The Royal Navy Goes to War
On the eve of war the Royal Navy mobilized its reserves, with the Royal Naval Reserve and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve providing a much-needed extra 73,000 officers and men on top of the 129,000 officers and men of the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, while the members of the Royal Fleet Reserve, recently retired officers and ratings, were recalled.
The service had an old saying that Royal Navy officers were ‘gentlemen trying to become sailors’, RNR officers were ‘sailors trying to become gentlemen’ and the RNVR were ‘neither trying to become both’! No doubt RNR officers from the smarter shipping lines such as P&O would have rejected any suggestion that they were not gentlemen!
Some accounts of the Second World War make much of the contribution made by the countries of the British Empire and the Dominions in particular, but at the outset the contribution was insignificant. None of the Dominion navies had aircraft carriers or battleships, although the Royal Australian Navy had three light cruisers and the Royal New Zealand Navy had two. The Admiralty had a recruiting office in New Zealand, which encouraged many New Zealanders to volunteer for the Royal Navy and in particular the Fleet Air Arm. By the end of the war, these navies had grown in size and capability with the Royal Canadian Navy even manning two auxiliary or escort carriers, although the air-crew were provided by the Royal Navy. Post-war both the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Australian Navy created fleet air arms and added aircraft carriers to their fleets, as did the Indian Naval Service after independence.
The Second World War was to change the Royal Navy more than the First World War had done. After the First World War the Royal Marines had seen the Royal Marine Light Infantry, known as the ‘red marines’ because of the colour of their tunics, merged with the Royal Marine Artillery, or ‘blue marines’, to simply become the Royal Marines (with blue tunics). On board ship, they would man ‘X’ and ‘Y’ turrets, but they also had other duties including security, messmen and bandsmen, while from even before the First World War a small number of RM officers were aircraft pilots.
In 1923 the Admiralty was recommended by the Madden Committee to give the Royal Marines an amphibious role as well as providing a mobile force that could be used to defend overseas bases. These were far-sighted recommendations but they were ignored while peace lasted, possibly due to financial considerations. Nevertheless, the demands of war saw the Royal Marines develop, also the creation of the Royal Marine Commandos, and the seeds were sown for the Special Boat Service (SBS). Some of the traditional roles were doomed as warfare changed: battleships and cruisers began taking second place to the aircraft carrier, so in the event there was little need for ‘X’ and ‘Y’ turrets, especially when destroyers and frigates started to have helicopter landing platforms in the 1960s.
The reservists soon proved their worth with many RNVR personnel rising to command minesweepers, corvettes and destroyers, while others took command of naval air squadrons. By mid-1944, the Royal Navy had reached its wartime peak strength of 863,500 personnel, of whom 73,500 were members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service. Many of the lower deck personnel, or ratings, were conscripts called up under the National Service Acts for ‘hostilities only’. When merchant shipping was taken up from trade, the ships’ companies were signed up under special articles so that they became part of the Royal Navy and subject to naval discipline with temporary naval ranks, although they retained certain Merchant Navy terms of service such as danger money for working in a war zone.
One of the big differences between the Royal Navy and the Merchant Navy was that the latter paid its ratings better but once their ship was lost, pay stopped until they could sign on for another ship, which often meant another company. Royal Navy personnel continued to be paid, even while prisoners of war.
During the Second World War, the Royal Navy lost 50,758 men killed, with another 820 posted as missing, presumed dead, and 14,663 wounded. The WRNS lost 102 killed and 22 wounded, mainly in air-raids. The Merchant Navy lost 30,248 men through enemy action.
Many bases had been neglected during the peace years. Singapore was meant to be a strong naval base and fortress, but construction was neglected and completion delayed. It was in reality only a strong base if a strong fleet was deployed, but when this was needed the RN was heavily committed elsewhere. Rosyth was not used between the wars. Many naval officers disliked Rosyth because of its distance from the sea and because the Forth Bridge was in the way and not only a navigational hazard but a potential obstruction if bombed.
There had been no development of combined operations during the years between the two world wars, despite the lessons of Gallipoli, Ostend and Zeebrugge. Some of this was understandable, as it was not until the middle years of the Second World War that purpose-designed landing craft became available; even the Germans planned to invade England using barges and had used caiques for the amphibious phase of the invasion of Crete.
It was not until Churchill came to power that the importance of combined operations was recognized. In July 1940, shortly after he became prime minister, he set up a special directorate to develop combined operations and to develop equipment as well as training personnel, something that was made much easier by Admiralty control of the Royal Marines. Some believe that the outcome of the Norwegian campaign might have been different had these measures been implemented earlier, but the lack of suitable high-performance aircraft aboard the carriers was another factor.
