Volume 76, Number 1 (2023) Winter 2023

The Arrival of the American Fleet off Scapa Flow, December 1917, a 1920 oil painting by Bernard F. Gribble, depicts the arrival of U.S. Battleship Division 9 in Scotland. Although the United States entered World War I in April 1917, hesitation among the Navy’s senior leaders led to an eight-month delay in the dispatch of American battleships to join the conflict. In December 1914, Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, the premier theorist of big-ship naval warfare, had died. In “Mahan’s Theory and the Realities of the First World War: His Final Considerations on Sea Power,” Kevin D. McCranie analyzes what can be gleaned about Mahan’s thinking during the first months of the war and the last of his life. In “The Final Countdown? Charting a New Course for Capital Ships in Pacific War Plans,” Cameron M. Rountree acknowledges that naval leaders’ concerns regarding the safety and viability of modern navies’ capital ships continue today.