Naval Warfare 19191945

This is an excellent book, and one that I would recommend to all students of theInter-War and Second World War era.

Andrew Lambert, Kings College, London

Naval Warfare 19191945 is a comprehensive history of the war at sea from theend of the Great War to the end of World War II. Showing the bewilderingnature and complexity of the war facing those charged with ghting it aroundthe world, this book ranges far and wide: sweeping across all naval theatres andthose powers performing major, as well as minor, roles within them.Armed with the latest material from an extensive set of sources, Dr. Murfett

has written an absorbing as well as comprehensive reference work that is notafraid to re-examine the naval past in a stimulating way, or to take issue withthose aspects of it that deserve closer attention. He demonstrates that superiorequipment and the best intelligence, ominous power and systematic planning,vast nance and suitable training are often simply not enough in themselves toguarantee the successful outcome of a particular encounter at sea. Sometimes thenarrow dierence between victory and defeat hinges on those innite variables:the individuals performance under acute pressure and sheer luck.

Naval Warfare 19191945 is an analytical and interpretive study that examineswhy things happened when they did. This vividly written volume is an accessibleas well as fascinating read both for students and for interested members of thegeneral public.

Malcolm Murfett is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the author ofa number of works on naval themes, including Fool-proof Relations: The Search forAnglo-American Naval Cooperation in the Chamberlain Years, 193740 (1985), Hostage onthe Yangtze: Britain, China and the Amethyst Crisis of 1949 (1991) and the co-written Between Two Oceans: A Military History of Singapore from First Settlement to FinalBritish Withdrawal. He is also the editor of The First Sea Lords (1999).

Naval Warfare 19191945An operational history of the volatilewar at sea

Malcolm Murfett

First published 2009by Routledge2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canadaby Routledge270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2009 Malcolm Murfett

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced orutilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, nowknown or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in anyinformation storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from thepublishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataA catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication DataNaval warfare 19191945 : an operational history of the volatile war at sea /Malcolm H. Murfett.

p. cm.Includes bibliographical references and index.1. World War, 1939-1945Naval operations. 2. Naval art and science

History20th century. I. Title.D770.M87 2008359'.0309041dc22

2008015244

ISBN10: 0-415-45804-8 (hbk)

ISBN13: 978-0-415-45804-7 (hbk)ISBN13: 978-0-203-88998-5 (ebk)

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2008.

To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledgescollection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.

ISBN 0-203-88998-3 Master e-book ISBN

To the memory of my beloved Dad and Mum who taughtme many wonderful things the most priceless of whichwas love

Contents

Abbreviations viiiList of maps xiiPreface xiiiAcknowledgements xvi

1 Neither one thing nor the other (191939) 1

2 The opening gambit (1939) 49

3 Much more than a phoney war (1940) 66

4 Uncompromising hostilities (JanuaryNovember 1941) 100

5 From Pearl Harbor to Madagascar (December 1941May 1942) 135

6 Stalling the juggernaut in the early summer of 1942 176

7 From defence to attack in the autumn of 1942 223

8 A change in momentum (JanuaryAugust 1943) 257

9 Striking back (SeptemberDecember 1943) 291

10 Seizing the initiative (JanuaryAugust 1944) 324

11 Tightening the grip (SeptemberDecember 1944) 369

12 Stranglehold (1945) 418

Conclusion: Rising to the challenge of ghting the war at sea 461

Maps 511Appendix I: Allied convoy statistics (193945) 530Appendix II: Units of measurement Conversion equivalents 534Glossary 535Select bibliography 548Index 587

Abbreviations

A.A. Anti-AircraftABC-1 American, British and Canadian Sta Talks (March 1941)ABDACOM American, British, Dutch, and Australian CommandABDAFLOAT Naval C-in-C of ABDACOMANCXF Allied Naval Commander Expeditionary ForceASDIC Acronym for Allied Submarine Detection Investigation

CommitteeASV Air to Surface Vessel RadarASW Anti-Submarine WarfareBAD British Admiralty Delegation (Washington, DC)BdU Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote Commander-in-Chief

of U-boatsBEF British Expeditionary ForceBEIF British East Indies FleetBLT Battalion Landing TeamBPF British Pacic FleetCAGS Chief of the Army General Sta (Japan)CCS Combined Chiefs of Sta (Anglo-American)CCOS Abbreviation sometimes used for CCSC-in-C Commander-in-ChiefCINCPAC Commander-in-Chief PacicCNGS Chief of the Navy General Sta (Japan)CNO Chief of Naval Operations (US)COMINCH Commander-in-Chief (USN)COMINT Communications IntelligenceCOMSOWESPAC Commander, South West Pacic AreaCOS Chiefs of StaCU CuracaoUK and after CU9 New YorkUK convoy

tanker seriesDCNS Deputy Chief of Naval StaDF Direction FindingDNI Director, Oce of Naval IntelligenceDO Dornier

DRC Defence Requirements Sub-CommitteeDSO Distinguished Service OrderDUKW 1942 designed utility, all wheel drive, vehicle with two

rear driving axles used for amphibious operationsEASTOMP Eastern Ocean Meeting Point (o the coast of Ireland)EIF East Indies FleetENIGMA German cipher machine used for the encrypting of secret

messagesFAA Fleet Air ArmFAT FederapparatGerman search pattern running torpedoFDO Fighter Direction OcerFDR Franklin Delano RooseveltF.d.U. Fhrer der Unterseeboote (Flag Ocer/Commander of

U-boats)Fl K FliegerkorpsGerman Air CorpsFRUPac Fleet Radio Unit, Pacic (also known as Station HYPO)FuMO Funkmessortungsgert (radar detection equipment)FW Focke-WulfGC&CS Government Code and Cypher SchoolGNAT German Naval Acoustic Torpedoalso known as a T5GUF Oran or NaplesUSA (fast) convoy seriesHF/DF High Frequency Direction Finding (also known colloqui-

ally as Hu-Du)HG Homeward bound from Gibraltar (193942) convoy seriesHMS His Majestys ShipHX HalifaxUK (later New YorkUK) convoy seriesIGHQ Imperial General Headquarters (Daihonei)IJA Imperial Japanese ArmyIJN Imperial Japanese Navy (Nippon Tei Koku Kaigun)JCS Joint Chiefs of Sta (US)JICPOA Joint Intelligence Center Pacic Ocean AreaJPS Joint Planning Sta (UK)KG Kampfgeschwader or bombing groupKMF UKMediterranean (fast) convoy series from November

1942KMS UKMediterranean (slow) convoy series from November

1942KMT KuomintangChinese Nationalist government led by

Marshal Chiang Kai-shekK-Verband Kleinkampfverband or small battle unitKX UKGibraltar convoy series from October 1942LCI Landing Craft InfantryLCT Landing Craft TankLSD Landing Ship DockLSI Landing Ship Infantry

Abbreviations ix

LST Landing Ship TankMAD Magnetic Anomaly DetectorMAS Motoscafo Anti Sommergibilefast Italian MTBs which

had originally been designed as submarine-chasersMe MesserschmittMGB Motor Gun BoatMKF MediterraneanUK (fast) from November 1942MKS MediterraneanUK (slow) from November 1942MMS Motorized MinesweeperMTB Motor Torpedo BoatMOMP Mid-Ocean Meeting PointNID Naval Intelligence Division (Admiralty)nm Nautical MileOA Thames/Methil to Liverpool and onward into Atlantic

convoy seriesOB Liverpool outward into Atlantic convoy seriesObdM Oberbefehlshaber der Marine (Supreme C-in-C of the Navy)OG Outward from UK to GibraltarOIC Operational Intelligence Centre (Admiralty)OKM Oberkommando der Marine (Supreme Naval Command)OKW Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (Supreme Armed Forces

Command)ON Northward bound convoy series from the UKNorway

(193940) and USA/Canada from 1941ONS Slow northward bound convoy seriesOPINTEL Operational IntelligenceOS Southward convoy series from the UK to Freetown,

Sierra Leone from 1941PLA Peoples Liberation Army the military arm of the

Chinese Communists led by Mao Tse-tungPOW Prisoner-of-WarRAF Royal Air ForceRAI Regia Aeronautica Italiana (Royal Italian Airforce)RAN Royal Australian NavyRCN Royal Canadian NavyRCT Regimental Combat TeamRDF Radio Direction Finding (original British term for radar)RE Range EstimationRFP Radio Finger PrintingRMI Regia Marina Italiana Royal Italian NavyRN Royal NavyRNZN Royal New Zealand NavyRU Convoy series from Reykjavik to Loch Ewe and later

BelfastSAC Supreme Allied Commander

x Abbreviations

SC Sydney, Cape Breton (later Halifax or New York)UKconvoy series

SCAEF Supreme Commander Allied Expeditionary ForceSHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary ForceSIGINT Signals IntelligenceSL Freetown, Sierra Leone to UK convoy seriesSLC Siluro Lento Corso (also known as Maiali slow human

submersible chariots)SONAR SOund Navigation And Ranging the detection of

underwater objects by sound waves (an American versionof ASDIC).

