'The Best Laid Plans': The Development of British Battle-Fleet Tactics, 1919-1942

Author(s): Jon Tetsuro Sumida

Source: The International History Review, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Nov., 1992), pp. 681-700
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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JON TETSURO SUMIDA

'The Best Laid Plans': The Development of

British Battle-Fleet Tactics, 19 19- 1942

7 December 1941 at Pearl Harbor, Japanese carrier aircraft

sank five out of eight US battleships. Within days, Japanese
shore-based planes destroyed two British capital ships off
Malaya and, in April 1942, Japanese carrier aircraft inflicted heavy
losses on British surface units in the Indian Ocean. In May and June
1942, the course of the Pacific war was reversed by the battles of the
Coral Sea and Midway in which the opposing Japanese and American
main combatants were aircraft carriers. The successes of naval air

power during the first six months of hostilities in the Far East seemed

to demonstrate that the Royal Navy's pre-1939 concentration on

battle-fleet tactics was misplaced. Battleships appeared not only

patently obsolete, but the devastating form of the revelation made a

mockery of the elaborate inter- war preparations for surface action that
had been a central feature of tactical training in the navies of Japan and

the United States but especially that of Great Britain, whose naval
aviation capacity was far less developed than that of the other two
major naval powers.
Most prominent observers have attributed the heavy commitment
of the Royal Navy to the surface battle fleet during the 1920s and
1930s to an irrational preoccupation with the past. Stephen Roskill
notes that the First World War battle of Jutland 'dominated British
tactical thought for about twenty years' and that in the 1920s, in
I am indebted to David Brown, David Rosenberg, Charles Fairbanks, Paul Kennedy, Michael
Howard, and Michael Craig Waller for their instructive comments on the draft of this article,
which was presented at the Naval History Symposium of the United States Naval Academy at
Annapolis in September 1991. Special thanks are due to Admiral Sir Frank Twiss, an officer with
extensive gunnery experience before the Second World War (battleships Nelson, Rodney, Revenge,
and Malaya), who wrote a number of highly informative letters to the author over the course of
the last decade and commented at length on this article in draft. And last, I must acknowledge
the assistance of the late Stephen Roskill, gunnery officer of Warspite during her famous longrange firing of 1938 and renowned naval historian who, in correspondence and conversations
long ago, provided me with a start to his enquiries into the tactical and technical history of the
Royal Navy between the World Wars.

The International History Review, xiv, 4, November 1992, pp. 661-880

CN ISSN 0707-5332 The International History Review

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682 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

particular, administrative traditions and ceremonial

additional contributors to a state of 'tactical sterility

Reynolds argues that between 19 19 and 1939 'conservativ

admirals . . . returned to the old prewar anti-intellectualism,

war colleges and fleet maneuvers looking to another

virtually ignoring the promise of the airplane'.2 Arthur

writes of 'the Jutland syndrome' and quotes Admiral

Casper John's observation that during the inter-war

obsession with Jutland ran through the Navy as a deade

And most recently, Correlli Barnett charges that 'Jutland

future Jutland fought against the Japanese fleet in Far Easte

befogged the Royal Navy's thinking over the entire

maritime warfare in the years before the Second World W

These views have been qualified, if not contradicted. Ge

argues that the aircraft carrier was not capable of re

battleship during the 1920s and he and Norman Friedman

that it had an important role in the British battle fleet
outbreak of war.5 Wayne P. Hughes observes that 'an ex
reading of naval operations off the northern European coa

Mediterranean [conducted by the Royal Navy during

World War] leads not to the conclusion that the ascen
power should have been obvious but to an appreciation o
the competition between gun and airplane really was
Marder had second thoughts about the fairness of cri
admiralty for maintaining a large force of battleship
notwithstanding, however, pre-war Royal Navy tactical
gone largely unstudied. The widely held view that it

influenced by the past, and thus faulty, continues to dra

from what are believed to be the obvious lessons of the first six
months of the war in the Pacific.

The primary sources for a viable account of Royal Navy tactical

1 Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy between the Wars (London, 1968-76), i. 534-5.
2 Wayne P. Hughes, Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (Annapolis, 1986), pp. 85-6.
3 Arthur J. Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran: Studies of the Royal Navy in War and Peace 1915-

1940 (London, 1974), pp. 48-9.

4 Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (New

York, 1991), p. 44.

5 Geoffrey Till, 'Airpower and the Battleship in the 1920s', in Technical Change and British Naval

Policy 1860-1939, ed. Bryan Ranft (New York, 1977), pp. 108-22 and Air Power and the Royal
Navy 1914-1945: A Historical Survey (London, 1979); and Norman Friedman, British Carrier
Aviation: The Evolution of the Ships and Their Aircraft (Annapolis, 1988).

6 Wayne P. Hughes, Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice (Annapolis, 1986), pp. 85-6.
7 Arthur J. Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy
(Oxford, 1981-90), i. 324.

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 683

development between the world wars, though incomplete, are none

the less considerable. Although nearly all the detailed papers related t
naval tactical exercises have been lost,1 the more or less annual issues

of Progress in Tactics for the period from 1930 to 1939, fragments o

their precursors in the late 1920s, and a complete run of the annua
series Progress in Naval Gunnery from 1921 to 1938, have survived. The

preservation, moreover, of the technical handbooks for the mai

armament fire-control equipment of the Royal Navy of the period,

and the testimony in private correspondence and interviews of leadin
Royal Navy gunnery officers of the 1930s, make it possible to outlin
the development of surface gunnery capability upon which muc

tactical improvement was based. The analysis of this material in

combination with other published work indicates that the story of

British tactical planning for battle-fleet action during the inter-wa
period is more complicated and less encumbered by the memory of
Jutland than has previously been supposed.

The battle of Jutland, fought between the British Grand Fleet and th

German High Seas Fleet in the North Sea in May 1916, has bee
called 'the culminating surface action of the Age of Steam'.2 The

appellation is, however, misleading if applied to battle-fleet tactics.

While Jutland was the greatest encounter between big-gun capital
ships in history, it took place at a time when heavy-calibre gunnery,

inter-ship communications, and command-and-control technique

were not yet highly developed. In 1916, the Royal Navy's range

finders were deficient in base length and optical design; target data
plotting machinery was slow and prone to error; the several gunnery
computers in service were, for the most part, either crudely simple,

defective, or incomplete; director gun-laying lacked gyroscopi

stabilization and other refinements; radio for gunnery purposes wa

non-existent; and the machinery and organization required to keep

track of the movement of both detached friendly forces and th

enemy was primitive.3

These mechanical weaknesses, attributable largely to defective

l Roskill, Naval Policy, i. 531-6.

