Brothers in arms: the Admiralty, the Air Ministry and the Battle of the Atlantic
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Conclusion The period from 1940 to early 1943 saw bitter disputes between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry over the provision of air support for the Battle of the Atlantic. The Admiralty had by now embraced the modern reality that sea power could only be adequately exercised by a combination of naval and air power and repeatedly sought the air support that they required. The Air Ministry, however, repeatedly refused to concede that the needs of the Battle of the Atlantic were sufficiently pressing to justify any reduction in the scale of the strategic air offensive. They genuinely believed that it could either win the war or leave the land forces with a task little harder than occupation, and hence naturally pushed it hard. The dispute between the two was not resolved by a compromise reached by the participants or an allocation imposed by the government; rather it was submerged by the rising tide of Allied materiel. This article has argued that the Air Ministry were in the wrong in this long drawn-out debate. This was in large part due to a contradiction in RAF philosophy: the insistence that all air power should be unified under the central control of a single service works only to the extent that the requirements of the other services are, if not fully met then at least reasonably addressed. The superimposition of a narrow and dogmatic fixation on strategic bombing as the way to win the war meant that the Air Staff was in effect declining to provide the air power that the other services freely acknowledged they needed, on the grounds that the RAF had better things to do with it. The RAF maintained that the other services would not be able to operate without air power, insisted that they should be its only providers, and then refused to meet this responsibility. Small wonder that the Navy and the Army found this unsatisfactory and periodically sought to bring a proportion of British air power under their own control. In the case of the Battle of the Atlantic, the Air Staff – driven by a brash, young ideology – refused to concede the evident, desperate needs of a campaign that was essential for Britain’s survival and for any other military operations, and focussed instead on their favoured theory that was at the time not only unproven but contradicted by all the available evidence. What was at issue was not – despite the hysterical reaction of the bomber barons – an end to or even a significant reduction in the bomber offensive, but rather a relatively small reallocation of resources. This case applied in particular to very-long range aircraft where, as was pointed out at the time, the losses of one night could have had a decisive effect on the campaign against the U-boats.135 The strategic bombing campaign did make a significant contribution to the Allied victory. However, this was very much less than had been promised and was merely a consolation prize for the bomber barons as for the air theorists, who believed it could win the war on its own, and who translated this blind faith into policy, resisting any deviation from it. Moreover this impact came at an enormous cost in resources and manpower. Once it became clear that strategic bombing would not and could not win the war alone, let alone quickly, then it became one line of operation among several. It thereby lost its claim to automatic first and over-riding priority, and its requirements would have to be balanced against those of other campaigns and operations. Some proportion of the resources devoted to the strategic bombing of Germany, which had distinctly modest results during the years in question, would have been better allocated to an increased provision of long-range reconnaissance aircraft, fighters and torpedo bombers to Coastal Command. In this way, the enormous contribution of air power to the Allied victory could have been still greater. Even those who are not persuaded by this argument might acknowledge two other conclusions that emerge. First, just as earlier quarrels had paved the way for them, the prolonged and bitter disputes of the wartime years left a legacy of mistrust and suspicion that carried over into the postwar years. This continuity did not apply only to a general and mutual prickliness