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    The Great Ships: British Battleships in World War II
    The Great Ships: British Battleships in World War II
    The Great Ships: British Battleships in World War II
    Ebook880 pages12 hours

    The Great Ships: British Battleships in World War II

    By Peter C. Smith

    3.5/5

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    Authoritative study of the battleship in World War II. Stirring episodes of naval combat. Covers the famous chase after the Bismarck, the sinking of the Scharnhorst, the coastal bombardments on D-Day, and other actions.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStackpole Books
    Release dateAug 4, 2008
    ISBN9780811749350
    The Great Ships: British Battleships in World War II
    Author

    Peter C. Smith

    Peter C. Smith is well-known to aviation and maritime history readers. He has written over 67 previously published books. Amongst these are Skua, Detroyer Leader, Into the Minefields and Naval Warfare in the English Channel 1939-1945, all published by Pen & Sword.

    Read more from Peter C. Smith

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    • 2/5
      we both like Battleships, so i'm giving him one-half star more than this book deserves. They were a crowning achievement of the ship builders' art, and they created a lot of jobs over the years. And, for their jobs, they were useful tools. A pity so few survive to be viewed.

    Book preview

    The Great Ships - Peter C. Smith

    THE GREAT SHIPS

    The Stackpole Military History Series

    THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

    Cavalry Raids of the Civil War

    Ghost, Thunderbolt, and Wizard

    Pickett’s Charge

    Witness to Gettysburg

    WORLD WAR II

    Armor Battles of the Waffen-SS, 1943–45

    Army of the West

    Australian Commandos

    The B-24 in China

    Backwater War

    The Battle of Sicily

    Beyond the Beachhead

    The Brandenburger Commandos

    The Brigade

    Bringing the Thunder

    Coast Watching in World War II

    Colossal Cracks

    A Dangerous Assignment

    D-Day to Berlin

    Dive Bomber!

    A Drop Too Many

    Eagles of the Third Reich

    Eastern Front Combat

    Exit Rommel

    Fist from the Sky

    Flying American Combat Aircraft of World War II

    Forging the Thunderbolt

    Fortress France

    The German Defeat in the East, 1944–45

    German Order of Battle, Vol. 1

    German Order of Battle, Vol. 2

    German Order of Battle, Vol. 3

    The Germans in Normandy

    Germany’s Panzer Arm in World War II

    GI Ingenuity

    The Great Ships

    Grenadiers

    Infantry Aces

    Iron Arm

    Iron Knights

    Kampfgruppe Peiper at the Battle of the Bulge

    Kursk

    Luftwaffe Aces

    Massacre at Tobruk

    Mechanized Juggernaut or Military Anachronism?

    Messerschmitts over Sicily

    Michael Wittmann, Vol. 1

    Michael Wittmann, Vol. 2

    Mountain Warriors

    The Nazi Rocketeers

    On the Canal

    Operation Mercury

    Packs On!

    Panzer Aces

    Panzer Aces II

    Panzer Commanders of the Western Front

    The Panzer Legions

    Panzers in Winter

    The Path to Blitzkrieg

    Retreat to the Reich

    Rommel’s Desert Commanders

    Rommel’s Desert War

    The Savage Sky

    A Soldier in the Cockpit

    Soviet Blitzkrieg

    Stalin’s Keys to Victory

    Surviving Bataan and Beyond

    T-34 in Action

    Tigers in the Mud

    The 12th SS, Vol. 1

    The 12th SS, Vol. 2

    The War against Rommel’s Supply Lines

    War in the Aegean

    THE COLD WAR / VIETNAM

    Cyclops in the Jungle

    Flying American Combat Aircraft: The Cold War

    Here There Are Tigers

    Land with No Sun

    Street without Joy

    Through the Valley

    WARS OF THE MIDDLE EAST

    Never-Ending Conflict

    GENERAL MILITARY HISTORY

    Carriers in Combat

    Desert Battles

    Guerrilla Warfare

    THE GREAT SHIPS

    British Battleships in World War II

    Peter C. Smith

    STACKPOLE

    BOOKS

    Dedicated to two very special and wonderful people, Pat and Jack

    Copyright © 1977, 1997, 2008 by Peter C. Smith

    Published in paperback in 2008 by

    STACKPOLE BOOKS

    5067 Ritter Road

    Mechanicsburg, PA 17055

    www.stackpolebooks.com

    All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. All inquiries should be addressed to Stackpole Books.

    For information on all of Peter C. Smith’s books, please visit www.dive–bombers.co.uk

    Cover design by Tracy Patterson

    Printed in the United States of America

    10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

    Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

    Smith, Peter Charles, 1940–

    [Great ships pass]

    The great ships: British battleships in World War II / Peter C. Smith.

       p. cm.— (Stackpole military history series)

    Originally published: The great ships pass: British battleships at war 1939–1945 / Peter C. Smith. 1977.

    Includes bibliographical references and index.

    ISBN 978-0-8117-3514-8

    1. World War, 1939–1945—Naval operations, British. 2. Battleships—Great Britain—History—20th century. 3. Great Britain. Royal Navy—History—World War,

    1939–1945. I. Title.

    D771.S63 2008

    940.54'5941—dc22

    2008003817

    eISBN: 9780811749350

    Contents

    Introduction

    In 1960, an almost-unnoticed event took place that to a few people seemed to symbolize the ultimate acknowledgment that Great Britain had long ceased to be a major naval power. That event was the consigning to the scrap yard of the HMS Vanguard, the last of the mighty battleships to fly the White Ensign.

    Although by this date she represented merely an obsolete hulk of an era and age long passed—with her ironic name (Rearguard would have been more apt) and her forlorn isolation for many years sealed up in reserve in Portsmouth Harbor in full view of her most illustrious forebear, the HMS Victory—the physical act of severing the last link with Britain’s former maritime greatness was a sad occasion.

    The last British battleship went to the breakers about 100 years after the arrival of the first ironclad battleship, the HMS Warrior, had effected a revolution in warship design, but the lineage of the Vanguard and her kind went back much farther—back four centuries, in fact, before the armada of 1588.

