The Significance of the Royal Navy’s Operations in the Pacific during World War II

Introduction: History and Context as a Guide to Reflect upon the Past

First of all, allow me two scene-setting observations. History is a powerful tool to engage with the concerns of the present. Indeed, I would suggest that history as a reflective subject only exists to the extent to which it relates to the present. From our vantage point we look at the past and draw inspiration to reflect upon the challenges of today. This is what makes history both an ever-evolving subject and one of incredible importance to make world events more intelligible.

Speaking of the concerns of the present, it is worth recalling that in the UK ‘strategy month’ – with the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) released this Monday, and the National Security Strategy bound to be published in time for the NATO summit at the end of June – there is ample scope for a reflection about the past to help us in navigating present concerns.[1]

Thus, in my conclusions I shall try to offer some thoughts on how thinking about the RN role in the War in the Pacific remains particularly relevant as we reflect on Britain and the Indo-Pacific today – in light of the SDR.[2]

The other observation pertains to context. Context matters. The best speeches I have enjoyed over the years were those drawing upon the energy in the room to deliver effects. And what an incredible space we are fortunate to gather in tonight. You may not be surprised to hear that – as a young student – HMS Belfast was the first museum I visited when I arrived in London in the summer of 2003. The thought to be here tonight for this event carries no small emotional impact on me personally.

More importantly though, it is remarkable to think that at 05:00 hrs on 6 June 1944, this very warship was part of a line of three cruisers off the coast of Normandy that started to fire upon Vers-sur-Mer on the east side of the ‘Gold’ section of the landing site.[3] At 05:27, HMS Belfast fired the first of four ranging salvoes over her port side – despite clouds making spotting a rather complex affair. Over 13 minutes, the ship fired ‘for effect’ 18 armour-piercing rounds and 13 high-explosives.[4]

The loud sound of her guns offered an ‘ear-splitting’ but comforting blanket of gunfire support to those about to take on the fight against Germany on French shores. As one flag officer on the ship on the day noted, from the deck all proceeded like clockwork.[5] Little the crew knew that within a year hence, HMS Belfast would be on her way to East Asian waters to partake in what was going to be the final and dramatic chapter of World War II.

Speaking of context, therefore, this is a place like no other for us to reflect on the Royal Navy in the Pacific. But please let me reassure you: this is not going to be a ‘stuffy’ lecture from a history professor. I have my instructions: to keep it informative and light-hearted – which for a war that witnessed drama and destruction on a global scale might be a bit of a challenge – but this is a good challenge to have!

Britain, the Royal Navy, and the Emergence of Modern East Asia

Thinking about the Royal Navy’s contribution to the war in the Pacific is a complex affair. In part, this is because by the time World War II broke out in Europe, Britain had been a major player in the shaping of international affairs in Europe and beyond its boundaries for more than a century. This was certainly true for East Asia. The following might be a story familiar to some of you – but it is one worth retelling briefly because it provides crucial context to assess the efforts and impact of the Royal Navy in the Pacific War. In East Asia, the First and Second Opium Wars – conflicts that were fundamentally about trade and tariffs and the integration of the ‘far east’ in a growing global economic interdependence based on imperial networks – set the stage for the region’s transformation.

This transformation informs national narratives in the region to the present day. In fact, Britain’s perceived role in shaping regional politics stands at the hearts of national narratives in both China and Japan – two of the region’s major players. On the one hand, the storming of the Summer Palace in Beijing in 1860 – led by a Franco-British force – is taught in China as a key moment in the narrative of the ‘Century of Humiliation’.[6] On the other, moments such as the Iwakura Mission to Europe, and Cdr Archibald Douglas’ Naval Mission to establish the modern Imperial Japanese Navy Academy in Etajima, are two of the several examples of Britain’s constructive role in the rise of Modern Japan.[7]

One can argue that from the inability of Qing China to reform to meet the European challenge, to the emergence of Meiji Japan as a modern state in Westphalian terms, Britain’s interactions in the region – part of a broader European quest for influence – changed the regional political and security architecture forever.