between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry; the specific issues that were the subject of the on-going disputes were remarkably similar to those of the war, including the extent to which British strategy could and should rely on strategic bombing versus the need to protect sea communications, and the strength and (to a far greater extent than during the war) the control of Coastal Command. The similarity of the issues dividing the Navy and the RAF in the early 1940s and in the early 1950s was truly remarkable. Even such an enormously significant technological innovation as the introduction of atomic weapons had a strangely minor effect on the relationship, becoming simply one more element in an on-going debate rather than igniting a whole new one.136 Second, the intensity and longevity of the disagreements between the two services, from the 1920s to the 1960s and beyond, suggest that they rested on basic and fundamental differences over the nature of warfare and the conduct of strategy. Dismissing these issues as ‘inter-service squabbling’ is inadequate, implying as it does that they were no more than partisan bickering, classic exercises in noisy bureaucratic politics to seek the greatest possible share of limited resources. While this was no doubt one element of the explanation, it is not sufficient by itself. There was more substance to the controversy than this depiction suggests and it is hardly surprising that the disagreements would continue into peacetime. 1 I would like to thank Christina Goulter and David Jordan for invaluable guidance through the literature on the air war, and two anonymous reviewers for their hugely constructive comments on an earlier draft of this article. I alone am responsible for the interpretations and arguments that it contains. 2 John Buckley, The RAF and Trade Defence 1919-1945: Constant Endeavour (Keele: Ryburn / Keele University Press, 1995); for the more offensive role of Coastal Command, see Christina J.M. Goulter, A Forgotten Offensive: Royal Air Force Coastal Command’s Anti-Shipping Campaign, 1940-45 (London: Frank Cass, 1995). 3 Marc Milner, ‘The battle of the Atlantic’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.13 No.1 (1990), pp.45-66; quotation, p.59. Milner plays down the importance of Ultra signals intelligence, assessing it as secondary to the air gap; ibid., pp.57-58. 4 Richard Goette, ‘Britain and the Delay in Closing the Mid-Atlantic “Air Gap” During the Battle of the Atlantic’, Northern Mariner, Vol.XV No.4 (October 2005), pp.19-41; quotations pp.21, 40. 5 John F. O’Connell, ‘Closing the North Atlantic air gap: where did all the British Liberators go?’, Air Power History, Vol.59 No.2 (Summer 2012), pp.32-43. 6 Malcolm Smith, ‘The allied air offensive’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.13 No.1 (1990), pp.67-83, especially pp.80-81. 7 Richard J. Overy, Why the Allies Won (London: Pimlico, 1996) p.60. 8 Duncan Redford, ‘Inter- and Intra-Service Rivalries in the Battle of the Atlantic’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol.32 No.6 (December 2009), pp.899-928. 9 Christopher M. Bell, Churchill and Sea Power (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), especially chapter 9. 10 For general works on the war at sea and the Battle of the Atlantic, see S.W. Roskill, The War at Sea 1939-45, four volumes (London: HMSO, 1954 to 1961); S.W. Roskill, The Navy at War 1939-1945 (London: Collins, 1960); Corelli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1991); Marc Milner’s article, ‘The battle of the Atlantic’, cited in full above and the same author’s Battle of the Atlantic, second edition (Stroud: History Press, 2011); John Terraine, Business in Great Waters: The U-Boat Wars 1916-1945 (London: Leo Cooper, 1989); and V.E. Tarrant, The U-Boat Offensive 1914-1945 (London: Cassell, 2000). For the air war in general and the strategic air offensive in particular, see Richard J. Overy, The Air War 1939 – 1945 (London: Europa, 1980); John Terraine, The Right of the Line: The Royal Air Force in the European War 1939-1945 (London: Sceptre, 1988); Smith, ‘The allied air offensive’; Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-45, four volumes (London: HMSO, 1961); Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas About Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002); and Peter W. Gray, ‘The Strategic Leadership and Direction of the Royal Air Force