Combined operations were very much in mind before the war when Area Combined Headquarters (ACHQs) were established close to Plymouth, Chatham and Rosyth with officers of all three services involved, but the priority for these was improved co-operation between the Royal Navy and RAF Coastal Command. During the war, such ACHQs were introduced to many foreign stations. In 1941, under the pressures of the Blitz, Western Approaches ACHQ moved from Plymouth to Liverpool.
Despite the glaring omission of high-performance aircraft from its aircraft carriers – the fault of senior naval officers who, lacking aviation experience themselves, believed that such aircraft could not be operated from aircraft carriers – the Royal Navy had many technical advantages over its opponents. The Royal Navy was fitting its warships with radar, which the Italian navy did not have and so did not expect to have to fight a night engagement. Instead it had good quality ASDIC.
The advantages were not just technical. Despite having shrunk by some 12 per cent since 1912, at the time the United Kingdom still had the world’s largest merchant fleet, accounting for approximately 33 per cent of the world’s merchant shipping tonnage, and also had a substantial fishing fleet including both inshore vessels and deep sea trawlers. This meant that there was a substantial pool of experienced manpower and, when necessary, ships as well. Passenger liners became armed merchant cruisers, fitted in naval dockyards with guns salvaged from warships that had been scrapped in the past. Sadly these ships were a failure as they lacked the speed, armament or armour to withstand an engagement with a German warship. Nevertheless, trawlers were converted for minesweeping, as were some of the smaller ferries, while tugs became rescue tugs picking up survivors from ships sunk while in convoy. Other merchant ships became hospital ships or troopships, with the latter including the duo that were the pride of the British Merchant Navy, the two Cunard liners RMS (Royal Mail Ship) Queen Mary and her newer and larger sister, RMS Queen Elizabeth. These two ships had been considered for conversion to aircraft carriers before the war as the Admiralty was concerned about the shortage of flight decks and with their size and speed these two would have been very useful as carriers. However, the resources necessary for this would have been extensive, and in any case many thought that they would be more useful as troopships. The decision was the right one, and they were among the few ships able to cross the Atlantic safely without an escort.
Such wholesale requisitioning of the merchant fleet, not just to augment the Royal Navy but to meet the supply and transport needs of the other two armed services as well, was not without cost. The size of the merchant fleet shrunk dramatically, although it was boosted by ships that had fled from the territories occupied by the Germans or diverted to British ports on their homeward voyages rather than steam into occupation. As it happened, three of the countries occupied by the Germans – Norway, Denmark and The Netherlands – had substantial merchant fleets, although on average some 26 per cent of their ships were caught in port by the German invasions. Of course, a number of German ships were caught in ports under British control and these were captured and taken to augment the British fleet, with the ships owned by the British government but managed by merchant ship-owners. These vessels could easily be identified as they were given new names, all of which were prefixed with ‘Empire’. Later, ships built to the government’s account and again managed by merchant shipping lines were treated in the same way, as were the American Liberty ships provided under the Lend-Lease scheme.
There were still some deficiencies. In 1939 the RN lacked fast craft such as motor gunboats and motor torpedo boats and this was not addressed until after the start of war; even then really only under pressure from the German E-boats after the fall of France presented the enemy with Channel ports. There was also the shortage of flight decks, but with some ingenuity this was soon resolved. More submarines were needed and not just the larger boats of the ‘S’ and ‘T’ classes but the smaller craft of the ‘U’ and ‘V’ classes, so useful and effective in the Mediterranean where British submariners played their part in reducing supplies for Axis forces in North Africa.
There was much to learn still, but from the start a convoy system was introduced. Even so, losses were heavy at the beginning, and remained heavy on certain routes such as those across the Mediterranean and to Murmansk and Archangel where the weather was as much an enemy as the Germans. For a period, the Royal Navy also deployed small groups of warships on anti-submarine sweeps but after some serious losses, especially the aircraft carrier HMS Courageous, this was abandoned until later in the war when, equipped with Ultra intelligence, the locations of U-boats could be detected and successes scored.
The work of Ultra intelligence and the decoding operation at Bletchley Park was made possible when, in August 1941, the Royal Navy gained a decisive advantage when U-570 was captured south of Iceland together with the books for the German Enigma code, which could then be intercepted by the British Ultra intelligence. The capture was kept secret but U-570 was commissioned into British service as HMS Graph. The British were thus able to exploit the major weakness of the German U-boat campaign, which was that the U-boat commanders sent and received a significant volume of radio transmissions.