2 Sea Power: A Naval History, ed. E. B. Potter and C. Nimitz (Englewood Cliffs, i960), p. 451.
3 For the official accounts of Royal Navy gunnery equipment in the First World War, see Grea
Britain, Admiralty, Technical History Section, Fire Control in HM Ships, Technical History an
Index, vol. 23, Dec. 19 19 and Naval Staff, Gunnery Division, Grand Fleet Gunnery and Torped
Memoranda on Naval Actions, 1Q14-1918, April 1922, both in the Naval Library [Ministry o
Defence]; and Gunnery Branch, Reports of the Grand Fleet Dreyer Table Committee, igi8-igig, Sept.

1 9 19, ADM[iralty Records] 186/241 [Public Record Office].

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684 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

prewar tactical assessments, sharply limited surface fleet ta

shortcomings in fire-control gear meant that effective sh
long-range when courses were sharply converging or divergi
a time after alterations of course, was practically impossib
placed a premium on the maintenance of a straight course
the enemy.1 The lack of radio for gunnery purposes preclu
exact co-ordination of salvos, essential if two or more ship

fire on a single target without loss of accuracy, because of the d

of identifying the splashes made by shells fired simultaneou

different ships.2 Without modifications to the director to c
for the phenomenon known as 'cross-roll' ('cross-levelling'
guns could not be laid accurately when pointed to fire acros
or stern. And fleet commanders, in the absence of some m
rapidly recording, integrating, and assessing information ab
own fleet and the enemy's movements, could not respond in

to rapidly changing tactical situations.

At Jutland, much of the firing took place at ranges of 10,00

or more, too great to be measured accurately by the ninerange-finders standard in most British ships; in light so p
range-taking with the existing optical system was virtually i

and at speeds causing heavy vibration that interfered

operation of the range-finders. Between 1917 and 1923,

fleet was completely re-equipped with longer base instrume

improved optics and mountings that damped ship vibration,

better equipment was installed in the two Washington

battleships Nelson and Rodney, and in the older ships as th

refitted. Accuracy at long ranges, in dim light, and in spit
vibration, was improved and, equally important, the rapidi

which ranges could be taken and fed to the plottin

substantially increased.4 In spite of these changes, how

performance of the new British optical range-finders unde

1 Arthur Hungerford Pollen, 'Memoranda and Instructions Introductory to the Us

Tactical Instrument', May 1909, in The Pollen Papers: The Privately Circulated Prin
Arthur Hungerford Pollen, igoi-igi6, ed. Jon Tetsuro Sumida (London, 1984), pp. 23

2 Great Britain, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Concentration of Fire Experiment: Extracts

of the Firing at HMS 'Landrail', carried out at Portland, 4th October iqo6, 1906, N
Pamphlet P. 1015.

3 Jon Tetsuro Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy: Finance, Technology, and British

(Boston, 1989), p. 322, n. 72.

4 Barr and Stroud, Ltd., The Principles of Rangefinding [Pamphlet 42] (Anniesland

n.d.); Great Britain, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Handbook for Naval Range-

Mountings: Book I (Nov. 192 1), Naval Library; Michael Moss and Iain Russell, Rang
The First Hundred Years of Barr & Stroud (Edinburgh, 1988), pp. 95, 109-10; an
Defence of Naval Supremacy, p. 198.

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 685

conditions remained unreliable and, as a consequence, accurate naval

gunfire continued to depend heavily on spotting shell splashes.1
Although inclinometers, introduced generally in the late 1920s,
provided a mechanical means of measuring the course of a target, and
supplementing estimates produced from the range- and bearing-plots,2

they were generally distrusted.3 Cross-levelling gear developed

between 1923 and 1928 proved to be less than satisfactory, and

adequate equipment does not appear to have been issued until the late
1930s.4 Gyro-stabilized director gun-laying for both elevation and
train, which improved the accuracy of laying in general and allowed
firing even when the target could not be seen (blind or indirect fire),
was also not available until the very late 1930s.5 And until radar was
introduced in the Second World War, the British were unaware that

their naval guns (for reasons that are still not clear), fired short of the
distance fire-control officers - relying on official range tables made up

from results obtained on land - were led to expect.6

The prototype of a greatly improved plotting and calculating

l For the inaccuracy of post-1918 British naval range-finders, see [Great Britain, Admiralty,
Gunnery Branch], Progress in] N[aval] G[unnery], 1938, April 1938, p. 26, ADM 186/349 and
Admiral Sir Frank Twiss to author, 29 March 1983 and 4 Feb. 1990. Twiss noted tnat the spread
of the range-finders in the battleship Nelson, in which he was a gunnery lieutenant, one of the

most up-to-date capital units of the Royal Navy between the wars, was from 1,000 to 1,200
yards (five per cent error at the expected battle ranges of 20,000 yards plus) and that similar
problems plagued the eight-inch gun cruisers.
2 Great Britain, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Progress in Gunnery Materiel, 1922 and 1923, 1923, p.

14, ADM 186/259 and PNG, 1926, March 1927, p. 13, ADM 186/271; Handbook for Naval
Rangefinders and Inclinometers: II: Instruments in Capital Ships and Cruisers, 1943, Naval Library; and

Twiss to author, 29 March 1983.

3 Twiss to author andj. Campbell, Naval Weapons of World War Two (Annapolis, 1985), p. 11.
4 For the cross-levelling problem, see Great Britain, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Progress in
Gunnery Materiel, 1920, July 1920, pp. 17-19, ADM 186/244. For the shortcomings of early cross-

levelling equipment, see PNG, 1936, June 1936, pp. 87-91, ADM 186/338. For the trial of
improved cross-levelling gear as late as 1936, see PNG, 1937, May 1937, p. 97, ADM 186/343.
For the general employment of cross-levelling equipment during the Second World War, see
Great Britain, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Director Handbook: Cross Levelling Gear for Low Angle

Fire, 7 Nov. 1940 and The Gunnery Pocket Book, 1945, Naval Library. For the shortcomings of
even the Second World War equipment, see Campbell, Naval Weapons, p. 1 1.
5 For the experiments in indirect fife, see PNG, 1921, March 1922, p. 8, ADM 186/257; PNG,
1922, April 1923, p. 3, ADM 186/258; PNG, 1924, April 1925, p. 10, ADM 186/263; and PNG,
1925, April 1926, pp. 9, 17, ADM 186/270. For the difficulties of developing an improved gyrocompass for indirect fire, see Hugh Clausen, 'Invention and the Navy: The Progress from Ideas
to Ironmongery', a paper read at the Royal Society of Arts to the Institute of Patentees and
Inventors, 30 Jan. 1970, p. 8, Pollen Papers, ed. Sumida. For the development of a gyro-compass
capable of allowing accurate firing for angle of bearing by 1937, see PNG, 1937, May 1937, p. 98,
ADM 186/343. Fr tne unreliability of gyro-compasses in action, however, see Great Britain,
Admiralty, Naval Staff, Training and Staff Duties Division, The River Plate Battle,' 13 December
1939, 1940, pp. 38-9, Naval Library.
6 Committee Report [on the Accuracy ot Naval GunsJ, reb. 1944, Oliver Papers, CJLVR 2/7
[Archive Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge].

