During his stirring campaign address to the Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute, Republican Tea Party (GOTP) presidential footnote Willard Mitt Romney said, “The size of our Navy is at levels not seen since 1916. I will restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions by building 15 ships per year, including three submarines.”
In 1916 the United States had 245 ships
36 battleships
30 cruisers
3 monitors
61 destroyers
18 torpedo boats
44 submarines
17 steel gunboats
11 gunboats
25 auxiliaries/support vessels
In 2012 the United States has 287 ships, 3,700+ aircraft and 321,053 active duty personnel
13 aircraft carriers
22 cruisers
9 amphibious assault ships
62 destroyers
24 frigates
71 submarines
7 amphibious transport docks
12 dock landing ships
2 littoral combat ships
13 coastal patrol ships
14 mine countermeasure ships
38 auxiliaries/support vessels
Concerning Willard’s ambitious ship building goals, Navy spokesman Lt. Cdr. Chris Servello says building 15 ships per year would be next to impossible given the current industrial base of shipyards in the United States. In other words, Romney doesn’t know what he’s talking about – I know, hard to believe.
There’s more however, to our Navy today than the number of ships it has, the quality and lethality of our modern Navy is such that almost any one of its ships could more than handle anything afloat in 1916. But concerning his “numbers”, either Willard’s staff (hence Romney) knew the numbers were off and used them anyway (LIED), or no one bothered to fact check the speech first (INCOMPETENT); don’t need either someone who’s a liar or incompetent in the White House. I tend to believe Willard knew it was a lie when he said it, but went ahead and lied to the Cadets in an effort to paint the President as weak on defense. As has been proven again and again, Romney’s a liar.
The Liberty Tree 
Stephen
October 11, 2012 at 23:35
You are correct – he used the wrong year here, but has used the correct year elsewhere – He should have said 1917…. one year later – after the gunboat expansion in anticipation of instability in Europe. Yes – in 1916, the USN had 245 total ships in the arsenal. By April of 1917 (The year the US entered WWI), that number jumped to 342, and 744 the next year. A lull then in post WWI naval deployment – and then came WWII – upwards of 6000 vessels deployed. The USN never dipped below a ready deployment of less than 320 from 1935 to the year 2000 – with an approximate average of 700 vessels deployed during that same period. It was actually the GWB admin that reduced the size of the naval fleet below 300 by 2003.