The Butterfly Effect: A British AAR

Chapter LXXVI: Family Meeting Part IV - A Matter of Family Pride.​

As we consider the aerial portions of the Conference there is one question that must be answered before all others; Why were the Dominions keen on involvement at all? The costs were not insignificant, especially given the fragile recovery and stretched budgets, and there was a world of difference between rallying to the Empire at war and committing to an extended peace time deployment. The answer can be found in the the successes, both military and political, of the Royal Australian Air Force during the Abyssinian War.

The relatively modest force sent had out-performed it's British counterpart for much of the early stages of the war, forging itself a strong reputation with friend and foe alike. These military feats had bestowed upon the Australian government a string of advantages, not least a strong position at the Imperial conference and a substantial boost in the opinion polls. While the latter concentrated the minds of many a politician it was the former that exercised the minds of the more statesman like thinkers. The RAAF experience showed was that a meaningful air force was within reach, one that could work with it's British parent service on almost equal terms. This was a goal both Empire loyalists and independence seekers in the Dominions could support, if perhaps for different reasons.

Having covered the positive of the RAAF's war we should also consider the negatives, the successes not being entirely welcomed by the Australian government. If the RAAF's performance had caused embarrassed consternation for the British Air Ministry, that was as nothing compared to the reaction of their Australians counterparts. The Australian Prime Minister, Joseph Lyons, had sent out a political gesture but got back conquering heroes with a literally sky high profile and a long, expensive, shopping list. While modernisation of the RAAF had been on the agenda pre-war, it had been as much with an eye to the industrial and commercial aspects as the military arguments. Post war, particularly after the heroic return of the aircraft and their pilots, public opinion swung behind re-armament as an end in itself. For a government looking to cash in on the military successes of the war and benefit in a 'Kahki Election' that meant giving the military at least some of what it wanted, regardless of tightly budgeted pre-war plans. On balance though the political positives were felt to more than outweighed the financial costs, and were enough to encourage other Dominion governments to look more carefully at their own air forces.


As one would expect Australia and New Zealand were the keenest on the initiative, being nearest to Japan they were closest to the biggest military threat facing the Empire. At the other end of the spectrum Prime Minister Smuts made it clear that, despite his own keenness on Imperial co-operation, South Africa's lingering domestic issues forced his hand and Imperial Defence would have to remain an 'At war only' issue for the short term. That left Canada where the situation was quite different from that in Britain and the other Dominions. Quite simply the Abyssinian War had had little impact on most Canadians; the Royal Canadian Navy had roused itself into energetic anti-submarine patrols, until it was confirmed the Italian Navy was indeed bottled up in the Mediterranean, and the government did mobilise, calling up the navy and army reservists. However these units were soon stood down when it became apparent there could be no role for them in the war and the navy returned to port with no Italians to hunt, at which point the only Canadians involved in the war were the official observers, newspaper reporters and those workers enjoying the upswing in British orders to fuel the war. The political situation was therefore somewhat unfavourable for the government; despite Canada having technically won she had not fought, thus there was little 'Khaki' poll boost, indeed support actually dropped as the Anglophile section of the electorate punished their leaders for failing to support Britain.

This outcome was somewhat unfair on the Canadian government, Prime Minister Mackenzie King would never be the keenest of Imperialist but he had supported what he believed was an entirely 'just' war of self defence. It was not lack of will or motive that had stopped Canadian involvement, but lack of means to do so. The mobilisation had exposed the decidedly poor state of Canada's armed forces, while patriotic fervour had ensured the reservists turned up when the call was issued, there had been precious little modern equipment to give them. The non-permanent militia battalions were issued with equipment their Great War forebears would have though obsolete, while the RCAF's 'wartime' squadrons existed mostly on paper. The Royal Canadian Navy, by managing to get to sea and conduct their wartime role of trade protection and submarine hunting, was by far the best performing service but was not immune to problems. The quick tempo of war time operations soon told on the ancient 'S' class destroyers HMCS Vancouver and HMCS Champlain, hastening their paying off and leaving a gaping hole in an already small fleet.

While these performances were something of an embarrassment for the government King had the additional problem that the war was just too short. Barely had the government begun the slow, and expensive, task of bringing the military up to scratch than news of the first victories filtered back from North Africa. By the time Canada felt ready to begin talking with Britain about a military contribution the war was clearly in it's final stages, making such a contribution moot and denying King the possibility of a popularity-recovering gesture. Fortunately King did have available the entirely accurate justification of blaming the problems on the savage defence cuts of his predecessor, Richard Bennett's government having slashed spending in the early years of the Depression. While this was effective in the short term King was well aware that unless he kept his promises of increasing defence spending and better co-operation with Britain the short term polling damage could well become permanent.

Committed to spending the problem became where to direct the extra resources and how to demonstrate co-operation with Britain in a way that would be 'useful' to Canada. At the simplest level every service benefited, the breadth of pressures and influence from newspapers and select committees pushed the cabinet towards ensuring all branches benefited. The detail revealed that while funding was indeed spread around, it was not spread evenly, some doing considerably better than others. The 'losers' were undoubtedly the Army, King using the age old political ploy of announcing an existing plan as something new and dressing up a long planned re-organisation as a new initiative. That is not to say things were all bad, the original plan had called for several regiments to be disbanded or amalgamated to consolidate manpower and resources, the new plan instead paid for new equipment and funded a recruitment drive to fill out the empty rank, a most welcome change. The headline news however was slightly more controversial - the mechanisation of the cavalry and the formation of the Canadian Armoured Corps. As in Britain the Canadian General Staff was in favour of the former but somewhat unsure about the later, while there was general consensus on the horse being obsolete how to replace it with was far less clear. The announcement was therefore long on words but short on detail, promising funds for the ubiquitous 'Two Ms' (Mechanisation and Modernisation) but not actually saying how the money would be spent. The Canadian General Staff indicating a preference to wait until the results of Britain's post-war review to see what lessons Canada could learn before spending their windfall, a money saving position King was more than happy to go along with.


