Amphibious Warfare - History
Amphibious warfare fills an ambiguous place in Australian military history and in current Australian military doctrine. On the one hand Australia does not have a strong tradition in amphibious warfare, but on the other hand Australia has had considerable experience in amphibious operations. This disconnect between lack of tradition and our considerable experience needs some explanation. The Australian Army was formed not to fight overseas, but for the defence of the homeland. It was built around a compulsorily enlisted, part-time militia which would fight around the main population centres. For that reason, the new Australian Army did not expect that it would be involved in amphibious warfare.
It was ironic, then, that Australia's contribution to the First World War began with two amphibious operations. Australia's first independent military operation was an amphibious one, when the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF), comprising elements of the RAN and the Commonwealth Military Forces, seized the German colonial possessions in New Guinea. Conducted between mid-August and early December 1914, this brief campaign secured Australia's trade routes in the Pacific by denying the Germans the ability to use the excellent harbor at Rabaul and its wireless station to direct their East Asian Squadron against Allied shipping.
The landing of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force on New Britain, near Rabaul, in September 1914, was a classic example of the exercise of maritime power. The Australian land forces were quite small, consisting of a battalion of infantry specially enlisted in Sydney and another small battalion of naval reservists and ex-seamen. While it is true that the expedition was ordered by Britain against the wishes of the Australian Chief of Naval Staff, nonetheless, it constituted the first expedition planned and executed by the Australian forces. It was not seen as a precedent for the future.
The naval force of 14 ships, including the French cruiser Montcalm, was commanded by Rear Admiral Sir George Patey. The land forces, comprising 500 men of the Royal Australian Naval Brigade (RANB), a battalion of infantry, two machine gun sections, signals troops and elements of the Australian Army Medical Corps, were commanded by Colonel William Holmes. The operation was thus both joint (even including one of the Commonwealth's three aircraft) and coalition. After some sharp fighting on 11 and 12 September 1914, the wireless station was captured and Rabaul surrendered on 15 September. Although it was both brief and small scale, the ANMEF demonstrated the usefulness of joint forces in the defence of Australian interests, particularly in the regions to the nation's north. The operation also showed the value of possessing troops that could go anywhere, and a fleet capableof taking them there. The ANMEF's successful operations were, however, quickly overshadowed in the Australian national memory by the amphibious landings at Gallipoli.
The second amphibious operation, the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915, is far better known than the landing on New Britain. Yet when the First AIF was dispatched overseas in October 1914, there was no expectation that it would be involved in amphibious operations. This campaign did not contribute to any greater understanding of the potential role that joint operations might play in Australia's naval and military thinking. From the broad perspective of the history of warfare in the 20th century, however, the Gallipoli campaign was to have considerable influence, particularly on the development of United States Marine Corps (USMC) amphibious tactics in the Second World War. The masterful evacuation of the Allied forces from the Gallipoli Peninsula demonstrated how quickly armed services are able to learn during wartime. Had there been as much concern with planning, security and surprise in early 1915, the initial landings might have met with the same success as the evacuation.
After the war, the AIF was dissolved and the land defence of Australia was again put in the hands of the part-time militia. Since the militia could not serve overseas, there was no requirement for, or training in, amphibious operations.
Despite the Gallipoli experience some 27 years earlier, the Australian Army had no culture of amphibious warfare. Between the wars, Australia had only a small Navy that was designed to cooperate with the Royal Navy. There was hardly any regular army and the part-time militia was formed for the home defence of Australia, not for overseas expeditions. In the 1920s and 1930s, Australian governments of all political persuasions willingly subscribed to Imperial Defence. While it was relatively cost- effective - Australia's contribution was largely to provide escort ships for the Royal Navy's battle fleet - Imperial Defence was nonetheless detrimental to Australia's development of a clear understanding of its own strategic circumstances as an island nation.
The only recorded Australian involvement in training for amphibious operations during this period was a weekend exercise held just 10 days before the twentieth anniversary of Anzac Day. This activity, conducted at Blackman's Bay south of Hobart, involved a militia battalion and two cruisers of the Australian Squadron. The rudimentary landing techniques employed during the exercise harked back to First World War, and the contemporary reports seem totally unconcerned by the fact that, almost 20 years after Gallipoli, the best Australian forces could do was to stage what was little more than avery small-scale replay of the fateful landings.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
