What happened to the Royal Navy?

deathscompanion1

Banned
For both World Wars the Royal navy was on paper the best in the world.

Yet in both despite the massive resources it had it barely met it's obligations.

My question to those who know about naval matters why was the Royal Navy so ineffective in both world wars given the inferiority of it's opponents?

Obviously the First World War is the most obvious as there was fleet battles that the Royal Navy was built to fight yet did not win decisively.
 

Living in Exile

In the First World War the Royal Navy did its job near-perfectly. It prevented the British coast from all but a couple token raids, and conducted a blockade of Germany that was of great strategic significance. It struggled with the U-boat blockade, but eventually pulled through.

In the Second World War, the Royal Navy just ran out of money. Its fleet had old ships, and ships of the wrong type. They crash-built a fleet of ships to make up for that, but the ships weren't of the greatest quality and had to cut corners. Examples: The King George V class and the Dido class. The King George V ships were nice battleships, most importantly they were there WHEN the Royal Navy needed them, but so many things went wrong with them. Same issue with the Dido class. The Royal Navy completed its basic aim of protecting the British Isles, but failed at the historically significant aim of protecting WWII, most notably in the Pacific.
 
The Kiat

The Kiat

The British don't have a far-flung empire to protect anymore, so there's no reason to have a massive navy. They just need one strong enough to protect Britain... for now.
 

BigWillyG

deathscompanion1 said:
Obviously the First World War is the most obvious as there was fleet battles that the Royal Navy was built to fight yet did not win decisively.
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Hard to judge WWI since Jutland was the only major fleet action involving the main dreadnaught fleets. That is was indecisive doesn't say much about either the British or German fleets. Even the 18th-early 19th century Royal Navy had as many indecisive fleet actions as Quiberon's or Trafalgar's. Especially when the Fighting Instructions were followed religiously. Add the massive technological changes since the RN had fought its last fleet action at Navarino and you have two fleets trying to fight with technology they didn't follow know the capabilities of under combat conditions. A stalemate is probably to be expected, especially with both the German and British high commands being extremely casualty averse.

As for WWII, especially the major defeats in the Pacific, like the lost of Repulse and Prince of Wales, I think the RN got caught trying to use its battleship centric fleets to fight a naval war dominated by the airplane and the carrier. They could have switched fleets and they did build carriers but they ran out of money to complete the change to a carrier force or to maintain this force after the war ended.
 

The Oncoming Storm

As others have said the RN did the job it was supposed to in WW1 despite disasters like Coronel that were due to obsolete ships being put into situations they shouldn't have been let near. In the inter war years it was hamstrung by Britain's economic weakness that made the kind of re-equipment it needed near impossible, the biggest failing was the way the FAA was left to wither under RAF control meaning that it was not properly equipped for the new kind of naval warfare that emerged, it really wasn't until the closing months of the War and equipped with American aircraft that the RN's carrier force showed what it could do. It did have notable successes in WW2, such as the Battle of the Atlantic once it learned the right tactics to deal with the U-Boats. Post war it's down again to Britain's economic weakness because of political mismanagement.
 

Devolved

As someone else has said the Royal Navy did its job perfectly in WW1 and adapted itself to the changes in technology very well.

The purpose of the navy was to keep the sea lanes open and transport troops safely across the globe. This task was carried out without army loss.

The U Boat threat (especially attacks on merchant ships without warning) was something no one had seriously considered until it happened but the threat was overcome in a comparatively short space of time.

The naval battles showed the positives of German design but in the end they posed no threat to the dominant position of the Royal Navy. The surface raiders were wiped out and each time major units met (at Dogger Bank and Jutland) the Germans were the ones who fled the field of battle.

In WW2 resources were more restricted but even then the RN got the Army to France, Norway and Greece and then got them out again. The U Boats were defeated after a long struggle and the surface raiders were dealt with. The Italian Navy avoided battle after early 1941 even when the Luftwaffe was reigning supreme over the central Med. Only the war against Japan proved a problem but that was due to over stretch as much as poor planning. Pre WW2 it was understood the RN couldn't fight 3 powerful enemies simultaneously and that if that occurred everyone expected America to be in the war and that they would play with the Japanese in the Pacific.
 

