The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (68 page)

If two or three years earlier it had been possible to make an alliance with Soviet Russia, this might have been implemented by a British battle squadron joined to the Russian Fleet and based on Kronstadt. I commended this to my circle of friends at the time. Whether such an arrangement was ever within the bounds of action cannot be known. It was certainly one way of restraining Germany; but there were also easier methods which were not taken. Now in the autumn of 1939, Russia was an adverse neutral, balancing between antagonism and actual war. Sweden had several suitable harbours on which a British Fleet could be based. But Sweden could not be expected to expose herself to invasion by Germany. Without the command of the Baltic, we could not ask for a Swedish harbour. Without a Swedish harbour we could not have the command of the Baltic. Here was a deadlock in strategic thought. Was it possible to break it? It is always right to probe. During the war, as will be seen, I forced long staff studies of various operations, as the result of which I was usually convinced that they were better left alone, or else that they could not be fitted in with the general conduct of the struggle. Of these the first was the Baltic domination.

* * * * *

On the fourth day after I reached the Admiralty, I asked that a plan for forcing a passage into the Baltic should be prepared by the Naval Staff. The Plans Division replied quickly that Italy and Japan must be neutral; that the threat of air attack appeared prohibitive; but that apart from this the operation justified detailed planning and should, if judged practicable, be carried out in March, 1940, or earlier. Meanwhile, I had long talks with the Director of Naval Construction, Sir Stanley Goodall, one of my friends from 1911/12, who was immediately captivated by the idea. I named the plan “Catherine,” after Catherine the Great, because Russia lay in the background of my thought. On September 12 I was able to write a detailed minute to the authorities concerned.
¹

Admiral Pound replied on the twentieth that success would depend on Russia not joining Germany and on the assurance of co-operation by Norway and Sweden; and that we must be able to win the war against any probable combination of Powers without counting upon whatever force was sent into the Baltic. He was all for the exploration. On September 21, he agreed that Admiral of the Fleet the Earl of Cork and Orrery, an officer of the highest attainments and distinction, should come to work at the Admiralty, with quarters and a nucleus staff, and all information necessary for exploring and planning the Baltic offensive project. There was an apt precedent for this in the previous war, when I had brought back the famous Admiral “Tug” Wilson to the Admiralty for special duties of this kind with the full agreement of Lord Fisher; and there are several instances in this war where, in an easy and friendly manner, large issues of this kind were tested without any resentment being felt by the Chiefs of Staff concerned.

Both Lord Cork’s ideas and mine rested upon the construction of capital ships specially adapted to withstand air and torpedo attack. As is seen from the minute in the Appendix, I wished to convert two or three ships of the
Royal Sovereign
class for action inshore or in narrow waters by giving them super-bulges against torpedoes and strong armour-plated decks against air bombs. For this I was prepared to sacrifice one or even two turrets and seven or eight knots’ speed. Quite apart from the Baltic, this would give us facilities for offensive action, both off the enemy’s North Sea coast, and even more in the Mediterranean. Nothing could be ready before the late spring of 1940, even if the earliest estimates of the naval constructors and the dockyards were realised. On this basis, therefore, we proceeded.

On the twenty-sixth, Lord Cork presented his preliminary appreciation, based, of course, on a purely military study of the problem. He considered the operation, which he would, of course, have commanded, perfectly feasible but hazardous. He asked for a margin of at least thirty per cent over the German Fleet on account of expected losses in the passage. If we were to act in 1940, the assembly of the Fleet and all necessary training must be complete by the middle of February. Time did not, therefore, permit the deck-armouring and side-blistering of the
Royal Sovereigns,
on which I counted. Here was another deadlock. Still, if these kinds of things go working on, one may get into position – maybe a year later – to act. But in war, as in life, all other things are moving too. If one can plan calmly with a year or two in hand, better solutions are open.

I had strong support in all this from the Deputy Chief of Staff, Admiral Tom Phillips (who perished in the
Prince of Wales
at the end of 1941 near Singapore); and from Admiral Fraser, the Controller and Third Sea Lord. He advised the addition to the assault fleet of the four fast merchant ships of the Glen Line, which were to play their part in other events.

* * * * *

One of my first duties at the Admiralty was to examine the existing programmes of new construction and war expansion which had come into force on the outbreak.

At any given moment there are at least four successive annual programmes running at the Admiralty. In 1936 and 1937, five new battleships had been laid down which would come into service in 1940 and 1941. Four more battleships had been authorised by Parliament in 1938 and 1939, which could not be finished for five or six years from the date of order. Nineteen cruisers were in various stages of construction. The constructive genius and commanding reputation of the Royal Navy in design had been distorted and hampered by the treaty restrictions for twenty years. All our cruisers were the result of trying to conform to treaty limitations and “gentleman’s agreements.” In peace-time vessels had thus been built to keep up the strength of the Navy from year to year amid political difficulties. In war-time a definite tactical object must inspire all construction. I greatly desired to build a few 14,000-ton cruisers carrying 9.2-inch guns, with good armour against eight-inch projectiles, wide radius of action, and superior speed to any existing
Deutschland
or other German cruiser. Hitherto the treaty restrictions had prevented such a policy. Now that we were free from them, the hard priorities of war interposed an equally decisive veto on such long-term plans.