    In those four centuries, Britain rose to become the greatest power in the world, the richest nation on earth, and the most widespread and benevolent empire ever known. This unique position was achieved by command of the sea, and that command, for almost all of that long period, ultimately rested on Britain’s great ships, its ships of the line, its battleships.

    No weapon of war did more for Great Britain over such a length of time and so economically. Behind those forbidding but majestic bulwarks, Britain remained immune from the envy and hatred of the other lesser powers who sought to conquer and despoil it and subject its free peoples.

    No tyranny succeeded in passing those defenses, though many tried. Spanish king, French emperor, Prussian emperor, German and Italian dictators—all failed. But in the end, decay came from inside, and the decline and passing of the battleship ultimately matched exactly in its timing and speed the passing of the British nation as a major power and factor in world events. This was undoubtedly a coincidence, but it was somehow apt. Over the centuries, neglect and shortsightedness had often threatened both. Finally, the will to maintain them was eroded, and battleship and national greatness passed into history.

    The last brief years of the battleship saw them reach their zenith in size and power, but these same years were marked with acrimony and derision about the battleship’s usefulness and purpose, and its ultimate passing went unmourned in Britain at large. All that remains of the battleship era are two 15-inch guns mounted incongruously on the lawn of a London museum. It is not enough.

    A great many books have been written about the technical development of the battleship. The most worthwhile one is Dr. Oscar Parkes’s magnificent volume, a worthy monument indeed. When one turns for a brief description of what these great ships achieved during the last two decades of their long development, the situation is less satisfactory. Whereas there are several books that purport to tell the full story of their achievements in the last years, few do so in any detail. Most books of this nature dismiss the years 1919-45 in a chapter or two at best. Battleships in World War II are generally presented as already obsolete. When they put to sea, they were sunk wholesale by bombers and submarines—or so the story goes. When not sunk, they achieved nothing at all constructive to the war effort. These are the usual generalizations.

    Introduction to the 2008 Edition

    Iam very proud to have this revised edition of my book published for the American reader. The historical links between the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy go back a very long time. After a brief period of mistrust in the 1920s, the ties grew very strong and were cemented during the period reviewed by this work, World War II. With four times the population and ten times the wealth, it was inevitable that the U.S. Navy would overtake the Royal Navy as the premier naval power. Aided by a series of mistaken decisions by Prime Minister Winston Churchill—bedazzled as he was by visions of German cities in ashes—the age-old priority given to Britain’s sea defenses lapsed, and the United States’ awesome and awe-inspiring construction program to build a two-ocean navy combined with British decline to make the U.S. the main maritime power from 1942 onward. This fact should not, however, distract from what the British battleship did during the final years of her 400-year-old history.

    The nonsense written about British battleships in many history books is nothing compared to the deluge of inaccuracy, misinformation, and downright idiocy transmitted on television in both the United Kingdom and United States since the first edition of this book in 1977. The pure scale and regularity of this media babble masquerading as factual history makes a new edition of this book even more essential for some balance and objectivity.

    Talking heads and voice overs reading puerile scripts, with sound bites by so-called experts to give the façade of accuracy, only add to the charade. I have seen the sinking of HMS Barham in the Mediterranean portrayed by the BBC as the sinking of a Japanese battleship off Leyte and by the History Channel as a sinking merchant ship in the North Atlantic. Such is the stuff served up as factual research on television today, while Hollywood, making up its own fabrications like U-571, The Battle of Midway, and Pearl Harbor, further perpetuates the rewriting of history. Nobody seems to care what is the truth anymore. This applies equally to the United Kingdom, with the television companies seemingly leading the stampede to dumb down history and steer it away from accuracy. Someone on the BBC’s The Word program recently sneered, History is dead. For them, that certainly would seem to be the case.

    Unfortunately, for this legion of detractors, it is a stubborn and uncomfortable fact for them to face that, for all their hasty and superficial judgements, the British battleship took part in more actions, was engaged in more operations, and voyaged more miles in combat duties in World War II than at any period since 1805.

    This new edition of my book attempts to redress the balance of knowledge and chronicle the final and neglected facet of the battleship’s story.

    Peter C. Smith

    Riseley, Bedford, United Kingdom

    June 2008

    CHAPTER 1

    Mistress of the Seas?

    On November 21, 1918, there was enacted in the bleak wastes of the cold North Sea, some forty miles from lonely May Island in the Firth of Forth, a drama of awe-inspiring significance and magnitude. It was nothing less than the surrender of the German High Seas Fleet to Britain’s Grand Fleet and this act of total submission of vanquished to the victor marked the supreme highwater mark of British sea power after three centuries of development and almost unbroken victory. But more than this, it marked the apex of supremacy of the battleship as the final arbiter of naval might after an equally long and successful period on the grim stage of sea warfare.

    You have given us their army, wrote Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson to Adm. David Beatty that day, and we have given you their fleet.¹

    There can be no doubt at all that the field marshal was speaking the plain truth. It had been the successful application of the blockade by the Royal Navy of Imperial Germany that in its slow, quiet but irresistible way had nullified the many great victories and feats of arms gained by that nation’s soldiers in the four years of the bloodiest warfare yet known to man. Though her armies might strike deep into the heart of France and Russia and there consolidate, resisting all attempts to throw them back in countless massive assaults that bled the Allies white, behind the front lines starvation grew, and in its wretched misery, the German home front festered, grew rotten, and ultimately broke.

    The German armies were finally defeated in the field by the British under Field Marshal Douglas Haig, but by that time, the whole imperial edifice built up by Kaiser Wilhelm II had become gutted spiritually from within until all that remained was the rotten core of a once-proud nation.²

    British sea power had brought this about in four years. More particularly, the Grand Fleet which, though it did not come firmly to grips with its opponent once during that period of time, by its mere existence doomed the colossal efforts of Germany to dominate the continent. In the same manner, the great ships of the Royal Navy had cast their decisive influence over other tyrannical empires with similar ambitions, Napoleon’s France and Philip’s Spain in the centuries before.

    The once imperial splendor of Germany followed these earlier examples to an equally decisive termination, laid low by the one force which they all tried to challenge but never were able to dominate: Britain’s control of the sea. And this vital factor was guarded in 1918, as in 1805 and no less surely in 1588, by the battleship, the British battleship. At this supreme hour of its greatest and most complete victory, whereby an entire enemy fleet submitted without a shot being fired, how stood the battleship in the Royal Navy, in the fleets of the lesser sea powers and in the eyes of the world.

