On Seas Contested
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On Seas Contested UNITED KINGDOM ROYAL NAVY I. Backstory A. History The British Royal Navy has a history dating back to the 9th century and King Alfred the Great’s defense against Danish invaders. British sea power first decisively manifested itself in successful naval wars against the Spanish in the 16th century and the Dutch in the 17th centuries and during the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Navy reached the peak of supremacy under its most revered admiral, Horatio Nelson. Nelson’s triumph at Trafalgar over the combined French and Spanish fleets remains a synonym for decisive victory even today. The Royal Navy entered the modern era during the Crimean War when the first steam-powered ships of the line entered service. Rifling of cannon improved accuracy, and the explosive shell which followed proved devastating against wooden hulls, prompting the introduction of armor plating. In 1870, the Royal Navy was the first to purchase the self-propelled torpedo. The turret ship Devastation entered service in 1873, giving the Royal Navy its first major warship without sails. The enormous Inflexible of 1881, with four 16-inch muzzle-loaded guns and a speed of 15 knots, was the largest warship of its day. By 1900 the Royal Navy had its first submarines. In 1906 the battleship Dreadnought revolutionized naval warfare and became the model for subsequent capital ship designs with her turbine propulsion and all-big-gun weaponry. This radical escalation from previous standards had consequences. With all the navies inspired to build their own dreadnoughts, the Royal Navy instantly forfeited its numerical advantage in top-quality ships. British policy had held that the Royal Navy should match the size of any two combined foreign fleets, the so-called “Two-Power Standard,” but now the British found themselves in a naval construction race with a newly expanding German fleet. This rivalry set the stage for the First World War, an event the Royal Navy found distinctly unsatisfying. The navy’s vast battleship fleet failed to fulfill the public’s expectation of a decisive victory to match Trafalgar while the threat of starvation presented by German submarines forced the navy to meet challenges its admirals had failed to anticipate before the war started. World War I saw other unexpected innovations. Seaplanes rapidly evolved in capability to operate from shore and from specialized sea-going tenders. Furious, a cruiser converted with a short flying-off deck, launched a carrier-borne attack on the Zeppelin sheds at Tondern in August 1918. Soon after, Argus became the world’s first flushdeck aircraft carrier. These accomplishments, however, came after the Royal Navy had lost command of its air service with the creation on the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918, a move that would stunt Britain’s naval aviation for twenty years. Peacetime brought further challenges. The Washington Treaty of 1922 dictated a “One-Power Standard” for the Royal Navy, now nominally equal to the United States Navy with a total battleship tonnage of 525,000 tons. For the 1930 London Treaty, Britain sacrificed its stated cruiser requirements. Six years later, the British signed another London Treaty to reduce the permissible battleship weaponry to 14-inch guns. The Royal Navy, its supremacy clearly waning, had additional disadvantages attached to its carrier force. Though the fleet finally regained command of the Fleet Air Arm, this could not instantly erase the consequences of the twenty-year divorce, and the carriers themselves were generally older and less capable than those operating with the Japanese and American fleets.
