The Royal Navy in Eastern Waters: Linchpin of Victory, 1935–1942

By Andrew Boyd and N.A.M. Rodger

How British naval power in the Indian Ocean played a critical early role in WWII: “Commands the reader's attention. . . . a history game-changer.” —Warship, Naval Books of the Year
 
This new work tells the compelling story of how the Royal Navy secured the strategic space from Egypt in the west to Australasia in the East through the first half of the Second World War—and explains why this contribution, made while Russia’s fate remained in the balance and before American economic power took effect, was so critical. Without it, the war would certainly have lasted longer and decisive victory might have proved impossible.
 
After the protection of the Atlantic lifeline, this was surely the Royal Navy’s finest achievement, the linchpin of victory. The book moves authoritatively between grand strategy, intelligence, accounts of specific operations, and technical assessment of ships and weapons. It challenges established perceptions of Royal Navy capability and will change the way we think about Britain’s role and contribution in the first half of the war. The Navy of 1939 was stronger than usually suggested and British intelligence did not fail against Japan. Nor was the Royal Navy outmatched by Japan, coming very close to a British Midway off Ceylon in 1942. And it was the Admiralty, demonstrating a reckless disregard for risks, that caused the loss of Force Z in 1941. The book also lays stress on the key part played by the American relationship in Britain’s Eastern naval strategy. Superbly researched and elegantly written, it adds a hugely important dimension to our understanding of the war in the East.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Mar 30, 2017
• ISBN: 9781473892507

Andrew Boyd

Andrew Boyd is an experienced journalist who has reported extensively around the world. His latest book Neither Bomb nor Bullet tells the inspirational story of Archbishop Ben Kwashi on the frontline of faith in Nigeria. Three times assassins have tried to kill him, but each time it just concentrates the mind. In the words of this warm and courageous man: "If God spares my life, no matter how short or long that is, I have something worth living and dying for. That kind of faith is what I am passing on to the coming generations. This world is not our home, we are strangers here, we've got business to do, let's get on and do it."

Book preview

Introduction

When I told people I was writing this book, the usual reaction was: ‘Oh, you mean the Prince of Wales and Repulse , the fall of Singapore, and all that.’ The more informed might refer to imperial over-stretch, arrogant underestimation of the Japanese, and inappropriate political meddling in naval dispositions by Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Some claimed to see a gloomy parallel between my chosen topic and Britain’s recent interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Was there not a classic British pattern here of reluctance to make adequate defence provision, a conservative military establishment unable to recognise new threats, and poor political risk assessment?

These reactions reflect assumptions which are embedded in popular national memory. They are influenced by the way professional historians have described and interpreted Britain’s effort to secure the eastern part of its empire from the 1920s through to the Second World War. The story conveyed consistently from the first post-1945 writings onward is one of strategic illusion in the interwar period, catastrophic defeat and moral collapse when the Japanese attacked in late 1941, irrelevance as the focus shifted to the Pacific theatre in 1942, and, finally, partial redemption from a successful Burma campaign in the last year of the war. British defeats in the East are explained primarily as the inevitable consequence of resource weakness and imperial over-stretch, especially as regards naval power.¹ Over-stretch, it is suggested, led Britain to pursue a flawed pre-war policy to secure Britain’s Far East possessions not with a permanent military presence, but by deploying a naval fleet to Singapore only in time of crisis, the ‘Singapore strategy’. The prevailing view insists that Britain never had the naval resources to protect a two-hemisphere empire, let alone meet a simultaneous triple threat from Germany, Italy and Japan. It certainly could not counter Japan once it was fighting for its life in Europe in 1940/41. Furthermore, the Royal Navy compounded resource weakness by persistently underestimating its Japanese opponent and failing to recognise the potential of modern air power at sea.²

This picture sat conveniently with the view of Britain as being in decline, which became fashionable from the 1960s.³ Rapid collapse in the Far East reflected imperial over-stretch, but also the failings of a backward-looking military leadership and a sclerotic defence industrial base which was unable adequately to meet the demands of modern warfare. Other themes such as racial arrogance and poor intelligence reinforced this narrative. The loss of Singapore and the other Far East territories therefore came to symbolise a wider failure of imperial will and capacity. Meanwhile, the defeats suffered by the Royal Navy in the East surely signalled the end of its claim to be the preeminent maritime power, on which the security of the British Empire rested.⁴ In future, Australia and New Zealand would have to look to the United States for protection. There is also widespread agreement that while Britain’s early war with Japan ended in ignominy, this ultimately had little impact on the overall global struggle against the Axis. Britain’s role in the East was essentially irrelevant to the Allied cause, whatever the blow to imperial standing. The consensus is that both Japan’s own fate, and that of the countries she conquered, was determined solely by American power in what was primarily a Pacific-based conflict.⁵

Even a brief look at British government records from the mid-1930s through to the first half of the war exposes problems with this still predominant narrative. From 1935 onward, the government’s commitment of resources and the Royal Navy’s planning for a future two-hemisphere war was remarkably ambitious. The challenges in dealing with three widely dispersed enemies in the short term were certainly viewed as formidable, but there was no lack of will to invest in the long-term naval defence of the empire in the East. Nor did the pace and quality of naval output from 1935 to 1942 easily fit with the traditional picture of a sclerotic, unresponsive shipbuilding industry. In early 1942, in response to the new Japanese threat, the Royal Navy deployed a larger fleet to the Indian Ocean than it had to any other war theatre previously. It intended to have three-quarters of its major vessels in the eastern theatre by the middle of the year. British decision-makers at the time did not, therefore, see the Indian Ocean as just a sideshow compared to the Atlantic and Mediterranean. On the contrary, they saw its security as critical to the successful conduct of the war. As the Joint Planning Committee emphasised, the consequences of failing to hold the Indian Ocean, including the loss of Persian oil, the Persian supply route to Russia, the whole position in the Middle East, India and, potentially, Australia and New Zealand, were ‘incalculable’. For a while, such a scenario seemed entirely possible. Yet this aspect of the war has received surprisingly little attention.

Despite its numerous commitments elsewhere, and its heavy recent losses, the Royal Navy had the capacity, the resilience and determination to find considerable resources to protect this theatre. There is a discrepancy here between the established portrayal of the naval defence of Britain’s empire in the East as a story of strategic illusion, weakness, and then irrelevance, and the much more positive reality of Royal Navy policy, planning and execution displayed in the official record. Many historians have gone to great lengths to explain why, faced with growing threats in Europe, Britain would never be able to send a fleet to the East. Few acknowledge that when it really mattered, Britain did send one, after all. To argue that commitments in the Atlantic and Mediterranean rendered naval defeat in the East inevitable is to oversimplify.

