USS MAINE PRELUDES: WAR PLANS

SOURCE INFO COMPILED
Adam Larson / Caustic Logic
May 3 2009

In the process of fleshing out my previous thoughts on the USS Maine incident, this post will serve to gather some clues to fill in the "war games" angle. I'd only caught a glimpse of this before in a book by G.J.A. O'Toole, but it left me noticing how the "splendid little war" had been planned out at least two years in advance of the fortuitous pretext blasting its way into history. In my 2006 barely-researched essay I wrote in part:

In 1896, the recently created Office of Naval Intelligence drafted a plan should war with Spain be ignited over these developing issues. The plan recommended simultaneously attacking Spanish colonial holdings in the Philippines and in the Caribbean. The conclusion, apparently, was that the U.S. would win handily and could easily seize these strategic possessions.
[...]
[T]he gears kept turning at the Navy, under Secretary John Long and his assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt; by the end of June, the Navy had adopted the 1896 war plan. In August, Long went on vacation, leaving Roosevelt at the helm. President McKinley invited Teddy for at least two personal discussions, at which time the acting Secretary acquainted the President with the ONI’s suggestions. McKinley was apparently impressed with both Teddy and the plan.
[...]
I would note that it was a well-timed accident that the Maine should blow up, of all times and places, right after it had docked in soon-to-be-enemy waters for murky reasons, allowing that two-year-old plan to go into effect to the great benefit of U.S. policy.

So with this hint at what I'm looking for details regarding, here are some credible sources adding light to that dim awareness:

“After the renewal of the Cuban insurrection in 1895, officers of the Navy War College and the Office of Naval Intelligence drew up and then revised a series of war plans for the fleet in case the United States and Spain went to war. All three major parties endorsed freedom for Cuba during the election campaign of 1896, and the Spanish government would not end its pacification campaign or negotiate away its colonies, hence this planning was prudent. While President William McKinley and the State Department attempted to come to terms with Spain, a Navy War Board of five senior officers reviewed and revised the basic plan drafted in 1896. Essentially, the Navy War Board envisioned offensive operations against the Spanish fleet in the Caribbean and in the western pacific near another Spanish colony, the Philippine Islands. A defeat in the Caribbean would isolate Cuba and blockade the Spanish armies in Cuba and Puerto Rico, while a victory in the Philippines would allow the American government to hold Manila hostage until a peace was negotiated.” [2]

“Although the Navy War Board did not plan any specific operations to seize temporary bases, its plan implied that such actions might be necessary. In any event, by the end of 1897 the Navy Department had a fairly accurate vision of its responsibilities in 1898.” [3]

"When the Cuban insurrection broke out the following year, the officers in charge at the Naval War College believed that it was important to undertake a full-scale study of a Spanish-American conflict. They gave the class of 1895 a "special problem" concerning war with Spain where the objective was to secure independence for Cuba. The plan [was] submitted to the Navy Department in January 1896 [...] The Office of Naval Intelligence entered the planning effort later in 1896. Lieutenant William Kimball prepared a plan that focussed on a tight naval blockade of Cuba [...] supporting attacks against Manila and the Spanish coast [...] According to Kimball's plan, only if these efforts failed to bring about peace, would the army land in Cuba and operate against Havana. The Naval War College criticized the plan [but] endorsed the idea to use the Asiatic Squadron against Spanish forces in the Philippines, and this element would reappear in later plans.
[...]
Secretary of the Navy Hilary Herbert [convened] a board in the summer of 1896 to draft a separate plan for war with Spain. Like the Kimball plan, the Ramsay Board focused on the a naval blockade, but added the deep water ports of Puerto Rico to those of Cuba. [more details...] Finally, the European Squadron should be reinforced by ships from the U.S. and the Asiatic Squadron, and together operate against the Spanish coast after capturing the Canary Islands as an advance base.
[...]
Perhaps confused by the different positions in the existing plans, the new Secretary of the Navy, John Long, convened his own War Planning Board under Commander in Chief of the North Atlantic Station, Rear Admiral Montgomery Sicard, in June 1897. Chief Intelligence Officer Lieutenant Commander Richard Wainwright was the only member who had served on the previous board. The Sicard Board endorsed the War College idea that joint operations against Havana would be necessary to end the war. Therefore, the plan called for the early seizure of Matanzas, sixty miles east of Havana, to serve as a base of operations against the latter, and to deliver arms to the Cuban insurgents.
[...]
When war between the United States and Spain appeared unavoidable following the destruction of USS Maine in Havana harbor on 15 February 1898, the Navy Department had a solid body of plans and documents honed by four years of debate by its leading officers. Although the realities of war would force several modifications, many of the concepts laid out in the Sicard Plan were implemented
[...]
[N]early every plan called for the purchase or charter of merchant vessels to serve as auxiliary cruisers, colliers, and transports. The data furnished in appended lists and the inspiration to act quickly served as a basis for decision making in those crucial weeks prior to war. [...] The destruction of the Maine propelled the department into action. Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt organized a Board of Auxiliary Vessels [...] On 9 March Congress passed a $50 million emergency defense appropriation bill, and the Navy Department began to acquire vessels. [4]

