Chapter twelve: A review of the British armed forces (III).
The Royal Navy: Ye mighty one.
Finally, while the Army and the RAF were modernized and enlarged, the same process took place in Royal Navy. By 1936, the majority of the Royal Navy’s screening ships were decent but too short-legged destroyers (
A-, B-, C-, D-, E- and
F classes). Then newer destroyers (
G-, H-, &
I class destroyers) were to join the Fleet from 1936 onwards. For a while it was considered to replace the older destroyers and to send them to the scrap yards as the new destroyers. However, this idea was soon forgotten and the elder ships remained in service, although there were plans to transfer the five
C-class destroyers to the Royal Canadian Navy. However, all Royal Navy destroyers, the "interwar standard" ones, were being eclipsed by foreign designs, particularly from Japan, Italy, and Germany. To counteract this trend, the Admiralty decided to build a new destroyer type, with an emphasis on gunnery over torpedo warfare. This design envisioned a 1,850-ton ship with a speed of 36.25 knots, an endurance of 5,500 nautical miles (10,200 km; 6,300 mi), and five twin 4.7 inch guns as main armament: the
Tribal-class.
The HMS Ilex, an I-class destroyer, entering Malta harbour.
The Royal Navy’s cruiser, battlecruiser and battleship squadrons were in no better shape than their escorts when it came to age. Most of the light cruisers were still the Great War
C-class cruisers, and the
D- and
E-class light cruisers of the postwar period. To replace them several new classes had been designed and introduced into service (
Leander-, Arethusa-, the
Town- and the
Dido-class), ships that had been designed to be equal in size and effective power to heavy cruisers and to protect the trade routes, too. The heavy cruiser squadrons were equipped with the
County-class ships, which, by the mid-1930s, had replaced the
Hawkins ships.
The HMS Leander, seen here short after joining the Home Fleet.
The battlecruisers offered a curious dilemma. After the Great War their role had been fullfilled by the new heavy cruisers and battleships. However, the Fleet retained three battlecruisers,
Renown, Repulse and
Hood, after some hesitations and rumours that all of them were to be converted into air carriers. In the end nothing came out of it and the three ships underwent a thorough reconstruction during the mid 1930’s.
The HMS
Hood was the pride of the Fleet, if not the Empire itself. Built during the Great War, the
Hood and her planned sisters of the
Admiral-class battlecruisers were designed in response to the German
Mackensen-class battlecruisers which were reported to be more heavily armed and armoured than the latest British battlecruisers. As the German navy was reduced to impotence in the first clashes of the war, only
Hood was completed because the ships required labour and material that could be put to better use building merchant ships needed to replace those lost to the German U-boat campaign. The
Hood displaced forty-two thousand tons and was 860 feet long. She was armed with eight 15-inch guns, had a complement of 1325 in 1934 and a top speed of 32 knots.
One of the 8-barrel 2-pdr pom-pom mounts which were added in the 1930s to the British battlecruisers.
Even the battleships fleet was affected by the Washington Treaty, which imposed scrappings of capital ships (1) and limitations on new construction. Thus, by the 1930s the Royal Navy had just three separate classes of battleships, the early Great War
Queen Elizabeth-class, the Great War
Revenge-class, and the mid-1920’s
Nelson-class.
The
Queen Elizabeth’s (
HMS Queen Elizabeth, Warspite, Barham, Valiant and
Malaya), while getting advanced in age, were still powerful ships: they had an excellent combination of weaponry, armour and speed. The class was armed with eight 15-inch guns but the ships were quite different from the original design: during the late 1920’s and early to mid-1930’s the ships received a complete upgrading, which included new machinery, deck armor upgrades, torpedo belt armor, new superstructure, new secondary armament and anti-aircraft armament, and many electronics upgrades.
The HMS Barnham, seen here prior to depart for a spell on the Mediterranean Sea.
The
Revenge-class battleships (
HMS Royal Oak, Royal Sovereign, Revenge, Resolution and
Ramillies) were smaller and economical versions of the
Queen Elizabeth’s and were designed to be able to use both coal and oil as its fuel source. This was partially due to fears over the total reliance of the QE class on oil as their fuel source. To be cheaper than the QEs their size was reduced and their engines were less powerful, and their slim single funnel distinguished them from the QEs, which had twin funnels (or thick trunked funnels after the modernization of the 1920’s). The armour was very different to that of the QEs: the armoured deck was raised much higher in the ship, and the side armour was much more extensive at its full thickness. The Revenge class ships were flawed vessels, a poor plataform of fire and, worse still, unable to be improved with more powerful machinery later in their lives.