    In Admiral Beatty’s great fleet, that remarkable November day in 1918 was to be found the greatest assembly of British warships in her history. There were 150 lithe, sleek destroyers, flotilla upon flotilla, in that assembly—six squadrons of swift, pert light cruisers and one squadron of rugged armored cruisers swelled this total, but dominating all else were the great bulks of the battleships and battlecruisers; there were seven squadrons of these mighty vessels.

    This massive armada of more than 200 fighting ships, with five American and three French representative vessels in attendance, steamed out to meet its German enemy in full fighting order. Each ship had its guns crews closed up for action with the guns trained outboard. At their battle stations, the men were issued with gas masks and asbestos clothing.

    At 9:30 the dirty and uncared-for ships³ of the High Seas Fleet were in sight, being led to the rendezvous by the light cruiser Cardiff and, on sighting her, Admiral Beatty formed his great command into two gigantic columns, each composed of two score or more battleships and cruisers.

    The German fleet, which surrendered that day, consisted of their most modern vessels: nine battleships, five battlecruisers, seven light cruisers, and forty-nine destroyers. Large as this array was, it was totally dwarfed by the Grand Fleet, and this comparison illustrated perfectly the hopelessness of the German challenge to dispute control of the sea.

    As the Grand Fleet came abreast of the German formation, Admiral Beatty turned the two long lines of British ships inward toward the German ships through 180 degrees, and in one brilliant maneuver, he placed his flag-ship, the battleship Queen Elizabeth, abeam Adm. Ludwig von Reuter’s German fleet. Thus sandwiched between the two British columns, the German fleet was escorted back to the Forth, where both fleets anchored. The final seal on this memorable day was set by the signal sent by Beatty to Reuter at 11:00 A.M.: The German flag will be hauled down at sunset today, Thursday, and will not be hoisted again without permission.

    Seven months later, in a final act of self-degradation, the bulk of these surrendered German ships scuttled themselves in the still, quiet waters of Scapa Flow. This final drama was in fact an acknowledgement that their whole creation and purpose had failed utterly. As the last of the German ships slid below the water the work of the Grand Fleet was brought to its fulfillment, in a less spectacular, but far more complete and absolute, manner than the Battle of Trafalgar.

    In 1918, then, there was no question in the minds of most senior officers of the Royal Navy that the battleship, as so often before, had been the main instrument with which this crushing victory had been secured. Nor was there much doubt then that as Mistress of the Seas, her place was still secure for the foreseeable future.

    Indeed, in 1918, in terms of battleship strength, the Royal Navy appeared to be in an unapproachable position. No less than seventy-one battleships and battlecruisers flew the white ensign in November 1918, a total that no other nation could even begin to approach.

    It is true that many of these ships were elderly vessels, the so-called pre-Dreadnoughts, which had possessed little fighting value during the Great War and were destined for early visits to the breakers’ yards in any event. But even without these ships, along with Dreadnought herself, which was destined for the same early termination, the number of modern fully battleworthy capital ships that the Royal Navy had in full commission was thirty-two battleships and nine battlecruisers, a total of forty-one heavy ships. This placed the Royal Navy way out ahead of any of her competitors in naval strength, especially as this ratio was maintained by cruiser and destroyer strength as well.

    With the total elimination of the German and Austrian fleets from the world scene, only a few other nations retained even the semblance of a modern fighting fleet anyway. In order of precedence, these nations possessed the following the numbers of modern battleships and battlecruisers:

    These nine nations totaled forty-nine modern capital ships against the Royal Navy’s strength, on its own, of forty-one. Moreover, it was not only in numbers that the Royal Navy had a convincing preponderance of strength; equally, or perhaps more important, it was at a high pitch of training and readiness, and more than any of her rivals, the British fleet was fully attuned to modern battle conditions as they existed at that time. In numbers, in expertise, and in tradition, the Royal Navy in 1918 was undoubtedly the greatest maritime fighting organization in existence.

    The figures thus presented appeared to confirm the continuing predominance of the British fleet in the postwar world and in the unshakeableness of the security of the empire, which had emerged even larger after the Great War, and whose ties were now strengthened as never before by the mutual sacrifice of the shedding of the blood of their sons in a common cause. British prestige was at its peak.

    And yet within five years, this numerical superiority had been thrown away and was never regained. In ten years, the experience and expertise amassed from the Great War had been overtaken by new technical innovations with which the Royal Navy began to fall behind. Within twenty years, the utterly prostrate German enemy would once again be in a position to challenge Britain for control of the seas. How could this come about? There is no single answer but rather a series of interlocking factors that ensured the complete reversal of the 1918 position in so short a time. And the decline of the Royal Navy and the growth of her rivals are linked absolutely with the uncertainty of the future role of the battleship in sea warfare.

    Presenting the numbers of capital ships completed and in service with the world’s fleets as a yardstick (a now familiar phrase but one that was only just about to make its debut on the naval scene in 1918) gives a somewhat reassuring picture, but at the same time, it is a completely false one. Before proceeding, an explanation of the term capital ship as used in this book is desirable for the lay reader. This term was adopted to identify both the battleships and the battlecruisers of the fleets—a wholly misleading adoption because the two types had little in common, save for the main armaments. How the two types differed will be discussed later in this volume, but the United States had not actually built any of the latter at this time and wished to include those of other nations in the battleship totals. This led to frequent confusion in the minds of the public that they were in fact one and the same.

    The true picture is only revealed when the actual numbers and types of capital ships then under construction are taken into account, and here the position was, for the British public—which regarded British dominance at sea as a fact of life, like breathing and taxes—far more alarming.

    In 1918, in fact, work was in progress on only one British capital ship, the battlecruiser Hood. Originally one of a class of four, her sisters—Anson, Howe, and Rodney—had been cancelled earlier. Such was not the case with Britain’s main rivals, the United States and Japan; both nations had already embarked on enormous building programs, which, once completed, would completely alter the rosy picture of British might at sea.

