ELEMENTS OF SEA FORCE
Having established the truth that the primary purpose of a navy is to
fight and its immediate object victory, we must next pass on to ask of
what it is that naval force consists and by what processes it fights
and wins. All fighting is done by men using weapons. At sea the men and
weapons have to be carried in ships. The ships and weapons have to be
designed and selected, and the men have to be converted from ignorance
into accomplished fighting units. Finally, the ships and the weapons
must be employed in accordance with certain methods and in obedience
to certain dynamic laws--the technique, the tactics, and the strategy
of war. It may simplify the subject to summarize the elements of naval
force as follows. It may be said to consist:
1. Of the main weapon-bearing ships built for fighting fleet actions.
2. Of smaller armed ships of many kinds necessary for the right use of
the main fighting ships and for the subsidiary operations leading up
to, or following from, fleet actions.
3. Of means other than ships--aircraft, mines, and the like--for
entrapping and injuring the main fleets and cruisers of the enemy,
for defending and attacking bases, and for making certain sea areas
dangerous or impassable to the enemy’s forces.
4. Of the personnel to man, fight, and command the ships and to direct
the operations of the separate squadrons and fleets at sea; and
5. Of that higher central command on shore that, by designing and
selecting the material, by training the officers and men, creates
sea force; that discovers the right method of using weapons; that
elucidates the tactics that follow from such use; that develops the
strategy which the strength and situation of rival forces makes best;
that as a preparation for war, keeps the whole force ready in all
particulars; that in war, directs it to the greatest advantage.
To get the best naval force it is clear, then, that you want
(_a_) Ships whose tactical properties are superior to those which the
enemy possesses, and you want more of them.
(_b_) Weapons delivering a more devastating blow, that can reach to
longer ranges, and can be employed with higher rapidity.
(_c_) Methods of employing both the ships and the weapons that will
assure to them the utmost scope of efficiency so as to strike at the
enemy--if possible--before the enemy can strike, and will keep them in
use when conditions of movement, light, and weather have become too
difficult for the enemy to overcome.
(_d_) A personnel of higher _moral_, better discipline, and greater
skill.
(_e_) A staff of officers to train and command this personnel, adept in
all the craft of fighting, instinct with the loftiest patriotism, and
masters of the art of leadership.
(_f_) A supreme command, not only equally conversant both with the
doctrine that can be gathered from a study of the past and with the
resources that modern scientific and industrial development place at
the disposal of the fighting men, but consciously cultivating what may
be called a prophetic imagination, by which alone future developments
can be anticipated, and guided throughout, and always, by regard to the
public interest only.
The factors that enter are first, material; secondly, men; and,
thirdly, the intellectual, spiritual, and moral activities necessary
for shaping and turning the first two to their purpose.
Looked at largely, the elements have been enumerated above in the
inverse order of their importance. For, clearly, the qualities of
the ship are much less important than the qualities of the weapons
that she carries. A slow, unarmoured battleship, carrying accurate,
quick-firing, long-range guns, is a better fleet unit than a fast,
perfectly protected ship with weapons unlikely to hit, because
ill-made, poorly mounted, or badly ammunitioned. And the power and
range of the weapons are less important than the science and methods
with which they are employed. An old 12-inch gun that can be used with
constant effect at 12,000 yards when the change of range is high, the
target often obscured by smoke, and the firing ship constantly under
helm, is an infinitely more effective weapon than a new 15-inch that,
in spite of a legend range of 20,000 yards, cannot be made to hit in
action conditions. And it is from right method that are derived right
tactics by which, in turn, the decisive massing of ships in action
is obtained. Again, the best of ships’ weapons and methods must be
absolutely useless unless the discipline, _moral_, and skill of those
who use them are equal to the strain of fighting. Again, it is highly
improbable that you will have good discipline and skill unless you
have good leaders, for the excellent reason that it is the officers
who make the men; certainly, if they exist in spite of there not being
good leaders, weak or heartless leadership can throw them altogether
away. The Revolution robbed the French Navy of nearly all its trained
officers--and, though possessed of better ships and courageous crews,
that navy never fought with real effect in the Great War of from 1792
to 1815. Again, however excellent your ships, weapons, and methods,
your _moral_ and your courage, unskilful command at sea and ignorance
of the true principles of tactics may rob you of victory. And, lastly,
unless those who are responsible for the creation of the material and
the training of human force, and for the chief command and general
strategy before and during war, are equal to their task unless they
keep in close and real touch with the active service, not only is it
almost impossible that a force of very high efficiency can exist, but
quite impossible that a right direction can be given to it in war.