The records reveal another important challenge to the prevailing historical view. This concerns the portrayal of the debate and decisions over British naval reinforcement to the Far East in the autumn of 1941, which led to the deployment of the battleship Prince of Wales and battlecruiser Repulse, later known as Force Z. The subsequent loss of this force to the aircraft of an ‘upstart Asian power’ was traumatic at the time. But it has also been frequently presented as a fitting symbol for the wider collapse of British imperial and naval power. Starting with the British official history of the naval war published in 1954, responsibility for this disaster has been pinned firmly on Churchill.⁶ He stands accused not only of pursuing an unrealistic goal of political deterrence in pushing for a modern battleship to be deployed direct to Singapore, but of brushing aside professional naval advice. This interpretation ignores substantial and unambiguous Admiralty and Cabinet Office records demonstrating that the naval staff shifted in September that year from their previous cautious defensive strategy in the Indian Ocean to the concept of a forward offensive strategy based on Singapore and, potentially, Manila. This offensive strategy is the direct opposite of that traditionally ascribed to the Admiralty. It was the Admiralty, not the prime minister, who wanted a Royal Navy battle-fleet in Singapore in the immediate run-up to war in late 1941. Their intent to conduct offensive operations with inadequate forces broke with previous policy, and showed reckless disregard for the risks.

This further striking discrepancy between established history and the official records raises important questions. First, why has this shift to a forward strategy, which the Admiralty certainly saw as important at the time, received so little attention?⁷ There are fascinating issues of reliability and integrity here. While some historians have undoubtedly adopted a rather partisan position in telling this story, key contemporary naval witnesses were highly selective in their subsequent testimony during and after the war. Secondly, what caused the shift? The documents record that it took place, but do not adequately explain why. It can, however, be understood by looking at how Far East naval policy evolved across the whole of 1941, rather than concentrating on the wellknown debate over naval reinforcement conducted between the prime minister and First Sea Lord in August that year. In particular, it is important to recognise the impact of developments in other war theatres and, crucially, how American attitudes influenced British strategic thinking during 1940/41. Finally, how much does this issue matter? Did it affect the fate of Force Z and subsequent events? More important, given the symbolism which has become attached to the whole Force Z story, if the facts are fundamentally different, is there a requirement to reconsider the whole way the Singapore strategy and the naval defence of the empire in the East has been presented?

The contemporary British records also reveal two wider problems with the way the naval defence of the empire in the East has traditionally been described and interpreted. The first concerns the part played by the Mediterranean and Middle East in British strategic thinking. An important theme in the established Far East narrative, which reinforces the traditional ‘over-stretch’ argument, is that Britain sacrificed the Far East in 1941 to concentrate its military effort in the Mediterranean and Middle East. It is often suggested that this choice was discretionary, and reflected prime ministerial prejudice, rather than careful strategic calculation. However, the way British leaders themselves perceived the balance of risk between Middle and Far East theatres at the time, the influence of pre-war thinking, and how and why priorities changed after the Japanese attack, is rarely properly addressed. Indeed, despite thousands of books written on the Middle East and Mediterranean campaigns in the Second World War, the rationale offered in most historical accounts for Britain’s overall investment here prior to 1942 remains opaque.⁸ That is largely due to the tendency of both critics and advocates of Britain’s Mediterranean strategy to treat the theatre in isolation, and to view it through the optic of developments in the second half of the war. Critics see the Mediterranean as a commitment largely irrelevant to the successful prosecution of the war, with costs disproportionate to benefits.⁹ Advocates emphasise the need to protect oil resources and empire communications, as well as the need to engage the main enemy somewhere, but struggle to explain why these factors were important when they present them within a narrow Middle East focus.

There was a key shift underway in how British leaders thought about the defence of the empire in the East, starting in the winter of 1938/39. They began to recognise that, faced with three potential Axis enemies and limited British resources, the essential objectives in the East were to protect the inner core, comprising Australasia and India, and also the communications across the Indian Ocean. Singapore was still seen as essential to secure the eastern perimeter of this core, but interests north of Singapore were ultimately dispensable. At the same time, there was growing awareness that controlling the eastern Mediterranean was essential too. This was not to protect a highway to the East, since the Admiralty expected the Mediterranean to be closed to through traffic in war. It was rather to protect the western boundary of the eastern core, and to shield the vital resources of the Middle East – above all, its oil.

What British strategy was reaching towards here, hesitantly at first, but with ever sharper definition under the pressure of events, was the concept of a single interdependent space under British control, an ‘eastern empire’, extending from Egypt, through the Middle East and Indian Ocean, to Australasia. By mid-1941 Britain not only viewed the eastern empire in exactly this way, but recognised that to survive as an effective fighting power itself, and to ensure the survival of its new Russian ally, it needed the resources and strategic leverage of this wider space. It was an important force multiplier, giving Britain oil and other important raw materials, and vital additional human resources. Equally important, by controlling this wide eastern space, Britain denied its resources and opportunities to the Axis.

As this vision of a single ‘eastern empire’ space evolved from early 1939, the Royal Navy became the primary means for safeguarding it from the existential threats facing it at both ends. It therefore had to find a way of balancing its limited resources between the two ends from this time. This concept of a wider eastern empire, ultimately secured by ensuring command of the eastern Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, is different from the established historical view. This has defined Britain’s empire in the East, and the role of the Royal Navy in securing it, in narrow terms. It has focused almost entirely on the specific problem of the defence of the Far East territories against Japan: above all, Singapore and its naval base. In reality, by 1939 Britain’s leaders recognised that the use of naval power to defend British territories and interests in the East was more than protecting Singapore. Managing competing risks to east and west and across the Indian Ocean required a more flexible response. Events would demonstrate that the fate of Singapore and ability to deploy a fleet to the eastern theatre were different things.

