British

The Failure of Royal Navy Air Power 1939-40

Royal Navy Air

During the Norwegian campaign there was one brilliantly successful but now almost forgotten exploit by the Fleet Air Arm. On 10th April 1940 Skua dive-bombers flying from the Orkneys sank the German cruiser Konigsberg in Bergen harbour. Although this was the first time a major warship had been sunk by air attack, the word appeared to fall on stony ground in the Admiralty. Skuas were withdrawn from operations in early 1941 and thereafter the Fleet Air Arm had no specialist dive-bomber until the unsatisfactory Barracuda in 1943. But for the Germans and the Japanese the attack on Konigsberg was a textbook demonstration and later in the war both showed that they had read, marked, learned, and inwardly digested the lessen of.

In significant measure the Royal Navy’s inability to secure the initiative in the North Sea reflected the failure of the Royal Air Force to prepare for maritime war. The experience of 1914-18 had demonstrated that aircraft had a major role in naval warfare, in reconnaissance, anti-surface, anti-submarine strike, and fleet air defence, but the Royal Air Force did not develop effective aircraft or weapons between the wars. This was most significant in the field of ASW, where the standard patrol aircraft of 1939, the Anson, was less effective, in range and weapons, than the 1918 Kangaroo.

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ISANDHLWANA AND RORKE’S DRIFT, 1879 Part II

The Defence of Rorke’s Drift, by Alphonse de Neuville (1882)

The Defence of Rorke’s Drift, by Alphonse de Neuville (1882)

Account of Isandhluwana by Lieutenant Horace Smith-Dorrien

Since I wrote the first part of my letter a dreadful disaster has happened to us. It seems to me a pure miracle that I am alive to tell you about it. On the 21 st January an order came to me, then stationed at Rorke’s Drift, to go out to advanced camp [at Isandhlwana] to escort a convoy of twenty-five waggons from there to Rorke’s Drift and bring them back loaded with supplies. Accordingly I slept in camp. At about three a.m. on the morning of the 22nd the General sent for me and told me not to take the waggons, but to convey a dispatch to Colonel Durnford, who was at Rorke’s Drift, with about 500 mounted black fellows, as a battle was expected. He (Colonel Durnford) accordingly started off with his men to join the camp. I did not return with him, but came out an hour afterwards by myself.

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Bombs on London

It began in the late afternoon of 7 September. No fewer than 348 bombers drawn from five Geschwader, escorted by 617 fighters (mainly Bf 109s), set off for the capital. Subtlety was thrown to the winds: this attack was a sledgehammer! The choice of London was also a surprise to the defenders: expecting the massive column of bombers to split up and attack individual targets, the defending fighters were positioned to cover the sector stations, and places like the Thameshaven oil refinery.

As a result, the juggernaut, headed by Johannes Fink with KG 2, reached the London dock area almost unopposed and bombed, causing heavy damage. By the time Fighter Command reacted, the bombers were on their way home, their losses negligible. Over the next few days further attacks were made on the metropolis, and while cloud hampered the bombing it hindered interception equally. Optimistic as ever, Luftwaffe Intelligence concluded from the lack of opposition that Fighter Command was on the verge of defeat-down to its ‘last 50 Spitfires’.

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Gibraltar is Taken

Gibraltar

The combined English and Dutch fleets line up at the start of the attack on Gibraltar.

Attack on Gibraltar 1-3 August 1704. Prince George of Hesse entered the town on 6 August in the name of ‘Charles III’ but effective control remained with the English.

In 1624, the Spanish king, Philip IV, visited Gibraltar and ordered the construction of even more extensive fortifications, including walls and ditches, and these defenses, together with the cannons that had already been installed, made Gibraltar nearly impregnable as a fortress.

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MALTA AND ITALIAN WAR PLANS

By June 1940, Italy’s battleship strength increased. The Littorio and Vittorio Veneto were completed, the last two of the Cavour class were completing modernization, and work continued on the new Roma and Impero. So now, with these new additions and the surrender of France on June 24, the situation in the Mediterranean changed drastically from what it had been nine months before, from nine Allied capital ships against four Italian, to six Italian capital ships versus four British.

For Italy, control of the Mediterranean was essential. All its African and Middle Eastern objectives could be reached only across the sea, so the Italian Navy would play a pivotal role. The fleet itself was large, modern, and possessed a very good naval commando branch. However, despite its modern character, it lacked radar, sonar, and night fighting training. Its most serious deficiency, however, was the lack of aircraft carriers, which Mussolini believed were unnecessary.

