The direction from submarine force leadership past and present is clear: “Prepare for battle.”1 Part of those preparations is determining how U.S. submarines should engage Chinese and Russian submarines when called upon. Naval history must guide that effort, but there is little recent submarine combat to learn from, and the lessons from the world wars are limited because of the fundamental changes introduced by nuclear power.
Instead, the Age of Fighting Sail is the best resource to prepare the submarine force for one-on-one undersea fights. Both the Age of Fighting Sail and modern submarine operations feature independent warships with short scouting and weapon ranges, poor communications leading to a heavy emphasis on mission command, and unlimited propulsion methods. Analyzing the lessons of the Age of Fighting Sail, with a focus on single-ship actions, can provide insights into how U.S. submariners can be ready to defeat their Chinese and Russian counterparts in battle.
‘The Most Opaque of All Domains’
As Vice Admiral Michael J. Connor observed in a 2015 statement before Congress, “The undersea arena is the most opaque of all warfighting domains.”2 To prepare for submarine-on-submarine combat, officers and sailors could seek lessons from undersea naval history. They could study the world wars, but submarine combat then was significantly different from what it likely will look like today. The world wars featured “submersible warships,” able to dive for only short periods, that focused on the antisurface warfare mission. The 1982 Falklands War offers a more modern case study, but it also provides few insights into submarine-on-submarine combat; in the first—and only—case of a nuclear-powered submarine (SSN) engaging in combat, a British submarine sank a single surface warship but never encountered any Argentinian submarines.3
The history of undersea warfare is a valuable reference in officers’ and sailors’ efforts to prepare to sink surface warships, but it offers little to study for submarine-on-submarine engagements.
Instead, submariners could turn to other warfare communities’ modern history, such as that of the surface fleet. However, massive differences in scouting and weapon ranges, communications, and endurance mean there are fundamental differences between platforms on or above the seas and those operating beneath them.
Today, aircraft and warships benefit from near-ubiquitous sensing, high-bandwidth communications, and weapons with incredible ranges, allowing for powerful networks of platforms able to scout and attack the enemy like never before. In contrast, submarine scouting and weapon ranges are comparable to what they were in 1945, and their communications, while much advanced, are still impaired by the challenges of underwater physics and submarines’ emission control practices.4
Finally, fuel tethers most surface and air platforms to an aircraft carrier, a supply ship, or a port—a constraint nuclear-powered submarines do not have. Thus, while submariners should study other communities’ recent history and current operations, their applicability to submarine-on-submarine combat is limited. Overall, it appears difficult to directly apply the 20th century’s lessons in naval history to submarine duels today.
Instead, the single-ship actions of the Age of Fighting Sail are the best resource for officers and sailors looking to prepare for undersea fights. The opaque nature of the undersea domain, limiting submarines’ detection ranges and communications, is well represented by the technological limits of the Age of Sail. Ships of that era, relying on visual searches, had short scouting and weapon ranges comparable to those of submarines today—and unlike most other modern platforms that can be detected and attacked by enemies hundreds of miles away.
The slow and unreliable communications of the Age of Fighting Sail typically meant that, when encountering the enemy, friendly support could not be summoned before the battle was over. Again, this is more likely to be similar to submarines’ situation today, and unlike most other warships and aircraft with near-constant networked communications. Single-ship fights in the Age of Sail featured two of the same types of platforms facing off against each other in the same domain, just as with two submarines battling today—and unlike submarine-vs.–surface warship battles during the world wars, when two different types of platforms fought from two different domains. Finally, ships in the Age of Fighting Sail and U.S. submarines today have unlimited propulsion sources: wind and nuclear power.
Just as with single Age of Sail frigates, submarines’ independent nature, short scouting ranges, poor communications, and long endurance likely will lead to single-submarine engagements, in which submarines only organically detect each other once already within weapons range and without the networks or time to call for support. Accordingly, the submarine force’s Commander’s Intent 4.0 states, “We must be ready to operate alone far forward with little communications in the adversary’s weapons engagement zone relying on our own organic sensors and weapons battery.”5 The lessons of the Age of Sail can help submariners execute that commander’s intent.
Yesteryear’s Lessons—From Training to Tactics
The Age of Fighting Sail offers today’s submariners lessons in training, scouting, command and control (C2) and mission command, and tactics. These lessons are organized along the kill chain: preparing for battle, searching for the enemy, controlling the attack, and tactics to achieve victory.
