6 replies to this topic

[W. Clark]

​The Royal Navy felt that it needed 70 cruisers to provide adequate protection for British trade. They included any cruisers in the Dominion navies in that total as did everyone else. But despite the perceived need and strenuous efforts to achieve that total by the Royal Navy, they never did. I've listed the cruisers they had year by year from 1939 through 1944. I've also divided the cruisers into four categories, Heavy Cruisers (armed w/ 7.5 to 8"), Large Light Cruisers (armed with more than 8x 6"), Small Light Cruisers (armed with 6 or 8 6" or 5.25") and finally Old Light Cruisers (6" cruisers of the E Class or older). The last group includes the various C Class including 4" AA conversions. 

 

So why didn't the navy achieve a total of 70 cruisers? The navy certainly did everything in its power to achieve that total including retaining the older cruisers long after their treaty replacement dates had come and gone. IMHO there were several causes. First and foremost was money or the lack thereof. Admiral of the Fleet, Beatty made a flippant remark to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Winston Churchill in the middle 20s that haunted the navy from there on. Beatty when asked how many cruisers were needed, replied that the navy needed about 50 cruisers. He failed to explain that it took about 70 cruisers to keep the number at sea at 50. The Government clung to the number 50 as it suited them financially. The second major reason IMHO was the war. The navy got close to obtaining 70 cruisers, but war losses prevented it. As you can see from the list the retention of the older cruisers was vital to getting anywhere near a total of 70. The older cruisers totaled about 25% of the overall cruiser total throughout the war.

 

I'd just love to hear other opinions on this.

 

WMC

 

RN & Dominion Navies Cruisers

1939-64

Heavy Cruisers-17

Kent Class: Berwick, Cornwall, Cumberland, Kent, Suffolk, Australia & Canberra

London Class: Devonshire, Shropshire, Sussex & London

Norfolk Class: Dorsetshire & Norfolk

York Class: York & Exeter

Elizabethan Class: Hawkins & Frobisher

Large Light Cruisers-10

Town Class: Southampton, Newcastle, Birmingham, Glasgow, Sheffield, Gloucester, Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast & Edinburgh

Small Light Cruisers-12

Leander Class: Leander, Achilles, Ajax, Neptune & Orion

Apollo Class: Sydney, Perth & Hobart

Arethusa Class: Arethusa, Aurora, Galatea & Penelope

Old Light Cruisers-25

Elizabethan Class: Effingham

E Class: Emerald & Enterprise

D Class: Danae, Dauntless, Dragon, Delhi, Despatch, Dunedin,  Durban & Diomede

C Class: Capetown, Colombo, Calypso, Caledon, Caradoc, Cardiff, Ceres, Calcutta, Carlisle, Cairo, Coventry, Curlew & Curacoa

WWI Town Class: Adelaide

1940-69

Heavy Cruisers-17

Lost: 0

Large Light Cruisers-13

Lost: 0

Colony Class: Fiji, Kenya & Nigeria

Small Light Cruisers-16

Lost: 0

Dido Class: Dido, Bonaventure, Naiad & Phobe

Old Cruisers-23

Lost-2

 

1941-69

Heavy Cruisers-16

Lost: 1

 

Large Light Cruisers-15

Lost: 3

Colony Class: Mauritius

Small Light Cruisers-17

Lost: 3

Dido Class: Euryalus, Hermione, Cleopatra & Charybdis

Old Light Cruisers-21

Lost: 2

1942-61

Heavy Cruisers-13

Lost: 3

Large Light Cruisers-15

Lost: 3

Colony Class: Gambia, Jamaica & Bermuda

Small Light Cruisers-15

Lost: 3

Dido Class: Scylla & Argonaut

Old Light Cruisers-18

Lost: 3

1943-67

Heavy Cruisers-13

Lost: 0

Large Light Cruisers-18

Lost: 0

Colony Class: Uganda, Newfoundland & Ceylon

Small Light Cruisers-18

Lost: 1

Dido Class: Spartan, Bellona, Black Prince & Royalist

Old Light Cruisers-18

Lost: 0

 

1944-65

Heavy Cruisers-13

Lost: 0

Large Light Cruisers-18

Lost: 0

Small Light Cruisers-18

Lost: 1

Dido Class: Diadem

Old Light Cruisers-16

Lost: 2

[healey36]

Totally financial...remember, half of the interwar period is blanketed by the economic depression, a time when financial resources were limited to an extreme. This, together with servicing/paying-down the massive debts run up during WWI, put a big damper on spending. In this constricted environment came the Ten Year Plan concept, developed by the War Office as a response to Parliament coming out of WWI. The idea was that any threat to Britain and/or the Empire could be identified ten years out, and that the ten years could be spent in preparation. In other words, do nothing, or certainly very little, until a tangible threat is identified, then develop a response/defense. A risky proposition, one that was thankfully tossed aside during the years immediately before the second go-round.

