The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: Linchpin of Victory 1935-1942 by Andrew Boyd

Author:Andrew Boyd [Boyd, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Seaforth Publishing
Published: 2017-03-30T04:00:00+00:00

The Admiralty shift to an offensive strategy

Most accounts of the naval reinforcement debate in late 1941 insist that the August exchange between Pound and the prime minister ended in stand-off. There was then a hiatus until mid-October when the prime minister brought the issue of capital ship reinforcement to the Defence Committee.51 Such accounts are wrong in two respects. Their picture of the August exchange as a fundamental clash between Churchill and Pound over Far East strategy overstates a reasonable debate about a force composition not achievable for some months. (The first capital units deployed to the Indian Ocean were, in fact, Revenge and the battlecruiser Repulse. Revenge joined East Indies Command in mid-September and Repulse at the beginning of October.52 None of the other ‘R’-class battleships would be available to deploy until November.53) More important, there was no hiatus in the Admiralty, who fundamentally changed their Far East plans during the next six weeks.

The trigger here was the need to revise the first attempt at an Allied joint operating plan for the Far East produced at the American-Dutch-British conference at Singapore in April. As explained earlier, the United States chiefs of staff rejected this ADB-1 plan in July. It was therefore agreed at Riviera that Britain would produce a revised draft plan, known as ADB-2, for review at a further conference in Singapore in October.54 On 26 September Director of Plans, now Captain Gerald Bellars, accordingly produced a draft aidememoire for use by Far East commanders at this conference, for approval within the Admiralty.55

Bellars stated that since ADB-1 the US Navy Fleet had taken on tasks and dispositions originally designed to apply only when it joined the war against Germany. Consequently, it was possible to begin moving capital ships earmarked for the Eastern Fleet into the Indian Ocean earlier than anticipated and movements should complete early in 1942. For political reasons, the implementation of peacetime US Navy convoy escort in the western Atlantic had proceeded more slowly than anticipated at ABC-1. However, by the time Bellars produced his draft, the Americans had taken over battleship cover and escort for the northwest Atlantic, including the western half of the Denmark Strait. This released the ‘R’ class from the Halifax force, but not yet Force H. However, the availability of three King George Vs from new build by the end of the year made the two Nelsons potentially available too. This meant the Eastern Fleet, first envisaged in February and confirmed by Pound in August, could indeed be deployed by January 1942.56 Bellars argued that phase 1 forces could now be more powerful than originally planned, available earlier and translate more rapidly into phase 2. This made it feasible to adopt a more offensive strategy towards Japan earlier in a war than previously considered desirable.

Bellars judged that the shortage of destroyers underlined to Pound the previous month still precluded the deployment of capital ships beyond the Malay Barrier.57 However, capital ships in the Indian Ocean could release cruisers for strike operations forward of the barrier.

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