Learning to Learn: The Royal Navy in the Pacific, 1945

In 1945 the British Pacific Fleet (BPF) was the largest and, excepting nuclear armed ships, arguably the most powerful force ever deployed by the Royal Navy, yet, echoing the Army in Burma, they felt that they had been forgotten by the British people. Apart from a brief revival of interest around the 50^th anniversary celebrations of VJ day, they have also been largely forgotten by the Royal Navy and its historians; when Derek Law prepared a near definitive bibliography of the Royal Navy in the Second World War he listed 82 books about the Battle of the Atlantic, 89 about the Mediterranean, but only 15 about the Pacific campaign.

This is a great shame, as it is arguable that much of the RN’s post war doctrine has roots in the Pacific, and examination of the Pacific campaign highlights lessons which the RN of today would do well to study. In this paper an attempt has been made to look at the BPF’s operations, and to determine if the formula that allowed such crushing defeat in the approach to Japan was remembered.

Admiral Rawlings, Second in Command of the BPF, attempted to drive home to the Admiralty the enormity of the Pacific theatre by laying the distances involved on a map with which their Lordships would be more familiar; he compared his task to “sailing from Plymouth to strike at Rio de Janeiro, replenishing once from harbour tankers in the Cape Verde Islands, and a second time at sea.”[1] In doing so he uncannily predicted the Falklands War of 1982, and the acid test of what the RN really learnt in the Pacific must be in how capable they were, 37 years later, of conducting Rawlings’ mythical campaign. As the paper progresses, attempts will be made to analyse the impact of the Pacific lessons on the Falklands Campaign.

Narrative

In September 1944, Winston Churchill offered to provide a surface fleet to operate alongside the USN in the Pacific theatre. Churchill’s motive had more to do with long term strategic planning than any wish to fight the Japanese. The Americans had proved themselves well capable of defeating the Japanese almost single handedly, and the Royal Navy was already heavily committed to the Russian convoys, Normandy and the Mediterranean. Churchill, however, had a vision of a postwar Far East in which the credibility of the former colonial powers would be seriously questioned; the Americans claiming sole credit for defeating Japan and driving them out of former British, French and Dutch colonies. To avert this loss of face, in a part of the world where face is all important, Britain needed to despatch a Naval Force as impressive as possible to make a highly visible contribution to the defeat of Japan.

Meanwhile, Fleet Admiral King, Commander-in-Chief of the US Navy, was opposed to integration of the RN into USN operations in the Pacific. King was a known Anglophobe, with a distaste for all things British, the Royal Navy in particular. However, while there may have been some personal motive in his objections to the RN’s participation, there was logic to his thinking. The Royal Navy was largely configured as an anti-submarine force to carry out short haul operations in the Atlantic and Western European seas; there was little ability to replenish at sea and the ships were tied to their bases by their limited endurance. The few carriers possessed by the RN suffered from inadequate aircraft complements and were inexperienced in the kind of warfare being carried out in the Pacific. Even in the anti-submarine role, the RN’s acknowledged area of expertise, limited help could be provided; Japanese submarines, always victims of a dubious tactical doctrine, were by 1944 a spent force.[2] To introduce such forces into the air war being prosecuted over vast tracts of ocean in the Pacific would add little to the available offensive capability and would place even greater demands on the already stretched American supply organisation. The return of European colonies was low on Washington’s agenda, and was no reason to compromise the efficient running of the Pacific war.

Churchill took some of the wind out of King’s sails by announcing that the RN, if allowed to operate in the Pacific, would be self-supporting. Such a force would not call on the American logistic organisation, and could hardly lessen the offensive capability in theatre. In the face of this logic, and Churchill’s rash promise of self-sufficiency, the offer was accepted by Roosevelt.[3] The Fleet sailed from Trincomalee, bound for Fremantle, on 16 January 1945 and carried out highly successful strikes on the Japanese oil facilities in Sumatra on the way, in an operation that could be characterised as a shake down before the real test of the Pacific theatre.

