David Wragg - Royal Navy Handbook 1939-1945

ROYAL
NAVY

Handbook

19391945

ROYAL
NAVY

Handbook

19391945

DAVID WRAGG

First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by

Sutton Publishing Limited

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

David Wragg, 2005, 2013

The right of David Wragg to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7509 5428 0

Original typesetting by The History Press

INTRODUCTION

Command of the sea is the indispensable basis of security, but whether the instrument that commands swims, floats, or flies is a mere matter of detail.

Adm Sir Herbert Richmond, Statesmen and Sea Power, OUP, 1946.

Despite years of economic depression, in June 1939 the Royal Navy and Royal Marines totalled 129,000 men, which could be expanded by a further 73,000 men from the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve. Today, in a period of economic prosperity and many uncertain dangers, the Royal Navy and Royal Marines numbers just about a third of its 1939 strength. Admittedly, we have lost the burden of empire, but all too often the responsibilities of the past come back to haunt us, whether it be in providing humanitarian aid as most recently following the tsunami that caused devastation across the Indian Ocean, or simply during the hurricane season in the Caribbean or maintaining an armed intervention as in Sierra Leone. It is clear that today we would be hard put to repeat the Falklands campaign of 1982, and even that was a close-run thing, with ships lost because of the lack of airborne-early-warning aircraft. In 1939 the United Kingdom had the worlds largest Merchant Navy, and we still had the remnants of it in 1982, but today a Britishregistered deep-sea vessel is a rarity, so there is no longer the trained back-up of seafarers to allow the rapid expansion of a fleet, and no longer the same opportunity to take ships up from trade when a crisis occurs.

Of course, technological change has also helped reduce the number of ships and manpower needed. Modern warships do not need to spend years in refit simply to have their engines changed, or months to have boilers cleaned. The presence of helicopters aboard frigates and destroyers also helps. Yet from 2006 until 2012 the fleet will be without fighter air cover, and in recent years this has comprised just two squadrons, each of only eight aircraft, with only two of the three aircraft carriers active at any one time. The dependence on costly nuclearpowered submarines is also a weakness, as smaller, conventional submarines are not only cheaper and better for training, they are also much better for many tasks, including the insertion of special forces and operations in shallow waters. In one sense, it might not matter that for the first time in more than 200 years, the Royal Navy is smaller than the French navy, but in others it does. France does not claim to be a maritime power, yet most of our trade is by sea. We also have extensive offshore waters to protect, both for fisheries purposes and because of the importance of North Sea oil. Recent events such as the Anglo-American intervention in Iraq also show that France does not view the world in the same way. Yet politicians constantly demand more from the armed forces while providing less, and in the case of the Royal Navy, the construction of new ships is not an oper-ational question, but a political matter, so that the present government can safeguard its majority.

If one is to draw a parallel between the 1930s and the situation today, one shines through clearly. Between the two world wars, the ten-year rule applied, meaning that there would be ten years in which to prepare for a major war. Today, much the same attitude is taken. But modern equipment takes much longer to bring to service. In fact, by the time the Eurofighter Typhoon 2000 reaches operational service in the Royal Air Force, more than twenty years will have passed since the first flight of its antecedent, the British Aerospace Future Combat Aircraft. In the meantime, the role for which the aircraft was designed has gone, and much time and taxpayers money has been spent re-inventing the wheel, simply so that work and technology can be transferred to European partners who have a different requirement. An earlier in-service date and new aircraft carriers capable of handling conventional take-off and landing aircraft might have meant that this fighter could have been a formidable addition to the Fleet Air Arms capabilities.

Today we are also looking at ten years plus for new ships, against three in the 1930s. Yet modern technology should mean that ships are easier to design and construct, with modular installation of equipment. All too often we are told that ships are simply platforms for weapons and aircraft.

Looking at the world today, we see a heavily armed China emerging not only as an industrial power, but while that country lacks democracy and maintains territorial ambitions a regional, if not global, threat. The increasing centralisation of power in Russia also threatens a return to the dark days of the Soviet Union, which many Russians mourn as they face the uncertainties of life in post-Communist Russia. A modern ten-year rule is even more dangerous than it was during the 1930s, when just six years passed between Adolf Hitlers assumption of absolute power and war breaking out. We no longer have the certainties of a known danger, as during the Cold War. After all, no one waking up on the morning of 11 September 2001 realised what that day would bring, and its implications.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In researching and compiling any book such as this, an author is heavily dependent on the help and assistance of many others. In particular, I am indebted for the provision of photographs and other material to Lord Kilbracken, who, as John Godley, flew as an RNVR pilot; to Bill Drake for photographs of his service; to my cousin David Wragg (yes, there is another David Wragg) for photographs of his late fathers submarine service during the Second World War; to Mrs Marjorie Schupke, for photographs of her brother, Sub Lt (A) Gordon Maynard, RNVR, who lost his life in action while flying with no. 1836 Squadron off HMS Victorious; to my late father, Lt S.H. Harry Wragg, RN, for his collection of wartime photographs and other material.

Inevitably, official and semi-official sources have also been invaluable. Like many other researchers, I am grateful to Debbie Corner, Keeper of Photographs at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum at Gosport; Jerry Shore, Assistant Curator and Archivist of the Fleet Air Arm Museum, and his enthusiastic team; and to the Photographic Archive team at the Imperial war Museum.

No work on something as vast as our wartime Royal Navy can cover every inch of ground, and for those whose appetite is whetted by this book, I would draw their attention to the bibliography at the back. There are accounts of the war at sea from every perspective, including the all-important personal accounts, as well as volumes of sheer factual matter, essential for the serious student and the modeller alike.