Britain's Anti-submarine Capability 1919-1939 (Cass Series: Naval Policy and History)

233 Pages·2003·2.64 MB·English

by  George Franklin

BRITAIN’S ANTI-SUBMARINE CAPABILITY
1919–1939
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
CASS SERIES: NAVAL POLICY AND HISTORY
Series Editor: Geoffrey Till
ISSN 1366–9478
This series consists primarily of original manuscripts by research scholars in the
general area of naval policy and history, without national or chronological limitations.
It will from time to time also include collections of important articles as well as
reprints of classic works.
1. Austro-Hungarian Naval Policy, 1904–1914
Milan N.Vego
2. Far-Flung Lines: Studies in Imperial Defence in Honour of Donald Mackenzie Schurman
Edited by Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy
3. Maritime Strategy and Continental Wars
Rear Admiral Raja Menon
4. The Royal Navy and German Naval Disarmament 1942–1947
Chris Madsen
5. Naval Strategy and Operations in Narrow Seas
Milan N.Vego
6. The Pen and Ink Sailor: Charles Middleton and the King’s Navy, 1778–1813
John E.Talbott
7. The Italian Navy and Fascist Expansionism, 1935–1940
Robert Mallett
8. The Merchant Marine and International Affairs, 1850–1950
Edited by Greg Kennedy
9. Naval Strategy in Northeast Asia: Geo-strategic Goals, Policies and Prospects
Duk-Ki Kim
10. Naval Policy and Strategy in the Mediterranean Sea: Past, Present and Future
Edited by John B.Hattendorf
11. Stalin’s Ocean-going Fleet: Soviet Naval Strategy and Shipbuilding Programmes, 1935–1953
Jürgen Rohwer and Mikhail S.Monakov
12. Imperial Defence, 1868–1887
Donald Mackenzie Schurman; edited by John Beeler
13. Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
Edited by Phillips Payson O’Brien
14. The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons
Richard Moore
15. The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period: An Operational Perspective
Joseph Moretz
16. Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power
Thomas M.Kane
17. Britain’s Anti-submarine Capability, 1919–1939
George Franklin
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
Britain’s
Anti-Submarine Capability
1919–1939
GEORGE FRANKLIN
FRANK CASS
LONDON (cid:127) PORTLAND, OR
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
First published in 2003 in Great Britain by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
Crown House, 47 Chase Side, Southgate
London N14 5BP
and in the United States of America by
FRANK CASS PUBLISHERS
c/o ISBS, 5824 N.E.Hassalo Street
Portland, Oregon, 97213–3644
Website: www.frankcass.com
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Franklin, George D.
Britain’s anti-submarine capability 1919–1939.–
(Cass series. Naval policy and history; 17)
1. Anti-submarine warfare—Great Britain—History
2. Great Britain—History, Naval—20th century
I. Title
359.9'3'0941'09042
ISBN 0-7146-5318-7 (cloth)
ISSN 1366–9478
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Franklin, George D.
Britain’s anti-submarine capability, 1919–1939/George D.Franklin.
p. cm.—(Cass series-naval policy and history; 17)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7146-5318-7 (cloth)
1. Anti-submarine warfare—Great Britain-History-20th century.
2. Great Britain. Royal Navy-History—20th century. I. Title. II. Series.
V214.F73 2003
359.9'3–dc21
2002035056
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher of this book.
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
Some were brave, some were not,
all were human.
To the men who went to sea and faced the U-boats.
But, first among them,
to my father.
As he asked us to write on his gravestone
CAPTAIN RICHARD FRANKLIN CBE RN
MARINER
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
Contents