Strategic Air Offensive against Germany from Inception to 1945’, PhD thesis, University of Birmingham, October 2009. The official history of the RAF in the maritime war was written but never published; with the exception of the official history of the strategic air offensive, the Air Ministry was reluctant to cede to the Cabinet Office oversight and the final say over what might be written, as was the practice with the official histories, for fear that the result might be critical of the RAF. See Gray, ‘Strategic Leadership and Direction of the Royal Air Force Strategic Air Offensive’, p.20, also Christina J.M. Goulter, ‘British official histories of the air war’ in Jeffrey Grey (ed.), The last word: essays on official history in the United States and British Commonwealth (London: Praeger, 2003). 11 Tarrant, U-Boat Offensive, p.81. 12 Ibid., p.88. 13 Gray, ‘Strategic Leadership and Direction of the Royal Air Force Strategic Air Offensive’, pp.155-57. 14 Milner, Battle of the Atlantic, pp.14-15. 15 Goette recounts how one squadron of nine Liberators was passed to Coastal Command in June 1941 but as they went out of service, they were not replaced, leaving only the shorter ranged aircraft. He cites the effective operating radius of the Liberator as 700-1000 miles compared to the Catalina (600 miles), Sunderland (440 miles), Wellington and Whitley (both 340 miles) and Hudson (250 miles). Goette, ‘Britain and the Delay in Closing the Mid-Atlantic “Air Gap”’, pp.25-26. 16 Redford argues that the failure of Bomber Command to attack the U-boat pens while they were under construction ‘is possibly one of the key failures of the war’; Redford, ‘Inter- and Intra-Service Rivalries’, p.925. 17 Tarrant, U-Boat Offensive, p.96. 18 For a general account of signals intelligence in the campaign, see W.J.R. Gardner, Decoding History: The Battle of the Atlantic and Ultra (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999). 19 Tarrant, U-Boat Offensive, p.108. 20 Buckley, RAF and Trade Defence 1919-1945, chapters 5-7; Goette, ‘Britain and the Delay in Closing the Mid-Atlantic “Air Gap”’, pp.29-30. 21 Ibid., pp.33-35. 22 Overy, Why the Allies Won, p.124. 23 Tami Davis Biddle, ‘Winston Churchill and Sir Charles Portal: Their Wartime Relationship, 1940-1945’, in Peter W. Gray and Sebastian Cox (eds), Airpower Leadership: Theory and Practice (London: The Stationery Office, 2002), p.191. 24 In the British context, J.F.C. Fuller and Basil H. Liddell Hart are the best known examples. For their influential interwar works, see J.F.C. Fuller, The Reformation of War (London: Hutchinson, 1923), On Future Warfare (London: Sifton Praed, 1928) and Machine Warfare (London: Hutchinson, 1942); Basil H. Liddell Hart, Paris: The Future of Warfare (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1925) and The British Way in Warfare (London: Faber and Faber, 1932). 25 For general accounts of British air policy, see H. Montgomery Hyde, British Air Policy Between the Wars (London: Heinemann, 1976); Malcolm Smith, British Air Strategy Between the Wars (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984). For a recent account of the British and US development and then application of ideas about strategic bombing, see Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare. See also Gray, ‘Strategic Leadership and Direction of the Royal Air Force Strategic Air Offensive’. 26 For example, Marshal of the RAF Sir John Slessor, who as Chief of the Air Staff in the early 1950s was still a true believer in strategic bombing and also remarkably hostile to naval aviation, told a correspondent in 1968 that he had never read Douhet. Slessor to Major William Giffen, Department of History, USAF Academy, 20 July 1968, The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA) AIR 75/86. Both Harris and Slessor insisted to another author that they had never either read or even heard of Douhet before the war; Tony Mason, Air Power: A Centennial Appraisal (London: Brasseys, 1994), pp.44-45. Harris did cite Seversky approvingly in his account of the strategic bombing campaign; Arthur Harris, Bomber Offensive (London: Collins, 1947), p.264. 27 For a general account of the influences on interwar air thinking, including a review of the literature, see Gray, ‘Strategic Leadership and Direction of the Royal Air Force Strategic Air Offensive’, pp. 69-81, also 107-116, 146-52. 