The George W. Bush administration has repeated the pledge to protect Taiwan against an attack from mainland China. In March 2005, Chinese leaders in Beijing introduced legislation that would authorize military action if Taiwan took concrete steps toward formal independence. This is a direct challenge to the president of Taiwan, who has made the island’s de facto independent status a paramount goal of his administration.
If the United States were to reduce its carrier levels to eight or nine CVNs in the next several years, there would be a question of whether the nation could prevail in a military showdown over Taiwan with the Chinese navy of the future. Intelligence analysts from multiple sources agree that China is building a modern navy of nuclear submarines, missile ships, and supersonic maritime strike aircraft on an accelerated basis. Considering the long land border with Russia and India, and the lack of any Japanese navy (only a maritime self defense force), China’s new navy can only be for the purpose of confronting the U.S. Navy on the Pacific Rim. In any Sino-U.S. confrontation over Taiwan, the U.S. carriers would be our main source of military power. Our surface navy could not survive in the Taiwan Straits against Chinese land-based air without the cover of carrier-based strike fighters to establish local zones of air and maritime superiority in which to engage Chinese amphibious forces. Basing U.S. Air Force aircraft on Taiwan airfields would not appear to be an option, because they would be within range of the new Chinese missiles launched from mainland sites.
Such a conflict, or even a confrontation, with the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan may not occur. But to dissuade the mainland Chinese from threatening Taiwan, the United States must maintain a credible deterrence, a realistic capability to interpose in the event of a threatened PRC invasion. This capability only resides in the carriers of the U.S. Navy. It is unreasonable to think of even a threat to resort to nuclear weapons. The potential of a miscalculation on the part of the Chinese or ourselves could lead to an attempt at preemption resulting in a nuclear exchange. The defense of Taiwan is clearly not worth the risk of a nuclear war with the Chinese, with the attendant destruction of American cities and industry. Taiwan can be best defended through deterring a PRC invasion or conflict by maintaining the threat of intervention from a force of large-deck aircraft carriers in sufficient numbers to achieve maritime air superiority in the Taiwan Straits with squadrons of embarked fighter-attack aircraft representative of the most advanced aerospace and weapons technology.
Envoi
This has been a book about aircraft carriers. The subject cannot be considered completed without reemphasizing that, without the people to operate and maintain them, aircraft carriers and the planes they fly are immobile, inanimate objects. The skill, dedication, and courage of these young American men and women, which have enabled naval aviation to sustain the preeminent role of the aircraft carrier as the centerpiece of U.S. sea power, are perhaps singularly well exemplified by a young George Herbert Walker Bush, who at the age of seventeen, and not yet out of high school, walked into a Navy recruiting office the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor to sign up as a Navy pilot. He had to wait until he became eighteen, and then, with his father’s permission, he joined up and began a career of public service that carried him to the White House as our forty-first president.
His selfless courage, which marked him as a hero among heroes, was commemorated in remarks I made at the keel-laying ceremony for the George H. W. Bush (CVN-77), on 6 September 2003 in Newport News, Virginia:
George Herbert Walker Bush, the forty-first president of the United States, is a living hero to many people for many different reasons. To one very special group, the community of naval aviators, he is a hero among heroes. To the carrier pilots of the U.S. Navy, George Bush is one of them. They are proud and possessive of their special relationship with this great American.
These naval aviators have a keen appreciation for the patriotism of George Bush. He was just out of high school, setting aside his plans to attend the college (where he was already accepted) in order to take his place in the front lines of the conflict as a carrier pilot. When he got his wings and commission, just days before his nineteenth birthday, he was the youngest naval aviator on record.
Navy carrier pilots remember with a vicarious satisfaction that Lieutenant Bush accumulated more than twelve hundred flight hours and flew fifty-eight combat missions. He also made 126 carrier landings during his service in the Navy, most of them in a large, fast torpedo plane on the small, pitching deck of a converted cruiser. Naval aviators give his pilot skills high marks. They remember that after his TBM suffered complete engine failure on a carrier takeoff, he ditched the depth charge — laden Avenger in a smooth crash landing that enabled his two crewmen to escape the sinking plane without injury.
But especially, naval aviators remember with an admiration born of their own experience his personal courage at Chi-Chi Jima Island in Japan. We should let the simple but compelling phrases of Lieutenant Bush’s citation for the Distinguished Flying Cross tell the story: “For heroism and extraordinary achievement as pilot of a torpedo plane leading a two-plane section in a strike against a radio station, LTJG Bush pressed home his attacks in the face of intense anti-aircraft fire. Although his plane was hit and set afire at the beginning of his dive, he continued his plunge toward the target and scored damaging bomb hits before bailing out of his craft.”
For the combat Navy pilot, the sentence that earns the highest level of admiration is the last one: “Although his plane was hit and set afire at the beginning of his dive, he continued his plunge toward the target and scored damaging bomb hits before bailing out of his craft.” No one would ever disagree with the decision of a pilot in combat to bail out of a powerless, blazing aircraft at high altitude, where the getting out was good. But Lt. George Bush stayed with his fatally crippled plane to complete his attack. In doing this, he drastically reduced his chances of surviving. Bailing out at minimum altitude, he struck the plane’s horizontal stabilizer and his parachute canopy was torn. George Bush was a hero in the definitive sense of the word, but his Distinguished Flying Cross came close to being a posthumous award.
After a dramatic pickup by the rescue submarine USS Finback, he remained on board for a month while the sub completed its war patrol. When the Finback finally returned to Hawaii, where he could disembark, George Bush asked to be returned to his old squadron, VT-51, still aboard the San Jacinto in the western Pacific. For the second time in his brief naval career, Lieutenant Bush had risen above and beyond the normal call of duty. In his status as a survivor separated from his squadron, he could have returned to the United States where his combat experience would be put to use training fleet replacement pilots. This was, in fact, standard practice. Naval aviators will always remember with undisguised approbation George Bush’s decision to rejoin his comrades in arms in VT-51 and continue flying TBMs in combat at the forefront of the intensifying battle for the Japanese home islands.
For a nineteen-year-old Naval Reserve lieutenant (j.g.), this was the epitome of commitment. He remained with his squadron mates until VT-51 was disbanded in 1945, having suffered more than 50 percent casualties.