The second mission was to protect the United Kingdom and the dominions1 and the Empire from invasion by a foreign power. Between the wars, the British government promised the dominions of Australia and New Zealand that, in the event of war with Japan, a strong fleet would be sent east to protect them. This pledge did not take into account the possibility of war in Europe. As war with Germany became increasingly likely, a third mission emerged, that of collaborating with the UK’s ally, France, while also supporting the lines of communication across the English Channel for the British Expeditionary Force.2
In 1939, the distribution of the Royal Navy was: 1) The Home Fleet, the largest administrative formation. 2) The Mediterranean Fleet, with its bases at Malta, Gibraltar and Alexandria. 3) The China Station, essentially meaning Hong Kong. 4) The East Indies Station, centered on Singapore. 5) The American Station, meaning Bermuda. 6) The African Station, based on Simonstown, near Cape Town in South Africa. 7) The West Indies Station. On the outbreak of war in 1939, the commander-in-chief of the Home Fleet was Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, who had five battleships, two battlecruisers, two aircraft carriers, three squadrons with a total of fifteen cruisers, two flotillas each with between five and nine destroyers, and some twenty submarines. The main forward base for the Home Fleet was Scapa Flow in Orkney, to the north of the Scottish mainland. Also in home waters and in addition to the Home Fleet, another two battleships and two aircraft carriers were based in the English Channel, with three cruisers and a destroyer flotilla, while another two cruisers and a further destroyer flotilla were based on the Humber. Further escort vessels were based on Plymouth and Portsmouth. Under wartime pressures, new North Atlantic and South Atlantic Commands were created. There were also six home commands, Orkney and Shetland, Rosyth, Nore, Dover (created in October 1939), Portsmouth and Western Approaches (initially at Plymouth, soon moved to Liverpool). The China Station became the British Eastern Fleet on 2 December 1941, with its own commander-in-chief, and was augmented by ships previously allocated to Force Z. After the fall of Singapore and the Japanese attacks on Ceylon, the British Eastern Fleet moved its headquarters to Kilindini, or Mombasa, in British East Africa. Operations in the Indian Ocean were helped by a secret refueling base at Addu Atoll. In 1939 the Mediterranean Fleet was commanded by Admiral Sir Andrew Browne Cunningham. It had an aircraft carrier, two battleships, and supporting cruisers and destroyers. It had bases at Gibraltar, Alexandria and, as its main base with extensive dockyard facilities, Malta. As Italian and German air power effectively cut the Mediterranean in two, the Mediterranean Fleet was effectively confined to the Eastern Mediterranean, while a new fleet, Force H, was created under Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville, which operated in both the Western Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Although Force H was officially a squadron, it was in reality a small fleet based at Gibraltar, with its own aircraft carrier, a battleship and a battlecruiser, plus cruisers and destroyers. 1. Administration (includes appropriations) A key feature distinguishing the Royal Navy from the British Army and the Royal Air Force was that the Admiralty was not simply the power that directed the Royal Navy; it was also an operational headquarters. While the navy did have local commanders with substantial delegated authority, usually designated as flag officers (holding the rank of rear admiral and above), there would often be a commander-in-chief over and above any flag officers. As an example, the Mediterranean Fleet had a commander-in-chief with subordinate flag officers for cruisers, destroyers and aircraft carriers, while Force H based on Gibraltar had a flag officer and enjoyed considerable autonomy, moving between the Atlantic and the western Mediterranean as the strategic position required. As the war developed, not only was there a commander-in-chief for the Home Fleet, but one for the Western Approaches as well. As an operational and an administrative HQ, the Admiralty could send orders to individual COs aboard their ships over the heads of their local C-in-C, justified by the developments in naval intelligence. Indeed, the withholding of information by the Admiralty had contributed to the disappointing outcome of the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and that lesson had been learned. The Admiralty included an Operational Intelligence Centre, OIC, and this was to prove especially successful in countering the U-boat threat. The Admiralty dated from the reign of Henry VIII and, long before the Second World War, was controlled by the Board of Admiralty, which itself had replaced the earlier post of Lord High Admiral. The First Lord of the Admiralty was a political post and a member of the Cabinet, and at the outbreak of war this post was held by Sir Winston Churchill. The naval officers on the board were led by the First Sea Lord, who was also the Chief of the Naval Staff. The other sea lords were the Second Sea Lord, responsible for personnel; the Third Sea Lord or Controller of the Navy, responsible for ship building and repair, including the naval dockyards; the Fourth Sea Lord, responsible for victualling and supplies and the naval hospitals; and the most recent addition to the group, the Fifth Sea Lord, in charge of naval aviation. The First Sea Lord