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Tim Benbow, ‘Largely a matter of sentiment’? The demise of the battleship in the post-1945 Royal Navy, Historical Research, Volume 97, Issue 278, November 2024, Pages 534–549, https://doi.org/10.1093/hisres/htae016
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Abstract
Received wisdom suggests that a conservative, even sentimental Royal Navy clung to the battleship long after it ceased to have any strategic rationale; that the battleship finally disappeared due to its vulnerability; and that its withdrawal was imposed on a reluctant admiralty by more enlightened politicians. This article challenges each of these assertions to argue that the admiralty in fact had a reasoned case for temporarily retaining battleships; they departed because other capabilities could better perform their role; and the admiralty actively developed these replacements, while rapidly shrinking and retiring its battleship fleet in the face of some political resistance.
The departure of the battleship from the Royal Navy is subject to a prevailing received wisdom that amounts to a cliché. Criticism from contemporary politicians and senior Royal Air Force (R.A.F.) officers fed later accounts to create an unflattering portrayal of an admiralty that clung to the battleship long after it had ceased to have any utility. Its reasons for doing so were supposedly social and emotional, stemming from bureaucratic conservatism and a lack of imagination – ‘largely a matter of sentiment’.1 The battleship’s opponents argued that there was no useful role for this obsolete behemoth and that it finally exited the scene because of its vulnerability. They also suggested that its overdue demise was imposed on a reluctant admiralty by its more enlightened political masters. Each of these assertions is demonstrably false.
This article challenges these myths and explores the real reasons for and process of the demise of the battleship in the post-war Royal Navy. It considers the standard depiction of the admiralty’s approach to these vessels and the reasons supposedly underlying it before exploring the actual rationale for them. The article then traces the rapid rundown and final disposal of the battleship fleet. It argues that despite the assertions of the admiralty’s critics, its post-war position on the battleship was not mere sentiment. Rather, it was carefully reasoned, based on sober assessment of wartime experience combined with careful analysis of the strategic context and developing technology. It sought a small, rapidly diminishing number of battleships, for a limited period as an interim measure to meet a threat that was genuine, albeit a relatively low priority, until other means (which the admiralty actively developed) could take their place. The end of the battleship came not because it was vulnerable but because of the successful development of superior alternatives – and the admiralty moved its last battleships towards retirement swiftly, repeatedly sacrificing them for higher-priority capabilities, in the face of some political resistance.
The literature on battleships devotes surprisingly little attention to their final stages. The majority of accounts have a pre-1945 focus. In some cases this is explicit,2 yet in others the rationale for stopping there is unclear; the period during which battleships left the stage is omitted or included only as a brief postscript, with the causes not being considered.3 Several accounts are sceptical about their utility. Max Boot writes, ‘Some critics rail against woolly-headed admirals who insisted on building battleships allegedly for purely sentimental reasons. This criticism has a good deal of validity for the post-World War I era’.4 Robert O’Connell goes further, judging that even in the First World War, the ‘battleship concept was an exercise in tunnel vision’ that was ‘passionately defended in the face of all logic’, due not only to ‘stubbornness or blind conservatism’ but also to ‘faith, culture and tradition’.5 The failure to consider that there might have been a strategic case for the battleship goes alongside the difficulty for this approach in explaining why the admirals later changed their views.
Other works touch on the battleship’s demise but misrepresent what happened and why. C. J. Bartlett notes that the ‘carrier has replaced the battleship as the most important unit in the fleet’, which is accurate, yet continues, ‘But tradition died hard, and five battleships were retained’.6 Desmond Wettern suggests that the admiralty’s failure to properly explain the role of the carrier was due partly to its own uncertainty about it, with some officers still being pro-gun and not realizing that strike aircraft were ‘vastly more potent weapons against the new Russian cruisers’ than Tiger-class cruisers.7 Martin Middlebrook and Patrick Mahoney argue that the sinking of Force Z in 1941 was ‘the end of the useful lifespan of the battleship’, demonstrating that ‘for the Royal Navy and for navies everywhere the battleship had become obsolete’. Noting that H.M.S. Vanguard was completed in 1946, they add, ‘It is difficult to see what role the Navy saw for Vanguard in wartime’.8 Setting aside their remarkable neglect of the useful service of battleships in many navies after 1941, their difficulty in seeing an intended role for Vanguard stems primarily from failing to look for it. Neil McCart refers to ‘how the role of these mighty ships had been reduced to that of a floating battery for shore bombardments’, which was incorrect for either the wartime or the post-war period, and asserts that ‘it was difficult to envisage any useful operational role’ for Vanguard – and this in a book about this very warship. He also suggests that when the admiralty declined to dispose of her in 1958, ‘it was clear that the political pressure to get rid of Vanguard could not be ignored indefinitely’.9
Some authors consider the post-1945 period accurately but focus on technical matters or the activities of particular battleships, not addressing their place in strategy or the reasons for their demise.10 Others cover issues of policy and strategy but do not devote detailed attention to the end of the battleship,11 perhaps because the focus of debates about naval power had moved elsewhere, while archival material was unavailable until the process was long since completed. Some works touch on the debates surrounding the battleship but cover only a small part of the story. Norman Friedman acknowledges their continuing value in one role, and the impact of manpower shortages and priorities shifting to other classes of ship, but includes little detail on the reasons.12 David Brown rightly rejects the suggestion that the battleship disappeared because it was vulnerable, arguing that it ‘died because it was far less capable than the carrier of inflicting damage in the enemy’.13 Chris Baker provides copious detail on technical characteristics of battleships, in all the navies in which they served in the post-war period, as well as on their day-to-day activities, but does not analyse the policy process in depth.14 These works contribute useful background and shed light on some elements of the story. This article, however, provides a more detailed, primary source-based account of why and how the battleship finally departed from the Royal Navy.
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The view that the navy had a sentimental approach to the battleship is reflected among historians but had its roots in contemporary commentators. There is a long history of scepticism about the value of battleships and of cynicism about the motives and psychology of their proponents. A classic example is Basil Liddell Hart, writing in 1965 about the interwar period:
I also came to realise that to most admirals the respective value of battleships and aircraft was not basically a technological issue, but more in the nature of a spiritual issue. They cherished the battleship with a religious fervour, as an article of belief defying all scientific examination. The blindness of hard-headed sailors to realities that were obvious to a dispassionate observer is only explicable through understanding the place that ‘ships of the line’ filled in their hearts. A battleship had long been to an admiral what a cathedral is to a bishop.15
His comments are representative of the views of other public figures. In 1949 a member of parliament referred to tradition, which in the Royal Navy ‘makes the question of the retention of the battleship a social problem rather than a question of naval efficiency’,16 while another suggested, ‘Battleships are such lovely toys; they are so useful for naval manoeuvres, and they tend to be kept on that sort of basis’.17 One M.P. with an interest in air power confessed to having ‘the same sort of sentimental feeling for the flying boat as, I suppose, the Navy has for its battleships’.18 In 1953 another M.P. suggested that battleships were vulnerable and lacked any useful role, continuing, ‘There is bound to be opposition from the Admirals to any suggestion of scrapping these ships … I cannot blame their Lordships for having a sentimental attachment to the battleship’.19 In 1955 the member for Plymouth Devonport (Britain’s second biggest naval base) derided Vanguard as ‘probably the most vulnerable ship in the world’.20 There was a widespread assumption that the views of the navy on the battleship question were outdated, the products of narrow service interest, tradition and sentiment, not logical thought.
