The Gathering Storm: The Second World War (102 page)

6. The same principles apply even more strongly to destroyers and light craft; but these seem to be going on pretty well, and I have not yet had time to look in detail into their finishing dates. But we most urgently require two new battleships, four aircraft carriers and a dozen cruisers
commissioned and at work
before the end of 1940.

W. S. C.

* * * * *

I address this to you alone, because together we can do what is needful.

We must have a certain number of capital ships that are not afraid of a chance air bomb. We have been able to protect them by bulges and Asdics against the U-boats. We must have them made secure against the air. It is quite true that it may well be a hundred to one against a hit with a heavy air torpedo upon a ship, but the chance is always there, and the disproportion is grievous. Like a hero being stung by a malarious mosquito! We must work up to the old idea of a ship fit to lie the line against whatever may be coming.

To come to the point. I want four or five ships made into tortoises that we can put where we like and go to sleep content. There may be other types which will play their parts in the outer oceans; but we cannot go on without a squadron of heavy ships that can stand up to the battery from the air.

I wrote you this morning about the
Queen Elizabeth.
But we must make at least five other ships air-proof, i.e., not afraid of a thousand-pound armour-piercing bomb, if by chance it should hit from ten thousand feet. This is not so large a structural rearrangement as might appear. You have got to pull a couple of turrets out of them, saving at least two thousand tons, and this two thousand tons has to be laid out in flat armour of six or seven inches, as high as possible, having regard to stability. The blank spaces of the turrets must be filled with A.A. guns. This means going down from eight guns to four. But surely four fifteen-inch can wipe out
Scharnhorst
or
Gneisenau.
Before the new German battleship arrives, we must have
King George V
and
Prince of Wales.
Let us therefore concentrate on having five or six vessels which are not afraid of the air, and therefore can work in narrow waters, and keep the high-class stuff for the outer oceans. Pull the guns out and plaster the decks with steel. This is the war proposition of 1940.

How are you going to get these ships into dockyards hands with all your other troubles?

Do not let us worry about the look of the ship. Pull the superimposed turrets out of them. Do one at Plymouth, one at Portsmouth, two on the Clyde, and one on the Tyne. These four-gun ships could be worked up to a very fine battery if the gunnery experts threw themselves into it. But, after all, they must bristle with A.A. and they must swim or float wherever they choose. Here is the war
motif
of 1940, and we now have the time.

How all this reinforces our need for armoured ammunition ships, and armoured oilers, is easily seen. In all this we have not got to think so much of a sea action as of sea-power maintained in the teeth of air attack.

All this ought to be put in motion Monday, and enough information should be provided to enable us to take far-reaching decisions not later than Thursday. On that day let us have Controller, D.N.C. and D.N.O. and shift our fighting front from the side of the ship to the top.

* * * * *

It looks to me as if the war would lag through the winter with token fighting in all spheres, but that it will begin with mortal intensity in the spring.

Remember no one can gainsay what we together decide.

W. S. C.

Appendix D, Book II

NEW CONSTRUCTION PROGRAMMES

Appendix E, Book II

FLEET BASES

It was arranged at a conference between the First Lord, the First Sea Lord and the C.-in-C. on
Nelson, October
31, 1939, that the following arrangements should be made at Fleet bases:

1. Scapa cannot be available, except as a momentary refuelling base for the Fleet, before the spring. Work is, however, to proceed with all possible speed upon

(
a
) blockships in the exposed channels:

(
b
) doubling the nets and placing them specially wherever required. They are to be at least as numerous and extensive as in the last war, plus the fact that the modern net is better. The routine of the gates is to be studied afresh with a view to briefer openings and greater security.

(
c
) The trawler and drifter fleet on the scale used in the Great War is to be earmarked for Scapa, and its disposition carefully considered by Plans Division. However, all these trawlers and drifters will be available for the Forth until it is time to use Scapa as a main base, i.e., not before the end of February, 1940.

(
d
) The work on the hutments is to proceed without intermission.

(
e
) Gun platforms are to be made in concrete for the whole of the eighty guns contemplated for the defence of Scapa. The work on these is to proceed throughout the winter; but the guns will not be moved there or mounted until the spring, when everything must be ready for them.