To sum up the state of readiness of the BPF’s ships in early February: they had carried out air strikes against heavily defended shore installations, they had fought off limited air attack, and had replenished off an enemy coastline. What they had not yet done was to defend themselves against Kamikaze strikes or keep themselves at sea for extended periods; Trincomalee to Fremantle had taken but 19 days, and fuel constraints had caused the suspension of the Sumatran raids. The USN was achieving endurances upwards of 60 days, and if the BPF were to be useful they would have to match, or at least come near to, these levels.

On 15 March came the welcome news that the BPF would sail to take part in the operations against Okinawa, codenamed ICEBERG, as an integral part of the American 5^th Fleet. While the bulk of the 5^th Fleet would be supporting the main landings on Okinawa, the role given to the BPF, designated TF57, was to attack the islands of Sakashima Gunto, through which Japanese air reinforcements from China and Formosa would have to be staged. This mission was an ideal opportunity for TF57 to cut its teeth in the main theatre of Pacific operations, having an important role in support of the 5^th Fleet, but not yet actually fighting alongside American units. Admirals Spruance, Commanding the 5^th Fleet, and Admiral Nimitz, Commander-in-Chief Pacific, were putting the new boys on probation, but there was backup in case the BPF proved itself unequal to the task; Nimitz had authorisation to call on the Marianas based B29s of 21 Bomber Command to hit Sakashima if required.[4]

On 25 March the Fleet met some of the replenishment units of the Fleet Train and began their first period of replenishment at sea in the operational Pacific theatre, on completion of which they made their way to the first flying off position. After two days of successful strikes against the enemy airfields they withdrew to replenish. The replenishment was complete after a further two days and at dawn on 31 March the first aircraft were flown off to resume strikes. The operations against the Sakashima Gunto, and later Formosa, continued in a cycle of two or three strike days followed by two or three days of replenishment, until the Fleet returned to Leyte for repair and replenishment, by which time it had kept itself at sea for 32 days, carrying out strikes on 12 of those days, and had fulfilled its mission of denying the enemy the use of the Sakashima Gunto airfields.

On 4 May TF57 returned again to strike at the Islands, as part of operation ICEBERG 2. The cycle familiar from ICEBERG 1 resumed until the final strikes of 25 May, when the BPF retired to Sydney for repair and replenishment. Its part in ICEBERG had been neither glamorous nor central, but the RN had without doubt been of assistance to the USN, and had proved itself capable. Indeed, Spruance concluded in his report of proceedings that the BPF was now experienced and competent enough to take its place in the line with the Fast Carrier Task Force in future operations.

The promise implicit in Spruance’s report was honoured and on return to theatre on 16 July TF57 joined the US 3^rd Fleet (the same ships as the 5^th Fleet, but Admiral Halsey had replaced Admiral Spruance) in the designation TF37. Acting thus as part of the 3^rd Fleet they entered yet another cycle of replenishment and strikes, this time against the Japanese mainland. The target area was bigger than in ICEBERG and required greater flexibility of movement. It was also farther from the oil supply, and these factors combined to make the Fleet Train’s task harder still. On more than one occasion during these operations American tankers were called upon to help out.

Regrettably, on 12 August, three days after the first atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki, the BPF’s supply line finally failed and the Americans were unable to help; TF37 was forced to withdraw from the theatre, leaving the USN to carry on with the attack and giving the final lie to Churchill’s promise of self-sufficiency.

The lessons: Endurance in Theatre

In the mid 18^th century supply ships carried beer and bullocks to Hawke’s fleet, and 50 years later the ships of the Channel Squadron were spending months at a time blockading Brest, in the process becoming highly skilled in the process of replenishing at sea. Coal, however, was harder to replenish so the techniques were lost, and were not relearnt even with the introduction of pumpable oil fuel. The oil-powered RN of 1945 had lost the art of keeping the sea for long periods.

The RN had spent the century before the Second World War developing a network of bases around the world from which a Fleet could obtain victuals, engineering support, coal and oil. This had resulted in a Navy of short haul vessels with little seagoing support, in sharp contrast to the isolationist Americans, who had to take virtually everything with them when they left home. Operations in the early years of the war had not inclined the RN to explore the possibilities of replenishment at sea; the weather in the Atlantic made it difficult, especially for beginners, and the constant threat of air attack in the Mediterranean made the operation too hazardous.