28 This analysis is developed at greater length in Tim Benbow, ‘Navies and the Challenge of Technological Change,’ Defence Studies, Vol.8 No.2 (June 2008), especially pp.210-15. 29 For overviews of the interwar air theorists, see Edward Warner, ‘Douhet, Mitchell, Seversky: Theories of Air Warfare’ in Edward M. Earle, Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought From Machiavelli to Hitler (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943); also David MacIsaac, ‘Voices From the Central Blue: The Air Power Theorists’ in Peter Paret, (ed.) Makers of Modern Strategy from Machiavelli to the Nuclear Age (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). The key works of the major air theorists are Giulio Douhet, Command of the Air (London: Faber and Faber, 1943 – original 1921); William Mitchell, Winged Defense: The Development and Possibilities of Modern Air Power – Economic and Military (New York: Putnams, 1925) and Skyways (Philadelphia, Lippincott, 1930); Alexander P. de Seversky, Victory Through Air Power (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942). 30 RAF Air Historical Branch draft paper, ‘Bomber Command in the war at sea, 1939-1945’, TNA, AIR 8/1452, p.8. 31 COS(41)83(O), Chief of the Air Staff, ‘The Air Programme’, 21 May 1941, TNA, CAB 80/57, paras.4, 9; emphasis original. 32 COS(41)119(O), Chief of the Air Staff, ‘Army Air Requirements’, 26 June 1941, TNA, CAB 80/58. 33 Denis Richards, Lord Portal of Hungerford (London: Heinemann, 1977), pp.338, 199. 34 Alex Danchev and Daniel Todman (eds.), Field Marshall Lord Alanbrooke: War Diaries 1939-1945 (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2001), entry for 29 September 1942, p.325. 35 Ibid., entry for 22 October 1942, p.332. In May 1943, Brooke commented that Portal still believed that bombing could win the war; ibid., p.411. 36 Richards, Lord Portal, p.225. 37 In August 1941 the Butt Report revealed that of the aircrews who claimed to have attacked their targets, only one third actually managed to get as close as five miles; this figure was better for French ports at two-thirds, and worse for the Ruhr at one tenth. Charles Webster and Noble Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive Against Germany 1939-45, Volume I: Preparation (London: HMSO, 1961), pp.178-79; the report itself is reproduced in Volume IV: Annexes and Appendices (London: HMSO, 1961), pp.205-13. Webster and Frankland also drily note, ‘Crews who failed to find their bases on return were “nearly always” convinced that they had found their targets’; Strategic Air Offensive, Vol.I, p.228. 38 Ibid., p.473. 39 DO(41)4th Meeting, 13 January 1941, TNA, CAB 69/2. 40 DO(41)41st Meeting, 16 June 1941 and DO(41)52nd Meeting, 21 July 1941, both TNA, CAB 69/2. 41 COS(41)86(O), Lord Trenchard, ‘The present war situation mainly in so far as it relates to air’, 19 May 1941, TNA, CAB 80/57. Trenchard’s source of such remarkably detailed intelligence on the behaviour of the German population in air raid shelters is not identified. 42 The Commander-in-Chief of RAF Coastal Command from June 1941 to February 1943, Air Marshal Philip Joubert de la Ferté, noted this appeal and its effect: ‘Mr Churchill’s one wish was to hit at Germany in Germany and so Bomber Command was his favourite child. Any suggestion that some of the resources becoming available should be directed towards winning the air/sea war met with considerable resistance and a determination that the bombing offensive against the Germany homeland should have pride of place.’ Philip Joubert de la Ferté, Fun and Games (London: Hutchinson, 1964), p.122. 43 Douhet, Command of the Air, p.81. He makes it quite clear that this is his real opinion, in contrast to the more benign view he expressed for tactical reasons in his earlier work (reproduced in the same volume) that such uses might have value. 44 An Air Historical Branch paper about the campaign reveals the centrality of the bombing offensive to the self-image of the RAF, noting that the strategic options for the RAF were either to join the land forces in defence of France and naval forces in defence of sea communications, or to take the offensive against Germany. ‘The choice between an offensive and defensive policy for Bomber Command was therefore also the choice between an independent or auxiliary role.’ Should they attack German warships and ports, ‘then their action would be auxiliary to that of the navy and equally defensive’ In other words, cooperation with the other services was anathema and only an independent role was worthwhile. RAF Air Historical Branch Draft Paper on Bomber Command in the war at sea, 1939-1945, TNA, AIR8/1452, pp.6-7. 45 WP(42)399, Lord Trenchard, ‘Note on our War Policy’, 29 August 1942, TNA, CAB 66/28/29; emphases original. 46 WP(42)374, Air Marshall Sir Arthur Harris, ‘The Role and Work of Bomber Command’, 24 August 1942, TNA, CAB 66/28/4, para.17. 47 While their account is in some respects one of the more balanced, it is striking that this latter term is from Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, Vol.I, p.310. Terraine lists the ‘diversions’ that Bomber Command complained about, noting ‘it will be seen that in effect they add up to the war itself.’ Terraine, The Right of the Line, pp.227-28, 691. Biddle concurs; ‘What he called “diversions” was the war itself’ – and also points out that his approach risks overlooking the valuable work done by Bomber Command in other roles; Tami Davis Biddle, ‘Bombing by the Square Yard: Sir Arthur Harris at War, 1942-1945’, International History Review, Vol.XXI No.3 (September 1999), p.664. 48 Harris to Portal, 11 May 1942, cited in Dudley Saward, Bomber Harris: the story of Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris (New York: Doubleday, 1985), p.142. In the same memo he complained that other RAF Commands ‘regard Bomber Command as a milch cow whenever they feel the slightest pangs of hunger or even mere inconvenience within their own organisations’. Harris’ single-mindedness is further demonstrated in his own account of the campaign, in which he objected to the fact that, ‘I was required to attack targets of immediate strategic importance – a euphemism for targets chosen by the Navy.’ Harris, Bomber Offensive, p.90. 49 Secretary of State for Air to Prime Minister, 9 October 1942, appendix to WP(42)481, Note by Secretary, ‘Strength of Bomber Command’, 23 October 1942, TNA, CAB66/30/11. 50 COS(41)95(O), Comments by CIGS on Lord Trenchard’s Paper, 2 June 1941, TNA, CAB 80/57. His successor as CIGS (who replaced him in December 1941) felt the same way, referring to the anti-submarine war, ‘on which our very existence depended’; Danchev and Todman, Alanbrooke: War Diaries, p.238. 51 Second Sea Lord to First Sea Lord, ‘Remarks on Bombing Policy called for by First Sea Lord’, 26 February 1942, TNA, ADM 205/15. This dependence was recognised in parts of the RAF: ‘Ultimately everything, including of course the strategic bombing offensive, depended upon British success in this struggle’, RAF Air Historical Branch draft paper, ‘Bomber Command in the war at sea, 1939-1945’, TNA, AIR 8/1452, p.8. The official historians of the strategic air offensive noted that Bomber Command depended on fuel from overseas, and to some extent on crew training there: ‘Thus, even in its defensive phases, the Battle of the Atlantic had an ultimately offensive purpose.’ Webster and Frankland, Strategic Air Offensive, Vol.I, p.167. 52 WP(40)454, Secretary of State for Air, ‘Coastal Command’, 21 November 1940, TNA, CAB 66/13, p.3. 53 COS(41)83(O), Chief of the Air Staff, ‘The Air Programme’, 21 May 1941, TNA, CAB 80/57, para.2. 54 Director of Plans to First Sea Lord, ‘Sea and air power in future developments: Paper B’, 27 February 1942, TNA, ADM 205/15, paras. 19-21. Churchill seemed sympathetic to this argument, stating that: ‘The use of the fighter aircraft in larger proportions by our carriers is not a defensive symptom, since its object is to enable the Fleet to take bolder offensive action.’ WP(42)580, Prime Minister, ‘Air Policy’, 16 December 1942, TNA, CAB 66/32, para.14. 55 Naval Assistant to First Sea Lord, cover note to paper on ‘U-boat bases in the Bay of Biscay’, 26 March 1943, TNA, ADM 205/30, para.4. 56 DO(41)35th Meeting, 27 May 1941, TNA, CAB 69/2. 57 Geoffrey Till, Air Power and the Royal Navy 1914-1945 (London: Jane, 1979), p.177. For a detailed account of this action, see Admiralty Tactical and Staff Duties Division (Historical Section), BR1736(3/50), Directory: portal -> files files -> Is it possible to construct a canon of tv programmes? Immanent reading versus textual-historicism files -> Lawrence Peter Ampofo files -> Impact case study (ref3b) files -> Ethics and Factual Television: a short history files -> P. O. 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