British Naval Policy - 1920-1939
At the end of the First World War Britain had the largest navy in the world. In 1919, Lloyd George's cabinet placed stringent limits on defence expenditure on the planning assumptions that a major war involving UK forces would not occur within ten years. As it required the greatest industrial infrastructure, the ten-year rule hit the Royal Navy particularly hard. With orders for warships at a low level it had an impact on a wide variety of industries - shipbuilding, steel and engineering, as well as specialised manufacturers of guns, ammunition and naval equipment. The political decision to pursue a policy of disarmament by international agreement only made the problems faced by the armed forces, and especially the Navy, even worse.
At the time of the Armistice the Admiralty were building four Hoods: the "Hood," the "Rodney," the "Howe," and the "Anson," They continued building those ships for some time. They went on for some little time, and then stopped building three of them. They completed the "Hood," but they stopped building on the "Rodney," the "Howe," and the "Anson," and the contractors who were building these three ships claimed £860,000 odd for compensation for work put in. The engines of these three great battle-cruisers were taken to pieces again and the parts used where they could be used and the metal for the hulls was sold.
The work was stopped, and what had been put in was wasted. The next thing was that, after various Committees had sat— and, in particular, the Committee presided over by the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Central Glasgow (Mr. Bonar Law), which dealt with the whole question of capital ships, aircraft, submarines and so on, and the finding of which was kept secret — the Admiralty announced, through the mouth of the right hon. Gentleman the Secretary of State for the Colonies, that Britain was going to build four great capital ships in the year 1921, and that they were to be followed by another four capital ships. The first four were to be battle cruisers and the next four battleships. Then the Washington Conference came, and building on these four new ships was stopped.
Although nominally in full commission the Atlantic Fleet was not, in fact, on a footing of immediate readiness for active service. A substantial proportion of the ships’ complements was made up of boys and young, untrained seamen. Naval officers complained that so much time is taken up with training the personnel that few opportunities were left for evolutionary and tactical exercises. Moreover, in view of the unsettled political conditions in-Europe and the Near East, it was useless to map out a training program for any length of time, as ships were liable to be detached at short notice for active service in one or other of the disturbed areas.
During the 1920s the limited funds for defence, coupled with the resentment felt by the Army and the Royal Navy in thinking the Royal Air Force had more than its fair share of funds, caused inter-service bureaucratic infighting. The Navy in particular took the loss of its own air service very badly and continually attempted to regain control of naval aviation. The deep cuts in defence spending and the resulting contraction of defence industries had a long-term effect on rearmament. The legacy of limited finance and concentration on the barest of essentials in material and defence thinking would reverberate through the 1930s and into the Second World War.
The goal of international disarmament was preserved in Woodrow Wilson's 14 points and implicit within the League of Nations framework. The first act of international disarmament was the Washington Naval Conference of 1921-1922. The Washington Conference of 1921-1922 set ratios for the number of capital ships of the major powers. For the first time it was agreed that the British Royal Navy and the US Navy have the same number of battleships and battle cruisers. The conference agreed parity between the British and American navies, setting a lower quota of battleships for the Japanese, French and Italian navies. The conference also agreed a ten-year building holiday for major warships and set down the maximum size of battleships, aircraft carriers and cruisers as well as the size of the gun armament. The conference was supposed to be the first of a series of treaties limiting not just navies, but land and air forces too. However, the subsequent conferences never took place so Britain, as the world's predominant naval power, suffered more than a land power such as France.
With no need to plan for a major global or European conflict for ten years, the armed forces concentrated on imperial policing roles. For the Royal Navy, cruisers were vital for this role, as well as for the defence of trade. In 1927 a further conference in Geneva failed, the difficulty being agreement on the number and size of cruisers needed by Britain for trade defence. Until the early 1930s Anglo-American naval tension continued to simmer. In 1930 the London Naval Conference extended the terms of the Washington conference to 1936 and Britain agreed to reduce the number of cruisers to 50 - against the wishes of the Admiralty, which had a long-established requirement for 70. Finally, the British took the lead in the wide-ranging Geneva Disarmament Conference (1932-1934) that sought land, sea and air reductions. It too was a failure, and its collapse was a spur to Britain's rearmament.
