The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History)

Joseph Moretz's innovative work focuses on what battleships actually did in the inter-war years and what its designed war role in fact was. In doing so, the book tells us much about British naval policy and planning of the time. Drawing heavily on official Admiralty records and private papers of leading officers, the author examines the navy's operational experience and the evolution of its tactical doctrine during the interwar period. He argues that operational experience, combined with assumptions about the nature of a future naval war, were more important in keeping the battleship afloat than conservatism in Navy.

The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period: An Operational Perspective (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History)

History

Moretz, Joseph

Military

Routledge

The projecting of military force to a distant shore has come to be seen as a uniquely British way of waging war. To be sure, many of these operations would now be classed as administrative landings with battle, if occurring at all, only following sometimes afterward. Others, of course, merit the label of opposed landings. To contemporaries of the period covered by this study, the evolutions went by the appellation of conjoint or combined operations. Less important than how they were styled remains the thought and the purpose giving rise to these ventures. In the decades before the First World War, professionals appreciated the myriad difficulties and dangers associated with amphibious operations. The laity, including statesmen, thought rather less of these matters but could recount numerous examples of their occurrence before 1914. Indeed, whatever operational failings Britain demonstrated during the World War a corpus of relevant experience was the least of these.What is now styled joint amphibious operations were difficult because they were never of a single type. Naval support to a military force standing on the defensive, raids, feints, blocking operations, riverine operations, and, yes, an opposed landing, spoke to a series of joint operations of ever-increasing complexity. Meanwhile, as every operation must at some point end, even the manner of evacuation came to be viewed as a special type of combined operation to be understood and learned. Finally, it remained that in a campaign of the grandest scale, examples of each might feature at differing moments along the way. Landings before 1914 were difficult and what military and naval authorities thought feasible before the onset of the World War in the realm of joint operations is a neglected field of study--a surprising omission given the ink that has been spilt retelling the debacles experienced at Gallipoli, Mesopotamia, and East Africa. Every campaign has its context--operational and strategic to be sure--but also political, doctrinal, and bureaucratic. How Britain elected to wage war in 1914 proved a product of these variables just as surely as the military and naval capabilities it could muster. Tying the strands of pre-war military experience and thought in the realm of joint operations is the chief purpose of this study which takes as its starting point 1882 and the British assault against Egypt. The choice is far from arbitrary as the moment saw several earning their spurs who would later play a central role in the amphibious operations executed during the Great War.To the extent learning is more than the product of self-experience, this work pays special attention to the Russo-Japanese War. Thinking officers appreciated that fundamental changes were occurring in the nature and style of war. A learned public also appreciated this courtesy of works such as Ivan Bloch's Is War Now Possible? Notwithstanding what British officers understood on the eve of the World War, the problem of time and scale remained. This alone should give one pause before chiding others over past mistakes. This study looks at what was thought, what was taught, what was expected, and what occurred in the thirty years before Britain found herself facing a scale of conflict not witnessed in a century.

The Development of British Amphibious Operations 1882-1914

Europe

Pen and Sword Maritime

Joseph Moretz's innovative work focuses on what battleships actually did in the inter-war years and what its designed war role in fact was. In doing so, the book tells us much about British naval policy and planning of the time. Drawing heavily on official Admiralty records and private papers of leading officers, the author examines the navy's operational experience and the evolution of its tactical doctrine during the interwar period. He argues that operational experience, combined with assumptions about the nature of a future naval war, were more important in keeping the battleship afloat than conservatism in Navy.

"Thinking, Wisely, Planning Boldly" examines the style, content and manner of Royal Navy executive officer higher education and training between the World Wars. Based on official and private archival records, oral histories and the secondary literature extant, this book traces the changes the Navy made in how it prepared its midlevel officers following the First World War, contrasts this approach with that of the British Army and Royal Air Force and addresses the use the Royal Navy made of the officers so trained. In the process, the work offers a fundamental reappraisal of the inter war Royal Navy challenging many of the accepted conclusions rendered by earlier authors who failed to actually examine the style and content of officer education and did not weigh the many competing factors the service had to balance in any professional development program. Along the way, it offers insight into the relative centrality of the Battle of Jutland in inter war training and concludes that contrary to received wisdom its role was a secondary one at best and that the experience of most relevance in the Navy’s educational efforts was the Dardanelles campaign. This work is original in scope and original in interpretation with no other book-length volume in print now or previously covering the subject. Beyond saying something valuable about the 1919-39 Royal Navy, it discusses issues that resound with contemporary military officers faced with the eternal question of what to teach, how to teach it, and the pitfalls faced in preparing officers in an uncertain world. It sheds fresh light on such noted figures as Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond and Major General J. F. C. Fuller and offers insight into such events as the Washington Naval Treaty and the Invergordon Mutiny not previously considered. Though many writers have had much to say about inter war training, none actually took the time to examine what was taught, how instruction was imparted, and the aims that the Navy sought to achieve. Thinking Wisely, Planning Boldly fills the void and in the process speaks to the continuing issues facing professional military education.

Thinking Wisely, Planning Boldly: The Higher Education and Training of Royal Navy Officers, 1919-39 (Modern Military History)

Helion and Company

Towards a Wider War examines British policy, grand strategy, military operations and tactical execution in the critical period of the ‘Phoney War’ - culminating in Scandinavia and the forlorn campaign in Norway. Recognizing that political and military leaders rarely plan for failure, the work assesses the strengths and weaknesses of British performance in the last year of peace and during the first critical months of war. Fundamentally, major problems were evidenced across the spectrum of war, but perhaps the greatest failing demonstrated remained in the higher direction of war and the mismatch between avowed strategy and operational capability. Based on official and unofficial records - and a review of the existing secondary literature - Towards a Wider War offers a reasoned and balanced assessment of British war-making at the start of the Second World War. Following a summation of the actual experience of war, the work investigates and assesses the style and manner of Britain’s higher direction of war and the effectiveness of each of the services at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of war - as well as their abilities to cooperate in the joint environment. Along the way, fresh insight is offered into the centrality of economic warfare in British planning; the place of the War Cabinet in executing oversight of the war; and the workings of the Chiefs of Staff Committee and the role of the Joint Planning Committee. Of the services, the Royal Navy was most prepared for war in a European theatre in 1939. Force structure alone made this so, yet German aggression against Poland demonstrated the limitations of maritime power. Both the British Army and the Royal Air Force were undergoing major expansion programs when war arose and, for the former, it was thought three years would be required before deficiencies were alleviated. Sustaining public support during the interim was by no means assured - and in the background stood the necessity to avoid another bloodletting on the Western Front. These factors loomed large in London in late 1939 and that Italy - a presumed belligerent - had opted for neutrality painted initial strategic plans false. Increasingly, Britain (and France) looked to defeat Germany by removing her access to those commodities that made modern warfare possible: petroleum, iron ore and finance. That it increasingly appeared Nazi Germany was allied to Communist Russia only made the problem of making war more vexing. Towards a Wider War offers a unique single-volume analysis of British war-making at the pivotal beginning of the Second World War when all remained to be won — or lost — in the far north.

Towards A Wider War: British Strategic Decision-Making And Military Effectiveness In Scandinavia, 1939-40 (Wolverhampton Military Studies)