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686 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

system, the Admiralty Fire Control Table Mark I [AFCT M

completed in 1925. It was capable in theory of working out
rapidity a highly accurate firing solution, even when the ta
firing-ships were converging or diverging at sharp angles an
speed.1 Its cost, however, was prodigious: thirty-five time
for inflation) as much as the late-model Dreyer Tables that h
during the First World War, and it was too large to be fitte
the space allotted to fire-control instruments in any existi
ship.2 This was probably critical, because enough extra spac
only be obtained in the older ships through major rebuildi
impossible in the late 1920s and 1930s given the shortage o
Thus, although the inadequacy of the Dreyer Tables was re

in the fleet,3 the AFCT Mk. I was mounted only in Ne

Rodney, which were completed in 1927, where its capabilit

have been obscured for a time by persistent difficulties wit
battleships' sixteen-inch guns, the inaccuracy of range-finde

the unrealistically easy conditions chosen for gunnery practice.4

The limitations to British naval gunnery equipment t

continued to restrict the tactical development of the British bat

during the 1920s. Although the record of British tactical exe

planning is fragmentary, there can be little doubt that throu
decade, battle-fleet formation and procedures closely resemb

of the First World War. In 1924, for example, carriers

reconnaissance flights and limited strike capacity - thus ta

1 Great Britain, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Reports of the Grand Fleet Dreyer Table
igi8-igig, Sept. 1919, ADM 186/241 and Handbook for Admiralty Fire Control Table

1927, ADM 186/273-4; Twiss, 3-page MS memo on the AFCT Mk. I to autho

1983; and Sumida, In Defence of Naval Supremacy, pp. 313-16.

2 Director of Naval Ordnance minute, 'New Fire Control System', 1922, ADM 1/86
Control Table, New Design', 1925-6, in Monthly Record of Important Questions Deal
Director of Naval Ordnance, July ig2j to June ig26, Naval Library; and Sumida, In Defe

Supremacy, p. 253. For the effects of inflation on naval prices, see G. Modelsk
Thompson, Seapower in Global Politics, i^g^-iggj (London, 1988), p. 345. For minor
fire-control instruments of the period, see Great Britain, Admiralty, Manual of Gu
III) for His Majesty's Fleet, lgjj, 9 Oct. 1933, Naval Library. For general gunnery pro
those of fire control in particular, see Great Britain, Admiralty, Training and
Division, Naval Staff, Handbook of Gunnery Organization, W32, May 1932, ADM 18

3 Great Britain, Admiralty, Naval Staff, Training and Staff Duties Division, Summary o

Naval Gunnery, igi4~igj6, Dec. 1936, p. 31, ADM 186/339.

4 For excessive spreads of the 16-inch guns, which were twice those of the earlier
batteries, see PNG, ig2g, March 1930, p. 19, ADM 186/298; Twiss to author, 4 F
Campbell, Naval Weapons, pp. 21-2. For the manifold problems with the moun
1936, see Peter Hodges, The Big Gun: Battleship Main Armament 1860-ig^ (Annapo

93-4. For the influence that the conditions of gunnery practice may have had
regarding the shortcomings of the Dreyer Tables and other factors, see Stephe
author, 30 Aug. 1980.

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 687

tasks previously carried out exclusively by battle cruisers - and fighter

protection and artillery spotting; battle cruisers were deployed to deal
with enemy battle cruisers and if possible to support the battle line;

and the main fighting was carried out by battleships deployed in

single-line-ahead.1 These arrangements appear to have continued until
the late 1920s.2

For most of the decade following the end of the First World War,
the lack of change in tactics had no significance, given the qualitative
parity of the great navies. By the late 1920s, however, the admiralty
had good reason to fear that Great Britain's battle-fleet modernization
programme was slipping behind those of the United States and Japan.
The progress made by the Americans, while not directly threatening,
redefined the state of the art and served as a spur to the Japanese, a

more likely opponent. During the late 1920s and early 1930s, the

overall naval expenditure of the United States exceeded that of Great

Britain by over forty per cent,3 much of it going to improving the
battle fleet. By 1933, the United States had spent five times as much as

Great Britain on capital-ship renovation, and had fitted every US

battleship with the latest fire-control gear, aircraft equipment, and

longer-range gun mountings, while Japan, following suit, allocated
three times as much money for battleship reconstruction as the Royal
Navy. Further increases were on the way.4
In the late 1920s and early 1930s, major modification of existing
Royal Navy capital ships was declared out of the question owing to
the cost. Between 1928 and 193 1, spending on the navy fell by over
ten per cent and, in September 1931, a mismanaged attempt to reduce
it further by lowering the pay of enlisted personnel, was the direct

cause of serious breaches of discipline known as the Invergordon

mutiny.5 Yet the danger of not modernizing equipment became

evident with reports during the early 1930s that the Japanese were
1 Till, Air Power and the Royal Navy, p. 138.

2 Great Britain, Admiralty, Torpedo Division, Tactical Section, Naval Staff, Selected Reports of
Exercises, Operations and Torpedo Practices in HM Fleet [Summer and Autumn, 1927], Sept. 1928,
ADM 186/143; Selected Reports of Exercises, Operations, and Torpedo Practices in HM Fleet (Vol. II
and Annual Summary of Tactical Progress during 1928, Aug. 1929, ADM 186/144; and Exercises and
Operations iQ2g, Vol. I, Dec. 1929, ADM 186/145.
3 Roskill, Naval Policy, ii. 489-91.
4 Alan Raven and John Roberts, British Battleships oj World War I wo: I he Development and
Technical History of the Royal Navy's Battleships and Battlecruisers from 1911 to 1946 (London, 1976),

p. 165 and Norman Friedman, US Battleships: An Illustrated Design History (Annapolis, 1985), pp.
1 89-207.

5 Roskill, Naval Policy, ii. 89-133. Roskill's balanced scholarly account is excellent, but see also
Alan Ereira, The Invergordon Mutiny: A Narrative History of the Last Great Mutiny in the Royal Navy
and How It Forced Britain Off the Gold Standard in 1931 (London, 198 1).