The Labour Government in 1930 came to an agreement with other Powers on limitation of cruisers, under which Britain was able to map out and to lay down since 1929 a regular replacement program so that, in comparison with the other cruiser fleets in the world, the British Fleet was not only the largest but the most efficient. Some of those ships were rapidly approaching the over-age position by the mid-1930s, but there was nothing that could not have been met by the ordinary, annual replacement program [but there had not been one].
His Majesty's Fleet, with one brief exception of Invergordon, had been manned by perfectly loyal seamen, marines and stokers for a century. There had been one or two isolated cases of insubordination, but in the 20th Century there had been no concerted attempt to mutiny in the Fleet. Attempts were made by agitators to seduce the seamen of the Royal Navy during the Great War, and without success. It was not in the British Fleet that there was any trouble. The trouble came in the German Navy, and there was a very serious outbreak in the Austrian Navy as well. The British Navy, its members drawn from a nation that was used to liberty, came through without one concerted case of serious insubordination, much less of mutiny, during the whole of the four years of war.
In September 1931 there was a first-class mutiny in the Navy over wage cuts. The Jerram Report of 1919 had laid down certain scales of pay for the men of the lower deck, and ever since then, whatever Government has been in office, they have pledged themselves that under no circumstances would there be any departure from the scales of pay so laid down. Attempts to cut ratings' pay led to a strike at Invergordon in 1931 that caused a run on the pound, so symbolic was Britain's navy to her national image.
The men at Invergordon compelled the National Government to cut the cuts that had already been agreed upon. It was said that similar occurrences were being arranged with bribery by Soviet organisers in Malta. There was no penalisation in respect of the occurrences at Invergordon, but 24 naval ratings were dismissed, their services being no longer required by an order of the Board of Admiralty after full consideration. The reason for their discharge, as was stated in the official statement issued by the Board of Admiralty, was that after the return of the Atlantic Fleet to the home port they continued conduct subversive of discipline. The Invergordon incident gave the First Lord a chance to make new laws and new regulations and to bring in new ideas.
The men on the ships were well provided for, well fed, and well looked after, and the factor which brought about this mutiny was not their treatment on board but their pay which they were unable to send to their families ashore. It was that which determined the action the men eventually took. If the Board of Admiralty had been more in touch with the position of the men and had more fully realised the very close margin between the actual pay of the sailor and nothing at all, what a very little extra amount he had, if they had fully appreciated the effect the cut was likely to have, they would have approached the matter really in a better manner.
From 1918 to 1931, nine battleships of the "Queen Elizabeth" and "Royal Sovereign" classes, and the battle cruisers "Renown" and "Repulse," had been modernised and the "Barham" was in hand in 1931. The main alterations comprised addition of bulges, increase in anti-aircraft armament in some cases, improvements to bridges and tops, and improvements to ventilation and accommodation. Additional armor protection had been fitted in "Renown" and "Repulse." The estimated total cost of these items of modernisation, including "Barham," is approximately £2,870,000.
The "Warspite," a battleship of 31,000 tons, launched in 1914, cost £2,500,000. The "Nelson" and "Rodney," completed in 1927, cost £7,000,000 each. Battleship construction has gone up from an average of £78 per ton in 1913 to £178 per ton for the last battleships. The cost of constructing light cruisers had gone up three times — from £71 per ton to £228 per ton for 1932–33, though last year it was down to £209. The cost of constructing submarines has gone up three times what it was in pre-war days. The same could be said of all other naval construction.
The chief duty of the Fleet was to ensure that adequate supplies reach these shores. To that end the battle fleet existed, whose main duty was to look after the enemy's battle fleet and to keep it in check, while the convoying duty depends mainly on the cruisers and destroyers. As a result of the Ottawa Conference much more food must come to Britain from overseas, from Canada, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand instead of from countries nearer at hand. That meant that there would be much more for Royal Navy commerce protectors to do.
