For King and Country

Just a to add a little to the discussion...

Yes Rodney had 9 16" guns against the Italian light cruisers. However, it must be remebered that the Italians had twenty 6" guns and 12 torpedo tubes and could race about at 34 knots versus Rodney's 28 knots. Also their were only two Battle-class destroyers facing five Italian destroyers in the initial stages of the battle, the Battles able to provide eigth 4.5 inch guns versus the Italians' 26 4.7 inch guns.

On the German side, the Deschimag-class were armed with five 5.9" guns, hence the appraisal as small light cruisers, and the other German destroyers had five 5" guns.

Needless to say, if you look at things merely at the number of and the size of the gun tubes of the two sides, and I were a gambling man, I'd put more of my money on the Italians and Germans than on my beloved Royal Navy. o

But, all this aside... just wait for the Royal Navy's response to this battle.

I should have it all polished and ready for posting this weekend. Stay tuned.

Tactically and strategically, the Battle of the Channel Islands was a victory of the same magnitude of the 1805 Battle of Cape Finisterre Battle of Cape Finisterre in that the losses inflicted upon the Kriegsmarine and Regia Marina convinced Berlin and Rome that any further attempts to join forces and take the naval war to the beaches of the British Isles would be impossible. This despite the fact that if such a concentrated effort was undertaken following the July 8 battle, the Royal Navy would have been hard pressed to prevent either fleet from bombarding English ports and coastal cities with impunity.

This fact also assisted in the matériel victory of the battle. Seizing upon not only the fact that Commodore Storeyville, now Rear Admiral Sir Joseph Storeyville, DSO, OBE, was forced to take such a small Channel Fleet into battle against superior forces but also the horrible casualty numbers among the Motor Torpedo Boat squadrons, the Admiralty’s Third Sea Lord pressed for a change. The Third Sea Lord’s responsibility, and hence his ability to loudly proclaim the need for a change, was for procurement of men and matériel for the Royal Navy. The current Third Sea Lord was Admiral Sir Philip Quelch, affectionately known through the fleet as “El Pip” due to an incident on his midshipman’s cruise involving Spanish gendarmes and a house of ill repute near Gibraltar, was a firm proponent a massive fleet harkening back to the days when the British Army was considered a piece of ordinance fired by the Royal Navy for actions the Fleet itself could not reach. Labouring quite vocally for the laying of more ship keels since before the disastrous loss of the Channel Fleet’s heavy cruisers on November 16, “El Pip” Quelch was able to convince the Imperial General Staff, and more importantly King George, for the Channel Fleet be strengthened by the recalling of the American/West Indies Station and Africa Station squadrons and using them to bolster the Channel Fleet. The ships of these two squadrons, the Danae-class light cruiser HMS Dragon, the Leander-class light cruiser HMS Ajax, and the V-class destroyers HMS Westminster and HMS Vehement from the West Indies, and the Leander-class HMS Leander, C-class light cruiser HMS Carlisle, and the V-class HMS Versatile and HMS Virago, would bring the Channel Fleet to the battleship Rodney, four light cruisers, ten destroyers and nearly forty motor torpedo boats.

This transfer of ships was not Quelch’s (moving forward to be known as ‘El Pip’) only goal. Writing in an Admiralty White Paper that was addressed to the Imperial General Staff, His Majesty the King, and Parliament, El Pip argued for and provided a proposal to institute a crash building project as well as the acceleration of development of the Fleet’s next generation of warships. ‘The naval battles fought thus far in the war, he wrote, have shown that while the ships currently in service with the Fleet are formidable combatants, however, they are either beginning to show their age or design flaws that are a detriment have become apparent, and for the Empire be able to defend all of her far flung lands that bend the knee to the Crown, the full vigor of the Empire’s shipwrights need to be concentrated upon the design of ships that will supersede the abilities of the Fleet’s current ships.’

The White Paper continued to contend that while waiting for these new warships to be designed, the Fleet was in sorry need of heavy warships to make up for the losses inflicted upon the Channel Fleet, yet without hampering the development and eventual construction of the new ships, the successful pre-war tactic of scrapping obsolete warships and using their scraps and crews to create new ships not an option for a combatant strapped Fleet. Additionally, the ships to be built needed to be able to take the war to the Empire’s enemies as a member of a fleet or alone anywhere across the globe and successfully inflict the will of the British Empire, as El Pip wrote in the White Paper, ‘… without contestation! ’

The solution, according to El Pip and his supporters within the Fleet, was for the laying the keels of eight new vessels. Four would be modified County-class cruisers, having nine 8” guns in three turrets, two funnels, improved engines, and up to date electronics versus the existing County-class heavy cruisers having eight 8” guns in four turrets, four funnels and five year old electronics. The four cruisers would be HMS Northumberland (which had actually had been started and then canceled in 1922 due to the Washington Naval Treaty) and then HMS Durbin, HMS Auckland and HMS Ceylon.

The more audacious position of El Pip’s White Paper was for the resurrection of what had been looked upon as to be the pride of the Royal Navy and the successors of HMS Hood, the G3-class battlecruisers cancelled due to the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922. These magnificently designed yet never-built "battlecruisers" were, as designed and planned, more heavily protected than any existing battleship at time of their inception and with slight modification would still be more protected than any ship currently in service with any combatant facing the Empire, and their only claim to battlecruiser status coming from their high speed.

