earthquake that Japan had in 1923 which wrecked several ships on the ways.

So there you go, if anyone can pull that one off they're a better man than me.
 
In 1946 the US started Demobilizing, Putting Ships Planes and tanks in Mothballs and discharging troops.
By 1948 when whe signed NATO whe were back to 1940 levels, with the Idea that whe could maintain just enuff to fufill NATO and Japanese treaty needs.

Korea changed ALL.

No Korean War and the US Military would be about the size per capita as the Military was back in mid 1941.
With Hundreds of Ships in Mothballs the Congress cuts the Navy budget for new ships.
Over the next fifties years the navy pulls ships out of storage and refurbishes them.

The Navy never experiments with Nuclear power. and in the 1990's is still using Ships built back in the 1940's.
 
This is completely ASB. The USA is a mercantile nation which depends upon international trading. Freedom of the seas, that is the ability of US or other shipping carrying US goods to move freely has been a lynchpin of US foreign policy essentially forever. Jefferson's policy of a coastal navy only was seen to be a complete disaster.

There are a whole variety of scenarios that might make the US Navy smaller, but none that would reduce it to "joke" status.
 
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I don't see why people think it's so unlikely because of industrial power. You can have a huge navy, but if it had some embarassing defeats and poorly thought out construction plans then it could still be regarded as a shamefull embarassment. Imagine if they develop some battleship obsession before ww2 and almost neglect carriers (stupider things have happened), or lose some major ships against fluke air attacks by third world countries in the cold war. "Best" case could be they try and invade Iran in 2002, resulting in a real life version of the infamous "Mellenium Challange" excercises. This could be even more embarassing if the Army had been successful, but then had to withdraw due to lack of naval support.
 
Gore wins in 2000. After the 9/11 attacks, Gore orders a full conventional invasion of Afghanistan, which acheives initial success despite serious logistical problems, but gradually becomes increasingly unpopular as casualties and costs mount. Amid growing anti-war sentiment, Ron Paul comes in a close second in the 2004 primary (Gore narrowly wins the general election), and eventually wins the nomination and the general election in 2008.

In 2009, Paul vetoes the defense appropriations bill. When Congress fails to scrape together the votes to override his veto, Paul orders the military's equipment auctioned off to the highest bidder in order to pay down the national debt. After the auction, Australia, Britain, and China are the world's leading naval powers, followed by Wal-Mart and Berkshire Hathaway.
 
Make the greatest Navy this world has ever seen a joke? Is that even possible? Well...I guess if the ASBs try REALLY HARD they can do it.
 

Nikephoros

Banned

You're missing the rest:

The war begins anew after the United States decides to invade Canada after a Canadian visiting Detroit rapes a young girl. The United States bumbles through the conflict, and the British land 100,000 troops near Washington, taking the city after the American Army retreats in fear of the Mighty British Army.

The American people gladly welcome British control over the East Coast, which naturally fell because Washington fell.
 
"Best" case could be they try and invade Iran in 2002, resulting in a real life version of the infamous "Mellenium Challange" excercises. This could be even more embarassing if the Army had been successful, but then had to withdraw due to lack of naval support.

Exercises like that do highlight arrogance and oversights, which they should do, but often under very strict operational parameters such as limited conflict. In the event of war there, as is their habit, demonstrating overkill the USN would likely just destroy anything within a cordon sanitaire (after all, in such a war with such heavy casualties, which politicians would worry about a few hundred darky fishermen/merchant seamen killed in error, out of sight of land?)
 
Closest thing I can think of that's not entirely ASB and has a post-1900 POD is that in the late 1940s. the Army & AF get their way with the chicanery that led to the 'Revolt of the Admirals', followed by no Korean War, so naval avation gets largely gutted, minimal strategic/power projection capability, and the Navy that's left and goes into the Cold War as almost an entirely-ASW oriented force, which, with the end of the Cold War, gets downsized dramatically. Even then, although that alt-USN would be a joke compared to what it is OTL, it'd still probably be one of the most powerful, and not what the OP is looking for, but although not all that plausible, it's about the closest thing I can think of that doesn't require ASBs or require butterflying away not only the Cold War, but any somewhat similar period of prolonged tension with any other concievable rival in the ATL.
 
[67th Tigers]

The U.S. gets into a war over trade rights and China against an Anglo-Japanese Alliance in the 20s. The RN smashes the USN with its mighty G3s and N3s and imposes a blockade, bombarding the U.S. coastline and landing 40,000 troops at random points, easily driving the U.S. army before it. Heavy bombers based in Canada obliterate U.S. industry in the Midwest and New England in a matter of weeks. RN cruisers steam into the Great Lakes through a rapidly enlarged canal and bombard the U.S. Great Lakes Cities, while the vast Canadian Lakes shipbuilding industry rapidly cranks out light battleships. The final blow is struck when Japan lands 20 divisions on the U.S. West Coast and rapidly sweeps all before them. The U.S. is forced to surrender, with Britain and Japan partitioning its overseas territories and Alaska. The U.S. is reduced in one fell swoop to a 3rd world equivalent, and is forced to sign a Versailles style treaty forbidding ocean-going warships, which thanks to its sadly reduced economy, it can't afford anyway. By the end of the century, while the U.S. has recovered somewhat (though still far below the world-bestriding British Empire), Congress still refuses to fund any navy, believing it to be just the first step on another massive beating from Britain.

[/67th Tigers]


Um, no... just no, parlaiment is not going to have the political will to invade the continental US less than a decade after the end of the bloodiest war in the UK's history. Also the possibility of a successful invasion the American mainland any time during the 20th century is pure ASB. Besides, even allowing for your ridiculous scenario, this probably turns into some massive Axis wank TL in which the US joins the Axis out of a desire for revenge, the USN gets built up in the interbellum years and combined with the KM raiding shipping, superior US CV's put the RN at the bottom of the ocean and starve the British Isles into submission, and ov course Canada becomes a 51st state in the process. Either way the USN is still top notch by the end of the century.

The best bet for an embarresment of a navy for the US is to have the new deal fail horribly, FDR gets voted out in the 40's and replaced by a deficit hawk who would most likely also be isolationist and cuts military spending. As a result gitmo is closed, the Philippines puerto rico and Hawaii are granted independence. WWII ends with a Soviet dominated Eurasian continent. The US government adopts strict isolationism, when the Russians eventually develope nukes and ICBM's in the late 50's the US military concentrates on countering that with their own missile mounted nukes, the navy still gets snubbed in favor of nuclear arsenal. By the end of the 20th century the USN is little more than a coastal defense force, while the Soviet Navy is king of the waves. Still pretty thin, but plausible.
 
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