    In 1916, the year of the battle of Jutland, the American Congress had voted through an enormous expenditure to allow for the rapid and unprecedented growth of the U.S. fleet, with the avowed aim of creating—to use their favorite phrase of the time—a navy second to none. In fact, what the big navy men wanted was a navy superior to all, and in this, they were enthusiastically backed up by the steel and shipbuilding lobby, which foresaw an unprecedented boom in construction.

    The aim, it was said, was to create a fleet that would be able to stand up to any British challenge in the Atlantic and any Japanese threat from across the Pacific—at the same time. Britain and Japan were linked by a strong treaty of alliance. Although this treaty was not directed at the United States when it was signed in 1902 but rather drafted as a brake on Russian imperialistic expansion into China and the Pacific, the very virulent and vocal Anglophobes in the American navy—and there were many at this time⁴—used this treaty as a threat to persuade the Congress to authorize this enormous program.

    As a direct result, 1916 saw the beginning of construction in American yards of twelve of the largest and most powerful warships ever envisaged, vessels that, once built, would so completely outclass all existing capital ships as to somewhat nullify any temporary numerical advantage Great Britain might have. In addition, a further six equally enormous and awe-inspiring battle-cruisers were laid down. The full program was as follows: twelve battleships—Colorado, Maryland, Washington, West Virginia at 32,600 tons; eight 16-inch guns, fourteen 5-inch guns, four 3-inch guns; and twenty-one knots; South Dakota, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, Iowa, Massachusetts at 43,200 tons; twelve 16-inch guns, sixteen 6-inch guns; and twenty-three knots; and two other battleships; and six battlecruisers—Lexington, Constellation, Saratoga, Ranger, Constitution, United States at 43,200 tons; eight 16-inch guns, sixteen 6-inch guns, four 3-inch guns; thirty-three knots. The Colorado-class battleships were laid down on the stocks between 1917 and 1920; the Lexington-class battlecruisers were commenced in 1920 and 1921, as were the South Dakota-class battleships.

    Nor was this program, ambitious as it was, the end of the story. In their eagerness to overtake Britain as the leading naval power, while that country was still fully focused on the German menace, the U.S. Navy actively considered even more far-reaching designs to produce the ultimate battleship. That summer, the American Senate directed the Committee on Naval Affairs to go ahead with research into the design of such a ship, which they aptly enough named the Terror. The ship was to have, in their own words the maximum size, the maximum draft, and the maximum armament, and the maximum thickness of armor to make the very best battleship. or cruiser the world has ever seen or will see.⁵ In their usual way, they stated that the creation of such a monster was not a threat to Britain or Japan but instead would be the peacemaker of the world.⁶

    Research work went ahead; the only limitations being put on the designers were the width of the locks on the Panama Canal. By October 1916, they had come up with a sketch design of the following characteristics: 70,000 tons; twelve 16-inch guns, twenty-one 6-inch guns; thirty-one knots.

    It was not very surprising, therefore, to anyone but the Americans themselves that both Japan and Great Britain, when viewing this gigantic expansion of American seapower, tended to regard the Terror and even the more modest vessels already under construction, not as the world’s peacemaker but as a determined threat against their very existence.

    Whereas the American senators might consider themselves better than most nations and therefore ideally suited to wield such an instrument and be arbiter of events on the world’s stage, both Japan and Great Britain took rather more worldly views on what they saw as a challenge. In this, the same reasons applied to the new American fleet as had been applied to the creation of the powerful German fleet before 1914. Great Britain had an enormous empire spread all over the globe. It had the world’s largest mercantile fleet, which also had to be defended, and it was dependent on the importation of food and materials to an alarming degree, as the recent U-boat campaign had so convincingly brought home. Control of the sea was essential to the British, but to the Americans, completely self-sufficient at that time, it was not a necessity, merely an exercise in prestige.

    It was a commonly expressed viewpoint in British naval circles, at all levels, that war with the United States was unthinkable.⁷ The reverse was quite often the case across the Atlantic, however, with many American admirals seeing Britain as the most logical future opponent in any new sea conflict, the clash of trading interests being the most likely cause of friction leading to such an event.⁸

    Japan too was alarmed. It had been pursuing her own expansionist policies at the expense of her Chinese neighbor, and when told by the United States and Great Britain to curb these policies, Japan greatly resented it. It had reached the status of a first-rate power very quickly and largely by its own military prowess. Quite naturally, Japan saw what it considered its natural destiny being thwarted by the two western powers and acted accordingly. The only way the U.S. and Britain could reach Japan in the event of war was by sea, so Japan immediately initiated a great shipbuilding program of its own to counter that threat.

    Although the earlier cordial relations between Japan and Great Britain were now wearing rather thin, the long-established ties between the two navies were still deep, and in particular, the influence of the world’s greatest seapower in design was still strongly felt. British-built and British-designed warships predominated in the Japanese fleet, as did British methods. As in other areas, however, Japan was now becoming more and more self-reliant. This was reflected in its building programs.

    As early as 1912, Japan had shown her newfound independence of thought with the magnificent Kongo-class battlecruisers. The lead ship was ordered from a British yard—Vickers, Barrow—while the three sisters were built in Japanese yards, but it was the design itself which most impressed. Indeed, Great Britain thought so highly of the Kongo, which so obviously out-classed the Lion-class of the current British program, that the Tiger, laid down soon after the launch of the Kongo, was redesigned to incorporate many of the design features of the Japanese vessel and, as a result, turned out to be one of the most successful vessels of this type ever built. Already, then, the pupil, Japan, was imparting lessons to the teacher, Britain. In the 1920s, this trend was accelerated still further.

    Alarmed at the massive United States building program of 1916 onward, Japan was now ready to counter it. Although at war in 1914 alongside the Allies, Japan was never a very enthusiastic backer of their cause, the military caste in Japan having far more in common with the Prussians, who took over the German destiny during the Great War, than with the democratic nations she was linked to by treaty. Japan therefore made the maximum effort toward the war to qualify it for a major seat at the peace conference but undertook only such military expeditions that actually contributed to her own ambitions and strict self-interest. For example, to besiege and capture Tsingtao, Germany’s main naval base in the Pacific, was a prize that she took quick action to secure. It was not so much the removal of German influence from China, however, as the establishment of Japan’s own power there that had prompted this action, which was completed by November 1914.