The G3 design, which preceded the Nelson-class battleships and provided those battleships with a good deal of their design, was to be a large ship, reaching a length of 856 ft and a beam of 106 ft, with a crew complement of 1720 officers and ratings. Yet the most apparent difference of the design was the several unconventional ideas that went into their design. The most apparent was the concentration of the main battery, nine 16” guns in three turrets, forward of the funnel. While commentators of 1920 attributed this to the idea that since British ships never ran away from a battle they did not need to fire astern and could concentrate all guns on the enemy without turning side on, the reality was that in order to achieve the desired scale of armour protection it was necessary to reduce the length of the armoured part of the ship to a minimum. This led to the concentration of the turrets and associated magazines and hence the limited firing arcs, a 40-degree blind spot aft for the main batteries. Adding to this limited firing arc was a tower bridge structure, which was designed to reduce draughts and be made secure against gas attack. The tower bridge was sited behind the first two gun turrets and in front of the third which consequently suffered from restricted firing arcs, namely being unable to fire directly ahead along with the first two turrets. The Nelson-class battleships had a similar issue with the third turret of their main batteries, but thus far in the war, both battleship’s captains had been able to use astute ship handling to negate what some considered a flaw.

The G3s secondary battery consisted of sixteen dual purpose 6” guns in eight twin turrets, four along side the tower bridge and two along side the aft secondary bridge, and the last two slightly aft of those. The forward turrets faced fore and aft, two to starboard and two to port, while the aft turrets were situated facing aft yet provided with nearly one hundred and sixty degree firing arcs. The G3s secondary battery was provided with the ability to fire at surface targets and to provide 'barrage fire' against aircraft (specifically torpedo bombers) in tandem with the battlecruiser’s anti-aircraft batteries. Taking lessons from studies completed by Admiral Cunningham prior to the outbreak of hostilities concerning the abilities of aircraft against surface vessels, the G3s proposed by El Pip had an already strong anti-aircraft battery of six quick-firing 4.7” guns and four ten barrel 40mm pom-pom guns augmented with an additional thirty-two 2-pdr guns in four eight barrel pom-poms, all tied into a central directed fire control system, making them a formidable ship to be attacked from the air.

Protecting the proposed and modified G3-class battlecruisers would be the “all-or-nothing” concept first espoused by the United States Navy and fully embraced by the post-Great War Royal Navy, complete armour protection for all important areas and none for the rest. The resulting G3 design was thus provided with a twelve to fourteen inch armour plate sloped at an 18-degree angle covering the amidships citadel and turrets, and 4.5” to 9” deck armour forward and aft. Horizontal protections was excellent, the heaviest in any capital ship in the 1920s and quite possibly still the heaviest in 1940, with underwater protection augmented by bulges, crush tubes, and liquid-loaded compartments. The design was far better protected than the Hood, whom the G3s were designed to replace, equal to contemporary battleships, and if built still superior to almost anything afloat in any navy.


They were designated as battlecruisers, and as such needed to be fast ships despite the fifty-three thousand tons they would weigh if built. Under the 1920 design, the flush decked G3s with their transom sterns would reach 32 knots thanks to twenty Yarrow small tube boilers in nine boiler rooms, pushing four Brown-Curtis geared turbines and shafts, the exhaust created being released through one funnel aft of the number three turret. The G3s proposed by El Pip in his White Paper have their length increased to 870 ft and their beam widened to 112 ft to incorporate twenty-four boilers in ten boiler rooms and an additional funnel, driving the same turbines to push the G3s to a top speed of 36 knots.

As designed in 1920 and as modified in 1940, the G3 ranked as the most powerful capital ships ever designed in Britain. They were a new type, a true fast battleship, and as far advanced over the preceding Hood as that ship was over HMS Renown. Most importantly argued El Pip, they were what the Royal Navy needed and what the Empire needed.


To a British Empire still reeling from the loss of the beloved Hood only six months previously, the White Paper struck a nerve within the Crown, with Parliament, and when released, in the general public. The clamouring for the full acceptance of El Pip’s proposal that was produced shocked not only the Crown and Admiralty, but the public itself, as if something within the paper called to something within the psyche of the Crown’s subjects to once more have the world tremble at the thought and sight of a Royal Navy vessel appearing off the coast.

Within two weeks of the paper’s release, with a unanimous vote of support from Parliament, the proposal was ordered to be implemented, and the Admiralty began awarding contracts to shipyards. While the contracts were being awarded, the question was raised as to what to name the about to be laid G3s. Under the original plans of 1920, the lead ship was to be christened Invincible after the Great War battlecruiser lost during the Battle of Jutland with all but six of her crew, with the remaining hulls to be christened as Indomitable, Inflexible, and Indefatigable. While the names were proud names that were much revered within the Royal Navy, it was decided that the ships should be named to form a link of solidarity throughout the Empire and it was decided to scrap the plan of transforming the G3s into I-class battlecruisers. Instead, it was determined that the new battlecruisers would be named after the Empire’s four patron saints.

As dawn rose on July 30, 1940, along with the keels of the four new County-class heavy cruisers (HMS Northumberland, HMS Durbin, HMS Auckland and HMS Ceylon), with great ceremony the workers at the shipyard of Swan Hunter (where the great pre-Great War cruise liners RMS Mauretania and RMS Carpathia were built just after the turn of the century) began laying the keel of what would be christened as HMS St. George, the keel of HMS St. David was laid down at the shipyard of Beardmore and Company, Fairfields Shipbuilding upon the Clyde began building HMS St. Andrew, and John Brown & Company workers gathered to begin creating HMS St. Patrick.


Thus did the Battle of the Channel Islands provide a victory for the British Empire and the Royal Navy that transcended a mere tactical victory and provided the upward swing from the Fleet’s nadir of war time operations.

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I do believe that will make people happy, eh?

Up next, a visit with an old friend.... stay tuned.