 

 

[W. Clark]

I agree that money was the primary reason. But the navy's new construction could not keep up with war time losses, particularly in 40-42. And the result was that the total dropped from 69 to 61 during 42 even though the navy received 17 new constructions during 40-42. IMHO the primary reason was the poor performance of RN designs AA.

 

WMC

[healey36]

Construction during the war, I can't really speak to. I'd need to do a lot more reading. Financial constraints would certainly have been off the table once hostilities commenced and the realization that it would be a long, tough slog was made. Ship-building capacity was likely an issue as merchant ship losses accelerated. The Americans had similar problems initially, but the resources were seemingly endless and when guys like Henry Kaiser, Eugene Grace, and others got more involved, construction ramped up exponentially. Bottom line, defending a global empire required a lot of assets, and the RN didn't have sufficient cruiser numbers going in.

 

I think ship-borne AA was a problem for everyone at the start; witness the multiple rebuilds by USN for many classes during the war, seriously adding/upgrading AA mounts. It seems everyone low-balled the effectiveness of aircraft as a threat to surface ships to some degree. The loss of Prince of Wales and Repulse looks almost reckless in hindsight, but it probably was not viewed as facing such long odds given the RN's experience up to that point...maybe. The RN operated in a lot of areas where it was within range of substantial numbers of land-based bombers...I would agree with the notion that they were unprepared for that.

[W. Clark]

I agree that poor AA performance affected every navy out there, especially at the beginning of the war. But the level of the problem for the Royal Navy and as consequence the Dominion navies was largely self-inflicted. The Admiralty knew that its ships had poor AA performance and really did little about it. They were still designing DDs with SP MB through 42 even they lost more DDs to a/c in 39-42 than any other reason. They had known this since the mid 30s due to the fleet's inability to hit their target drones during excises and in effect did nothing to resolve their problem. The USN for all its myopia saw early on that a/c would be a problem and devoted ever increasing resources to combat that. As a consequence, it had the overall best AA throughout the war. The constant up grades were due to the advent of suicide tactics and subsequent need to break the attacking a/c up and not just shoot it down.

 

WMC

[healey36]

Help me out...what do you mean with the term "SP MB"? That is unfamiliar.

 

I can't really speak to either the USN's or the RN's AA upgrade programs, other than to say there was IMHO a concerted effort by the USN and perhaps a somewhat less diligent effort by the RN (although that is subjective). I look at DD's like HMS Wallace (a personal favorite), from a WWI design commissioned in 1919, who underwent a number of upgrade/conversions both before and during the war. Starting in 1938, she had all of her 4.7-inch Mk 1 removed and replaced with two twin QF 4-inch Mk XVI and a quad 40mm "multiple pom-pom" aft. There were also smaller fifty-cal quad mounts added amidships. In 1942, she got a pair Oerlikon 20mm, then in 1944, the quad fifty-cal were replaced with a pair of single 20mm "pom-pom". Despite all of this, she still got pounded in the Med. According to Manning (The British Destroyer) and Campbell (Naval Weapons of WWII), development of the 40mm quad was significantly hindered during the run-up to the war due to funding priorities.

 

I'd stand by the notion that the RN's declining cruiser and destroyer numbers was the result of unanticipated losses due to some combination of poor preparation, funding, and tactics, together with a shipbuilding capacity stretched to the absolute breaking point once the Battle of the Atlantic got rolling. You would not want to have been an RN tin-can sailor those first few years of the war.

 

One clarification to my earlier statement re: Prince of Wales, a factor in her loss must certainly have been that three of her four Type 282 radar sets were out of action when she departed Singapore. By no stretch am I saying a full complement of radar would have saved her, just that she was significantly impaired. I seem to recall reading somewhere that the Type 282 sets were terrifically vulnerable to battle damage, especially torpedo hits. The 282 was a set used on RN DD's, I think. The whole armament/radar/fire-direction thing seems to have been problematic for the RN in the early going where aircraft were involved. 

[W. Clark]

​I'm not saying that they made no effort. But it's hard to justify a conscious decision in view of their war time experience to lay down destroyers with a single purpose 4.7" mounting that was little different than those fitted on Amazon or the Tribals in 1942. 

 

WMC