(
f
) The aerodromes at Wick are to be increased to take four squadrons.

(
g
) The R.D.F. work is to be gone on with, but must take its turn with more urgent work.

Meanwhile, Scapa can be used as a destroyer refuelling base, and the camouflaging of the oil tanks and the creation of dummy oil tanks should proceed as arranged. Staff at Scapa is not to be dimin ished, but there is no need to add to the oil storage there beyond the 120,000 tons already provided. The men now making the underground storage can be used for other work of a more urgent nature, even within the recent Board decision.

2. Loch Ewe. Port A is to be maintained in its present position with its existing staff. A permanent boom and net is to be provided even before the Scapa nets are completed. The freshwater pipe is to be finished and any minor measures taken to render this base convenient as a concealed resting-place for the Fleet from time to time.

3. Rosyth is to be the main operational base of the Fleet, and everything is to be done to bring it to the highest possible efficiency. Any improvements in the nets should be made with first priority. The balloons must be supplied so as to give effective cover against low-flying attack to the anchorage below the Bridge. The twenty-four 3.7 guns and the four Bofors which were lately moved to the Clyde are to travel back, battery by battery, in the next four days to the Forth, beginning after the Fleet has left the Clyde. It is not desired that this move should appear to be hurried, and the batteries may move as convenient and in a leisurely manner, provided that all are in their stations at the Forth within five days from the date of this minute. Strenuous effort with the highest priority for the R.D.F. installations which cover Rosyth must be forthcoming. Air Vice-Marshal Dowding is today conferring with the C.-in-C., Home Fleet, upon the support which can be forthcoming from A.D.G.B. The arrangement previously reached with the Air Ministry must be regarded as the minimum, and it is hoped that at least six squadrons will be able to come into action on the first occasion the Fleet uses this base.

D.C.N.S. will kindly find out the upshot of the conference between the C.-in-C. and Vice-Marshal Dowding and report the results. We must certainly look forward to the Fleet being attacked as soon as it reaches the Forth, and all must be ready for that. Thereafter this base will continue to be worked up in every way until it is a place where the strong ships of the Fleet can rest in security. Special arrangements must be made to co-ordinate the fire of the ships with that of the shore batteries observing that a seventy-two-gun concentration should be possible over the anchorage.

4. The sixteen balloons now disposed at the Clyde should not be removed, as they will tend to mislead the enemy upon our intentions.

I should be glad if D.C.N.S. will vet this minute and make sure it is correct and solid in every detail, and, after obtaining the assent of the First S.L., make it operative in all Departments.

W. S. C.

Scapa Defences

1. When in September we undertook to man the Scapa batteries, etc., the number of Marines required was estimated at 3,000. This has now grown successively by War Office estimates to 6,000, to 7,000, to 10,000, or even 11,000. Of course, such figures are entirely beyond the capacity of the Royal Marines to supply.

2. Moreover, the training of the Royal Marines “hostilities only” men can only begin after March 1, when the necessary facilities can be given by the Army. Nothing has, in fact, been done since September except to gather together the nucleus of officers and N.C.O.s with about eight hundred men. These can readily be used by us either for the Marine striking force or the mobile defence force.

The War Office, on the other hand, have a surplus of trained men in their pools, and seem prepared to man the guns at Scapa as they are mounted at the rate of sixteen a month. As we want to use the base from March onwards, it is certain that this is the best way in which the need can be met.

3. If by any chance the War Office do not wish to resume the reponsibility, then we must demand from them the training facilities from February 1 and their full assistance with all the technical ratings we cannot supply; and also make arrangements for the gradual handing-over of the staff. It is clear, however, that the right thing is for them to do it, and we must press them hard.

4. I do not wish the Admiralty to make too great a demand upon the Army. It would seem that the numbers required could be substantially reduced if certain tolerances were allowed. The figure of thirty men per gun and fourteen per searchlight is intended to enable every gun and searchlight to be continuously manned at full strength, night and day, all the year round. But the Fleet will often be at sea, when a lower scale of readiness could be accepted. Moreover, one would not expect the guns to be continuously in action for very prolonged attack. If these attacks were made, the Fleet would surely put to sea. It is a question whether the highest readiness might not be confined to a proportion of the guns, the others having a somewhat longer notice.