Arachnid

I'm actually in the minority who think the RN performed better in WW2 than WW1 despite doing "worse". In WW1 the RN went in with the benefit of a basically brand new fleet thanks to the Dreadnought revolution and while it admirably fulfilled it's tasks considering the mismatch between the resources devoted to it versus those devoted to the Hochseeflotte it's performance was below what it should have been.
In contrast during WW2 the RN went it with an obsolete fleet that was overstretched to a ludicrous degree thanks to the underlying weakness of the British economy, yet despite that it managed to punch above it's weight, showed exceptional initiative and prowess in the Battle of the Atlantic and pioneered aircraft carrier strikes on land targets at Taranto. The only real flaw was the dispatch of Repulse and the Prince of Wales on what was basically a suicide mission considering the forces arrayed against them and that was a political decision against the RN's wishes.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
deathscompanion1 said:
For both World Wars the Royal navy was on paper the best in the world.

Yet in both despite the massive resources it had it barely met it's obligations.

My question to those who know about naval matters why was the Royal Navy so ineffective in both world wars given the inferiority of it's opponents?

Obviously the First World War is the most obvious as there was fleet battles that the Royal Navy was built to fight yet did not win decisively.
Click to expand...

The RN was very effective in WW1 (it got the job done), it was just resource inefficient. It had twice the size of Germany, yet managed only to achieve a stalemate in the North Sea. The UK was no more able to attack the German coast than vice versa. It was geography that saved the RN on this one. Gallipoli was a blunder. And the U-boats were badly handled. In WW1, the RN resembled the stereotype of the Russian/Soviet Army. Average quality units applied in overwhelming numbers where losses can simply be absorbed.

The failings largely have to do with the RN falling in love with big glorious ships, its own traditions, and decisive sea battles. It forgot that its first role was to protect the sea lanes for trade with the British Isles. Winning the sea battles is a way to achieve protection of the sea lanes in many cases. It is an means to an end. Not the end.

As to the PoW and Repulse, it was a simple intelligence failure. The Admiral believe he was out of effective range of land based airpower when he was sunk. The Japanese had spent 6 months working with lean fuel mixtures and other gimmicks to extend the range of their planes. They had been intensely training to improve their land base naval aviation.

In WW2, the RN repeats the pattern of having an average quality Navy, but winning against much smaller German and Italian Navies and being driven from the field by the Japanese Navy. The RN just traded surface ships lost with the Germans, they out fought the Italians, and they were outfought by the Japanese.
 

Devolved

BlondieBC said:
The failings largely have to do with the RN falling in love with big glorious ships, its own traditions, and decisive sea battles. It forgot that its first role was to protect the sea lanes for trade with the British Isles. Winning the sea battles is a way to achieve protection of the sea lanes in many cases. It is an means to an end. Not the end.

As to the PoW and Repulse, it was a simple intelligence failure. The Admiral believe he was out of effective range of land based airpower when he was sunk. The Japanese had spent 6 months working with lean fuel mixtures and other gimmicks to extend the range of their planes. They had been intensely training to improve their land base naval aviation.

In WW2, the RN repeats the pattern of having an average quality Navy, but winning against much smaller German and Italian Navies and being driven from the field by the Japanese Navy. The RN just traded surface ships lost with the Germans, they out fought the Italians, and they were outfought by the Japanese.
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Falling in love with big ships and dreaming of decisive sea battles was not really a RN failing.

In WW1 the German fleet talked of 'Der Tag' while rusting away in Wilhelmshaven. In WW2 the Japanese battlefleet spent until 1944 looking for the decisive battle and the Italians built a large modern fleet just to retreat in the face of obsolete British battleships.

Better examples of falling in love with big useless ships would be Bismarck and Tirpitz for Germany. Yamato and Musashi for Japan and Littorio, Vittoria Veneto and Roma for Italy. None of these ships achieved anything in the end. Unless you count the love of post war enthusiasts as an achievement.

The British in WW2 built large numbers of cheap ships because they had large areas of ocean to protect. They couldn't afford to waste resources on uber ships that could pick and choose when to venture out of harbour.

In addition the RN successfully evacuated the army from Dunkirk, Greece and Crete in the face of enemy air superiority. They kept Malta and Tobruk supplied as well as defeating the U Boats in the Atlantic. Referring to the RN as average quality seems to be a silly thing to say since they achieved everything asked apart from holding the Japanese which even the Americans found difficult to do with most of their fleet until late '42 early '43.
 
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Riain

Banned
Arachnid said:
I'm actually in the minority who think the RN performed better in WW2 than WW1 despite doing "worse". In WW1 the RN went in with the benefit of a basically brand new fleet thanks to the Dreadnought revolution and while it admirably fulfilled it's tasks considering the mismatch between the resources devoted to it versus those devoted to the Hochseeflotte it's performance was below what it should have been.
In contrast during WW2 the RN went it with an obsolete fleet that was overstretched to a ludicrous degree thanks to the underlying weakness of the British economy, yet despite that it managed to punch above it's weight, showed exceptional initiative and prowess in the Battle of the Atlantic and pioneered aircraft carrier strikes on land targets at Taranto. The only real flaw was the dispatch of Repulse and the Prince of Wales on what was basically a suicide mission considering the forces arrayed against them and that was a political decision against the RN's wishes.
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I agree that mostly ship for shhip the RN did better in WW2 than WW1, but they did lag in a few key areas such as AA and aviation which would have made a lot of difference. For example for all the captial ship actions of WW2 it was the RN who got the longest range big gun hit of the war, not the others with their vaunted advantages.
 

