INTRODUCTION

In 1947 the US Navy's Admiral Chester Nimitz produced a report that dramatically proclaimed that the Second World War, especially in the Pacific, had been won essentially by seapower.1 Its successful outcome seemed to demonstrate that the traditional strategic verities enunciated by the likes of Mahan and Corbett were as true, and as critical, now as they had ever been. The capacity to control the sea had led apparently inexorably to the capacity to control the land. This seemed particularly to apply to the waters of the Indo-Pacific region. Given the eventual triumph of Western seapower, it seemed reasonable to conclude that with the war now over, things would go back to normal.

Almost immediately, though, these comforting conclusions were challenged by a number of radical developments. Most dramatically, the concept and shape of war seemed to be transformed by the consequences of the technological advances made during the Second World War. The arrival of atomic and nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, for example, produced what the Soviet Navy's Admiral Sergei Gorshkov called “the atomic shock”.

The last chapter by James Goldrick has made a number of important points. First, it stressed that it is wholly appropriate for this book to end on the subject of how best to bring their history home to navies because it is so important both for them and for the historians who produce it. It argued that history helps explain to navies what they are for and to some extent at least how they should set about their business. Second, navies need to be receptive to the past, to preserve and process the records (or what these days passes for records) of what they have done to build a bank of experience for the future. They need to nurture the declining number of long-serving professional practitioners who actually hadthat experience and are willing to talk about it if they only had the encouragement to do so, and the appropriate outlets (neither of which, as an aside, I believe they currently do).

Naval historians can help in all this of course, but it is good to be reminded of some of the things that historians must do in order to perform that function effectively. They should think of things ‘in the round’ – to pay due regard to context and to avoid narrow fixations on mono-causal explanations. They need to understand the technological and logistical realities, what it is actually like to beat sea. Hence the particular value of ex-sailors (like James Goldrick himself, and indeed John Hattendorf) who are also historians. They also need to avoid unconscious hindsight and to sympathise with their subjects who clearly could not enjoy its advantages.

The chapter ended with the encouraging conclusion that all this can be done and that properly encouraged, proper history can ‘stick’ amongst the barbarians. This argument could go further. My own experience at the Royal Naval Colleges of Dartmouth and Greenwich and the Joint Services Command and Staff College at Shrivenham is that the ‘barbarians’ actually quite often likebeing ‘stuck’ with naval history, provided it is ‘what it says on the tin’ – namely real, honest objective analysis of the naval past, not a threadbare academic covering for proselytising. We historians are pushing on an open door, or should be.

In the 1950s and early 1960s few doubted that the United Kingdom had a world role and the responsibilities that went with it: “In those days, more than a quarter of a century ago”, remarked Lord Carrington the British Foreign Secretary, “it seemed clear that we had indeed such a role and must be ready to play it — and the next few years justified the assumption.” Across the board of British politics the simple abandonment of existing commitments was considered unthinkable. Even Edward Heath, that arch-European, when in opposition was adamantly opposed to the cuts decided on by the Labour Government in 1966–68.

Moreover, the British had the forces to put their policy into effect. In 1964 when Healey took over as Defence Secretary, there were more land forces East of Suez than there were confronting the Russians in Germany. The Royal Navy thought of itself as a world-wide actor in defence of the British Empire and Commonwealth, not just as a counter to the Soviet Northern and Baltic fleets, burgeoning as they were. The Royal Navy had major bases in Singapore, Aden, Bahrain and Labuan in Borneo; the Royal Air Force staging posts at Ascension Island and Gan; and the Army maintained garrisons in Malaya, Hong Kong and Borneo.

This did not, however, imply that the British saw themselves simply as wanting to defend the status quo. The British had always maintained the empire on the cheap because they were basically interested in trade, not territory, and were reluctant to assume the burdens of an empire. For this reason, the British relied on consent of a sort. British imperial historians have for years been making the point that the empire rested essentially on such consent. How else could the British “rule” India, a region of 225–250 million people, with just 1,250 senior civil servants and at most 35,000 British troops? With the growth of nationalism, this consent was withdrawn and the British recognized with considerably greater insight than the Dutch or the French that the status quo was unsustainable.

In World War II, aviation had a decisive effect on the outcome of the naval campaigns against the Axis powers. Carrier and land-based maritime aircraft vastly extended reconnaissance at sea, offered the most effective means of protecting shipping – merchant as well as military – against air and submarine attack, and proved to be a potent means of attack on enemy warships and maritime commerce. Sea-based aircraft were essential for the conduct of amphibious operations because they were the principal means of attacking defensive aircraft and of securing command of the air. Carrier aircraft protected amphibious shipping and troops ashore and provided reconnaissance and fire-support facilities that were often decisive.

However, in the years between the wars, the British, American, and Japanese navies failed to realize fully the contribution that airpower could make to the conduct of war at sea. Policy makers, in all three navies, underestimated the extent to which naval airpower represented a significant departure in the way they would conduct their business.

Nonetheless, the following analysis will show that by the outbreak of World War II, the three navies differed only in the degree of their underestimation of the strategic significance of maritime air power. The British were the least perceptive, the Japanese, the most. But the differences among them, and indeed between them and other major navies not included in this review, were matters of degree, not a question of absolutes.