Search

Before the First World War, the law stated that only Anglican clergy could perform religious services aboard British warships; clergy of other denominations were, other than in exceptional circumstances, barred from undertaking this role. For a brief period at the start of the twentieth century an informal and unpublicized attempt was made to circumvent this requirement and provide Catholic sailors with access to their own priests at sea. The reasons for this policy, how it operated and why it ended are explored in this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During World War II, Britain established a liaison officer with the Soviet Fleet in the Black Sea. Military cooperation between the western allies and the USSR is often regarded as minimal and unsuccessful, but this post demonstrated more positive cooperation. There were two crises when there were accusations of misbehaviour, and there were occasions when he was idle, but these were handled successfully in Whitehall. The post endured, and successive officers did a good job of operational liaison, as well as providing unique intelligence insights from a Soviet fighting front, right up until the end of the war in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article explores the significance of two British military expeditions deployed to the ancient Sudanese port city of Suakin on the Red Sea coast in 1884 and 1885. Although the British government claimed the expeditions were organized to support Egyptian forces in Sudan during the Mahdist revolt, the evidence suggests instead that the intervention was orchestrated as part of a wider effort to seize all Egyptian ports in the Red Sea to prevent them from falling into French hands. This move came as Britain began increasingly to rely on the imperial sea lanes to support its status as a global power in the late nineteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In August 1914 the Royal Navy entered the First World War without a clear sense of how it was going to undertake anti-submarine warfare (ASW). In part this was a technical issue; fundamentally the requirements of ASW were at the very edge of what was then possible. This article will, however, argue that the problem ran deeper, and stemmed from cultural assumptions about what the role of the Royal Navy was, and how it should seek to address the challenge posed by submarines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the utility of naval aviation, specifically the contribution of the British naval air arm to Operation Overlord. It argues that while there were practical reasons for carriers not being present directly off the Normandy beaches, British naval aviation supported the invasion both directly (from ashore, and from carriers operating at a distance) and indirectly, over a long period. It was also performing a range of other roles in several theatres. Navies and naval aviation contribute to campaigns in a way that is different to land-based forces; understanding this requires a bigger map and a longer timeline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a commonplace that the Royal Navy entered the Great War intending to strangle the German economy through a strategy of blockade. This was not so. Prior to 1912 blockade was mainly seen as a means of attaining operational intelligence; economic warfare was secondary. For legal reasons blockade had to be abandoned in 1912. Thereafter, only contraband control remained as a means of waging economic warfare, and this was seen purely as a way of luring the Germans to battle. In 1914 the Royal Navy had no grand strategy, a fact that explains its hesitant performance in the war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the evolution of the Royal Navy’s policy relating to the use of amphetamines during the Second World War. This discussion, which demonstrates the groundbreaking yet restrictive nature of naval drug policy, is placed in the wider context of medical research in the Royal Navy during the conflict, in which the organisation was the last of the Services to develop its own personnel research committee. In turn, the article examines the motivation for utilising the drug, which included considerations relating to both wakefulness, in combat situations, and well-being, in survival at sea situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The provision of naval gunfire support was an important aspect of the Falklands War. By the end of the 1970s, naval gunfire support appeared to be doomed, but its vital role during the Falklands War led to a timely reappraisal. Indeed, the use of naval gunfire support during the Iraq War in 2003 and the conflict in Libya in 2011 vindicated the revival of interest in the capability. The Falklands War provided a number of valuable lessons about the role and significance of naval gunfire support, particularly during amphibious and expeditionary operations. With the threat of defence cuts ever-present, it is important that those lessons are not forgotten. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revises previous interpretations of the Imperial Maritime League, and adds new detail to our understanding of Edwardian patriotic leagues, by highlighting the relevance of radical right ideology. A product of division in the Navy League, the Imperial Maritime League channelled extra-parliamentary sentiment into specific navalist causes, and worked closely with likeminded newspaper editors and naval officers to challenge the Unionist leadership, Admiralty, and Navy League. The new league was ultimately undermined by British victory in the naval race, and the Navy League’s preparedness to react positively to the challenge of a new navalist league. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article shows how Sir John Fisher, together with Edward VII, sought to use Britain’s naval strength as a tool of deterrence against Germany. By highlighting the Royal Navy’s strength and German vulnerability, they tried to convince policymakers in Berlin that war was not in German interests. This attitude underpinned much of Fisher’s naval policy and helps to explain some of his more extreme statements and actions, which have been the source of certain contradictions within the current historiography. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines Nicholas Lambert’s criticisms of the article ‘Sir John Fisher’s Naval Revolution Reconsidered: Winston Churchill at the Admiralty, 1911–1914’ (War in History 18, 2011), which challenged revisionist claims that in July 1914 the Royal Navy was on the verge of implementing a ‘naval revolution’ based on radical ideas attributed to Admiral Sir John Fisher. It demonstrates that Lambert’s criticisms are unfounded, and provides additional evidence to support an alternative interpretation of British naval policy in the period 1912–14. Important changes were undoubtedly under way on the eve of the First World War, but the revisionists exaggerate Fisher’s influence and oversimplify an inherently complex decision-making process. The Admiralty’s plan to substitute torpedo craft for some of the battleships in its 1914 programme was intended to bolster a conservative strategy, and the changes under consideration were essentially evolutionary in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Royal Navy’s 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’ provide a unique and underutilized window onto British naval doctrine in the World War II era. A comparison with US and Japanese pre-war tactical/operational thinking clarifies and illuminates the ideas and issues faced by naval officers in the interwar period. Additionally, this line of inquiry foregrounds the question of how we assess naval tactical schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article challenges claims by revisionist historians that in July 1914 the Royal Navy was on the verge of instituting a ‘naval revolution’ based on the ideas of Admiral Sir John Fisher. Winston Churchill, the first lord of the Admiralty, was not prepared to rely on Fisher’s concept of ‘flotilla defence’ in the North Sea, as revisionists contend. Nor did he wish to send capital ships to distant waters. He increasingly looked to submarines to protect Britain’s interests in the Mediterranean, a secondary theatre, but he still believed that Britain must maintain a preponderance of strength over Germany in capital ships in the North Sea. Churchill’s strategic views were generally conservative. He hoped that new designs or new technologies would one day allow submarines to supplant battleships, and he actively supported measures that might help to make this possible. But there is no evidence that he and his naval advisers were ready to gamble on a radical departure in force structure or naval strategy on the eve of the First World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]