The Americans, meanwhile, were meeting with great success in the development of their own Fleet Train, and in February 1944 the Admiralty sent a mission to Washington under Rear Admiral C S Daniel to seek some understanding of this new art.[5]

Competing bids for shipping from the Ministry of War Transport and other theatres were fought off with varying degrees of success and the Fleet Train gradually took shape. By early 1945 the Fleet Train, tasked with supporting two battleships, four fleet carriers, four cruisers and 12 destroyers, comprised over 30 ships in total.[6]

On paper an impressive organisation, in the flesh Task Force 112, as the Fleet Train was known, had a more down at heel appearance, being described by one commentator as “The most extraordinarily motley collection of shipping ever assembled in British Maritime History.”[7] Manned by seamen from a wide spectrum of backgrounds, engagements and training levels, the Fleet Train lacked any real uniformity. Few ships were worked up to any degree, many were sadly inexperienced in replenishment at sea, some were 30 years old and they flew a variety of ensigns; white, red and blue as well as foreign and commonwealth. There was also great potential for disciplinary problems; RN ratings serving next to civilians, different civilians having different articles of agreement, and men of widely varying racial backgrounds living together in ships. In contrast, the American Fleet Train comprised new purpose built ships with worked-up crews under Naval discipline. Mr David Divine was a war correspondent serving with the Fleet at the time, and compared his experience of RN and USN replenishment;

“The American tankers would take a ship on either side… They would have everything aboard, three lines pumping, in twenty minutes. They would be switching stuff on the jackstay and so on in that time. KGV (RN Battleship HMS King George V) went up astern of one rusty old tanker, which appeared to be manned by two Geordie mates and twenty consumptive Chinamen and it took us, I think, an hour and a half to pick up a single buoyed pipe-line, fiddling around under our bows.”[8]

The reasons for the shortfall between TF 112 and the crisp and oiled machine that supplied the USN in theatre are not hard to find. The Americans, already ahead in 1939, had started their drive across the Pacific at Tarawa in November 1943 and had been perfecting their methods ever since, with a massive industrial base to support them. The Royal Navy was new to the game, and British yards were building few merchantmen, being almost exclusively dedicated to warship construction and ship repair. Further, the RN had had to compete for merchant hulls with the Ministry of War Transport, who were struggling to keep the trans-Atlantic supply route open. The USN, meanwhile, had obtained their ships through the ‘War Shipping Administration’, which was heavily influenced by Admiral King, and gave priority to the Pacific.[9]

To have gathered the Fleet Train that existed in early 1945 was no mean feat by the Royal Navy, though the proof of the pudding would be in its ability to feed a ravenous fighting fleet.

The Fleet was fuelled successfully throughout ICEBERG without assistance from the American Fleet Train, but the tanker situation was becoming serious. The tankers were too few, given the long time it took to refuel each ship, to achieve anything but the bare minimum and were too slow either to manoeuvre properly with the Fleet or to fetch more fuel when required; only four of the 24 tankers available to Rear Admiral Fisher (Rear Admiral Fleet Train) were capable of more than 11 knots. The post war RFA tanker tonnages do not indicate, when studied in isolation, that the shortages of the Pacific were lessons well remembered. Against a gross tanker tonnage of 531,000 in 1938, the RFA had 687,000 in 1950, and 332,000 in 1960.[10] These raw figures should, however, be treated with caution; the post war RFA was a much more capable organisation than it had been before, equipped and trained to replenish quickly and in poor sea states, and the tonnage of warships it had to support fell dramatically in the post war years. The RFA in fact became steadily better able to support the available warships.

Much of the strain that was put on the Fleet Train could have been avoided if the warships had been designed for longer unsupported endurance. Ships and submarines built with Pacific distances in mind had been fitted with larger fuel tanks, but the replenishment interval was dictated by the weakest link in the chain, and many of the ships still needed very frequent refuelling.

There were other difficulties in keeping the ships at sea for long periods aside from limited stores and fuel endurance. The engines and machinery of the ships were not designed to run for the long periods that were now being asked of them, and they were suffering because routine jobs such as boiler cleaning could not be carried out. These engineering-based deficiencies in unsupported endurance were addressed successfully by the postwar Admiralty. Though greatly stretched, the task force in 1982 was adequately supplied by the Royal Fleet Auxiliary and STUFT throughout Operation CORPORATE. The supply chain ran from a main base in the UK (equating to Sydney), using an intermediate base at Ascension (equating to Manus or Leyte).