"Roosevelt and his expansionist friends, led by Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, lobbied successfully for his appointment as Assistant Secretary of the Navy after McKinley's victory in 1896--despite McKinley's views that TR was too pugnacious. Coming to office several years into the Cuban insurgency, TR's top priority was expelling Spain from the Americas, but he had to contend with a variety of naval war plans on how to do it. In the event of war, the Office of Naval Intelligence advocated an attack on not only Cuba but also the Philippines to force a Spanish war indemnity and to tie down their fleet. The Naval War College planned for a defensive coastal war if Britain joined Spain in defending Cuba, but an attack against Spain itself if Britain stayed out. Typically, TR favored the most aggressive option--attacking Spanish forces more or less everywhere." [5]

“In 1896-97, [ONI] chief intelligence officer Lt. Comdr. Richard Wainwright, and his staff officer Lt. William W. Kimball, expanded a war plan begun at the Naval War College […] Wainwright also sent Lt. Comdr. George L. Dyer in 1897 as the first full-time U.S. naval attaché to Madrid. Wainwright collaborated closely with the Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt in developing clandestine U.S. war preparations, the secret purchase of armaments and warships overseas, and development of a spy network in Europe. Roosevelt corresponded with naval attachés Lt. Comdr. John C. Colwell in London and Lt. William S. Sims in Paris. Colwell and Sims operated a string of civilian spies with a “Secret Service Emergency Fund” sent directly by Assistant Secretary of the navy Roosevelt, probably without the knowledge of either the secretary of the navy or the president.” [6]

!!!
Sources:
[1] O'Toole, G.J.A. The Spanish War: An American Epic 1898. New York. WW Norton. 1989. Pages 100-102.
[2] Millett, Allan Reed. Semper Fidelis: The History of the United States Marine Corps. Simon and Schuster, 1991. p.128 Google Books.
[3] Ibid. p 129.
[4] Hayes, Mark L. War Plans and Preparations and Their Impact on U.S. Naval Operations in the Spanish-American War. Early History Branch, Naval Historical Center. Paper presented March 23 1998.
[5] Parker, Tom The Realistic Roosevelt. The National Interest, Fall 2004.
[6] Beadle, Benjamin R., ed. The War of 1898 and U.S. Interventions, 1898-1934: An Encyclopedia. Google Books p 235.

Remember the Maine, Forget the Treachery

In 1895, revolutions broke out in both Cuba and the Philippines, then Spanish colonial possessions. The Spanish dispatched General Valeriano “Butcher” Weyler to take over Cuba and suppress the “Insurrectos.” Soon death squads, concentration camps and the like made headlines in the U.S. Both the sugar industry and humanitarian sentiment were upset by this instability, and calls for intervention grew. In 1896, the recently created Office of Naval Intelligence drafted a plan should war with Spain be ignited over these developing issues. The plan recommended simultaneously attacking Spanish colonial holdings in the Philippines and in the Caribbean. The conclusion, apparently, was that the U.S. would win handily and could easily seize these strategic possessions.

