I rather think that Pearl Harbor as the tombstone of the Mahan Doctrine
But the fleet had largely moved on from it. An excellent resource for this is Warplan Orange - a compilation of the Navy War College studies from the late 1800s up through the war, for the War with Japan.
Early studies were all Mahanian Decisive Battle plans. Going into 1940 there were two competing plans, one Mahanian, the other essentially what we did. The Mahanian scheme was to win a quick decisive battle, but played largely into the Japanese thinking and would have been a disaster for us. The second, called for 2 years to build a whole new fleet, and required 300% of the worlds cargo shipping capacity. Had we gone with the first one, we would have lost our fleet somewhere between Pearl and Manila, and option 2 would have been the only course open.
Congress picked Option 2 in 1940, and EVERY hull except for the Midways that was laid down during the war was ordered by the Naval Appropriations Bill of 1940. More than a full year before Pearl Harbor. This called for 6 Iowas (4 completed), and 6 Montanas (none even laid down), but many, many, many more carriers, light carriers, and escort carriers.
On 7 Dec 41 the USN had CV 8 in commission, and CV1 had been converted to a seaplane tender, leaving 7 CVs in the total fleet, 2 largely incompatible with Pacific operations (Ranger and Wasp).
On 2 Sep 45 (Date of formal surrender) the USN had 32 CV/CVL, and probably 50+ CVEs, with another dozen CV's nearing completion. Three (3) of those ships were NOT ordered before Pearl Harbor.
Mahan's doctrine was dead in the USN before the first bomb dropped, though some of the gunner's mentality stayed with the fleet through the war.
Whereas the IJN never accepted that the battle was fought, and (for them) lost in 1942.
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In response to this post by bourbonstreet)
Link: https://smile.amazon.com/War-Plan-Orange-Strategy-1897-1945/dp/1591145007/ref=sr_1_sc_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1468635163&sr=8-1-spell&keywords=warplan+orange
Posted: 07/15/2016 at 10:13PM