Within this context, the 1902 Alliance with Japan became the first formal mutual defence treaty Britain signed in its modern history, recognising Japan as a key security provider, and guaranteeing support to British interests in the region from an ally that would be helpful in keeping Russian ambitions in check.[8] In this respect, it is worth pondering that then – as now – British partnerships in other regions of the world served a firmly Europe-first approach.[9]

In the two years leading to the Anglo-Japanese alliance, British leadership had come to be in full display in the coalition operations to deal with the Boxers’ rebellion in China. Not only Britain – together with Japan – had led the coalition’s efforts to success, but it also hosted the official ‘celebration dinner’ in Beijing on 9 March 1901. Britain had the ‘stomach’ to shape the international order in a contested age and led ‘the muscle’ enforcing it at home and overseas. And I mean this literally:

The dinner itself was a mastery of diplomacy, not for the faint of heart – Purée a la Reine, carp in sauce mayonnaise, vol au vent a la financiere, canard a l’Americaine, filet de beef aux champignons, faisan roti, gateau, fromage, salads … Speaking of food. Vibes of that positive influence continue to present day Japan: one of the most iconic dishes you can taste is ‘navy curry’ which is a tradition introduced originally from the Royal Navy. A well-known attraction to any tourist visiting Japan.

So, if nothing else, you can take from my remarks tonight that British cuisine – delivered by the Royal Navy – is a real factor of influence in East Asia. I bet you did not see this coming. And from an Italian no less. Still, for the purpose of our conversation tonight, by the end of the First World War, the rise of Japan that Britain had contributed to nurture, was changing in character. In 1919, the minister plenipotentiary in Tokyo Sir Beilby Alston aptly noted, “Now that [Japan] has diplomatically, financially, economically, and as a fighting Power attained so superior a position in international affairs, there seems no reason why [Japan] should any longer adhere to her antiquated diplomatic procedure of waiting on the other Powers for a lead whenever a difficult question arises.”[10]

Events in the 1920s and 1930s further confirmed to regional actors – especially within the Japanese military – that the European presence in the region was shrinking to a more modest defence of imperial interests – rather than retaining a capacity for influencing regional affairs.[11] Crucially, during this period of time, the changing character of the British presence in the region – centred around the fleet assigned to the China station – contributed to colour regional, and especially Japanese, perceptions.[12] From a Japanese perspective, British expeditionary capacity and naval power had been the key tool of statecraft in the shaping of regional affairs, one that was receding from regional visibility.

As such, it should come as no surprise that by March 1941, the US Secretary of State could observe to his ambassador in Japan that European events reinforced the Japanese confidence in its ability to secure victory in case of war.

As he pointed out: “Officers of the Japanese Navy are reported to have expressed in conversation the opinion that in the anticipated German spring offensive British defeat is a foregone conclusion; that British sea power will probably be diminished to such an extent that control of the Atlantic will be lost to the British; and that as a result thereof a part of the American fleet will be withdrawn from the Pacific Ocean, enabling the Japanese to carry out their plans for expansion in southeast Asia without substantial opposition.”[13]

Britain in the Pacific War: Loss, Trauma, and Victory – with a bitter aftertaste

In retrospect we now know that Japanese views under-appreciated, and by a considerable margin, the ability of the United States to fight and stay in it. Yet, we must recognise that the initial months of the War in Pacific carried a heavy cost for Britain and the Royal Navy more specifically. On 10 December 1941, the loss of Force Z centred on the battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the battle cruiser HMS Repulse a little more than 100km east of Kuantan, Pahang (modern Malaysia) marked the beginning of a difficult defence phase of the Empire in East Asia.[14]

