Royal Navy Fleet Problems
- Thread starter Hood
- Start date
Partly that but with the limits of the treaties combined with the extent of British global commitments the Royal Navy was probably always going to have local numerical inferiority as every likely opponent could concentrate their forces while Britain couldn't. Plus of course the RN had to win without taking too much damage, even if they won a slugging match against say the Italians it would leave them weak trying to cover Japan and Germany. Night fighting against an opponent that couldn't do that offered a chance to get in some crushing wins that preserved the fleet.
That said the last part takes it too far and looks very dodgy. Sure for treaty purposes the KGVs were listed at 80 rounds per gun, but in reality they had space for 1,100 rounds or 110 per gun. You look at their contemporaries, say the North Carolinas and they had 100 rounds per gun plus 100 spare in general making a total of 111 rounds per gun.
Now maybe that 1 extra round per gun magically made long range fighting a 'tactical option'. But when you consider the the Nagatos only had 90 rounds per gun and the Littorios scrapped by on 74 , and those were the ships the RN would actually be shooting at, then surely no-one else had the option of a long range fight either? The alternative is that Moretz is just making things up to justify a conclusion he had already reached, which seems a lot more likely.
The worst., most dangerous enemy the RN has ever faced was the Exchequer.
My thoughts ,
Commander Rollo Appleyard's work was declared obsolete in 1939 and destroyed.
Valuable experience of 1914–18 was disregarded in other respects as concerns convoy. Until 1943, when Professor P. M. S. Blackett produced some interesting statistics about ocean convoys and changed the staff view on convoy escort, it was Admiralty gospel that ‘the larger the convoy the greater the risk’. Had the convoy statistics of 1917–18 been analysed after the war, and the printed results of the mathematical research on comparative escort strength by an acting commander, RNVR (Rollo Appleyard) early in 1918 been studied, the Admiralty would have been aware of ‘the law of convoy size’: ‘The escort strength requires to be measured, not in terms of the number of vessels in convoy, but in terms of the total area comprised within the boundary formed by lines connecting all outer vessels.’ Appleyard went on to prove mathematically that the ratio of the torpedo attack area around the convoy perimeter to the number of escorts directly watching it is ‘a more correct numerical measure of the escort strength of a convoy than is the ratio of the number of ships in convoy to the number of close escorts’. It is sad that operational research was not understood in the interwar years; it needed someone of the standing of Blackett to show what could be done in this field.
The Royal Navy and the Lessons of 1914–1918 Part II
There is substance in Lieutenant-Commander D. W. Waters’s assertion that ‘virtually every surface and air anti-submarine lesson of the first submarine war had to be, and ultimately was, re-learnt i…weaponsandwarfare.com
Yeah, it seems pretty clear that neither of the 2 real naval great powers, the UK and US, were not especially invested in fighting each other. Each have fairly glaring holes in their doctrines and equipment regarding the other (fast capital ships lacking in the USN and American BB gunfire significantly outranging the RN's, the US lacking a night fighting doctrine and the RN carriers being designed not really fighting in blue water, etc) .
Arguably though, both were fairly well built to combat more likely foes. The USN developed excellent planning for the Pacific war, the RN could pretty handily handle Italy, Germany or possibly even Japan (the first two together).
The Royal Navy ran into serious issues due to circumstances though. France fell swiftly, the USSR lost it's only real naval assets and the Fleet air arm was massacred... By the Royal air force.
When the US joined the war the possible naval reinforcement was balanced by the Japanese massacring ill supported RN assets.
I would say any of the two together at a time.
But of course, they faced all three at the same time.
Only the USN could truly overmatch the RN, if desired, but in most scenarios there is little reason to compare the USN and the RN, the USN is really built to secure the coasts and then to defeat Japan. Without overt provocation one should suspect whether the USN has a future of even parity with the RN, longer term if the USA withdraws from the Philippines the rationale for the Pacific Fleet dwindles.
The RN is really built to deter and then overmatch any of its European rivals in open conflict. Without Germany, Japan fills in as a good theoretical enemy who then fulfils the wish. As we saw, the RN is the only truly global naval, thus it pursued alliances as Germany built to a too close to parity stance, in any event any combination of foes would undo the RN as it rarely could concentrate, thus rival coalitions were a real fear.
In most any alternatives post World War One, even in those without a WW1, the RN is going to be the most powerful European navy, it will be the only navy with commitments in every ocean, as well as potential foes, and where possible it would steer diplomacy towards a local force to non-plus another great power. Post-WW1 both Italy and Japan offer up rivalry and threats in areas of high interest. A surviving or resurrected Germany should be a real concern, much later the USSR plays bogeyman. The RN should hold its lead until the end of the 1930s at minimum and only be showing relative weakness, especially against any combinations, after that. At least that was what I did for a surviving Imperial German Navy. Realistically I could not get a stronger KM until at least the 1940s and with a neutral USA that effectively puts the USN off the board for everyone but Japan.
Also, the concept of KM based on the French Atlantic coast would have been moon-beam thinking for much of the 30s. With the Maginot Line, and access to the Atlantic through the Channel/North Sea choke points, meant that ASW planning concentrated on 'more realistic' concepts.