Contemporary analysis has generally accepted that amphibious warfare development in the United States and the United Kingdom was quite similar, if not almost identical, during the Cold War. So-called 'parallel courses' of similar development, which had emerged during the interwar years and continued to evolve during the Second World War, converged even further in the post-war era. This effectively culminated in national approaches (or systems) that most closely reflected the US Naval Service's (i.e., US Navy and Marine Corps) World War II model, which had been used with legendary success in the Pacific through 1945. However, a comparative study of American and British developments from 1945 to 1968 at the strategic, organisational/institutional and tactical/operational levels of analysis reveals that there were significant, if not fundamental, differences. These variances-which had, in fact, materialised during the inter-war years and were consolidated during World War II-continued to evolve along parallel but different courses of development. In essence, they were based on naval versus maritime strategies, single-service versus inter-service (or joint) organizations/institutions, and combined arms versus joint warfare concepts, techniques and doctrine. One could arguably summarise these developmental trends as being amphibious and expeditionary, respectively. Comparing these different courses of development is best accomplished by determining and analysing the similarly divergent evolutionary debates and changes that occurred within each subject country, specifically during the peacetime years when the most significant advances in concepts, tactics, techniques, and doctrine were made. Whilst these activities were particularly divisive in the late 1940s and 1950s (and even in the early 1960s), it was not until the mid-l960s that compromises were reached on both sides of the Atlantic, which made a convergence of amphibious/expeditionary warfare development apparent; but even this did not completely eliminate certain underlying national differences
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:545926 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Liles, Christian F. M. |
| Publisher | King's College London (University of London) |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/the-development-of-amphibiousexpeditionary-warfare-in-the-united-states-and-the-united-kingdom-19451968--a-study-in-comparison-contrast-and-compromise(34f89418-2155-4e61-ae86-34dbee7b3d12).html |
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