History & Campus

In 1861, while Luce was serving on the faculty at the U.S. Naval Academy, he discovered there was no existing text for seamanship—so he wrote one, and it became the U.S. Navy’s standard for more than 50 years.

Later, as Luce rose in rank and his breadth of command—in peace and at war—expanded, he noticed other crucial components missing from the Navy’s training and education. When he saw that there was not yet a procedure to exercise naval tactics nor a unit assigned to examine experimental tactical ideas, he created both. In 1883, after he recognized a need for preparatory programs for enlisted recruits, Luce established the Navy’s first recruit training station at Newport’s Coasters Harbor Island.

Perhaps most important, though, was Luce’s epiphany that there was no place in the Navy to study the central issue for a professional officer in the armed forces: war. Along with this, it was a time of “revolution in military affairs,” and the current technology and science were advancing rapidly. Luce knew that learning the sciences of metallurgy, chemistry, physics of weapons, and other advances were critical to success in modern warfare.

Luce proposed to the U.S. Department of the Navy the establishment of an institution dedicated to the advanced study of war. On October 6, 1884, Secretary of the Navy William E. Chandler signed General Order 325 establishing the U.S. Naval War College, bringing Luce’s vision to life.

The Naval War College was interdisciplinary from the beginning. Luce understood that the study of war requires original research and scholarship to understand how wars begin, how wars are fought, how wars end, and ideally, how wars can be prevented.

He also knew that learning about war involved an understanding of additional topics such as governmental management, finance, decision-making, logistics, campaign planning and tactics, international relations, and grand strategy. Luce found that analyzing these topics involved other disciplines with which most naval officers at the time were unfamiliar: the social sciences, politics, history, management, and international law.

Luce foresaw that game boards could become a key tool linking the broad analysis of political-military issues with the burgeoning developments in current and future naval technologies. To bring these concepts together, Luce empowered Lieutenant William McCarty Little to develop wargaming at the NWC.

Luce also sought to recruit for his early faculty military officers of demonstrated intellectual bent. Among those whom he brought to Newport was Army Second Lieutenant Tasker H. Bliss, who helped Luce to convene the first class of nine students at the Naval War College in 1885. Bliss’s participation established the precedent of having officers from other services on the faculty and among the students to broaden the perspective. Later, Bliss made use of his experience in Newport when he became the first Commandant of the Army War College in 1901, and in 1919, when he accompanied President Woodrow Wilson to the Versailles peace negotiations.

From these early times, Luce also established the precedent of having civilian academics on the faculty—a practice continued today. With Luce’s concept for the college in place, the NWC began to make the contributions that established its reputation. The student body gradually grew, and soon, the college had its first students from foreign navies: Sweden in 1894 and Denmark in 1895.

Perhaps most famous of all the college’s contributions, Captain Alfred Thayer Mahan’s lectures on the influence of sea power in the 1880s and early 1890s provided the basis for an early understanding of naval strategy. Mahan’s War College lectures, eventually published in book form as Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660–1783, influenced naval thinking around the globe for decades to come.

Another groundbreaking thinker was Captain Charles H. Stockton, who, in 1900 published the first code of international law for naval operations. Within a decade it became the focus for international discussions and a basis for the modern law of naval warfare. Officers at the Naval War College played a key part in creating the country’s first contingency plans for war, some of which were used in the Spanish-American War in 1898.

In the early years of the 20th century, the Naval War College was the principal engine driving the creation of operational naval doctrine and the innovative concept of an operational staff to support flag officers at sea. In addition, the college was the wellspring for the long-term movement leading to the creation in 1915 of a Chief of Naval Operations. With its shore-based naval staff, this office was tasked to advise government leaders in Washington on grand strategy and to give the Navy the professional uniformed leadership it had not previously had.

Following World War I, under the leadership of Admiral William S. Sims (who had commanded U.S. Naval Forces in Europe), the Naval War College staff, students, and faculty looked critically at recent naval operations and began to think about future operational uses for submarines, aircraft, and amphibious forces.

Continuing through the 1930s, the college made significant contributions to the development of War Plan Orange and the Rainbow plan that were used in World War II. As Fleet Admiral Nimitz later recalled from his own experience as a student, the Naval War College had examined so many different possible scenarios and possible courses of action for a war in the Pacific that he and his colleagues were surprised only by Japan’s employment of kamikaze aircraft.

In 1946, Admiral Raymond Spruance, the victor at the battle of Midway, returned to the Naval War College for his fourth tour of duty and established the college’s direction as it entered the Cold War era. During that period, much thought was devoted to the issues of nuclear weapons and multinational cooperation.

During the post-World War II and post-Korean War era, the college saw a greater need for cooperative operations with other navies and established multiple enduring initiatives: the Naval Command Course for senior international officers in 1956, the Naval Staff College for intermediate-level international officers in the 1970s, and the convening of regular biennial meetings of the world’s chiefs of navies in the International Sea Power Symposia from 1969 onward.

In the 1950s, the Naval War College curriculum adapted to meet the circumstances Cold War period. Chairs were established to emphasize the attention given to international relations, maritime strategy, military and diplomatic history, international law, and economics. The influence of rapidly changing technology was further recognized in the establishment of military chairs, occupied by senior officers especially qualified in such areas as submarine warfare, electronic warfare, air warfare, amphibious warfare, and surface warfare. The student body grew, with substantial student representation from the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Air Force, Coast Guard, and many mid-career professionals from civilian agencies, representation also reflected in the faculty.

In 1972, under the leadership of Vice Admiral Stansfield Turner, significant changes were instituted, including sharpening the curriculum’s focus on three academic areas. Over time, the names of the courses have changed slightly, but Turner’s general concept has remained constant for more than 35 years—concentrating on strategy and policy, national security and decision-making, and joint military operations.

During this time, the NWC also established a full-time, highly qualified teaching civilian and military faculty, adopted case study methodology and a more rigorous curriculum, and emphasized individual student effort. Concurrently, student selection criteria became more stringent.

In 1981, nearly a century after Stephen B. Luce founded the Naval War College as “a place of original research on all questions relating to war and the statesmanship connected with war, or the prevention of war,” the Center for Naval Warfare Studies was established for broadly based, advanced research on the naval contributions to national strategy. The center’s work informs and stimulates the faculty and students in the classroom as well as helping to link the college to the fleet and policy makers in Washington.

The college contributed substantially to the thinking behind the “Maritime Strategy” of the 1980s and the conduct of the Gulf War in 1990–91. In 1990, the Naval War College became the first of the nation’s staff and war colleges to reach academic standards that allowed for formal academic accreditation, leading to the authority to award its students a Master of Arts degree in national security and strategic studies.

In the first years of the 21st century, the Naval War College’s responsibilities expanded from its traditional focus on intermediate and senior-level officer professional military education to responsibility for all professional military education for all enlisted personnel and all officers within the U.S. Navy.

In October 2006, the College began to serve as executive agent for the Chief of Naval Operations’ Navy Professional Reading Program, which established lending libraries of significant books at over 1,200 ships, squadrons, and commands around the world.

In 2007, the NWC established the College of Operational and Strategic Leadership (COSL) in response to the broadened span of professional military education responsibilities; COSL developed and delivers advanced courses for selected groups of flag and general officers.

The Naval War College celebrates the institution’s 125-plus year history and heritage and continues to look ahead. The world is changing more rapidly than ever before, and the NWC is aware that today’s concepts, strategies, and tactics may become obsolete—whether by technological advances or due to ever-changing political, economic, social, and military conditions. Guided by our mission, the college will prepare future leaders to adapt in times of change and uncertainty.