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688 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

practice-firing over very long distances (30,000 yards) b

maximum range of four-fifths of the Royal Navy's

prompting the Naval Staff to observe in 1934 that 'the

how the British Fleet can best close an enemy, whose

greater extreme range than that of our older ships, i

urgently requires investigation'.1

The inability to improve materiel may have been one

reason why British naval officers in the early 1930s bega
compensation, to explore the possibilities of short-range a
to 15,000 yards)2 and night fighting.3 Scepticism of the
long-range firing - that is, at ranges where new-model

instruments and improved gun mountings were ess

expressed as early as 1928, when the Naval Staff suggeste

range action had two great advantages: 'the rate of hitti
and therefore more likely to lead to an early decision', an

cannot quickly withdraw out of range'.4 In 1929, Re

Reginald Drax, then serving with the First Battle Squadr

Mediterranean Fleet, argued that in future the Royal

seek short-range engagements - despite what he too

prevailing opinion to the contrary - because 'every grea

our naval history has been achieved at close action range
overwhelmed the enemy by a higher rate of fire, bette

discipline, and superior morale'.5 Lastly, by 1935, an

memorandum dealing with the design of the next ge

battleships favoured short-range action for the reasons

Naval Staff and Drax six years earlier.6

The investigation of the problem - how best to gain an

the range at which it is desired to fight - during board w

at the Tactical School in 1932, indicated that air attac

disruption by jamming of the enemy's air-spotti

communications - even at the cost of losing one's own ai

reports - could slow down an enemy fleet and prevent it

1 Great Britain, Admiralty, Naval Staff, Tactical Division, Progress in] T[actics]
p. 54, Naval Library. For expectations that the Japanese would open fire at 30,
metres), see also PT, IQ32, June 1933, pp. 43-4 and PNC, IQ36, June 1936, p. 96
2 PNG, 1938, April 1938, ADM 186/349, P- 27.
3 For the recognition of Great Britain's financial difficulties and their relationsh
to maintain her naval position on the part of such leading Royal Navy tactical r
and Chatfield, see Rear-Admiral Reginald Aylmer Ranfurly Plunkett-Ernle-

Tactics (A Lecture)', 1 Nov. 1929, DRAX 2/2, Archive Centre, Churchill Co

and Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of British Naval Mastery (New York, 1976),
4 Selected Reports of Exercises, Operations and Torpedo Practices, Sept. 1928, p. 20-1.

5 Drax, 'Battle Tactics', DRAX 2/2.

6 Raven and Roberts, British Battleships, pp. 276-7.

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 689

accurately at long ranges, thus allowing a British fleet to impose a

short-range action.1 An additional simulation in 1937, this time

involving the use of smoke-screens by the British force, as well as

fighter attacks on the enemy's spotting aircraft and torpedo bomber
attacks on the enemy's battle line, seemed to confirm the principal
lesson of 1932, namely, that a British fleet would be able to bring an
enemy force to close action without suffering severe damage durin
the approach.2
Night fighting offered another way of fighting a close-range battle

without the potential drawbacks of being exposed to heavy enemy fire

at long ranges. In 1928, the Naval Staff was still convinced that 'night
actions between heavy ships are usually not desirable'.3 Night action,
however, favoured well-handled formations and heavily drilled gun
crews capable of accurate rapid fire at short range - areas in which the

Royal Navy believed itself to be strong - while discounting the

importance of long-range fire where the performance of British
equipment was relatively unsatisfactory.4 Preparations for night

fighting began to increase dramatically in 193 1 and, by 1934, the

Royal Navy was investigating situations in which the battle fleet

deliberately sought night action against the enemy's capital units.5
Under successive commanders of the Mediterranean Fleet, the Royal
Navy's premier and tactically most influential force, night fighting

became standard.6

The decentralization of control over the battle fleet through the

adoption of divisional tactics was another change of at least

comparable importance. Divisional tactics simply meant the splitting of

the single-line-ahead into two or more units, each made up of

anywhere from one to five ships. The Royal Navy had experimented
with divisional tactics before the First World War7 and, though they
1 PT, 1932, June 1933, p. 43-4.
2 PT, 1937, Dec. 1937, PP- 85-6.
3 Selected Reports of Exercises, Operations and Torpedo Practices, Sept. 1928, p. 26.

4 For what appears to be the exploration of this idea, see Drax, Battle Tactics , DRAX 2/2.
Drax was critical of the emphasis on long-range firing, cited the advantages of close action, noted
the excellence of British shiphandling and general training, expressed a measure of doubt about
the capacity of a British fleet to gain superiority in a day action, and called strongly for much
greater effort to be placed in night fighting.

5 PT, 1931, Aug. 1932, p. 32 and PT, 1934, Aug. 1934, p. 66.
6 Lord Chatfield, The Navy and Defence (London, 1942), pp. 239-40, 245 and Admiral Sir William
James, Admiral Sir William Fisher (London, 1943), pp. 110-11, 126-7.
7 Vice-Admiral K.G.B. Dewar, The Navy from Within (London, 1939), pp. 123-4. For prescient
explorations of the idea of divisional tactics, see Arthur Hungerford Pollen, 'The Tactical Value

of Speed in Capital Ships', Nov. 1906 and 'Memoranda and Instructions', in Pollen Papers, ed.
Sumida, pp. 109, 241-2.

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690 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

were rejected, the subject was resurrected by Drax at the Sta

between 1919 and 1922.1 The Tactical School, on the other hand,
which had been founded in 1925 at the behest of Rear- Admiral Sir
Frederic Dreyer,2 who was almost certainly a proponent of centralized
control in the manner of his mentor and patron, Admiral Sir John

Jellicoe, remained wedded to the single-line-ahead well into the

1930s, when it was compelled to re-examine its ideas.

Divisional tactics were promoted by the fact that between the

wars the active British battle fleet was less than half the size of the

Grand Fleet at its wartime peak and was, moreover, subdivided into
three parts, the Atlantic Fleet, the Mediterranean Fleet, and the battlecruiser squadron. After 1929, each numbered no more than five capital
ships, usually less, the size of a division.3 Tactical and gunnery routines
necessarily based on small groups of capital ships, which were far more
manoeuvrable than a line of ten or more, amounted to the
implementation of one aspect of divisional tactics and were bound to

highlight its advantages. The outcome of exercises in the

Mediterranean, for example, prompted the Naval Staff to conclude in

1932 that 'massed attack by destroyers on a small battlefleet of five
ships, handled as a British battlefleet can be ... offers little chance of
success and may lead to disproportionate losses of destroyers'.4
The commander-in-chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral
A.E.M. Chatfield, remained convinced that destroyer attacks would be
effective against the larger battle fleets he expected to be deployed in
wartime.5 The Tactical School, however, after intensive study of the

threat to the battle line from torpedoes launched by destroyers,

proposed in 1935 'a radical modification of the initiative at present
conferred on column and divisional commanders': 'individual action'

by divisional commanders should become the standard method of

manoeuvring a battle fleet. In other words, they recommended the
formal adoption of divisional tactics.6 The reaction of the fleet to this
suggestion has not been recorded, but it is perhaps revealing that, in
June 1939, the Naval Staff observed: 'with the advent of battlefleets of
greatly reduced size and increased speed and manoeuvrability', massed
destroyer attacks were not 'best suited to the action of the future'.7
l Roskill, Naval Polity, i. 533 n.
2 Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran, pp. 35 and 35-6 n. and Admiral Sir Frederic Dreyer, The
Sea Heritage: A Study of Maritime Warfare (London, 1955), pp. 278-9.
3 Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor's Odyssey (London, 195 1), pp. 140, 158, 206.
4 PT, 1931, Aug. 1932, p. 27.