The reader will very likely detect in the foregoing category of
precedence a trite maxim of Napoleon’s elaborated into a series of
sonorous, if illustrative, commonplaces. But this is a matter in which,
even at the cost of being hackneyed, it is absolutely necessary that
certain points should be clearly established. First, looking at the
whole subject of sea force as a problem in dynamics, it should be
constantly before our eyes that a navy is so highly complex an affair
that it can only act rightly when _all_ the elements of which it is
composed are employed in accord with the principles peculiar to each,
and are combined so that each takes its due place in relation to the
rest. It is, for example, quite conceivable that you might have a
fleet or a flotilla equipped with the best material, its personnel
instructed and expert in the best methods, commanded in detail and
directed by the chief command according to the soundest principles of
tactics and strategy, and yet that such a unit might fail in winning
its legitimate purpose, simply because of some failure to base its
operations on correct data. The omission to provide all the means for
obtaining intelligence that science and experience suggest, or, having
employed them and got the raw material, an inability to interpret and
transmit it rightly and promptly to the officer in command, might send
a fleet upon its mission either to the wrong place or at the wrong
time, or with the wrong dispositions. In considering naval science,
then, it is, so to speak, axiomatic to recognize that, as its extent
and variety are almost infinite, the task of elucidating and teaching
its principles and their application, so that every person making up
the organism which is to set the science into action shall act in the
light of true doctrine, requires an intellectual effort of incalculable
magnitude, just because the dynamic laws governing each element are
extraordinarily obscure, and because the number of elements is so
extraordinarily great. To be part perfect, then, may vitiate the whole
effort.
But if a whole science must be explored and its principles universally
inculcated, it would seem as if a wholly untenable ideal was being
put forward. But there is no escape from this ideal. For the laws
of science are ruthless. Just as “the wages of sin is death,” so is
failure the fruit of false doctrine. And the cruelty of the things lies
in this, that what seems an almost infinitesimal infidelity may bring
a large and noble effort, greatly conceived and gallantly executed, to
disaster.
The scale of the task prescribes the scale of the instruments for its
discharge. It was clearly beyond the scope of a single individual as
chief professional adviser to the Admiralty, I will not say to solve,
but even to keep account of, all the intricate problems which require
investigation. Indeed, for many years before the war it was fully
realized that only a properly organized war staff could even make a
beginning from which a right understanding of naval war in modern
conditions could derive. The necessity for this had constantly been
urged upon successive governments. The matter came to a head when,
in 1909, the Cabinet appointed a committee from its own members to
consider Lord Charles Beresford’s very grave statements as to the
condition of the Navy. This committee never published the evidence by
which Lord Charles and his associates tried to establish their case.
But in the course of a brief report which was published they said
that they had been impressed “with the difference of opinion amongst
officers of high rank and professional attainments regarding important
principles of naval strategy and tactics, and they look forward with
much confidence to the further development of a naval war staff, from
which naval members of the Board and flag officers and their staffs
at sea may be expected to derive common benefit.” Observe, that the
most experienced officers of the day differed with regard to important
principles of tactics! The technical officers of the navy knew that
this absence of doctrine “among officers of high rank and professional
attainments” arose very largely out of a total want of exact data as
to the precise effect our weapons could be expected to have upon the
enemy, and the effect the enemy’s weapons could be expected to have
upon us. If there was no agreement as to how to use weapons there could
be no agreement as to their value and, without such agreement, any
common doctrine of tactics must be impossible. And with tactics in the
melting-pot, strategy must be pure guesswork.
