He [Forbes] was in my opinion quite one of the soundest and best of our war admirals, and was never given credit for his doings.1
Admiral A. B. Cunningham
Compared with that of Lord Dowding, the reputation of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Morton Forbes (1880–1960) is clouded in obscurity. For the reasons detailed in the two previous chapters, Dowding’s name is synonymous with the Battle of Britain but it is rare for Forbes to be accorded even a cursory mention. Even publications dealing with the Norway campaign of 1940, an action in which he played a major part, have made surprisingly few direct references to the C-in-C Home Fleet by name.
An article in the Sunday Post dated 21 April 1940 observed that prior to the commencement of the Norway campaign “hardly anyone knew his name,” despite the fact that the war was now seven months old and Forbes had been in command of the Home Fleet for two years. While the article was naturally positive about Forbes’ qualities as a commander, it also contrasted his anonymity with naval predecessors Admirals of the Fleet John Arbuthnot Fisher, John Rushworth Jellicoe, and David Beatty, all of whom were household names in 1914.2 No attempt was made to analyze the reason for this. Lord Nelson’s dramatic victory at Trafalgar in 1805 heralded the so-called Pax Britannica (1815–1914) and was a hard act to follow.3 The failure to impose the same crushing defeat on the German High Seas Fleet at Jutland in 1916 had proved a great disappointment to the press and public. Though by now out of the Admiralty, Churchill also suffered (and allegedly accepted) some public criticism over Jutland for failing to appreciate the value of aircraft as spotters for the fleet when he was First Lord.4 This is not to say the British had lost touch with their maritime tradition in 1940, as is said to have happened in the second half of the twentieth century. The Royal Navy was still a source of pride but since Jutland, German Gotha bombers had bombed London and the great technological strides in aviation accompanied by doomsday scenarios of destruction from the air had focused attention away from the sea and toward the sky.5 The diversion of staggering amounts of public money into the RAF—inevitably at the navy’s expense—during the 1930s can therefore be seen as a reflection of the public’s unspoken yet diminished regard for the senior service and its leaders. Nothing much happened to change this view during 1940. Churchill proclaimed the RAF’s victory in the Battle of Britain and by November 1940 severe parliamentary criticism of the navy’s leadership was being reported in the British press.6 One historian wrote that until “March 1941 the RAF with its triumphant record in the Battle of Britain, the only great pivotal battle to be witnessed by half the nation, had attracted the greatest acclaim among the three services.”7 None of this fully explains Forbes’ continued obscurity. His colleague, Admiral A. B. Cunningham, has enjoyed well-deserved fame to the present day. Taranto was a battle that caught the world’s imagination, and in gaining a spectacular success with Fleet Air Arm aircraft against Italian capital ships in November 1940, Cunningham could only benefit from the validation this bestowed on British airpower, especially when it was turned against warships. In turn, this can only have reinforced the perception of the Battle of Britain as a decisive victory won by airpower alone.8 Forbes never had the opportunity of delivering a similar success, and unlike Cunningham and the majority of senior military men he did not bother to write memoirs after the war. In consequence, the historiographies of the “finest hour” and the Royal Navy in World War II do not hold Forbes in any position of prominence.
Belying many of his actions in 1940, Winston Churchill wrote that following his second meeting on board HMS Nelson, he “formed a strong feeling of confidence in the Commander-in-Chief.”9 The official historian of the Royal Navy summed up Forbes by noting that “his fifteen months bought no great sea victory . . . as might catch the public’s imagination.” However, despite many constraints he felt that Forbes’ policy and strategy were “generally justified by subsequent events, and that his steady hand on the reins contributed greatly to bringing the country through this anxious period.”10 However, for another writer, Forbes was “guilty of not backing his hunches” in the matter of ship dispositions during the Norway campaign. Along with Admiral William Whitworth and others, he was among the “decent men doing a very competent job” but who were “not going to set naval warfare alight.”11 A more controversial critic considered Forbes shared Cunningham’s characteristic “unshakability” but quoted a subordinate’s opinion that the C-in-C lacked “panache.”12 A book aimed at the general reader stressed the C-in-C’s “ill-luck” to be in charge during “a period of setbacks and uncertainties,” but praised his strategic grasp and noted his command “immobilized the bulk of the German surface ships during the Norwegian conflict.” Concluding that he was a scapegoat for the navy’s ill-preparedness at this time, the author pointed out that Forbes later handed over a stronger fleet than existed at the commencement of hostilities.13 Some praise was given by Admiral Dudley Pound’s biographer, who stated that it was Forbes rather than the Admiralty who read the invasion situation correctly. He also absolved Forbes from blame over the sinking of Royal Oak in 1939 by pointing out that he “had moved heaven and earth to get the Scapa Flow defences improved.”14 The only academic to examine Forbes’ career in any detail has been the American scholar James Levy, who praised Forbes as “a solid strategist and a fine admiral” but who could not be considered a “great commander” owing “to his inability to see through the intelligence muddle [during the Norway campaign] and guess his enemy’s actions and intentions.”15 Levy considered that Forbes would have made a better First Sea Lord than Dudley Pound, except perhaps for an outspokenness that antagonized Churchill and contributed toward his eventual dismissal. As far as most naval historical literature is concerned, Forbes remains a figure with only tangential significance.16
Ultimately, the reputation of military commanders should rest more heavily upon how they dealt with the constraints placed upon their operational tenure rather than upon the glamour surrounding their branch of the armed services. Both Forbes and Dowding had served in senior appointments for many years and the efficiency of the RAF and Royal Navy (RN) was partly the result of their prewar efforts to modernize their organizations. Forbes therefore shared collective responsibility with his colleagues for the state of the Royal Navy during the early phase of the war. In this respect, there has been a tendency among some writers to portray the navy as a backward-looking organization obsessed with the so-called lessons of Jutland during the inter-war period.17 However, there is an opposing school emphasizing the pragmatic way in which the navy adapted to financial and technological constraints by making radical changes to tactics and gunnery. Whichever of these views one accepts will inevitably influence how Forbes is perceived. Also relevant to his reputation was the propensity of Churchill and the Admiralty to interfere in operations with the justification of “superior” knowledge as it fundamentally related to his ability to contact and destroy enemy ships. As we shall see, it also reflected a clash in temperament that existed between Forbes and his immediate superior at the Admiralty, First Sea Lord Dudley Pound. A detailed blow-by-blow account of the Norway campaign is not covered here, but the operation is discussed in order to highlight the “intelligence muddle” and the problems of excessive interference with Forbes’ command. Yet the C-in-C’s crippling of the Kriegsmarine around Norway and the giving of sound strategic advice during the invasion crisis did not save him from the sack. Why then was Forbes’ contribution to victory so diminished?