TBS Talk Between ShipsTF Task ForceTG Task GroupTINA Means of identifying an individual radio code operatorUC UKNew York convoy tanker seriesUDT Underwater Demolition TeamUGF USAGibraltar (later Naples) convoy series from

November 1942UGS USAGibraltar, later Port Said convoy series from

November 1942May 1945UR Loch Ewe (later Belfast) Reykjavik convoy seriesUSAAF United States Army Air ForceUSN United States NavyUSSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union)VCNS Vice Chief of Naval StaVHF Very High FrequencyVLR Very Long RangeWESTOMP Western Ocean Meeting Point (o the Atlantic coast of

Canada)W/T Wireless TelegraphyWWII World War TwoXK GibraltarUK convoy seriesY Radio Intelligence

Abbreviations xi

List of maps

1. Adriatic Sea 5112. Aegean Sea 5123. Barents Sea 5134. Black Sea 5145. Central and South America 5156. Central and South Pacic 5167. Japan and the Ryukyu Islands 5178. Mediterranean 5189. Midway Island 51910. New Guinea 52011. Normandy and the French Channel coast to the Belgian border 52112. North Atlantic 52213. North Pacic 52314. North Sea 52415. Norway 52516. Philippines 52617. Solomon Islands 52718. South Pacic 52819. West Atlantic 529

Preface

Beginning in what was supposedly a time of peace, Naval Warfare 19191945demonstrates that the 1920s and 1930s were rarely that quiescent or immunefrom naval issues and conict before the war at sea was ocially resumed inSeptember 1939. In those twenty years, each of the naval powers conducted asearching examination of their record from the last war and set about applyingsome of those hard-learnt lessons in their future planning and development forthe next one. While implementing some of these reforms undoubtedly servedthem well when they were obliged to ght once again, it didnt mean that theirpreparations were foolproof or that they were protected from the imponder-ability of warfare, as would be shown time and again in World War II. Dynamic,unpredictable and multifaceted, the war at sea continued to pose innumerablechallenges to all those engaged in it.It also poses all kinds of challenges to those who seek to write about it. Naval

history is both vivid and compelling and deserves to be written in a lively, lucidand informative way based on the latest and most up-to-date research. My aimwas to write a single-volume operational history of naval warfare from 1919 to1945 in this manner and make it accessible to a wide audience. I hope I haveachieved that aim and that those who consult this book will agree that it is avaluable addition to the existing literature on the war at sea.There are, of course, some caveats. While I admire the painstaking skill and

the unbridled enthusiasm of military historians and accomplished naval experts,I cannot expect them to be content with an abbreviated account of whatever it isthat they know intimately well and in the nest detail. Clearly, this book was notwritten for them or for those revisionist academics who feel that the new ortho-doxy demands sustained engagement with the archival sources and who viewany kind of narrative history with the deepest suspicion, often labelling it as bothold fashioned and unsophisticated. I simply dont agree with this narrow view ofmy discipline.Having spent much of my early to mid-career encamped in archival deposi-

tories around the world, I wont quarrel with the thesis that primary-source-based research is of crucial importance. Moreover, I freely concede that scholarlycontributions to our understanding of the past can be based upon a substantialpaper trail that has been left by individuals previously employed within the

various departments of state and/or service and defence ministries. Even so, I donot delude myself that on all occasions the unvarnished truth will only nallyemerge through exclusive use of primary documentation. Life isnt quite thatsimple.Although works of synthesis are usually frowned upon in some circles, I

thought it the only logical approach to take given the wide canvass on which Iaimed to draw in depicting these events. My approach, therefore, was to opt fora modern, secondary-source-based narrative that would tap the research ndingspublished in a host of scholarly articles and books over the past fteen years. Inanalysing the vicissitudes of the naval war, I have attempted to mould the latestscholarship and my own views together in a balanced manner so as to present anintriguing and fascinating story in an engaging and credible way. While no bookcan claim to be the denitive work on the naval war, I have taken great pains totry and present an authentic picture of the war. Even so, the discordant statis-tical and factual evidence that exists on so many subjects ensures that the con-clusions I have reached and the gures I have quoted in the text will dier onoccasion (sometimes radically) from already published works in the eld. Wheremajor disagreements do occur on the issues touched upon in this text, however, Ihave recommended a list of alternative sources in the endnotes for readers toconsult if they so desire.Anthony Eden once remarked that there are no chapters in foreign policy but

only chapters in books written about foreign policy issues. He may not have gotmany things right at the end of his career, but he was on the ball as far as thisassertion was concerned. His observation is as applicable to war as it is to foreignpolicy. War is a very complex undertaking at the best of times and it is compli-cated still further by action taking place in several dierent theatres hundreds or,in some cases, thousands of miles apart at precisely the same time. A sense ofordered, discreet sequence is often missing as crises arise and develop simulta-neously across the world testing the patience of even the most stoical of navaland military commanders as they do so. I wanted this study to illustrate thisdramatic situation and the kind of strategic, tactical and logistic problems con-fronting the leaders both military and political as the war they wagedunfolded in various ways at sea over the twenty-six years covered by this opera-tional history. Chronological, as distinct from being thematic or theatre-driven,this study of naval warfare is not seen from the perspective of a single combatantor a group of powers instead it tries to adopt a non-partisan approach inwhich naval performance is judged purely on its own merits and is not inu-enced by other external political factors or ideals.

Naval Warfare 19191945 is certainly not a hagiographical account of navalwarfare or those engaged in it. I am not in thrall to the world of the services.Indeed many servicemen may feel I have been unduly harsh about militarycommand and the business of warfare. Nonetheless, I hope a sense of balancehas been struck between the genuine admiration I have for the skill and heroismexhibited by those caught up in the war at sea and the sheer horror and sadnessI feel about the descent into war and the emotional, mental and physical cost

xiv Preface

that warfare invariably brings to those engaged in it or to their loved ones backhome.My book is geared to assist all those who are both curious and anxious to

learn about what happened in the war at sea. As a starting point it doesnt pre-sume much, if any, pre-existing, knowledge of the subject material and seeksinstead to explain the pitfalls and successes of ghting the naval war in anaccessible way and one not driven by dogma, polemical discourse, or littered bytoo many mysterious acronyms and expert catchphrases. As such, Naval Warfare19191945 seeks to be of value to both hard-bitten professionals as well as theuninitiated, but discerning, amateur, and may be dipped into for a host of fac-tual information on who did what to whom and when; explored protably as aguide to all kinds of naval campaigns that were conducted in these years; orread, I hope, as an intriguing and fascinating chronicle of war fought out on theoceans, seas and rivers of the world between 1919 and 1945.

Preface xv

Acknowledgements

When it comes to research, my debt to Professor Jrgen Rohwer is immense. HisChronology of the War at Sea 19391945: The Naval History of World War Two(London: Chatham Publishing, 2005) is a meticulous work of scholarship distilledfrom more than half a century of research enterprise. It was Professor Rohwerswork that provided me with a bedrock of data on the war and inspired me toadopt the methodology I did for my own operational history.I also owe debts to all those whose work I have read in conventional published

form or in bytes downloaded from the Internet: even though I may not agreewith their interpretation of an incident, battle or campaign, their work hashelped to make me far better informed on many subjects than had been the casepreviously.I am also immensely grateful to Professor Jeremy Black for encouraging me to

write a history of twentieth-century naval warfare for his Warfare and History series.Although it has taken several years to come to fruition and at far greater lengththan either of us had ever imagined, I hope he will feel that the wait has beenworthwhile. As a result of accepting Jeremys invitation to write this book, I havefound myself working closely with a number of superb editors at Routledge. Anumber have come and gone over the last decade but Vicky Peters and Eve Setchhave both stood the test of time and are professionals of the highest class. It has beenan honour to work closely with them and their team, especially Elizabeth Cliordand Andrew Watts. They have been wonderfully supportive throughout.As I have been researching and writing this book, my family and friends have

also stepped in repeatedly to oer me massive amounts of assistance in myriadways. I have beneted from their critical input as well as their incredible gener-osity. Parts of this book have been formed and revised in various locationsaround the world. My gratitude extends to Charlie and Liz Barker at RadleyCollege; Grant Baird o the beaten track in California; David and AwenCampbell in Langley; Janet Chisholm in London; Janey and Jeremy Cook inHampton; Professor Peter and Irna Dennis in Canberra; Gill Doherty inNewbury; Mike and Jo Emery in Wrea; Professor Grant Goodman in Lawrence,Kansas; Professor John and Berit Hattendorf in Newport, RI; Dr. Jack andVivian Humphrey in Long Beach, California; Ernst Kaltner in Abtenau; Helga,Helmut and Monika Kaltner in Salzburg; Drs. Terry and Cath OSullivan and