5 Ibid.

6 PT, 1935, Oct. 1935, pp. 66-8.

7 PT, 1939, June 1939, p. 48.

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 691

The argument in favour of divisional tactics was strengthened by

the improved capability of carrier-launched torpedo bombers,

considered to be the most dangerous form of air attack.1 In 193 1, th

Naval Staff cautioned that although the capabilities of carrier aircraft
were still limited, 'improvements which are in sight may well alter th
whole situation as regards the operational problems presented'.2 The
principal weakness of the torpedo bomber of the 1920s had been its
short effective range, no more than sixty miles in 1927. 3 By 193 1

however, its range had nearly doubled to no miles, and aircraft

introduced in 1935 and 1936 were both faster and more reliable.4 The
implications for the long single-line-ahead formation, which could no
be maintained if violent manoeuvring was required to avoid torpedoes
were serious. The Naval Staff gave warning in 1937 that 'exercises in

which avoiding action has been practised have demonstrated that

against short range attack, particularly against torpedo aircraft attack

only the most drastic avoiding action is likely to prove effective'.5
Practice torpedo attacks on a seven-ship battle line resulted in March
1938 not only in heavy damage, but also in the complete disruption o
the linear formation. Similar attacks on a more manoeuvrable two-shi
battle-cruiser squadron largely failed.6
In the face of massed air attack without carrier-based fighter cover
or a close anti-aircraft screen of cruisers and destroyers (the case in the

exercise of 1938), even divisional deployment would not hav

prevented serious losses and the disintegration of the battle fleet. The

presence of carrier support, on the other hand, combined wit

improved screening arrangements; much improved early warnin

provided by the introduction of radar in late 1938; and the greater

manoeuvrability of a division as compared with a long line, coul

reasonably have been expected to reduce substantially the effect of

such attacks and preserve the formation of capital ships by division.7
Fleet air-arm carrier strikes, meanwhile, could be counted on to throw

the enemy's battle line into disarray, or perhaps to separate his

1 For the discounting of horizontal bombing and the perception that dive bombing would serv
as a backup to torpedo bombing, see Till, Airpower and the Royal Navy, p. 143.
2 PT, IQ30, July 193 1, p. 11.
3 Selected Reports of Exercises, Operations and Torpedo Practices, 1927, ADM 186/143.
4 PT, 1930, July 193 1, p. 30. For the fleet air-arm earner torpedo bombers of the 1920s and 193
(Blackburn Dart, Ripon, Baffin, Shark, and Fairey Swordfish) and their performance, see Owe
Thetford, British Naval Aircraft since 1912 (London, 1978), pp. 46-7, 51-7, 132-435 PT, 1937, Dec. 1937, p. 86.
6 Till, Air Power and the Royal Navy, pp. 144-5.
1 PT, 1939, June 1939, pp. 27-9. For aspects of the early development of British naval radar not

explained in PT, 1939, see Alastair Mitchell, 'The Development of Radar in the Royal Navy
(1935-45)', Part 1, in Warship, ed. John Roberts (Annapolis, 1980), iv. 2-14.

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692 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

divisions, greatly reducing the danger of British divisi

defeated in detail by superior forces.

The movement towards divisional tactics was probably h

by the belief that opponents such as the Germans and the Ita
did not have large numbers of capital ships, would use them
nucleus of fast and manoeuvrable battle groups. They woul
be countered by forces of comparable mobility.1 The admi
appears to have had grounds to believe that the Japanese, too
not possess a large battle fleet, would deploy by divisions. In
gunnery branch called for gunnery exercises with the combi
squadrons of the Home (until 1932 the Atlantic) and Medite
Fleets, along with the battle-cruiser squadron in which the ei

targets - the number suggests a hypothetical Japanese o

should be deployed to represent two enemy divisions of fo
units each.2 And the Tactical School hypothesized openly in
the Japanese would divide their fleet into fast and slow div
which case, as with the Germans and the Italians, the Ro
would have had to have responded with divisions of its own.

The strengthening of the demand for divisional tac

defensive grounds was matched towards the end of the 193

better prospect of hitting an opponent at longer ranges, even
range and bearing were changing rapidly or variably or soo
changes in course, and in spite of the Royal Navy's shortco

gunnery. By 1926, radio, in combination with certain s

nevertheless important, modifications to the fire-contr

enabled a single master ship controlling the fire of up to fou

a single target - known as concentration firing - to achiev
hitting that were higher per ship than in one-on-one firin
invention of reliable lightweight wireless gear allowed a

transmit fall-of-shot information, greatly increasing the accura

in general, and that of ships with new fire-control tables in

The full value of air spotting was recognized bv I9H,5 and th
1 Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran, p. 54.

2 PNG, 1938, April 1938, p. 8, ADM 186/349.

3 PT, 1939, June 1939, pp. 44-5.

4 PNG, 1926, March 1927, p. 4, ADM 186/271. For a narrative account of t

development of concentration firing, see Summary PNG, 1914-36, Dec. 1936, pp

1 86/3 39. For the 'Position in Line' calculator modification of the Dreyer Tables,
and compare the description of the Dreyer Table Mk. IV* in Great Britain, Admiral
of Captain F.C. Dreyer's Fire Control Tables, 1918, 25 June 191 8 and Gunnery Branch,
the Mark IV* Dreyer Table, 20 Dec. 1930, both in the Naval Library.