Some newspapers shared the assumption that the navy lacked a rational approach to battleships. The Economist opined that ‘the battleship has always been the sacred cow of the navy’.21 The Manchester Guardian clearly saw the admiralty as favouring battleships over other warships: ‘We seem to have more “battleship admirals” than the Americans. Might it not be wise – one must not of course speak above a whisper, in case the First Lord hears us – to look to our fleet and escort carriers and to the destroyers and anti-submarine craft which come so slowly from the builders?’22 In a previous editorial in the same newspaper, the only role for battleships considered was provision of air defence for aircraft carriers.23 Remarkably, when a writer in the Spectator noted the ‘intriguing thought that there is only one major fleet in the world today which is not in some sort of formal alliance with the ships of the Royal Navy’, he was referring to that of Sweden! He did not consider the Soviet Navy to be a major fleet, apparently due to its geographical disadvantages and lack of battleships or aircraft carriers, although he did emphasize its strength in submarines. His conclusion was that the role of the Royal Navy’s carriers, battleships and cruisers would be to support operations ashore rather than ‘their traditional role of seeking out and destroying the core of hostile sea power – the enemy battlefleet, which does not at present exist’.24
Not all critiques were offered by commentators or politicians; some emanated either directly or indirectly from a rival institution with its own distinct interests. Much of the invective against the navy either originated from the R.A.F. or was inspired and promoted by it. While the principal target of their ire was the heretical notion of the aircraft carrier – violating as it did the sacred dogma of the ‘indivisibility of air power’ – they also attacked the battleship. At times, the bomber barons used an indirect approach of which Liddell Hart would have approved. For example, in 1944 senior R.A.F. figures aided and abetted a memorandum entitled ‘Battleships versus Aircraft’, written for the war cabinet by Lord Cherwell, scientific adviser to Prime Minister Winston Churchill.25 In it, Cherwell questioned the continuing need for battleships given the threat posed by aerial weapons and the ability of aircraft to perform the tasks of capital ships. While accepting the importance of seaborne trade and of naval vessels to protect it, he doubted ‘whether battleships will be able to hold their own against aircraft attack’. Carrier fighters could not destroy all attacking aircraft, especially at night, and the relative manpower and cost between aircraft and battleships made the future of the latter yet more dubious. Moreover, he asked, ‘What is the object of having a battleship at all if it always has to be escorted by a carrier? What is there which a battleship can do which the carrier cannot?’ Aircraft could counter capital ships more effectively and cheaply than battleships, their range was increasing, and their limitations in bad weather declining; the case for battleships therefore ‘becomes largely a matter of sentiment’. Cherwell concluded,
The handicaps of the battleships are fundamental and inevitable. Its main advantage is its heavy armour. All military history has surely shown that the ability to strike blows is more important than the power to survive them. In the struggle for existence, the tortoise has achieved but a relatively humble niche; it is only in fable that it carries off the prize.26
In his view battleships could not resist air attack, their roles could be performed more effectively and economically by aircraft, and the case for them was mere sentiment. We will come to the admiralty’s reply below.
Some leading airmen from the interwar and wartime years continued to comment after the war. In 1946 Lord Trenchard (an interwar chief of the air staff) proclaimed that battleships were ‘absolutely unnecessary’ and ‘a terrific liability’. He continued, ‘They are dead, just as dead as archers were at Waterloo, or cavalry were in the 1939–45 war. Air power has shown that it can sink anything that sails the seas’.27 His enthusiastic acolyte, Marshal of the R.A.F. Sir Arthur Harris (erstwhile head of Bomber Command), saw narrow service interest at play:
the consequence of insisting on the survival of a weapon in order to ensure the survival of the service which uses it are as immediate as they are disastrous. There is no better example of the tendency to cling to old weapons than the history of the battleship in the last quarter of a century … The navy with its battleships – the most expensive and the most utterly useless weapons employed in the whole of the last war – provide the outstanding example of that parochial spirit which springs from the existence of separate services.28
It was not only retired officers who chipped in. Air Marshal Sir John Slessor served as air member for personnel from 1945 to 1946, then as commandant of the Imperial Defence College before becoming chief of the air staff in January 1950.29 He waged a lengthy and determined crusade against the navy in which the principal target was carriers, yet he also touched on battleships. Demonstrating a startling ignorance, whether genuine or feigned, of the admiralty’s rationale for their retention, he referred to ‘battleships for shore bombardment’,30 which was never a prominent role mentioned by the admiralty. Betraying an understanding of naval warfare that was thoroughly outdated, he depicted the only purpose of battleships or large carriers as being a fleet action, which was ‘as dead as the dodo’, and suggested that the only significant threats at sea were submarines and aircraft.31 It is striking that Trenchard, Harris, Slessor and their ilk were quick to insist that understanding air power required specialist expertise and bridled at non-airmen commenting upon it, yet were nonetheless entirely ready to pontificate on naval warfare. While quite incorrectly accusing their naval counterparts of seeking to refight the Pacific War, their grasp of naval warfare in general and the role of battleships seemed to be mired in a flawed account of the Battle of Jutland and quite failed to understand naval strategy during the Second World War.32
Many others – air force officers, politicians and civil servants, commentators and academics – took up variants of this chorus. The other services retained assets in the post-war period for which the case might have been described as ‘sentimental’, such as the army’s horses or the R.A.F.’s Second World War aircraft. Yet these were largely ceremonial in purpose rather than a core operational capability and were never the target for the sustained criticism that was aimed at the battleship. To its critics, this class of warship was hopelessly vulnerable, had no worthwhile role and was clung to by a backwards-looking service, solely for its own self-preservation. Any advocacy of the battleship could only be for self-centred or traditional reasons, from an inescapably conservative, backwards-looking institution; largely a matter of sentiment.
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The admiralty argued that there remained a vital role for battleships, which no other platform or capability could yet fulfil and which was still required for national and allied military strategy.
The onset of the Cold War gradually eroded initial reluctance within the British government to acknowledge a military threat from the Soviet Union. There was some scepticism about the requirement for sea power in a nuclear war but the admiralty successfully argued that Britain and its allies still needed to use the sea and that an ability to defend sea communications was essential for either waging or deterring war.33 The debate therefore shifted to the character of the threat. Several politicians and officials denied that the U.S.S.R. posed any significant threat at sea based on a (sentimental?) attachment to a depiction of the Soviet Union as a land power with little interest in naval forces. In January 1947 chancellor of the exchequer Hugh Dalton questioned the size of the navy, noting that the hostile German, Italian and Japanese fleets no longer existed and ‘no one claims that the Russians have, as yet, a fleet as strong as any one of these in 1938’.34 Admiral Sir John Cunningham, first sea lord, explained that on the contrary, while Germany had in service sixty-five submarines on the outbreak of war, the Russians currently had 230, as well as seventeen cruisers and sixty-nine destroyers, many of which were new.35 Yet in 1950 Prime Minister Clement Attlee, doubting the requirement for capital ships, asked, ‘Who is there to fight at sea?’36 Meanwhile the threat continued to grow, with the Joint Intelligence Committee estimating later that year that the Soviet Navy included one monitor, seventeen cruisers, 133 destroyers, 181 ocean-going submarines and 130 coastal submarines.37 Naval intelligence predicted that by 1957 the Soviet fleet would include thirty-three cruisers of 10,000 tons, of which eleven would be based in northern waters and the Baltic.38
It was the admiralty’s case for capital ships that attracted the most criticism. For example, in 1952 one of the M.P.s cited above asked, ‘What are capital ships required for? First, to fight an enemy fleet. Well, there is no enemy fleet. Secondly, to clear raiders off the seas. Well, let us realise this. The day of the surface raider is over’.39 The admiralty’s critics seemed to assume that a serious threat must resemble the British or German battlefleets of the First World War, or alternatively the U.S. or Japanese fleets of the Second World War: if the Soviet Navy did not follow a Mahanian model of seeking to gain command of the sea, then it could be dismissed.40 The admiralty was concerned about a different approach, akin to that of the German Navy in the Second World War, which sought not to fight a decisive battle to win command of the sea but rather to dispute Allied command by attacking shipping with submarines and land-based aircraft but also using powerful surface warships in their support as individual raiders or in task groups.41
Later analysis based on Soviet sources vindicated the admiralty’s concerns: post-war Soviet naval plans envisaged battleships, battlecruisers and cruisers.42 While some projects never proceeded past the drawing board, a number of powerful cruisers were constructed and entered service – with precisely the role anticipated by the Royal Navy. Large cruisers were intended to work alongside submarines to target N.A.T.O. dependence on shipping between North America and Europe.43 This approach emerged from Soviet analysis of the recent German campaign, not least the conclusion that its principal error was the failure to properly co-ordinate U-boats and land-based aircraft with the operations of its surface fleet.44 Both the admiralty and its critics drew parallels from the two World Wars; the difference was that the former had identified the right one – and this was an approach that it well understood, having defeated it only a few years before. Just as in that campaign, the threats were interdependent. Submarines could not be defeated without also neutralizing enemy heavy warships, of which the U.S.S.R. was building a significant force: in 1953 the first lord of the admiralty informed the house of commons that the Soviet Navy included over 100 destroyers and 350 submarines, but also ‘twenty very powerful cruisers’, noting further that ‘more cruisers are now being built annually than by all the NATO forces combined’.45
Attention focused on the Sverdlov-class cruisers, which were ordered from 1947 and entered service from 1952. Described by one analyst as ‘the most accomplished Soviet cruiser’,46 these ships ‘were intended for classic cruiser tasks, defending the fleet against surface and air torpedo attacks, covering convoys, undertaking raiding operations and laying minefields’.47 Compared to the German pocket battleships of the late war, the Sverdlovs were larger, faster, had thicker armour, and carried a main armament with twice as many guns, albeit smaller in calibre (twelve 6-inch as against six 11-inch). The admiralty was all too aware of the disruption that just three of these heavy German raiders had caused, when the Royal Navy had been far stronger in capital ships than it was in the post-war period, yet the Soviet Navy laid down twenty-one Sverdlovs between 1949 and 1953. It is hard to criticize concern about these cruisers. In 1953, when fourteen of the class were in service, the naval staff produced a report, based on intelligence reports and a ‘close study’ of the lead ship when it participated in the Spithead Review that year. It estimated the cruiser’s displacement at 17,500 tons and noted,
The general impression gained was that she compared favourably with RN cruisers. She is bigger, more powerful and likely to be much faster. She appears to be more heavily armed and armoured than RN cruisers, but her armament control is probably not so good as ours … She would be an unpleasant threat loose on the trade routes and would take a great deal of bringing to book.48
Naval intelligence expected these ships to be used as commerce raiders: ‘One, working alone, with her superior speed enabling her to avoid action when necessary, would be a menace; two, working in co-operation, could cause havoc’.49
The Soviet Union was pouring considerable resources into its navy, building a large new class of powerful cruisers. Sceptics might insist that the Soviets had no intention of fighting a surface war at sea but the evidence challenged this comfortable assertion. In November 1953 Duncan Sandys, minister of supply and fierce critic of the navy, questioned the need to counter enemy warships, declaring, ‘The enemy won’t attack our shipping’. As the admiralty director of plans retorted, ‘They are building Sverdlovs for ornament?’50 Heavy warships were not the only threat that the Soviet Navy posed to allied use of the sea but they could not be ignored. Britain would need some means of countering them.
