Good riposte! It made me laugh out loud.
Maybe he would have. I suspect not, at least not all of it, maybe even not most of it. He was a very plain just the basics kind of guy I've read. From what I've read an awful lot of what we use is there only because it is shiny and new, not so much because it is useful.
I think you very much underestimate the complexity of running those old armies. The Union Army was very large so you had all the complexities that go with feeding, clothing, paying, providing medical care hundreds of thousands of men in any era. Plus you had horses back then, tens of thousands of them. If you ever stopp and think what it takes to fully train and fight a cavalry unit, it is quite complicated. So I think it quite unwise to think that because the didn't have to sling trons, those guys had it simple.
Those armies did have motorized transport, steamers, both river and ocean going, and railroads.
First off, you're wrong about that last serious surface actions being Jutland. They didn't call it Iron Bottom Sound for nothing, and many of those ships were sunk in a long series of night surface actions.
But that isn't really important. The point was we haven't seen serious naval fighting since WWII.
As far as ship to ship action goes, I doubt we've seen that last of that by a long shot. I understand sinking subs will mainly be the job of other sube, a ship to ship action. And if a surface combatant shoots an Asroc type weapon at a sub or a sub shoots anything at a surface ship that is a ship to ship action. (Fuchs says airplanes aren't that good at ASW anymore. If he is right then ASW will be mostly ship to ship. I think he said that.)
Big time naval fighting doesn't come around very often as you say. It has been 70 years since WWII and it was about 100 years between the end of the Napoleonic Wars and WWI or 90 if you count the Russo-Japanese War. But it does come around. And often it doesn't matter if you want to keep the ships out harm's way. Harm's way tends to seek them out.
I always bring up what actual sea fighting entails for the sailors because people often just see the machines. There it is. Oops it sunk. People are on those things and they have experiences. That matters.
Now it is time for my smart aleck remark of the afternoon. The historical casualty rate in land forces rear HQs hasn't been so high as to make people in the infantry count their lucky stars that they didn't have the misfortune to be posted back at D-Main.
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