The second structural problem with the traditional narrative concerns the role played by the United States. Most accounts of Royal Navy policy and performance during the approach to the Far East war, especially the issues surrounding naval reinforcement in the autumn of 1941, imply Britain was making decisions in isolation. They make only passing reference to American influence on Royal Navy plans for managing the naval risk from Japan. Yet American attitudes were, in reality, fundamental to the evolution of British strategy. As soon as France fell, Britain recognised it would be unable to provide any naval forces to counter Japanese intervention unless it withdrew from the eastern Mediterranean, which would now seriously undermine its ability to continue the war. It hoped therefore to enlist the United States to guard the eastern boundary of the eastern empire. The subsequent difficulty the two powers experienced in reaching any agreement on Far East naval defence during 1940/41 can only be understood by recognising the primacy they both gave to Atlantic security. Equally, explaining the despatch of British naval reinforcements to the Far East in autumn 1941 requires understanding of the compromise agreement reached at the ABC-1 staff talks the previous March. Here, the US Navy assumed certain Royal Navy responsibilities in the Atlantic, in order to release Royal Navy forces for a new Eastern Fleet. Meanwhile, the ambitious American plans initiated in autumn 1941 to reinforce the Philippines with air power to contain Japan have been largely ignored in accounts of Britain’s war in the East. Yet American actions here gave the emerging Allied policy of deterrence and containment more credibility than has so far been recognised, even if, as this book shows, the measures proved too late and too ill co-ordinated to be effective.

In addition to these problems with the way the Royal Navy’s role in the East has been described and interpreted, there are striking gaps in historical coverage. There is a large body of work addressing the Singapore strategy, and numerous books have addressed the origins and loss of Force Z. However, the former is heavily focused on the period before the fall of France, while the latter tend to begin with the debate between the prime minister and Admiralty in August 1941. There has been surprisingly little analysis of Royal Navy policy and planning in the eastern Mediterranean in the late 1930s, and how it sought to balance interests here with those in the Far East.¹⁰ The same applies to the important debates over the trade-offs between these two theatres during 1941. There are several authoritative studies of Anglo-American naval relations through the 1930s and up to the ABC-1 staff talks, but then almost a void from March 1941 until late 1942.¹¹

There is, of course, a huge literature addressing the performance of the Royal Navy in the Second World War. A similarly large literature examines the Pacific war from the vantage point of the US Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN).¹² However, with the notable exception of the Force Z story, only a tiny proportion of this historical coverage deals specifically with the Royal Navy’s performance in the eastern war. Historians have generally tackled Royal Navy strategy and operations in the East after the loss of Force Z within more general studies of either the Royal Navy or the war with Japan. Only one historian, Arthur Marder, has attempted a comprehensive picture of the Royal Navy’s engagement with Japan from build-up to war through to the final operations in the Pacific in 1945.¹³ Marder apart, the period between the loss of Force Z in late 1941 and the build-up to the Pacific deployment in late 1944 has been barely touched outside the general histories.¹⁴ This includes the critical importance of Indian Ocean communications during 1942 in sustaining Britain’s whole position in the war at that time, and the implications of the IJN incursion against Ceylon in April that year.¹⁵ It is striking that important issues such as the role of Persian oil and the Persian supply route to Russia are barely mentioned, in even the best general histories of the war.¹⁶ A further gap is the limited biographical coverage of the Royal Navy officers who were most influential in policy and operations relating to the eastern empire in the period covered by this book.¹⁷ Only Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham has been relatively well served.¹⁸

The starting point for this book, therefore, is that the established view of Britain’s eastern naval strategy from the late 1930s is not satisfactory. It provides a one-dimensional account of the Royal Navy’s effort to counter a specific threat from Japan when, from 1938, the naval defence of the eastern empire was becoming a much more complex set of competing challenges. The story of how the Royal Navy identified and met those challenges amply deserves new scrutiny. It certainly involves much more than a catalogue of Britain’s failings as a fading imperial and maritime power. The Royal Navy of 1939 was stronger, and its rearmament programme more effective, than mainstream accounts of its interwar history imply. Britain did not pursue a single rigid strategy based on sending a fleet to Singapore to meet an attack by Japan. It adjusted its defence plans and dispositions to the evolving threats. The fall of France made its position in the East much more difficult, but also brought home to Britain that it must secure the whole space from Egypt to Australasia if it was successfully to prosecute the war.

The importance of the war potential of this wider eastern empire and the role of the Royal Navy in securing it is the central theme of this book. With American help, the Royal Navy had to find a way of countering the existential threats to this empire war potential from both east and west. In meeting these threats, the campaigns it fought in the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean were both essential and interdependent, and they indirectly influenced the Atlantic outcome too. In a global war for survival, securing the overall war potential of this eastern empire space and denying it to the Axis powers ultimately mattered more than holding any specific territory, even Singapore. This is the measure against which Royal Navy performance in the East should be judged.

The book is in four parts:

Part 1 re-examines the strengths and weaknesses of the Royal Navy as it faced the prospect of war in two hemispheres in the late 1930s. It assesses the suitability of the rearmament programme for the war it would actually fight from 1939 to 1942, and its overall operational effectiveness compared to its three potential Axis enemies. It then examines how British strategy to maintain adequate security through naval power for the core territories of the eastern empire evolved between 1935 and the fall of France in 1940 against the looming Triple Axis threat. It explains why this strategy was more flexible and realistic, and better directed at what would prove the critical points in the first half of the war, than previously accepted.

Part 2 describes how, following the fall of France in mid-1940, Britain tried to establish a limited defensive screen against Japanese intervention in the Far East, while it concentrated on the existential threat to the United Kingdom homeland from Germany and securing the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. It explains why Britain’s investment in the Middle East and the Royal Navy commitment to the eastern Mediterranean from 1940 to 1942 was essential to effective prosecution of the war. This part then shows how promises of US Navy support in the Atlantic and exaggerated expectations of American deterrent power against Japan encouraged Britain’s war leadership to believe it could simultaneously maintain a forward defence strategy in the Middle and Far East theatres, opening the way to strategic failure.

Part 3 assesses British perceptions of the threat posed by Japan in mid-1941 and the naval resources available for Far East reinforcement in the second half of the year. It shows how reinforcement plans evolved through the summer and autumn, how the Admiralty came to embrace their reckless forward deployment policy north of Singapore, and how this led inexorably to the loss of Force Z.

Part 4 examines why the entry of Japan into the war demonstrated that control of the Indian Ocean was critical not just for Britain, but also the wider Allied cause – ranking, indeed, second only to the Atlantic lifeline in importance. It assesses whether the hastily gathered Eastern Fleet guarding Ceylon was really the helpless bystander popularly portrayed. It then reviews whether the Royal Navy could generate sufficient power during the rest of 1942 to defend the Indian Ocean theatre against any naval force Japan was likely to deploy.

