Introduction 1 the Royal Navy and the Home Fleet: Men, Material
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Notes Introduction 1. P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (London: Ashfield Press, 1995 revised paper back ed.), p. 306. 2. For a modern account informed by Italian language sources, see J. Greene and A. Massignani, The Naval War in the Mediterranean 1940–1943 (Rochester, Kent: Chatham Publishing, 1998), pp. 63–81. 3. L. Kennedy, The Death of the Tirpitz (Boston: Little, Brown, 1979), p. 56 uses the term ‘much worry’; ‘bogeyman’ is from P. Kemp, Convoy! Drama in Arctic Waters (London: Arms Armour Press, 1993), p. 191; Rear Admiral W. H. Langenberg, USNR, in ‘The German Battleship Tirpitz: A Strategic Warship?’, Naval War College Review, 34 (4), p. 82, uses the term ‘concern’. See also T. Gallagher, The X-Craft Raid (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), chapter 2. 4. Langenberg, ‘The German Battleship Tirpitz’, p. 82. 1 The Royal Navy and the Home Fleet: Men, Material, Strategy 1919–39 1. This process is described in detail by P. Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 205–37. However, the conventional view of naval policy ca 1900–14 has recently come under critical review; see, for example, J. T. Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy (London: Routledge, 1993), N. Lambert, Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution (Columbia, SC: South Carolina University Press, 1999). Certainly, it was a cost-saving measure. But whether Britain employed a Dreadnought fleet or ‘flotilla defence’, it became clear between 1906 and 1912 that most of the Fleet would be needed in Home Waters if war with Germany erupted. 2. Quotation from A. Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (London: John Murray, 1996), p. 21. 3. For an introductory look at the Washington Naval Conference, see Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 274–83, and Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield’s memoir It Might Happen Again (London: Heineman, 1947) chapter 1. To see how domestic politics, strategy, money, and President Harding’s need for acclaim and foreign policy success figured into the Washington Conference, see R. Dingman, Power in the Pacific: The Origins of Naval Arms Limitation, 1914–1922 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). 4. A. Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in Peace and War 1915–1940 (London: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 108–9. The responsibilities of the First Sea Lord are delineated in the Introduction to M. Murfett’s The First Sea Lords (London: Praeger, 1995). 5. Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran, p. 108. 163 164 Notes 6. Or, as A. J. P. Taylor has noted, Churchill was responsible for ‘trespassing into operations more than any other first lord had ever done’; see A. J. P. Taylor, English History 1914–1945 (London: Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 480. For Churchill’s activity (meddling?) as First Lord, see Murfett, The First Sea Lords, pp. 26–9, 48–9, and 55–87; for a general critique, see S. Roskill’s Churchill and the Admirals (London: Collins, 1977). 7. For three differing opinions about Pound, see S. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2 (London: Collins, 1976), pp. 463–7; Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran chapter 4; and more generally, R. Brodhurst’s chapter on Pound in Murfett, The First Sea Lords. A spirited defence of Churchill can be found in both R. Lewin, Churchill as Warlord (New York: Stein & Day, 1973) and in R. Lamb, Churchill as War Leader (New York: Carroll & Graf, 1993), especially pp. 339–48. Recent revelations in Lord Allenbrook’s War Diaries 1939–1945 (A. Danchev and D. Todman (eds), Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001) of Pound’s napping at COS meetings, his inarticulate- ness, and Churchill’s drunkenness supports my negative impression of both. 8. This rift with Japan can be seen in Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 290, and Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, pp. 168 and 346. 9. See C. M. Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), pp. 59–98. 10. For moneys allotted to the Royal Navy, see S. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 1 (London: Collins, 1968), appendix D. 11. Quotation in Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, p. 145. 12. Quotation in Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 276. 