Forbes was born into an expatriate Scottish family in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1880. It was a family with naval traditions—hence his father’s intention for his son to join the navy. This was fine by Charles and his early education at Dollar Academy in Scotland proved a happy one.18 Forbes entered the navy in 1894, and in passing out from his training program with a reported five out of five first-class certificates gained a twelve-month seniority advantage over many of his peers.19 He was then posted to a series of sea-going appointments but in 1903 served on the staff of the gunnery school Cambridge at Devonport. This was undoubtedly a shrewd career move given the primacy of big-gun specialists that would prevail for years to come. A variety of other postings followed and in 1916 he was present at the Dardanelles as commander of the battleship Queen Elizabeth. At Jutland he was flag commander to Sir John Jellicoe in the battleship Iron Duke, where he won the Distinguished Service Order and a mention in dispatches.20 His relationship with Jellicoe was clearly a positive one. Now captain of the light cruiser Galatea, Forbes commiserated with Jellicoe over his dismissal as First Sea Lord in December 1917 and thanked him “for all that he has done for me.”21 In August 1919 he became a naval member of the Ordnance Committee and was deputy director of the Royal Naval Staff College from August 1921 to May 1923. From 1923 he served in flag captain appointments in the Atlantic and Mediterranean before serving as the director of Naval Ordnance with the rank of rear admiral in 1928.22 From October 1925 to May 1928, Forbes was considered by Vice Admiral Ernle Chatfield (First Sea Lord, 1933–38, and minister for co-ordination of defence, 1939–40) to be “exceptional.” Chatfield wrote that Forbes would probably make a “brilliant Controller” and a “fine Flag Officer” but tempered his praise with the observation that his cautious approach could make him unsuitable for the Naval Staff. In 1930, Forbes became rear admiral (destroyers) in the Mediterranean Fleet and Chatfield considered he fulfilled these duties “admirably” but thought he was “better at consolidating a position than capturing it.” However, this was “without intending to detract from the fact that his abilities are of a high order.”23 He next became Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Admiralty, and was promoted to vice admiral on 21 January 1933. This post was considered by Vice Admiral Clifford Caslon to be one “calling for exceptional qualities of technical knowledge and ability in committee.”24 It covered responsibility for materiel including ships and armament, and oversaw the directors of Naval Construction, Dockyards; Naval Ordnance; Torpedoes and Mining, Armament Supply; Compasses; Scientific Research and Experiment; Electrical Engineering; and the Fleet-Engineer-in-Chief.25 Later second-in-command of the Mediterranean Fleet, he received the Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in 1935, the year prior to being promoted to admiral. His appointment in the Mediterranean Fleet was a key appointment as this was the Royal Navy’s most important tactical formation—a place where the naval tactics that would be used in World War II were developed during the interwar period. The appointment as C-in-C Home Fleet was made in April 1938, shortly after the Anschluss crisis drew to a close.
His “Captain’s Confidential Reports,” taken from his service record, cover the period from 1914–40 and portray an extraordinarily talented officer. While Chatfield’s remarks about Forbes’ cautious approach cannot be put aside lightly, it may be significant that Chatfield was the only reporting officer to interpret his calm and thorough approach in this manner. Nevertheless, this criticism may have prevented him from gaining the First Sea Lord’s chair in 1939. His Times obituary article claimed there “was nothing spectacular . . . nor on first acquaintance did he give the impression of possessing outstanding personality.” Nevertheless, it acknowledged “no man ever saw him ‘rattled . . . he had full confidence in himself, and he inspired it in those under his command.’” It went on to say that those in “closest contact with him knew best the reserves of power . . . the clear vision, sound judgment, and strong sense of proportion,” while also likening him to “a tower of strength.”26 Obituaries, by their nature, focus on the positive aspects of the deceased but not without hinting at the subject’s perceived shortcomings. By emphasizing that those in “closest contact” knew his virtues the impression was given that many people were unaware of these qualities. Many years after the war, his former flag officer wrote to the official historian about him. Godfrey Style stated that “he [Forbes] dodged the publicity cult like mad.” An aversion to publicity was a disadvantage when there were problems with the morale of the fleet at the end of 1939, resulting from the perception that the public was not appreciating the navy’s efforts.27 The same source also remarked upon “his extreme loyalty both upwards and downwards. . . . [H]e stood on his own bridge, always calm, always the same and ALWAYS CORRECTLY DRESSED without mufflers or other fancy gear.” This behavior contrasted with another admiral against whom it was claimed, if there was a problem on the bridge, “would come in and push one out of the way.”28 The sartorial comment was probably made to support the remark about Forbes’ aversion to publicity. Style was doubtless thinking of egocentric self-publicists such as Lord Louis Mountbatten, a controversial but well-connected officer with enough influence to take him from the captaincy of a destroyer to Supreme Allied Commander, South-East Asia, by the end of the war.
Commander J. A. J. Dennis’ papers also remarked that “poor Admiral Forbes came in for a lot of criticism—indeed it is said that some called him ‘Wrong-Way Charlie.’ ” While Dennis went on to defend Forbes, stating that the fault lay with the higher command and Churchill himself, these recollections were almost certainly influenced by hindsight and subsequent reading.29 An interview with Ron Babb, who served as an engine-room artificer on HMS Rodney before and during the Norway campaign, suggests that Forbes was not badly thought of by the personnel of the Home Fleet except that it was always considered he wasn’t doing enough to push the war effort forward. He did not “come over as a striking force” at the time and people thought he was a little more cautious than he should be. When questioned directly about whether the “lower deck” had confidence in Forbes, he replied that to the best of his knowledge they had. He “never heard anyone knock him on the lower deck.” A suggestion (originally made by Admiral John Tovey) was put to Mr. Babb that Forbes failed to visit his ships enough. As far as he could recollect, Forbes did come on board and make regular inspections. Much of the problem appeared to be rooted in the sailors’ frustration at the relative inactivity during the opening months of the war, and they took it out on their superiors.30 The relative inactivity was perhaps inevitable as the Draft Hague Rules of Air Warfare (1923) did not permit the harrying of German coastal traffic, despite the fact that these rules were self-imposed, unratified, and not part of international law.31 Nevertheless, the Allies decided to adhere to them until the Norway campaign and it is clear this ruling put a severe restraint upon the activities of the Home Fleet at this time.
Forbes’ career showed a steady rise through the strata of naval hierarchy and, as the Times pointed out shortly after his death, his career shadowed closely that of his predecessor as C-in-C Home Fleet, First Sea Lord Sir Roger Backhouse, a fact suggesting Forbes was being groomed for Backhouse’s job. This may well have happened after the death of Admiral Dudley Pound in 1943, had circumstances been a little different.32 Unlike colleagues such as Pound, Forbes was neither a centralizer nor an advocate of “orthodox” tactics. One Royal Navy officer has stated that it has “become very fashionable” to blame the predominance of gunnery officers in the 1930s for some tactical misdirection, because of assumptions that U-boat attacks would only be made in shallow waters and because anti-submarine (A/S) officers exaggerated the success of their Asdic anti-submarine detecting device. While acknowledging that Asdic failed partly as a result of the navy’s failure to audit their systems properly, he believed that it was more a “freak application of a generally satisfactory [administrative] system.” Gunnery officers seemed to have not understood the problems because submariners tended to “have minimal interface with other branches” and because of a natural “slight bias” to their own interests. He also indicated that the disappointment with Asdic was more the result of a tactical misconception during the early phase of the war than the failure of pre-war development. It was also acknowledged that other navies including that of Germany made the same mistake of over-emphasizing the importance of big guns, yet there were certainly grounds for asserting the primacy of gunnery in Britain.33 The kind of battle for which big guns, battleships, and their tactics were developed would later occur at the Battle of Calabria against the Italian fleet in 1940.34
Like the majority of great naval battles before it and with the notable exception of Trafalgar, Jutland was characterized by the opposing fleets forming up into parallel lines against each other. As historian J. T. Sumida explained, there were mechanical weaknesses relating to British gunnery, making the Grand Fleet of 1916 relatively ineffective at long range. Despite subsequent improvements to this equipment, financial and treaty constraints resulted in the navy losing some ground in the technological competition with other powers during the interwar period. With the Japanese thought to be achieving proficiency at 30,000 yards, well beyond anything the British could achieve in 1934, experiments were conducted in the use of short-range actions of 10,000 to 15,000 yards.35 By 1935, not long after Forbes’ term as Third Sea Lord and controller in charge of materiel, a memorandum was distributed advocating short-range actions, reflecting the many successes obtained by this method in the past.36 Other simulations also indicated the possibility of controlling the ranges at which combats would be fought utilizing smoke screens and night-fighting techniques. According to Sumida, night fighting became standard under the Mediterranean Fleet commanders of the 1930s, and this fleet was recognized as the navy’s “premier and tactically most influential force.”37 As Forbes commanded the destroyer flotillas of this fleet during 1930–31, and was vice admiral in the Mediterranean commanding the first battle squadron, and second in command, Mediterranean Fleet, 1934–38, his role in developing these tactics must have been significant.