The 1935 start date for the book marks the time when the threats posed by a resurgent Germany, an increasingly hostile Japan, and unpredictable Italy, moved from theoretical to real. The end of 1942 is an appropriate finishing point because, as the final chapter explains, it marks the end of any credible threat from the Axis to the core eastern empire through either the Indian Ocean or the Middle East.

PART I

Preparing for Two-Hemisphere War

1

The Royal Navy 1935–39: The Right Navy for the Right War

For fifty years after the Second World War, the standard portrayal of the Royal Navy in the interwar period was one of decline and decay modified by a late (and from the political perspective reluctant) spurt of rearmament. Outside a few specialist works, this picture remains dominant. ¹ This prevailing view stresses not only the rapid decline in size of the Royal Navy, both absolute and relative, from its zenith in 1919, but a failure of the Royal Navy leadership to learn the lessons of the First World War and especially to address the implications of air and submarine power. Thus the Royal Navy at the start of the 1930s has been described as ‘technologically obsolescent, truncated by treaty, no longer a war hardened fighting service, but once again a kind of fashionable yacht club more apt for elegant displays of ship handling and Royal Tours of the Empire than for battle’. ² Such language may be florid and overstated, but it captures the popular picture of the interwar Royal Navy. This portrays a service fixated on fighting another Jutland and, at best, technically and tactically conservative, if not backward, compared to its US Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) peers. ³ There is a fascinating example recently highlighted which contributed to this image. This is the endless repetition of the claim first made by Stephen Roskill, the official naval historian of the Second World War, that ‘not one exercise in the protection of a slow moving mercantile convoy against sea or air attack took place during the period 1919–1939’. This ‘seeming extraordinary assertion’ has been taken as fact ever since. ⁴ The claim is wrong, and one of many enduring myths. ⁵

This chapter shows that the Royal Navy of the late 1930s was a stronger, more innovative, and more ambitious force than even the most revisionist views have so far suggested. It begins by examining the state of the Royal Navy, with its inherited strengths and weaknesses, in 1935. This is the chosen starting point for this book for three reasons. First, as already noted, it marks the moment when the risks to Britain’s maritime security from a resurgent Germany in Europe and from Japan in the Far East became real. By the end of that year, a third potential enemy, Italy, was in view as well. Secondly, it marks the beginning of a naval rearmament programme, designed to address the new risks, but also deficiencies in naval investment accumulated since the late 1920s. Finally, it marks the time when the naval limitation structures which had been in place since the Washington Treaty of 1922 began to break down. From this 1935 starting point, the chapter examines the Royal Navy’s response to the emerging threats to Britain’s naval security. It scrutinises the Royal Navy rearmament programme, the industrial capacity to support it, what it hoped to achieve, whether its goals were realistic, and how well it met Royal Navy requirements for the war it ultimately had to fight from 1939 through to the end of 1942. The final section assesses Royal Navy strengths and weaknesses by 1939 and its overall operational effectiveness then, compared to its future enemies. The evolution of Royal Navy strategy and planning during this period for a global war against three potential enemies is addressed in the next chapter.

1919–1935: Underlying strength and resilience

At the start of 1935, the Royal Navy remained the largest navy in the world, whether judged by total warship tonnage or by numbers of major warships.⁶ Leaving aside the US Navy, where there was broad parity, it had a significant margin over any other single naval power, at least in quantity, in every category of major warship except submarines, where Japan and France had larger numbers. It had the three largest and arguably most powerful capital ships in the world. These were the battlecruiser Hood completed in 1920, the largest and fastest capital ship until the completion of the Bismarck in late 1940, and Nelson and Rodney, the extra capital ships permitted to the Royal Navy under the 1922 Washington Treaty. The two Nelsons completed in 1927 had a design more modern than any contemporary.⁷ The Royal Navy also possessed a network of global bases that made it the only navy genuinely deployable on a worldwide basis, though until the Singapore base was complete (which was still some years away), there were no dockyards capable of heavy repair east of Suez and the Cape, which would constrain any long-term fleet deployment in the Far East.⁸

For the first fifteen years after the end of the First World War, there were certainly no immediate risks to the maritime security of the British Empire and, arguably, no credible risks at all. Despite naval rivalry and some economic tensions, war with the United States was inconceivable. Germany was effectively disarmed and other European powers were friendly. Japan, with the third largest navy in the world, posed a theoretical threat to British interests and territories in the Far East, but until the early 1930s it was hard to see how serious conflict would develop in practice. Against this background, the size and composition of the post-war Royal Navy through to 1935 was shaped by three factors. These were: the strength inherited at the end of the war and the historic experience and assumptions that had created and sustained that strength; subsequent political judgement on the size of navy appropriate to a global empire dependent on secure global maritime communications; and an international environment that, until the early 1930s, favoured measures promoting peace and disarmament.

The key issue for the British political leadership, contemplating naval policy for a post-war world without obvious security risks, was whether to sustain the historical status of a Royal Navy stronger than all other powers, risking a ruinous competition with a US Navy set on parity. Their decision, which reflected a broad political consensus, and reluctant acceptance from the Royal Navy leadership, was to adopt a ‘one-power standard’. This standard, first defined in 1921 and confirmed by the Cabinet in 1925, required that ‘our fleet, wherever situated, should be equal to the fleet of any other nation wherever situated’. The US Navy, as the next largest after the Royal Navy, became the new standard against which Royal Navy strength was assessed. The British naval staff accepted this formula because it granted them a virtual ‘two-power standard’ over Japan, the only credible threat to British interests in the Far East, and France as the largest European naval power.⁹ The Royal Navy therefore acquiesced in broad parity with the US Navy from 1921. This parity was underpinned by the Washington Naval Limitations Treaty negotiated at the end of that year. The Washington Treaty text contains no direct reference to parity, but British government willingness to concede this was crucial in making the treaty possible. It is worth noting, however, that although the limits established for capital ships came close to parity, the Royal Navy came away with a slight advantage in both permitted tonnage (about 6 per cent greater) and numbers (twenty versus eighteen). The US Navy calculated at the end of 1922 that the Royal Navy had come away from Washington with a much greater superiority, perhaps 30 per cent, in the effective fighting strength of its capital ship fleet.¹⁰

