At first sight the problems of war potential for the Navy need not have worried about the Admiralty unduly. The problem of reserves, so complicated elsewhere, was confined to ammunition and similar stores. And although the meagre financial allocations in the 'lean years' did not allow, at that time, for the carrying of stocks for the opening period of the war, the position had been fully restored by 1938. The problem of war potential proper appeared more or less solved by the vast reserves of shipbuilding capacity. Yet looked at more closely the Admiralty's needs of increased industrial resources were almost as great as those of any other Service, even though they were most felt in the specialised fields of equipment outside the main field of shipbuilding proper. By a policy which dated to the first years of the Washington Treaty of 1922, the Admiralty maintained in being a nucleus of specialised capacity in industrial fields which otherwise would altogether have been abandoned through lack of civilian demands. This nucleus proved an important starting point. In order to meet the needs of the 'accelerated' and 'rationed' programmes
63 the Admiralty had to find or to create further additions to its specialised capacity, and in so doing it made an important contribution to war potential.
As has just been said, the effect of the Admiralty orders was felt least in the shipyards themselves. Throughout the interwar years the Admiralty assumed that the general shipbuilding capacity in the country would be sufficient not only to meet the needs of the naval programmes in peacetime but also to provide a reserve for war. In this respect the position in 1938 was somewhat less favourable than it had appeared in the twenties. As has already been shown the number of berths declined in the early thirties, and the equipment of
64 Yet on the whole the assumption still held good throughout the years of rearmament, the real problem was not so much that of berths, slips and plant, as that of labour. The size of the shipbuilding labour force which stood in 1935 at about 100,000 grew by 1939 to about 140,000, but the increase was insufficient to meet the expansion in general shipbuilding and still less the needs of the naval programmes. Skilled labour was especially short, for new entrants were few and other branches of the engineering and armament industry continued to steal skilled labour from the shipyards. By 1938 all the capacity in the yards that could be employed on new construction was fully engaged, and it was becoming clear that with the supplies of labour then available production in war could develop only at the expense of some of the peacetime projects or of merchant shipbuilding.
Another problem of war potential which the peacetime measures did not radically solve was that of gun mountings. It had always been understood that gun mountings presented one of the most difficult supply problems of naval construction. The Admiralty depended for the supply of guns on private firms, and in the absence of commercial demand for guns in peacetime privately-owned capacity was very exiguous. The chief suppliers were Vickers-Armstrongs, and the dwindling of naval orders at home and abroad since the end of the war made it impossible for them to maintain intact the specialised equipment and to keep together a sufficient number of skilled gunmakers. The firms were also allowed to dissipate much of their earlier strength in the design of guns; and designs which were slow to mature were bound to retard production and delivery.
The Admiralty was thus very conscious of the unsatisfactory prospects of gun production. So even in the 'lean years' it had tried to maintain and improve the existing facilities, and for that purpose had agreed in 1923 with the principal makers, Vickers, acting in the spirit of the agreement, modernised their plant and were in 1935 engaged on several expansion projects. Yet all these measures were short of what the new naval programmes appeared to require. The Admiralty estimated in 1936 that under the re-equipment programme sanctioned the requirements of gun mountings—in that year estimated at 5,325 tons—would fully engage the existing capacity and that by 1939 well over 11,000 tons would be needed. Steps were then taken to create further capacity, but a 'bottleneck' in gun mountings nevertheless developed, and by the beginning of 1938 deliveries were running at least three months late. For this the novelty of designs and the multiplicity of new types of gun mountings were sometimes blamed; the priority accorded to guns for the air defence of Great Britain was also held responsible. But the chief impediment was the shortage of skilled labour. This shortage of skilled labour. This shortage continued to be felt throughout the early rearmament period, and in the end the entire naval programme had to be retimed to fit in with the flow of gun mountings.
Almost equally intractable turned out to be the supply of fire control gear. The Admiralty's demands for the equipment were large and growing; in addition the War Office also wanted it in considerable quantities. On the other hand production facilities, though just sufficient for the naval needs before 1932, were already strained between 1932 and 1935, and additional capacity to meet the requirements of the reequipment programmes was obviously needed. As part of the subsidised nucleus four firms making fire control equipment and instruments for the Navy were retained in the years immediately following the Washington Treaty. The Admiralty's endeavours to harness additional firms met from the outset with difficulties. The declared Government policy was not to interfere with the normal commercial business firms met from the outset with the normal commercial business of firms, especially of those working for export, and it so happened that the most suitable firms were precisely those which were at the time fully occupied, such as the accounting and tabulating machinery. Certain other firms, such as electrical manufacturers, tool makers and instrument makers, were either unsuitably organised or unprovided with the type of labour most needed. In the end, however, the Admiralty succeeded in enlarging the nucleus of its contractors by drawing on the resources firms for sub-contracting. Yet from the middle of 1938 onwards it was becoming increasingly apparent that in spite of recent additions output was insufficient, and by early 1938 fire control gear became as serious a cause in the delay of the general programme as gun mountings.
