On 04Aug2020 0318, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:

> During the '20's & '30's the USN pretty much maintained the same  > command structure as WWII despite the much reduced force levels. >
IMO, the big change came with the drastic draw-downs that have >
happened several times since the end of WWII. Esp in the post-VietNam >
era, when all the left-over ships from WWII were finally retired &, >
pretty much, not replaced.
The drop in force levels after WWI wasn't super-huge for the USN, and
was mostly in ratings and more junior officers that were only in 'for
the duration' anyway. After WWII the same thing happened, but on a much
larger scale - it's actually the main reason post-WWII ships had much
lighter AA armaments than late WWII ships - there simply wasn't the
manpower to crew all those AA gun mounts, and as the ships weren't
getting attacked constantly in peacetime, they could be removed.

Both periods were also ones where the USN was short of cash (especially
between the wars), between the wars because of tight budgets in general
and isolationism, post-WWII because of the assumption that the next war
would be all atmonic. That didn't affect the USN as badly as it did the
Army, but it did reduce the money available for conventional warfare units.

This lack on money tends to reduce sea hours, which causes choke-points
in the careers of both ratings and officers, as they're generally
expected to have a certain amount of sea time and experience at certain
ranks. This might have combated the peacetime tendency of militaries to
become top-heavy, but I suspect it just made some ranks more
over-populated than others.