According to Admiral of the Fleet Sir John de Robeck, divisional tactics had been practiced by Forbes as captain of the battleship Queen Elizabeth during 1923–24 with “great success.”38 Later, these divisional tactics gradually superseded the single line-ahead or in other words, the division of the line-ahead into components ranging from one to five ships. The Tactical School emphasized the importance of “individual action” by divisional commanders in 1935, recognizing that torpedoes launched from destroyers threatened the battle fleet.39 It was also recognized that developments in carrier design and torpedo bombers also threatened the line of battle, which was seemingly proved in a 1937 exercise where torpedo bombing attacks on a seven-ship line resulted in heavy damage and disruption, whereas similar attacks against more agile two-ship battle-cruiser formations were ineffective. However, it ought to be stressed it was not being suggested that divisional tactics were a complete antidote to the effects of massed air attack, but in many circumstances they would “greatly reduce the danger.”40 None of this resembles the actions of a moribund and backward-looking organization, though it did represent the pragmatic response of a navy with very limited resources.
Postwar critics of the Royal Navy, focusing on the supposed obsession of the “fleet action,” may have taken their cue from Dowding’s wartime Sunday Chronicle article in which he claimed that it was the Admiralty’s fault the navy had been supplied by the Air Ministry with inadequate aircraft. It was the Admiralty that insisted on a “plurality of roles” and on hybrid types “doomed to inefficiency before pencil was laid to drawing board.” He claimed “the role of naval aircraft was completely subordinated by this [fleet action] conception.” Dowding had been provoked by Admiral Herbert Richmond’s earlier newspaper criticism of the Air Ministry, but it was only natural that where the Air Ministry was holding the purse strings, the Admiralty could not have expected (or got) a series of different aircraft each designed for separate purposes.41 The Fleet Air Arm was only returned to full Admiralty control in May 1939, and the story of how it started the war with inadequate equipment in terms of both numbers and quality is well known. In reality, a multitude of factors was responsible for the limitations of the Fleet Air Arm’s aircraft. The most fundamental was the strategic priority for “strategic” bombers and the Admiralty’s tendency to stress the naval rather than the aerodynamic design aspects. Both the Air Ministry and the Admiralty shared responsibility for the problems, but fortunately the limitations of the Fleet Air Arm did not fatally weaken the fleet’s ability to operate in the teeth of enemy airpower.
In 1942, the retired Admiral R. H. S. Bacon explained the tactics being used by the navy to the general public in surprising detail, in the book Britain’s Glorious Navy. Principles of division and subdivision were affirmed but placed within the context of divisions operating within the line-ahead for fighting. The advantage was in allowing each heavy gun to fire over an arc of 120 degrees. Other positions were considered less satisfactory because of obstructions from the ship’s superstructure. However, Bacon drew a distinction here between fighting and cruising, acknowledging that line-ahead was too vulnerable to torpedo attack. “The best cruising formation in wartime is with one or more divisions abreast of each other.” Such a formation represented a far smaller target area on an attack from the beam, and was relatively easy to maneuver into “line-ahead” when enemy surface units were to be engaged.42 In another section by Admiral Sir Studholme Brownrigg, the advantages of night fighting were espoused by stating that a “weaker or numerically inferior force well skilled in night fighting may well score a success over a stronger opponent less well skilled in night fighting.” The obliteration of two Italian cruisers in the Battle of Matapan in 1941 was cited as an example of the success of these methods.43 This wartime book written by senior naval officers indicates that much of what was learned in the interwar exercises was actually put into practice.
After the war, Forbes told the official historian: “I think the Navy’s ideas on the whole were fairly, in fact very sound.” He conceded that some tactical mistakes were made, for example, anticipating wrongly the Germans would employ torpedo-bombing attacks against warships. This meant that in the initial contact phases, destroyer screens protecting capital ships spread too far outward, weakening the barrage of protective fire. It also meant outlying ships were vulnerable to conventional bombing, but this was soon remedied by bringing the destroyers close in to the big ships.44 The legacy of Forbes’ Mediterranean experience and pragmatic approach was also apparent in his chairmanship of pre-war naval discussions on the relative merits of speed, armor, and firepower, sensibly observing that warship design could only ever be a compromise between the three.45 Levy has remarked that in true Nelsonian tradition, Forbes’ management style was to let his captains know what he wanted to achieve and let them work out the precise details of how it was to be done.46
It is also easy to see the parallels in attitude with Nelson’s actions at Trafalgar. Nelson was willing to go against conventions by delegating authority to his captains and abandoning the traditional line of battle in favor of two columns of ships aimed at breaking the enemy line in order to place their ships in cross fire. Forbes, who also believed in delegation, opposed the traditional line-of-battle tactics laid down in the Fighting Instructions in favor of the more recently developed divisional tactics. Ironically, the Fighting Instructions of 1939 had been co-written by Forbes and Pound before the war, representing guidance rather than “orders.”47 That Forbes was co-author might be seen as a reflection of his tactical expertise built up between the wars or, more simply, that the co-authors happened to possess recent experience of senior command in the tactically important Mediterranean Fleet. However, these instructions cannot be represented as an important contribution to naval warfare. According to historian A. J. Marder, the feeling in the navy was that they were “all rubbish.”48 There were perhaps two reasons for this. First, the history of the Fighting Instructions—or Articles of War—was embarrassing for the Royal Navy as Admiral John Byng’s zealous adherence to them was blamed for the British defeat at Minorca in 1756 and led to his execution for failing to do his utmost against the enemy.49 Second, the co-authors seem to have had fundamental disagreements. For example, Pound was said to have written them with a view to a fleet action against the Japanese and thus envisaged two parallel lines of capital ships slugging it out with heavy guns. As already stated, a pitched battle similar to that envisaged by Pound did take place in the Mediterranean at the Battle of Calabria, indicating that the line of battle was not completely redundant. However, this concept was inappropriate to the circumstances of 1939 as they pertained to home waters. The Kriegsmarine was too small for a large fleet action and saw no advantage in fighting one. Even in the Pacific, it was unlikely that the Royal Navy could ever have amassed enough ships to deal with the Japanese in this sort of fleet action while Germany and Italy represented major threats much closer to home. Marder has noted that Forbes opposed large fleet actions strongly.50 With the blessings of hindsight, it may have been more useful to have written two sets of instructions for the radically different conditions in each theater, but in the event, even the Pacific war did not run to the sort of fleet action envisaged by Pound.51 As one historian has remarked, the problem of dealing with a triple threat from Germany, Italy, and Japan with a single power fleet was one that “defied solution.”52