At sea the Royal Canadian Navy had very high hopes, given Canada's position and dependence on exports their mission of trade protection gave them a strong position in relation to the 'useful' strand of King's thinking. The Navy could also be certain as to what to spend it's money on, the big post-Abyssinian naval debates were frankly irrelevant for the RCN; they would not be getting either battleships or aircraft carriers so the relative superiority of one over the other was of almost purely academic interest. Finally the early paying off of the 'S' class destroyers gave them a very imminent claim on the money just to maintain their current position, let alone any expansion. On the negative side though was politics, even under the most ambitious expansion plans the RCN would be far smaller than the nearest Empire naval force, the Royal Navy's America and West Indies Station. Therefore on a 'bang per diplomatic buck' measure the RCN was at a considerable disadvantage to it's main rival in the review, the Royal Canadian Air Force.

The final outcome of these competing arguments was a naval settlement better than the Army received, in pure cash terms at least, but far from what the Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Nelles had asked for. Nelles had hoped that Canada's previous naval purchases, the two River class destroyers HMCS Saguenay and Skeena, had set a precedent and that the RCN would be procuring new build vessels instead of old Royal Navy types. Unfortunately for the Naval Staff economic reality and political necessity insisted otherwise and a delegation was duly despatched to London to look into purchasing ex-RN inter-war standard destroyers for Canadian service. The big plus for Nelles though was that rather than just the two replacements they needed, the delegation was instructed to return with half a dozen vessels, including a large flotilla leader, enabling the RCN to put a 'proper' squadron to sea for the first time since the 1920s. On the co-operation front there were also to be discussion over the permanent detachment of at least one RCN destroyer to the America and West Indies Station to work on the anti-piracy and smuggling patrols, both problems Canada was keen to see confined to the Caribbean.

That left the Royal Canadian Air Force, a force very much in transition at the time due to long planned institutional changes. The force had been almost entirely civilian orientated for much of it's brief existence, indeed it was only in early 1936 that it became a purely military force and was able to hand off it's fire-fighting, forestry patrol and other such duties to the newly formed Department of Transport. Years of focus on non-military missions had left the RCAF with a cadre of technically skilled pilots and ground crew but absolutely no experience of actual combat operations and a dearth of suitable aircraft. The first step had been forming purely military squadrons, as opposed to the 'dual-use' or pure civilian squadrons that had gone before. The Air Staff had signalled their ambition by forming Army Co-operation, Bomber and Torpedo Bomber squadrons, indicating their desire for an all-role air force. This however had been the easy part, the harder question was which aircraft to equip with, a decision interrupted by the outbreak of war and the despatching of as many officers as possible to the theatre as 'observers', the hope being they would gain the experience necessary to help transform the force. When these observers returned they found themselves in an enviable position; the RCAF was, thanks to the example of her sister service the RAAF, politically favoured and would have the all funds she so desperately needed. This made Canada the only Dominion to attend the aerial portion of the conference with both an open mind and the funding to carry through any decision. There was however a gap between the Canadian airmen keen to make the RCAF a world class, active air force and their political masters who took a wider, though less well focused view. This made the discussions between Australia and Britain on Far East deployments and procurement the subject of intense Canadian interest.

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Notes:
The Canadian section is a bit of a detour I know, but after I'd written it I could hardly discard it. Even if it is somewhat larger than I first intended.

So the Canadian Armoured Corps comes around ~4 years early, as does mechanising the cavalry (there were still alarming numbers of Canadian horse soldiers in 1940). However they're still not sure how to buy tanks so are waiting for an idea from Britain, no guarantee they'll slavishly follow it of course but Britain has at least used tanks in combat so it would be quite foolish to utterly ignore such experience. The 1936 re-org did indeed plan for disbanding and amalgamations to try and concentrate manpower, and formalising infantry-tank regiments. TTL the Army could probably argue for recruiting a few more men instead and waiting to make the correct choice on tanks. Game effects will make the Canadian AI pumping out INF divisions a bit more realistic, on tanks who knows?

The RCN gets a slight boost, not what they were looking for but at least they start expansion earlier than OTL which will help (if they keep up the pace). As with the Army they're probably going to study the British war record, particularly the failure to sink any subs. Not sure what they'll do about it but they will look at it.

Piracy and smuggling in the Caribbean? My thoughts are that an extra few years of Prohibition means an ever stronger Mafia and general criminal underworld, more specifically I has an interesting scenario based around the growth in water borne smuggling (gangs far from the Mexican or Canadian border trying to 'cut out the middle man' and import booze directly) escalating into piracy as Mob wars expanded onto the seas, helped by an impoverished USN being confined to base and massive bribery of the US Coast Guard. Sadly with Landon as President I had to cut that idea, though as it's now States Rights Prohibition repeal not the OTL version I'm hopeful of saving some part of it in a different form.

The RCAF was indeed in a terrible state and only started to emerge in the late 1930s. It was pretty much a civilian operation until late 1936 OTL so no real change in re-org changes, the big difference being King waving around a cheque book for political and domestic reasons. As with the Army I can see the Canadian Air Staff waiting before making a final decision, King can't back down from spending commitments so they can wait till post-conference to decide what to buy and where to put it.

On interesting point, Canada was not without it's own 'built it yourself' approach to trainers (see the equally 1937 CCF Maple Leaf) and trying to expand beyond licence manufacture. Could be an interesting three-way scuffle between London, Canberra and Ottawa over the 'who builds what where' issue.