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How should the Soviet warships be countered? For most of the admiralty’s critics, the answer lay in land-based air power. Air theorists had long asserted that bombers would easily and quickly drive heavy warships from the sea.51
The admiralty fully accepted that land-based aircraft would play a central part in any maritime war. However, based on wartime experience, it rejected the claim that they could replace capital ships in countering the enemy fleet. First, both during the war and in post-war exercises, land-based aircraft repeatedly found it far more difficult than air enthusiasts expected to find and hit warships at sea (where they were mobile and elusive) or in port (where they were well defended), particularly at the ranges and in the weather conditions of the north-east Atlantic. This limited capacity was exacerbated by the insistence that a single all-purpose bomber force, capable of being switched between any targets, would suffice; in fact, maritime air operations required specialized aircraft and trained crews. Second, while Bomber Command could in theory be directed against any target, in practice its commanders had resisted activities other than its main priority of strategic bombing. In post-war debates, the Air Ministry fluctuated between asserting that the general bomber force could counter enemy warships and denying that there would be any need to do so. The admiralty feared that any future war would see a similar pattern: with the R.A.F. facing many competing commitments it would decline to perform the maritime roles it refused to let the navy take on, while on the rare occasions that the R.A.F. could be persuaded to try, it would not succeed.52 Hence when Sandys suggested that land-based bombers could counter Soviet raiders, an admiralty official summarized his argument as suggesting that ‘any modern bomber could kill a Sverdlov’, and commented, ‘If found on the right day, and if Bomber Command airfields not already out of action’ – with a handwritten note adding, ‘They have no weapons and are not trained for this purpose’.53 Land-based air power would not be the solution; Soviet heavy ships would have to be countered, just as those of the German Navy had been, primarily by warships, along with air power that was dedicated to the task.54
During the Second World War Royal Navy carriers and the battleships formed a close partnership but the former were increasingly ascendant. This shift in the shape of the fleet was partly due to the carrier’s versatility, with its ability to defend shipping or a task group against submarines and air attack. The main reason, however, was the superior range and striking power of its offensive capability, against warships at sea, warships in port or targets ashore. The rise of the carrier in admiralty plans was unmistakable. The 1947 edition of Fighting Instructions stated, ‘In ocean warfare, the aircraft carrier is now recognized as the offensive and defensive core round which a Force must be built up’.55 Carrier aircraft were to take over the strike role against enemy surface ships: in 1955 the first lord of the admiralty told parliament that ‘the main answer today to the “Sverdlov” is the carrier and its aircraft’.56
However, while naval air power was to be the eventual counter to enemy surface vessels, it was not yet able to do this. During and immediately after the war, carriers were still limited in their ability to operate aircraft in bad weather and in darkness – conditions that would be common in the North Atlantic. Fighting Instructions commented, ‘War experience has shown that in areas such as the Arctic, where conditions are frequently unsuitable for flying, decisions will be reached by surface action alone’.57
A series of national and N.A.T.O. exercises demonstrated that the navy was focusing on surface raiders rather than refighting old-style fleet battles. These exercises also provided concrete evidence that carrier aircraft (and their land-based counterparts) were limited by weather. Exercise Sunrise in 1948 ‘emphasized the unsuitability of Light Fleet Carriers equipped with present day modern aircraft for operating in the average weather conditions to be expected in the North Atlantic in winter’.58 During the major N.A.T.O. exercise Mainbrace in 1952 ‘the limitations of existing British carrier borne aircraft were fully exposed, in particular as regards night flying and strike roles … The weather severely limited carrier operations’. Two warships playing enemy raiders went unlocated by air reconnaissance and had to be found and engaged by a battleship and a heavy cruiser.59 Exercise Mariner the following year presented similar experience. The cruiser H.M.S. Swiftsure, playing an enemy raider, was spotted by surface ships since bad weather again limited flying. In response the carrier U.S.S. Bennington flew off a strike, which ‘attacked’ the friendly battleship H.M.S. Vanguard. The umpires helpfully adjudged this strike to have missed, after which Vanguard intercepted and sank the raider.60 The captain of Vanguard, noting that the exercise took place ‘in gale conditions’, concluded, ‘The results obtained in the search for the Enemy Raider, proved beyond doubt that there still is a need for heavy ships which can steam far and fast in bad weather when conditions do not permit flying and restrict the operation of lighter surface forces’.61
The capabilities of naval aviation were expected to improve rapidly; the navy was working to enhance night operations from carriers62 and was making great efforts to acquire effective strike aircraft. However, ‘Modern developments have not yet overcome these limitations of aircraft’.63 The emphasis of the Royal Navy had shifted towards carriers yet ‘until it is proved that Battleships have outlived their usefulness, it is considered that they must continue, in small numbers, to form part of the Main Fleet’.64 Naval aviation could not wholly take on the role of countering heavy warships, so the battleship was still, temporarily, required for its traditional core function.
