From the Dardanelles to Oran by Marder Arthur

Author:Marder, Arthur
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
ISBN: 9781473849259
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2015-06-09T16:00:00+00:00

The position of the Board of Admiralty at the end of December was, as Churchill notified Cork on the 29th, that ‘the study of the project is to continue, and that all preparations are to be pressed forward, subject to the inevitable demands of the naval war from day to day; but that neither this study nor these preparations in any way commit the Admiralty or H.M.G. to authorise action. The position remains, as I said, “the gun is to be loaded for firing.” This, and no more.’ Pound weighed in with a blunt minute to Churchill on the 31st. ‘“Catherine” is a great gamble, even if there were adequate fighter protection for the Fleet, and if Russia were on our side and we had the use of Russian bases. As neither of these conditions will be present, I consider that the sending of a Fleet of surface ships into the Baltic is courting disaster.’ All he was prepared to sanction was, with special reference to the Swedish ore problem (on which more below), the dispatch of a strong submarine force into the Baltic immediately the Germans had landed in, or were at war with, Sweden.

The advantage of sending submarines as opposed to surface ships is that we are not dependent on either Russian assistance or Air co-operation. If we do establish a force at Lulea our submarines should not only be able to interrupt the lines of communication between Germany and the South of Sweden, but we should also be able to prevent German forces being landed anywhere on the East Coast of Sweden. On the other hand if we had not landed forces at Narvik, our submarines should be able to ensure that we had time to do so before the Germans had time to reach Lulea by land from the South of Sweden. It is possible that we might lose all our submarines, but this would not prevent us from waging the war with full intensity inside the Baltic, nor would it jeopardise our general Naval position in the world.

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