by David Wragg
Comparing the two navies, the most obvious deficiency with the Kriegsmarine compared to the Royal Navy was its lack of aircraft carriers and the small number of destroyers. Its surface force was also vastly inferior in numbers and it had nothing like the successful British Town-class cruisers. On the other hand, the Royal Navy lacked any equivalent to the E-boats, and had to struggle to get motor torpedo-boats and gunboats into service after the fall of France meant that E-boats were within hit and run range of British ports and coastal shipping. Neither navy had the means of mounting successful amphibious operations, but the deficiency was the more critical for the Kriegsmarine given Hitler’s ambitious plans to invade England, and showed in the defeat of his surface forces during the invasion of Crete.
VERSAILLES AND WASHINGTON
While the Treaty of Versailles in 1919 had determined that the then Reichsmarine would be small and primarily designed to provide coastal protection, what followed was the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 whose terms meant that the best the Royal Navy could aspire to was the ‘One Power Standard’. This simply meant that it would be limited to the size of the navy of one other nation. The Washington Treaty was very specific, for its provisions allocating maximum tonnages to each navy of the signatories meant that other navy was to be the United States Navy. In addition to the Treaty stipulating not only a maximum tonnage of ships for the main navies, it also imposed restrictions on the total tonnage for each type of warship, and imposed maximum tonnages for individual vessels as well, with cruisers limited to 10,000 tons, for example, and capital ships to 35,000 tons, while aircraft carriers were limited to 27,000 tons, although both the British and Americans were allowed two carriers of up to 33,000 tons each.
Both the Royal Navy and the United States Navy were limited to a total warship tonnage of 525,000 tons, while Japan, a First World War ally, was limited to 315,000 tons, and France and Italy were both limited to 175,000 tons each. These limitations had some unexpected results, with all three of the largest ‘treaty navies’ having battlecruisers in excess of their permitted tonnage, and all three took the option of converting two of these ships to aircraft carriers.
It was also the case that there were practical differences that meant that the state of the Royal Navy was worse than it might have been. The first of these was the determination of successive British inter-war governments to tighten the Washington restrictions, and drive down the tonnage of warships to much less than that allowed, aiming at a figure of around 8,500 tons for a heavy cruiser and 23,000 tons for an aircraft carrier. Not surprisingly, the future Axis powers took an opposing view, and consistently under-stated their tonnages. At the London Naval Conference of 1930, the Japanese attempted to obtain parity with both the UK and the USA. Four years later, the Japanese formally notified the other Washington Naval Treaty signatories that she no longer considered herself bound by its restrictions. German desire for rearmament became increasingly clear after Hitler assumed absolute power in 1933, but even the Weimar Republic had aspired to rebuild its naval forces and had conducted clandestine developments in U-boats, while the Paris Air Agreement of 1926 had already removed the restrictions on German commercial aviation and aircraft manufacture. The London Naval Treaty of 1935 paved the way for the reconstruction of the German Navy, granting Germany a total tonnage equivalent to 35 per cent of that of the Royal Navy, although within this figure, what can only be regarded as an oversight or collective memory loss allowed Germany parity with the Royal Navy in terms of submarines! The Germans even managed to build extra ships once new tonnage was permitted, ordering the battlecruiser Gneisenau secretly.
The second problem was that the Royal Navy had lost its aviation element, the Royal Naval Air Service, with the creation of the Royal Air Force on 1 April 1918. So it happened that between the wars, the navy that had invented the aircraft carrier and had come to know more about the operation of aircraft from ships than any other navy, found itself providing aircraft carriers for an air force to use. Many have drawn attention to the poor state of British naval aircraft at the outbreak of war, and some have blamed this on the Air Ministry, even though it too suffered from severe financial constraints until the late 1930s. The real problem, however, was the loss of experienced naval aviation personnel to the RAF in 1918. While the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Air Force had included a number of naval airmen, especially for the catapult fights aboard battleships and cruisers, most naval officers knew little about aviation and cared even less. It was the Admiralty that believed that high performance aircraft could not be operated off aircraft carriers. By contrast, in the United States Navy, with control of its own air power and even including the shore-based long-range maritime-reconnaissance aircraft, there were senior officers such as Read and Towers with a real understanding of naval aviation.