With Forbes’ experience of command in the influential Mediterranean Fleet, it would have been easy to put his differences with Pound down to contrasting experiences, but Pound had been C-in-C there between 1935 and 1938 and must have drawn other conclusions from his tenure of command. Ironically, Pound’s entry in the Dictionary of National Biography made a point of emphasizing that in this post he had trained “officers to use their initiative and not to wait for orders.”53 This stands in stark contrast to the reality of Pound’s micromanaging personality, a factor that would complicate the relationship of these men in the early stages of World War II. In the circumstances, it would be surprising if the Fighting Instructions of 1939 seemed at all coherent. Nevertheless, they did allow for discretion on the part of commanders. When Pound wrote to him in August 1939, reserving the right to intervene in operations, Forbes responded “that it must be left to my discretion at the time whether or not I carry out these [Admiralty] orders, in the same way that Captains are given this discretion in Clauses 2 and 6 of the Fighting Instructions.”54 These instructions confirm that captains “without ‘specific directions’” or “faced with unforeseen circumstances . . . must act as their judgment dictates.” Clause 6 stated that if orders from a senior officer would result in losing touch with the enemy, consideration must be given to the senior officer “not being in full possession of the facts.”55 Accurately predicting what would later happen around Norway, Forbes argued that if he were maintaining radio silence at sea, then too much radio traffic (including inappropriately detailed orders) would give away his position to the enemy. His view was that the Admiralty should advise a course of action, leaving the decision to him as to whether the suggested action should be complied with. Forbes would later write “never answered” on the file copy of his letter to Pound.56
Perhaps the most serious obstacle to Forbes’ reputation is the unfortunate “Wrong-Way Charlie” tag applied by some personnel. This was because of his inability to intercept German surface raiders at the beginning of hostilities and later, for failing to immediately grasp that an invasion of Norway was under way. Forbes was initially distracted by the need to stop German naval surface raiders from breaking out of the Baltic into the Atlantic, and indeed the pre-war naval plans of both countries had been based on the assumption that this would be attempted by Germany at the first available opportunity. Yet the poor information received by him did not mean the navy was backward in appreciating the value of good-quality intelligence. According to a former producer of a signals intelligence system known as Ultra, “the war at sea presents the sharpest possible contrast to the war in the air from the intelligence point of view,” and the navy was ahead of the other services in this respect. During 1914–18, signals intelligence had developed to a high standard but atrophied between the wars, a problem illustrating the wider problem of insufficient long-term service funding. However, complex organizations cannot be quickly resurrected at full efficiency simply by sudden injections of large cash amounts. The problems manifested themselves in an inability to understand the significance of the decrypts. Bomber Command showed little interest in signals intelligence throughout the war because it did nothing to confirm the validity of Air Chief Marshal Arthur “Bomber” Harris’ strategic bombing theories.57 Ultra played little part in Fighter Command’s campaign and there is still doubt over whether Dowding was on the list of persons approved to see the decrypts. Consequently signals intelligence, including Ultra, was of little help to the Allies at this stage of the war, but there is no real evidence that this was simply down to “Admiralty complacency.”58 In the event, Kriegsmarine signals could not be read by the British until 1941.59
Undoubtedly needled by the situation and probably aware that the lower decks were frustrated at his inability to find the German ships, Forbes complained to the Admiralty in January 1940 about the contradictions in Operational Intelligence Centre (OIC) intelligence and demanded an improvement. He complained that the reports of 4 January 1940 confirming the Deutschland was under repair at Kiel on 20–21 December had not been received by him until his return from sea on 10 January. His message also claimed that reports could be anything up to fourteen days old when posted to the base. Furthermore, if the reports were correct, then which pocket battleship was it that came through the Great Belt early on 21 December, bearing in mind one report said that Gneisenau and Scharnhorst were at Wilhelmshaven on 18 and 21 December? From these contradictory reports he concluded wrongly that the Deutschland and a cruiser must have been responsible for the much-publicized sinking of the Rawalpindi and second, “the Admiral Scheer and a cruiser are not abroad.” In conclusion he urged that signals should be sent to him on a daily basis giving the last known location of enemy battle cruisers, pocket battleships, and cruisers, with copies to other commanders.60 It is hard to say whether he was fully justified in drawing the wrong conclusion about which ship had sunk the Rawalpindi, but the complaint about delays resulting from having the reports posted to his base is a reasonable one. Unfortunately, as will be seen, increases in signals traffic would further assist the Germans in their own intelligence gathering. It was, in fact, the Scharnhorst that sank the Rawalpindi on 23 November between the Faeroe Islands and Iceland. Forbes’ report does not make clear that he had also received a report direct from the Rawalpindi correctly identifying the battle cruiser Scharnhorst. Within minutes of receiving this, a contradictory report from the Rawalpindi claimed it was the Deutschland. It must be noted here that Stephen Roskill, the official historian of the Royal Navy from 1949 to 1960, has remarked on the difficulties of distinguishing pocket battleships and battle cruisers because of similarities in construction and the poor visibility in northern waters. Forbes accepted the second report because it was already known the Deutschland was abroad, and while she was back at Kiel on 15 December the Admiralty did not discover this until later. Forbes confessed to being “a bit muddled” about the Deutschland’s whereabouts by 27 December, but an OIC report dated 29 December told him that a neutral ship had seen her badly damaged and approaching Kiel on 21 December. Even this contains an anomaly with the date recorded by the official historian. As Roskill has concluded, the mistake in identifying the Rawalpindi’s assailant confused Admiralty intelligence on enemy dispositions for a significant time.61 In the circumstances, it is hard to blame anyone for the confusion. Interception problems were compounded by the speed advantage of most German heavy ships and by the temporary loss of Scapa Flow as a base while its anti-submarine and anti-aircraft defenses were being overhauled. Forbes’ heavy ships were now positioned on the Clyde, farther south and on the wrong side for operations in the North Sea. During March, however, the Home Fleet returned to Scapa Flow.