The one-power standard was interpreted flexibly. It was a target, not a precise measure. The Royal Navy leadership always stressed that Britain had ‘absolute’ naval requirements, notably the security of empire communications, which dictated Royal Navy strength in addition to the ‘comparative’ requirements relative to other powers. British stakeholders generally accepted, therefore, that the Royal Navy could not slavishly copy the US Navy, or accept parity across all categories of warship. This flexibility of interpretation was inevitably used by the Admiralty to push for larger investment and by the Treasury to rein it in.¹¹ As the Director of Plans, Captain Tom Phillips, stated in 1937 – ‘The term One Power Naval Standard is extremely vague and means different things to different people’.¹² The commitment of successive governments to the one-power standard through the 1920s and the Great Depression 1929–31 reflected the consensus that the continued security and wellbeing of the empire rested on the perception by both friends and potential enemies that Britain intended to remain the dominant maritime power. It was also due to the success of the Admiralty in portraying Japan as a plausible future opponent, and using this as a focus to frame plans, budgets and political debate in a practical way.¹³

The concept of a one-power standard suited British needs well enough during the 1920s, when other European navies were in decline and the international situation was benign. It also suited the Royal Navy which, through skilful negotiation with the Treasury, won rather more investment than parity strictly required and, arguably, ended the decade with its superiority over the US Navy enhanced. However, by the early 1930s, as the risk of naval conflict with Japan became more credible, the argument used to set the standard of strength shifted. By 1932 the Cabinet had effectively recognised, though not formally agreed to fund, a modified standard proposed by the Admiralty.¹⁴ This recognised that security in Europe might be threatened while most of the Royal Navy was fighting a Far East war with Japan. It therefore stated that ‘we should be able to retain in European waters a deterrent force to prevent our vital home terminal areas being commanded by the strongest European naval power while we took up a defensive position in the Far East and brought home the necessary units for home defence’. The growth of the French and Italian navies initially drove this change, more than concern over Germany. It clearly fell short, at this stage, of a two-power standard, excluding the United States. It was a move in this direction, but still a limited and achievable objective.¹⁵ The change enabled the Royal Navy to bid for more resources, but it had little practical effect on Royal Navy funding before fiscal year 1935.¹⁶

The application of the one-power standard defined against the United States, and the subsequent two-power standard excluding the United States, were complicated by the interwar naval limitation treaties. These set internationally agreed limits on naval strength, both quantitative and qualitative, and also defined relative strengths between the naval powers. The treaties confirmed the general concept of British and United States parity, but did not initiate it. They rather endorsed a comparative balance that the two parties had already agreed for their own reasons. The treaties, therefore, allowed Britain to pursue a one-power standard up to the ceiling set for the US Navy but, with some exceptions, not to exceed it. The treaties also constrained the flexibility with which Britain interpreted the one-power standard, by setting common limits on certain warship categories that did not suit Britain’s particular needs. While the treaties set upper limits, they naturally did not define minimum levels of strength. Britain invariably built up to her permitted limits while, during the period 1925–35, the US Navy often failed to do so. The Washington Treaty allowed the Royal Navy to build two new battleships as soon as it wished, but there was no requirement to commence construction immediately, or indeed at all. Nor was it obvious that the Royal Navy would be in a position of immediate inferiority without them for some years to come. In the event, the Royal Navy got immediate political backing for the ships and laid the two Nelsons down within ten months of the treaty. The Royal Navy also laid down fifteen heavy cruisers between 1924 and 1928, compared with just eight by the US Navy. The ambitions of the US Navy leadership to achieve parity with the Royal Navy never received the necessary political and financial backing in this period. The Royal Navy therefore retained an advantage in major surface units well into the 1930s and, as already noted, was still some 10 per cent larger than the US Navy in 1935.¹⁷

The Royal Navy in 1919 contained a huge number of warships which were less than five years old, in all categories completed or laid down during the war. Those laid down later in the war were often of innovative design, reflecting war experience. They included the battlecruiser Hood, arguably the world’s first ‘fast battleship’, larger and faster than any contemporary, with protection superior to the Queen Elizabeth-class battleships until their reconstruction in the late 1930s, and the ‘V’- and ‘W’-class destroyers, the most advanced of their day. These destroyers set the standard for most navies through to the early 1930s. They had geared turbine machinery, were well armed and the best sea-boats of their size anywhere. Over one hundred ships of these classes were ordered, with sixty-seven completed between 1917 and 1924. Fifty-eight remained on the strength as second-line destroyers earmarked for convoy escort in 1939. Twenty were converted to specialist anti-aircraft escorts between 1938 and early 1941, and a further twenty-one to long-range Atlantic escorts during the first half of the war.¹⁸ The Royal Navy completed twenty-nine cruisers and seventy-nine destroyers from mid-1917 onward, seventeen and thirty-one of these, respectively, after the war. Apart from Hood, completed in 1920, sixteen capital ships had been completed during the war and were four years old or less. All these vessels had a normal lifespan remaining of at least fifteen to twenty years.¹⁹ Early replacement was hard to justify in threat terms, but the Admiralty recognised that without steady investment it faced a block obsolescence problem later.

The Royal Navy, therefore, had a very modern core through the 1920s, enhanced by the two new battleships, Rodney and Nelson, and the substantial number of County-class heavy cruisers completed at the end of the decade under the Washington Treaty terms.²⁰ However, by the 1930s, this core was ageing. Two-thirds of the cruisers and destroyers, and almost all the capital units, in the Royal Navy fleet at the start of 1935 derived from wartime investment. Given treaty limitations and economic stringency, implementing a programme through the 1930s that combined modernisation with increased strength to meet new threats was certainly challenging. However, the political and economic limitations were overcome through a mixture of good foresight, shrewd political management, and some luck, and the Royal Navy achieved sufficient of the right capabilities at the right time to protect Britain’s most critical maritime interests through the first and most dangerous half of the coming war.