Professor Michael Toolan and Julianne Statham in Birmingham; Eddy andJanet Phipps in Cheltenham; Professor David Ralston and Catherine Hunt inSarasota, Florida; Dr. Srilata Ravi in Perth; Dr. Nicholas Rodger in Acton; Rickand Paula Silverman in Steamboat Springs, Colorado; Professor Georey Till inWatcheld; Frank and Catherine Willsdon in Sydney; Mike and Abby Wilson inthe Weald of Kent; Allen and Cherry Yhearm in Henley-on-Thames; and DrHubert and Francesca Zawadzki in Abingdon. Professor John Young and HanielRiviere-Allen from the Department of History, University of Nottingham, alsogot into the act by arranging for me to spend my sabbatical year 200405attached to that ne institution. I appreciated their support in what was a trulysplendid year spent in the East Midlands.In addition, Dr. Dan Crosswell and Professor Brian Farrell, my departmental

colleagues at the National University of Singapore (NUS), could always be reliedupon as founts of knowledge on military-related matters. I didnt always agreewith their trenchant views on military aairs, but their advice was always worthlistening to and often deserved to be acted upon. I have also beneted from myclose friendship with Professor Peter Dennis who has become a kind of scholarlymentor to me. I have known and worked under Peters leadership at theAustralian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra and have no hesitationin saying that he led by example and its an example worth following. Peteroered to help read the proofs of this book for me. What more need be saidabout his generosity?NUS is also extremely fortunate to have Tim Yap at the head of the

Information section of its Central Library. He is a superb librarian with a deepand abiding fascination for all things historical, especially military aairs.Nothing is too much trouble for Tim. He goes to great lengths to track downobscure sources and discovered various gems while doing so that I have usedprotably subsequently. Tim is the Singaporean equivalent of ChristopherDawkins, the military specialist librarian at ADFA and a librarian of great talentand resourcefulness. Apart from the outstanding naval collections held by bothADFA and the Joint Services Command College in Watcheld, Wiltshire, I havealso been extremely fortunate to have a resource-rich research base in Singapore.Led initially by Barbara Quek, the chief librarian of the Singapore ArmedForces Training Institutes Military Institute Library in Upper Jurong, and hersuccessors Mary Ho and Kym Loo, most ably supported by the indomitable pairof Julaiha and Ratha, SAFTI MI has been an excellent and congenial place inwhich to do my work. Apart from being consistently helpful and considerate tome, all of the sta have gone out of their way to make me welcome in a librarywhich is one of the best kept secrets in Singapore. Nothing seemingly is toomuch trouble for them. They really are an admirable team.I am also deeply indebted to my old friend and former colleague, Dr. John W.

(Jack) Humphrey, a wonderful cartographer from Diversa Consulting in LongBeach, California, for the superb quality of the maps he has drawn for each ofthe maritime regions of the world mentioned in the text. In eschewing thecomplex tracking charts of individual ships or battleeets that adorn many of the

Acknowledgements xvii

naval histories of the past, Jacks maps are intended as spatial guides that willhelp orientate the reader to the action being described in the book. I think theydo this task wonderfully.My thanks must also be extended to Professor Albert Lau, the head of my

department, who encouraged me to run a public outreach programme in 200607 in which I was able to try out some of my ideas about naval warfare on afascinating cross section of people drawn from all walks of life in Singapore. Inother words, it was just the type of audience that Naval Warfare 19191945 hasbeen geared to. I was delighted with the reception my work received at thehands of these very talented people. Ever supportive from the time he joined theDepartment of History and a constant feature throughout the lecture series,Professor Merle Ricklefs continues to inspire me both as a scholar and a shrewdobserver of the academic scene. I really appreciate his judicious counsel on awide range of matters.Once again, the Lee Foundation came to my aid as it has done consistently

over the past dozen years and funded a substantial amount of my research. Icant thank Mr. Lee Seng Gee enough for his generosity to me. I hope he willfeel that Naval Warfare 19191945 has been worth the investment his Foundationhas made in it.My greatest debt of gratitude, however, is justiably reserved for my wife

Ulrike and our four wonderful children: Marianne, Caroline, Nicolas andStephanie, none of whom can remember a time when I wasnt working on thisvolume in some capacity or another. They are the rarest of all joyous gifts andthey continue to light up my life on a daily basis. Words simply cannot expressmy love for every one of them.Despite all the help I have received from so many quarters in completing this

study, however, I willingly acknowledge that I am solely responsible for anymistakes of omission or commission that may be found in this piece of work.

Singapore,30 March 2008

xviii Acknowledgements

1 Neither one thing nor the other(191939)

Such was the grotesque nature and cost of the Great War in both human andeconomic terms that it soon became referred to as the war to end all wars.1

Alas, it didnt prove to be so. Whatever pious hopes may have been expressedfor peace in the months after the armistice had been arranged in November1918 they amounted to little more than well intentioned wishful thinking. As autopian concept, the renunciation of war was to have a brief renaissance inEurope before faltering and being abandoned in the years of acute economic,political and social upheaval that followed the Wall Street Crash in 1929 andthe onset of the Great Depression at the outset of the 1930s.2 Thereafter theworld began lurching from one international crisis to the next with alarmingfrequency. Before the end of the decade the lamps of peace that had gone outonce before in July 1914 were extinguished yet again in Europe as the continentwas dragged into another tumultuous war by the forces of craven personalambition and belligerent national expansionism.3

A little over twenty years before Hitler was to open his blitzkrieg (lightningwar) oensive against Poland and usher in the Second World War on1 September 1939, the major naval powers had emerged from the 191418 con-ict in some disarray. So much had not gone according to plan. Some cherishednotions had fallen well short of expectations.4 Instead of being the nal arbiter ofthe war at sea, the capital ship had not exercised the decisive inuence on theseencounters that so many naval experts had condently predicted beforehand itwould have done.5 Controversy has stalked the issue ever since. Were the Britishcapital ships let down by poor equipment or inferior tactics or by inadequatetraining and dangerous practices? While it is customary to blame problems inrange-nding, gun-laying and re control for undermining their gunnery poten-tial especially over long distances, the jury remains deantly out on whether theusual suspects the Admiralty and its use of the Dreyer Tables in preference toPollens Argo system were really so inept.6 To add to the general frustration ofthose on board the capital ship, even when its gunnery problems were correctedand hits were made on enemy vessels, their shells would often malfunction andfail to explode on impact. Again, in deance of condent predictions to thecontrary, a nal denitive set piece battle between the capital ship eets of thevarious adversaries had not been waged amidst the dying embers of the war.

Instead, contradictorily, the numerically weaker enemy combatants had pre-ferred to retain their principal naval assets as a eet-in-being by keeping themin their bases as a latent threat rather than risking them in some nal epicgtterdmerung on the high seas that could well have totally eliminated them.7

While the battleship and battlecruiser had clearly failed to live up to their pre-war hype, the submarine, on the other hand, had comfortably exceeded expec-tations. Coping with the menace of the U-boat and its withering attack onmercantile trade was to tax the British Admiralty to the hilt. What made itsleaders so culpable was that they possessed the means of eectively tackling orneutralising the threat posed by the submersible if only they had adopted itsooner than they did. Convoy had a long history of success when operatingunder hostile conditions. It was designed for the practice of defending mercantilesupplies and war matriel, but it was blatantly ignored by the Admiralty forspecious reasons for far too long and at great cost to the Allied war eort.Instead of merely being a defensive tool, the convoy was far more proactive thanit was given credit for. As destroyer escorts improved their anti-submarine war-fare (ASW) methods so convoy losses fell to below 1% in 1918 while the toll ontheir would-be U-boat predators increased to over 7%.8

It was precisely this blind spot mentality amongst a number of senior navalocers in the Admiralty that ensured that non-optimal use was made of thepriceless signals intelligence that ooded into Room 40 during the war.9 It wasalso present in the attitude of those within the Senior Service who tended todenigrate the importance and potential of the submarine in the immediate post-war world. Despite its performance in the Great War, or perhaps because of it,the submarine had acquired a reputation for such unscrupulous and deviousconduct that a school of opinion developed within Royal Navy circles thatlooked to ban these vessels in future. Other powers, most notably the French,found this curious British reluctance to embrace the submarine as a key vessel inany future naval struggle as being thoroughly unworldly and peculiarly short-sighted given the problems caused by the U-boats in the recent war.10

There was much, therefore, for the leading naval powers to absorb and reectupon in the early days of peace. Would they heed the lessons of the First WorldWar and be better prepared in future if the collective yearning for peace wasonce again replaced by a nation striving for war? What changes would be madeto both strategic and tactical doctrine so as to position naval powers to their bestadvantage for future operations at sea? Would there be sucient time to criti-cally test these ideas and theories through rigorous war gaming and naval man-oeuvres so as to ensure their viability in time of war?11 What role, for instance,might be played by the aeroplane in any future conict conducted at sea?12 Towhat purposes might radio and radar be used on board ship?13 Would sucientnance, research and training be devoted to improving a ships capacity to strikean enemy more often than not, regardless of weather, sea, and rapidly changingbattle conditions? What of weapons technology and improvements in warshipdesign and construction? Would sucient investment be made in the eld ofcryptology to improve cipher security and, if so, would sucient attention be

2 Neither one thing nor the other

also paid to cryptanalysis in a bid to penetrate the communication systems offoreign powers?14 While any naval sta worth its salt would be forced to con-sider these questions to improve their combat readiness, solving them would takean immense amount of money. Would governments be prepared to devote thesums necessary to improve their navies when there would be other militaryclaimants seeking a larger share of the service estimates? Could the servicesexpect to receive vast subventions when across Europe most of the continentalpowers desperately needed time for reconstruction and redevelopment work andrequired the nancial resources to pay for them?15