Many believed at the outset that the Second World War would follow the pattern of the first, with the Germans coming to a stop in France and Belgium. No one foresaw that France would be forced to surrender, even though not completely overrun; also no one foresaw the invasion of Denmark and Norway, or The Netherlands, all of which had remained neutral during the First World War. At the same time, unlike 1914, no one thought that the war would be over by Christmas, so the RN rapidly changed its training structure, creating new shore establishments and cutting training courses to the necessary minimum.
The pre-war Royal Navy consisted of volunteers. Officers began training as early as 13 years of age, with the Britannia Royal Naval College at Dartmouth acting as a public school*, and expecting to spend most of their working lives in the service. The ordinary seaman signed up for an initial twelve years, but only once he was at least 18 years old and had already completed shore training in what was known as ‘boy service’. At one stage between the wars, in order to maintain recruitment a shorter service option of five years followed by five years in the reserves was introduced, but as the depression began to hit civilian employment prospects recruitment picked up and the five-year service was dropped. After the initial twelve-year engagement, ratings could sign on for another ten years, at the end of which they were eligible for a pension. Most of those who took this option were senior ratings, i.e. petty officers, equivalent to a sergeant in the army or air force, or chief petty officers, equal to a staff sergeant or flight sergeant.
The wartime navy became heavily dependent on conscription, including not just men but women without children. The bulk of those conscripted for active service went into the British army but others were allocated to the Royal Air Force or Royal Navy, while the wise would volunteer for the service of their choice to avoid being sent wherever the demand was strongest. Post-war, conscription continued but only for the armed forces, while in wartime conscripts could be sent to vital industries such as the coal mines.
Those who were educated away from Dartmouth and wished to become naval officers joined at 17 or 18 years of age. Whether they had joined at 13 or later, they left Dartmouth to spend eighteen months as a midshipman aboard a warship. Those who wanted to fly would also train as midshipmen, and under wartime pressures the two-year flying training course was condensed to ten months.
Commissioning ratings, or in naval parlance, those from the lower deck, had been rare in the pre-war navy, but wartime required experienced officers and suitable chief petty officers were able to be commissioned under what was known as the ‘Upper Yardman Scheme’. To increase the intake of officer cadets, a special entry scheme was introduced at Dartmouth. After it was bombed in September 1942, it was evacuated to Eaton Hall in Cheshire. Volunteer reserve officers were sent for training at Hove Marina and the nearby public school, Lancing College, renamed HMS King Alfred, before later being relocated to Exbury House in the New Forest, Hampshire. By 1942, however, the rating training establishments, including the specialized establishments such as HMS Excalibur which trained communications specialists, and Gosling which trained naval airmen, were also trawled for suitable candidates for officer training.
The main shore establishment for mine countermeasures was HMS Vernon, a stone frigate or shore establishment on the Old Gunwharf at Portsmouth. This was heavily bombed and on 3 May 1941 the personnel were evacuated to the girls’ public school Roedean, near Brighton, whose pupils had in turn been evacuated away from the coast for fear of German invasion. The temporary accommodation became HMS Vernon (R). It is claimed that the evacuees from Vernon were delighted to find bellpushes labelled ‘Ring for Mistress’.
Training of naval airmen as pilots or observers was hampered by the Fleet Air Arm being dependent on the Royal Air Force, which was overwhelmed by its own training requirements. The RAF found relief in the Empire Air Training Scheme, which saw pilots, navigators and flight engineers trained in South Africa and Rhodesia, as well as New Zealand. For the Royal Navy, the relief was provided by the United States Navy which trained many British naval airmen at its large training base at Pensacola in Florida. Graduates from Pensacola completed their training in Canada, where they learned the ‘British’ way of doing things.
For both services, training air-crew away from the United Kingdom had several advantages. The most obvious one was better weather, so that flying training was not interrupted by bad conditions. Another was safety. Small, slow, training aircraft were vulnerable should an enemy fighter appear, looking for a target of opportunity. The third was that the costs of training were largely borne by the host country, with those in the British Empire seeing it as part of their contribution to the war effort.
*British readers will be familiar with this term, but it may confuse others as in the USA a ‘public school’ is a school funded by the taxpayer. In the UK it is a charitable institution, often charging fees and expecting a certain minimum academic standard from its pupil intake.