In reviewing the factors that determined the strength of the Royal Navy in the 1920s and into the early 1930s, the ‘ten-year rule’ requires mention. This has gained some notoriety for those seeking reasons for Britain’s apparent lack of preparedness for the Second World War. The ‘rule’ was effectively Treasury guidance to the three armed services that, in preparing annual estimates, they should assume no major war for ten years. The rule was theoretically in force for much of the period from 1919 to 1932, when it formally lapsed. It moved forward on a rolling basis, so that the ten years started again each year. The concept was not, however, applied in a consistent fashion, nor did the Treasury always get Cabinet backing when it tried to use it to restrain specific investment projects. In the 1920s the benign international environment made the rule a reasonable assumption and it was perhaps even defensible in assessing the outlook for Europe as late as 1932. It is best seen as a further weapon for the Treasury negotiating hand, especially against the Royal Navy as the biggest spender on major capital items. It is doubtful that it had much practical effect, compared to the other factors already discussed, in determining the frontline strength of the Royal Navy.²¹ If the Treasury had been fully successful in applying the rule, then logically the Nelson battleships would have been postponed and the County-class cruiser programme emasculated. It did have an impact on support services, war stores and reserves, and, above all, on the progress of the Singapore base. To that extent, it impeded the Royal Navy’s global mobility as well as its immediate readiness for war.²²

Despite the limitations imposed by the ten-year rule, British maritime power remained considerable at the start of 1935. The Royal Navy maintained the largest force of warships. The quality of Royal Navy personnel and fighting doctrine was high. Weaponry and equipment in most areas was at least competitive. British shipbuilding and naval support industries had lost significant capacity since the mid-1920s, but were still the largest in the world.²³ These continuing strengths nevertheless concealed potential weaknesses. There is a good argument that the provisions of the Treaty of London in 1930, the second major naval limitations treaty, were especially illsuited to British interests and weakened the Royal Navy more than any other naval power. Although the Royal Navy’s immediate strength slipped only marginally, by limiting new build the treaty exacerbated the problem of block obsolescence facing the Royal Navy in the mid-1930s.²⁴ Meanwhile, the combination of a much reduced naval building programme resulting from the treaty, together with the impact of the 1929–31 depression, weakened the naval industries, reducing capacity by around half between 1929 and 1936.²⁵ Finally, this combination of obsolescence and reduced industrial capacity hit the Royal Navy just as potential enemies were growing significantly in strength. While at the end of the 1920s the Royal Navy could handle any combination of likely threats with ease, by the mid-1930s Germany and Italy were building sufficient new and competitive warships to stretch the Royal Navy if she had to counter a serious threat in Europe as well as fighting Japan in the Far East.²⁶ While the Royal Navy could rearm once free of treaty obligations and pursue a new two-power standard excluding the US Navy, the capacity cuts in British industry meant it could not do so quickly.²⁷

In explaining these weaknesses, there is an obvious point that needs emphasis, namely that political support for naval investment in this period was inevitably shaped by perceptions of the existing risks to British Empire security. Those who argue that Royal Navy strength was allowed to decline to a dangerous level tend to view the first half of the 1930s through the optic of hindsight – their knowledge of what happened in the second half. They imply political and naval leaders should have anticipated future risks at a point when these were not reasonably foreseeable. Given the time lag involved in most naval investment, a more substantial modernisation and replacement programme to have better capability in place by 1935 would have required decisions in 1929–31. At that time there was still no credible naval threat to Britain from European powers, while that from Japan remained theoretical, dictated by her position as the world’s third naval power, rather than any immediate evidence of hostile intent. By the late 1920s Britain could no longer sensibly calibrate its navy and industry to existing threats. Britain’s leadership must either continue supporting a much larger navy than it needed, or allow it to get smaller. In the context of the Great Depression and the continuing absence of any foreseeable challenge to British sea power, some reduction was inevitable.²⁸

At the political level, American attitudes and developments were also influential. For all the aggressive talk in United States naval circles of achieving parity with the Royal Navy, it proved impossible to win political support in Washington for even a modest replacement programme in the 1920s, let alone for an increase up to Washington Treaty limits. The US Navy had completed only two post-treaty warships by the end of 1929, the two heavy cruisers of the Pensacola class. A further eight heavy cruisers joined the fleet by the end of 1933, by which time the Royal Navy had completed fifteen. No US Navy destroyers were laid down until 1934.²⁹ Only with the arrival of the Roosevelt administration in 1933 would significant investment start. From the vantage point of 1930, if the United States was not spending, why should Britain not also accept reductions?

The key issues for the British political leadership, as they weighed the balance of advantage in the London Treaty negotiations, were whether to insist on retaining the 1931 start on capital ship replacement envisaged at Washington, and a global cruiser force sufficient for all contingencies, or to accept reductions that would effectively freeze the status quo with the United States and Japan, but at the price of a reduced margin of superiority in Europe. Given the lead the Royal Navy had retained through the 1920s, despite supposed adherence to a one-power standard, and the new investment it had only recently received with the Nelsons and County-class cruisers, it is not surprising that in a still benign international environment, Britain opted for the latter.³⁰

Comparative expenditure between the Royal Navy and US Navy across the interwar period requires further comment. Looking across the ten fiscal years 1925–34, the headline figures suggest that US Navy expenditure was about 26.5 per cent greater than the Royal Navy during this period.³¹ It is frequently argued that this discrepancy, which continued through the later 1930s, demonstrated low investment and under-resourcing for the Royal Navy. However, there is convincing evidence that United States naval production costs were far higher than those of the United Kingdom, generally by a factor of as much as two to three. Indeed, this cost difference seems to have persisted through the coming war. Some of this higher cost in the United States reflected higher quality equipment, engineering standards and, not least, habitability. It appears the British shipbuilding industry, contrary to popular belief, was also more efficient.³² Taking the quality differential into account, it seems the US Navy had to spend at least 50 per cent more on the production and support of its ships through this period than the Royal Navy.

Some of the higher US Navy expenditure also reflected higher average US Navy manpower, which exceeded that of the Royal Navy by about 17 per cent across these years. This is largely explained by the US Navy’s much larger air arm. By 1936, the US Navy had 15,000 personnel in its air arm, operating nearly one thousand aircraft. Royal Navy personnel numbers here were about one thousand, although comparisons quickly become difficult because of the British dual-control system at this time and the resulting Royal Air Force contribution to personnel and aircraft, together with its responsibility for shore-based maritime support. Dominion expenditure and manpower, which for practical purposes came under the strategic direction of the Royal Navy, and supported ships which were included in Royal Navy strength, should also be added to the Royal Navy for a true comparison. Admiralty figures suggest the combined contribution from Australia, New Zealand and Canada to empire naval defence was about £6.7 million per year and 6,500 personnel by 1935, representing, therefore, about 10 per cent of Royal Navy expenditure.³³ When these two factors are taken into account, it appears non-air investment and running costs were not very different between the two navies, but that still left the Royal Navy with a substantial benefit from its lower production costs. This explains why it could sustain a surface fleet some 10 per cent larger than the US Navy through the 1930s, despite the headline budget difference. It also meant, of course, that the British taxpayer got rather better value for money.

