15. The Navy expanded as the Army continued to shrink
During the 1930s the US Navy acquired its first aircraft carriers, contracted for new battleships, modernized older battleships, and focused its attention on the Pacific and Japanese aggression. The peacetime crews of most ships were by necessity smaller than would be required to take the vessels to war. There wasn’t enough money to pay crews at wartime strength. The Navy’s chunk of defense budgets allowed it to continue to grow from the mid-1930s. Seen as the nation’s first line of defense, the Navy and their infantry branch, the US Marines, were also favored by President Roosevelt. The Army continued to shrink, dwindling to just over 180,000 men on active duty, called the Regular Army. Morale was low. Pay was low. Routine was boring. There weren’t enough weapons to train adequately, and when weapons were to be had there was often no ammunition.
Recruits marched with wooden mock-ups of guns, practiced attacking machine gun nests consisting of mock-up guns. Automobiles, and even bicycles, bore signs which read “tank” during training exercises. There wasn’t enough money in the training budget to allow the expenditure of fuel in real tanks. By 1938 the US Army ranked, according to some sources, as the 19 largest in the world, behind the armies of Portugal and Belgium. The pace of promotions was that of a snail. Dwight Eisenhower, a major in 1920, still retained that rank in 1935. That year he accompanied MacArthur to the Philippines, where MacArthur accepted the rank of Field Marshall in the new Army of the Philippines (the promotion was his own idea). The following year Ike finally received a promotion to Lt. Colonel, US Army, after 21 years of active service.
