SBattleforAtlanticCaseStudyPageTwo

The end of an era and The Royal Navy prior to the Second World War

Britain gained tremendously, in a territorial sense, from World War One. The Versailles
Treaty had carved up the Ottoman Empire and stripped away Germany's overseas colonies.
Consequently, the British Empire, one of the great Imperial benefactors from Versailles, was
both relatively and physically larger than ever. Nonetheless, Britain's expanded colonial
holdings also created an enormous burden for a British military tasked with defending
Britain's Empire against those nations identified as a menace to British supremacy. In
particular, Germany, Italy and Japan all represented significant threats to British interests.
Therefore, British military and economic planning amply considered the risk these powers
posed to the British dominated status quo in the world.

The British approached foreign threats to the Empire in two ways. First, Britain maintained
only a small army and poured resources into building a potent air force and overwhelming
navy. Second, Britain strategically positioned her military assets. For countering German
power Britain maintained small ground forces and strategically positioning air and naval
units near the European continent. The British would rely on their French partners and
France's large army to carry the burden of facing down a German threat on the continent.

As for dealing with the challenges posed by the Italians and Japanese, the British planned
for the Royal Navy to carry the defensive load. The Royal Navy needed to protect
important shipping lanes around the globe; especially in the Mediterranean Sea and Eastern
Oceans. In the Far East, Britain imported oil and rubber from Indonesia and Singapore
through the critical Straights of Malacca. Nonetheless, in spite of the formidable challenges
presented by the Empire's vast scope, Britain tackled these problems by repositioning
military assets, and building massive fortresses in Gibraltar and Singapore, astride the most
important trade routes. In addition, British shipyard output remained as prodigious as ever.
The 1930s era Royal Navy was simply huge and could call upon 15 battleships, 6 aircraft
carriers, 54 cruisers, 145 destroyers, and 54 submarines for combat operations.[7] For
nearly any other country the sheer size and expense of maintaining a Navy such as this
was unfathomable; however for the British it was expected.

Since the decisive British victory in the Seven Years' War in Europe ,[8] British naval power
had ruled the world's oceans and created the foundation for Britain's 19th-century Empire
in India, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and North America. This empire arose in no small
part from the British victories during the mid 18th century. The British Navy then
dominated the 19th century with powerful ships mounting numerous cannons; ships also
possessing the ability to sail great distances. During the late 19th Century and early part
of the 20th Century this tradition continued in the great battle fleets of dreadnoughts
forming the British Navy's nucleus.[9]

For over three centuries, naval power protected the British Empire. Therefore, in the 1930s
as Britain set about desperately attempting to hold together her fragile and far-flung
empire, she reverted to the naval tradition that built her empire. Great Britain, economically
reliant as she was on her overseas Empire, maintained a navy exceeding the combined
power of Europe's other navies. Just as in other navies, the battle fleet formed the Royal
Navy's backbone.

Nevertheless, battleships were enormously expensive weapons systems, requiring large,
well-trained crews and massive amounts of fuel for the ships' powerful engines. In addition,
these ships took years to build and only exceedingly wealthy nations with long running
naval programs possessed the ability to field anywhere near the numbers of these ships
required to challenge for control of the seas. The massive investment in men and resources
incurred in building and maintaining a battle fleet meant these ships' costs inhibited their
use. Losing a single ship could prove devastating.[10] The inflexibility associated with the
battle fleet thus ran counter to a basic tenant of weaponry; useful weapons are
expendable weapons. Battleships were not expendable. Their very size and strength
represented their weakness.

Moreover, tests done in the interwar period convinced some 20th century naval planners
that if the battleship was not dead as a useful weapon, it at least needed the protection
offered by aircraft carriers to operate effectively. In addition to the threat to surface ships
represented by aircraft a second threat to battle fleets emerged from the First World War
- the submarine.

Prior to World War One the submarine had lacked the technological ability to come to
fruition as a capable weapons system. Problems regarding propulsion, navigation, and
combat capabilities proved endemic in 19th century submarines. Late in the 19th century
however, American John Holland solved most of these problems when he realized he could
supplement the engine submarines used for propulsion on the surface with an additional
engine for underwater use. Thus, Holland combined a gasoline-powered engine, later diesel,
for surface propulsion and an electric motor for underwater use charged by the surface
engine.[11] This model went through little alteration over the next half-century and the
submarine as an effective underwater weapon was born, seeing its first effective use
during World War One; in the hands of a German navy seeking to vitiate British naval
supremacy. Only technological limitations, and American intervention in the war, kept the
submarine or U-boat (for the German Unterseeboat) from starving Great Britain from the
First World War.[12]

The submarine represented a potentially war altering weapon if employed to destroy the
economy of an enemy heavily reliant upon seaborne trade. Accordingly, in the 1930s, as
Germany again attempted to challenge the global status quo, German naval planners once
again turned to the submarine as an integral part of the new navy Hitler had ordered built.

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