The 1909 committee had hoped that an extended war staff would bring
order out of chaos. But by 1911 there had still been nothing done to
realize its pious aspirations. When Mr. Churchill took office, then,
in the autumn of that year, he had the conclusions of the Beresford
Committee to guide him as to the state of strategy and tactics and a
state of things in the matter of guns, torpedoes, and mines, no less
than the manifest trend of active naval thought, to show where the
beginnings of reform must be made.
Mr. Churchill became First Lord in circumstances which were very
unexpected, and his first public announcement raised hope to the
highest point. For, over the date of New Year’s Day, 1912, there was
published by the First Lord a Memorandum which contained a passage on
which every optimist fastened. This document defined the root need of
naval force with masterly precision. Coming so soon, expressed with
such clarity and conviction, it seemed to be not so much a collection
of eloquent and thoughtful sentences logically compacted, but a
profession of intentions that must definitely turn the current of
naval life into the only channel that could assure right progress. Mr.
Churchill, in short, had quite evidently grasped the fundamental truth
that the whole structure of naval war was based upon the mastery of
weapons and, as evidently, intended the pursuit of this mastery to be
the watchword of his administration. His actual words were as follows:
“Unit efficiency--that is to say, the individual fighting power of
each vessel--is in the sea service for considerable periods entirely
independent of all external arrangements and unit efficiency at sea,
far more so than on land, is the prime and final factor _without which
the combinations of strategy and tactics_ are only the _preliminaries
of defeat_, but with which even faulty dispositions can be swiftly and
decisively retrieved.”
At last, then, the man and the moment had come together. To the new
First Lord had been given the vision that the moment called for. At
last, the consistent, concerted, co-ordinated effort would be made
which, proceeding by investigation, analysis, reason, and experiment,
would lead us to the root truths of one weapon after another. When the
conditions of action were analyzed and the problems they propounded
isolated, a measure of our capacity to deal with them would be
afforded, and not only would the points of our incapacity be made
clear, but the reasons for that incapacity and the character of the
measures needed for the remedy would be automatically shown by the
analysis. For the first condition for solving any problem is its
accurate, scientific, and exhaustive statement. And, if the statement
is sufficiently full, it almost carries the solution with it. Let the
problems of the gun, torpedo, mine, and submarine once be set out in
full, and the principles on which we should proceed to get the utmost
out of them in attack, and the utmost against similar efforts by the
enemy in defence, would become very clear indeed. In short, when all
available knowledge was put before those capable of appreciating it,
weighing it, and drawing from it right deductions, progress in a right
direction would be assured because, for the first time, it would be
established on a scientific foundation.
Nor, indeed, was this all. For no such inquisition could be made in
fundamentals without the work being reflected in every other department
of naval activity. In place of uninstructed conjecture, we should have,
as a basis of naval thought and plan, the reasoned conclusions of
expert knowledge.
There was the more reason for this optimistic view because Mr.
Churchill’s Memorandum went on to indicate the machinery by which
alone right methods can invariably, because together impartially
and impersonally, be discovered. For the particular occasion of the
Memorandum was the establishment of a new and extended war staff for
which, since 1904, we had all been waiting. This, the First Lord
explained, must have four carefully differentiated but very important
tasks.
It was first, the Memorandum said, “to be the means of preparing and
training officers for dealing with the extended problems that await
them in stations of high responsibility.” Its second function was to
sift, develop, and apply the results of history and experience, and to
preserve them “as a general stock of reasoned opinion available as an
aid and as a guide for all who are called upon to determine in peace
or war the naval policy of the country.” Its third function was the
exhibition of the vast superiority which a well-selected committee
of experts possesses over even the most brilliant expert working by
himself. The Staff was to be a “brain far more comprehensive than of
any single man, however gifted, and tireless and unceasing in its
action, applied continuously to the scientific study of naval strategy
and preparation.” Finally, this Staff, carefully selected from the
most promising officers, whose work would train them for the highest
command, making all history and experience the province from which
to draw the raw material of its doctrines, engaged tirelessly and
unceasingly in applying this doctrine to the guidance of the civilian
authorities by defining the requirements of our war preparation and war
strategy, was also to be the executive department through which the
higher command would issue its authoritative orders. “It is to be an
instrument capable of formulating any decision which has been taken,
or may be taken, by the executive, in terms of precise and exhaustive
detail.”