was supported by the Vice-Chief of the Naval Staff, who had wide-ranging responsibilities including intelligence, planning, communications, hydrography and navigation, and by three Assistant Chiefs of the Naval Staff, otherwise known as ACNS, who had responsibility for Home, Foreign and Trade matters. In addition to these individual roles, each ACNS would also look after local defense, operations, training, gunnery and minesweeping. The Western Approaches Command exemplified how this structure worked. Tasked with the battle of the Atlantic and the convoys, it came under the direct responsibility of the ACNS Trade. The Admiralty Trade Division planned routes for the convoys, working with the Submarine Tracking Room at the Admiralty, itself part of the Naval Intelligence Division. The allocation of merchant ships to convoys was the responsibility of the Naval Control Service, which had a presence in each merchant port. Escort vessels were organized into groups under the control of Western Approaches. Under wartime pressures, the major naval base at Devonport, part of Plymouth, operated under the constant threat of enemy air attack, and was moved to Liverpool, on the North-West coast of England. When Southern Ireland had been granted home rule in 1922, the Royal Navy had been granted the use of several ports, the so-called “Treaty Ports,” but it was politically impossible to use these in 1939 as the Irish Free State remained neutral throughout the war. To provide a base as close to the convoy routes as possible, Londonderry in Northern Ireland, became the major base for convoy escorts. A major naval air station was established to the east of the town at Eglinton, later augmented by a satellite at Maydown, from which the aircraft for the merchant aircraft carriers, the so-called MAC-ships, were drawn. Within the fleets battleships, battlecruisers, cruisers and aircraft carriers, were organized into squadrons, each of which could have two or more ships. Smaller warships such as destroyers, minesweepers and submarines, were organized into flotillas, again with varying numbers of ships, although destroyer flotillas ideally consisted of nine vessels. A destroyer flotilla would be sub-divided into two divisions. Within “forces,” the squadron and flotilla distinction was usually dropped, so that Force K, for example, when first established on Malta consisted simply of two cruisers and two destroyers. A submarine flotilla often operated independently and could have any number of craft, while submarine commanders usually had considerable delegated authority – with none of the centralized direction that characterized the German U-boat fleet. Later, the Admiralty became heavily involved in combined operations, and when the time came, this organization took over landing ships and landing craft. With no separate ministry for defense, but three separate services ministries (Admiralty, War Office and Air Ministry), appropriations during the war were based on overall defense requirements rather than on a service by service basis. A good example arose when Churchill wrote to Chancellor of the Exchequer Anderson, demanding that a sum of £20 million per year be allocated to improving pay and allowances for service personnel, with priority being given to the lowest paid and those who were married. There was no distinction between the individual services. The United Kingdom paid all of its bills in the United States for the first fourteen months of war, but afterwards it received considerable lend lease assistance, and this was complicated by the country later passing on equipment, mainly produced by its own industries, to the Soviet Union. It also transferred equipment to the Empire and to the free forces of the occupied countries. 2. Personnel (officers/enlisted, includes demographics and training) In June 1939the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, totaled 129,000 men, of whom just under 10,000 were officers. The 12,400 officers and men of the Royal Marines had a number of shipboard roles, including security and the RM Band Service, but on cruisers and battleships they also manned “X” turret. The Fleet Air Arm included a significant number of RM pilots and some observers. To achieve maximum strength in wartime, the navy could recall recently retired officers and ratings, as well as two categories of reserves, the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve which between them provided another 73,000 officers and men in 1939. The RNR consisted mainly of people drawn from the merchant navy, who often had outstanding navigation and ship-handling skills, although there other branches, notably marine engineering. The RNVR consisted of people from all walks of life, and this was to undergo massive wartime expansion - to 48,000 officers and 5,000 ratings - as most wartime recruits went into the RNVR. Many RNVR personnel rose to command corvettes, minesweepers and destroyers, others took command of Fleet Air Arm squadrons as that element of the RN expanded rapidly. By mid-1944, the RN had reached its peak strength of 863,500 personnel, including 73,500 of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Many of the lower deck personnel in wartime were conscripts called up under the National Service Acts for “hostilities only.” In many cases, when merchant shipping was taken up from trade, the ships’ companies were signed up under special articles so that they became part of the Royal Navy and subject to naval discipline, with temporary naval ranks, although they retained certain Merchant Navy terms of service, such as danger money for