Training: It is no secret of naval history that training is key to victory at sea. For example, Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson’s victories at Aboukir Bay and Trafalgar came in part because his practiced crews had a significant advantage over adversaries who had lost proficiency during extended in-port periods.6
However, training is even more decisive in single-ship actions than in large fleet engagements. In duels in which the quantity, strength, or timeliness of supporting forces do not come into play, there are fewer variables affecting the battle, thus increasing the importance of remaining factors such as training status. It reduces to just two crews trying to best operate their ships to win without any outside interference tipping the scales.
Consider Captain James Lawrence’s two battles in the War of 1812, both single-ship actions fought in less than 15 minutes. On 24 February 1813, the USS Hornet under Lawrence fought HMS Peaco*ck under Captain William Peake. Lawrence had been in command for 18 months and had trained his crew extensively during their long stretches at sea, leading Commodore William Bainbridge to write that the Hornet was in a “high state of discipline and excellent order.”7 On board the Peaco*ck, Peake was particularly focused on the ship’s appearance and, according to the resulting court-martial, had allowed the “omission of the practice of exercising the crew in the use of the guns for the last three years.”8 In the short action, the Hornet’s superior gunnery and shiphandling led Peake to surrender and the Peaco*ck to sink.
Less than four months later, Lawrence led the USS Chesapeake into battle against HMS Shannon off Boston Harbor. In terms of ship size and armament, it was one of the closest matchups of the war. However, Lawrence had taken command of the Chesapeake just ten days before, his four most senior officers were either new to their positions or to the ship, and he sailed with a large number of new sailors.9 On the other hand, the Shannon, under Captain Philip Broke, was one of the best-trained ships in the Royal Navy. Her crew was well practiced at gunnery and conducted frequent target practice, with Broke personally overseeing, rewarding, and at times financing that training.10 As Theodore Roosevelt wrote, “In short, the Shannon was very greatly superior, thanks to her careful training, to the average British frigate of her rate, while the Chesapeake, owing to her having a raw and inexperienced crew, was decidedly inferior to the average American frigate of the same strength.”11
The resulting battle was one of the most intense and deadly fights of the war, and even with Lawrence’s dying words of “Don’t give up the ship,” the Chesapeake struck her colors after approximately 14 minutes.12 Despite the near-even matchup in ship size and armament, Broke’s crew’s superior gunnery and discipline—enabled by better training—led them to strike the Chesapeake more than double the times that the Shannon was hit.13
Thus, both Lawrence’s victory and subsequent defeat were in large part decided not by hull strength, broadside weight, or speed, but by training. In his 1936 Proceedings General Prize Essay, Lieutenant Ernest Eller analyzed Lawrence’s battles. His conclusions apply just as well to submariners preparing for one-on-one combat today:
Habit, which is merely the result-name for discipline, organization, and preparation, is one of the strongest forces that guide man’s destiny. There are others, moral and material, uncountable in their effect. But when equal will meets equal will, as with Broke and Lawrence; when equal valor shatters against equal strength of soul, as with the British and American crews; when equal force meets equal force, as with the Chesapeake and Shannon; when well-armed determination hurls against its like, then a potent factor will decide—and its name, for men and nations, is preparation.14
When U.S. submariners go into battle, their vessels’ independent nature, short detection ranges, and poor communications means it likely will be against a single enemy submarine. The resulting fight will be a close matchup in terms of stealth, sensors, and weapons, especially as the nation’s adversaries continue to improve. Lawrence showed how training can be a decisive factor in such engagements, even on board ships with impressive designs such as those of Joshua Humphreys. Today, even on board fearsome ships such as Virginia--class SSNs, submarine captains must conduct frequent, rigorous, and realistic combat training like Broke’s, at the expense of other priorities if necessary. Submariners must train like their lives depend on it, because—as Captain Lawrence and 60 of his crew proved—they do.15
Scouting: Throughout the Age of Sail, there were numerous instances of superior forces struggling to destroy a single enemy ship simply because they could not find her. John Paul Jones commanded the sloop-of-war Ranger and frigate Bonhomme Richard in raids circling the British home isles despite the Royal Navy’s status as the world’s premier naval power. Captain David Porter led the USS Essex on a months-long attack on British assets in the Pacific despite overwhelming British naval superiority during the War of 1812. At the end of the Age of Sail, Confederate raiders such as the CSS Alabama, Florida, and Shenandoah attacked U.S. shipping around the world for years while evading the much stronger and more numerous Union Navy.