Command, Control and Communications

It is worth discussing the adoption of two linked American systems; USN signalling procedures and Task Force/Task Group/Task Unit designations. When Fraser was serving in the Grand Fleet in the First World War the American 6^th Battle Squadron joined to serve alongside the RN and unhesitatingly adopted the RN’s signalling procedures. Then, in 1943, when Fraser was Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet, the American battleships South Dakota and Alabama, with their attendant destroyers, had come under his command. They had immediately adopted RN procedures.

Given these precedents it is not surprising that Fraser agreed with the advice of his Fleet Communications Officer, Captain Richard Courage, that the BPF should use American procedures, books, flags, phonetic alphabet and cryptography. The Admiralty, under Cunningham, disagreed. Courage recalls a signal emanating from the Admiralty at the time which stated, quite simply, that “The Board is strongly of the opinion that on no account should the British Fleet use the American system. The British method is superior.”[11] Leaving aside the technical merits of the two systems, both of which carried strong supporting arguments, it was plainly impossible for the Fleets to work together if they could not talk to each other. In the absence of any prospect of the Americans adopting RN methods, Fraser and his school finally prevailed on the Admiralty to allow concession.

Soon after the Japanese surrender Fraser signalled the Admiralty saying that RN signal books should be adapted to incorporate the best of both RN and USN systems. Once again Cunningham disagreed, and replied saying that “Delay of re-embarkation of RN signal books can not be accepted,” so the RN returned to pre-Pacific methods.[12] A compromise was later reached in the terms of reference of the Signal Books Committee set up under Admiral Brind to review the RN books “incorporating any advantages found in the American books, but not to be unduly influenced by USN practice.” Many USN procedures were included, among them International Code Flags and manoeuvring signals aimed at air defence, when the new Conduct of the Fleet and Fleet Signal Books were published in 1948.[13]

Through all these changes the lessons of the Pacific enabled the RN to make informed judgements about the merits of the two major available systems, having used them both, while maintaining a flexible attitude to the adoption of the methods of other Navies. It is worth noting that when called on to work alongside the USN off Korea, before the time of NATO books, the RN ships concerned did not hesitate to ‘go American’ overnight. Without the benefit of the Pacific War such a change would have been unthinkable and unworkable, and had Admiral Brind, a Pacific veteran and a Communicator, not been in command it still might not have been attempted.

Interlinked with the issue of Communications, though less contentious, was the adoption of Task rather than Type designations. The RN had historically grouped its ships according to type; the 6^th Cruiser Squadron, the 15^th Destroyer squadron etc., while this was administratively convenient it made little sense in battle. As Fraser had shown in his prosecution of the Scharnhorst, timely and appropriate use by a Commander of his varying assets will produce the optimum results. In a battle therefore it makes more sense to divide a force of ships up into subdivisions, each capable of independent operation and containing a variety of types. This was how the USN was already configuring itself, a Fleet being divided up into Task Forces and subdivided into Task Groups, which were in turn divided into Task Units.

This whole system allowed ships to operate in tactical groupings, the configuration of which could be altered to suit a specific task. While the RN kept the old type designations for administrative purposes, groups of ships on operational deployment adopted the Task designations. This practice of using Type designations for administration and Task designations for operational purposes was adopted wholesale by the RN soon after the war, and remains in use today.

Air Operations

The flying operations during ICEBERG were hampered by some problems, but were largely successful. The Fleet Air Arm was already well aware of its operational shortcomings and many of the innovations the Fleet brought home after the war were introduced before entry into the Pacific theatre. The Indian Ocean operations had confirmed their fears that the Seafire was not optimal for carrier flying; the Sumatran raids had shown the value of a USN style airborne coordinator, and general techniques had been improved since the Fleet’s arrival in the Indian Ocean.

One point that was becoming obvious as the Pacific operations started was that, while there were great advantages in using technically superior American aircraft such as Corsairs, Avengers and Hellcats, they were going to cause logistical problems because of the non-interchangeability of parts with British aircraft.