This approach informed the admiralty’s response to Cherwell’s 1944 memorandum. Draft replies summarized Cherwell as arguing ‘that the battleship is not unsinkable and is therefore useless’. The admiralty acknowledged that the battleship could be sunk like any vessel but insisted that although it could withstand damage better than any other ship, especially the carrier, this was not its main advantage. The navy had to be able to destroy heavy warships and hence needed the battleship because ‘she can strike the heaviest blows, and keep on striking these blows under any conditions of geographical position, weather or light’. Carrier-borne aircraft ‘can only be operated under suitable weather conditions. Although this handicap is gradually being overcome there is at present no signs of development which will allow of the operation of aircraft in all states of the weather at sea’. The navy needed a balanced force: ‘Thus the aircraft carrier and the battleship are complementary to each other and form the Battle Group which has become the accepted tactical unit for modern sea warfare, and replaces the conception of the capital ship which hitherto held sway’.65
The suggestion that battleships were unusually vulnerable was a canard. Against the argument that it was not unsinkable, the admiralty stressed that no one had argued this. Rather, ‘What is claimed is that the battleship can stand up to heavier attack than any other type of ship and thus continue longer in operation’. Against assertions that the battleship was powerless against air attack, it emphasized advances in air defence provided by improved anti-aircraft fire control, proximity fuses for anti-aircraft shells, and eventually missiles.66 The meaningful question is not whether a platform can be destroyed but whether it is too vulnerable to perform a function that is still required. The Second World War saw battleships constrained by air and submarine threats but this situation resulted in improved defences and adaptations in how they operated. Battleships, working with suitably equipped carriers and escorts, were still needed for an essential role and were able to perform it successfully, when no other capability could do so (including defending the carriers against enemy heavy surface forces in bad weather or at night, a role still necessary in the late 1940s and early 1950s). The Royal Navy did lose capital ships but perhaps fewer than might be thought: no British battleship was sunk after December 1941, and no fleet carrier after August 1942, despite these ships being frequently committed in high-threat areas.67
The remaining, vital role of the battleship was summarized by the first sea lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Bruce Fraser, in 1949, when he argued that because a future adversary could well have heavy warships: ‘Battleships must be regarded as essential insurance’.68 His wartime experience included commanding from the battleship H.M.S. Duke of York the force that sank the German battleship Scharnhorst. This decisive 1943 engagement took place in darkness during a winter Arctic gale – conditions in which no aircraft, land- or carrier-based, could have intervened. In Fraser’s words, ‘There is no doubt that the Duke of York was the principal factor in the battle. She fought the Scharnhorst at night, and won’.69
The admiralty’s case that there was still a vital role for battleships was logical and strategically sound; even if one disagreed with the conclusions drawn, it was based on reason and not merely on sentiment. However, if its critics were correct, a sentimental attachment to the battleship could still have distorted strategy and policy. Perhaps the mooted replacements for the battleship might have been paid no more than lip service, never quite ready to step up. The surface threat that justified the battleship might have been given disproportionate attention compared to less prestigious threats. Or the rationale for keeping battleships might have been used to retain a larger fleet than was really required – that is, the admiralty could have devised a respectable case but then failed to follow through with its implications, ever extending the twilight of the battleship. In fact, it did nothing of the sort; far from clinging to the battleship, the Royal Navy pushed on with its acknowledged replacements, prioritized threats that required other capabilities, and rapidly reduced its battleship force before eliminating it entirely.
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For naval aviation, the limiting factor was not admiralty conservatism but rather the defence budget and priorities. The admiralty was well aware of the limitations of existing naval aircraft and advocated their replacements. However, these efforts were hindered by the Fleet Air Arm being given a lower priority than the R.A.F., which benefitted, for example, from no fewer than three jet bomber programmes.70 Many naval aircraft programmes were cancelled, delayed or postponed,71 while others proved disappointing, notably the Wyvern strike aircraft, a wartime design that entered service only in 1953. An admiralty memorandum referred to its ‘relative failure’,72 while the chief of the air staff simply stated that ‘the Wyvern is NBG [No Bloody Good]’.73 The advent of the Sverdlov drove a push for new naval strike aircraft, which would be armed with anti-ship missiles and tactical nuclear weapons.74 These projects would eventually bear fruit, including the Scimitar entering service in 1958 and the Buccaneer entering service in 1963. Yet they were opposed at every stage by the Air Ministry, the treasury and some politicians; tellingly, during the ‘radical reviews’ of the early to mid 1950s, it was the fleet carriers and strike aircraft programmes for which the admiralty fought, not the battleships.75 Had the navy received more swiftly the modern strike aircraft for which it was pressing, the battleship might have been replaced sooner. It is a little ironic that many of the same voices arguing that the battleship was obsolete simultaneously sought to deny the navy the strike aircraft that would replace it.
The admiralty placed considerable emphasis on guided weapons. Reflecting the threats, this effort prioritized surface-to-air weapons yet also included anti-ship missiles.76 These weapons promised to give smaller vessels the offensive capabilities of a battleship; when considering its reply to Cherwell’s diatribe against the battleship, the admiralty noted that if missiles developed the same striking power as a 16-inch gun, then a smaller vessel could perform its role:
It is likely that the ‘battleship’ of the future will bear little resemblance to the battleship as we known it now: for example if the rocket weapon replaces the gun it may be possible to build a much smaller ship which will still fulfil the essential requirement of the ‘battleship’ – i.e. the ability under all conditions to seek out and destroy the most powerful ships of the enemy.77
When the minister of defence in 1954 requested a memorandum on the future of the navy, the vision was clear. The resulting paper predicted that ultimately, the fleet would not need any ships mainly armed with guns, as surface warships would be countered ‘by ship-borne guided weapons and aircraft’. Instead of task groups of carriers and battleships, the future would see task groups of carriers and guided-missile cruisers, the latter combining some capability in anti-air and anti-surface warfare.78
The admiralty therefore anticipated the traditional role of the battleship being passed on to naval aviation and to smaller surface warships. Far from resisting the advent of this change, it actively pursued the developments that would bring it about, albeit slowly due to competing priorities for limited defence spending. Britain’s significant defence research and development effort was devoted primarily to nuclear weapons while naval aircraft and guided weapons programmes had to fight for their place alongside those for the R.A.F. and army. As a result, admiralty proposals for guided weapons were either not adopted by the government or cancelled to save money.79 New guided weapons, like modern strike aircraft, were slow to emerge but, as W. J. Crowe put it, ‘In all fairness this can be attributed fundamentally not to the lack of foresight but the lack of funds’.80 The admiralty followed the logic of its vision by pressing ahead with the capabilities that would replace the battleship. However, the period before their introduction left a place for capital ships; would the admirals extend their service for sentimental reasons?
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The post-war rundown of the battleship fleet was rapid and substantial. New construction was curtailed, with four of the five underway (Conqueror, Thunderer, Lion and Temeraire) being cancelled or scrapped and only Vanguard entering service, the sole British battleship completed after 1942. In contrast, two fleet carriers and ten light fleet carriers remained in construction.81 The existing force was also drastically cut. The navy ended the war with seventeen capital ships, of which no fewer than twelve were disposed of by 1949, including illustrious names that had provided sterling wartime service: Iron Duke, Malaya, Nelson, Queen Elizabeth, Ramillies, Renown (battlecruiser), Resolution, Revenge, Rodney, Royal Sovereign, Valiant and Warspite. This left in commission only the four King George V-class battleships (King George V, Duke of York, Anson, Howe) and Vanguard. The admiralty explained to the cabinet that while battleships were still needed against a potential enemy’s heavy warships, this role required only five modern vessels. The naval staff saw no use for the older ships: ‘Their value, even if modernized as far as practicable at the considerable cost indicated, would be doubtful and we shall in any event require the money for the modernisation of our Aircraft Carriers which must be given first priority’.82 The first lord of the admiralty told the upper house that some of the decisions to scrap ships ‘with such gallant and valiant service’ had been done with ‘a very great pang of regret’, however, ‘ships, like human beings, get older and past their serviceable age’.83 Yet the navy’s policy was not always appreciated by the press: the Daily Mail bemoaned these reductions in (not, as it seemed to believe, complete elimination of) capital ships: ‘Britain and America have both reduced their forces below the danger level. Our Navy has become a small fleet without battleships’.84
Further reductions in funding and manpower soon left the admiralty unable to fully crew both the large warships and the numerous smaller vessels for use against the underwater and aerial threats. The assistant chief of the naval staff, presenting to a 1949 naval conference, listed the priority of the threats faced as submarines, then mines, then air attack and last, surface warships.85 He concluded that the priority should be minesweepers, air defence and anti-submarine escorts, and carriers. While there was a threat from Russian capital ships, it could not ‘be regarded as serious and is certainly not one against which we can afford to over-insure’. He therefore recommended that all five remaining battleships should be placed in low-readiness reserve.86 The admiralty’s proposal accordingly concentrated its declining manpower on the smaller ships:
The essential need of the present time is to have in full commission as many as possible of the smaller vessels, chiefly the destroyers, frigates and minesweepers, on which the heaviest call would be made if an emergency came upon us in the near future.
Accordingly, Vanguard was to have a reduced complement and join the Training Squadron, though she ‘will be available for special duties, e.g. Royal tours, if required’. Howe was to enter Category A Reserve (‘fit for full operational service’ and available within three months of mobilization) and to be available to relieve Vanguard. The other three were to join the lowest readiness Category C Reserve (preserved but not commissioned until the second stage of wartime mobilization).87 In Eric Grove’s words, ‘It was, in effect, the end of the careers of [the King George Vs] … None was commissioned again. The Royal Navy was down to one operational battleship, and even she was not fully combatant’.88 A single battleship was to be available on the outbreak of war and a second within three months; when the admiralty said that they sought only a small number of battleships as an insurance policy, they meant it. In contrast, the planned active fleet included seven carriers (three fleet and four light), with three and two, respectively, in reserve. There would be 13 cruisers (plus 5 in reserve), 40 destroyers (14 in reserve), 65 frigates (117 in reserve), 40 submarines (13 in reserve) and 43 minesweepers (268 in reserve).89 The emphasis on smaller vessels is clear as is the steady shift from battleships to carriers.