    Japan had solemnly promised the Chinese that she fully accepted the integrity of China, and that pledge influenced the Chinese, with whom Germany had been negotiating to return the port intact, knowing in any case that it could not be held against British sea power.

    Once established, however, the Japanese did not yield this prize of war to its rightful ownership, and in 1920, it was still very much a Japanese base.

    More than this, early in 1915, with a strong foothold thus established, with its allies fully committed in Europe, and with America apathetic and uninterested, Japan saw its chance to press on with the next stage of its program, and it had nothing to do with aiding the crusade against Germany. Japan presented the Chinese government with a series of points aimed at giving itself a complete stranglehold over China’s economy; if met in full, these points would give Japan absolute ascendancy and influence over that vast country, to the exclusion of all other foreign influences. The so-called Twenty-one Demands were made in secret, but when the British and American governments got wind of them, they combined to administer a stern warning to Japan to desist. But Japan ignored this and pressed on, and China, with little hope of material assistance at that time, was forced to accept the bulk of them. This gave the western governments a perfect indication of the probable course of Japan’s future diplomacy, but there was little they could do to stop her between 1915 and 1918.

    However, in overplaying her hand, Japan had made potential enemies out of what had hitherto been cordial friends, and as both these nations happened to be premier naval powers, Japan had no option but to speed her own naval defences. This she would have done anyway; the 1916 American program merely acted as both the spur and the necessary excuse for proceeding with her own rebuilding plans.

    The Kongo-class battlecruisers had been followed by a steady stream of Super Dreadnoughts, through the Fuso, Hyuga, and Nagato, all designed and built to outclass the corresponding ships built by the United States over the period 1912-16. Once the American 1916 plans were known, however, the Japanese countered with their 8-8 Plan. This was the immediate construction of eight battleships and eight battlecruisers to be laid down between 1917 and 1927. Again, ship for ship, they were to be the match—or much better—than the American South Dakotas and Lexingtons.

    The first two were completed in 1919 and 1920, and others were being built while more were still in the planning stage. The full program was as follows: eight battleships—Nagato, Mutsu at 33,800 tons; eight 16-inch guns, twenty 5.5-inch guns, four 3.1-inch guns; 26.5 knots; Kaga, Tosa at 39,900 tons; ten 16-inch guns, twenty 5.5-inch guns, four 3.1-inch guns; 29.5 knots; and 13, 14, 15, 16 (names unallocated). Yet a further class of four ships, the Y Hiraga design of 1921, were prepared with the following specifications: 47,500 tons; eight 18-inch guns, sixteen 5.5-inch guns, eight 4.7-inch guns; thirty knots. The eight battlecruiseres were the Amagi, Akagi, Atago, and Takao at 41,217 tons; ten 16-inch guns, sixteen 5.5-inch guns; and thirty knots; the Kii, Owari, 11, and 12 (names unallocated) at 42,600 tons; ten 16-inch guns, sixteen 5.5-inch guns; and thirty knots.

    Thus it can be seen that with the introduction of these monsters—mounting 18-inch guns in the main against the 16-inch guns of the American ships—Japan was not only accepting the challenge but going considerably farther.

    When compared with both these titanic building programs, the Royal Navy’s completion of the battlecruiser Hood in 1920 was the pale termination of that service’s expansion from the war programs. Compared with what had gone before, Hood was a fine addition to the fleet, but compared with the behemoths being built by Japan and the U.S., she had already been left far behind. Hood’s details were 41,200 tons; eight 15-inch guns, sixteen 5.5-inch guns; thirty-two knots.

    Worse than the fact that her 15-inch guns were already being outclassed by existing 16-inch and projected 18-inch weapons was the fact that she was only one ship against the eighteen new American vessels and the sixteen new Japanese ships, without taking into account the ships of those two powers now being completed and joining the fleet from earlier programs.

    Obviously, the Admiralty had to respond to this dual challenge, and respond it did. In 1921, Parliament sanctioned new naval estimates, which included this response. Four new battlecruisers mounting 16-inch guns were to be laid down at once, followed by a program of battleships with 18-inch guns. The details of the four battlecruisers were as follows: 1, 2, 3, 4 (names unconfirmed, although generally thought to have been Inflexible, Indomitable, Indefatigable, and Invincible; an alternative set of speculative names put forward at the time included St. George, St. Andrew, St. David, and St. Patrick) at 48,000 tons; nine 16-inch guns, sixteen 6-inch guns, six 4.7-inch and no fewer than forty 2-pounder pom-poms; and thirty-two knots. Known as the G-3 design, these four ships were approved in August 1921 and ordered on October 26 from the shipyards of Beardmore, John Brown, Fairfield, and Swan Hunter. The four battleships were designated 5, 6, 7, and 8. These four magnificent battleships, the N-3 design, were thought to have a designed tonnage of 48,500 tons and mount nine 18-inch guns, sixteen 6-inch guns, six 4.7-inch guns, and carry forty 2-pounder pom-poms, and have a speed of at least about twenty-three knots.

    It is a thousand pities these eight ships were never built, for each one would have been worth two of older battleships that were eventually retained for World War II; the battlecruisers alone would have had the speed to accompany carrier task groups; but the Treasury was hostile and unsympathetic even without the machinations of Washington.

    When details of these ships and the Japanese giants came to light, the American politicians, who had sanctioned their great program to ensure the fulfillment of the United States’ destiny as leader of democratic impulse,⁹ began to have second thoughts. It was one thing to undertake the construction of the world’s mightiest battle fleet for use as the proverbial big stick with which to bring Great Britain to heel and browbeat the rest of the world into accepting a Pax Americana to replace the long-established Pax Britannica. It was quite another when, after the spending of many millions of dollars on such vessels, that they would then be completely outclassed by both British and Japanese ships of the same type. They would have expended a great deal of taxpayers money and have been no farther forward.