The multiplicity of aircraft types (there were seven types flying with the BPF), in addition to causing obvious logistical problems, created operational difficulties as carriers flying off or recovering different aircraft had different wind speed and time into wind requirements. Roskill contends that these problems came as a result of the prewar failure to develop suitable carrier aircraft, and that “the lack of standardisation of aircraft came nearer to curtailing the work of the carrier borne squadrons than any other factor.”[14]

While this situation may have been exacerbated by the exigencies of total war, and was certainly not helped by the low priority given to Naval Air between the wars, Fleet Air Arm procurement in postwar years led to more standardised complements. The carriers operating off Korea used only three types of aircraft, and those supporting the Suez campaign carried only four types for widely varying roles.[15] Roskill’s argument that the prewar RN failed to procure suitable aircraft was met head on; the next generation of aircraft, such as Firebrands, Sea Furies and the early jets were designed, without compromise, for carrier work. The fixed wing aircraft used in the 1982 campaign were of a uniform type throughout the Task Force, and although originally based on an RAF aircraft, the Sea Harrier had, unlike the Seafire before it, been properly adapted for carrier operations. The rotary wing aircraft used in CORPORATE lacked the uniformity of the fixed wing ones, but this owed more to the ongoing transition to Sea King than to any deficiencies in procurement planning; when Merlin is eventually introduced the RN will have achieved a rare standardisation of airframes.

Air Defence

During ICEBERG the ships adopted yet another American innovation, the use of the radar picket ship. The concept of stationing ships up threat to act as the eyes of the Fleet was not a new one, and radar pickets had first been experimented with in 1938. In the Pacific, however, the techniques were developed, and their use became routine which they had not been in any other theatre. The task of a picket ship has always been, and remains, a dangerous one, as illustrated by the fate of HMS Sheffield in 1982. In 1945 the threat of Kamikaze attack made the job unusually unpleasant; one American destroyer is reported to have been attacked by no less than 50 ‘special attack’ aircraft in one day.[16] Notwithstanding this danger, ships were kept out on picket duty, and with great success; Admiral Sir Philip Vian lists 26 of the BPF total of 48 air intercepts as having been directed by picket ships.[17] The lesson of the picket ship seems to have stuck, too; in 1958-59 four Weapon-class destroyers were converted specifically to be used as picket ships, and as mentioned picket ships were employed in the Falklands.

On their second strike day off the Sakashima Gunto the BPF had their first experience of Kamikaze attack. A number of enemy aircraft were detected by radar; the CAP (Combat Air Patrol; a new American name for an old RN practice) claimed two of the enemy aircraft before they reached the Fleet and two over the ships, but one was allowed to crash into HMS Indefatigable’s flight deck, where its bomb detonated. The fact that four enemy were shot down in air-to-air combat while none fell prey to the ship’s anti-air defences illustrated what was to become a fundamental difficulty: the inability of ships to defend themselves against Kamikaze attack.

Ships in 1945 carried a far higher level of anti-air armament than they had in 1941; while HMS Prince of Wales had tried in vain to save herself with six eight barrelled pompoms, her sister ship KGV in 1945 sported 64 two pounder pompoms, 10 Bofors 40mm and 36 Oerlikon 20mm weapons.[18] This increase came after hard lessons in the Mediterranean, the Russian convoys and elsewhere, but all these operations had involved an enemy for whom the return home was an important part of the evolution. Against the Kamikaze, effectively an autonomous homing weapon with a guidance system still today unmatched for intelligence, even the increased stopping power of RN anti-air gunnery was simply inadequate. A number of attempts were made during the campaign to overcome this problem; the vulnerable picket ships were given Goalkeepers for mutual support (cf the ‘42/22 combo’ employed in CORPORATE); each aircraft carrier had a destroyer stationed close astern; the main gun ships were kept with the carriers to help defend them, and the Fleet adopted ever tighter formations for mutual support, accepting the risk of damaging each other with stray anti-aircraft fire. The lasting lesson from the Kamikaze attacks was that it was vital to get a vast amount of lead in the air, not simply to break up the aircraft, but to stop it in the sky before it could impact.