To those hopefully disposed this departure, then, seemed beyond words
momentous. For thirty years, whatever disagreement there may have been
in the navy, there was absolute unanimity as to the need of a staff
for the study of war and the formulation of campaign plans. So long
as weapons in use could be mastered by the personnel of the ships
without dependence on methods of fire control and so forth extraneously
supplied, this was indeed the navy’s chief and overmastering need. Had
such a staff existed even sixteen years ago, it is quite inconceivable
that we could imperceptibly have drifted into dependence on extraneous
methods for the right use of weapons, without the staff responsible
for preparation for war, bringing the fact of this dependence to the
notice of its chief. And, the principle once recognized that staff
organization is the only road to infallibility, the institution
of an additional staff for the study of so vital a matter must
inevitably have followed. The existence of one competent, impartial,
and impersonal expert body would automatically have resulted in the
creation of another.
But actually when this new staff was so resoundingly established at the
beginning of 1912, some amongst the optimists began to wonder whether
there might not be a fly in the ointment of their content. It was
pointed out that to create a staff for dealing “with the combinations
of strategy and tactics” _before_ any machinery existed for elucidating
the essentials of “unit efficiency” did most certainly have the air of
putting the cart before the horse. But to doubt that this machinery
would follow seemed too absurd in face of the tremendous emphasis that
Mr. Churchill had laid upon its necessity. If, without unit efficiency,
“the combinations of strategy and tactics were only the preliminaries
of defeat,” whereas if it existed a position in which tactics had
failed, “could be retrieved with swiftness and decision,” it was
manifestly unthinkable that such efficiency could be left to chance,
or assumed to exist on the _ipse dixit_ of any official. Obviously the
First Lord, having put his hand to the minor and secondary matter,
would not delay action at least as drastic in the major primary.
The institution of the War Staff, then, was watched with sympathetic
interest in the full expectation, not only that it must lead to great
results, but that it must be followed--as, of course, it should have
been preceded--by one for fathoming all the potentialities of the means
employed in the attack and defence of fleets.
But the War Staff was never put into the position to discharge the
functions which the 1909 committee had designated as its main purpose.
So far from being an authority equipped for the exhaustive study of
war and how to prepare for it, the whole apparatus of fighting was
carefully excluded from its purview. It had no connection with the
departments administering gunnery, torpedoes, submarines, aircraft,
or mines. As to some of these activities, there were as a fact no
departments solely charged with their control before the War Staff was
instituted. They were not entrusted to the War Staff. And no new staffs
were created! If the strategical vagueness, to which the Beresford
Committee had borne witness in 1909, arose largely, as many supposed,
from the uncertain state of naval technique, then, so far as the War
Staff was concerned, this vagueness had to continue--for technique was
not their concern.
The consequences were demonstrated in many striking ways as the war
progressed. But not the least curious result was the confusion that
arose as to the offensive and defensive aspects of naval strategy and
preparation. In the debate on the Naval Estimates of 1916 a violent
attack on Admiralty policy by Mr. Churchill left Mr. Balfour with no
alternative but to break the brutal truth to us that, at the outbreak
of war, we had not a single submarine-proof harbour on the East
Coast. Reflect for a minute what this means. In the years which have
elapsed since Lord Fisher came to the Admiralty as First Sea Lord, two
altogether revolutionary changes have been made in naval war.
1. Until 1904 the 12-inch guns of our battleships were weapons that no
one would have thought of using beyond the range of 4,000 yards. The
identical guns have been used in this war at 11,000, 12,000, and 13,000
yards. The advance in range owes nothing to improvements in the gun. It
has been brought about by improvements in sights, in range-finders, and
in the organization called fire control.
2. Again, in 1904 the submarine, or submersible torpedo-carrying boat,
had indeed been proved to be a practical instrument for war, but was
still in its infancy. By 1907, when Captain Murray Sueter wrote his
well-known work on the subject, it had become obvious that the tactics
of battle, no less than the defence of fleets, stood to be completely
changed by its actual and probable developments.