    If Great Britain and Japan could not be outbuilt in a new naval race, then might not an alternative way be found to ensure that America’s naval destiny be fulfilled on the cheap? As Oscar Parkes related, At an average cost of 7 million pounds apiece, these three powers were committed to an expenditure of 252 million pounds on capital ships alone.¹⁰ The United States might be the world’s richest nation, but there was a limit to what public opinion at home would stand, especially as many prominent American citizens were not as convinced as the big navy group that their nation really needed to replace Great Britain as the world’s policeman, even for national prestige.¹¹

    In this new policy, they were aided by several important factors that now began to emerge. The first was the economic bankruptcy of Great Britain, which emerged from the Great War—which it had started as the richest country in the world—with vast debts, mainly to the United States. True, the amount owed Britain by other countries exceeded its debts, but when Britain’s bills went unpaid, it was expected to pay up. Britain owed the United States a large amount of money, and the American authorities were making it clear that it must be repaid despite it having been spent, among other things, in keeping the United States safe from the German fleet, which in 1914 was second only to the British.¹²

    This was not at first thought to have influenced the British politicians. In March 1920, for example, the new First Lord, Walter Long, addressed the house in terms that seemed to indicate that the traditional British policy of control of the sea would be maintained indefinitely. I believe, he stated, it is a fact that the naval policies of all past governments, whichever party they have represented, have at least included the common principle that our Navy should not be inferior in strength to the Navy of any other power, and to this principle the present Government firmly adheres.¹³

    This was not, however, the same as saying that the government of David Lloyd George intended to maintain the old two-power standard, which was thought vital by most of its predecessors. When Sir David Beatty, now First Sea Lord, laid before Parliament the size of the postwar fleet he considered the absolute minimum, it was not well received.

    Beatty’s requirements were for an Atlantic fleet to be composed of a fleet flagship, two battleship squadrons, a battlecruiser squadron, two light cruiser squadrons, four destroyer flotillas, and three submarine flotillas, in addition to a powerful Mediterranean fleet which was once more to be reestablished after a lapse of several years. This did not seem excessive to the Royal Navy in view of the size of the old Grand Fleet, but to the economists, it seemed to be highly unrealistic. A total force of fourteen battleships in full commission in the balmy days of 1920, when not an enemy appeared in sight, was just not tolerated. The numbers were pruned to a total of six capital ships in the Atlantic Fleet and six in the Mediterranean; cruiser and destroyer strengths were cut even more, and the actual number of ships in the destroyer flotillas were reduced from one flotilla leader, one sub leader, and sixteen destroyers to one leader and eight destroyers only. This was as much a tactical consideration as an economic one, since war experience had shown that the larger numbers made handling flotillas in combat unwieldy.

    The realities of economics soon made themselves felt in the navy in other ways. The summary reduction in the strength of the serving personnel from the wartime peak of 407,316 caused great resentment, especially in the clumsy and thoughtless way it was handled. This feature of the so-called Geddes Axe, named after the First Lord of the day, was to be repeated, in the high-handed way in which it was introduced, by a later government when cuts in pay were to become necessary and led to the Invergordon mutiny. Insensitivity when dealing with service matters and personnel had long been a hallmark of the British government, although it should have been expected, by the 1920s and 30s, to have acted with more thought and tact.

    Allied to the economic factor was the strong feeling in the country that the Great War had indeed been the war to end all wars. This feeling was common, and the widespread pacifism that swept the western world was in its way highly commendable. It was particularly strong in Great Britain, and the reasons are not hard to find. For centuries, this country had relied on seapower to protect her. A miniscule standing army had been built up, but this was, in the main, small in comparison with the continental armies, especially those that developed during the nineteenth century. Not only had the British not fought a major land campaign since Waterloo more than a century before, but it had always conducted its campaigns without conscription. Even the Crimea operations had not brought home to the bulk of the population how bloody and all-embracing land warfare had become. Seapower was not only effective, it was economical in the nation’s most valuable asset, manpower.¹⁴

    It was only when this policy was abandoned in the 1914–18 war and a huge conscript army sent to fight in the traditional continental manner that this aspect of modern warfare was brought grimly home to the nation.¹⁵ The ghastly carnage of the Western Front naturally made a deep and long-lasting impression on all who took part, and an equally firm impression on those that had lost relations and friends—in 1920, this meant almost every household in the land. There was a fierce determination that such wholesale slaughter must never be allowed to take place again.

    The logical answer would probably have been to revert once more to the old tried, tested, and reliable defense of the sea, but the natural reaction against the huge casualty lists of France and Flanders automatically embraced all forms of self-defense. The thought that all the suffering and hardship of World War I had been in vain, that naval rivalry with Germany, held by many to have been a contributing factor to the outbreak of the war, had been overcome only to be replaced by similar rivalry on an even vaster scale, was simply not acceptable. Politicians naturally reflected the will of the people and, even if they sincerely believed in the need to maintain Britain’s defenses, found that the arguments for such a policy fell on deaf ears. It was not long therefore before excuses were being made in the House of Commons as to why Great Britain was falling behind in terms of battleship construction, and for the first time but unhappily not for the last, the reasons given were the general, financial, and international situation prevailing.¹⁶

    The United States, although hardly as affected in terms of casualties as Great Britain, shared the revulsion against warfare and further spending on arms, and the public climate changed sufficiently by 1921 that the American House of Representatives halved the naval estimates for that year, effectively putting an end to the immediate realizations of the big navy men. Despite Japanese aloofness from this general trend, it is not surprising that the two western powers began to make diplomatic approaches to each other to terminate the new race before it got fully underway.

    Unfortunately for all these men of good faith and idealistic intents, the old lesson—that unilateral disarmament is futile and, more to the point, highly dangerous—was forgotten in the general euphoria of the time, which led them to believe that perhaps Japan might be persuaded to join them in a reduction in naval forces, providing that they led the way in making concessions. The argument ran that if it were demonstrated to the Japanese by example that they had nothing to fear from the British and American navies, then they would agree to cooperate in wholesale limitations. All well and good, then, but suppose such a power was to renege on any new pact and go all-out for world domination? Then it was argued that an international force based on existing armaments would provide the solution.¹⁷

    Be that as it may, President Warren G. Harding’s call for an arms limitations conference, made in 1921, was warmly welcomed in British circles, and only slightly less enthusiastically by the lesser naval powers, France and Italy. And why shouldn’t it have been, for in any general agreement on naval disarmament, such powers could not help benefiting, in proportion of total strengths, at the expense of the premier naval power, Britain. It was Britain that had the most to lose at this time, and ultimately, it was Britain, or rather the men of her mercantile marine, who had to pay the price.