5 For the experimental state of aircraft spotting in the late 1920s, see PNG, 1928, M

71-3, ADM 186/293. For the recognition of the much greater accuracy conferre
spotting, see PNG, 1934, April 1934, pp. 6-7, ADM 186/323 and PT, 1934, Aug. 1934

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 693

issue of the required radio equipment for both concentration firing
and air spotting, the fitting of capital-ship aircraft-handling facilities to

one-third of the battle line, and the adoption of standard spotting

procedures was completed in 193 8. x

The battle cruiser Hood, with the help of aircraft spotting,

conducted a high-speed shoot in June 1937 at a medium-speed

manoeuvring target at 20,000 yards. Hood, however, lacked aircraft-

handling equipment and the observation aircraft thus came from

another vessel. The air-spotting reports, though accurate, were
ignored, because the Hood's fire-control team did not know, and thus
did not trust, the air-spotting officer and, as a consequence, no hits

were made during the five minutes of firing allowed. This had

troubling tactical implications because it suggested that the gunnery of

a ship with unmodernized fire-control equipment and without a

catapult for aircraft would be ineffective at moderately long ranges in a
battle of manoeuvre when the time available for finding the target was

limited.2 Funding for the Royal Navy had begun to increase in 1933,
however, if slowly at first,3 which allowed the admiralty to launch a
modest programme of capital-ship reconstruction, starting with the
battleship Warspite. The rebuilt unit was equipped with the tried and
true fifteen-inch gun with upgraded mountings; the AFCT Mk. VII,
an improved variant of the AFCT Mk. I;4 and a hanger and catapult
for spotting aircraft.

In 1938, Warspite carried out a prolonged firing test, aided by

spotting from her own aircraft, in which she quickly destroyed

manoeuvring high-speed (twenty-three knot) targets at a moderately
1 For the development of standardized spotting rules, which were still a matter of debate as late as

1937, see PNG, 1936, June 1936, pp. 102-3, ADM 186/338 and PNG, 1937, May 1937, pp. 1079, ADM 186/343. For radio equipment of the battle fleet, see Vice-Admiral Sir Arthur Hezlet,
Electronics and Sea Power (New York, 1975), pp. 18 1-3; Raven and Roberts, British Battleships of

World War Two, pp. 13 1-4, 170, 189-91, 197, 220; R. A. Burt, 'The Royal Sovereign Class

Battleships, 1913-1948, Part II', in Warship, ed. Andrew Lambert (London, 1985), ix. 183-5; and
John Roberts, The Battlecruiser Hood (London, 1982), pp. 96-7. For the issue of radios to spotting
aircraft as late as 1937 in particular, see PNG, 1937, May 1937, p. 18, ADM 186/343. For tne
fitting of turret and amidships catapults between 1933 and 1937, see Raven and Roberts, British
Battleships, pp. 173, 182, 205, 207, 220, 231.
2 PNG, 1938, April 1938, pp. 27-8, 148-51, ADM 186/349. Hood enjoyed greater success during
her prolonged firing exercise of 1937, but this may have been attributable to the shorter ranges,
which were 9,500 to 14,500 yards as compared with 18,000 to 20,000 in the case of the fiveminute shoot. The speed and course of the target are not known, but if low and constant, would
also have been an important factor. For the lack of effective co-operation between air spotters
and battleship fire-control officers when spotting aircraft were flown from carriers (or other
ships), see also Twiss to author, 28 March 1988.

3 Roskill, Naval Policy, 11. 489.

4 Great Britain, Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Handbook of the Admiralty Fire Control Table Mark

VII, 1939, ADM 186/275.

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694 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

long range of 21,000 yards.1 With the recommissioning of the s

reconstructed battle cruiser Renown in 1939, the Royal Navy

capital ships (Rodney was the third) equipped with both first-cla

control gear and aircraft, enough to provide both active ba

divisions and the battle-cruiser squadron with a more or le

date unit to serve as master ship in concentration firi

additional battleships were undergoing major reconstructio

were in train to modernize the remaining two battle cruisers,3 a

new battleships were under construction, all of which, wer

given new fire-control tables and aircraft equipment.4

commissioning of the new and rebuilt units, the majority of

Navy's capital ships would have been capable of firing under
difficult conditions likely to occur during divisional deploym
without master-ship control.

Important improvements in organization and equipm

favoured divisional tactics. A tactical-plotting organization of the 'Action Information Organization' or, in American p

'Combat Information Center' of the Second World War

from the navigation plot had been set up shortly after the F
War and expanded and developed over the next decade.5 Du
same period, sophisticated automatic tactical-plotting instrum
developed by the Admiralty Research Laboratory for use in
flagships. Simplified cheaper derivatives were supplied to all

1 Stephen Roskill, HMS Warspite (London, 1957), p. 189 and Roskill to author, 30 A
is worth pointing out that Warspite and the similarly equipped Renown equalled, if
this performance in long-range actions with German and Italian capital ships in 194
see Raven and Roberts, British Battleships of World War II, pp. 344, 357.

2 For the apparent use of ships equipped with the AFCT Mks. I and VII as mas

divisions, see the papers on Combined Fleet Exercises 1938 (XZP) 8-18 Mar

116/3873. In the case of the Red Fleet, Nelson and Rodney (AFCT Mk. I) fired in c
against the lead ship of the Blue Fleet, with the three unmodernized 'R' class b

Mk. IV*) firing on their opposite numbers. No specific gunnery information is ava

Fleet, but the order of the deployment is suggestive, with Warspite (AFCT Mk
Malaya (DT Mk. IV*), Hood (DT Mk. V), and Repulse (DT Mk. IV*). Of the two A

fitted ships, only one, Rodney, was fitted to launch aircraft. On the other hand, T
'no occasion when any attempt was made to get ships of dissimilar class to work t
firing in concentration]': (Twiss to author, 30 Oct. 1991) and believes that the form
1938 was intended to exercise station keeping (Twiss to author, 1 Jan. 1992).
3 Handbook of the Admiralty Fire Control Table Mark VII, p. 7, ADM 186/357.

4 For the AFCT Mk. IX, mounted in the King George V class battleships, see G
Admiralty, Gunnery Branch, Handbook for the Admiralty Fire Control Table Mark
Naval Library.
5 Great Britain, Admiralty, Navigation Division, Handbook of Action Information Organization and
Plotting 1945, Section I: Development and Functions of Action Information Organization, Dec. 1945,
Naval Library.