King Augeas

It seems that every few weeks the same criticisms of the KGVs and Force Z come up. If you're criticising the political decisions that switched the KGVs from 9x15 to 10x14 at the cost of six months' delay, then that's fair enough, although you should note that it was a political decision that can hardly be laid at the door of the RN. If you're criticising the "unreliable" turrets, well, this has been repeatedly shown to be largely a myth. POW had a green crew and civilian contractors still on board at DS; elsewhere, loss of output in prolonged shooting was comparable to US experiences.

For Force Z, there was a very good post on here a while back. It showed that Phillips and Leach knew exactly what they might be getting into, but also that they had to attack the convoys to save Singapore.

Not sure where the criticism of the Didos comes from though, I thought they regarded as popular and effective escort cruisers.
 

Fellatio Nelson

I don't recall in either World War the Germans having freedom of the high seas. So the RN achieved that; bottling up the hostile fleets and crippling their entire merchant fleet.

I don't recall neutral shipping being free to trade with Germany; or even Axis Mediterranean trade during WW2 being that free; one of the big handicaps for the Germans in North Africa was a lack of support due to interdiction of their convoys. So the RN achieved the blockade of Germany during both world wars.

No great decisive battle during WW1 - well, a few mistakes led to Germans getting away, but did they come out again/did the battle change anything to their advantage? So the RN contained the German surface fleet during both world wars.

The British (and allied) armies were able to be deposited around the globe, as and when required. So the RN allowed freedom of movement to the army.

I don't recall the UK starved to submission in either World War. So, for an aggregate of a decade, the RN protected the sea lanes in spite of a massive submarine threat.

So it did the job, admirably, especially during the increased stresses of WW2 on it. Of course there were inefficiencies and mistakes, especially when viewed with hindsight, but in which wars has that never happened?
 

The Oncoming Storm

Something else to consider about Force Z is that Philips did have air support available, OK they were Buffalos but they were better than nothing and could have at least disrupted the Japanese attacks. Their pilots were sitting waiting to go but Philips didn't make the call until it was too late.
 

frlmerrin

Banned
The RN did OK in WWI and better in WWII but 'only money will make navies' and by 1900s the British no longer enjoyed the primacy in trade and manufacture they once had. The navy was feeling the pinch in WWI and by WWII Britain could no longer afford the RN.
 

Coulsdon Eagle

Monthly Donor
Strategic overstretch. In the years before the Great War Fisher led the move to concentrate the RN's battle squadrons in the North Sea. By 1939 the RN had to watch not only the North Sea and Atlantic, but the Mediterranean, and be aware of the Japanese threat. That made it far easier for Jellicoe & Beatty - the latter was constantly concerned at efforts to siphon off his dreadnoughts in 1914/15 and later in the war his fleet destroyers.

Correlli Barnett in "Engage the Enemy More Closely" suggested that, far from being a pillar of support, the Empire was a drain on Britain's resources, particularly the RN with global commitments. All those lines of communication to defend. In theory, no India (or Australia, Malaya, etc.) would result in no strategic interest in the Mediterranean, let alone the Pacific. [Mind you - it would cut Britain off from their only controlled source of oil.]
 

aghart

I think people even now completely underestimate the resources the Royal Navy had to put into the battle of the atlantic. Despite some assistance from the USN and the RCN, it was the Royal Navy who shouldered the lions share of the fighting in the Atlantic.

To try to modernise at breakneck speed is hard enough, to try to modernise at breakneck speed and fight a major naval war at the same time, whilst having your sea lanes under siege is no easy task.
 

ModernKiwi

Coulsdon Eagle said:
...
Correlli Barnett in "Engage the Enemy More Closely" suggested that, far from being a pillar of support, the Empire was a drain on Britain's resources, particularly the RN with global commitments. All those lines of communication to defend. In theory, no India (or Australia, Malaya, etc.) would result in no strategic interest in the Mediterranean, let alone the Pacific. [Mind you - it would cut Britain off from their only controlled source of oil.]
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Well you had the perfect "self licking ice cream cone" whereby the colonies were needed to supply the navy, and the navy was needed to protect the colonies.
 
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