well, a question like that can be answered by historians. i’d be interesting to discuss historical exceptions though, as well as present-day implications.
as far as i can remember, the seapower usually prevailed over the continental land power. anywhere from HRE vs ottomans (lepanto) to the armada, to nelson, russo-japanese war, WW1, WW2.
but there are questions:
were naval units crucial to the norman conquest of the english kingdoms?
why couldn’t england press her advantages during the hundred years war?
why couldn’t britain press her advantages in both ground and naval forces during the american revolution, up to the race to colonize the whole of north america?
should the russians have developed a pacific-side fleet before tsushima?
should the kaiser have focused more on ground forces than try to match british naval strength?
how could hitler have finished off britain?
should the US eventually cut-back on military strength (mainly naval) as teh chinese economy becomes more dominant (remember the past mistake with Japan Inc. during the 70s-80s.)
As a rule, in a conventional war an army is required to win. All the bombs, shore bombardment, sunken ships, fighter combat, etc. doesn’t make a bit of difference if you don’t have boots on the ground. Everything else is ancillary to that requirement.
Let me put it to you this way: if the US Navy turned on the US en masse tomorrow, would they be able to defeat even so much as a single major city? They could blow it to hell, but they couldn’t occupy it.
The Army is required. The Navy is required only to get the Army where it needs to go, keep it supplied, and support its advance.
I’d think “blowing it to hell” counts as a defeat, especially once you’ve got nuclear weapons. The navy is just poorly suited to exploiting said defeat.
If the war in question is nuclear, there is no need for the Army or the Navy. The Air Force has enough ICBMs and nuclear bombers to blow anything to kingdom come. But that’s why I specifically said about a conventional war. To win you have to occupy, otherwise you’ve just destroyed a bunch of stuff.
wanted this thead to go several pages but this one stumps it. but i have some things to say:
at the start of a war, even if you have the biggest army around but with a sorry navy, your enemy across the channel will have little to fear from you. by the time your naval build-up has achieved parity with his, he might well have invaded you and his (enlarged) army might already be threatening your capital.
your continent (or whatever your army controls) had better be self-supporting. his navy would have bottled up your supply sources overseas.
a navy takes a lot longer to develop than an army (or even an air force.) an arms build-up even at peacetime, just to achieve naval contention, will likely bankrupt a modest- to strong economy.
victory from the sea or the air can already be considered a total victory, particularly in the case of asymetric wars.
It’s like asking what’s better, machine guns or grenades, tanks or helicopters, jeeps or missiles. You need them all. A military needs both land and sea-based assets; determining how much of each it needs depends on its doctrine, its enemies, the terrain on which it plans to fight, and the scope and nature of its operations.
Navies and armies aren’t competing forces; they’re two cogs in the same machine.
fair enough. i’m waiting for a wisecrack like, “depends on what you’re fighting for: buried treasure or sunken treasure?”
having an inordinate strategic/tactical advantage in terms of ground or sea forces is beneficial depending on the situation. i’m just convinced that a country should maintain a navy during peacetime. much more crucial than an army. there are exceptions to this of course, best exemplified by west germany during the cold war.
From the Civilization series of games an army was needed for conquest, but could be easily held up, prevented from going forward into enemy territory, allowing the enemy to build itself up in non-affected areas. The navy allowed one to infiltrate deep into enemy territory and bomb the sh!t out of them, keeping them pretty much in the stone age, unable to do much, but you couldn’t conquer the cities from the sea.
At least that’s how the first few versions went.
edit - the later versions had a marine unit, so technically you could take a city by sea in those ones
The Russians did have a Pacific Fleet (Far East Fleet). It just wasn’t very big or very good. Or very well led, except for the brief period before Markarov was killed. The Japanese surprise attack effectively bottled it up in Port Arthur.
It can be argued that the Kaiser challenging the British Naval strength was one of the causes of the war. As it was, Germany had the best Army in the world at the time anyway so it is a bit difficult to say he could have focused more on ground forces. The other thing to remember was that it was not certain that Britain would even enter the war.
Hitler could probably have finished off Britain by not hesitating at Dunkirk and also having a decent invasion fleet ready at that time. However, that is hindsight- even the German military never expected France to fall in a hole so easily.
I think the OP is focusing on history more than modern times. He makes references to the Hundred Years Wars, and the rivalry between Britain and France is a case study of Big Navy Vs Big Army.
The English-speaking world is heavily influenced by the experience of England/Great Britain, so tends to favor naval matters - it seems to have worked out pretty well for global commerce and globe-spanning empires.
However, if the people asking and answering the question were speaking Russian, Mandarin, Turkish, German, Hindi, or French, we might have a different perspective on the matter.
For example, take the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 mentioned in the OP. Undoubtedly a decisive naval victory for the Catholic alliance, the Ottomans still continued to expand. In 1573 the Venetians recognized Ottoman dominance of Cyprus, which remained under their control for centuries, and the conquest of Crete in the 1660s. The gradual decline and destruction of the Ottoman Empire was more closely linked with defeats on land against the Austrians, Hungarians, Poland, and various Balkan nations/revolts than the defeat at Lepanto or any naval battle for that matter.
For Great Britain, the United States, and Japan, the need for a large navy is a no-brainer. For Russia and China the need for a large army is a no-brainer. For other countries, the choice may vary quite a bit.
Horrible composite plan by the Spanish. Either Parma or Santa Cruz’s original plans would have had better shots at at least partial success. Parma’s involved a quick descent by surprise, with no naval engagement required or envisioned ( whether it would have worked is another question ).
Trafalgar has great significance as the symbolic beginning of the Pax Britannica on the high seas, but it did not significantly impact the War of the Third Coalition, which was shortly thereafter won by Napoleon at Austerlitz.
No. Lucky timing and a victory on land was crucial to success.
What advantages? England enjoyed no consistent superiority in sea-power during the Hundred Years War. Often just the opposite. And they certainly couldn’t consistently match the resources of France, which was far wealthier and more populous, at least in theory. Rather it is remarkable that the English did as well as they did before finally losing in the end. As it is it took some lucky breaks to prevent massive French fleets from landing large armies in England - for example the great victory at Sluys in 1340, or the later mostly outside issues that stalled French invasion plans in the period ~1383-1386.
By dint of a massive expansion ( ruinously expensive and unsustainable in the long run as it turns out ) France had, soon combined with their allies, achieved a certain degree of naval parity or even superiority over Great Britain in this period. By 1779 France had 66 ships of the line and Spain entered the war with 54, by 1780 they were joined by the Netherlands with ~20 more, all to to GB’s ~90. In 1782 the combined balance was ~146 allies vs 94 GB. The strains on the British navy were eventually untenable - any attempt to achieve local superiority in the Caribbean or North America ( not to mention Channel defense, Atlantic convoys, annual Gibraltar resupply, India commitments, etc. ) were soon cancelled out as they had too many threats pressing from too many directions. Indeed in 1779 GB temporarily lost control of the Channel and was briefly vulnerable to invasion ( which was considered ).
French involvement was hugely more important than even the usually laudatory respect paid to them in your average U.S. HS history text.