6 PT, 1930, July 193 1, p. 24 and Admiralty Research Laboratory, Teddington, 'ARL Course
Plotter - Type B\ May 1932, ADM 212/189. However, the Royal Navy lacked voice circuits

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British Battle- Fleet Tactics 695

the mid- 1 93 os, the Royal Navy's tactical data-management capability
was much greater than it had been during the First World War, which

may have reduced the need for rigid centralized control of fleet
deployment.
The changes in the tactical thinking of the Naval Staff and the
Tactical School, and improvements in gunnery and tactical materiel and

organization, were matched by a shift in the views of fleet

commanders. From 1930 to 1936, the Mediterranean Fleet was

commanded by Admiral Chatfield and Admiral W.W. Fisher, both
probably committed to the single-line-ahead in the manner of their

predecessors but far more willing to delegate authority, open to

tactical innovation, and influenced by Drax, the navy's leading
advocate of divisional tactics.1 Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, who
followed them from 1936 to 1939, was a centralizer,2 whose
contribution to the Fighting Instructions of 1939, written with action
against the Japanese in mind, called for battle between two parallel
lines of capital ships. Pound's ideas were strongly disputed, however,

by Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, commander-in-chief of the Home

Fleet, and apparently there was a widespread belief in the navy that
they were 'all rubbish'.3 Pound's own chief-of-staff, Rear- Admiral
Bruce Fraser - who significantly perhaps had been one of the designers
of the AFCT Mk. I - was a strong believer in decentralization and a
long-time proponent of fighting in small battle groups.4

In 1939, Pound was succeeded in the Mediterranean by Admiral

Sir Andrew Cunningham, who held very different tactical views.

Cunningham had attended the Tactical School in 1933 - at which

time it had already begun move in the direction of divisional tactics and he later acknowledged the great value of its work.5 Cunningham
was a delegator of tactical authority6 and, while in command of the
(in the US Navy, TBS - Talk between Ships) until well into the Second World War, relying on
Morse and key transmission for communication beyond the ship to the detriment of air spotting,
concentration of fire, and manoeuvring, for which see Twiss to author, 30 Oct. 1991.
1 Chatfield, Navy and Defence, pp. 225-31, 240.
2 Oliver Warner, Admiral of the Fleet Cunningham of Hyndhope: I he Battle Jor the Mediterranean
(Athens, Ohio, 1967), p. 86 and Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely, p. 51.
3Marder, From the Dardanelles to Oran, pp. 53-4. Marder noted that he was relying on secondhand testimony and had not actually read the Fighting Instructions [statement of general principles]
of i939> which were not the same as the Fleet Tactical Instructions [statement of details related to

specific operations] of the same provenance and date, for which see ADM 116/4204.
4 Richard Humble, Fraser of North Cape: The Life of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fraser (London,
1983), pp. 81-4, 86, 1 1 5-6.
5 Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor's Odyssey (London, 195 1), pp. 156, 260.
6 Warner, Admiral of the Fleet Cunningham, pp. 93, in. Barnett s views [tngage the tnemy More
Closely, pp. 222-3] are based on Warner.

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696 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

Mediterranean Fleet, won striking victories against the It

and 1 94 1 using small mixed battleship and carrier battle
believed that Rear- Admiral Sir Philip Vian's use of divisio
the battle of Sirte in 1942 constituted one of the most br
the most brilliant, tactical performances of the Second W

and it may not have been mere coincidence that his

command of the Mediterranean Fleet was Admira

Harwood, a disciple of Drax, who had employed divisiona

the battle of the River Plate with great success.2

The incompleteness of the written record and the fac

Royal Navy fought no large fleet action against the Jap
the Second World War make it impossible to say with cer
the tactical deployment of a British force under such ci
would have been. But it is highly unlikely - the Fighting
notwithstanding - that it would have taken the form of
ahead steaming on a straight course under tight centraliz

The British battle fleet of 1939 was prepared by its g

command-control equipment, and by its training, to fig

order based on manoeuvrable divisions. It was commande
who almost certainly recognized that they had no other c
There can be little doubt, therefore, that by the outbr
Second World War, the tactical orientation of the Royal
practically the reverse of what it had been in 191 6. At
Jutland, the Grand Fleet had deployed in single-line-ahea
direction from the flagship; had attempted to engage at
then extreme ranges, while steaming on an unchanging c
to the enemy; and had declined night engagement. In

Britain's best admirals were disposed to fight an action of ma

semi-independent divisions; favoured fighting at ranges t

much shorter than the expected enemy would have

welcomed the prospect of a night encounter. If Bri

thinking was animated at all by the historical past, tact

back beyond Jellicoe at Jutland, to Nelson at the Nile and

In July 1935, the director of the Tactical School stated th

major tactical lessons of Jutland were that a turn-away fr

1 Cunningham, A Sailor's Odyssey, p. 454. For a detailed account of the Sirte a

Pack, The Battle of Sirte (Annapolis, 1975).

2 Roskill, Naval Poliqr, i. 533 n.

3 For the views of Drax, Chatfield, and Cunningham, see Drax, 'Battle Tac

Chatfield, Navy and Defence, p. 227; and Warner, Admiral of the Fleet Cunningham,

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 697

to avoid torpedoes risked loss of contact; that the proper use of

destroyers in a battle-fleet action was offensive rather than defensiv

and that all ships must keep the commander-in-chief informed by
signals as necessary. Commenting on these observations, Drax, after
noting that the first and third were truisms and the second had bee
learned before 1916, went on to say that the real lesson of Jutland wa
the need of more highly developed offensive spirit.1 So it seems tha
well before the outbreak of the Second World War, the tactical

influence of Jutland on the Royal Navy amounted to no more than

narrowly applicable technical platitudes or highly general moralizing.
British tactical planning for large-scale battle-fleet action was shaped
primarily by other forces of which three - technology, the behaviour
of other naval powers, and finance - were the most important.
During the 1920s, the lack of new-model gunnery equipment and
fully effective air spotting, together with the small numbers of carriers

in existence and the low capability of their aircraft, meant that there
was little alternative to the tactics of the First World War. During the

early 1930s, Great Britain's financial choices prevented her from

matching the very expensive capital-ship rebuilding programmes of
the United States and Japan, which encouraged, even if it did not

cause, the Royal Navy to resort to short-range action and night

fighting. By the late 1930s, the increasing threat of surface- and airlaunched torpedoes made long linear formations more vulnerable to

disruption than had previously been the case; cumulative

improvements in fire control and air spotting made it possible to

achieve hits at moderately long range, even when the relative positions
of the firing ship and her target were changing; and the Naval Staff

concluded that the Japanese had abandoned the single-line-ahead.

Divisional tactics, as a matter of defensive necessity and offensive

practicality, were thus almost certainly adopted. The problem for the
Royal Navy at the end of the inter- war period, therefore, was not its
failure to formulate an appropriate tactical doctrine, but lack of the
means to carry it out.

Much has been made of the weakness of the fleet air arm in

comparison with the naval air forces of the United States and Japan,
given the character of the Pacific War as it was ultimately fought. In

1939, however, the admiralty had good reason to believe that the

Royal Navy was as short of effective battleships as of aircraft. The

Japanese navy could deploy nearly twice as many carrier aircraft as the
Royal Navy but, except for a few early-model Nakajima B5NS (later
1 Drax, Tactics' (193 5), DRAX 2/2.