This lesson, however, seems to have passed the post war Admiralty by. The table below shows the decline in destroyer anti air armament after the war:

These figures, depressing enough in themselves, are backed up by the comparable data for carriers; HMS Centaur, of 22,000 tons and completed in 1953, sported only ten 40mm guns, and when HMS Ark Royal was completed two years later, at 43,000 tons, she carried eighteen 40mm and four 4.5” guns, little more than the pre-Pacific Battle-class, though 18-times as big.

Those watching the Falklands Conflict saw a sad echo of 1945 in the vulnerability of surface ships to air attack; both guided weapons and iron bombs causing extensive ship casualties. While the excuse of excessive reliance on defensive missiles may be used, the fact remains that, after the Falklands, navies throughout the world improved their ability to put lead in the air to stop or deter air attacks. The Royal Navy, it seems, was not alone in forgetting the damage that was done to ships in the Pacific.

Strategic relations

In the field of strategic relations with America the RN came away from the Second World War with dramatically altered perspectives. To ascribe this change wholly to events in the Pacific would be to overstate the importance of that theatre, but the subordination of the RN to the USN set a pattern that would be followed in the postwar years. On arrival in the Pacific, Fraser, who had shown himself in the past to be a proponent of close liaison with the USN, decreed that the men of the BPF should wear American-style khakis rather than whites. This psychologically significant attempt to soothe American sensibilities was initially opposed by the Admiralty, as had been the adoption of USN communications procedures, but Fraser prevailed.

While Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean theatres had been dominated by the RN, in the Pacific the Americans were very much in charge. Here the RN learnt to subordinate themselves to a foreign Navy; they entered the theatre only with Washington’s approval, took their tasking from Admiral Nimitz and effectively acted under the tactical control of Admirals Spruance and Halsey.

When NATO was formed in 1949 the economic and strategic realities of the time dictated that, irrespective of what had happened in the Second War, America would become the lead member. The Pacific experience, in which the RN was allowed to swallow the bitter pill of secondary status away from the limelight of Europe, prepared them to accept the primacy of the USN in 1949. This was a circumstance that would have been unthinkable before 1939, and difficult before the formation of the BPF.

Conclusion

To sum up, the Royal Navy rediscovered in the Pacific the art of working at sea off an enemy coastline thousands of miles from the nearest base. They learnt to operate as part of a force in which the Americans, or any other Allied navy, might call the shots; they learnt the value of a common Allied signalling procedure and the importance to carrier logistics, of an uncomplicated aircraft complement, and they discovered how to manoeuvre a force at sea to counter air attack. Possibly the most important lesson, one which has no section of its own but appears as a current throughout the paper, was that it was possible for the Royal Navy to learn from another Navy, and that even after five years of steady development and highly successful war, further improvement could be achieved. What they sadly failed to learn was the importance of defending individual warships against air attack. They still had not learnt that lesson in 1982, and one must doubt if they have learnt it today.

Appendix: British Pacific Fleet on VJ Day, 15 August 1945 [NR 34/1, p. 73]

References

[1] S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea Vol III (London, 1961) p. 362

[2] Carl Boyd and Akihiko Yoshida, The Japanese Submarine Force and World War II

[3] Sir Winston Churchill, The Second World War Vol VI (London, 1954) p. 136

[4] Major General S. Woodburn Kirby, The War Against Japan Vol. 5 (London, 1969) p. 109

[5] Admiral Sir Philip Vian, Action This Day (London, 1960) p. 156

[6] John Winton, The Forgotten Fleet (London , 1969) p. 291

[7] ibid., p. 270

[8] ibid., p. 1l4

[9] Arthur Marder, Old Friends New Enemies Vol. II (Oxford, 1981) p. 359

[10] Approximate tonnages taken from Jane’s Fighting Ships

[11] Richard Humble, Fraser of North Cape (London, 1983) p. 250

[12] ibid., p. 283

[13] Captain Barrie Kent, Signal (London, 1993) pp. 169-171

[14] Roskill, op. cit. n. 1, p. 344

[15] Ray Sturtivant, British Naval Aviation, The Fleet Air Arm 1917-1990 (London, 1990) p. 218

[16] Kirby, op. cit. n. 4, p. 115

[17] Vian, op. cit. n. 5, p. 201.

[18] Marder, op. cit. n. 9, p. 409