In fact, the Royal Navy between the two world wars had quickly forgotten the teaching of Lord Fisher that the future of naval warfare would be in the air and under the sea. It still clung to the belief that future warfare would see major fleet actions dominated by the battleship, and officers were taught the ‘lessons’ of Jutland.
This was, and remains, the difficulty with international treaties that were intended to restrict the actions of dictatorships. The democracies played fair and abided by their treaty limitations, often hampered by tightly drawn public purse strings and by a zealous and unwarranted desire to reduce ship sizes on the part of the body politic, then had to face dictatorships that consistently ignored their treaty obligations and whose expansion plans were never limited by money, but by shipbuilding capacity and the availability of raw materials.
The impact of all this on the individual serviceman should not be underestimated. Certainly the Royal Navy had not had to face the mutinies and Communist uprisings suffered by the Reichsmarine, but in 1931, across the board pay cuts during the financial crisis resulted in mutiny amongst ratings aboard the ships of the Atlantic Fleet at Invergordon on the east coast of Scotland. Throughout the inter-war period until 1938, officers without a ship or a posting ashore awaiting them, all too frequently saw their careers interrupted by a spell on half pay, and this was a danger of service life for officers as senior as rear admiral!
The outbreak of war did not come as a surprise to the Royal Navy, which had expected war from October 1935 onwards, after Italy had invaded Abyssinia, present day Ethiopia, and indeed many in the Mediterranean Fleet at the time were surprised and disappointed that the League of Nations did not sanction war with Italy. The successive crises over Czechoslovakia and Italy’s seize of Albania had also increased tensions.
AN IMPERIAL NAVY
The world’s navies are generally divided into those that are ‘blue water’, or ocean-going, or ‘brown water’, which means that they are limited to coastal duties or perhaps a largely land-bound sea, such as the Baltic or the Black Sea. The Royal Navy was always the consummate blue water navy, with the worldwide British Empire to support. In contrast to the United States Navy, it also retained the tasks that also fell upon a brown water navy, such as fisheries protection and in times of war keeping ports open through minesweeping. The USN was largely able to overlook many of these tasks, except minesweeping, because of the existence of the United States Coast Guard, in many ways a brown water navy, which belonged to the US Department of Transportation (sic) during peacetime, but came under naval control in wartime.
Between the two world wars, the Royal Navy went through a number of reorganisations. The Grand Fleet of the First World War became first the Atlantic Fleet and, later, the Home Fleet. The Inskip Award of 1937 saw naval aviation handed back to the Admiralty, which formally took control of the Fleet Air Arm in May 1939.
In 1939, the distribution of the Royal Navy included both the Home Fleet, which was the largest single administrative formation, as well as the Mediterranean Fleet, with its bases at Malta, Gibraltar and Alexandria, plus the China Station, essentially meaning Hong Kong; the East Indies Station, mainly centred on Singapore; the Ame
rican Station, meaning Bermuda; the African Station, based on Simonstown, near Cape Town in South Africa, and the West Indies Station.
On the outbreak of war in 1939, the Home Fleet was the strongest element within the Royal Navy and in many respects more than the equal of the entire Kriegsmarine. The commander-in-chief was Admiral Sir Charles Forbes, who had 5 battleships, 2 battlecruisers, 2 aircraft carriers, 3 squadrons with a total of 15 cruisers, 2 flotillas each with eight or nine destroyers, and some 20 or so submarines. The main forward base for the Home Fleet was Scapa Flow in Orkney. Scapa had been neglected since the previous conflict, and it was only as late as April 1938 that the Admiralty had decided that Rosyth would not be adequate for the coming conflict. All too soon, Scapa itself was to prove insecure, but in any case this was more of an anchorage than a base, lacking the heavy repair facilities available at Rosyth. On the other hand, Rosyth, on the north or Fife banks of the Firth of Forth, was too far south, about twelve hours’ steaming from Scapa.