Now every new engine of war--and as a long-range weapon the modern gun
is such--creates a double problem. There is the art of using it in
attack; there is the art of countering it when it is in the enemy’s
hands. With every new development, then, the Navy has to learn a new
offensive and a new defensive. In the matter of guns, there is but one
defensive that can be perfectly successful. It is to develop a method
of using them so rapid, so insistent, and so accurate that the enemy’s
guns will be out of action before they can be employed against us.
Failing this there is a secondary defensive, viz., to protect ships
by armour. Finally, you may keep out of range of the enemy’s guns by
turning or running away. The adoption of armour calls for no perfection
either of tactical organization or technical practice. It is a matter
which can be left to the metallurgists, engineers, and constructors.
The purely naval policy, then, would have been either to develop the
use of guns offensively, which, as we have seen, must also be the best
defence, or with a purely defensive idea, solely to enjoin the tactic
that will avoid the risks inseparable from coming under the enemy’s
fire. To the country that was completing nearly two battleships to any
other country’s one, that aspired to command the sea, that hoped to be
able to blow any enemy fleet out of the water if it got the chance, it
would seem obvious that there could be only one gunnery policy; to wit,
push the offensive to the highest possible extent.
Again, the distinguishing feature of submarines is their capacity
to approach the strongest of vessels unseen and then, in waters
superficially under hostile command, to strike with the most deadly
of all weapons. As they gained in speed and radius of action, it
became obvious that wherever a fleet might be--whether at sea or
in harbour--it must, unless it were protected by effective passive
defences while in harbour, and by numerous mobile guards when at sea,
be exposed to this insidious and, if successful, deadly form of attack.
The basic supposition of British naval policy has been to maintain
a fleet sufficiently powerful to drive all enemy’s craft within his
harbours and defences. The proposition has only to be stated for it
to be clear that the navy could not have expected, except in rare
circumstances, to have any targets for its submarines, whereas it was
as certain as any future thing could be, that every British ship would
be a constant target for the enemy’s submarines. British policy in
regard to submarine war should, then, have been mainly, if, indeed, not
wholly, defensive.
Thus, if there was one form of _offensive_ imperatively imposed on
us, it was that of naval artillery; and if there was one form of
_defensive_ not less imperatively incumbent, it was the provision of
adequate protection against submarines.
It is now, of course, common knowledge that it was exactly in these
two particulars that Admiralty policy from 1904-1914 was either
discontinuous, vacillating, and self-contradictory, or simply
non-existent. So far as it cultivated anything, it was a defensive
tactic for the gun and offensive tactics for the submarine! On the
latter point let the non-provision of a safe anchorage on the Northeast
coast stand for the whole. If you pick up a Navy List for any month
in any year prior to August, 1914, you will look in vain for any
department of Whitehall, any establishment at a principal port, any
appointment of flag officer or captain, to prove that there was at any
time an individual or a committee charged with the vital problem of
protecting the British Fleet against enemy submarines when war broke
out. The necessity had indeed been realized. It was set out by Captain
Sueter in 1907. It had been urged on the Board of Admiralty. But no
action was taken.
This, of course, was bad enough. The case of gunnery was worse,
for if you compare the Navy List of August, 1914, with that of the
corresponding month of the year that Mr. Churchill took office, you
will find that it was to his administration that we owe the abolition
of the only officer and department in the navy competent to advise
or direct methods of gunnery adequate for war. From 1908 to 1913 the
Inspectorship of Target Practice had been effective in giving shape,
and to some extent, a voice, to the alarm, anxiety, and indignation
of the navy at the manner in which gunnery administration boxed the
compass of conflicting policies. With the suppression of the office
there came administrative peace--and technical chaos.
Why were not these problems, each and all of them, thoroughly
investigated and their solutions discovered before war began?