In March 1897, President William McKinley was sworn in, replacing Grover Cleveland, who had vowed neutrality in the Cuban affair. McKinley was taunted by the war hawks in government, finance and the media for his own failure to go to war right away. But the gears kept turning at the Navy, under Secretary John Long and his assistant Secretary Theodore Roosevelt; by the end of June, the Navy had adopted the 1896 war plan. In August, Long went on vacation, leaving Roosevelt at the helm. President McKinley invited Teddy for at least two personal discussions, at which time the acting Secretary acquainted the President with the ONI’s suggestions. [1] McKinley was apparently impressed with both Teddy and the plan.

Lacking a pretext for such a war, someone in Navy leadership ordered the state-of-the-art battleship U.S.S. Maine to visit Havana Harbor in December. The mission of the Maine is not entirely clear – some sources say it was to evacuate Americans if war broke out, but others point out that the ship would have little room for evacuees, loaded as it was with tons of ammunition. As George J.A. O’Toole described it: “a friendly visit, the Americans blandly proclaimed; a welcome one, the Spanish replied with frigid propriety.” [2] The Maine’s appearance in late January 1898 was grudgingly accepted in Cuba; it moored for a few uneventful weeks until the night of February 15, when the ship was rocked by two powerful explosions, setting off the ammunition on board, and quickly sunk at a cost of about 260 sailors and officers dead.

After the explosion, the wreck of the U.S.S. Maine in 1900. Credit: Jackson, William Henry, photographer. "Wreck of the U.S.S. Maine." Detroit Publishing Company ca. 1900. Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920, Library of Congress.

The 2-15 blast was painted at the time as certain Spanish sabotage, ignoring that Spain had no hope of winning a war and no reason for starting one. Yet the “yellow press,” notably the Hearst papers, hyped-up the celebrated battleship’s destruction into a vicious war drive. The famous cry, of course, was “To Hell with Spain! Remember the Maine!” Some, like Samuel Clemens and Andrew Carnegie, were royally pissed at the nascent U.S. imperialism this “splendid little war” evidenced. But despite the protests, “Butcher” Weyler and the bloody sabotaging Spaniards were easily stopped.

The new American possession of the Philippines soon saw its own, larger butchery under the U.S. Army, and Hawaii was annexed as a coaling station to support the war in the Philippines. Puerto Rico has lobbied to become a state of the Union like Hawaii, but with no Pearl Harbor moment of their own, they languish in a semi-colonial status as a military firing range. Cuba’s fate was left complex, with independence so long as the U.S. Navy could maintain a toehold at Guantanamo Bay, which is still in use despite four decades of Castro’s rule, and has of course been back in the news lately as a “legal Black Hole” for the prisoners of WWIV.

As for the Spanish treachery that “started the game” at Havana Harbor and led to all of this, initial inquiries upheld the official story that the Maine was sunk with a submerged mine, presumably Spanish. In 1912 the ship was moved and sunk in the deeper sea, effectively burying the evidence. It wasn’t until the 1970s that the evidence was again dredged up by Admiral Rickover, whose commission decided the blast was probably caused by a coal-room fire, presumably an accident, that set off the ammunition aboard. This is now the generally accepted theory, but I would note that it was a well-timed accident that the Maine should blow up, of all times and places, right after it had docked in soon-to-be-enemy waters for murky reasons, allowing that two-year-old plan to go into effect to the great benefit of U.S. policy.

Theodore Roosevelt, who had sold the President on this plan, resigned his desk job soon after 2-15, going to Cuba and strenuously getting his picture taken on San Juan Hill with his much-publicized “Rough Riders.” As president McKinley rode his swift and profitable victory into a second term in the 1900 election, Teddy joined him as vice president, sworn-in in March 1901. After McKinley was gunned down by a crazed anarchist six months later, Teddy was speaking softly while carrying the big stick of the U.S. presidency with three and a half years ahead of him and no vice president to worry about.
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Sources:
[1] O’Toole, G.J.A. "The Spanish War: An American Epic 1898." New York. WW Norton. 1989. Pages 100-102.
[2] See [1] O’Toole. Page 21.