Unfortunately, just when a period of calm retrospection and sober accoun-tancy was urgently needed to tackle these momentous tasks, the world braceditself once more for the prospect of yet another naval race. Both the UnitedStates Navy (USN) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) seemed poised toembark on new warship construction programmes in the months after thearmistice.16 They could both see a number of strategic and commercial advan-tages accruing to those who possessed substantial eets and felt, not unreason-ably, that they had the economic clout to aord them. Despite not being able toaord the necessary expenditure to match this construction eort, the leadingEuropean powers with naval positions to protect nonetheless felt this twin ripostecould not go unanswered and they also began to plan ambitious programmes oftheir own. Fortunately the world was saved from this collective madness by theAmerican decision to take the lead in active disarmament at the time of theWashington Conference in November 1921.17 Secretary of State Charles EvansHughes decision to take the initiative and lay down an audaciously compre-hensive schedule of scrapping took all the naval powers by surprise. Not for therst time an enlightened decision was greeted with angst and much soul search-ing from those who felt that some nefarious design or sinister purpose lay behindthis desire to cut the eets of the various leading naval powers so appreciably.Weathering the predictable storm of protest, the Americans who wished toremove possible sources of friction between the victorious Allied and AssociatedPowers calmly and rmly insisted upon their plan of naval limitation and therest of the invited delegates were left to ponder on what this unprecedented scaleof disarmament meant for each of them.18

Of the three treaties to emerge from the Washington Conference, the FivePower Naval Limitation Agreement enshrined the principle of parity betweenthe capital ship force levels of the Americans and the British and established axed ratio between their eets and those of the Japanese, French and Italians onthe basis of a 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 proportion. In other words, as the Americans andthe British were to be awarded fteen capital ships each, the IJN would beallowed to build up to nine and the French and Italians ve each. Although thenon-American delegates expressed harsh words over the nal allocation, theprinciple of disarmament was grudgingly accepted by all concerned.19 Whiledealing an unprecedented quantitative blow to the Royal Navy, in particular by surgically removing a vast amount of old naval clutter that had been accu-mulated by the Admiralty over the course of time it proved to be a real

Neither one thing nor the other 3

qualitative stimulus for those signatory powers that now sought to build a set ofmodern and powerful capital ship units to replace those that were technicallyinferior to the new behemoths.20 Complaints about the details of this agreementpersisted, however, not least from leading gures in the USN who felt that theparity they had desired and regarded as their due for some time past was stillcompromised for years to come by the fact that the British had been allowed toretain a higher total tonnage gure for their capital ships than the Americanshad been given. Anglophobia was never far from the surface of many of theleading USN personnel at this time and the suspicion that the British had usedtheir wiles to get away with something at the expense of the USN rankled withmany American naval ocers.21

Over the course of the next few years there would be many more sources ofdisagreement that would conspire to bedevil Anglo-American relations. Almostall would stem from the reluctance of the British Admiralty to embrace anythingthat was seen as undermining the Royal Navys once privileged position on thehigh seas. In British eyes, Hughes startling coup at Washington over the num-bers and ratio of capital ships and aircraft carriers must not be repeated infuture by accepting similarly punitive agreements over the future of their eet ofcruisers. Setting their faces against such an eventuality on the basis that theUnited Kingdom was the only island nation to have a worldwide empire andthat cruisers were the most appropriate vessels to defend the maritime traderoutes between the colonies and the mother country, the British resolutelydefended their position in various international forums for the rest of the decadeand frustrated those who saw no validity in their special pleading.22

Notwithstanding what was oered to the British at Washington to win theirapproval for this agreement, the Japanese gained by far the most importantconcession. As part of a package deal that would not only place a cap on futureJapanese building programmes but also see the forced abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, the Americans were prepared to provide a level of security forthe Japanese in the Western Pacic that was as dramatic as it was ill-conceived.In essence, the Japanese were to be given a decisive measure of monopoly con-trol in the waters of the region by an agreement to prohibit the constructionand/or maintenance of any rst class naval base closer to Japanese shores thanSingapore for the British and Pearl Harbor for the Americans.23 By oeringsuch an undertaking, the Americans revealed the intensity of their dislike for theAnglo-Japanese Alliance and their intention to scrap this nineteen-year-old dip-lomatic arrangement by any means at their disposal. Whatever the Americansthought about the alliance, cancelling it was a bitter pill for both the British andthe Japanese governments to swallow and the more so because it had beenadministered by the Americans on grounds that were far from convincing. If theUS authorities could be believed, the existence of the alliance was deemed to befundamentally against the Harding administrations trading interests in the FarEast and particularly in China. Since the US saw the entire Pacic as lyingwithin its own sphere of inuence, the prospect of an Anglo-Japanese axis con-tending for power and penetration in the region was unwelcome. Whereas US

4 Neither one thing nor the other

ocials felt thoroughly justied in being cautious and were wont to cite thealliance as a potential threat to peace, neither the British nor the Japanesethought this reason was anything more than a spurious attempt by theAmericans to kill a diplomatic accord that didnt include them.24 Even so thefact that the British succumbed to American pressure and forced the unwillingJapanese to abrogate their strategic alliance was not taken kindly in Tokyo andthe reverberations of this momentous decision were to be felt for many years tocome both at home and abroad. Apart from anything else, it certainly didnothing to strengthen the hands of the Japanese government or assist thoseseeking a democratic future in the country. Moreover, it may also be seen as oneof those major turning points in the United Kingdoms fortunes after the war,not least because it managed to convert an admittedly dicult ally into apotential enemy with a disturbing agenda that it would reveal incrementally andominously to the non-Japanese world over the course of the following two dec-ades.25 That neither the Four Power nor Nine Power Treaties, which roundedout the Washington system, proved to be anything other than calamitous forthose of the signatory powers with interests in the Pacic Ocean should surprisefew people. Both diplomatic arrangements had been devised with one thing inmind the elimination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. That they replaced itwith a much less eective system of supposedly interlocking relationships was oneof the least satisfactory aspects of American diplomacy in the inter-war period, ifnot the century as a whole.26

In the aftermath of the Washington Conference as the signatory powers learntto cope with the various aspects of the new system bequeathed to them, the post-war European world entered an ugly phase in which anger and suspicion werenever very far from the surface. Those nations defeated in the Great War,Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey, had been left in no doubt asto where they stood in the new continental power structure and what theirformer enemies thought of them. As usual, the victors had turned on the van-quished. Harsh and even punitive terms had been levied against them in thepeace treaties that had been drawn up by the victors at Versailles, St. Germain,Trianon and at Svres during the course of 191920. From the outset the Alliedand Associated Powers were absolutely determined to exact the maximumreparations from the Central Powers for starting the war in the rst place.Subjectivity reigned and emotion, alas, was given its due reward at the expenseof seeking a just settlement.27 Inevitably, therefore, no sense of shared responsi-bility for the outbreak of that war was forthcoming. Instead the victors appliedthe old principle that winning was all that mattered. Apart from the nancialobligations that were applied to the defeated nations, the severe restrictions thatwere placed on their military force structures meant that erstwhile global orregional naval powers were deliberately reduced in status to little more thanlocalised self-defence forces. Refusing to contemplate such a fate, theReichsmarine pre-empted the Versailles settlement by ordering its ocers totake decisive action and scuttle the German High Seas Fleet in the Orkney baseof Scapa Flow. With this single act of deance, the problem of what to do about

Neither one thing nor the other 5

the bulk of this major international naval force had been eectively resolved.Even so, the orchestrated German resistance left a simmering sense of resent-ment among those who had hoped to benet from the post-war redistribution ofthe former Imperial German Navy.28

In the case of Russia, however, the extraordinary events of 191720 had left itan international and ideological outcast detested by all those powers that nowfelt threatened by its very existence. After surviving two revolutions one toeliminate its Tsarist past and the other to establish a communist dictatorship acivil war (in which its counter-revolutionary enemies had been aided tfully andunconvincingly by some of its former wartime allies) and a territorial disputeagainst its old adversary Poland that had degenerated into an impassioned warof uctuating fortunes, Russias Marxist-Leninist leaders could not be easilywritten o by their detractors.29 What they might do in the future with themilitary power at their disposal was, of course, a vital consideration for all non-communist states. There was no easy or denitive answer to this seminal ques-tion. While the Red Army had proved itself surprisingly durable in the wake ofthe Bolshevik revolution, the resurrection of Russian naval power in the futurecould neither be guaranteed nor dismissed out of hand by Western governments.Unlike the Central Powers, the Russians were not arraigned before the victor-ious powers and as such, the latter found themselves unable to impose anyquantitative or qualitative restrictions on either arm of the Russian military ser-vices. Apart from preventing Russia from joining the League of Nations andrefusing to establish diplomatic relations with this new pariah state, the Britishand the French, in particular, were left fervently hoping that the Soviet economywas in such poor shape that it could not immediately sustain a major navalrebuilding programme and therefore would be unable to pose a signicantthreat to their own eets for years to come. Their wish was to be granted.30