There was another question which was of a most important nature, and that was the position of the enemy raider. By the early 1930s Germany, which was only allowed to build ships up to 10,000 tons, had evolved a most dangerous type of ship which upset the whole calculation of battleship construction throughout the world. These ships - the pocket battleships - were very strong but not of very great speed, 26 knots, armed with 11-inch guns, and with an enormous radius of action. If these ships got out on to Imperialr trade routes Britain should find herself possessed of only three ships that could compete with them. They could run away from British battleships while British cruisers if they got within gun range would not stand a chance.
These new ships would practically fulfil the role of a ship which was built by the French 40 years earlier, in regard to which one of the most prominent French nautical writers, in describing its functions, said that its orders were to "mercilessly attack the weak, to fly without shame, before the strong." That is what the "Deutschland" and similar ships could do, and in the whole of the British Fleet there were only three ships that could hold them in check. The "Hood," the "Repulse," and the "Renown" had sufficient speed and gun-power to outmatch this new type of ship. If the Deutschland or any other ships of the same type that were built ever come within range of those three battle cruisers they are for it, but it is very difficult to find them and to get them in the right place.
As late as 1936 the British Fleet was said to be the largest, the most powerful, the most efficient Fleet in the whole world. That remark applied not to this or that category of vessels but to all the categories of vessels in the British Fleet. It applied to the category of capital ships. There were no other two capital ships afloat in the whole world which could match the "Nelson" and the "Rodney." Taking the actual age and the equipment of the rest of the capital ships, there was nothing in the whole world really comparable with them, outside the United States of America, and the United States had of late years always been ruled out of account as a possible enemy. It is the same with regard to aircraft carriers and their equipment.
The Estimates for 1936 were more than £18,000,000 higher than they were in 1914–15, although there were only 15 capital ships and none building, as against 68 and 14 building in 1914–15. There were only 54 cruisers and 12 building against 110 and 17 building in 1914–15, while there were only 169 destroyers against 322 in 1914–15 and only 51 submarines against 74 in 1914.
Inter-service rivalry between the Royal Navy and the new Royal Air Force was also acute until the Royal Navy regained control of seaborne aircraft. Despite further major naval conferences in London (in 1930 and 1935-1936), it only became clear in 1936 that limiting naval power through caps on ship numbers, tonnage and weapon types was not achieving its aims.
Having dropped out of the 1935-1936 London negotiations, Japan, along with Germany and Italy, embarked on major increases in defence spending. In 1936 the British rearmament program began in earnest with increases in budgets. The weapons and equipment developed were to form the backbone of British military capability during the first three years of the Second World War.
Naval rearmament was limited from the outset by the disarmament process. Expansion only got underway after 1936, once the limitations of the 1922 Washington Treaty and 1930 London Treaty expired on 31 December 1936. The Defence Requirements sub-Committee's standard fleet (their projection of what the Royal Navy would need to meet certain commitments) essentially brought the one-power standard (which stated that Britain's navy should be equal in size to the biggest naval power) up to date. This involved the modernisation of existing warships to compensate for the deterioration in qualitative superiority since 1922.
Winston Churchill, the member from Epping, told the Commons on 16 March 1936 "The foundation of British naval policy is the acceptance of the principle of parity with the United States of America, not only in battleships but over the whole range of the Fleet. We are all agreed upon that, and that decision once taken ought to exclude the idea of naval rivalry between the two countries. It certainly ought not to be followed by a meticulous measuring of swords, as it were, at recurring conference tables. The British view is, and has long been, that the, United States Navy, whatever it rely become, is no cause of anxiety to us. On the contrary, many people will feel, and it is no exaggeration to say so, that the stronger the United States Navy becomes, the surer are the foundations of peace throughout the world. I trust, therefore, that the principle of parity which is really the principle of non-competition, will be interpreted in the most liberal and flexible manner on both sides of the Atlantic, and that the two great branches of the English-speaking peoples will not seek to hamper one another in making whatever may be the best possible arrangements for their respective naval defence.