Headline figures confirm that the Royal Navy’s comparative strength and resource base did reduce markedly in the middle decade of the interwar period. However important qualifications are required when judging its standing in 1935. First, the impact of the financial reductions from fiscal year 1930 onward was modest. The drop in expenditure over the five fiscal years 1930– 34 compared to 1925–29 was 8.6 per cent. However, the earlier period included the exceptional expenditure on the new battleships Rodney and Nelson, whose combined cost was £13 million.³⁴ If this is removed, the reduction was around 6.8 per cent and much of this was accounted for in a fall of manpower of about 10 per cent between the two periods, which was largely due to decommissioning five old capital ships, following the London Treaty.³⁵ Reductions are always painful, but this fall is modest compared to other drops in defence expenditure in periods of perceived low risk during the twentieth century. In terms of GDP, the fall in naval expenditure here was about 0.1 per cent from 1.35 per cent average in the late 1920s to 1.25 per cent in the early 1930s. Naval expenditure in this period was just under half of all United Kingdom defence expenditure. By contrast, overall United Kingdom defence expenditure fell by 1.0 per cent GDP from 1990–97, following the end of the Cold War, and by a further 0.5 per cent over the next ten years to 2007.³⁶

The impact of these financial cuts on effective fighting strength over the period 1930–35 was also modest. It is claimed that the London Treaty ‘gutted’ Royal Navy power in capital ships by reducing numbers from sixteen to eighteen available in the 1920s to eleven or twelve in the mid to late 1930s.³⁷ In strict numerical terms, this reduction was correct, but the five retired ships of the pre-First World War King George V and Iron Duke classes were old, slow (burning a coal/oil mix), under-gunned and under-armoured, compared to later foreign rivals. They had little military value for fighting the IJN, but were manpower-intensive and increasingly costly to maintain. Indeed, the deletion of these vessels alone arguably covered most of the 1930–35 manpower reduction. Robert Craigie, the chief Foreign Office negotiator for the London Treaty, reminded the Admiralty in 1934 that the five capital ships retired had to be scrapped anyway by 1936 under the original Washington Treaty terms. Given the benign international environment, advancing this a few years posed no serious security risk and saved £4 million.³⁸ Meanwhile, Royal Navy manpower had returned to the level of the late 1920s as early as fiscal year 1936.

It is, nevertheless, still true that the continuing bar on building new capital ships and the tonnage limitation on aircraft carriers, under the London Treaty, presented the Royal Navy with a block obsolescence problem for these categories in the late 1930s. If the original Washington terms for restarting capital ship build had held at London, then Britain was permitted to lay down one or two ships per year, with a total of eight allowed by the end of fiscal year 1935. The Royal Navy could have had eight more modern ships by 1939, but would probably not then have undertaken any reconstructions of its existing ships, so the net increase in actual fighting strength must allow for this. If eight new ships were appearing from 1935, it is also unlikely five more ships would have been laid down (as the King George Vs were) in fiscal years 1936 and 1937, so perhaps further reducing net availability in 1941. The upshot is that a steady investment programme from 1931 would certainly have given the Royal Navy more modern or modernised capital ships in 1941, but the difference between possible numbers compared to historical reality might have been rather less than often claimed. Whether such an increase would have proved a good use of resources, or was what the Royal Navy really needed in 1941, is another debate.

The problem of block obsolescence applied equally to Japan, which was the Royal Navy’s primary naval threat, and to the US Navy. The IJN solution was the Yamato super-battleship, of which they planned to build five, although the third was not scheduled for completion until 1945 and the others even later. The programme was already stretching Japan industrially by late 1941. By 1945, eight out of ten pre-Yamato ships would be thirty years old and militarily useless. By contrast, in 1938, the Royal Navy planned to have ten new ships by 1944 and to lay down at least one more per year from fiscal year 1940. Most battleship specialists doubt the Yamatos had much advantage over the Royal Navy Lions in practical battle conditions. Royal Navy confidence that it could always out-build Japan was justified.³⁹ France and Italy enjoyed some freedom to build new capital units, but their construction only proceeded slowly, and war with France was anyway unlikely. The French Dunkerqueclass battlecruisers were laid down in 1932, but did not complete until 1938. The Italian Vittorio Veneto was laid down in 1934, but did not complete until 1940. The first two German warships which count as capital ships, Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, were not laid down until mid-1935.

The London Treaty also severely curtailed the Royal Navy’s cruiser allocation, at a time when revisionist naval powers were starting to invest heavily in this category. Over the five years 1930–34, the three future Axis enemies completed a combined total of nineteen cruisers (eleven heavy⁴⁰ and eight light) and the US Navy thirteen (all heavy), while the Royal Navy completed only six (with two heavy). However, the Royal Navy had invested significantly in cruisers during the 1920s (completing a total of twenty-one with thirteen heavy), and had a further thirteen under construction during 1935 (including five heavy Southampton class⁴¹).⁴² By the time these thirteen were complete at the end of 1937, the Royal Navy was steadily reducing the cruiser deficit, even before its main rearmament programme kicked in. It would lay down a further twenty-four cruisers before the outbreak of war, far more than the combined total of its Axis enemies. The Royal Navy also made an important investment in minor war vessels in the lean period of the early 1930s, which is rarely mentioned.⁴³ Over the five years 1930–34, it completed forty-three modern destroyers (the first laid down since 1919), sixteen assorted anti-submarine vessels and twenty submarines. The three future Axis enemies completed a combined total of thirty-seven destroyers in this period, no dedicated anti-submarine vessels and only sixteen submarines. Strikingly, the US Navy completed only three destroyers and four submarines. The Royal Navy also had as many destroyers building as the combined Axis group in 1935, and would continue to match them.⁴⁴ Only in submarines would it rapidly lose ground as German production began.

Table 1, which sets out the new warships commissioned by the main naval powers between January 1922 and December 1934, illustrates many of the points made in this chapter. The start date is chosen because wartime construction and adjustments were broadly complete by this time, and it also coincides with the signing of the Washington Treaty.

Table 1 Warships commissioned by the main naval powers January 1922–December 1934

Sources: See under Table A.