As the Americans withdrew self-consciously from the aairs of Europe into aform of isolationism refusing to ratify the Versailles Treaty and rejectingmembership of the League of Nations, the brainchild of their presidentWoodrow Wilson the other members of the victorious alliance were left to geton with things as best they could. That they did not demonstrate an unerringtouch in dealing with the outstanding issues of the day albeit diplomatic,defence, economic or foreign policy issues is hardly surprising. United on verylittle, driven by individual national agendas that left a reservoir of mutual sus-picion and forced by a Republican-led Congress to assume leadership of theLeague in the absence of the worlds strongest power, the governments inLondon and Paris found themselves very exposed on a range of issues, not leastin dealing with the question of what to do about two of their old foes: Turkeyand Germany. Both were to pose considerable problems for the governments inLondon and Paris where neither issue was handled with assurance or diplomaticskill by the leading politicians who all too frequently tended to behave with bel-licosity and aggressive intent. David Lloyd George may have been a ne warleader, but his handling of the GreekTurkish imbroglio in 191922 was hope-lessly biased in favour of the former and callowly unrealistic in respect of the

6 Neither one thing nor the other

latter, especially once Mustapha Kemal emerged on the scene to lead theTurkish nationalist forces. Lloyd George and his coalition government continuedto play with re until the Chanak crisis led to his ousting from power in October1922.31 War between Britain and Turkey had come close on several occasionsand the Mediterranean Fleet had played a prominent role throughout, oftenexercising restraint on the belligerent forces or tackling the consequences whenindiscretions from either side arose to complicate matters or create the circum-stances that bred humanitarian tragedies, such as the Smyrna re of September1922.32

When it came to dealing with Germany, the French invariably led the way.Uncomfortable with what they saw as the practical shortcomings of collectivesecurity, the French continued to seek more eective safeguards against aGerman renaissance in the future. For this reason, if for no other, they wereloath to accommodate any perceived German wavering on their nancial obli-gations to the international community. Embroiled in their own domestic poli-tical struggles, the British were ignored as an unedifying combination of Germanintransigence, French exasperation and Belgian complicity was responsible forthe lamentable occupation of the Ruhr in January 1923 and the concomitantmeteoric descent into hyperination that did so much to assist the early rise tonational prominence of Adolf Hitler.33

Given the unstable situation in Europe and a somewhat rudderless League, itwas fortunate that international crises were rare at this time. Those that didoccur were essentially small-scale disputes that could be resolved withoutimposing a great strain on the members of the League or exposing the fragilityof collective security.34 Moreover, once the French and the Belgians were able toextricate themselves from Germany and sanity began to prevail in Anglo-FrenchGerman relations with the rise of Briand, Chamberlain and Stresemannand the signing of the Locarno agreement, Europe began to settle down to enjoya period of relative tranquillity.35

Elsewhere, however, the same calm did not always prevail. In the case ofChina, for example, the allure that the former Middle Kingdom had historicallyexerted upon foreign states and driven their much sought after economic pene-tration of the country, had intensied after the ending of the Great War. Chinasmilitary weakness, which it had suered throughout the nineteenth century,proved to be an irresistible magnet for those foreign powers seeking a sphere ofinuence in the most populous place on earth and aware of the massive marketpotential that could be exploited if only they could establish more than a merefoothold in the country. After wringing a series of concessions from the haplessChinese at various times over the past eighty years the much vilied unequaltreaties the international community wished to protect these interests and ifpossible expand upon them. For this purpose an international otilla was formedconsisting of American, British, French and Japanese gunboats whose prime taskwas to ply Chinese coastal and inland waters and thereby ensure that theirinterests and possessions were not subject to encroachment by hostile forceswhether foreign or local. Such foreign interventionism sat uneasily, however,

Neither one thing nor the other 7

with a raised national consciousness and increasing xenophobia both by-pro-ducts of the May Fourth Movement of 1919.36 As national authority brokedown in the face of a merciless civil war, the edgling republic was left at themercy of extremists on all sides of the political divide. Despite being beset bymany debilitating challenges in the turbulent post-revolutionary period, a newtougher China emerged, one in which military weakness was fast becomingconsigned to the past. Warlordism with its emphasis on the coupling of militaryand regional political power ensured that indigenous Chinese militia forces werebetter armed and also quite prepared to use their weapons to confront any oftheir enemies either local or foreign. If this was not sucient reason for cautionon behalf of foreign powers, the political cauldron in China boiled over in 1926with the rst of Chiang Kai-sheks Northern Expeditions to unify the countryunder his nationalist Kuomintang forces. In a very real sense, therefore, thestage was set for an explosive encounter and it was not long in coming.37

Although the Wanhsien Incident of AugustSeptember 1926 was to prove tobe the most dramatic, contentious and costly episode in which a foreign navalpower was pitted against local Chinese forces, the sad fact is that it was far frombeing the rst occasion when such a clash had occurred in a riverine environ-ment. Both parties were to blame for this very unfortunate state of aairs: theinternational powers for mounting an indiscreet and disdainful naval presence inChina which succeeded in inaming local passions, and the local warlords andtheir henchmen for the practice of routinely commandeering foreign merchantvessels for transporting their troops and material from one place to another andfor indulging in random and indiscriminate ring upon foreign steamers as theypassed up or down river. Apart from the loss of life on both sides arising out ofthe rescue bid mounted by British gunboats on the Yangtze, the WanhsienIncident is important because its unsatisfactory resolution managed to greatlyintensify the state of anti-foreignism in China.38 More clashes arose and theforeign powers responded by redeploying a number of major warships fromother stations to Chinese waters to deal with the menace posed by their localadversaries. By January 1927, for instance, the British alone had an aircraftcarrier, eight cruisers, nine destroyers, twelve submarines, four sloops, twominesweepers and fteen river gunboats amongst other vessels in Chinesewaters. In addition, the Americans, French and Japanese likewise increased theirnaval contingents in Chinese waters, though none of them maintained a forcethat was as impressive quantitatively or qualitatively as that of the British.39

Regardless of its problems in China, the UK continued to see the Far Eastand Australasia as being vitally important to its long-term economic recovery.For this reason once the Washington Conference had conferred on the Japanesea substantial degree of autonomy in the Western Pacic, the British scrambled tond a suitable site to establish a rst class naval base for the region. Facing adearth of alternative choices, the British became convinced that they needed toupgrade their port facilities in Singapore so that it would become a major repairand maintenance facility in their Asia-Pacic theatre of operations. Unfortunately,the nancial outlay for a base such as this was so prohibitive that the Baldwin

8 Neither one thing nor the other

government in London could not possibly aord the most comprehensivescheme and was forced to compromise on a number of crucial items that left theSembawang naval base in the Strait of Johor something of a hostage to fortune ifMalaya was ever to fall to some superior enemy force. Political considerationsalso intruded: building work on the base was suspended by Ramsay MacDonaldsshort-lived Labour government in January 1924, only to be resumed under itsConservative successor later in the year and then subject to delay once more asMacDonald returned to 10 Downing Street in October 1929. MacDonaldspacism and general disinclination to pursue military options close to home, letalone far aeld, left the conservative naval establishment in Admiralty Houseseething and reluctant to embrace any further disarmament scheme that wouldbe prejudicial to its world-wide interests.40

This naturally fed latent Anglophobia as was evident in the surly reaction ofthe American naval establishment to all things British. US Navy Departmentocials continued to nurse a grudge against their British counterparts for arange of alleged misdemeanours. This attitude found a receptive audience inDefense and State Department circles and expressed itself in a rm Americanpreference for absenting themselves from European aairs for the balance of theHarding administration and the early phase of Calvin Coolidges time in theWhite House. While the politicians rejected internationalism in favour of dealingwith their domestic agenda, their military experts were engaged in a conscioustest of will at home over the forging of future US defence policy. Solving thatdicult equation took a number of years and a huge psychological toll on thoseintimately involved in these matters.41 Under sustained pressure from the Armyfor its introspective ways, the Navy Department was also subject to the begin-nings of a movement to advance the cause of the aeroplane at the expense of thecapital ship. No one made more noise on this heretical subject than BillyMitchell. His sterling advocacy of the combat merits of the aircraft vis--vis thebattleship and the successful trials that were held against old vessels of thattype Indiana, Ostfriesland and Alabama in 192021 to prove his point, didmuch to put the US Navy Department on the defensive for years to come.42

If it was any comfort to the Americans, the same type of contentious argu-ment over the emerging role of the aircraft vis--vis the enduring legacy of thebattleship was being waged with characteristic vigour (and arguably even greatervehemence) across the Atlantic where the Admiralty and the Air Ministry wereengaged in an on-going battle for supremacy as far as defence spending wasconcerned. Did the aircraft make the battleship redundant as its supporters,inspired by the views of the military theorist Giulio Douhet, claimed it would?Sir Hugh Trenchard, chief of the air sta in the 1920s and the rst marshal ofthe Royal Air Force, certainly believed that the balance of advantage now laywith the bomber rather than the capital ship. A combative individual at the best oftimes, he proved to be a doughty opponent to all those within the Senior Servicewho wished to exercise independent control over the edgling Fleet Air Arm.43