Also in home waters and in addition to the Home Fleet, another two battleships and two aircraft carriers were based in the English Channel, with three cruisers and a destroyer flotilla, while another two cruisers and a further destroyer flotilla were based on the Humber. Further escort vessels were based on Plymouth and Portsmouth.
Under wartime pressures, new North Atlantic and South Atlantic Commands were created. There were also six home commands, Orkney and Shetland, Rosyth, Nore, Dover (created in October 1939), Portsmouth and Western Approaches. The last-named was initially at Plymouth, but soon moved to Liverpool. The China Station became the British Eastern Fleet on 2 December 1941, with its own commander-in-chief, and was augmented by ships that had previously been allocated to Force Z. After the fall of Singapore and the Japanese attacks on Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, the British Eastern Fleet moved its headquarters to Kilindini, or Mombasa, in British East Africa, now Kenya. Operations in the Indian Ocean were helped by a secret refuelling base at Addu Atoll, now known as Gan.
In addition, the Royal Navy had far closer links with the navies of the British Empire than would be the case today when these relationships have largely been overtaken by those with Britain’s allies within the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, NATO. There were differences, however, and the Canadians, for example, took a far more independent view than say the Australians or New Zealanders. Nevertheless, the four main Commonwealth navies were the Royal Australian Navy, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Indian Navy, as well as the New Zealand Division, which later under wartime expansion became the Royal New Zealand Navy. None of the other colonies maintained a naval force, although locally recruited personnel were present in many cases. While officially Egypt was an independent kingdom, it was still at this time run virtually as a colony by the United Kingdom, and the Royal Egyptian Navy was commanded by a British admiral.
In 1939, no other navy had such a spread of responsibilities as the Royal Navy. The French came closest with the need to maintain ships in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, as well as a small naval presence in their colonies, but as a far weaker force, much can be noted from the fact that instead of ‘fleets’, the Marine Nationale was divided into Atlantic and Mediterranean Squadrons, as well as a Far Eastern Station (in French Indo-China).
The Royal Navy and Royal Marines in June, 1939, totalled 129,000 men, of whom just under 10,000 were officers. To bring it up to maximum strength in wartime, it could depend on recalling recently retired officers and ratings, as well as two categories of reserves, which between them provided another 73,000 officers and men in 1939. Included in the 1939 total were 12,400 officers and men in the Royal Marines. By mid-1944, the RN had reached its peak strength of 863,500 personnel, including 73,500 of the Women’s Royal Naval Service.
By contrast, the Kriegsmarine in 1939 had 122,000 personnel, rising to 190,000 the following year and peaking at 810,000 in 1944, as with the Royal Navy, after which the Kriegsmarine manpower figures plummeted as men were transferred to the Army to defend the Reich. In 1943, the year when war had originally been expected to break out, it had 780,000 men.
The Royal Navy’s wartime casualties amounted to 50,758 killed with another 820 missing, presumed dead, and 14,663 wounded. The WRNS lost 102 killed and 22 wounded, mainly in air raids.
The Kriegsmarine lost 48,904 men due to enemy action, and 11,125 through other causes. Another 25,259 were wounded, while a staggering 100,256 were listed as missing.