Notes: The heavy cruisers listed for Germany are the pocket battleships Deutschland and Admiral Scheer. The Admiralty considered three of these to be equivalent to one capital ship. British heavy cruisers include two built for Australia.

Assuming Britain was not going to renounce its treaty obligations (and whatever the shortcomings of the treaty structure in specific areas, objective analysis suggests they brought her more benefit than loss overall⁴⁵), where might more money have been spent if there had been political willingness to support a somewhat higher level of naval funding in the five years after 1929? Net expenditure on the Royal Navy in fiscal year 1929 was £56 million. This was somewhat less than the average for the period 1925–29, but more than in fiscal years 1923 and 1924. From 1929 it dropped to a low point of £50.2 million in fiscal year 1932, before rising again to £56.6 million in 1934, the last year before serious rearmament began. If 1929 levels of funding had been sustained for the next five years, the Royal Navy would have had an extra £16.5 million, representing about 6 per cent of total expenditure from 1929– 34. Full modernisation of two battleships would have cost an additional £4 million, six additional cruisers, perhaps £12 million, and an additional aircraft carrier about £3.75 million.⁴⁶

There are perhaps four obvious candidates for this extra investment. More capital ships could have been modernised: specifically the long refits of Barham (1930–33), and Royal Oak, Malaya and Repulse (1933–36) could have been exploited to increase the range of their guns. This involved turret modifications to raise the elevation of the 15in guns from twenty to thirty degrees. This increased maximum range from 23,000yds (21,000m) to 32,000yds (29,000m) using the new streamlined 6crh shell introduced in 1938. Twelve US Navy capital ships and all IJN capital ships received increased elevation in the late 1920s and 1930s. The Royal Navy only implemented this for four ships, Warspite, Valiant, Queen Elizabeth and Renown in the late 1930s. In addition, Hood and the two Nelsons had all been built with high-elevation guns. Malaya and Repulse could also have been reconstructed to the same standard as Warspite, which was in refit at the same time. Her modernisation involved a virtual rebuild with new engines, boilers, armour, anti-aircraft armament, and new fire control, as well as the increased elevation for her main armament 15in guns. Subsequent modernisations for Valiant, Queen Elizabeth and Renown were even more comprehensive.⁴⁷ At over £3 million, they cost about 45 per cent of the predicted cost of a new capital ship, but provided perhaps 70 per cent of the capability of a new ship.⁴⁸ Had war not broken out in 1939, the Admiralty also planned comprehensive reconstructions of Hood, and possibly Barham, beginning in 1940, and significant upgrades were also planned at this time for the two Nelsons.

It is often argued that the Royal Navy implemented far fewer capital ship modernisations than the IJN (all ten ships) or the US Navy (ten out of fifteen).⁴⁹ Admiralty figures in early 1937 indicate that the US Navy actually spent just under twice the Royal Navy total on capital ship refit and modernisation between 1922 and March 1937.⁵⁰ However, the US Navy undertook no further major modernisations after this time, while the Royal Navy had three commencing, at a total cost of some £10.5 million. This suggests that by 1940, when their last reconstruction finished, the Royal Navy had spent rather more across the whole interwar period 1922–39. A fair assessment is that the four Royal Navy reconstructions implemented from 1934 to 1940 were more comprehensive than any of those done by the IJN or US Navy, while two other Royal Navy ships (Royal Oak and Malaya) received partial modernisations comparable to the early upgrades carried out by the IJN and US Navy on their ships. Furthermore, in 1940–42, some of the unmodernised Royal Navy battleships had their gun range extended by fitting them for ‘supercharge’ firing. This increased range not through increased elevation, but by increasing the power of the discharge. At the maximum elevation of twenty degrees, gun range increased from 23,734yds (21,702m) to about 26,000yds (23,800m) with the pre-1939 4crh ammunition and 28,732yds (26,272m) with the new 6crh ammunition. Barham was the first battleship equipped for supercharge firing during the first half of 1940.⁵¹ Repulse was modified to take 6crh supercharge shells (twenty rounds per gun) by end June 1941.⁵² Malaya, Resolution and Royal Sovereign were also modified during their refits in the course of 1941.⁵³

Apart from additional capital ship modernisation, war stores, infrastructure and support services could have been better maintained and upgraded where appropriate, including earlier completion of the Singapore base. More money could have gone on air power, both accelerating the carrier replacement programme and building up overall Fleet Air Arm strength. Finally, more investment could have been made in anti-submarine warfare, upgrading older destroyers and purchasing Asdic anti-submarine detection sets to facilitate rapid expansion in wartime.⁵⁴

More and earlier modernisation of capital ships would have enhanced Royal Navy fighting strength and reduced the level of risk in the late 1930s, when the Royal Navy had three ships absent from the frontline simultaneously for reconstruction. However, Admiralty papers suggest that earlier investment here would have meant that plans to reconstruct Valiant, certainly, and Queen Elizabeth, possibly, would have been shelved.⁵⁵ By taking place later, the reconstructions of Valiant and Queen Elizabeth were more comprehensive, making them more valuable units. Overall, therefore, the real impact of an earlier modernisation programme on operational capability in 1940/41 would have been limited.⁵⁶ The stores and support shortfall was broadly rectified from 1934–39 under the deficiencies programme associated with rearmament. There is no guarantee that doing this earlier would have released funds for other purposes. The same argument applies to anti-submarine warfare, where Admiralty strategy was to create a core capability to facilitate rapid expansion in wartime. As discussed later, the effort here over the five years 1934–39 was proportionate to the threat as it appeared at that time.

By contrast, better and more consistent investment in naval air power from 1930 would certainly have significantly enhanced the effectiveness of the Royal Navy from 1939. If carriers had been laid down annually from 1932–35 (instead of the single Ark Royal laid down in 1935), this would have transformed Royal Navy carrier capability in the first years of the war.⁵⁷ However, it is important to recognise that the first generation of Royal Navy carriers, converted from battlecruisers, were only completed gradually through the 1920s and only reached critical mass at the very end of the decade. Eagle, converted from the Chilean battleship Almirante Cochrane, was completed in 1923, Furious in 1925, Courageous in 1928 and Glorious in 1929. The commissioning rate for these Royal Navy first-generation carriers was no slower than in the US Navy or IJN. The US Navy only commissioned the Lexington and Saratoga conversions in late 1927 and the IJN commissioned Akagi and Kaga in