The first British battleships built since the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the Nelson class was the newest battleships. As the Kannalkampf (1914) had shown the value of fierpower and protection over speed and maneuverability, the Admiralty drew up plans for massive, heavily armoured battlecruisers and battleships, far larger and stronger than all previous vessels: the
G3 battlecruisers and the proposed
N3 battleships. Their development was curtailed by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the ships were cancelled. The Treaty limited all nations' battleships to 35,000 tons and 16-inch guns.
The limits of the treaty inevitably afected the design of the new ships, and the
Nelson class sacrificed speed for being well-armed and defended. The need to limit displacement resulted in a radical new warship design, inspired in the G3 and N3 designs. To reduce the weight of armour, the main gun turrets were mounted all forward, in front of the bridge, shortening the armoured length, thus increasing firepower and armor, while keeping weight low. However, the
Nelson class was a failed design with some shortcomings. Despite the rear location of the superstructure, the center of gravity of the class was still too far forward which caused maneuverability problems in high wind. The inclined armor disposition considerably increased the danger of shells diving under the armor belt. Worse still, the guns suffered considerable barrel wear and had a large dispersion pattern. As a result their muzzle velocities were lowered which reduced their penetrative power. A heavier shell was needed to offset this, but the cost of producing new shells, and modifying shell handling and storage equipment, had come at a time when RN funding had been heavily reduced.
The HMS Nelson at Porsmouth. The Nelsons were the most powerful ships in the Royal Navy and, at the same time, the most maligned of the service.
The aircraft carrier was a kind of an enigm for the Royal Navy. Some people at the Admiralty were sure that the carriers were to become a key element in the naval war, but scepticism remained. In the end, the first experiences with the
HMS Furious, the converted battlecruisers
HMS Glorious and
HMS Courageous, the
HMS Eagle and the
HMS Hermes began to win the hearts and souls of the Navy. All of them had small air wings, in contrast with the American and Japanese navies, (the larger air groups were those of the
HMS Glorious and
Courageous, who had 48 aircrafts), but this changed when the keel of the
HMS Ark Royal was laid: the new carrier was to have an air wing of seventy-two aircrafts.
The submarine section of the Royal Navy was favoured in its development by the successes of the German Unterseeboots in the Great War. Thus, by 1936 several classes of submarines were in service and had several more in development.
The oldest submarines in service were the six
Odin-class submarines, launched in the late 1920s to replace the ageing L-class. The
Odin’s had large engine and propulsion system that gave them a surface speed of 17.5 knots and 8.5 knot submerged. Armament consisted of eight 21-inch torpedo tubes (6 bow, 2 stern) and one 4-inch gun plus Lewis machine guns on the foredeck of the conning tower. The Lewis's were a direct response to an increased awareness of submarines inherent vulnerability to attack by air. These boats were the first British submarines fitted with Asdic and VLF radio which could be used at periscope depth. After them came the
Parthian-class, a six boat class. These ships were almost identical to the
Odin class, the only difference being a different bow shape, which gave them a submerged speed of nine knots. In the early 1930s the Fleet received the four
Rainbow-class submarines, which internally where no different from the
Parthian-class. Both classes were designed as long range patrol submarines for the Far East.
HMS Parthian off Chinese coast in the 1930s.
The early 1930s saw the modernisation of the submarine force to meet the need for smaller boats to patrol the restricted waters of the North Sea and the Mediterranean Sea. The result of all this was the twelve
S-class submarines, coastal boats with a displacement of 650 tons and a crewe of only thirty-six officers and men. Armed with six 21-inch torpedo tubes in the bow, one 3-inch gun on the foredeck and one Vickers .303 caliber machinegun on the conning tower, the
S-class were loaded with only twelve torpedoes which, along with their small size, limited their scope of operable areas without the assistance of one of the Fleets submarine tenders.
Another design was the
River class, three submarines designed to operate as part of a fleet; and the
Grampus-class, a group of six minelaying submarines which were to enter into service from 1936 onwards. The last submarines were those of the
Triton class, designed in the 1930s to replace the aging
Odin and
Parthian-classes. Fifteen pre-war submarines were ordered under the Programmes of 1935 (one), 1936 (next four), 1937 (next seven) and 1938 (last three).
(1) To avoid that fate, in ATL some ships were sold, as the
HMS Agincourt, which was bought by Brazil as the
Rio de Janeiro; the
HMS Erin, bought by Argentina as the
Buenos Aires; and the
HMS Canada, sold to the Chilean Navy as the
Almirante Latorre.
@trekaddict: Indeed, but something tells me that some top brass are a bit afraid of the Vulture engine...
@El Pip: I'm tempted to sell some Manchesters to Spain but without the customary civil way I have not the slightest idea where they could use them (Gibraltar is not an option, it goes without saying). Perhaps Turkey may like some Manchesters and Tornados, if the Red Scare goes high enough in Ankara...
@trekaddict -2-: That's evil. Too evil even for me.