The Royal Navy that went to war in September 1939 consisted of 12 battleships and battlecruisers, including HMS Hood, ‘The Mighty Hood’, that despite its battlecruiser designation had been the world’s largest warship for many years, 7 aircraft carriers, of which 4 were either in reserve or earmarked for early retirement, 2 seaplane carriers, of little use in the carrier-age, 58 cruisers, 100 destroyers, 101 other escort vessels, 38 submarines and 232 aircraft. This compared badly with the 61 battleships, 120 cruisers and 443 destroyers, plus many sloops for convoy protection and two aircraft carriers of the previous global conflict, with which the Royal Navy had struggled to maintain control of the seas. Yet, by 1945, this fleet was to grow to 61 battleships and cruisers; 59 aircraft carriers; 846 destroyers, frigates and corvettes; 729 minesweepers; 131 submarines; 1,000 minor vessels and landing craft and 3,700 aircraft.
Much has been made by the contribution to Britain’s armed forces of the dominions and colonies, but in terms of equipment, this was insignificant in 1939. In the case of a threat from Japan, Australia and New Zealand had been promised the support of the Royal Navy. No one seems to have considered the possibility of fighting three nations, a war on three fronts, while there was still time to do something about it.
By contrast, the Kriegsmarine, in 1939 had 2 old battleships, really the old coastal defence ships permitted under the Treaty of Versailles, 2 battlecruisers, 3 armoured cruisers, 3 heavy cruisers, 6 light cruisers, 22 destroyers, 20 torpedo boats and small destroyers, and 59 submarines. Still under construction at the outbreak of war were the two battleships, Bismarck and Tirpitz.
The Italian Navy was stronger still, and as Italy did not enter the war until June 1940, that has to be the relevant date for comparison. The Italians had 6 battleships and 7 heavy cruisers, 14 light cruisers and a coast defence ship, no less than 122 destroyers and torpedo boats and 119 submarines. Nevertheless, as the Second World War progressed, the Italian fleet, the Regia Navale, was to find its operations restricted by a growing fuel shortage.
On this basis, the Royal Navy was outnumbered and out-gunned by the opposition, even without the need to dilute its strength through maintaining a worldwide presence. The Imperial Japanese Navy was not to be an opponent until December 1941, by which time the United States was also in the war, but by that date, the Japanese could boast 10 battleships, with 2 still building, 8 aircraft carriers and 18 heavy cruisers, 20 light cruisers and 108 destroyers, as well as 65 submarines. The Imperial Japanese Navy was the only Axis navy to have aircraft carriers. An unusual feature in the Imperial Japanese Navy was the inclusion of aircraft-carrying submarines, something long abandoned by the Royal Navy after the loss of the experimental M2, and even more unusual was the fact that some of the Japanese submarines could carry two aircraft.
Looking at navies in terms of the numbers of ships and manpower is not enough. In 1939, the Royal Navy had radar, the Italians didn’t. The Royal Navy also had Asdic, or sonar as it would now be called, which was far superior to the hydrophones used during the First World War. In fact, the Italian Navy did not expect to fight at night!
CHAPTER EIGHT
Seizing the French Fleet
War had come far earlier than the Kriegsmarine planners had allowed for. They had been led to believe that they would have had at least four more years before war broke out. Nevertheless, they were not caught quite by surprise. Many senior officers had doubted that Hitler could keep the British and French out of their war with Poland.
Poland itself had not presented a threat to German
y. The country was impoverished and amongst the most backward in Europe. It had gained independence from Russia during the Russian Civil War and had been awarded Germany territory, East Prussia, under the Versailles Treaty. It had been a virtual dictatorship since 1926, and even when Marshal Pilsudski died in 1935, his followers in the Sanacja (‘cleansing) regime, continued his policies. The army had some 280,000 men, and although this could be increased by the mobilisation of some 3 million reservists, there was little modern equipment. The same could be said of the air force, with 400 aircraft, but few were modern and none were a match for the Luftwaffe or even for those of the Red Air Forces when the USSR invaded on 17 September. The navy was commanded by a rear-admiral and was little more than a coastal defence force, having just four modern destroyers, two of which had been built in Great Britain and the other two in France, and five modern submarines, as well as twenty-three aircraft. In addition to a small force of coastal gunboats and minesweepers, there were also river craft. There were just 3,500 personnel.
