The Depression constrained William V. Pratt's 1930-33 tenure as Chief of Naval Operations, though he resisted Franklin D. Roosevelt's proposal to combine the Navy and Coast Guard. A merger risked letting the much larger Navy swamp the Coast Guard's separate institutional priorities. Coast Guard search patterns were built to find missing ships, while the Navy often designed searches to locate fleets. Submarine hunting could resemble the former problem, with a small target hidden in a vast area, more closely than a fleet search. Keeping the services separate protected a body of search expertise that could inform maritime patrol and antisubmarine warfare.
Notable Point · 1:02:15-1:04:21
Pratt preserves Coast Guard search expertise from merger
A Depression-era proposal to combine the Navy and Coast Guard exposes why search-and-rescue patterns could contribute distinct maritime-patrol and antisubmarine methods.