There can be no doubt that Forbes and the navy were let down by poor intelligence at this early stage of the war, as there were a number of indications that a full-scale invasion of Norway was under way in April. A signal intercepted in early April 1940 revealed that all ships heading for Bergen were told to regularly report to OKH in Berlin. The cryptographer, Christopher Morris, was told that the signal must have been incorrectly decrypted because ships would not report to the army. Morris later wrote, “The ships were of course troopships, and the signals would have given advance warning of the invasion of Norway.” Other indications supporting the signal included Coastal Command sightings and a report on unusual German naval wireless activity during 6–7 April within the Baltic. As these reports went to different departments in Whitehall, they were not appropriately collated.62 There was no such thing as a German naval Ultra in home waters until August 1941, although a certain amount could be learned of enemy shipping movements in the Channel and the Atlantic using RDF and the decryption of low-grade keys. This meant that German troops were able to land in mainly undefended Norwegian ports and gain a significant foothold before Allied naval and land units arrived on the scene. It was an extremely bold and daring plan. Using the Luftwaffe to offset their naval inferiority, the Germans would eventually take the country by force. Not only could they secure the supply of essential iron ore from Sweden but also the opening of several hundred miles of coastline to German shipping undermined the Allied blockade and allowed more bases from which German warships and aircraft could operate. However, once he had figured out the German intentions, Forbes ordered his destroyers to attack the German disembarkation at the port of Narvik and prepared to bombard troop landings at Bergen. Sadly, Churchill and Pound cancelled the Bergen plan at the last moment though this may have been the last realistic chance to check the German advance in central Norway.63 Although the land fighting resulted in a humiliating debacle for the Allies, it must be remembered that the naval balance sheet at the end of the fighting favored the British, who had sustained heavy but manageable losses. German losses were three cruisers, one gunnery training ship, eight U-boats, one torpedo boat, and ten destroyers, representing around 50 percent unit losses. British losses were two cruisers, nine destroyers, six submarines, and an aircraft carrier. Bombing was the main single cause of the British losses, although these amounted to less than one-third of the total.64 Admiral Raeder would later write in his memoirs, “The losses it [the Kriegsmarine] suffered in doing its part weighed heavily upon us for the rest of the war.”65
In the circumstances a heavy dependence needed to be placed on air reconnaissance provided by the RAF. Sadly, the Norway campaign tended to show up the RAF’s shortcomings. A frustrated Forbes signaled the Admiralty on 15 June 1940: “The quite unexpected appearance of enemy forces . . . in the far north on 8th June which led to the sinking of the Glorious, two destroyers, and a liner . . . shows that our scheme of air reconnaissance should be overhauled.” Peevishly, he added, “The enemy reconnoitre Scapa daily if they consider it necessary. Our reconnaissance of the enemy’s bases are few and far between.”66 This begs the question as to whether Forbes was trying to scapegoat the RAF for these disasters. Roskill believed there was an atmosphere of obsessive secrecy covering the final phase of the campaign responsible for the failure to make Coastal Command sweeps for enemy ships, and criticism of the Admiralty reported in the Times on this very point in November 1940 tends to confirm the woeful state of internal communications within the Admiralty at this time.67 Roskill, who then worked in the Admiralty, maintained the Air Officer C-in-C had been told unofficially about the evacuation from Norway, but the information did not filter down to a lower level.68
Unfortunately, with only some 170 largely obsolete operational aircraft in home waters on its strength, Coastal Command may well have failed to locate the Scharnhorst anyway. Why the Glorious (an aircraft carrier) did not carry out its own reconnaissance missions is unknown but may have had something to do with a lack of operating deck space for its own aircraft after receiving several RAF fighters withdrawn from the fighting the previous day.69 The real reason may never be known, but the fact that RAF reconnaissance was inadequate at these longer ranges can hardly be doubted. Even in 1941, Admiralty papers revealed little confidence in Air Ministry intelligence.70 While the sinking of the Glorious had something to do with a lucky break on the part of the Germans, Forbes was unfortunate in having to operate in a milieu where German naval intelligence was having remarkable success at this stage of the war. Writing to Captain Roskill after the war, Forbes wrote: “One of the most dreadful things that has come to light since we captured all the German documents is the way they had ‘broken the ciphers’ so early in the war, whereas we were still a long way from that goal, and when one comes to think of the mass of stuff that went out over the air from our War lords at the Admiralty, just giving away our dispositions at the slightest provocation.”71
The irony of this complaint is in Forbes’ earlier demands that signals regarding the location of enemy ships be widely disseminated among commands. Another irony was contained within Foreign Office advice to war correspondents that a warship has “to keep its radio silent, unless it wants to reveal its whereabouts to the enemy.”72 It was not until August 1940 that the Admiralty suspected the Germans were reading the naval codes and changed them, thus depriving the enemy of an important intelligence advantage during the period a cross-Channel invasion was most likely to have been made. Unfortunately, German expertise at reading the strength and direction of British naval traffic meant the problem was not entirely removed. By contrast with its British counterpart, during the period 1940–41, the reputation of B-Dienst (German naval intelligence) was high.
Given the Admiralty’s relative enthusiasm for intelligence activity and the postwar publicity regarding Ultra, it seems hard to comprehend that B-Dienst was so successful. Captain Heinz Bonatz, former head of B-Dienst, attributed the German success to “long years of effort” rather than any technological breakthrough. Peacetime Royal Navy codes gave them few difficulties, as they were not re-ciphered on a regular basis. Familiarity developed with British routines and the phrases used within wireless transmissions. The adoption of secret cipher and secret code increased the complexity. However, Bonatz also claimed that German expertise in analyzing the broad range of wireless traffic soon re-established the initiative. Traffic analysis in this sense includes all of the material that can be gathered through a W/T receiver and that is susceptible to analysis, including changes of frequency band, monitoring the appearance of ships maintaining W/T watch, “corrections, calling-up procedure, acknowledgments, the interpretation of numerous call-up signs and delivery groups.” This sort of analysis did not require cryptanalysis but Bonatz claimed it later enabled a cryptanalysis breakthrough based largely on the experience gained regarding the character and vocabulary employed in British signals along with accurate assumptions regarding message contents taking into account whether or not the message was routine.73 In this situation, any unnecessary W/T traffic was likely to have deleterious consequences. Forbes undoubtedly considered that too much information was being sent over the air because the Admiralty was trying to micromanage the campaign from London.
Unfortunately, Churchill had undermined Forbes in the Norwegian campaign by dividing his ships between the C-in-C and another officer. This was the elderly Admiral of the Fleet William “Ginger” Boyle, Lord Cork and Orrery, appointed as flag officer, Narvik, and finally supreme commander of the operations around Narvik. Thus, for reasons that are not completely clear, but probably connected with the First Lord’s desire to “divide and rule,” Narvik was treated as a separate operational area from the rest of Norway. Yet it was not completely unrealistic to have one commander to focus on attempting to cut the enemy supply lines at sea, while another commander concentrated on amphibious landings around the crucial Narvik area. Forbes may have felt resentment about this treatment but he did not let this interfere with the job in hand. The official historian suggested there were difficulties arising from Lord Cork’s dependence on Forbes for support, as each commander could not properly appreciate what the other was doing in their respective spheres. However, a letter to Forbes from Rear Admiral L. H. “Turtle” Hamilton conveys Lord Cork’s wish for Hamilton to emphasize “how grateful he was to you for the AA cruisers and escort vessels, which have undoubtedly saved the situation.” Not too much can be read into this but it is at least an indication that the naval commanders ended the campaign on cordial terms.74
The allegation that Churchill had interfered in the Norway operation probably originated in Roskill’s official history drafts, in which he suggested the First Lord’s tendency at certain times “to spend long hours in the Operational Intelligence Centre” encouraged “him to assume direct control therefrom” and “sometimes confused the conduct of operations.”75 This comment clearly needled Churchill as he had already written about the operations around Bergen: “Looking back . . . I consider that the Admiralty kept too close a control upon the Commander-in-Chief.”76 So sensitive did the matter become that Roskill’s accusations spawned an internal government investigation, which concluded that the Admiralty had tended to interfere “too freely” but not as a result of Churchill’s interference.77 His exoneration was perhaps unsurprising in view of the reverence in which Churchill’s name was then held. Temperamentally, Churchill could not help himself but his insistence on pressing dubious strategies on the military professionals drove even loyal colleagues to distraction.78 Roosevelt’s envoy Harry Hopkins held the impression that Churchill ran the British war effort from strategy down to the details. A man of considerable paradox, Churchill found the whole business of war exciting, envied the younger men their direct involvement, and yet still found room to empathize with the human suffering that war entailed.