working in a war zone. The Royal Navy’s wartime casualties amounted to 50,758 killed with another 820 missing, presumed dead, and 14,663 wounded. The WRNS lost 102 killed and 22 wounded, mainly in air raids.3 Training a) Officers In peacetime, regular officers entered the service as early as age thirteen, spending four years at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth, which operated as a fee-paying school. Those who had attended other schools joined at seventeen or eighteen, and spent a term at Dartmouth. In both cases, after graduating from Dartmouth, they would spend eighteen months as a midshipmen. Despite the cap badge, midshipmen were not regarded as officers in the full sense, being addressed as “mister” and not joining their seniors in the wardroom, the naval term for the officers’ mess, but instead being confined to the “gunroom mess.” In peacetime, a midshipman who wanted to fly would undergo most of his training with the RAF, with the Royal Navy providing catapult training so that he could fly ship launched seaplanes and amphibians. The two year training program for pilots and observers was compressed into ten months after war broke out. Though commissioning from the ranks - or in naval parlance the “lower deck” - became significant during and after the Second World War, it had been a rarity in the pre-war Navy. To obtain a sufficient number of experienced officers for the rapid wartime expansion, many senior ratings, normally chief petty officers, were commissioned under the “Upper Yardman Scheme.” With war looming, a Special Entry Scheme at Dartmouth was introduced. In September 1942, the College was bombed, as a result of which it was evacuated to Eaton Hall, Cheshire, until the end of the war. Even before this, it was already clear that extra training facilities would be needed. In 1939 the government requisitioned Hove Marina and nearby Lancing College and commissioned them as HMS King Alfred. The reservists’ college later relocated to Exbury House near Southampton before the Normandy landings in 1944. During the war years, 22,508 RNVR officers graduated from HMS King Alfred. Nevertheless, by 1942 it had become apparent that King Alfred alone could not meet the growing demand for officers, and the methods of selecting suitable candidates from the lower deck were improved. A trial scheme at HMS Glendower, a seaman new entry training establishment at Pwllheli in North Wales, showed promise and was soon extended to the seamen training establishments at HMS Collingwood, Ganges, Raleigh and Royal Arthur, while engineering candidates were found at the stokers’ school at HMS Duke, communications specialists at HMS Excalibur and naval airmen at HMS Gosling. The peacetime practice of naval officers becoming midshipmen before undertaking aircrew training also underwent change under wartime conditions. Training was reduced from two years to ten months, producing naval airmen who were not strictly speaking “sailors who could fly,” but instead “fliers who went to sea.” An Air Branch was formed to accommodate both the RNVR pilots and observers and those members of the Royal Air Force who had volunteered to transfer to the Royal Navy when it regained control of its own aviation. Aspiring pilots and observers were given basic training at HMS St Vincent, a stone frigate at Gosport, before being sent to start their basic flying training, initially with the RAF. As the RAF struggled to cope with its own expanded training needs, many received their training with the United States Navy at Pensacola, returning to the Royal Navy for the final stages. They were not commissioned until flying training was completed, but started operational conversion courses as naval officers. With a few exceptions, naval pilots and observers were all commissioned. The rank at which aircrew were commissioned was determined by age, with RNVR officers often missing the rank of midshipman altogether. Those over 21 years of age became Temporary Sub-Lieutenants, those under 21, Temporary Acting Sub-Lieutenants, and those under 20 became Temporary Midshipmen.
These measures were accompanied in 1940 by a halving of the time allowed ratings to receive their basic training. By this time, the Royal Navy’s personnel strength was in excess of 250,000, giving some idea of the pace of wartime expansion. Highnam Court was developed to accommodate up to three thousand personnel, while HMS Ganges’s capacity was expanded to seventeen thousand. From Easter 1940 to October 1945, no fewer than 60,968 HO ratings passed through HMS Ganges, including a number from the Empire. Specialized training such as that for wireless telegraphy followed basic training. One of the new training establishments, HMS Collingwood, started to receive wireless telegraph trainees in June 1940, with a thousand trainees joining every three weeks for a ten week course, while a Radio Direction Finding School was also added in 1942. HMS Collingwood also trained Wrens.
The first moves to prepare for a future war came with the Abyssinian crisis of 1935. The Director of Naval Intelligence was ordered by the Deputy Chief of Naval Staff to prepare an intelligence center so that operational intelligence would be passed to the units at sea and to the RAF without delay. The Operational Intelligence Centre was put on a war footing shortly before the outbreak of war in Europe. In addition to reports from various sources, the OIC used a network of directional wireless stations which plotted the positions of Axis signals. Yüklə 127,45 Kb. Dostları ilə paylaş:
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