Canada's Navy by Marc Milner

Author:Marc Milner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
Published: 2012-05-29T04:00:00+00:00

PART THREE

SECURING A PLACE

What nation has ever been powerful without the maritime element?

SIR GEORGE-ÉTIENNE CARTIER, 15 AUGUST 1864

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE HALCYON DAYS, 1950–1958

It is 47 years since the Royal Canadian Navy came into being ... I assure you that it is only those who took part in the first half of that period, with its trials and difficulties, who can experience the gratification I feel witnessing the splendid development that I have been privileged to see.

REAR-ADMIRAL WALTER HOSE, RCN (RET’D), ADDRESS TO SHIP’S COMPANY, HMCS St Laurent, SEPTEMBER 19571

In early 1950 the fleet had only five fully operational warships: the carrier Magnificent and the destroyers Huron, Micmac, Cayuga, and Sioux. The cruiser Ontario, Tribal Class destroyer Athabaskan, Second World War frigates Antigonish, Beaconhill, LaHulloise, and Swansea, and the Algerine Class minesweeper Portage were busy training personnel. Manpower strength was a little over 7000, building to the newly authorized ceiling of 9600.2 Eight years later the RCN had some fifty warships in commission with a personnel strength of nearly 20,000. By 1958 the navy was big, bold, and brash. Its fleet, its weapons, equipment, and scientific innovation were all cutting edge. Walter Hose, who had nursed the RCN through the dark days of the 1920s, lived to see his dreams come true.

The ostensible reason for this unprecedented naval expansion was the outbreak of war in Korea in June 1950, and the accompanying fear that this conflict was part of a global scheme to divert forces from Europe prior to a Soviet assault. The scenario envisaged in 1950 for ‘World War III’ was simply a repeat of the previous war. Massive Soviet tank armies, never fully demobilized after 1945, would pour into Western Europe, quickly overrun western Germany, the Low Countries, France, and probably Italy. Spain and Portugal might be saved for a while by the Pyrenees, and Britain by the English Channel. Soviet power might also be checked by aerial bombardment, although for the moment there were too few atomic bombs to wage an annihilating campaign. The defence of NATO bastions in Europe, and the ultimate reconquest of the continent, therefore depended on America and the free use of the Atlantic. As in the Second World War, the new world war would be won by seapower and the mobilization of manpower and industry in depth over a prolonged period. Apprehended war and the establishment of a formal Western alliance thus gave the RCN the resources and the operational focus it needed to build a large modern service.

Neither of these essentials – the resources and the focus – had emerged in the immediate postwar years, so by 1949 the RCN was still a work in progress. Since 1945 it had consisted of little more than a carrier, a few destroyers, and the pious hope that this core of a real navy could be sustained. That core was kept alive because the navy poured a disproportionate share of its manpower and money into aviation, and because the RCAF’s abandonment of maritime patrol squadrons after 1945 left the duty of maritime flying to the RCN.

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