Yet if Churchill had a tendency to meddle in the conduct of operations, then his First Sea Lord was no less guilty. There is abundant evidence to show that Dudley Pound’s instincts and actions were to centralize and control to an extreme degree. At an academic level, Pound was sometimes prepared to acknowledge the right of a C-in-C to run his own show, but in practice he found it difficult to “let go.” The culture of excessive secrecy within the Admiralty over which he presided is a further indication of a micromanaging personality. As the Admiralty was an operational center as well as a department of state, Pound had a technical right to intervene. General Hastings Ismay, in charge of the military wing of the War Cabinet secretariat during 1940, has commented on how this function differentiated between the chief of naval staff on one hand and, on the other, the chiefs of the Imperial General Staff and the Air Staff, who did not issue executive orders to their organizations. But it was obviously a matter of degree.79 According to a former director of Operations Division (Home)—DOD (H)—Captain (later Admiral) Ralph Edwards, Pound was the “arch-meddler.” Edwards expressed amazement to Roskill at the degree to which Pound intervened in operations at sea, and claimed he (Edwards) was repeatedly ordered to signal detailed instructions to fleets and ships regarding where their destroyer screens were to be placed. Edwards, who was involved in the investigation exonerating Churchill from interfering, claimed “his interference was negligible compared with Dudley Pound.”80 Admiral John Tovey, Forbes’ successor as C-in-C Home Fleet, complained that Pound fancied himself as a great tactician and strategist who was in turn adversely affected by Vice Chief of Naval Staff (VCNS) Tom Phillips, a man who was inexperienced, “narrow-minded, very self-opinionated, and even more obstinate and pig-headed than you [Roskill] accuse me of being.”81 Pound was also a worrier. At the conclusion of the Altmark affair, Pound wrote a lengthy letter to Captain Philip Vian, commander of the Cossack, who boarded the German supply ship in Norwegian waters to successfully rescue prisoners taken by the Graf Spee. After a brief sentence offering Vian “hearty congratulations,” Pound scolded him at length for not updating him with situation reports and complaining how he and Churchill spent “many anxious hours” at the OIC, waiting for news. Forbes, who had reason to feel aggrieved about the way the Admiralty had given orders to Vian directly over his own head, also received a letter from Pound stating that “no doubt you also spent a good many unnecessarily anxious hours.” In the margin Forbes scribbled, “No, I went to bed. I know Vian.”82
The clash of opinions between Forbes and his “warlords” was clearly shown during the invasion crisis. His views on invasion were clearly laid out for them on 4 June 1940. He complained of the difficulty in making an appreciation, having been “kept in ignorance of the size and disposition of the Royal Air Force and Army,” asserting “the repelling of invasion is a matter for all three forces working in the closest co-operation. . . . [H]istory,” he argued, “has proved beyond all shadow of doubt that invasion is to all intents impossible without local control of the sea.” In this he emphasized the importance of airpower and how local control of the sea during the Norwegian campaign and minimal Norwegian resistance still cost the Germans ten thousand men. He also went on to stress the irrelevance of German naval power in influencing the Polish campaign and in the Dunkirk operation; also how the air situation had greatly influenced the recent fighting in Europe. If an invasion was launched, he argued “it would be a great opportunity.” He did not see why the army could not fulfill its traditional function of holding up the enemy until the navy could cut their supply lines. It was not worth diverting too many naval resources for this purpose and since the Norwegian campaign he had increasingly thought that Germany would go all out to sever British communications by air and submarine, as there was no way of achieving this with “surface forces.” Consequently, “no first line troops should be kept in England if required elsewhere,” he continued. Forbes was also concerned that British ports might be prematurely sabotaged to prevent their use by German forces. The immediate problem, as far as he could see, was to protect the “sea communications of London (including its docks) against mines, both magnetic and contact . . . and against air attack.” He suggested increasing the strength of defensive mine barriers and dared to propose that “all small craft now allocated to inshore squadrons for invasion be diverted to sweeping.”83
The opinions expressed were sensible and vindicated by events. That the Germans now had even easier access to the Atlantic since the fall of France and were in control of the “gate” between Denmark and Norway could only increase the potential for imposing economic blockade upon Britain. He also knew that if destroyers, cruisers, and submarines attached to the bases at the Nore (Sheerness and Harwich), Portsmouth, and Plymouth failed to prevent a landing, then he could be in the Channel from Scapa Flow within thirty hours with the heavy ships of the Home Fleet. It must also be said that having been on board HMS Rodney while under air attack at Norway and having his operations constrained by the German air superiority there, he was irritated by ill-informed criticisms about lack of naval aggression. He was also annoyed that his destroyers and most of his light cruisers had been taken away and placed under the control of base commanders responsible for flotilla defense. Scattering ships around the Channel bases would only bring them within Luftwaffe bombing range, and while these were not sitting ducks, there was no point in exposing them to the risk of air bombardment without strategic gain.
Forbes’ memorandum dismayed the Admiralty. The DOD (H) described the arguments as “unconvincing” and quoted a Joint Intelligence Committee conclusion that the enemy had enough resources for an invasion despite his “other commitment.”84 While it was generally acknowledged that Forbes may only have been thinking in terms of a mass invasion, it was also felt the possibility of a raid was being ignored despite the fact that successes in France, Belgium, and Holland allowed the enemy greater scope for amphibious operations. Raids held the potential to disrupt internal communications and make life unbearable for the civil population.85 No doubt recalling the naval theories of Sir Julian Corbett, these officers were worried the launching of small raids at different points would cause British defenders to exhaust themselves attempting to defend the whole coastline. After all, this was part of Liddell Hart’s “British way in warfare” that had been used successfully in Britain’s eighteenth-century wars. However, these officers apparently overlooked the fact that for such a method to succeed, naval superiority was required for the attacker in order to utilize the mobility that such a condition might confer.86 The German conquests did of course open up the possibility of raids over short distances from a greater number of foreign harbors than had ever hitherto been the case. But even a raid in the circumstances of 1940 would have been a hazardous undertaking with ambiguous results. A raid, however successful in military terms, ultimately involves the withdrawal of troops and equipment plus the abandonment of fallen comrades, and this would have been represented as the foiling of a mass invasion. After the war, Churchill admitted that no steps were taken to contradict the persistent rumors that arose in 1940 concerning an invasion attempt that had been foiled as a result of forty German bodies being washed up along the south coast. In the event, no German amphibious landings, other than the unopposed Channel Island occupations, were ever attempted on British territory.87