    When this conference got underway at Washington in November 1921, the British delegation faced the knowledge that they would have to fight hard for a large enough fleet to protect the empire. Worse, they knew that at the same time as they were striving to prevent the whittling away of the navy to a dangerous level at the conference table in Washington, they faced equally fierce opposition from the Treasury at home. It was an unenviable position but one to which Sir David Beatty applied himself with the same devotion and patience as he had his seagoing commands during the war.

    The nature of the Washington Conference was set by the opening speech of the American president. Instead of a carefully debated conference to discuss the best ways and means of limiting naval armaments, the Americans produced, out of the hat, a plan—a diktat, almost—aimed at ensuring that America achieved at least parity with Great Britain, thus leapfrogging herself to the top of the naval strength league. In one respect, Harding knew that his audacious outline was almost certain of ultimate acceptance, for the British government, in flat contradiction of their pious utterances in 1919, had already made it fairly obvious that they would not, after all, object to such a parity.¹⁸

    What came as a complete surprise to the assembled delegates—and as alluring as it was unexpected—was the proposal that all the battleships and battlecruisers then in various stages of construction should be broken up on the slips forthwith and that no new construction of capital ships should take place for at least ten years. The lure was in the tonnage figures put forward.

    Here it was seen that the United States was being virtuous and setting a wholesome lead for the other powers to follow, for she would scrap some 845,000 tons of new capital ships against 583,000 tons for Great Britain and 449,000 tons for Japan. These figures later included the tonnages for completed ships also to be dismantled at the same time. Of course, these tonnages did not reveal that, in making this concession, America was at this time well aware that the ships she was building were already far outclassed by those building in Japan and Britain, as we have seen.

    Though these proposals went far, there was still more. On completion of the scrapping program, the Royal Navy would still be left with a slight tonnage margin of superiority:

    But any misplaced relief that the British representatives might have felt at even this small concession to her commitments was quickly eradicated as the American proposal went on to suggest that these figures were only temporary and that the final figures, to be achieved within the ten year period, were as follows:

    It was clear from these figures on whom the final sacrifice was to be placed, for whereas the American and Japanese allocations remained much the same, still further reductions were to be made by Great Britain over this period. The final ratios for all the main powers would then come out as:

    If the nature of the fight before the British delegation was fairly obvious to them from the start, the position on the home front was equally precarious, as they well knew. Although in 1919 David Lloyd George had told the Americans that Britain would spend her last guinea¹⁹ to ensure that the British fleet remained superior to the American, things were now very different. Leaving Admiral Chatfield and his staff to do their best in the face of the American proposals, Beatty hurried back to London, behavior which one historian has called odd, coming, as it did, in the face of such a threat across the conference table.

    In the circumstances, there is little doubt that Beatty took the right course. Although big issues were at stake in Washington, ultimately it was the prime minister and the British government that would have to make the decisions, and knowing the strength of the forces at work in Whitehall to pare the armed forces to the bone, Beatty wanted to be at the center of affairs.²⁰ As Beatty recorded, If it continues, we shall have no navy at all, Washington Conference or not!²¹

    Back at Washington, the caving in of the other nations to the American proposals was complete. None pretended to like it. Japan felt it a national insult to have her rapidly expanding navy frozen at 60 percent of its two potential enemies, and she gave way with bad grace. She was shrewd enough, however, to use her building program as a bargaining chip to give her mandates over the strategic islands of the Bonins, Kurile, Formosa, and the Pescadores, which she undertook, no doubt with tongue in cheek, not to fortify. Moreover, the Americans were forbidden to fortify either Guam or Manila, which meant that the closest fleet base available for their battle fleet to work against Japan remained at distant Hawaii. This agreement virtually gave the Japanese complete control of the Western Pacific, which was what she desired in order to pursue her forward policy with regard to China.

    If Japan was outwardly upset at, but ultimately accepted, the ratios proposed, then France was equally insulted. For more than two centuries, it had been the main rival to Britain at sea, and up until the last decades of the nineteenth century, its fleet had maintained second place. It is true that this position was usurped first by Germany and then the United States during the early years of the twentieth century, but France still had a strong tradition as a major, albeit a seldom victorious, sea power. Her rank was now equal to that of Italy, a nation with no large worldwide empire to defend. Moreover, France had at this period the largest and best-equipped army in the world, and the agreed ratios hurt her pride. She no doubt found solace in the fact that the Washington Conference failed to agree on similar limitations for lesser warships, especially submarines, which Britain had wished to ban completely.²²

    But as another very perceptive historian has noted, none of these nations really suffered at Washington, despite their protests:

    Britain lost on the deal. By accepting the main American ratios, she surrendered her long-standing sea supremacy among the nations of the world, she abandoned her ancient freedom to protect in the way she thought best her vital maritime communications, and she agreed to forgo her previous commanding lead over the Japanese.²³

    He added: For the sake of a false semblance of naval equality with America, the British government gave away any chance of equality in the Far East, where it mattered a great deal.²⁴ Whereas the judgment of history would seem to uphold this opinion, another historian reaches quite different conclusions. The loss of this supremacy in terms of battleships was regarded as

    a considerable achievement. It failed to limit competition in submarines or military aircraft, both of which were potentially more important weapons than battleships, but this is more apparent with hindsight than it was in 1922; at that time battle fleets were generally regarded as the backbone of any navy, and it was reasonable to assume that the vicious, rising spiral of suspicion, response and counter-response had been cuts.²⁵

    It was this reasoning that provided the fuel to the third weapon in the pacifists’ armory: The battleship was on the way out!²⁶ This third front against the Admiralty had been opened almost as soon as the war was over and reached the general public by way of a furious debate in the correspondence columns of the Times through the so-called battleship-versus-bomber controversy. Moreover, it was a feeling that, combined with the war-weariness of the nation, British governments were eager to back. That the battleship in 1945 was finally recognized as being finished by the development of air weapons should not cloud the issue of the decisions made in the 1920s. Informed naval opinion at this period was completely in agreement around the world that the battleship was still the main weapon of naval power. The Admiralty has been pilloried time and time again for the stand it took in the interwar years on this issue and is generally depicted as being run by ultra-conservative men with closed minds. Such a stance is wholly unacceptable but is made with distressing frequency. It cannot accord with the facts.