Destroyers were our most urgent need, and also our worst feature. None had been included in the 1938 programme, but sixteen had been ordered in 1939. In all, thirty-two of these indispensable craft were in the yards, and only nine could be delivered before the end of 1940. The irresistible tendency to make each successive flotilla an improvement upon the last had lengthened the time of building to nearer three than two years. Naturally, the Navy liked to have vessels capable of riding out the Atlantic swell and large enough to carry all the modern improvements in gunnery and especially anti-aircraft defence. It is evident that along this line of solid argument a point is soon reached where one is no longer building a destroyer but a small cruiser. The displacement approaches or even exceeds two thousand tons, and a crew of more than two hundred sail the seas in these unarmoured ships, themselves an easy prey to any regular cruiser. The destroyer is the chief weapon against the U-boat, but as it grows ever larger it becomes itself a worth-while target. The line is passed where the hunter becomes the hunted. We could not have too many destroyers, but their perpetual improvement and growth imposed severe limitation on the numbers the yards could build, and deadly delay in completion.

On the other hand, there are seldom less than two thousand British merchant ships at sea, and the sailings in and out of our home ports amounted each week to several hundreds of ocean-going vessels and several thousands of coastwise traders. To bring the convoy system into play, to patrol the Narrow Seas, to guard the hundreds of ports of the British Isles, to serve our bases all over the world, to protect the minesweepers in their ceaseless task, all required an immense multiplication of small armed vessels. Numbers and speed of construction were the dominating conditions.

It was my duty to readjust our programmes to the need of the hour and to enforce the largest possible expansion of anti-U-boat vessels. For this purpose two principles were laid down. First, the long-term programme should be either stopped or severely delayed, thus concentrating labour and materials upon what we could get in the first year or year and a half. Secondly, new types of anti-submarine craft must be devised which were good enough for work on the approaches to the island, thus setting free our larger destroyers for more distant duties.

On all these questions I addressed a series of minutes to my naval colleagues:

Having regard to the U-boat menace, which must be expected to renew itself on a much larger scale towards the end of
1940, the type of destroyer to be constructed must aim at numbers and celerity of construction rather than size and power. It ought to be possible to design destroyers which can be completed in under a year, in which case fifty at least should be begun forthwith. I am well aware of the need of a proportion of flotilla leaders and large destroyers capable of ocean service, but the arrival in our fleets of fifty destroyers of the medium emergency type I am contemplating would liberate all larger vessels for ocean work and for combat.

The usual conflict between long-term and short-term policy rises to intensity in war. I prescribed that all work likely to compete with essential construction should be stopped on large vessels which could not come into service before the end of 1940, and that the multiplication of our anti-submarine fleets must be effected by types capable of being built within twelve months, or, if possible, eight. For the first type we revived the name corvette. Orders for fifty-eight of these had been placed shortly before the outbreak of war, but none were yet laid down. Later and improved vessels of a similar type, ordered in 1940, were called frigates. Besides this, a great number of small craft of many kinds, particularly trawlers, had to be converted with the utmost dispatch and fitted with guns, depth-charges, and Asdics; motor launches of new Admiralty design were also required in large numbers for coastal work. Orders were placed to the limit of our shipbuilding resources, including those of Canada. Even so we did not achieve all that we hoped, and delays arose which were inevitable under the prevailing conditions and which caused the deliveries from the shipyards to fall considerably short of our expectations.

* * * * *

Eventually my view about Baltic strategy and battleship reconstruction prevailed in the protracted discussions. The designs were made and the orders were given. However, one reason after another was advanced, some of them well-founded, for not putting the work in hand. The
Royal Sovereigns,
it was said, might be needed for convoy in case the German pocket battleships or eight-inch-gun cruisers broke loose. It was represented that the scheme involved unacceptable interference with other vital work, and a plausible case could be shown for alternative priorities for our labour and armour. I deeply regretted that I was never able to achieve my conception of a squadron of very heavily deck-armoured ships of no more than fifteen knots, bristling with anti-aircraft guns and capable of withstanding to a degree not enjoyed by any other vessel afloat both air and under-water attack. When in 1941 and 1942, the defence and succouring of Malta became so vital, when we had every need to bombard Italian ports and, above all, Tripoli, others felt the need as much as I. It was then too late.

Throughout the war the
Royal Sovereigns
remained an expense and an anxiety. They had none of them been rebuilt like their sisters the
Queen Elizabeths,
and when, as will be seen in due course, the possibility of bringing them into action against the Japanese Fleet which entered the Indian Ocean in April, 1942, presented itself, the only thought of the Admiral on the spot, of Admiral Pound and the Minister of Defence, was to put as many thousands of miles as possible between them and the enemy in the shortest possible time.

* * * * *

One of the first steps I took on taking charge of the Admiralty and becoming a member of the War Cabinet was to form a statistical department of my own. For this purpose I relied on Professor Lindemann, my friend and confidant of so many years. Together we had formed our views and estimates about the whole story. I now installed him at the Admiralty with half a dozen statisticians and economists whom we could trust to pay no attention to anything but realities. This group of capable men, with access to all official information, was able, under Lindemann’s guidance, to present me continually with tables and diagrams, illustrating the whole war so far as it came within our knowledge. They examined and analysed with relentless pertinacity all the departmental papers which were circulated to the War Cabinet, and also pursued all the inquiries which I wished to make myself.

At this time there was no general governmental statistical organisation. Each department presented its tale on its own figures and data. The Air Ministry counted one way, the War Office another. The Ministry of Supply and the Board of Trade, though meaning the same thing, talked different dialects. This led sometimes to misunderstandings and waste of time when some point or other came to a crunch in the Cabinet. I had, however, from the beginning my own sure, steady source of information, every part of which was integrally related to all the rest. Although at first this covered only a portion of the field, it was most helpful to me in forming a just and comprehensible view of the innumerable facts and figures which flowed out upon us.