Forbes’ arguments were not entirely disregarded as a meeting called in Pound’s office on 7 June resulted in the battle cruisers Hood and Renown, plus one destroyer flotilla, being based at Scapa rather than Rosyth in order to deter a German northward breakout.88 The argument between the C-in-C and the Admiralty raged over the next few weeks, with the latter trying to convince Forbes that an east coast raid was likely, despite his arguments to the contrary. The Norwegian port of Trondheim had now become the main Kriegsmarine base for heavy ships, meaning that the main surface threat now came to the Northern Patrol or even to Ireland. By the end of June Forbes was being told with increasing force to consider an invasion likely.89A desire to bring home to Churchill the potential effects of attacks from the air upon warships may well account for a curious episode related by General Ismay. An early invasion conference attended by Forbes and Churchill discussed the part to be played by the Home Fleet. The C-in-C shocked the conference by immediately making it clear that his heavy ships would not operate south of the Wash “under any circumstances.” Instead of erupting into rage, the prime minister merely remarked mildly that “he never took much notice of what the Royal Navy said they would or would not do in advance of an event.” Smiling indulgently, he said “since they invariably undertook the apparently impossible whenever the situation so demanded . . . he had not a shadow of doubt . . . we should see every available battleship storming through the Straits of Dover.”90
Why did Churchill react in this uncharacteristic manner? Forbes had already shown he was quite capable of resisting the prime minister’s bullying and knew well enough that if matters came to the crunch, then he had to run the gauntlet in the Channel. There is also reason to think that Churchill secretly agreed with at least some of Forbes’ strategic ideas. Churchill must have realized he had underestimated the potential of air attack upon shipping during the Norway campaign, and knew that taking away Forbes’ destroyers to serve in the Channel meant the heavy ships lacked adequate protective destroyer screens. The prime minister had never been entirely consistent on the ability of Germany to launch an invasion anyway. Erskine Childers’ Riddle of the Sands, a novel in which Germany planned a surprise invasion using boats hidden in the Frisian Islands, caught Churchill’s imagination in 1903.91 So seriously did he take this idea that when First Lord, he was said to have made it required reading for naval officers prior to 1914. Later, Churchill’s speeches of 4 and 17 June 1940 were widely reported and raised invasion fears.92 However, on 18 June he was saying that the Royal Navy makes a mass invasion impossible, but they “have never pretended to prevent raids by 5,000 to 10,000 men . . . thrown ashore . . . some dark night.”93
The somewhat alarmist Pound told Churchill on 12 July: “It appears probable that a total of some hundred thousand men might reach these shores without being intercepted by naval forces.” Yet, if Churchill was to be believed, the prime minister remained confident that such a force was “well within the capacity of our rapidly-improving Army.” It is easy to criticize Pound for being unduly pessimistic, though he later revised this figure to 200,000.94 According to John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, the prime minister said he did not believe the Germans could bring troops over from Norway in fishing boats, and that he doubted if an invasion was a “serious menace” but thought it useful in terms of keeping everyone “tuned to a high pitch of readiness.” He did not want the invasion scare to abate yet and was going to continue giving the impression of imminent danger by talking about “long and dangerous vigils” in his forthcoming broadcast.95
Pound’s biographer has suggested that the First Sea Lord and VCNS Tom Phillips were persuaded by an idea emanating from military intelligence in the War Office (who had obviously read Erskine Childers) suggesting the Germans might commandeer a flotilla of fast motorboats each carrying a tank. Admiral Godfrey, the director of Naval Intelligence, was one who did not accept this scenario and it must have been galling for his opinion to have been rejected in preference to that of other service colleagues.96 Nevertheless, Pound had the support of base commanders such as Admiral Drax at the Nore who naturally wanted maximum resources under their control, bearing in mind the responsibility for preventing an enemy landing impinged more immediately upon them than on Forbes and the Home Fleet. Furthermore as a member of the Chiefs of Staff, Pound must also have been adversely affected by the attitudes of the army, who did not relish the prospect of getting to grips with the potentially immense power of German land forces.97 A considerable amount of equipment was lost at Dunkirk and a humiliating defeat inflicted on the BEF. In his relations with the other services, Pound has been described as having a philosophy of “compromises must be found,” an attitude that even the sometimes critical official historian found himself in broad agreement with.98
Two days earlier Churchill had written to General William Edmund Ironside, C-in-C Home Forces, along the lines that Germany would face great difficulties launching an invasion, and arguing for more troops to be moved from a defensive role in the UK to offensive operations abroad, thus suggesting he had taken Forbes’ comments on board about not keeping “first line troops in England if required elsewhere.”99 He also quoted Forbes’ reply to a War Cabinet question concerning the possibility of German heavy ships covering an invasion. This was that only heavy ships not under repair are based at Trondheim and superior British naval forces guarded this base. It is not too much to say that Forbes had indirectly made possible Generals Archibald Wavell and Richard O’Connor’s spectacular offensive in Egypt and Libya against the Italians later in the year. It is also hard to imagine that Churchill’s aggressive temperament would have left him sympathetic to the passive defense policy advocated by the Admiralty. Neither was he oblivious to what was happening in the Atlantic while so many potential escort vessels were tied up in the Channel. As early as November 1939 he wrote to Pound expressing serious concern over the “immense slowing down of trade . . . during the first ten weeks of the war.”100 By 7 July 1940, his concern over “rifle convoys” from the United States was being strongly expressed in a minute to the secretary of state for war.101 On 4 August 1940, the prime minister sent Pound a haranguing minute about “repeated severe losses in the North-western Approaches,” and speculating that “this is largely due to the shortage of destroyers through invasion precautions.” He then went on to demand information on the numbers of “destroyers, corvettes, and Asdic trawlers, together with aircraft” tied down in these duties. “Anyhow, we cannot go on like this,” he continued.102 Churchill’s own tables show that total British, Allied, and Neutral shipping losses surged from 273,219 gross tons in May 1940 to 571,496 gross tons in June and would not fall back to the May figure during 1940.103 Had the Kriegsmarine not been plagued with unreliable torpedoes, these figures would have been much worse.
Nevertheless, there were limits to Churchill’s power and the country did “go on like this” for several weeks. When his military commanders occasionally united against blustering attempts to press ill-conceived strategies upon them, the prime minister invariably backed down. This had been demonstrated during the Norway campaign when he urged the attack upon Trondheim. Concerned about being hemmed into a narrow thirty-mile-long fjord by mines dropped in his rear, Forbes forcefully argued against the order to attack. Churchill was furious but after a long and heated argument he eventually retreated when the advisors surrounding him backed Forbes’ judgment.104 The Chiefs of Staff would become more adept at this as the war progressed. As none of the services was prepared to accept the burden of risk-taking it probably suited all of the senior figures involved to use the navy as a visible deterrent to German amphibious landings by encouraging the spread of destroyers and light cruisers around the east and south coasts. The general lack of faith in the ability of the RAF to provide early warning also contributed to this over-cautious attitude, although it was far easier to watch the Channel coast from the air than it had been to patrol Norwegian waters at extreme ranges. There was no German naval Enigma yet and as most of the Luftwaffe’s communications were being made via landlines not enough information could be divined from intelligence sources to ascertain precise German intentions. Consequently, a large flotilla of small craft mainly commandeered from the fishing fleet was being misemployed on sentry duty outside foreign ports instead of being utilized for anti-submarine work. As Forbes could see no reason why the other services should not be engaged in the initial stages of the invasion it is unsurprising that colleagues treated his views with alarm. Churchill probably saw advantages in these dispositions in terms of maintaining a state of visible readiness that would impress U.S. journalists and exaggerate the danger of invasion to manipulate American insecurities.