Page
List of Illustrations viii
List of Figures and Tables ix
Series Editor’s Preface xi
Acknowledgements xiii
List of Abbreviations xv
Introduction 1
1 Strategy 9
2 Organisation 28
3 Sensors 57
4 Weapons 72
5 Platforms 87
6 Tactics 112
7 Wartime Experience 162
8 The System 176
Conclusion 186
Appendix A: Theory of Asdic 191
Appendix B: Portland Exercise Success Criteria 196
Bibliography 198
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
Illustrations
Between pages 80 and 81
1. Bridge repeaters and asdic communications on a destroyer, c. 1932.
2. A 1922 photograph of HMS Rocket’s asdic control position.
3. A First World War hydrophone operator training the equipment to
obtain the bearing of a contact.
4. HMS Rocket’s transducer.
5. Retractable streamlined dome for type 121 asdic.
6. Asdic control position on a trawler.
7. A Sa Ro London small flying boat.
8. Pre-war Avro Ansons flying in formation.
9. Two A/S bombs fitted to a Sa Ro London.
10. Short Sunderland flying boat.
11. Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Trenchard.
12. Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris.
13. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield.
14. Captain ‘Jonny’ Walker directing an attack.
15. HMS Stork.
16. HMS Ibis.
17. HMS Enchantress.
18. HMS Stork.
19. Loading a depth-charge thrower.
20. A depth charge in the air, having been fired from its thrower.
21. Detonation of a single depth charge.
22. Anti-submarine nets during the Seawolf trials.
23. HMS Seawolf on the surface, after having become entangled during
indicator net trials.
24. Heavy anti-submarine nets being laid near Rosyth for the Seawolf
trials.
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
Figures and Tables
FIGURES
Page
1. Sea Lords and Sections of the Naval Staff Concerned with Anti-
Submarine Warfare. 29
2. Employment of Specialist A/S Officers, and Total Personnel
Strength of the Navy. 39
3. Type 114 Asdic Set, Showing Typical Arrangement of Equipment. 59
4. Depth Charge Thrower. 74
5. Standard Depth Charge Pattern. 74
6. Depth Charge Chute. 76
7. Depth Charge Rail. 77
8. The Submarine Approach Problem. 119
9. Asdic Sweep Pattern. 122
10. Battle Fleet Asdic Screen for Exercise RZ, August 1933. 138
11. Convoy Night Asdic Screen for A/S Defence only: Exercise MA,
1929. 144
12. Percentage of Success Rates in Asdic Hunting Exercises, 1925–38. 157
13. Subaqueous Sound Paths. 194
TABLES
Page
1. Bearing and Requirement of A/S Specialist Officers, 1922. 35
2. Training of A/S Officers at Portland, 1935–38. 36
3. Training of SD Ratings at Portland, 1929–38. 43
4. Depth Charge Armaments, 1939. 79
5. Escort and Patrol Vessel Particulars. 92
6. Particulars of A/S Vessels Built 1919–39. 95
7. Convoy Defence Exercises. 114
8. Ships Sunk in Convoys, 3 September 1939–31 May 1940. 169
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
Series Editor’s Preface
In his charmingly modest memoirs1 Admiral Harris Laning, US Navy,
reflecting on his time at the US Naval War College in the early 1930s,
refers to the widespread view that sailors are intrinsically resistant to new
ideas, often through having some ulterior motive. In Laning’s time, the
particular complaint was that hidebound battleship admirals were reluctant
to admit the extent to which technology in the shape of aircraft and
submarine was threatening the traditional primacy of the all-big-gun
battleship.
This view has also been adopted by a number of scholars, especially
amongst those who proceed on the basis of a set of generalisations derived
from the social sciences about how innovation does, or does not, take
place. Most obviously a new technology comes along and is eventually
accepted. It becomes part of the naval establishment. This creates a
generation of naval officers with experience of this new technology; partly
for career reasons, and partly because they cannot shake off attitudes
absorbed in their most formative years, they become a vested interest,
defending their now accepted paradigm of naval warfare against even
newer challenges coming along in their turn. Almost by definition
therefore, naval officers will be a generation behind the times. The only
comfort is that their enemies will be too—mostly.2
Often such scholars are able to make use of the views of naval officers
connected with the new technology, disappointed at the slow rate at which
their ideas have been adopted—or, even worse, furious that they have
been rejected altogether. In the case of the Royal Navy of the inter-war
period, such views have even heavily influenced the conclusions of its
great and much respected semi-official historian Captain Stephen Roskill
who argues in his Naval Policy Between The War3 that the British Admiralty
of the time did indeed concentrate too much on the conduct of major
fleet battles at sea, wanting in particular to re-fight the Battle of Jutland;
they did pay too little attention to the impact of airpower at sea and, most
dangerous of all, they did neglect the unglamorous demands of the defence
of shipping. And even when such conservative admirals were concerned
about the defence of shipping, they focused on the wrong kind of threat
to it—surface raiders not submarines.
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin
BRITAIN’S ANTI-SUBMARINE CAPABILITY, 1919–1939
This historical debate about the way that conservative naval hierarchies
delay the process of adaptation has a good deal of modern salience as we
move into a new century of naval operations at sea. Today, there is much
talk about the ‘transformational’ impact of new technology, especially in
the shape of computers and micro-processors, and much worry that
modern sailors are not responding to such challenges effectively and
may well be caught out by it later, as their predecessors were.
Against this litany of complaint of and concern, Laning pleaded for a
degree of realism and of understanding:
Those critics fail to realize that naval officers, more than anyone
else, want to win our wars at sea and care little as to the kind of
weapon used, only that it be legal and bring victory. For that reason,
they try out every device, every method, and every suggestion, but
advocate only those with satisfactory results. The writings and talks
of columnists and others unacquainted with sea warfare or with the
practical utilization of sea weapons cannot convince the navy to
adopt unproven ideas. The navy tries every new, feasible, and
worthwhile suggestion, hoping to find more certain ways to win a
war. It does not however accept neophyte suggestions.
Navies always have to deal with the challenges of new technology, and
the best policy, he argued, was one of ‘steady as she goes’—cautious,
open-minded, pragmatic and incremental adaptation when the evidence
that major change is necessary is finally convincing.
In this book, George Franklin, a serving naval officer himself,
explores the Royal Navy’s attitude to anti-submarine warfare in the
interwar period. His conclusions will challenge many of the existing
stereotypes about ‘naval conservatism’ and offer much support for
the views of Admiral Laning. He finds that the Admiralty approach
towards the submarine threat was much more balanced and sensible
than it is often given credit for. He shows that the innovation process
is a complicated one and that only by realising such complexities
and by avoiding the seductive appeal of simple solutions will navies
be able effectively to respond to technological challenge.
NOTES
1 Admiral Harris Laning, An Admiral’s Yarn (edited by Mark Russell Shulman), Naval
War College Press, Newport, RI, 1999, pp. 327–8.
2 W.M.McBride, Technological Change and the United States Navy 1865–1945, Johns Hopkins
University Press, Baltimore, MD, 2001, is an example of this kind of approach.
Several previous volumes in this series have attacked such simplistic ideas, notably
Phillips Payson O’Brien, Technology and Naval Combat in the Twentieth Century and Beyond
and Joseph Moretz, The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period.
3 Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars (2 vols), Collins, London, 1968 and 1976.
xii
Copyright © 2003 George Franklin