The American Join Chiefs of Staff are not in the line of command either. Like the name says, it’s a staff position, not a command position. They exist to advise the President and Secretary of Defense, not to give orders to the combantant commanders.
You guys have that, too?
I read Churchill’s account of HMS Jervis Bay, and almost wept.
An armed merchant cruiser, “armed” with guns designed in 1898, who took on the German cruiser Admiral Scheer to protect her convoy.
Sounds like the biggest balls on board weren’t the ones they were loading into the cannons.
It was during an election campaign in which Labour were the avowedly socialist opposition, and the Labour leader responded on the radio the next day.
“No Socialist Government conducting the entire life and industry of the country could afford to allow free, sharp, or violently-worded expressions of public discontent. They would have to fall back on some form of Gestapo, no doubt very humanely directed in the first instance. And this would nip opinion in the bud; it would stop criticism as it reared its head, and it would gather all the power to the supreme party and the party leaders, rising like stately pinnacles above their vast bureaucracies of Civil servants, no longer servants and no longer civil.” – Churchil, 4/6/45
“The Prime Minister made much play last night with the rights of the individual and the dangers of people being ordered about by officials. I entirely agree that people should have the greatest freedom compatible with the freedom of others. There was a time when employers were free to work little children for sixteen hours a day. I remember when employers were free to employ sweated women workers on finishing trousers at a penny halfpenny a pair. There was a time when people were free to neglect sanitation so that thousands died of preventable diseases. For years every attempt to remedy these crying evils was blocked by the same plea of freedom for the individual. It was in fact freedom for the rich and slavery for the poor. Make no mistake, it has only been through the power of the State, given to it by Parliament, that the general public has been protected against the greed of ruthless profit-makers and property owners. The Conservative Party remains as always a class Party. In twenty-three years in the House of Commons, I cannot recall more than half a dozen from the ranks of the wage earners. It represents today, as in the past, the forces of property and privilege. The Labour Party is, in fact, the one Party which most nearly reflects in its representation and composition all the main streams which flow into the great river of our national life.” – Attlee, 5/6/45
Thanks.
That is civil compared to American Congressmen.
And American Congressmen are Little Miss Manners compared to Australian politicians.
They were during World War II, though. The US had separate and antagonistic ground, air, and naval forces, just like the UK. (ETA: Also up to this point, the Marines were not a separate service, but under the command of the Navy, which eventually got them pissed off enough to demand a divorce at the war’s conclusion.)
The Defense Department was not established as a parent agency for all the services until 1947, and the Joint Chiefs were made advisory-only roles only during the Goldwater-Nichols reforms in 1986, in the wake of the disastrous Iran hostage rescue mission.
The US Air Force was part of the US Army until 1947.
The Marine Corps has been a separate branch of the US military, within the Department of the Navy, since President John Adams approved “An Act for Establishing and Organizing a Marine Corps” in 1798. The National Security Act of 1947, among many other things, ensured the Marine Corps would be protected as an independent service, rather than be absorbed by the Army or outright disbanded.
Yes, but in practice Army Air Forces operated with a great deal of autonomy from the rest of the army at the time of WWII, leading to frequent conflicts with the rest of the Army command structure in procurement, operations, and even recruiting.
Regardless, the Marine Corps was subordinate to the Navy admiralty until 1952, when the Commandant of the Corps was made equal to the other service chiefs and the structure reorganized to its present form by the Douglas–Mansfield Act.