These post-war decisions were taken in the context of the limited threat from elderly Soviet battleships. The rise of the Sverdlov-class cruisers together with the increased budget resulting from the outbreak of the Korean War presented an opportunity for a truly sentimental admiralty to backtrack on the marginalization of battleships. It passed this test of its intentions. In May 1950 the minister of defence, Emanuel Shinwell, had questioned whether the admiralty was really prioritizing anti-submarine warfare or rather maintaining, ‘for traditional and other reasons, vessels and establishments that had outlived their usefulness’.90 Yet just two months later the navy programme presented to him focused on accelerating plans to modernize and convert minesweepers and anti-submarine frigates, as well as naval aviation. Battleships were not mentioned in the list of shortcomings, ‘as it is not at present planned to modernize them’.91
Between 1953 and 1955 another opportunity arose for the admiralty to embrace the battleship once more with the ‘radical reviews’ of defence policy in which a series of government committees sought to reduce spending, primarily by targeting the navy.92 Once again, though, the admiralty held its course. In autumn 1953, seeking to free funds for modernization, the admiralty proposed to scrap many reserve warships including the four King George V-class battleships.93 Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed shock, arguing that they could be superior to anything the enemy had left after each side had taken losses; the admiralty was instructed to consider alternatives.94 Accordingly, and with some easing of the financial pressure, it revised the plan, retaining the King George Vs in reserve, ‘in view of the expressed wishes of the Prime Minister’.95 This was not the first time Churchill had resisted the disposal of battleships: in opposition in 1948 he had criticized proposals to scrap wartime battleships. The government implemented the admiralty plan, though ensuring that Churchill was informed before the final decision was made public.96
The navy even opted to keep Vanguard in reserve, with a lower crew requirement, rather than restoring the battleship to active status, so as to preserve more, smaller warships.97 This decision was challenged by a ministerial committee tasked to find further savings.98 The Swinton Committee proposed recommissioning Vanguard at the cost of two cruisers being placed in reserve. Some admiralty officials saw the battleship as valuable for showing the flag in the Cold War, as well as for being the only ship ‘which would undoubtedly be superior to a Russian SVERDLOV in a surface gun action’. Vanguard was therefore preferable to two cruisers – though not, they emphasized, to a carrier.99 Others disagreed, including the influential head of military branch, who advocated advising Churchill that all battleships should be scrapped on the grounds that minesweepers would be far more important. If Churchill agreed, ‘we should have some white elephants off our hands: if not, the illogicality would be very clear’.100 The admiralty acknowledged the advantages of retaining Vanguard but argued that in hot war, the main counter to the Sverdlov would be strike aircraft from carriers rather than gunfire, while in the Cold War two cruisers could be more flexibly deployed than a single battleship. Therefore, ‘balancing cold and hot war requirements the Admiralty consider that the number of cruisers cannot be further reduced and for this reason regretfully concluded that Vanguard must go into Reserve’.101
The Swinton Committee stuck to its guns and the recommissioning of Vanguard at the cost of two cruisers remained in its final report.102 While the cabinet rejected the proposals relating to the fleet carriers (the committee’s main target), the recommendation on Vanguard stood.103 Here was a genuine example of senior decision-makers clinging to old assumptions, but they were politicians rather than admirals. The role of ministers here was to slow change in navy policy, not to impose it. If the admiralty had been motivated as its critics suggested, it would have leapt at this as a pretext – in fact, it pushed back hard. The head of military branch noted that Vanguard ‘continued, however, to bear in the Prime Minister’s eyes a value in comparison with Heavy Carriers that was not in accordance with the views of the Naval Staff’. He therefore suggested that the admiralty should revisit this decision when politically possible.104
The opportunity arose in April 1955 with the overdue retirement of the great capital ship of the political world, as Churchill finally handed over office to Sir Anthony Eden. In August the admiralty once again sought approval to retain Vanguard in reserve rather than active status when the ship completed her refit. ‘Vanguard would give us prestige in the cold war, but no more; the smaller ships which are her equivalent in manpower and the price of her commissioning are collectively of much greater value in both cold and limited wars’. If Vanguard were recommissioned, the only way to provide the skilled technicians for H.M.S. Girdleness, the trials ship for ‘the all-important guided weapon Sea Slug’, would be to cut two anti-submarine frigates. Hence, ‘We believe that the weight of argument is now overwhelmingly against commissioning Vanguard’.105 The cabinet duly approved the proposal to keep Vanguard in reserve.106 When Eden informed Churchill, the latter ‘protested’ the decision.107
The final passing of the battleships soon followed. In February 1956 the admiralty argued that the four King George V-class vessels now had so little value ‘that the heavy outlay of money and manpower in maintaining them, even in their present unmodernized conditions, is no longer justifiable’. They should be reduced to the lowest, unmaintained category of reserve – and that only because scrapping them before new cruisers were laid down risked an adverse public and parliamentary reaction.108 When the decision was announced publicly, the parliamentary and financial secretary to the admiralty justified it by explaining that ‘the principal striking power of the fleet today is provided by a balanced force of aircraft operating from floating bases’.109 The following year, the admiralty proposed scrapping them, noting that a further push for cuts in defence spending ‘would seem a particularly propitious time, therefore, to implement a decision which the Board in effect took some years ago’.110 This decision was announced in the March 1957 Defence white paper.111 The same year, Vanguard was removed from the operational reserve to be used for accommodation and harbour training before final disposal.112 In June 1959 the admiralty decided to scrap her the following year and did so, rejecting a proposal that she be preserved as a museum ship because of the cost of preservation and maintenance.113 The battleship finally left the Royal Navy in July 1960.114
By now naval concepts and doctrine had moved on. The new 1958 edition of the Naval War Manual listed the threats facing shipping as submarines, then aircraft, then mines; ‘Surface raiders are not likely to be used on any scale, but may possibly be deployed in more remote areas to attack independent shipping and to extend the protecting forces’. The account of modern warships that followed did not even mention battleships, with carriers and land-based aircraft described as the counter to surface raiders.115 A 1959 revised edition of Fighting Instructions had a stronger focus on air operations than its 1947 predecessor as well as covering electronic warfare (the longest section) and guided weapons; it made no mention at all of battleships, and the section on surface gunnery referred only to cruisers and destroyers.116
Conceptual changes were paralleled by the advent of another new capability: by the time Vanguard was scrapped, the navy had already ordered its first nuclear-powered submarine. Having worked with the pioneering U.S.S. Nautilus on exercises, the admiralty board was well aware of the potential impact of the nuclear submarine – particularly in anti-submarine warfare as well as in the battleship’s old role of countering surface warships.117 The order of the first such vessel for the Royal Navy was announced in 1957, to be called H.M.S. Dreadnought in order to emphasize the revolution in warfare it was expected to inaugurate. As the first lord explained, the name was chosen ‘to indicate the inception of a completely new period. In future, it will be rare for a surface ship to fight a surface ship, except perhaps on isolated occasions. Ships on the surface will now normally fight aircraft or submarines, or support amphibious landings of some character or other’. Hence, he continued, the carrier had become the centre of the fleet.118
*
The admiralty had a reasoned case that battleships were needed to counter enemy heavy warships, temporarily until other capabilities could perform this role and it followed through with this logic in policy decisions. It pushed the battleships’ replacements of naval strike aircraft and guided weapons as fast as it could given limited funds and competition from other defence programmes. The admiralty sought to retain only a small number of battleships, neither building new ones nor even modernizing the existing ones, and rapidly reduced the battleship fleet to a single active vessel and four in reserve – with the former dropping to reserve in 1955. The one consistent theme throughout the blizzard of revised fleet plans of the late 1940s and the 1950s was the prioritization of carriers, and anti-submarine and anti-mine capabilities, above battleships. Far from politicians having to prise battleships from the cold grasp of the admiralty, it was the latter that advocated their further marginalization against opposition from senior politicians. Not only did the admiralty decline to take several opportunities to restore the battleships, but it actively pushed for the retirement of these vessels.