Those large navies, while opposing only a small number of ships, were faced with a difficult intelligence challenge. Using visual searches, sightings by passing merchants, reports of port visits, captured mail, and intuition, they had to find a single ship with nearly unlimited endurance operating anywhere on the ocean—or multiple oceans. As a result, those navies had to employ huge forces spread out in often futile searches for their foes. The Boston Post described Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles’ search for Confederate raiders as being “like ten cats looking for a weasel in a hundred acre lot.”16
All these challenges meant that more powerful fleets needed to destroy those ships in or near port before they could disappear into the expanse of the open ocean. The Essex was defeated leaving Valparaíso, the President was captured leaving New York, the Alabama fought and lost leaving Cherbourg, and the Florida was captured in Bahia.
Today, undersea warfare may follow a similar pattern. Single submarines may face off against much larger fleets that cannot bring their overwhelming firepower to bear because they cannot find the submarine, due again to its mobility, short detection range, and endurance. Those large fleets, whether it is the U.S. Navy searching for a small number of quiet Russian submarines or the People’s Liberation Army Navy searching for U.S. submarines within the first island chain, will be forced to scrape together sightings, acoustic clues, signals intelligence, and rumors in a frustrating and long search. As Admiral James Stavridis wrote: “Destroying a submarine, I think, is the hardest task in naval warfare. The submarine must be found within the roiling ocean.”17 Just as with wind propulsion, nuclear-powered submarines will have nearly unlimited endurance, meaning antisubmarine warfare (ASW) forces cannot simply outwait their foe.
To overcome that scouting problem, fleets will be forced to use large numbers of ASW platforms spread out across the ocean. As seen in the Age of Sail, it becomes a long and costly struggle to find a single enemy ship. A capable submarine like a Russian Severodvinsk-class nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine can cause a great deal of physical damage with her missiles; she may cause even more problems by not firing them but staying hidden, as a modern fleet-in-being, and forcing huge portions of the U.S. fleet to scour the ocean for them.
All this indicates that, just like with the Essex, President, Alabama, and Florida, it is vitally important to destroy the submarine in port or immediately upon her departure and before she can establish her stealth. Submariners today must ensure their crews are trained, their ships are in position, and that they have the necessary permissions, discussed below, to destroy that enemy submarine as soon as she sets sail. History indicates that, if they fail, those enemy submarines may disappear for weeks or months with a major impact on the U.S. Navy’s disposition and operations.
C2 and Mission Command: Communications to and from sailing warships was slow and unreliable. Orders from ashore and reports back had to travel circuitous routes, were often intercepted or lost, and if they actually arrived were often so late as to not be useful. As a result, commanders needed to carefully write orders for ships that would be operating off them for months, often while dealing with drastically changing events and unforeseen circ*mstances. Leaders ashore needed to clearly explain the intent and bounds of their orders, and then grant the on-scene commander the freedom of action to accomplish what they directed.18
In May 1801 the Pasha of Tripoli unofficially declared war on the United States by ordering the flagpole chopped down outside the U.S. consulate.19 President Thomas Jefferson sent the fledgling U.S. Navy to the Mediterranean in response. The orders given to the squadron’s multiple commodores, and their implementation of those orders, show the promise and pitfalls of C2 and mission command with limited communications.
President Jefferson first sent Commodore Richard Dale, but his squadron’s small size and restrictive orders left him able to accomplish little. Next, Commodore Richard Morris disregarded his orders to establish a blockade and spent inordinate amounts of time in European ports with his wife and child, again accomplishing little in conduct Jefferson called “astonishing.”20
Third, Jefferson sent Commodore Edward Preble with clear orders from the Secretary of the Navy: “subdue, seize, and make prize of, all Vessels, Goods and Effects belonging to the Bey of Tripoli.”21 Dale’s orders were overly prescriptive (they directed the exact route he should sail through the Mediterranean with 11 specific ports or countries to visit).22 But Preble’s orders granted him the freedom of action he needed to succeed:
The varying aspects of our affairs in the Mediterranean—the great distance between this country and the probable places of your operations, render it improper for the government to prescribe to you any particular course of conduct. We therefore leave you unrestrained in your movement and at liberty to pursue the dictates of your own judgment subject however to the following general regulations and instructions.23
By clearly laying out the intent and boundaries of his orders and then granting Preble the freedom to execute them, the Secretary of the Navy enabled his success. Preble’s use of those orders to advance the President’s goals despite challenging circ*mstances, none more important than Tripoli’s capture of the USS Philadelphia, showed what a capable leader can accomplish when armed with a supportive C2 arrangement and able to exercise effective mission command. On Preble’s return, Jefferson praised “the energy and judgment displayed by this excellent officer.”24
Admiral Scott Swift wrote, “The most important skill a warfighter needs to master is the art of C2,” and that is especially true for submariners, often operating independently with poor communications like ships of the Age of Sail.25 For decades, U.S. political leaders have grown accustomed to real-time control of tactical actions, as they watched SEALs attack terrorist compounds or unmanned aerial vehicles stream high-definition live video of missile strikes. In the undersea domain, against a peer adversary, those leaders must be comfortable with much less awareness and control of ongoing engagements. As a former submarine force commander said, “It is easier to track a small object in space than it is to track a large submarine, with tremendous fire power under the water,” meaning an overly prescriptive C2 structure or one requiring frequent communications that delay attacks likely will result in lost contact and an enemy submarine unlocated in the vast ocean.26
Instead, if armed with clear and enabling orders like Preble’s, submarine captains today have the chance to exercise true mission command and wreak havoc on Chinese and Russian fleets. They can use their fearsome warships and knowledge of local conditions, potentially unknown to leaders ashore, to advance commanders’ intent while staying within the bounds of their orders.