By September, when the likelihood of invasion was at its height, Forbes’ views had not fundamentally changed and he was still arguing the navy “should not be tied down to provide passive defence to our country, which has now become a fortress.”105 However, on 4 September, the chief of Naval Staff scared his service colleagues by warning that if the Germans captured the coastal batteries at Dover, they could control both sides of the Straits and deny it to British naval forces. During a meeting of the War Cabinet Defence Committee on 31 October, when autumn should have virtually ruled out the threat of invasion for 1940 anyway, Churchill asked for Forbes’ opinion. “While we are predominant at sea and until Germany has defeated our fighter forces, invasion by sea is not a practical operation of war,” he replied.106 Only at this point and with overwhelming evidence from other sources did the Defence Committee agree that Forbes could have his ships back. Churchill had been present when Group Captain Winterbotham of the Secret Intelligence Service had passed on a decrypt during September to the effect that air-loading equipment at Luftwaffe airfields in Holland was being dismantled. The chief of Air Staff then announced it marked the end of the invasion threat for 1940.107 In the circumstances, the prime minister could not have been in any doubt about the issue and must have been using Forbes purely for the benefit of convincing the War Cabinet.
Sadly, the reward for his record of sound advice was the sack. Replaced by Sir John Tovey in December 1940, Forbes later served as commander of the naval base at Plymouth between May 1941 and August 1943. As this establishment had already declined in importance with the transfer of the headquarters of Western Approaches Command to Liverpool in February 1941, it was hardly an expression of continuing confidence. No official reason for his dismissal remains. However, Pound wrote to Admiral Cunningham on 20 September suggesting there “seems some chance C. M. F. will be relieved in the near future, not because he has not done well but because there is a growing demand for younger people.”108 It was undeniably true that the press was constantly demanding the promotion of younger officers at this time and at sixty, Forbes was one of the older field commanders. Yet he was younger than Pound and outlived him by a further seventeen years. The real reasons, according to Levy, were “his independent outlook, unsolicited opinions, and fearless critiques of the Pound/Churchill regime.”109 This analysis is broadly correct but Levy’s thesis also surmised that Churchill wished to pursue an “aggressive policy in the Mediterranean, while hedging his bets with a more defensive posture at home,” and this was why Forbes was continually ignored.110 While Cunningham later told Roskill that Churchill and Minister of Information Brendan Bracken both disliked Forbes, his advice was useful to the prime minister in helping him pursue initiatives in the Mediterranean even if he may sometimes have resented the outspoken way in which it was being given.
Long-standing tensions between Forbes and destroyer Captain Lord Louis Mountbatten centering on the latter’s reckless handling of HMS Kelly cannot have helped. Having only been “mentioned in dispatches” instead of winning a Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for bringing his shattered ship back from an engagement in the North Sea, Mountbatten was convinced that Forbes was plotting against him. Kelly had suffered terrific damage as a result of Mountbatten’s decision to ignore instructions and embark upon a fruitless U-boat pursuit. Mountbatten was the king’s cousin and a bad potential enemy to make. He was also a friend of Churchill’s, and according to the mischief-making Lord Beaverbrook was sent this message: “Tell Dickie [Mountbatten] that Winston warned me that Forbes means to break him.” Forbes probably disapproved of Mountbatten’s ostentatious lifestyle, but Forbes was “much too big a man” to let that interfere with his professional judgment.111 The poison Mountbatten dripped into the ears of Bracken, Beaverbrook, and Churchill may never be known, and whether the latter could separate personal feelings from professional judgment is perhaps another matter.
Despite this it was perhaps Pound who represented the main driving force for replacing the C-in-C. Undoubtedly aware that pressure was growing for even the apparently heroic figure of Dowding to be dismissed, he must have calculated that the time had come to replace his own “difficult” subordinate with an ostensibly more suitable—but in reality a more pliable and easier to control—C-in-C. Having picked up on some of the frustration within the fleet, including perhaps Mountbatten’s sense of injury, he must have represented these feelings to Churchill as lack of confidence in the C-in-C. It also needs to be stated that Churchill did not criticize Forbes in his memoirs and even made a point of expressing confidence in him.112 Forbes later wrote to Godfrey Style that he met a slightly inebriated Churchill at a Navy Club function and was assured privately that he never thought the Germans would invade in 1940. They had now “made it up.”113 There were no witnesses to this conversation but much of what Churchill said and wrote from 1940 is consistent with this. Forbes’ successor as C-in-C Home Fleet later responded to Roskill’s comment that in 1939 there was no suitable alternative to Pound for the post of First Sea Lord, stating that: “Charles Forbes was . . . in every way better equipped.” Tovey said that Pound’s report that “Forbes lacked the confidence of the fleet was, I consider, most unfair,” except Tovey had an “idea” that he did not inspect his ships enough but “confidence in his ability and courage was unquestioned.”114
First Lord A. V. Alexander found himself defending Forbes at an English-Speaking Union luncheon in October 1940, where he “deprecated . . . the general assumption that whenever there was a new appointment . . . reflection was thereby implied on the officer who was relieved.” Forbes was then allowed some positive praise but it was also stated that the navy’s leadership needed to be in the hands of those who were “equipped technically and scientifically to meet and defeat new threats.” The statement belied Forbes’ considerable technical expertise but it was probably meant to reinforce the idea he was “too old,” and the fact Alexander was mentioning this at a public function suggests some morale-damaging gossip was going around.115 A later report in the Times concerning parliamentary attacks on the Admiralty also indicated that Forbes had gone as a result of criticism.116 No doubt Alexander also felt the need to impress the Americans present that the navy would be more effective in the future.
Despite their obvious clash of temperaments, Churchill might have defended Forbes had the latter been in a position to secure a tangible victory for American opinion. While the Norway campaign can now be seen as a naval victory, that country still fell to the Wehrmacht. The whole affair had only provoked embarrassing questions in the American press about Britain’s ability to wage war.117 While it was true that Forbes had failed to divine German intentions in time to avert the invasion there, he was severely handicapped with the intelligence initiative in enemy hands. His later conduct of the campaign was also prejudiced by the undue interference of Churchill and Pound. The abject failure of the navy to intercept German surface raiders further embellished the picture of British incompetence, yet Admiral Tovey proved no more successful at this until the quality of British naval intelligence improved.118 Forbes had also been wrong about the whereabouts of German surface units in the Rawalpindi affair but there is no reason to think anyone else would have achieved more in the circumstances. On the credit side, he helped build a navy that was much more forward-looking and resourceful than some writers have allowed. Insufficiently emphasized in most accounts is the crippling damage to the Kriegsmarine’s surface fleet by units under his overall command that would soon have prejudicial consequences to Operation Sea Lion.
His strategic advice was sound and might well have reduced the impact of the U-boat’s “happy time.” Forbes was also unfortunate in having to command the Home Fleet at an initial stage of the war when there was no recent experience of commanding the fleet in wartime conditions. Circumstances had changed radically since 1918 and misjudgments were inevitable until the necessary practical experience had been acquired. Yet it could only have been succeeding generations of wartime officers able to benefit from this. While he may have needlessly antagonized Churchill and Pound by his outspoken tendencies, and some naval officers disagreed with his views, Admirals Whitworth, Tovey, and Cunningham acknowledged his wisdom and held him in high regard. This contrasts with Dowding, who antagonized most of his colleagues and with less justification. Neither officer sought publicity but Dowding gained sympathy from the public, politicians, and press because he had ostensibly delivered a decisive victory that was being sold to American opinion. Forbes was indeed a fine admiral and the more deserving of the two figures. But with no tangible victories to point toward and lacking the flair for flamboyant publicity that might have engaged the journalistic instincts of Churchill, Beaverbrook, and Bracken, there was little incentive to protect him. Sadly, he had nothing to offer the crucial campaign for winning over the United States.