News, Articles and Comment

Ed. With a laudable desire for linguistic clarity worthy of David Watkin Waters, Dr Mark Barton considers the language barrier impacting the cultivation of Joint and Service-wide consensus of concept meaning in operational planning. A 10 minute read.

Ed. The author argues that the ‘art of Admiralty’ represents more than simply a debate over force structure or naval tactics, but instead embodies the cultural ethos of an island seapower state, and – crucially – the vehicle by which maritime thinking is cultivated and disseminated in government and to the broader population as a whole. A 15 minute read.

Ed. As Sir Richard Branson likes to say ‘invest in your people and they will invest in your business’ , the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre is on the case.

Ed. In this second instalment of his reflections on the Battle of the Atlantic [84/1, p. 68], former Naval Staff historian David Waters, wary of the pernicious abuses of language so frequent in military affairs, asked the difficult question of why the convoy lessons of the First World War were not learnt before the Second. Republished here as part of the 80th Anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic. A 20 minute read.

Ed. Former Naval Staff historian D. W. Waters originally presented this essay as the Presidential Address to the British Society for the History of Science in 1978. It was reprinted in the NR over two volumes in 1984 [72/3 & 72/4]. Waters’ conclusions, based on the rigorous data analysis conducted for the Defeat of the Enemy Attack upon Shipping (1957), demonstrated mathematically the superiority of escorted convoys over independent sailings during the U-boat conflicts of 1914-1918 and 1939-1945. Reproduced here as part of the 80th anniversary of the Battle of the Atlantic. A 40 minute read.

Ed. In this third instalment of his history of the Royal Navy’s Naval Brigades during the 19th century, the author reflects on the legacy of the Anglo-Zulu War of 1879, and demonstrates the lessons learned since the Crimean War. A 20 minute read.

Ed. As we research James Goldrick’s 40 plus years of contributions to the Naval Review, every statistic discovered reinforces the great debt of scholarship we owe him in the UK, Australia and the US. We are indebted to Peter Hore, a shorter version of this obituary appeared online in the Daily Telegraph on 21 March 2023.

After a relatively short battle with cancer, James Goldrick ‘crossed the bar’ yesterday, the first of several obituaries can be […]

Ed. The author compares Germany’s self-defeating planning before the First World War, and the subsequent struggle to master attritional warfare, with the failure of deterrence in Ukraine and the battlefield ramifications, and makes an important historical point that bears repeating: As Moltke the Elder knew, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The dangers of attempting to force a political resolution through operational action are clear. Originally published in The Article, 1 June 2022 (https://www.thearticle.com/echoes-of-the-great-war-in-ukraine). A 10 minute read.