Louis A. Johnson Totally Explained

Everything about Louis A Johnson totally explained

Louis Arthur Johnson (January 10, 1891 - April 24, 1966) was the second United States Secretary of Defense, serving in the cabinet of President Harry S. Truman from March 28, 1949 to September 19, 1950.
Born in Roanoke, Virginia, he earned a law degree from the University of Virginia. After graduation he practiced law in Clarksburg, West Virginia; his firm, Steptoe and Johnson, eventually opened offices in Charleston, West Virginia, and Washington, DC. Elected to the West Virginia House of Delegates in 1916, he served as majority floor leader and chairman of the Judiciary Committee. During World War I, Johnson saw action as an Army officer in France. After the war he resumed his law practice and was active in veterans' affairs, helping to found the American Legion and serving as its national commander in 1932-33.

Assistant Secretary of War, 1937-40

As Assistant Secretary of War from 1937 to 1940, Johnson advocated Universal Military education and training, rearmament, and expansion of military aviation. He feuded with isolationist Secretary of War Harry Hines Woodring. In mid-1940, after the fall of France revealed the precarious state of the nation's defenses, Franklin D. Roosevelt fired both of them.
He had no major responsibilities for the war effort, though he did run the American operations of part of the German chemical giant I. G. Farben, under the alien property custodian laws. In 1942 he briefly served as the president's personal representative in India.

Secretary of Defense

In the 1948 campaign Johnson was chief fund-raiser for President Truman's election campaign. Truman chose him to succeed James V. Forrestal early in 1949.

Budget Cutbacks

Johnson entered office sharing the president's commitment to achieve further military unification and to reduce budget expenditures on defense forces in favor of other government programs. According to historian Walter LaFeber, Truman was known to approach defense budgetary requests by subtracting from total receipts the amount needed for domestic needs and recurrent operating costs, with any surplus going to the defense budget for that year. At a press conference the day after he took office, Johnson promised a drastic cut in the number of National Military Establishment boards, committees, and commissions, and added, "To the limit the present law allows, I promise you there will be unification as rapidly as the efficiency of the service permits it." Later, in one of his frequent speeches on unification, Johnson stated that "this nation can no longer tolerate the autonomous conduct of any single service...A waste of the resources of America in spendthrift defense is an invitation to disaster for America."
Johnson promptly began proposing mothballing or scrapping much of the Navy's conventional surface forces. Shortly after his appointment, Johnson had a conversation with Admiral Richard L. Connally, giving a revealing look at his attitudes towards the Navy and Marine Corps and any need for non-nuclear forces:
Admiral, the Navy is on its way out. There’s no reason for having a Navy and a Marine Corps. General Bradley tells me amphibious operations are a thing of the past. We’ll never have any more amphibious operations. That does away with the Marine Corps. And the Air Force can do anything the Navy can do, so that does away with the Navy. Both Truman and Johnson extended their opposition to the Navy in their treatment of the U.S. Marine Corps. Truman had a well-known dislike of the Marines dating back to his service in World War I, and famously said "The Marine Corps is the Navy's police force and as long as I'm President that's what it'll remain. They have a propaganda machine that's almost equal to Stalin's." Johnson exploited this ill feeling to reduce or eliminate many Marine Corps' budget requests.

Revolt of the Admirals

Johnson's defense cuts, which began on April 23 1949, were accelerated after he announced the cancellation of the 65,000-ton flushdeck aircraft carrier USS United States. The United States Navy had been planning this ship for several years and construction had already begun. Johnson, supported by a majority of the JCS and by President Truman, stressed the need to cut costs. At least by implication, Johnson had scuttled the Navy's hope to participate in strategic nuclear air operations through use of the carrier. Neither the Department of the Navy nor Congress had been consulted in the termination of United States. Abruptly resigning, Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan expressed concern about the future of the United States Marine Corps and marine and naval aviation and Johnson's determination to eliminate those services through progressive program cuts.
   The cancellation of the supercarrier precipitated a bitter controversy between the Navy and the United States Air Force, the so-called "Revolt of the Admirals." In congressional hearings and other public arenas, the Navy reacted angrily to Johnson's action by openly questioning the ability of the Air Force's latest strategic bomber, the Convair B-36, to penetrate Soviet airspace. The Air Force countered with data supporting the B-36, and minimized the importance of a naval role for surface ships in future major conflicts.
   Subsequently declassified material proved the USAF correct in its immediate assessment of the capabilities of the B-36 at the time of the Revolt of the Admirals. At the time, it was indeed virtually invulnerable to interception due to the great height at which it flew. However, the B-36 was a pre-World War II design: by the time it was fully deployed to Air Force active-duty squadrons, the B-36 was hopelessly vulnerable to modern Soviet MiG-15 jet interceptors, aircraft that would greatly surprise U.S. officials when they later appeared over North Korea. The role of heavy bombers evolved into an extension of their role during World War II, support of tactical forces in-theatre. In the long run, Navy arguments for the supercarrier prevailed, though not for the reasons originally cited. A relative failure as a strategic nuclear deterrent, the large aircraft carrier would prove invaluable as an element of conventional rapid deployment forces. Ironically, a successor to the canceled supercarrier, the radical new USS Forrestal, and later designs, continue in service with the Navy into the 21st century.
   However, a more ominous (if less publicized) development than the supercarrier debate was Johnson's steady reduction of force in Navy ships, landing craft, and equipment needed for conventional force readiness. Ship after ship was mothballed from the fleet for lack of operating funds. The United States Navy and Marine Corps, once the world's preeminent amphibious force, lost most of its amphibious capabilities and landing craft which were scrapped or sold as surplus (the remaining craft were reserved solely for Army use in amphibious operations exercises, which didn't utilize them in that role) For FY 1951, Johnson supported Truman's recommendation of $13.3 billion, but a month after the fighting in Korea started, the secretary hastily proposed a supplemental appropriation request for $10.5 billion, (an increase of 79%), bringing the total requested to $23.8 billion. Johnson told a House subcommittee when recommending the supplemental that "in the light of the actual fighting that's now in progress, we've reached the point where the military considerations clearly outweigh the fiscal considerations."
   It was all too late. U.S. Army infantry forces hastily deployed to Korea proved short of everything needed to repel the well-equipped North Korean forces: ammunition, heavy tanks, even 3.5-inch shoulder-fired anti-tank rocket launchers needed to penetrate the armor of Soviet-supplied tanks. Unlike the United States, the Soviet Union had kept its large World War II surplus inventories in readiness, and lavishly supplied the North Korean Army with tanks, combat aircraft, and artillery. The U.S. Navy's aircraft carriers were the only effective airfields available to U.N. forces, as they couldn't be overrun by the land-based North Koreans. U.S. reverses in Korea and the continued priority accorded to European security necessitated rapid, substantive changes in defense policy including a long-term expansion of the armed forces and more emphasis on the military buildup of U.S. allies. Truman decided that these tasks required new leadership in the Department of Defense. When Johnson resigned at Truman's request on September 19, 1950, the president quickly replaced him with General George C. Marshall.

Epilogue

Johnson returned to his law practice, which he pursued until his death in Washington at the age of 75. In his last speech as secretary of defense the day before he left office, Johnson observed: "When the hurly burly's done and the battle is won I trust the historian will find my record of performance creditable, my services honest and faithful commensurate with the trust that was placed in me and in the best interests of peace and our national defense."

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