Under attack by the other services, the general wellbeing of both the USNand the Royal Navy was not improved by taking part in the acrimonious sessions

Neither one thing nor the other 9

that so disgured the Geneva Conference in JuneAugust 1927. Naval dis-armament became an increasingly fraught aair with the British delegates ill-disposed to accepting any blanket extension of the Washington system thatwould cover cruisers as well as lesser classes of naval vessel. By stoutly resistingAmerican pressure for a reduction of its cruiser strength to fty and holding outfor a minimum force level of seventy in the face of much vocal opposition fromthe representatives of the US Navy Department, the Board of Admiraltyuniquely demonstrated its capacity for inexibility on those matters impingingon its own interests and revealed tellingly the very modest lengths it was pre-pared to go in order to preserve Anglo-American naval relations at this time.That cooperation between London and Washington now sank to a new lowsurprised few of those who had been at Geneva. As the two naval establishmentsrecoiled from one another, the individuals who were deeply antagonistic andinherently suspicious of the other side in this cross-Atlantic divide came into theirown with depressingly negative eects on policy formation for at least eighteenmonths.44

Although none of the naval powers had been enthusiastic about the imposi-tion of forced disarmament of their stocks of capital ships under the Washingtontreaty system, all had naturally sought to make the best of the situation and stillnd means of providing the ideal balanced eet for themselves. One way ofdoing so was to build up those classes of warship that hadnt been expresslydisallowed at Washington, namely, the cruiser and destroyer. After all, bothtypes of warship could perform a number of indispensable tasks for the eet.Cruisers were fast, well armed, armoured to a degree (whether reasonably oradequately is a moot point), and long on endurance. They could, therefore,continue to full their usual long-range reconnaissance or scouting role, and beused to protect their own shipping or raid enemy commerce, take part in anyship-to-shore bombardment of enemy positions, and serve as an integral oen-sive/defensive unit along with a task force of capital ships (and increasingly withcarriers in the years to come).45 Over the years destroyers had basically devel-oped into a more sophisticated and far heavier type of fast torpedo boat, but onethat was much smaller and more vulnerable than the cruiser. As they were muchcheaper and faster to build, they had become consequently more plentiful thanany other type of warship by the end of the 191418 war. Their prime role asprotective escorts for the battleeet had been enlarged in wartime to encompassconvoy protection and oensive anti-submarine warfare (ASW).46

Although the USN had begun laying down the rst four vessels of the muchcriticised Omaha class of light cruiser (i.e. those using no larger than 6-inch[155mm] guns for their main armament) even before the Washington Conferencehad begun, American cruiser development in the 1920s and early 1930s largelyconcentrated on the building up of the heavy type of cruiser (those that usednothing less than 8-inch [203mm] guns for their heavy armament) as a means ofproducing a viable range of what Norman Friedman has described as a juniorcapital ship.47 All four classes of heavy cruiser laid down in stages from 1926 to1934 were designed to achieve speeds in excess of 32 knots, but their armour

10 Neither one thing nor the other

protection against anything larger than a 5-inch (127mm) shell (the sort that adestroyer would re) was much less convincing.48 Although the British tackledthe thorny problem of a ten-year naval building holiday for capital ships inmuch the same way as their American counterparts, none of the ve classes ofheavy cruiser which the Royal Navy developed in the mid-to-late 1920s couldquite reach the speed of the USN types described above.49 As a result of theLondon Naval Treaty of 1930 and the restrictions it imposed on heavy cruisers,the British used the 1930s to develop their light cruiser classes laying down eightnew classes of this type of vessel before the war broke out in September 1939.50

Poignantly and rather gallingly for both the General Board in the US and theAdmiralty in the UK, the Japanese the third ranked naval power managedto eclipse both. Experimenting with dierent types of hull, better armour pro-tection both underwater and in the areas around previously vulnerable areassuch as the bridge, and by steadily improving their 4-shaft geared turbines andboilers to create vastly increased shaft horse power and speed, the eight classes ofJapanese cruiser developed during the interwar period raised the bar in terms ofcruiser design. While the Japanese undoubtedly led the way in cruiser develop-ment, the Navy General Stas insistence on building as much repower intothese ships as possible made many of them dangerously unstable.51

Of the various design teams from the subordinate powers that were pressedinto action around the globe, arguably none managed to produce a range ofvessels under the treaty limits with more air and panache than the Italians.Encouraged by the fascist dictatorship that Mussolini had erected after becomingprime minister in October 1922, the Italian Navy needed no second bidding tocreate something of a stir in the Mediterranean.52 Apart from the appearance oftheir ambitious 10,000-ton cruisers Trento and Trieste in 1927, units of thenew light condottieri type Giussano class (5,110 tons) were achieving sea trialspeeds of roughly 40 knots by 1930 without sacricing armaments to do so.Their new destroyers were soon going even faster, even though they werenotoriously poor sea keepers and rolled viciously in bad weather.53 Speed was, ofcourse, an extremely useful asset for any vessel to have at her disposal, but betterprotection for her crew was imperative if she was to be combative as well as swiftand be able to make any lasting impression on those that she would beemployed against. In this respect the Japanese were in a class of their own.While they could not compete for basic speed with the Italians, the JapaneseFubuki class incorporating new features, such as gas-proof gun-houses insteadof open shields for the guns and multiple tubes could claim to be among thesafest and most ecient destroyers aoat.54

At the capital ship end of the spectrum, American interest in the future role ofthe aeroplane was also taken several steps further by the conversion of the eetcollier Jupiter into the rst of its at tops Langley (12,700 tons) in 1922 and by re-designing the battlecruisers Lexington and Saratoga (37,681 tons) to make them intothe rst of the USNs eet carriers when they were commissioned at the end of1927. It was claimed for several years that they did not breach the 35,000 tonrule laid down by the Washington Treaty for carriers, but it is clear that they

Neither one thing nor the other 11

did. Funds were also set aside for the construction of a new Ranger class of air-craft carrier (14,575 tons) that could carry 76 aircraft (thirteen more than theLexington class) and could reach speeds of 29.9 knots at her sea trials in 1933.Despite being the rst of the American carriers to be designed as such from theoutset, Ranger was not a great success. Her captain would later testify in 1939that she sometimes pitched so violently in heavy seas that all ying operationswould have to be suspended from her decks.55

Despite the Admiraltys love of the dreadnought battleships in its midst, it hadlaid down the largest carrier eet in the world by the time the war came to anend, ranging from Pegasus at 3,300 tons (deep load) to that of Eagle (26,800 tons)when operational. Within a decade most had become rather antiquated andVindictive (12,095 tons) had already been converted back into a Hawkins classheavy cruiser. Beginning in 1922 with Furious (22,450 tons) which was designedoriginally as a light battlecruiser, the British converted both Courageous andGlorious, both of which had both been launched in 1916 as light battlecruisers,into eet carriers. They operated on similar tonnages to Furious, but each wasable to carry a dozen more aircraft than she did by the time they emerged fromreconstruction in 1928 and 1930 respectively.56

Like the other two principal naval powers, the rst three Japanese carrierswere converted from other forms of naval vessel: Hosho had originally been anaval oiler before being converted into a light carrier; Akagi had begun life as a41,200 ton battlecruiser and Kaga had been designed as a 39,000 ton battleship.Only the light carrier Ryujo which was laid down in 1929 was supposed to havebeen a carrier from the outset. In a bid to ensure that she could carry moreaircraft, a second hangar was added in the mid-1930s but this caused real stabilityproblems.57

Perhaps the most ominous development of the lot, however, came from theGermans who returned to the world of naval building in 1929 by unveiling anarmoured ship known as the Preussen (renamed Deutschland) a cross between asmall battleship and battlecruiser and the forerunner of the class of pocketbattleship (described as Panzerschi) that would circumvent the restrictions onmaximum tonnage and gun calibre imposed by the Treaty of Versailles andbecome such a feature of German naval construction in the 1930s. What dis-turbed the British most about this type of ship was that it looked to be designedas a high speed, long endurance and heavily-armed merchant raider, and onethat was in a class of its own in terms of these combinations of quality assets. Ofthe existing eets, only the three British battlecruisers (Hood, Renown and Repulse)were a match for these pocket battleships. As the naval powers didnt know whatto expect from the Germans in future, the French decided to lay down theirDunkerque class of battleship in 1932 which was based on, but not as heavy as,the British Nelson class that had been laid down in 1922. Once launched in193536 both Dunkerque and Strasbourg were capable of reaching speeds of over30 knots during their 8-hour power trials.58

Whatever emotions were raised in western European capitals by the re-emergence onto the world stage of the German Navy in 1929, they were utterly

12 Neither one thing nor the other

eclipsed by those generated by the disastrous stock market crash on Wall Streetin October of that same year. As countries around the world reeled from theeects of the rst Black Thursday and panic set in as fortunes and prots dis-appeared in a welter of falling prices and stocks and shares indices, a huge blowwas administered to both the capitalist and democratic systems upon which twinedices a number of regimes now rested. It is dicult not to see 1929 as adecisive turning point in the political fortunes of the world ushering in a collapseof international economic institutions and nancial arrangements, businesses ranging from the vibrant to the staid and personal credit lines and the lifestylesthat went with them. Political parties that had won their way into power throughthe ballot box now found the experience of being in power distinctly uncomfor-table. Those that managed to hold onto power did so at great cost to themselvesand were seen, perhaps unfairly, by many of their constituents both at the timeand subsequently as being weak and incompetent. Few democratic regimeslasted beyond their next major electoral test before being unceremoniouslyreplaced by their political opponents.59