"For instance, it might well happen that for a period of years the circumstances of the United States require her to have temporarily a Fleet stronger than we should consider necessary for our quite different requirements. In that case we should accept that fact with good will and without concern, and we should feel under no obligation to build up to the exceptional strength which the United States might require to have. Similarly, periods might occur when we should be involved in difficulties and pre-occupations which would lead us to require a larger Fleet than it was convenient for the United States to maintain. In that case we should have not the slightest objection if they built up to our exceptional 97 construction or even if they just went beyond it."
In this same debate, Churchill mentioned aircraft carriers constructed for trade protection. "I am not going to attempt to pronounce—especially with my hon. and gallant Friend the Admiral sitting so close behind me and my other hon. and gallant Friend in a tactical position on the other side—upon the vexed controversy of the Fleet Air Arm, but this I will say. If aeroplanes can be used, whether from cruisers or from trade protection aircraft carriers, in the protection of commerce, an important argument will have come into being for the unification of the whole 108 work of commerce protection and for its control by the Royal Navy.
The last six years have been very unfortunate for us. We are in a far worse position for dealing with our food supplies and with protection of the narrow seas than we should have been if the ideas which are generally accepted now had generally prevailed before. It is said that although we do not mind the United States building whatever she may require, it may start Japan upon large increases in her Navy, and this would react upon us. There may be something in that argument, but not much. "
The Defence Requirements sub-Committee soon decided that the one-power standard was out of date, and during 1936 a two-power standard (which stated that Britain's navy should equal the combined strengths of the two largest navies), based on the potential combined strengths of Japan and Germany, was developed. But the Cabinet decided against committing to a two-power standard in favor of speeding up existing programs.
In the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939). British warships were used to prevent interference with shipping by Spanish warships not granted belligerent rights by the international community, to break illegal blockades, to deter Italian submarines from covertly sinking ships bound for Spain, to evacuate personnel threatened by one side or the other and to symbolise by their presence on patrol the principle of non-intervention.
By 1937 shipbuilding was at full capacity following the acceleration of the Navy's programs. Any new standard of naval strength was of academic interest only, as it would not be achieved for some years. Even the gain of the Fleet Air arm from RAF control to the Navy was too late to ensure wholesale re-equipment with modern aircraft before the outbreak of war.
Adding the new 1939 program to the previous programs, British dockyards and shipyards in the course of the year were engaged in constructing some 200 vessels, or a total of 870,000 tons. An achievement like this had never been approached before in peace-time. The British were building, in the course of the year 1939, nine battleships, six aircraft carriers, 25 cruisers, 43 destroyers, 19 submarines, and a large number of small vessels. The annual tonnage output in 1940 and 1941 will be greater by no less than 30 per cent, than the annual tonnage output in those three pre-war years, 1912–14. In "The World Crisis," Churchill referred to "the mightiest Fleet laid down in 1912–13 and 1914, the greatest ever built by any Power in an equal period." The British planned to complete on an average, in 1940–41, 220,000 tons a year, as compared with 170,000 tons, which was the average of those years before the Great War.
Apart from the work on new construction, the British harnessed productive effort to secure the rearmament of the 649 existing Fleet, mainly directed to meet the increase in anti-aircraft armament by the fitting of more accurate systems of fire control. During the past three years the number of guns firing a shell of 2 lbs. and upwards has increased by 75 percent in the existing Fleet. Production in 1939 was running at the rate of 60 guns a month, and towards the end of the year production would reach over 80 guns a month. Productive effort of such immense proportions demanded foresight, continuous preparation, and planning ahead to secure the development of wider sources of supply in advance of requirements. This has been the constant preoccupation of the skilled staff of the Admiralty.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