    No responsible Board of Admiralty would press for the retention of the battleship in the face of tightening budgets had they not been convinced that it was a necessary weapon. Had it been demonstrably proven beyond doubt that the capital ship was outclassed and outmatched by aircraft in 1920 or by any other weapon, then surely such a weapon would have been adopted as quickly as possible by every nation aspiring to major status. In fact, the reverse was the case. It was not just Great Britain, with her long history of the battle fleet concept as defined by American admiral and naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan, who believed after comprehensive studies that the battleship remained supreme at this time, but the United States, Japan, and—when it again returned to the field—Germany also. Nor were the lesser powers—who were always outclassed and outnumbered in battleships and on whom restrictions would have placed a much lighter burden—in any less doubt that the battleship was still supreme at sea. The fact that all these powers came to the same conclusions at the same time would appear to negate the argument that the retention of the battleship was little more than an Anglo-Mahan confidence trick, which eventually rebounded on its own innocent perpetrators.²⁷

    Right at the start of this long, drawn-out, and unhappy period of paper arguments, the Admiralty had made its position clear. After acknowledging the growing criticism of the keeping in commission a large number of capital ships, they stated: The naval staff has examined this question with extreme care and as a result we profoundly dissent from these views. In our opinion the capital ship remains the unit on which sea-power is built up.²⁸

    The careful examination and the results that followed were not accepted by their critics however, and the press had a field day as the battleship was naturally denounced by the bomber enthusiasts, the pacifists, and—more alarmingly to the sincere men who were trying to give the empire the best defense they could—by many ex-naval men as well. Among the most vociferous of these were Adm. Percy Scott and Adm. John Fisher in England, both of whom were regarded as epitomizing the establishment of the big gun and the Dreadnought-class battleship, which both now regarded as finished. In the United States, this point of view was taken up by Adm. William Sims, an old friend of Scott’s who had done as much for the efficiency of American naval gunfire as had Scott for his own service. That such men were combined in their disdain for the battleship in the 1920s provided powerful ammunition for the advocates of the heavy bomber who were stridently calling for the complete abolition of navies.

    One concession wrung by Chatfield at Washington was that because other powers had 16-inch gun vessels completed, Britain was allowed to construct immediately two such ships to maintain the balance since her existing 15-inch-gunned ships were outclassed. These two vessels became the battleships Nelson and Rodney, laid down in 1922 and completed in 1927. Because the limit on displacement agreed to at Washington was 35,000 tons, these ships were far less powerful than the four battlecruisers of the original British postwar program. This was acknowledged in the fleet itself where the naturally perceptive sailors dubbed them the Cherry Tree class, because they were cut down by Washington! Their final details were 33,900 tons; nine 16-inch, twelve 6-inch, six 4.7-inch guns; and twenty-three knots.

    As can be seen by comparison, these two vessels, in order to conform to the new limitations, sacrificed speed for armor in the old manner, and the unusual disposition of their main armament, with three triple turrets forward, was necessitated by the need to concentrate what armor protection they were allowed over the most vital sections of the hull. Although criticized for this, they did present the best compromise possible, and in foreign circles, especially America, their appearance was considered a disturbing factor because they appeared to outclass the most modern American ships.

    In the then-current fighting strength table, drawn up by the U.S. Navy according to a complicated formula that involved both the life and hitting power of battleships, these two vessels rated as follows in comparison with the most recent ships in service at that time:

    It is interesting also to notice the high position of the Hood. Although designed as a battlecruiser rather than a battleship, her great displacement had allowed for extra armor to be worked in and had not affected her speed. She carried the same main armament as the Queen Elizabeth- and Royal Sovereign-class battleships as well. Between the wars, she was regarded as Queen of the Fleet and the Mighty ’ood in the Royal Navy and regarded with awe elsewhere. It was after her startling and sudden demise that opinion swung around squarely against her.

    Although it was frequently stated that she was a post-Jutland ship and thus embodied in her great hull all the lessons learned from the tragic destruction of the three British battlecruisers at that battle, she was still suspect. Even in 1930, there were doubts about her, which obviously were still unknown to the compilers of the American table of strengths. Adm. Sir Frederick Dreyer, Director of the Admiralty Gunnery Division, stated: It had become quite obvious to all of us that the improved type of 15-inch armour-piercing shell with which we had equipped the Grand Fleet in 1918 could easily penetrate and detonate in the Hood’s main magazines.²⁹ This was shown to be prophetic some ten years later, after nothing was done to rectify this weakness.

    However much the appearance of the Nelson and Rodney in the Royal Navy’s battle line might be welcomed by the Admiralty (five Iron Duke-class ships and the battlecruiser Tiger were soon afterwards scrapped in compensation), their arrival, or rather their very conception, aroused the battleship’s critics to a crescendo of anger. R.Adm. Stephen Hall was one of those who expressed the opinion of the bomber-rather-than-battleship lobby in a letter to the Times in 1922, when the ships were announced: By the time they [Nelson and Rodney] are completed, the inevitable development of air warfare will have left them entirely out of the picture.³⁰

    Others pointed to the dramatic demonstration of the bomber given in July 1921 by the American aviator Billy Mitchell, which seemed to prove their point beyond dispute. Both Mitchell in America and Maj. Gen. Sir Hugh Trenchard, at this time Chief of the Air Staff of newly independent Royal Air Force, represented the viewpoints of the air superiority faction. Both were convinced that not only was air power the most important factor in any future conflict between major powers, but that air power could do the jobs then and previously done by both armies and navies.³¹ Both were extremely vocal in this extremist point of view, and the prevailing climate of the time, with air power being hailed as something new and exciting by the popular press against the old sterile (i.e., less newsworthy) forms of defense, ensured that their arguments, viewpoints, and wild statements received the maximum publicity.

    Mitchell was particularly eager to force home his opinions, for America, unlike Britain, had not adopted a separate air force

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