While fatal harm was being done to some political careers by the ominousdescent into what became known as the Great Depression, others took ometeorically none more so than that of Adolf Hitler. His dire warnings aboutthe so-called November Criminals, the iniquities of the Versailles settlementand the savaging of German pride on the altar of Allied expediency now beganto nd common cause with a nation that succumbed once more to soaringunemployment and rampant ination. It made little dierence that the SocialDemocrats and their coalition partners in Berlin were not directly responsible forthe calamity that now befell the German nation. The fact was they were the ones inpower and this meant that they were held to be accountable to the people forthe grievous misfortunes that the latter were experiencing at this time. Just whatthis meant in practice could be glimpsed from the results of the Reichstag elec-tions of June 1930 when the National Socialist German Workers Party thatHitler led emerged as the most dynamic political movement in the country.60

As pressures mounted on governments around the world, the old WashingtonTreaty powers met once more in an eort to carry forward the disarmamentmessage that the original meeting in 192122 had proclaimed so shrilly. Afterthe misunderstandings and mistrust generated by the failed talks at Geneva in1927, the British government under the stewardship of Ramsay MacDonaldonce more was particularly determined to take naval disarmament to anotherlevel and improve the unsatisfactory state of Anglo-American relations at thesame time. Naturally, the Admiralty feared the consequences of this politicalinterference, but was powerless to stop the prime minister and his pacist ten-dencies from inicting further cuts on the Senior Service.61 MacDonald was notalone in seeking restraint and international understanding. Indeed it had beenthe key to the advocacy of the KelloggBriand Pact and its sublime, if alwaysidealistic, intention of outlawing war a document signed with much fanfare bymore than sixty nations in August 1928 and then promptly ignored by a numberof the signatory powers.62

Neither one thing nor the other 13

By the time the naval delegates gathered in London to begin this disarmamentrevival, therefore, the signs of international instability were becoming obvious toall. In Japan, the frail experiment with Taisho democracy had been dispensedwith as militarism resurfaced in a number of guises virtually all of them inim-ical to moderation. In fascist Italy Mussolini, emboldened by the recent under-standing reached with the Vatican, was proving to be considerably more astutein power and far less easy to outmanoeuvre than his many foreign detractorshad imagined he would be.63 In France politicians continued to rise and fall inthe rather heady fashion of the Third Republic, but a growing sense of appre-hension was detectable not least because of the death in early October 1929 ofGustav Stresemann the sturdy German nationalist gure who had done somuch to transform Franco-German relations in the previous six years rst aschancellor and then as foreign minister. Thereafter French foreign policyassumed an ultra defensive mode symbolised in the erection of the Maginot Lineof fortications that was to be constructed at phenomenal expense along theFranco-German border.64

Although the London Naval Conference could not be described as anunqualied success, it was less dramatically controversial than the Hughes-dominated assembly of 192122. Spurred on by Macdonald, the British dele-gates were prepared to accept the previously untenable American demand for anupper limit of fty cruisers and a maximum displacement limit of 339,000 tons.This spirit of constructive co-operation was matched on the American side bytheir willingness to select the Anglophile Captain Veazie Pratt as the technicalleader of the USN delegation. Inspired by Pratts positivism, the Americansworked closely with their Royal Navy counterparts to bury a good deal of theanimosity that had so disgured this cross-Atlantic relationship throughout thepast decade. As a result, agreements were forthcoming on a range of matters.Under the arrangements for capital ships, the Americans, British and Japaneseall agreed not to build any more before 1937, while the French and Italians,who could both have built a 35,000-ton vessel in 1927 and 1929 but had chosennot to do so in either year, indicated that they would exercise their option tobuild these vessels before 1937 and proceeded to do so. In examining the case forthe development of aircraft carriers, the 5:5:3:1.75:1.75 principle was re-endorsedand submarine equality with the USN and RN was permitted for the IJN,though not without some qualms expressed in private by representatives of thetwo leading naval powers. American fondness for the destroyer was recognisedand the USNs lead in this class of warship was duly protected.65

Whatever agreements had been forged in London, however, began to look agood deal less permanent only a short while later as the spectre of an uncom-promising nationalism stalked the globe. It was bad enough that Hitlers rise toprominence in Germany was not stalled by his presumptuous electoral duel withthe incumbent Paul von Hindenburg for the presidency of the republic in Marchand April 1932, underlining the notion that Europe had not heard the last ofhim or his party, but even this undesirable prospect had been upstaged severalmonths before by the machinations of the Japanese military in East Asia. Eyeing

14 Neither one thing nor the other

territorial acquisitions in Manchuria and China and realising that the only waythey were going to get them was by force, infantry troops of the ImperialJapanese Army staged the Mukden incident on 18 September 1931 and used theensuing disorder as a pretext for a full scale invasion and eventual annexation ofManchuria. Chinas appeal to the League of Nations hardly inconvenienced theby now exultant Japanese military, and the government in Tokyo knew better thanto try to restrain its troops in the eld let alone yield the territorial and economicgains made by them following the outbreak of the Manchurian war. Not contentwith bringing Manchuria under their control, the Japanese swiftly turned theirattention to the Chinese mainland that beckoned invitingly as a key economiccog in a new colonial empire ruled from Tokyo. Unrestrained Japanese enthu-siasm for the spoils of war soon caught up with them, however, and the belli-gerent behaviour of their troops in Shanghai in January 1932 and their warshipssubsequently was to bring them into confrontation with the Western Powers whojealously guarded their own interests in the International Settlement and had nowish to see them infringed upon or lost entirely to the Japanese. As a result,additional naval units were brought in by both the Americans and the British atthe beginning of February to reinforce their existing presence in the city and actas a deterrent to those who might otherwise have been tempted to trample ontheir national interests. Although heightened naval activity in local waters didnothing to cool the xenophobia of the Chinese, it may have been a sucientindication to the Japanese that they would have to tread more warily in futurewhere foreign powers were concerned. Nonetheless, the aggressive intent of theirforces both in Manchuria and China and the governments failure to restrainthem, demonstrated convincingly that moderation was a commodity in rathershort supply in Japanese political and military circles at this time.66

In setting the rst real challenge to the League of Nations, the Japanese were,of course, to expose the political bankruptcy of the organisation and the fragilityof the concept of collective security. Neither failing surprised the French whohad never been comfortable with the Leagues ability to resolve internationalcrises or to impose its will upon errant states. Even before the LyttonCommission had begun gathering information on the background to the disputeand seven months before rendering its judgement, the Japanese had shownwhere they stood on the issue by bringing into existence a new Manchurianrepublic that would henceforth be known as Manchukuo. While taking greatpains to couch its report in non-inammatory language, the Lytton Commissionstill managed to infuriate the Japanese by nding them guilty of several breachesof the League Covenant and the KelloggBriand Pact. In the months followingthe publication of the Lytton Commissions report in October 1932, the worldwas treated to a variety of unseemly diplomatic schemes intended to circumventthe necessity for taking direct action against the aggressor Japan and providingsome form of restitution for its victim China. It is sobering to note that theleading members of the League were often in the vanguard of this movement andtherefore did much to undermine the credibility of the institution to which theywere supposedly committed.67

Neither one thing nor the other 15

At precisely the same time as the Lytton Commission was conducting itsponderously thorough investigation in East Asia, the League of NationsDisarmament Conference began its own painfully frustrating proceedings inGeneva. Whatever hopes for world peace may have been pinned on the suc-cessful outcome of this international gathering at the outset were dispelledalmost immediately by the unhelpful behaviour of some of the delegations whowere in no mood to placate their traditional foes or assist even those of theirrecent allies who were striving for goals dierent from their own.68

If these were not sucient causes for disquiet, lurking in the background wasyet another menace to world peace, namely, Adolf Hitler. His Nazi Party,buoyant that their leaders presidential bid had netted more than thirteen mil-lion votes in April 1932, drew on this reservoir of support again in the Reichstagelections of June and polled slightly in excess of that gure nationally. From alow point of 12 seats at the 1928 elections, the Nazis had been transformed froma small provincial outt to the largest party in the entire parliament with 230seats at their disposal. Although they were to lose more than thirty seats in thenew elections held in November 1932, they remained the largest party overalland their brooding presence on the German political scene was such that theycould no longer be ignored as merely a lunatic fringe element either by theirdomestic opponents or by foreign governments.69

By the end of 1932, therefore, the stage seemed set for a new and moreunpredictable phase in international relations and one that was mirrored in theBritish governments decision to abandon the underlying principle of its foreignand defence policy that it had maintained after 1919, namely, that of the ten-year no-war rule. Although not ocially interred by the cabinet until March1933, MacDonalds National government had come to the conclusion wellbefore the end of the previous year that such a comforting analysis could nolonger be sustained. It was a correct assumption to make as the events of thefollowing months would conrm.70