This failure could be blamed on a number of causes, but whatever the cause it was not of the kind that could be obviated in time for the current programmes. The only possible remedy was yet additional industrial capacity. So early in 1938 the Admiralty tried again to call into existence further additions to plant. This it succeeded in doing, but the new capacity could not bear fruit at once and shortages were expected to continue. For example, but the middle of 1939 the principal items in the high-altitude control equipment for cruisers and battleships were to be forthcoming at the rate of about thirty-five percent of the requirements, and certain items for the high-altitude control gear for destroyers and sloops only to the extent of about ten percent. Nevertheless, much had been achieved by 1939.
What was virtually a new precision light engineering industry had come into being, and where only four firms were engaged in 1936, twenty-eight were now employed with a total capacity nine times that of 1936.
Preparations were equally advanced, while shortages proved less intractable, in the supply of armour and guns. In naval circles armour was always regarded a potential 'bottleneck', and the developments which followed the First World War boded ill for the future. At the end of 1918 armour was being produced at the rate of 44,000 tons per annum, and the five firms producing it were capable of turning out as much as 60,000 tons. As a result of the Washington Treaty, however, only three armour-making firms stayed in the business and the total capacity in the country fell to about 3,500 tons. This was just enough for such naval construction as went on between 1925 and 1931, but after 1931 a steep rise in requirements appeared probable (the official expectation was that under the new treaties new battleships might again come into the naval programme) and to meet it the Admiralty had to subsidise the erection of new armour-making plant in a number of steel-making plants for an additional 18,000 tons. Yet even this addition was insufficient to meet the needs and requirements of the 'D.R.C.' programme of 1935.
65 Under that programme it was estimated that requirements would rise from some 22,000 tons in 1936 to about 42,000 tons in 1939. The Admiralty therefore instigated a number of further extensions in armour-making capacity in June 1936, and when these proved insufficient, still further additions in 1938. At the same time over 12,500 tons were purchased in Czechoslovakia.
All these schemes, needless to say, took a long time to mature. By the end of 1937 even the first of the additions, that of 18,000 tons, was not yet available in full; some of the capacity sanctioned in 1938 was not full in operation until well into the war; and of the Czechoslovak order only 10,000 tons had been delivered by the time war broke out. Yet by 1939 the supply position had greatly eased off. The shortages elsewhere, above all in gun mountings and fire control gear, were delaying construction to an extent which made it possible to scale down the demand for armour. In fact potential capacity was now much beyond the current need at its reduced level. The capacity available by mid-1938 could in wartime be worked up to about 62,000 tons per annum, and this was expected to cover the larger part of wartime demands as then envisaged.
Broadly speaking, the capacity for guns grew in a somewhat similar fashion. In theory the most difficult problem of all was the provision of heavy guns. It was, therefore, in this field that the Admiralty planners were most active in the early years and that some subsidised nucleus capacity (mostly at Vickers-Armstrongs) survived from the 'lean years'. The Admiralty endeavoured to add to the manufacturing facilities by subsidising additions to plant at Vickers-Armstrongs and elsewhere. Yet, even with these additions, capacity proved no more adequate for the needs of the reequipment scheme than was the nucleus capacity in other specialised fields. In the course of 1937 a crisis appeared to be developing which threatened to add to other delays in shipbuilding. On the average the last turret had to be installed some twelve months before the completion date of a battleship, and heavy guns and gun mountings had to be ready some months earlier still, this the shortages appeared to threaten future construction for a long time ahead. When, however, in the spring of 1939 the position was again reviewed it turned out that the supplies of heavy guns as well as those of armour were greatly eased by failures in other directions. Owing to the postponement in the delivery dates of gun mountings, the whole timetable of completed ships had to be spaced, and the Admiralty found itself with a flow of heavy guns roughly adequate for the programme and a considerable war potential in hand.
By comparison with supplies of guns of the largest calibres those of the standard medium size, and especially of 6-inch guns, were adequate throughout the early rearmament period. Certain other calibres, especially those of 4-inch and 5.25-inch, were in short supply throughout owing to the great demand for them for anti-aircraft roles. New capacity was laid down in 1936 and 1938, but the naval demand for anti-aircraft armament continued to rise more steeply than the output of the new plant, and in addition the Admiralty had to compete in this field with the demands of other Services.
There were also bound to be some delays and difficulties over the supply of light automatic guns and mountings. The demands of the three Services for 20-mm. and 40-mm. guns were not standardised; each Service singled out for special preference a favourable light gun of its own. This and the general shortage of manufacturing capacity for automatic guns of these calibres prevented the Admiralty from getting its Oerlikons as early as it needed them;
66 and this also meant that the capacity for production in wartime was not made ready beforehand.
In this way the story of the war potential which rearmament created was as much one of light and shade as that of rearmament itself. The capacity made available by the spring of 1939 fell short of the full demands of war production just as the actual scale of rearmament fell short of the full 'two-power standard'. Yet here as in other respects the Navy had a great advantage over the other Services. Its production in wartime had not to be raised so high compared with its peacetime scale (or to put it differently, its peacetime scale was not so markedly below war needs) as to make the shortcomings in war potential difficult to make good. In fact, it has already been indicated that the principal measure which the Admiralty eventually took to meet the needs of the Navy in war was to suspend some of its peacetime projects.
67 This course was not open to the R.A.F. and certainly not to the diminutive Army of 1938.