In his recollections, Sir Henry Leach noted how in the run-up to the opening of hostilities in the Far East, as a young officer with considerable access to signal intelligence from his assignment in Singapore, the Royal Navy had very little detailed information on the movements of the Japanese forces.[15] He further recalled that, early in December, he had dined with his father – Captain John Leach – the CO of HMS Prince of Wales and had noticed that his usual cheerful self seemed a trifle subdued by a “nagging anxiety” that was “never far from his mind.”[16]

In the months that followed, in fact, the fall of Singapore, the capture and mistreatment of British military and civilian personnel prisoners of war at the hand of the Imperial Japanese Armed Forces, and the fundamental change of perception in Australia and New Zealand that Britain was no longer the primary guarantor of their regional security, contributed to form the patchwork of trauma that informed British perceptions of the theatre.

The British Pacific Fleet

To the present day, and this is a key point to recall this year as we mark the 80^th anniversary of the end of the war, a core part of the history of Britain in the Pacific theatres of World War II remains one of a fractured history of loss and trauma.[17]

For the Royal Navy, however, this history is one of recovery and victory as well. This is what I would like to turn our attention to now. Once more some, but perhaps not everyone here tonight, will be familiar with the British Pacific Fleet, the BPF. According to one leading historian, this was the single largest concentration of British naval firepower in the history of the Royal Navy during the war – and it became the main manifestation of the Navy’s contribution to end the war in the Pacific.[18]

Admiral Bruce Fraser, commander of the BPF, reflected on the experience by pointing out that, “The fact that the British Fleet was able to take its place alongside the US Fleet and to enter at short notice into their highly specialised type of warfare demonstrates the two qualities of ‘adaptability’ and ‘readiness’ of which the British Navy is just proud.”[19] Admiral Fraser’s words are especially important if one considers that the British redeployment of a fleet east of Suez came at the end of an intense four years of war in the European theatre at a time in which the end of the German foe was in sight, whilst the defeat of Japan remained elusive.

In theatre, since the moment of its formation on 22 December 1944 until the end of the war, the BPF participated in four operations and conducted 140 carrier strike days. For a force that included four battleships, five fleet, four light fleet, and eight escort carriers, 10 cruisers, 40 destroyers, over 170 minesweepers and support vessels, and some 30 submarines, this might not sound as the most striking battle roll.[20] Perhaps even more so since at the heart of the fleet also stood some of the most war-tested, and successful combatants of the war.

The battleships King George V, and Howe, the carriers Indomitable, Victorious, Indefatigable, and Illustrious, and D-day veterans like Belfast itself, were name that had defined the seizing of sea control in Europe.[21]

In the Pacific, however, war at sea had changed. Oceanic distances and the need to operate at sea over prolonged periods, months at a time, had dictated the emergence of a new “specialised type of warfare” – in Fraser’s words – that put the American efforts in a league of its own. Suffice to say that Operation ICEBERG, the expeditionary force that took on the seizing of Okinawa in April 1945, which the BPF joined, could count on Task Force 51 led by Vice Admiral R K Turner, USN, which included some 1,200 ships and support vessels, including some 18 escort carriers, 10 battleships, 12 cruisers, and 82 destroyers.[22]

The ‘fleet train’ that powered the US naval war machine through the Pacific was a transformative aspect of the difference between the American and British naval constructs. The Royal Navy had traditionally relied on a string of overseas bases which enabled its punch. As one scholar recently convincingly argued, the BPF became the testing bed of a Royal Navy that will forever be different and, if not the spear of a global Empire in future decades, it became the launching pad of a global force in support of the emerging US-led international order.[23]

The change in the tides of international affairs had become militarily clear – insofar as the Pacific was concerned – already in October 1944 at the Octagon conference. There, the American President accepted the Prime Minister’s offer of a British naval contribution over an initially sceptical Admiral King who considered that the US Navy was sufficient to carry out the task.