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698 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

known as Kates), they performed little better than thos

with Great Britain's fleet.1 The total number of Japanese
was not so great - given the losses likely to be inflicted
aircraft and anti-aircraft fire with the advantage of radar

to threaten a well-handled British battle fleet with substantial harm.

On the other hand, Japan had rebuilt all ten of her capital ships, while
Great Britain had reconstructed only two (plus Rodney). The British

were inferior by over two-to-one in capital ships capable of

performing well in the predicted surface battle of manoeuvre, despite

having a navy half again as large.

The strategic purpose of the British plan to send the 'main fleet to
Singapore', moreover, was to defend Malaya and the naval base from

which the flank of any Japanese advance on Australia could be

threatened. In the case of a battle either in the South China Sea or in

the waters off Australia, British naval forces could have expected
substantial support from land-based aircraft, whereas the Japanese until the occupation of southern Indo-China in the summer of 194 1 would presumably only have had the support of planes from carriers.2
The position of Great Britain in the event of war with Japan would be
the reverse of that of the United States, who had to assume that any
major encounter with Japanese naval forces would occur within range
of Japanese land-based aircraft.3 The inferiority of the British naval air

force, in comparison with the US and Japanese, may have been

unfortunate, given events as they unfolded after 1941, but was not
unreasonable, given Great Britain's strategic requirements as they were
perceived in the late 1930s.
Between 1939 and 1941, Japanese naval air striking power was
greatly increased by the commissioning of two large carriers and by
the introduction of vastly better fighter and strike aircraft than the
l For the numbers of Japanese carrier aircraft (310), see David Brown, World War 2 Fact Files:
Aircraft Carriers (London, 1977), pp. 14-21. For the numbers of British carrier aircraft (189),
which were the numbers actually in service on the outbreak of the war and were well below
maximum capacity figures, see Captain S.W. Roskill, The War at Sea (London, 1954-61), i. 31.

For the Japanese carrier aircraft in first-line service in 1939 [Aichi DiA, Mitsubishi A5M,
Nakajima B5N, Yokosuka B4Y], see R. J. Francillon, Japanese Aircraft of the Pacific War (New

York, 1970), pp. 268-71, 342-9, 41 1-2, 449-51 and Robert C. Mikesh, The Rise of Japanese
Naval Air Power' in Warship lggi, ed. Robert Gardiner (Annapolis, 1991), pp. 102-20.
2 For the size of the British battle fleet to be sent to the Far East in the event of war, planned
deployment of land-based air power, and British strategy, see W. David Mclntyre, The Rise and
Fall of the Singapore Naval Base, lgig-ig^ (London, 1979), pp. 133-5, M4-9, 169-70 and Marder,
Old Friends, New Enemies, i. 50-63.

3 Charles M. Melhorn, Two-Block Fox: The Rise of the Aircraft Carrier, ign-ig2g (Annapolis, 1974),
p. 115 and Paolo E. Coletta, 'Prelude to War: Japan, the United States, and the Aircraft Carrier,
1919-1945', Prologue, xxiii (i990> 343-59-

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British Battle-Fleet Tactics 699

Royal Navy possessed. For all that, medium and large carriers

remained heavily outnumbered by battleships in all navies - the resul

of the naval arms-control agreement - and for this reason carrier
aircraft were bound, in the short run, to play a supporting rather than

a leading role so long as all the leading naval powers possessed intac

balanced fleets. That the admiralty seriously underestimated th

potency of air power in general, and Japanese air power in particular

is undeniable.1 But given the numerical preponderance of surfac

capital ships, the demands of the new surface tactics, and Grea

Britain's strategic position in the event of a war against Japan, the

weakness of the unmodernized British capital ships was legitimat
cause for admiralty concern. This, rather than an obsession with an
outmoded weapons system, explains the high priority given to the
rebuilding of the battle fleet, in the event overtaken by the outbrea
of war in 1939.
By late 1941, the Royal Navy's capacity for large-scale fleet action
had virtually been lost. Capital ship and carrier losses, both ships sun
and others badly damaged and thus unavailable, had been very heav
during two years of hostilities, while the well-trained crews essentia
for an efficient battle fleet had either been killed or dispersed owing to

the rapid expansion of the wartime navy.2 The balanced battle fleet
and the relevance of its tactics had died before Prince of Wales and

Repulse were sunk off Malaya in an improvised operation durin

which well-established pre-war practices - the need for both carrie

support and an adequate surface anti-aircraft screen - were flagrantl

violated. In the spring of 1942, Great Britain's new Eastern Flee

under Admiral Sir James Somerville was formed in divisions, but wit
too few and mostly unmodernized capital ships and insufficient carrie

strength to perform any other service than that of a fleet in being. This

state of affairs is attributable less to pre-war technical and tactical

conservatism, such as it was, than to inadequate forces stemming from

financial restraints and the fortunes of war.

1 Testimony of Admiral A.E.M. Chatfield, then First Sea Lord, in the report dated 30 July 19
in Great Britain, Committee of Imperial Defence, Sub-Committee on the Vulnerability of Capit
Ships to Air Attack, Report, Proceedings & Memoranda, 1936, CAB[inet Records] 16/147, Publi

Record Office; Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies, i. 341-62; and Peter Lowe, 'Great Britain
Assessment of Japan before the Outbreak of the Pacific War', in Knowing One's Enemies

Intelligence Assessment before the Two World Wars, ed. Ernest R. May (Princeton, 1986), pp. 456-75
2 Insofar as personnel casualties are concerned, it should be noted that the sinkings ot Royal Oa
Hood, and Barham with most of their crews by late 1941 amounted to a loss of more than twent

per cent of the battle fleet's manpower at the start of the war, allowing for the fact that tw
battleships were undergoing reconstruction and thus unmanned. For the dilution of Royal Nav
manpower and its effects, see Marc Milner, North Atlantic Run: The Royal Canadian Navy and th
Battle for the Convoys (Annapolis, 1985), p. ix and Marder, Old Friends, ii. 103, 106-7, 285, 291.

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700 Jon Tetsuro Sumida

This brief survey of the tactical development of the

suggests that battleship technology and tactics underwen

change during the inter-war period, and that for this and

other reasons the surface capital ship was justifiably accorded

in the hierarchy of warship types by all major naval po

conclusions run contrary to those of most popular and e

scholarly accounts, which have painted portraits of t

tactical stagnation as the prelude to the failures and humiliat

Second World War. Based on unexamined assumptions, af

wisdom, and often on little if any systematic research,
making is common to a good deal of the writing on twent

military history. This may be attributable to the fact that hi

demand has encouraged the production of large numbers

articles of indifferent quality, which unfortunately have set
standards of the field.
University of Maryland, College Park

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