Wars and ConflictsΒ permalink
Effects of Singapore
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Message 1.Β
Posted by FormerlyOldHermit (U3291242) on Sunday, 19th June 2011
Singapore was built up as the bastion of Empire in the Far East but as we all know it fell in 1942. The wide ranging effects of the fall are known but to pose a counter-factual question what would have happened if Singapore had been held?
Let's say a number of scenarios:
Admiral Phillips moves Force Z out to sea and isn't spotted by the Japanese submarine that did. The Japanese can't reach his fleet in time with their air forces and he successfully engages the Japanese invasion fleet before running back to Singapore taking out a signficicant part of the invasion force.
Or perhaps the invasion force reaches Singapore in its entirety but the peninsula is defended well and either a stalemate develops or the invasion is completely defeated.
Personally I think if Singapore had been held British involvement in the Far East campaign would have been more significant than it was and the consequences would probably still be felt around ten years later. There could have been no Malayan Emergency for instance. -
Message 2
Posted by Vizzer aka U_numbers (U2011621) on Sunday, 19th June 2011
A successful defence of Singapore and Malaya would have been at odds with the 'Europe First' strategy which had been agreed a month earlier with the US during the Arcadia Conference in Washington.
It seems incredible to think that over 100,000 British Commonwealth troops were cynically sacrificed by Winston Churchill in order to 'prove' the Europe First strategy to the US military but that is precisely what has been suggested by some such as the former Daily Mail foreign correspondent and novelist the late Noel Barber. It's one of the several 'did Churchill know in advance?' allegations which have been levelled against the former UK prime minister ... Coventry, Pearl Harbor, Singapore etc.
If, however, Singapore and Malaya had been successfully defended then this would have have huge practical and psychological implications for the American forces in the Philippines defending the Bataan peninsula and on Corregidor. Let's not forget that this was the only theatre in which the Americans were engaged and so Washington would have been more than keen to do everything they could not to have had to abandon the forces on the ground. 'Europe First' would have come under serious pressure.
Japan's military would also have been much more cautious in its operations. More importantly, perhaps, it would have meant that Japan's gamble re rubber and oil in Malaya and the Dutch East Indies would have failed early on. This is turn could have prompted Tokyo to switch to a 'Europe First' startegy of its own and (validating Germany's declaration fo war on the US) may well have been forced by circmstances to declare war on the Soviet Union in the desperate hope of gaining oil etc from there.
The upshot is that Japan and Germany would still have lost the war but whether the manner in which they lost (in this alternative scenario) would have delayed the end of the British Empire is certainly a question. A lot has been made about how after the fall of Hong Kong, French Indochina, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, Dutch East Indies and nearly all of Burma to Japanese forces, this resulted in the public humiliation of the the traditional European and North American powers before an Asian audience. There were seemingly exposed as being not so invincible to their erstwhile subjects. This in turn is believed to have given impetus to the independence movements during and after the war.
It's possible that had this not happened then the notion of European and North American 'superiority' may have lasted longer in South-East Asia. That said - part of the Arcadia Conference (which agreed to 'Europe First') also included the issuing of the 'Declaration of the United Nations' on 1st January 1942. This was signed by 26 nations (including Asian countries such as China and India) and meant the Allies now subscribed to the Principles of the Atlantic Charter which had been agreed between the UK and the US 4 months earlier.
The Atlantic Charter, of course, included its Principle Number 3 which stated respect for 'the right of all peoples to choose the form of Government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them'. This was essentially incompatible with the long-term continuation of the British Empire. -
Message 3
Posted by rhmnney (U14528380) on Monday, 20th June 2011
I saw a program on US television regarding the fall of Singapore, the Japanese commander who took it was featured, he was throughly disgusted at the feeble attempt to defend Singapore, he said of an inferior force in numbers against a fortified position, and as far as he was concerned it was a breeze, a sheer 'Walk-Over'
Nice hearing it from the horse's mouth. -
Message 4
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Monday, 20th June 2011
Singapore was built up as the bastion of Empire in the Far East but as we all know it fell in 1942. The wide ranging effects of the fall are known but to pose a counter-factual question what would have happened if Singapore had been held?Β
The original War Memorandum (Eastern) envisaged sending a battle fleet to Singapore that was strong enough to defeat the Japanese fleet in battle. This is why the large fleet basis at Singapore was constructed: It was never intended as a "bastion" able to defend itself for a long time, it was built to receive the fleet that would be sent to the far east. Without reinforcements, Singapore was never expected to hold out for more than a couple of months, at most. And in 1941 the sending of substantial reinforcements had become a completely unrealistic notion.
