This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ The place of air power doctrine in post-war British defence planning, and its influence on the genesis and development of the theory of nuclear deterrence, 1945-1952. Venables, Mark The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). 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Oct. 2021 ThE PLACE OF AIR POWER DOCRINE IN POST-WAR BRITISH DEFENCE PLANNING, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON ThE GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE, 1945-1952 Mark Venables PhD Thesis 1985 Department of War Studies King's College University of London -2- THE PLACE OF AIR POWER DOCTRINE IN POST-WAR BRITISH DEFENCE PLANNING, AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE THEORY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE, 1945-1952 Mark Venables Department of War Studies, King's College, University of London, 1985. ABSTRACT This thesis is about the origins of nuclear deterrence. It argues that British air power doctrine as it developed between 1945 and 1952 was crucial to the formulation of western strategic thought about nuclear weapons, playing a role of far greater signficance than is recognized in the established literature. The numerous available studies of the evolution of nuclear strategy and its political context take as their premise that deterrence depends on the capability to destroy the opponents' cities. The essential mechanism of deterrence thus involves reliance on the military offensive. It is widely accepted that this requirement to destroy cities arises from the innate, non-historical logic of nuclear weapons. But one of the main conclusions which emerges from the analysis in this thesis is that the primacy of the offensive was already a historical reality before nuclear weapons were first used, at Hiroshima. Furthermore, British military thinking had increasingly emphasized the devastation of cities long before it was realistically possible to claim that there was no defence against the missile. However clearly individuals such as Bernard Brodie and P.M.S. Blackett may have seen the implications of the missile age in the 1940s, the development of such ideas in fact was bound up with the largely pragmatic reality of the RAF's struggle to come to terms with post-war circumstances. The argument in the thesis has three parts. (1) The essential tenets of British air power doctrine, as it developed 1939-1952, are examined, illustrating their interaction with British strategy as a whole and with the composition of the British armed forces. (2) The history of the air war in Europe is analysed to show how certain principles were applied in ccsthat, and emerged as the key ideas of deterrent air power. (3) Examination of the post-war scientific effort, British demobilization, the Air Staff's management of its priorities, and the British international situation after 1945, shows the historical context within which the basis of nuclear deterrence theory evolved. -3- NTENTS ABSTRACT 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 5 Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION 6 1. The subject 6 2. A revolution in warfare? 9 3. The stages of the analysis 15 4. The problem of method 29 Chapter 2: THE WARTIME CAMPAIGN 40 1 • Pre-war influences - military and political 41 2. Attempted economic precision, September 1939 - 51 March 1942 3. strategy redefined 61 4. Unrestricted bombing 63 5. The conclusion of the air war in Europe 72 Chapter 3: SOME LESSONS OF THE CAMPAIGN 75 Chapter 4: THE POST-WAR CONTRACTION OF THE RAF 97 1 • Management of the priorities 99 2. Personnel 106 3. Finance 112 4. Front line strength 115 5. Conclusion 122 Chapter 5: SCIENCE IN POST-WAR AIR POLICY, AND THE SUPPLY OF MILITARY AIRCRAFT 128 1. The Ministry of Supply 133 2. The research establishments 144 3. The post-war realignment of the scientific effort 151 4. The direction of the scientific effort 156 5. Research and development priorities and the 165 supply of military aircraft Chapter 6: BRITISH STRATEGY, 1945-1952 187 1. The strategic role of the atomic bomb 196 2. Air strategy 202 3. The atomic bomber fleet and global influence 206 through deterrence -4- Chapter 7: NUCLEAR DETERRENCE 212 1. The primacy of the offensive 219 2. Visions of a future major war 222 3. Vulnerability and attrition 225 4. Vulnerability and the force-in-being 226 5. Defence through deterrence 227 6. Conclusion 229 APPENDIX I: The organization of the RAF 238 APPENDIX II: Names of the officers who held important 253 Air Staff posts APPENDIX III: Discussion of data on defence manpower, 257 defence budgets and defence expenditure, for the period 1945-1952 APPENDIX IV: Table of defence personnel levels 260 APPENDIX V: Royal Air Force: table of annual personnel 262 targets and actual strengths APPENDIX VI: Table of defence budgets 263 APPENDIX VII: Royal Air Force: table of financial estimates 266 APENDIX VIII: Royal Air Force: table of air estimates; 267 Vote 7 APPENDIX IX: Memorandum by the Minister of Supply; 269 'Acceleration of the Guided Weapons Programme'. Cabinet Defence Committee, 18th November 1950 NOTE ON SOURCES 276 BIBLIOGRAPHY 278 -5- ACKNOWLGEMENTS My outstanding debt is to my wife, Susan. Without her unfailing encouragement and her generosity in supporting me financially while I was studying, this thesis would not have been written. She spent many painstaking weekends typing and correcting the text. I wish to thank my supervisor, Dr Barrie Paskins, for his tolerant understanding of the intellectual development of this work, and for the help he gave me in formulating coherent arguments. I am grateful to Mike Dockrill for reading the draft and encouraging me with his comments on it. Lady Kathleen Liddell Hart was very kind to me while I researched her late husband's papers at States House, Medmenham. I value her friendship and encouragement of those months. I acknowledge the permission of the Trustees of the Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives, King's College, London, to use and quote from the papers of Sir Basil Liddell Hart. I am grateful to Mr Humphrey Wynn of the Air Historical Branch for the trouble he took in commenting on parts of the thesis, and to both him and to Mr Reg Wafer, the Air Ministry Librarian, for the accommodating way in which they met my requests for material in their keeping. Chapter 1 INTRODUCTION 1. The subject. This thesis is about the progress of a strategic idea and the development of a military theory. The idea concerns the employment of air power and the theory is that of nuclear deterrence. After nearly a century of manned flight, and in a climate where military air power is universally regarded as the dominant factor in war, it is easy to overlook what a hostile environment existed for British air power advocates during the early years of the Air Force, and how desperate was their struggle to oblige others to take air power seriously. The terms 'air minded' and 'air enthusiast' come from an age when the future of air forces was in flux, and most commanders regarded air power as an adjunct to sea or land power. What made an officer air minded was his belief that air power had an independent role to play in future wars, and that air power (as a third factor) could intervene decisively in a military situation rather than simply enhancing the traditional operations of fleets and armies. These were subversive attitudes, and they were fiercely resisted. The outcome of the dispute was shaped by the types of argument on which the Royal Air Force (RAF) based its case. The early history of the RAF was dominated by two themes: the desire for an independent air force; and the primacy of the bomber and the strategic bombing offensive. Thus, in the period roughly 1920 - summer 1942, the RAF fought and won a defensive battle, first for survival as a force, and then for the survival of its cardinal doctrines. These two struggles were inextricably linked. In 1921 the War Office launched a campaign for the abolition of the RAF and the Air Ministry, proposing that air requirements be met independently by the two older services. The navy supported the War Office in this attack, but the Admiralty's real intention was to secure the return of the Fleet Air Arm to Admiralty control. After a protracted struggle, this was achieved in the later 1930s. This defeat for the RAF influenced the post-1945 relations between the RAF and Admiralty, at the time it was the theoretical concept of the 'unity of the air' that was forfeited.