Mr. Churchill supplies us with the answer. He closes his article in
the _London Magazine_ of September, 1916, with a protest against naval
operations being more critically and even captiously judged than
military operations. They are so judged, he tells us, because of the
apparent simplicity of a naval battle, and the obvious character of
any disaster that happens to any unit of a fleet. Regiments may be
thrown away upon land and no one be any the wiser, but to lose a ship
is an event about which there can be no dispute. It is regarded as a
disaster, and at once somebody, it is assumed, must be to blame. This
is hard measure on the seaman. Surely, an admiral, he tells us, has a
greater claim upon the generosity of his countrymen than a general.
“His warfare is almost entirely novel. Scarcely one had ever had
any experience of sea fighting. All had to learn the _strange new,
unmeasured, and_, in times of peace, _largely immeasurable conditions_.”
Now this is really a very striking admission. Whence arose this theory
that naval warfare consisted of unfathomable mysteries? Perhaps the
explanation is as follows: Popular interest in the navy was first
thoroughly aroused by Mr. Stead’s _Pall Mall_ articles in the middle
eighties. It is from the controversies that he aroused that Brassey’s
and the other annual naval publications emerged. For twenty years
newspaper interest in shipbuilding programmes, design, and so forth,
advanced in a crescendo of intensity. The many and startling departures
in naval policy that characterized Lord Fisher’s tenure of the first
professional place on the Board of Admiralty, brought this interest to
a climax. There was a controversial demand for more costly programmes
involving political and journalistic opposition, which in turn provoked
greater vigour in those that advocated them. Thus the whole of naval
policy had to be commended to popular--and civilian--judgment. And it
followed that the advocates of expansion had to employ arguments that
civilians could understand. They very soon perceived that success lay
along the line of sensationalism. Larger and faster ships, heavier and
longer range guns carrying bigger and more devastating shells, faster
and more terrifying torpedoes, those new craft of weird mystery, the
submarines--all these things in turn and for considerable periods were
urged upon the public and the statesmen in terms of awe and wonder.
But the Augurs, instead of winking behind the veil, came finally to
be hypnotized by their own wonder talk. Who cannot remember that
ever-recurring phrase, “the untold possibilities” of the new engines
of war? They got to be so convinced on this subject that they made
no effort to find out precisely what the possibilities were, and
Mr. Churchill’s phrase that I have just quoted, “the strange new,
unmeasured, and largely immeasurable conditions,” exactly summed up the
frame of mind of those who were responsible for naval policy up to and
including Mr. Churchill’s time. If all these problems were insoluble,
if the conditions were immeasurable, if the possibilities of new
weapons were really untold and untellable, what was the use of worrying
about experiment and knowledge, judgment and _expertize_? It was this
frame of mind that led a humorist to suggest that the materialists
ought really to be called the spiritualists.
It was all very unfortunate, because any rightly organized system of
inquiry, investigation, and experiment, would have dissipated this
atmosphere of mystery once and for all. When new inventions are made
that affect the processes of industry, it is not the men who go about
talking of their “untold possibilities,” their “incalculable” effects,
and their “immeasurable” results, that get the commercial advantage of
their development. It is those who take immediate steps to investigate
the limits of their action and the precise scope of their operations
who turn new discoveries to account. To talk as if the performance
of guns, torpedoes, submarines, and aircraft were beyond human
calculation, was really a confession of incompetence. The application
to these things of the principles of inquiry universally employed in
other fields was always perfectly simple, and had it been employed we
should not have begun the war with wondering what we could do, but
knowing precisely what we ought to do. It was want of preparation in
these matters that was undoubtedly one of the deciding factors in tying
us down both to defensive strategy and to defensive tactics.
Once grasp what are the possibilities open to the enemy’s armed forces;
once realize the scope the mine and torpedo possess; once analyze their
influence both on strategy and on tactics, with the new problems that
they create both for cruising force and for naval artillery in action,
and it becomes exceedingly clear what it is that your own fleet must
be prepared to do. Had these things been realized at any time between
1911 and 1914, should we have had our own naval bases unprotected
against submarine attack? Should we have been without any organization
for using mines offensively against the enemy? Still more, should we
have been practically without any means whatever of preventing the
enemy using mines against us? We should have had a fleet composed of
different units, organized, trained, and equipped in a very different
way.