Those pessimists who felt that 1933 was destined to become a momentousyear in international relations soon found plenty of evidence to support theirtheory. January had not even passed before the Austrian-born, ex-corporalHitler was reluctantly installed by Feldmarschall Hindenburg as the Germanchancellor. Whatever else might lie in store for Germany, his elevation to powerappeared to spell an abrupt end to the spirit of European co-operation andharmony that had existed from the time of the Locarno agreements. Foreigngovernments read the warning signs and altered tack immediately becomingmore defensive in nature and more inclined to the concept of re-armament thanthat of disarmament.71

A signicant culture of change arose in the United States too, but less out of aknee-jerk reaction to events in Europe than the fact that less than ve weeks afterHitlers elevation to power, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as thethirty-second president of the United States on 3 March 1933. Although tosupporters of the Republican Party this was looked upon as a quintessential dis-aster in its own right, Roosevelts entry into the White House was initially, at

16 Neither one thing nor the other

least, to have far more importance domestically than internationally. Consumedwith a burning commitment to tackling the scourge of mass unemployment athome, Roosevelt had little time or enthusiasm for making sweeping gestures onthe foreign stage.72

As a result, the democracies were left bereft of the type of strong, balancedand cohesive leadership or support that the United States might have providedin better economic times than these. Instead the members of the League con-tinued to look to the British and the French for guidance precisely at a timewhen they were incapable of performing this sort of role. Conrmation thatdemocracy had assumed a somewhat jaded appearance and that a new age ofunrestrained excesses had dawned came in the most dramatic way possible inMarch, with Japans withdrawal from the League of Nations and the imple-mentation in the same month of a series of draconian internal security measuresintroduced in Germany by the Nazis in the wake of the Reichstag Fire. To makematters worse, a sense of futility now masked the wearisome sessions of theDisarmament Conference in Geneva, where progress had stalled amid mutualacrimony and insouciant manoeuvring from some of the leading Europeandelegates. This unsatisfactory state of aairs worsened still further in October1933 when Germany, viewing the League as an anachronistic and irrelevantinstitution that had long passed its sell by date, promptly left it and the ill-fatedDisarmament Conference, while reminding those who wished to listen that itrejected the diktat of Versailles and considered itself no longer bound by anytreaty restrictions on the size and shape of its armed forces. This latest rebunaturally did nothing to bolster the condence of the other League members andnally put paid to any thoughts that an exhaustive system of disarmament mea-sures could be agreed upon and implemented worldwide. Whatever one feelsabout Germanys hedonistic diplomacy at this time, the fact is that the Leaguehad performed inadequately in the Manchurian crisis and looked woefullyincapable of settling anything other than the most minor of skirmishes.Collective decision-making had proved just as burdensome and time consumingto orchestrate as its detractors had imagined it would be, while the prospect ofenforcing its decisions upon any power of more than modest proportions lookedmore remote in 1933 than it had done since the League had been formallyproposed in 1919.73

Far from being discomforted by the enormity of these international develop-ments, the leading naval authorities wasted little time on sentimental schaden-freude preferring instead to warn their political masters of the dangers of beingcaught unprepared for trouble should it arise in the near future. While theAmerican and Japanese naval establishments put in hand large replacementconstruction programmes to bring their navies up to the limits set by the LondonTreaty, the British government continued, quite properly, to agonise over thenancial propriety of increasing defence spending at a time of great economicausterity.74 As it did so supporters of the Royal Navy were left to bewail theperilous state of the United Kingdoms preparedness for war and the inadequacyof the Senior Service vis--vis its potential rivals on the high seas. In particular,

Neither one thing nor the other 17

the ever-controversial topic of the number of cruisers available to the Admiraltyreceived the usual hand wringing attention from naval enthusiasts anxious totorpedo the restrictions imposed upon this class of warship by the Washingtonand London treaties.75

Faced with a world that was growing ever more dangerous and belligerentleaders who seemed to have shrugged o restraint for immoderation, theBaldwin and Roosevelt administrations and their military advisors had alreadybeen forced to respond. Both had laid down new classes of aircraft carrierallowed to them under the terms of the London Naval Treaty the Americanssettled on a modern design (Yorktown class) that embodied the knowledge theyhad gained from operating their earlier carriers. They initially laid down twoships in this class (Yorktown and Enterprise) in May and July 1934 respectively andwould add a third ve years later (Hornet). All exceeded 20,000 tons standarddisplacement, were capable of achieving a top speed exceeding 33 knots andeach carried 96 aircraft. They were to be the prototype of the substantiallyheavier, better armed, protected, and only slightly slower ships of the Essex classthat were to do so much to win the war in the Pacic from 1943 onwards. Fortheir part, the British settled on their rst carrier (Ark Royal) that had not startedlife as something else. When it was laid down in September 1935 it displacedover 2,200 tons more at deep load than the Yorktown, but carried only 60 aircraftand was on average 1.5 knots slower than the American carrier.76

It was just as well they did respond, for the Japanese had stolen a march onthem not only with their latest carrier designs but also, and more signicantly,with the carrier aircraft they developed during the course of the 1930s. Behindthis determined thrust to improve naval aviation and make it into a nationalasset was Rear-Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto a naval ocer who was destinedto carve an incredible niche for himself in the annals of the IJN at Pearl Harborin December 1941 and throughout the Pacic in the months thereafter.Yamamoto, chief of the Naval Aviation Department in 193536, was insistentthat complacency must be guarded against and that the IJN must constantlystrive to improve the performance of all aircraft types. Feedback from Japanesepilots in their campaigns over China helped to improve design features andincrease performance. In this way the Mitsubishi A6M Zeke (more popularlyknown as the Zero) emerged in 1940 as the IJNs carrier ghter of choice,combining high speed (332mph [534kph]) and great range (1,000 miles [1,609km]), while the Nakajima B5N Kate became the best torpedo bomber availableto any of the naval powers, and the Aichi D3A Val dive bomber was as good asany equivalent aircraft manufactured either by the Americans (Douglas SBDDaunteless) or by the Germans (Junkers Ju-87 Stuka) and well ahead ofanything the British had manufactured.77

This kind of technical success was seen in the growth of Japanese carriersduring the 1930s too where they easily surpassed the British both in terms ofqualitative and quantitative development and matched anything emanating fromthe US shipyards. Once it became clear that the Japanese wouldnt remainsignatories to the London Naval Treaty, So-ryu (19,800 tons deep load) was

18 Neither one thing nor the other

re-designed to become a fast carrier when she was launched in late 1935 with ahull and propulsion system that could provide her with a masterful 34.5 knots,reecting her original cruiser-carrier hybridity. Learning from their unsettlingexperience with the So-ryu, the Japanese improved the stability of her slightlylarger successor the Hiryu by modifying and strengthening her hull, forecastleand beam by the time she was launched in November 1937. Once the LondonTreaty was ocially dead, the Navy General Sta sought to design and build amuch heavier class of carrier that would contain all the best virtues of the exist-ing carriers without sacricing stability and could be used on oensive missionsin conjunction with the superbattleships Yamato and Musashi. It was looking forthe same aircraft complement as on the reconstructed Akagi and Kaga (roughly90), a similar speed to the Hiryu (34.3 knots) and an ability to cruise over10,000nm (18,520km) at 18 knots. It basically got what it wanted a fast carrierthat packed a considerable oensive punch when the two impressive eet car-riers the Shokaku and Zuikaku were completed in AugustSeptember 1941. Theywere in a class of their own until the Americans brought their Essex class intoservice in 194344.78

Although few of the lesser naval powers wished to embark on a new navalrace, they knew only too well that they could not aord to be left trailing in thewake of those who had no qualms about using government money in this way.French pessimism for the future, so emblematically associated with the buildingof the Maginot Line, might also be advanced in part for their governmentsdecision to lay down the battleship Dunkerque in 1932 and her sister ship Strasbourgin November 1934. These moves, though defensively inclined and in accordancewith their specic rights under the Washington Treaty, were nonetheless capableof being misinterpreted by others and unwittingly stimulated a new wave ofcapital ship construction around the world. A crisis in central Europe did nothelp matters either. After the botched coup against the legitimate Austrian gov-ernment by forces striving for union with Germany and the callous murder ofthe chancellor Engelburt Dollfuss in August 1934, however, Mussolini not onlymobilised four troop divisions and sent them to the Brenner Pass to demonstrateto Hitler that the Italians were opposed to any take-over of their neighbouringstate, but the Fascist Grand Council also approved the laying down of the Littorioand Vittorio Veneto in October 1934. This news had the eect of propelling theFrench to seek permission from their government to build two 35,000-ton battle-ships (the Richelieu and the Jean Bart) to match the latest Italian vessels and theGermans to build two ostensibly 26,000-ton battleships (Scharnhorst and Gneisenau)to rival those of the Dunkerque class.79

It was not what the German naval industry had built or was building thatcaused such misgivings in the corridors of power in Whitehall but rather whatthey might build in the future. It was the long term potential of theKriegsmarine that the British politicians were anxious to thwart if they could.Suspecting a