What is more remarkable is that the admirals who drove through the demise of the battleships in favour of carriers were without exception battleship men – the first Fleet Air Arm officer to become first sea lord was Caspar John, who took that position in 1960, the year of the final disposal of Vanguard. The first sea lord who took the decision to decommission the four King George V-class battleships was Fraser – who on his ennoblement chose the title ‘Baron Fraser of North Cape’; as noted above, one of this class of warships had been his flagship at the 1943 Battle of the North Cape, when Scharnhorst was sunk.119 Cherwell characterized the attitude of senior naval officers to battleships as ‘largely a matter of sentiment’ but Roskill was the more accurate when commenting on the imminent scrapping of Warspite, which had arguably the most impressive service history of any twentieth-century British warship and was a far better candidate than Vanguard for preservation: ‘Truly we are an unsentimental race’.120
Critics of the admiralty portrayed its retention of battleships as deriving from tradition and sentiment. There might have been an attachment to individual battleships or to the class as a whole among those who served in them but this was not a significant driver of policy. In fact, the admiralty’s case was rational and strategic rather than traditional, social or emotional. It was well aware of the weaknesses of battleships – not least their crew requirements, maintenance costs and advancing age – and set them in a sensible context among other priorities. It identified the precise conditions under which they would no longer be needed, namely, when other means could – genuinely – better perform their role. It then stuck to these conclusions and their implications. Far from holding back change or even simply awaiting it, the admiralty actively pushed ahead the development of the capabilities that would bring about the end of the battleships.
The supersession of the battleship did not just happen nor was it imposed by politicians, other services or some irresistible force of technological change – rather, it was something that the admiralty foresaw and worked diligently to bring about. It occurred not because the battleship was vulnerable nor because its role disappeared but because other capabilities could perform it more effectively. The much-maligned admirals asked the right questions and provided answers that withstand scrutiny far better than those of their critics, who were more prone to lapse into traditional thinking, whether that was on views of Soviet naval intentions, their unwillingness to acknowledge the limitations of air power or the blind spot that made them so reluctant to contemplate a strategic rationale for battleships. There was scope for disagreeing with the navy’s arguments on strategic or financial grounds but they were reasoned and consistent; any sweeping caricature of backwards-leaning attitudes was and is undeserved. We should not always jump to simplistic social and cultural slogans as explanations for decisions; strategic factors, professional expertise and judgement are also involved.
Few military capabilities have attracted as many premature obituaries during the twentieth century as the capital ship; it was repeatedly held to be obsolete and supposedly advocated only by knaves and fools, yet it withstood many challenges. It is remarkable how many parallels there were between the post-war debate over the battleship and similar disputes in the interwar period, or indeed to more recent controversies over the aircraft carrier. There is a tendency to assume that advocates of a particular innovation must be progressive and right, whereas anyone questioning it is clearly reactionary, conservative, hidebound – and, of course, only the latter is backed by ‘vested interests’. There are examples of large military institutions being reluctant to embrace change; however, accounts that focus solely on these are deeply misleading. There are also plenty of cases where proponents of change exaggerate or misinterpret the effects of their cherished project, whether regarding the degree of change that will result or the pace at which it will unfold. Assertions about the obsolescence of a capability or the potential of a novel alternative need to be subjected to analysis; the mere fact that a proposition is innovative cannot exempt it from critical scrutiny. The claims made may be wrong, exaggerated or premature, or could overlook a superior alternative.
A reassessment of the post-war admiralty is overdue. It would be interesting to examine this particular case in the light of theories of innovation or to conduct a broader reconsideration of the depiction of the post-1945 admiralty as unusually resistant to change. The record of the admiralty in terms of analysis and policy was far better than the popular image suggests and as regards the battleship was remarkably unsentimental.
Footnotes
I would like to thank Duncan Redford, Matthew Seligman and Geoffrey Till for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this article, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable insights and suggestions.
Lord Cherwell, government scientific adviser, 1944; see below.
S. W. Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars (2 vols., London, 1968, 1976); M. Middlebrook and P. Mahoney, Battleship: the Loss of the Prince of Wales and Repulse (London, 1977); D. K. Brown, Nelson to Vanguard: Warship Design and Development, 1923–1945 (London, 2000); and J. Moretz, The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period (London, 2002).
D. Macintyre, The Thunder of the Guns: a Century of Battleships (London, 1959); R. Hough, The Death of the Battleship (New York, 1963); and P. Padfield, The Battleship Era (London, 1973).
M. Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare and the Course of History, 1500 to Today (New York, 2006), pp. 193–4.
R. L. O’Connell, Sacred Vessels: the Cult of the Battleship and the Rise of the US Navy (Boulder, Colo., 1991), pp. 3, 391–2.
C. J. Bartlett, The Long Retreat: a Short History of British Defence Policy, 1945–1970 (London, 1972), p. 34.
D. Wettern, The Decline of British Sea Power (London, 1982), pp. 106–7.
Middlebrook and Mahoney, Battleship, pp. 314, 324.
N. McCart, HMS Vanguard, 1944–1960: Britain’s Last Battleship (Liskeard, 2001), pp. 9, 90.
S. W. Roskill, HMS Warspite: the Story of a Famous Battleship (London, 1957); R. A. Burt, The Last British Battleship: HMS Vanguard, 1946–1960 (Barnsley, 2019), pp. 91–3, which mentions the role of Vanguard but provides little detail.
B. Brodie, A Layman’s Guide to Naval Strategy (London, 1943) provides a convincing analysis of the changing balance between carrier and battleship, while in A Guide to Naval Strategy (4th edn., Westport, Conn., 1958), pp. 16–22, Brodie predicted that while no new battleships would be built, those that existed would still be useful for some time. W. J. Crowe, ‘The policy roots of the modern Royal Navy, 1946–63’ (unpublished Princeton University Ph.D. thesis, 1965) was written without access to primary sources, while E. Grove, Vanguard to Trident: British Naval Policy Since World War II (London, 1987), was able to use primary sources only up to the early 1950s; both make only passing references to battleships. D. K. Brown and G. Moore, Rebuilding the Royal Navy: Warship Design Since 1945 (Barnsley, 2012) and N. Friedman, The Postwar Naval Revolution (Annapolis, 1986) are invaluable sources of technical detail.
N. Friedman, The British Battleship, 1906–1946 (Barnsley, 2015), pp. 358–68.
Brown, Nelson to Vanguard, p. 39.
C. Baker, What Happened to the Battleship? (Barnsley, 2022).
B. H. Liddell Hart, The Memoirs of Captain Liddell Hart (2 vols., London, 1965), i. 326. Others detected in his own work an approach similar to that for which he criticized the navy: when commenting on ill-considered arguments against building battleships, Brodie referred to ‘the Liddell-Hart species of dogmatism’ (Brodie, Layman’s Guide, p. 127).
Geoffrey Bing, Hansard, Parliamentary Debates, 5th ser., Commons, cdlxii (3 March 1949), cols. 582–4.
Reginald Paget, Hansard, 5, Commons, cdlxii (8 March 1949), col. 1045.
Edward Shackleton, Hansard, 5, Commons, cdlxxxv (6 March 1951), col. 292.
Kenneth Robinson, Hansard, 5, Commons, dxii (16 March 1953), cols. 1861–4.
Michael Foot, Hansard, 5, Commons, dxxxvii (3 March 1955), col. 2380.
‘Last of the line’, Economist, 21 Sept. 1957; this piece was a review of Roskill, HMS Warspite.
‘Battleships’, Manchester Guardian, 21 Sept. 1948.
‘Naval scrap’, Manchester Guardian, 22 Jan. 1948.
‘A Naval Correspondent’, ‘Warships at Spithead’, Spectator, 12 June 1953. A far better-informed article appeared the following year (A. Courtney, ‘Soviet naval expansion’, Spectator, 3 Sept. 1954).
Cherwell consulted Portal, chief of the air staff, on the draft and the latter provided comments; the air staff were evidently delighted with the result, with the secretary of state for air writing to Portal on 4 Jan. 1945 pushing for the widest possible circulation (Oxford, Nuffield College Library, papers of F. A. Lindemann, Viscount Cherwell, MSS.CHERWELL CSAC 80/4/81, Box G150).
The National Archives of the U.K., ADM 205/53, paymaster general, WP(44)764, ‘Battleships versus aircraft’, 29 Dec. 1944.
T.N.A., AIR 75/17, Lord Trenchard, ‘Some thoughts on air policy and the choice of the right tools by all three services’, 28 Oct. 1946.
