IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB715470633

Deploying Technological Innovation in “Real Time”: Union and Confederate Ironclads (December 2019)

Goodman, Seymour E. (Author)

Vulcan
Volume: 7
Issue: 1
Pages: 81-110
Publication date: December 2019
Language: English

ISSN: 2213-459X; 2213-4603

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/22134603-00701007

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Torpedoes Technological determinism Ironclads Military technology 19th century Fox, Gustavus Vasa Mallory, Stephen Russell Welles, Gideon

The Industrial Revolution provided the environment and opportunities for the large scale development and deployment of military technological innovation in “real time,” that is, in time to influence the conduct and outcomes of a major conflict while that conflict was in progress. The case of the Union and Confederate strategies and their implementations during the American Civil War is particularly exemplary because both sides looked to ironclad warships in opposing ways. For the first year of the war each side pursued real-time ironclad warship deployment efforts to influence three different strategic races on a continental scale. Confederate success could have had enormous impacts on the course and outcomes of the war, but by August 1862 the Union had won all three races. Each was won in a different way, each portended how the conduct of the war on water continued, and each provided lessons for both navies to learn. Both sides went forward with revised strategies and renewed vigor to try to build and deploy more than one hundred ironclad warships between them. Over the next three years, the extensive Confederate ironclad program failed in multiple and costly ways to deliver much to the Confederate war effort. The even more extensive Union ironclad program did better primarily by securing what had been won the first year and neutralizing the continuing Confederate ironclad threat, although it failed in other important ways.

...More

Includes Series Articles

Article DeVries, Kelly R. (December 2019) Catapults Still Aren’t Atomic Bombs: Effectiveness and Determinism in Premodern Military Technology. Vulcan (pp. 34-44). unapi

Article Roland, Alex (December 2019) Is Military Technology Deterministic?. Vulcan (pp. 19-33). unapi

Article Walton, Steven A. (December 2019) Technological Determinism(s) and the Study of War. Vulcan (pp. 4-18). unapi

Article Zimmerman, David (December 2019) Neither Catapults nor Atomic Bombs: Technological Determinism and Military History from a Post-Industrial Revolution Perspective. Vulcan (pp. 45-61). unapi

Included in

Article Brown, Gates M. (December 2019) Technology’s Unrealistic Promise: The US Army in the 1950s and Technological Determinism. Vulcan (pp. 62-80). unapi

Citation URI

data.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB715470633

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Bergman, Yoel; (May 2015)
Union and Confederate Views on Guncotton (/p/isis/citation/CBB787655726/)

Book Saxon Bisbee; (2018)
Engines of Rebellion: Confederate Ironclads and Steam Engineering in the American Civil War (/p/isis/citation/CBB559245592/)

Article Heitz, Jesse A.; (January 2013)
British Reaction to American Civil War Ironclads (/p/isis/citation/CBB467642480/)

Book Wildenberg, Thomas; Polmar, Norman; (2010)
Ship Killer: A History of the American Torpedo (/p/isis/citation/CBB001212158/)

Article Tommy Jamison; (October 2022)
Manning the Torpedo Boats: How Gendered Insecurities Shaped Naval War in the United States and Britain, 1860–1900 (/p/isis/citation/CBB754269369/)

Article David Boursnell; (2021)
Developing Early Iron Armour: The Development of Rolling as the Preferred Method of Manufacture Between 1854 and 1863 (/p/isis/citation/CBB859927279/)

Article Braun, Hans-Joachim; (Winter 2020)
Hedy Lamarr, Radio-Controlled Torpedo (/p/isis/citation/CBB460686157/)

Article Walton, Steven A.; (December 2019)
Technological Determinism(s) and the Study of War (/p/isis/citation/CBB447906454/)

Article Brown, Gates M.; (December 2019)
Technology’s Unrealistic Promise: The US Army in the 1950s and Technological Determinism (/p/isis/citation/CBB875270366/)

Article Zimmerman, David; (December 2019)
Neither Catapults nor Atomic Bombs: Technological Determinism and Military History from a Post-Industrial Revolution Perspective (/p/isis/citation/CBB176871982/)

Article DeVries, Kelly R.; (December 2019)
Catapults Still Aren’t Atomic Bombs: Effectiveness and Determinism in Premodern Military Technology (/p/isis/citation/CBB642902232/)

Article Roland, Alex; (December 2019)
Is Military Technology Deterministic? (/p/isis/citation/CBB761922629/)

Article Collins, Steven G.; (January 2013)
Yankee Ingenuity in the South: James Burton and Confederate Ordnance Production (/p/isis/citation/CBB477639200/)

Article Timothy, Orr; (May 2014)
“The Greatest Terror to the Enemy”: The Combat Debut of Berdan’s U.S. Sharpshooters during the 1862 Peninsula Campaign (/p/isis/citation/CBB973312512/)

Article Michael Raber; (2017)
“It would be impossible to estimate the value of these works...” Mass Production at Springfield Armory during the American Civil War (/p/isis/citation/CBB036948205/)

Book Larry J. Daniel; (2022)
Engineering in the Confederate Heartland (/p/isis/citation/CBB691634160/)

Book Earl J. Hess; (2022)
Civil War Field Artillery: Promise and Performance on the Battlefield (/p/isis/citation/CBB605276586/)

Book Hacker, Barton C.; (2016)
Astride Two Worlds: Technology and the American Civil War (/p/isis/citation/CBB227040534/)

Book Stone, H. David, Jr.; (2008)
Vital Rails: The Charleston & Savannah Railroad and the Civil War in Coastal South Carolina (/p/isis/citation/CBB678318641/)

Article Steven A. Walton; (2009)
The West Point Foundry in Larger Perspective (/p/isis/citation/CBB554988023/)