13. For an all-out assault on Appeasement, see C. Barnett, The Collapse of British Power (New York: Morrow, 1972). Britain’s strategic situation in the inter-war years is well covered in Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, pp. 278–98, and in his The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (New York: Vintage, 1988), pp. 275–320, and I have drawn heavily for my analysis from these sources. Britain’s Achilles’ Heel in the Mediterranean is brought to light in L. R. Pratt, East of Malta, West of Suez (London: Cambridge University Press, 1975). And, for a magisterial synopsis of what the Admiralty and Cabinet were thinking at that time, read N. H. Gibbs, Grand Strategy Volume 1 (London: HMSO, 1976), esp. pp. 323–438. 14. Figures in Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, p. 335. The dread fear was from poison gas. And, ironically, air advocates like Churchill had compounded the problem, echoing Baldwin that ‘the bomber will always get through’. For a manifestation of the popularly imagined horror which people in the 1930s expected might be the face of the next war, see the 1938 film Things to Come. 15. Part of that diplomacy was the Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935, limiting the re-emerging German Navy to 35 per cent of British tonnage in surface ships and 45 per cent in submarines. The best work on this is J. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany 1933–1939 (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1998). On Britain’s decision to reach such an agreement with the Germans in contravention of the Versailles Treaty, Eric Grove has written: ‘Having used arms control successfully to contain the power of one rival, the USA, why not use it against Germany too?’, E. Grove, ‘A War Fleet Built Notes 165 for Peace: British Naval Rearmament in the 1930s and the Dilemma of Deterrence versus Defence’, Naval War College Review (Spring 1991): 82–92. Quotation from p. 83. 16. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, pp. 218–19. 17. Ironically, Winston Churchill, the Cassandra of the 1930s, was largely respon- sible for the running down of the Navy in the 1920s. It was Churchill who wielded the ‘Geddes Axe’, cutting naval expenditures during his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1924–29. Churchill was also responsible for the disastrous decision to re-establish the value of the Pound at its pre- 1914 $4.86, instantly making British exports noncompetitive, thus damaging Britain’s balance of payments and reducing the funds available to purchase supplies for rearmament. 18. Maiolo, The Royal Navy and Nazi Germany, p. 136. 19. Quotation from Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery, p. 290. 20. Maiolo stresses the desire of Chatfield to lock in the existing British position of naval pre-eminence through an interlocking series of qualitative and quan- titative arms limitation treaties. See also Bell, The Royal Navy, Seapower and Strategy Between the Wars. Bell shows that the British fully understood ‘the need for securing bases, defending imperial trade, and enforcing a maritime blockade’. (p. 134) They were not hidebound battleship bumpkins forever trapped at 7 o’clock on the evening of 31 May, 1916. 21. Japan would have six battleships and four rebuilt battlecruisers, plus the battleship Yamato completing. Germany would have her two battlecruisers plus Bismarck, with Tirpitz on the way. Italy would have six modern or modernised battleships and two building. The Royal Navy could count on having two ‘King George V’ class battleships built and another three on the way, Hood, Nelson, Rodney, Renown, Queen Elizabeth, Valiant, and, generously, Warspite. See Table 1.2 and R. Chesneau, Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships 1922–1946 (New York: Mayflower Books, 1980). British estimates of their future battleship strength and proposals for additional warship modifications in early 1939 are in ADM 1/10139. 22. A. Gordon, ‘The Admiralty and Imperial Overstretch, 1902–1941’, Journal of Strategic Studies, 17 (1) (1994), 63–85. Quotation is from p. 71. See also G. C. Peden, British Rearmament and the Treasury 1932–1939 (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1979), esp. pp. 179–84. 23. A. Raven and J. Robert, British Battleships of World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1976), esp. pp. 107–43 and pp. 165–269; E. H. H. Archibald, The Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (New York: Military Press, 1987), chapters 20 and 21. 24. Quotation in Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 1, p. 167. 25. See Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars Volume 2, pp. 333–4. 26. For details of Nelson and Rodney, see Raven and Robert, British Battleships, pp. 107–27. 27. CAB 16/147, ‘Sub-Committee on the Vulnerability of Capital Ships to Air Attack, 1936’. 28. For a general discussion of the battlecruiser concept, see Archibald, Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy, chapter 21. The details of Renown and Repulse are given in Raven and Robert, British Battleships on pp. 45–52, 141–3, 206–17, and 250–63. For the particulars of Hood, see ibid. pp. 60–75, 189–97. 166 Notes 29. M.