A. Harris, Bomber Offensive (London, 1947), pp. 274, 276.
M. Hastings, ‘Slessor, Sir John Cotesworth (1897–1979), air force officer’, O.D.N.B. <https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-31692> [accessed 4 June 2024].
T.N.A., AIR 8/1592, C.A.S. to A.C.A.S., 2 Jan. 1950.
J. Slessor, ‘Some British strategic problems’, Apr. 1948, in The Great Deterrent (London, 1957), pp. 72–86. See also T.N.A., DEFE 10/163, CAS 1531, 26 July 1952. For Slessor’s fixation on the Battle of Jutland, see V. Orange, Slessor: Bomber Champion. The Life of Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor (London, 2006), pp. 127, 129.
For more accurate accounts of the Battle of Jutland, see A. Gordon, The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command (London, 1996); R. Massie, Castles of Steel: Britain, Germany and the Winning of the Great War at Sea (London, 2003); N. Steel and P. Hart, Jutland 1916: Death in the Grey Wastes (London, 2003); and J. Goldrick, After Jutland: the Naval War in Northern European Waters, June 1916–November 1918 (Annapolis, 2018). For overviews of naval strategy in the Second World War, see C. L. Symonds, World War II at Sea: a Global History (Oxford, 2018); and E. Mawdsley, The War for the Seas: a Maritime History of World War II (New Haven, Conn., 2019).
T. Benbow, ‘The Royal Navy and sea power in British strategy, 1945–55’, Historical Research, xci (2018), 375–98.
T.N.A., CAB 131/4, chancellor of the exchequer, DO(47)9, ‘Defence estimates for 1947–48’, 13 Jan. 1947.
T.N.A., CAB 131/4, DO(47)2nd meeting, 14 Jan. 1947.
W. Jackson and D. Bramall, The Chiefs: the Story of the United Kingdom Chiefs of Staff (London, 1992), p. 279.
T.N.A., CAB 131/9, DO(50)101, JIC(50)83(Final), ‘Military and economic strength of the Soviet Union’, 18 Sept. 1950.
T.N.A., ADM 239/490, director of naval intelligence, in Admiralty, CB04521: Exercise Trident, ii (1949).
R. T. Paget, Hansard, 5, Commons, cdxcvii (6 March 1952), col. 809.
Similar strategic mirror-imaging appears in J. J. Grygiel, ‘The dilemmas of maritime supremacy in the early Cold War’, Journal of Strategic Studies, xxviii (2005), 187–216. Herrick suggested that the U.S. Navy and Royal Navy both sought to squeeze the Soviet Navy into a Mahanian framework, but about the latter he is quite wrong (R. W. Herrick, Soviet Naval Strategy: Fifty Years of Theory and Practice (Annapolis, 1968), pp. xxxi–xxxiii).
In addition to the sources on the Sverdlov class of Soviet cruisers cited below, see T.N.A., CAB 131/12, D(52)26, Chiefs of staff, ‘Defence policy and global strategy’, 17 June 1952, sections on threat to sea communications, paras. 106–7; the scenarios for and reports on Exercises Mainbrace (1952) in ADM 116/6438 and Mariner (1953) in ADM 116/6327; and the account of Mainbrace in ADM 223/236, ‘Editorial commentary’, Monthly Intelligence Review, Sept. 1952. See also T.N.A., DEFE 5/44, COS(53)75, Vice chief of naval staff and vice chief of air staff, ‘Naval and maritime aviation’, 7 Feb. 1953; CAB 134/809, DP(M)(53)14, First lord of the admiralty, ‘Role of aircraft carriers’, 14 Nov. 1953 and DP(M)(54)1, Minister of defence, ‘Naval air’, 26 Jan. 1954; ADM 205/97, Vice chief of naval staff to Sir Richard Powell, ‘The role of the covering force’, 19 Aug. 1954.
J. Rohwer and M. S. Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes, 1935–1953 (London, 2001); and E. Mawdsley, ‘The Russian Navy in the Gorshkov era’, in Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond, ed. P. P. O’Brien (London, 2001), pp. 165–84.
S. Chernyavskii, ‘The era of Gorshkov: triumph and contradictions’, Journal of Strategic Studies, xxviii (2005), 281–308, at pp. 285–6.
S. Gorshkov, The Sea Power of the State (Oxford, 1979), pp. 117–21; and B. Ranft and G. Till, The Sea in Soviet Strategy (London, 1983), pp. 92–4, 190.
Sir James Thomas, Hansard, 5, Commons, dxii (16 March 1953), cols. 1830–2.
M. L. Hauner, ‘Stalin’s big-fleet program’, Naval War College Review, lvii (2004), 87–120, at p. 115.
Rohwer and Monakov, Stalin’s Ocean-Going Fleet, pp. 144–5, 197–9, 266–77.
T.N.A., CAB 129/61, First lord of the admiralty, C(53)189, ‘The Sverdlov’, 6 July 1953. See also T.N.A., ADM 223/237, ‘The “Sverdlov” class cruisers’, Monthly Intelligence Review, Apr. 1953.
T.N.A., ADM 223/238, ‘A visit to the “Sverdlov”’, Monthly Intelligence Review, July 1953.
T.N.A., CAB 134/809, Minister of supply, DP(M)(53)15, ‘Defence policy and expenditure’, 20 Nov. 1953; ADM 205/97, Director of plans, ‘Minister of supply’s arguments on aircraft carriers and cruisers in DPM(53)15 of November 1953’.
See, e.g., G. Douhet, Command of the Air, trans. D. Ferrari (1921, repr., London, 1943); W. Mitchell, Winged Defense: the Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power – Economic and Military (New York, 1925); W. Mitchell, Skyways (Philadelphia, 1930); and A. P. de Seversky, Victory Through Air Power (New York, 1942).
For the respective Air Ministry and admiralty positions on land-based versus carrier aircraft in the war at sea, see T.N.A., CAB 134/809, Minister of defence, DP(M)(54)1, ‘Naval air’, 26 Jan. 1954, annexes 1–3.
‘Defence policy and expenditure’; and ‘Minister of Supply’s arguments on aircraft carriers and cruisers in DPM(53)15 of November 1953’ (see n. 50).
For the role of battleships and carriers during the war, see T.N.A., ADM 205/69, Tactical and Staff Duties Division, ‘The role of the battleship: appendix II, instances of the use of battleships by both sides during the war of 1939–45’, 7 Jan. 1948 (see also ‘Notes for historical survey of the value of battleships in World War II’, 1948). For a detailed account of the sinking of the Bismarck by the Fleet Air Arm and capital ships, see T.N.A., ADM 234/322, BR1736(3/50), ‘Battle summary no. 5: the chase and sinking of German battleship Bismarck 23–27 May 1941’, 1950.
T.N.A., ADM 239/382, CB04487, ‘The fighting instructions’, 1947, para. 63.
J. P. L. Thomas, Hansard, 5, Commons, dxxxvii (3 March 1955), col. 2249.
‘The fighting instructions’, para. 861.
T.N.A., ADM 239/565, CB03016(49), ‘Progress in tactics’, 1949, paras. 62–78.
T.N.A., ADM 116/6438, Commander-in-chief, Home Fleet, ‘Report on Exercise Mainbrace’, 12 Nov. 1952. See also C. Williamson, The US Navy and Its Cold War Alliances (Lawrence, Kan., 2020), pp. 185–8; and Baker, What Happened to the Battleship?, pp. 269–73.
T.N.A., ADM 116/6327, Flag officer, Heavy Squadron, Home Fleet, ‘Report on Exercise Mariner’, 14 Oct. 1953.
T.N.A., ADM 116/6327, Commanding officer, H.M.S. Vanguard, ‘Report on Exercise Mariner’, 11 Oct. 1953.
T.N.A., ADM 239/143, CB03016(47), ‘Progress in tactics’, 1947, ch. 4.
T.N.A., ADM 1/25077, ‘Operations essential to survival of UK through opening phase’, Aug. 1953.
T.N.A., ADM 167/123, Memorandum B435, ‘Composition of the post war navy’, 12 Sept. 1945.
T.N.A., ADM 205/53, Plans Division, ‘Draft of reply to memorandum by the paymaster general: battleships v aircraft’, 6 Feb. 1945, paras. 4–7. The same view prevailed after the war; see T.N.A., ADM 205/69, D.T.S.D., ‘The role of the battleship’, 7 Jan. 1948.
D.T.S.D., ‘The role of the battleship’, 7 Jan. 1948, app. 1; and ‘Historical survey of the value of battleships’ (see n. 54).