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The War at Sea, 1701-1714

The Battle of Malaga by Isaac Sailmaker. Oil on canvas, 1704.
The Battle of Malaga by Isaac Sailmaker. Oil on canvas, 1704.

Less than a week after the Capture of Gibraltar, Admiral George Rooke received intelligence that a French fleet under the command of Toulouse and d’Estrées was approaching Gibraltar. Leaving half his marines to defend the newly won prize, Rooke immediately set off with his combined Anglo-Dutch fleet to engage the French.

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Fall of Hong Kong

Brigadier Lawson with his brigade staff aboard the SS Swansea en route to Hong Kong, October 1941. Left to right: Major C.A. Lyndon, Brigadier Lawson, Colonel P. Hennessey and Captain H.S.A. Bush. Captain Bush was the only one of the four to survive the battle.

Brigadier Lawson with his brigade staff aboard the SS Swansea en route to Hong Kong, October 1941. Left to right: Major C.A. Lyndon, Brigadier Lawson, Colonel P. Hennessey and Captain H.S.A. Bush. Captain Bush was the only one of the four to survive the battle.

At the outbreak of World War II in the Pacific, Hong Kong was a British Crown colony, densely populated over about 400 square miles by 1.4 million persons, virtually all of them Chinese. British military planners understood well that Hong Kong was vulnerable to attack and invasion from the Japanese-occupied Chinese mainland. The 12,000- man British garrison was instructed to hold out as long as possible in the event of an attack, pending the arrival of Chinese forces under Chiang Kaishek (Jiang Jieshi). Inasmuch as Japanese spies had been active in Hong Kong for many years and had provided Japanese military command with highly detailed information concerning the island’s defenses and its troop dispositions, the standing order was little more than wishful thinking. A small garrison could not hold out for any significant length of time against an invasion of any substance.

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Radfan 1964

Radfan 1964

The early 1960s was the time when cheap transistor radios first became available. This new medium was used to great effect by Nasser, who promoted his nationalist message over the airwaves via the Egyptian wireless station, “Voice of the Arabs.” This message reached all parts of South Arabia, so that even the most primitive and isolated tribesman now had access to anti-British propaganda. The Radfan again became the focus of dissident attacks and in April 1964, the British High Commissioner had to admit that “The Aden-Dhala Road is again unusable as the area is now under guerrilla control.” In an attempt to crush the dissidents and drive them out of the Radfan, the Commander Aden Garrison, Brigadier Louis Hargroves, swiftly put together a brigade-size force.

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ISANDHLWANA AND RORKE’S DRIFT, 1879 Part I

Isandhlwana (c) The Royal Welsh Regimental Museum Trust; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation
Isandhlwana

Four Eyewitness Accounts

Africa south of the Sahara had, until the beginning of the nineteenth century, scarcely been penetrated by foreigners. A few coastal enclaves were held by slave-traders, European on the west coast, Arab on the east, while a Dutch colony, set up to service ships sailing to the East Indies, had been established at the Cape of Good Hope in the seventeenth century. The rest of black Africa remained in the possession of its native peoples.

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The Napoleonic Wars at Sea

An action during the British fleet’s blockade of the French port of Toulon between 1810 and 1814, depicted by Thomas Luny.

An action during the British fleet’s blockade of the French port of Toulon between 1810 and 1814, depicted by Thomas Luny.

Having beaten the Russians and the Austrians, Napoleon would have liked to resume the invasion of England he had planned for 1805. Yet Napoleon’s expansion of the French army after 1804 had been at the expense of the French navy, which in 1805 could muster just ninety-six battleships to Britain’s 136. As would be the case until 1945, Great Britain took pains to maintain a bigger navy than any European adversary. In 1805 the Royal Navy counted 1,000 ships and 142,000 sailors, making the Napoleonic Wars that proverbial contest between the (British) `whale’ and the (French) `elephant’. The Grande Armée indisputably ruled Europe, but the Royal Navy ruled the waves, and was able to impose a crippling embargo on French trade, supplies and movements (Kennedy 1976: 123-47). Furthermore, in terms of naval training, the British were far ahead of the French, who had purged most of their naval officers during the Revolution. Between 1789 and 1792, the French navy had lost twenty-two of twenty-seven admirals and 128 of 170 captains; most had sensibly chosen exile over death when threatened by their sans-culotte crews (Blanning 1996: 196-9; Griffith 1998: 131-2; R. Harding 1999: 273-7). With attrition like this in the skilled cadres, it was no wonder that the French failed to win a single major sea battle with the British in all of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

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