For submarine captains to have such freedom of action—the authority to shift operating areas, change missions, and attack targets all with minimal communications ashore—they must earn their commanders’ trust. As Admiral Michael Gilday wrote in his Navigation Plan, the Navy’s culture of mission command provides “a tactical edge in combat” that “is underpinned by a culture of trust and confidence based on proven character and competence.”27 If captains abuse that trust by aggressively operating beyond the limits of their orders or by avoiding any risk and thus not executing commander’s intent, it can have fleet-wide implications: international incidents, missed battles, or more restrictive C2 structures that require frequent communications degrading their stealth and combat potential.
The Age of Sail has much to offer submarine captains, but its lessons in mission command are the most valuable. Command is lonely; it is even lonelier on a single frigate sailing around the British Isles or on a submarine operating deep inside the first island chain.
Tactical Positioning: During the Age of Sail, ships’ geometric positioning was vital. Through superior scouting and maneuver, ships could maximize how many of their guns could be brought to bear, concentrate them against weak spots such as the bow or stern, and minimize the enemy’s ability to respond.
Consider the USS Constitution’s battle against HMS Levant and Cyane in 1815. The Constitution, commanded by Captain Charles Stewart, made superior use of the environment, holding and maintaining the weather gauge, which allowed her to close the British ships despite their efforts to delay the action. Once engaged, the Constitution’s superior speed, shiphandling, and training allowed her to skillfully “cap the T” on both ships while avoiding being raked herself, leading to both British ships’ surrender. James Fenimore Cooper wrote that the Constitution’s handling was “among the most brilliant maneuvering in naval annals.”28
Today, the environment has less of an effect on surface warships’ scouting and mobility because of their improved propulsion and sensors. However, beneath the seas, the highly variable nature of underwater sound propagation means the environment still has a massive impact on submarines’ ability to find their foes. Instead of the weather gauge, today submariners must strive to achieve the “scouting gauge,” in which they use the environment, bathymetry, and their quiet vessels to find the enemy and position for an attack before being detected themselves.
Captain Wayne Hughes discussed trends in maneuver (speed and agility), writing that there is “a shift of emphasis from speed of platform to speed of weapon. Until World War II, maneuvering the fleet was the very heart of tactics. During the war aircraft speed took precedence over ship speed. Since the war missile speed and range have created a tactical environment in which weapons will be delivered without much change in ship position.” As a result, “ship maneuverability has diminished in importance and given way to scouting.”29
The exception to these trends is the undersea domain, where torpedoes’ short range and slow speed means submarines’ relative bearing and range to the enemy remains a “paramount tactical consideration” just as it was in the Age of Sail.30 As a result, battles like that of the Constitution, Levant, and Cyane warrant submariners’ close study.
Kindred Characteristics
Warships of the Age of Fighting Sail and submarines today share similarities in their independent nature, short scouting and weapon ranges, limited communications, and nearly unlimited endurance. As a result, the sailing era offers valuable lessons in training, scouting, C2 and mission command, and tactics for today, and each area warrants deeper study.
The single-ship actions of the Age of Sail offer lessons for all warfare areas, but they are most applicable to modern submarine-vs-submarine duels. Similarly, all eras of naval history offer lessons for one-on-one submarine fights, but the Age of Sail is the best overall resource. As U.S. submariners “prepare for battle” against Chinese and Russian submarines, the lessons of the Hornet, Chesapeake, and Constitution are even more valuable than those of the Wahoo, Tang, and Barb.