For wartime Royal Navy warship losses, see S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–1945, iii: The Offensive, Part II, 1st June 1944–14th August 1945 (London, 1961), app. T, pp. 439–46.
T.N.A., DEFE 5/15, First sea lord, COS(49)236, ‘Future shape and size of the navy’, 14 July 1949.
Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, Despatch, ‘Sinking of the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst on 26th December 1943’, Supplement to London Gazette, 5 Aug. 1947, para. 82.
Crowe, ‘Policy roots of the modern Royal Navy’, p. 141; and T.N.A., ADM 1/24068, Director of naval air warfare, 29 Dec. 1952.
Grove, Vanguard to Trident, pp. 15–18, 56–8.
T.N.A., ADM 205/95, Director of naval air warfare, ‘Relative merits of N113 and DH110’, 19 Feb. 1954.
T.N.A., AIR 8/2044, Handwritten note on head of S6, ‘Review of defence programme’, 25 Aug. 1955.
T.N.A., ADM 1/24518, Commander-in-chief, Home Fleet, to admiralty, ‘Future naval aircraft needs’, 18 Sept. 1953, and admiralty reply; ADM 205/94, Director of plans and director of naval air warfare, ‘Naval air’, 22 Jan. 1954, annex 1, ‘Requirement for the NA39’.
T. Benbow, ‘British naval aviation and the “Radical Review”, 1953–1955’, in British Naval Aviation: the First 100 Years, ed. T. Benbow (Farnham, 2011), pp. 125–50.
Anti-ship missile projects included ‘Red Angel’, ‘Green Cheese’ and ‘Blue Slug’, an anti-ship variant of the Sea Slug anti-aircraft missile (E. Grove, ‘The Royal Navy and the guided missile’, in The Royal Navy, 1930–2000: Innovation and Defence, ed. R. Harding (London, 2005), pp. 193–212; Grove, Vanguard to Trident, pp. 119–21; and Friedman, Naval Revolution, pp. 82–4).
T.N.A., ADM 205/53, Draft reply, first sea lord’s office, 11 March 1945.
T.N.A., ADM 205/102, ‘The navy of the future’, 2 March 1954.
Grove, ‘Guided missile’, p. 198.
Crowe, ‘Policy roots of the modern Royal Navy’, pp. 84–5.
T.N.A., ADM 167/121, Memorandum B394, ‘Shipbuilding policy during the remainder of the war’, 14 Nov. 1944; CAB 129/4, CP(45)291, ‘New construction (revised) programme 1945’, 22 Nov. 1945.
T.N.A., CAB 131/4, First lord of the admiralty, DO(47)96, ‘Disposal of certain of HM ships’, 15 Dec. 1947.
Hansard, 5, Lords, cxlv (29 Jan. 1947), col. 287.
Comment, Daily Mail, 27 Feb. 1948.
T.N.A., ADM 239/490, Assistant chief of naval staff, ‘Maritime instruments of war’, in Admiralty, CB04521: Exercise Trident, ii (1949). The surface threat was covered in two short paragraphs out of fifty-two; the conference itself focused on innovative ways of meeting the growing submarine threat.
T.N.A., ADM 205/84, A.C.N.S., ‘Ships of the future navy’, 20 Apr. 1949.
T.N.A., CAB 131/7, First lord of the admiralty, DO(49)43, ‘Employment of battleships’, 8 June 1949; approved CAB 131/8, DO(49)17th meeting, 1 July 1949.
Grove, Vanguard to Trident, pp. 46–7.
T.N.A., ADM 167/133, Memorandum B590, ‘Revised restricted fleet’, 23 May 1949; see also T.N.A., ADM 167/132, Minute 4285, 26 and 30 May 1949.
T.N.A., DEFE 4/31, COS(50)74th meeting, 11 May 1950.
T.N.A., CAB 131/9, Chiefs of staff, DO(50)58, ‘Ability of the armed forces to meet an emergency’, 21 July 1950, annex 1: Royal Navy.
Benbow, ‘British naval aviation’.
T.N.A., CAB 131/13, First lord of the admiralty, D(53)47, ‘Future of certain units of the reserve fleet’, 13 Oct. 1953. See also papers in T.N.A., ADM 1/25077, ADM 1/25103.
T.N.A., CAB 131/13, D(53)13th meeting, 14 Oct. 1953.
T.N.A., ADM 205/91, Director of plans to first sea lord, 31 Oct. 1953.
Hansard, 5, Commons, cdxlviii (8 March 1948), cols. 829–32; and T.N.A., PREM 8/1245, Memorandum for prime minister, 27 May 1949.
T.N.A., ADM 167/144, Memorandum B913, ‘Future of HMS Vanguard’, 24 June 1954; Minute 4792, 29 June 1954.
The committee’s papers are in T.N.A., CAB 134/811.
T.N.A., ADM 205/98, Director of plans and director of the Operations Division, ‘Cost and effect of retaining VANGUARD in commission’, 9 Sept. 1954.
T.N.A., ADM 205/98, Head of military branch to first sea lord, 13 Sept. 1954.
T.N.A., ADM 205/98, First lord of the admiralty to minister of defence, ‘Effects of retaining HMS VANGUARD in commission’, 14 Sept. 1954; CAB 134/811, DR(54)8th meeting, 21 Sept. 1954.
The revised drafts of 11, 17 and 24 Sept. are in T.N.A., CAB 134/811; the final report is in T.N.A., CAB 129/71, Prime minister, C(54)329, ‘Defence policy’, 3 Nov. 1954.
T.N.A., CAB 128/27, CC(54)73rd conclusions, 5 Nov. 1954.
T.N.A., ADM 1/26089, Head of military branch, 27 Dec. 1954.
T.N.A., ADM 167/139, Memorandum B1000, ‘Future of HMS Vanguard’, 10 Aug. 1955; approved ADM 167/141, Minute 4901, 11 Aug. 1955; DEFE 13/66, First lord of the admiralty to prime minister, 24 Aug. 1955; CAB 131/16, First lord of the admiralty, DC(55)31, ‘Future of HMS Vanguard’, 24 Aug. 1955.
T.N.A., CAB 131/16, DC(55)11th meeting, 19 Oct. 1955.
T.N.A., ADM1/26089, Richard Powell, permanent secretary, Ministry of Defence, to Sir John Lang, admiralty, 1 Sept. 1955.
T.N.A., CAB 131/17, First lord of the admiralty, DC(56)4, ‘Future of the King George V class battleships’, 14 Feb. 1956; approved DC(56)4th meeting, 2 March 1956.
George Ward, Hansard, 5, Commons, dxlix (7 March 1956), cols. 2083–4; dxlix (8 March 1956), col. 2319.
T.N.A., ADM 167/150, Memorandum B1131, ‘King George V class battleships’, 25 Feb. 1957; approved ADM 167/149, Minute 5101, 28 Feb. 1957.
Defence: Outline of Future Policy (Parl. Papers 1957 [Cmnd. 124]).
T.N.A., ADM 167/150, memorandum B1150, ‘The future of HMS Vanguard’, 17 June 1957.
The final discussions are in T.N.A., ADM 1/27480.
As Friedman notes, ‘By that time no other major power had any battleships in commission, though the United States maintained fifteen of them in reserve – and four of them were brought back into service’ (Friedman, British Battleship, p. 368). Of these, the four Iowa-class battleships were later recommissioned and would serve mainly in a shore bombardment role in Vietnam, and then again in the 1980s off Lebanon and in the 1991 Gulf War, with both their main batteries and cruise missiles (Baker, What Happened to the Battleship?, pp. 335–75).
T.N.A., ADM 234/590, BR1806, The Naval War Manual (1958), paras. 87, 118–23.
T.N.A., ADM 239/651, CB04487(1), The Fighting Instructions, pt. i: Basic Considerations (1959); ADM 239/652, CB04487(2), The Fighting Instructions, pt. ii: Types of Operations (1959). For the 1947 edition, see T.N.A., ADM 239/382.
T.N.A., ADM 167/149, Admiralty Board minutes 5161 and 5163, 15 Oct. 1957; and Brown and Moore, Rebuilding the Royal Navy, pp. 120–4.
Hansard, 5, Lords, cciv (3 July 1957), col. 638.
Grove, Vanguard to Trident, p. 46; and Crowe, ‘Policy roots of the modern Royal Navy’, p. 74.
Roskill, HMS Warspite, p. 285.