Still, the BPF struck targets in Sumatra on of its way to Australia, before joining strike operations in March against Okinawa – with key assignments against the Kerama Retto and the Sakishima Gunto and down to Formosa.[24] As the war was brought to Japanese shores, British naval guns fired alongside American counterparts to mark the allied advance. Additional operations took place in Southeast Asia, with submarines striking Japanese forces in Singapore, and eventually attacks run against Truk.[25] By the time in August the BPF was ready to get back in the fight after a period to refit in Australia the war was drawing to a close.

The Royal Navy had been at the forefront of the final months of the war. Warships like HMS Belfast had been modified for the deployment to incorporate the new Type 282 radar to support point defence systems added specifically to address the deadly threat of special attack corps – the Tokkotai Kamikaze.[26] As a dark reminder of the risks of leading in war – the BPF did experience its fair share of Kamikaze attacks. On the day of the signing of the Japanese surrender, on 2 September 1945, Admiral Fraser stood proudly next to his American counterparts, and Britain’s significant but in a way supporting role was epitomised by the lending of the wooden chairs used in the 44-minute-long ceremony – the exquisite craft of the furniture onboard HMS King George V had rightfully taken centre stage on the occasion.[27]

Crucially, the Royal Navy had learned how to remain an oceanic Navy in the coming age of the American carrier battle group. A lesson that would be critical only five years later when the Korean War shown a clear light on the vital significance of the Pacific War to the service. A lesson that, from a distance, senior leadership found, at the time, hard to fully appreciate.

In response to a letter from Admiral Fraser who was trying to address the strain that long times of operations at sea had on the BPF, Admiral Cunningham in London stressed: “I hope our people will not get too blinded by American lavishness.… I am sure that soda fountains, etc. are very good things in the right place, but we have done without them for some hundreds of years and I dare say can for another year or two.”[28]

Conclusions: From the BPF to CSG25

What are the conclusions we should draw from the above? I promised you at the beginning that I would try to place the answer to the essay question – about the role of the RN in the Pacific war – in relation to the present. And today, as I speak, we have the single most significant legacy of the BPF – the carrier strike group, or CSG25, centred significantly around HMS Prince of Wales – heading towards the Indo-Pacific. Even more poignantly, CSG 25 will stop in Japan towards the end of summer to mark a growing defence partnership that is making the most of the ties that defined much of Anglo-Japanese links.

Given the SDR release this week, there are three conclusions I would like to share – each related to one of the document’s take-aways.[29]

The first conclusion relates to the SDR’s idea of a NATO-first approach that is not a NATO-only approach. For the UK, agency matters strategically in Europe – and elsewhere. The commitment to send the BPF, much like CSG25, is an important statement of the strategic value of showing up where it matters. Yes, the Euro-Atlantic is Britain’s core theatre. Yet, the Indo-Pacific is where core economic and political interests also rest. Being there empowers the UK with policy choices: towards our allies and partners, and in respect to our adversaries – we will keep them guessing as to where we bring the challenge to them.

Here, I should also stress that the story of the BPF could have not been written without key contributions from Australia and Canada. Then, as now, trusted friends, close partners, and core Allies are key force multipliers.

From this unfolds a second conclusion: war fighting readiness is built where the action is. It is undeniable that from the changes to surface warships like the Belfast to the exposure to fleet train, the BPF experience was vital for the post-war RN capacity to meet the challenges of a new contested Cold War age. Today, CSG25’s experience in the global deployment renews that essential commitment to operational excellence the RN is rightfully proud of. And, much like the BPF, CSG25 is experiencing today challenges that are likely to inform how adversaries will seek to fight us tomorrow – including the most sophisticated state and non-state actors.

Last but by no means least, the ‘lessons’ we learn from the engagements of today are of value only if put in the wider context of the potential risks of tomorrow. Churchill’s commitment to the Pacific theatre was not merely done in relation to crucial ties with the US, but also with an eye to the needs of a fractured post-war in which the recovery of Empire required a wider outlook. The War in Korea – unthinkable as it was in 1945 – proved that the experience of the BPF had been critical.

Today CSG25 operates to provide the RN with the exposure and experience that will inform our ability to meet challenges in a future in which the next conflict might not take place where we expect it to be. That is why in the end the RN’s contribution to the Pacific War continues to matter today, long after the guns of HMS Belfast have gone silent. It matters because it allows us today to listen to the voices who sailed the seas in the past to whisper and guide how we sail in the seas ahead.

References

[1] Ministry of Defence (MoD), Strategic Defence Review – Making Britain Safer: Secure at Home, Strong Abroad (London: Crown Copyright, 2025).

[2] For reference to the Indo-Pacific in the document, see MoD, Strategic Defence Review, op. Cit., 78.

[3] Brian Lavery, The Last Big Gun: At War & at Sea with HMS Belfast (London: The Pool of London Press, 2015), 201.

[4] Ibid., 202.

[5] Ibid., 204.

[6] This is powerfully captured in Julia Lovell, The Opium War: Drugs, Dreams and the Making of China (London: Picador, 2012).

[7] Alessio Patalano, Post-war Japan as a Sea Power: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience and the Making of a Navy (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 29-36.

[8] Richard Dudley, ‘The “Problem of Asia” and Imperial Competition before Word War I’, in Catherine Grant, Alessio Patalano, and James A. Russell (eds.), The New Age of Naval Power in the Indo-Pacific: Strategy, Order, and Regional Security (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2023), 151-168.

[9] In reference to the SDR, see MoD, Strategic Defence Review, op.cit., 37-39.

[10] Mr. Alson, ‘No 432 to Earl Curzon, 18 July 1919,’ Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919–1939, Ser. 1, vol. 6, Ref: 118980/6579/23, Documents on British Policy Overseas, King’s College London, hereafter DBPO, https://www.proquest.com/dbpo?accountid=11862.

[11] Daniel Moran, ‘The Far East between the World Wars’ in Grant, Patalano, and Russell, The New Age of Naval Power in the Indo-Pacific, op. Cit., 169-184.

[12] The transformation of British naval missions in East Asia is well-captured in Matthew Heaslip, Gunboats, Empire, and the China Station: The Royal Navy in 1920s East Asia (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).

[13] ‘The Secretary of State to the Ambassador in Japan (Grew)’ No. 2145, 15 March 1941, Foreign Relations of the United States Diplomatic Papers, 1941, The Far East, vol. 4, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments.

[14] Captain S. W. Roskill, RN, The War at Sea, Vol. I, 1939-1945 (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2004), 564-570.

[15] Henry Leach, Endure No Makeshifts: Some Naval Reflections (1^st Ed. 1993, Barnsley: Pen & Sword, 2003), 7.

[16] Ibid., 8.

[17] Kevin Rawlinson, ‘UK Marks 75^th Anniversary of Victory over Japan Day’, The Guardian, 15 August 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/15/uk-to-mark-75th-anniversary-of-victory-over-japan-day.

[18] H.P. Wilmott, ‘Just Being There’ cited in Jon Robb-Webb, The British Pacific Fleet Experience and Legacy, 1944-1950 (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013), 13.

[19] Ibid., 13.

[20] Captain S. W. Roskill, RN, The War at Sea, 1939-1945, Vol. III, Part II (Uckfield: Naval & Military Press, 2024), 202, 430, 436.

[21] Ibid., 343.

[22] Ibid., 340.

[23] Robb-Webb, The British Pacific Fleet Experience and Legacy, 1944-1950, op. Cit., 259-268.

[24] Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939-1945, Vol. III, Part II, op. Cit., 340-357.

[25] Ibid., 357-363.

[26] Lavery, The Last Big Gun, op. Cit., 218-219.

[27] Robb-Webb, The British Pacific Fleet Experience and Legacy, 1944-1950, op. Cit., 12.

[28] Robb-Webb, The British Pacific Fleet Experience and Legacy, 1944-1950, op. Cit., 123.

[29] Ministry of Defence, https://www.youtube.com/shorts/-PgvWP75K3Y.