The substitute "plan" assumed that Japanese operations in Malayan waters would be limited in scope because of the distance to Japanese ports, and a relatively modest RN force would be enough to deter the occasional raid and further disrupt Japanese communications. That was a bad misjudgment. Admittedly the Japanese surface fleet sent into the area was limited to the old (but modernized) Kongo-class battlecruisers. Still, as the USN found at Guadalcanal, a night engagement with the Japanese fleet was a bad idea. And in daylight Japanese aircraft represented a far too great danger to a fleet without air cover.
Force Z was not capable of surviving a determined Japanese attack. Even with the addition of an aircraft carrier, the odds were not good. The most likely result of a brief survival of Phillips' force would have been to redirect the sweep into the Indian Ocean of Nagumo's carriers, in the spring of 1942, at Singapore instead. The carriers could have easily dealt with any Royal Navy forces available in the region. Phillips, like Somerville, would have been able to keep his fleet intact only by hiding it. -
Message 5
Posted by rhmnney (U14528380) on Monday, 20th June 2011
MM I watched a US documentary on PBS, (an American government quasi educational service), where an experienced USAAF pilot was sent to the Pacific to oversee fighter squadrons. The American losses at that time in that sector was 300 American downed to 7 Japanese. Its not all Hollywood.
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Message 6
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
Once the original (IMO mistaken) decision was taken to use Singapore as the main base for a British Fleet in the Pacific, and the (equally misguided IMO) decision was taken to defend Malaya primarily from the air (with squadrons that were never supplied), the only useful thing Force Z could have done was to decamp immediately and join up with the USN's carriers to create a reasonably balanced force.
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Message 7
Posted by wollemi (U2318584) on Thursday, 23rd June 2011
#3
The Japanese commander at Singapore was Yamashita, who was executed for war crimes after the war, The judgement was controversial - he was found guilty of failing to prevent his forces committing atrocities in the Philippines. It was a feature of Japanese aggression in China and SE Asia for a 'Reign of Terror' as a tool of war
In essence, #2 is correct. The Malaya/Singapore Campaign was a casualty of Europe First. A political failure The urgency was to keep the US committed to the war in Europe -
Message 8
Posted by Mutatis_Mutandis (U8620894) on Friday, 24th June 2011
The Malaya/Singapore Campaign was a casualty of Europe First. A political failure.Β
This assumes that there was a choice. In terms of fleet deployment, there were very few to make. The French fleet was out of the equation entirely and the US fleet had just suffered the catastrophe of Pearl Harbor. This left the RN to cover the Atlantic, the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, and the South-West Pacific. It wasn't big enough for that.
If a political choice was made, then it was the decision, in the months before the Japanese attack, to send the small extra supply of first-line combat aircraft to the USSR rather than to Malaya. This indeed was a decision influenced by the "Europe First" strategy, although it had less to do with the agreement with the USA than with the need to keep the USSR in the war at almost any cost. -
Message 9
Posted by wollemi (U2318584) on Friday, 24th June 2011
#8
By...'this left the RN to cover'...I assume you've included the NZ, Canadian and Australian Navy contributions. all 3 dominions having lengthy Pacific coastlines
I think what #2 refers to is the concept that the defence of Singapore was undermined by more than poor military planning or availability of the promised fleet. The focus after Pearl Harbour was that the US commit to prosecuting the European War as a priority, something it had resisted doing for 2 years. In other words 'politics' influenced the decisions made about Singapore - it was a distraction
The Japanese were also underestimated. This was at least partly on racial grounds.It was also a long way from the British Isles. -
Message 10
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 24th June 2011
Surely to go back to the OP- as has been pointed out I think by inference- the position of Singapore in the Second World War must surely have been very much defined by the aspiration to dimilitarise the post-war world after 1918 in line with Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points that argued that it was the over-militarisation prior to 1914 that had imposed the logic of a Great War.
In line with this the pre-1914 position of the British Navies- both "Royal" and "Merchant" - was not restored after 1918 both have suffered terribly between 1914 and 1918.
The Naval Cuts had a devastating impact on many of the great shipbuilding regions. But, perhaps rather like current strategies for trying to cover global commitments with a smaller force, Singapore was selected as a forward holdng base for British power in the Asian sphere along with the Naval treaties that sought to maintain an acceptible ratio between the various Pacific Fleets. Perhaps a relevant comparison might be the traditional British attitude to Gibraltar, little more than a "foot in the door" that has made it a focal point for British strategies within the Mediterrean.
It could be argued that those calculations misfired, once the global reality was once more "an armed and arming world", (a) because the Japanese were much closer to the conflict area with various advantages including that of local knowledge that they tried to exploit in waging war in the name of Asia against Western Imperialism.
And (b) in this respect the Japanese innovative use of "new technology" on land and sea in the Asian-Pacfic sphere was crucial. Before the First World War, notably at the battle of Tsushima they had shown the value of small, fast and manoeuvrable torpedo boats against great traditional battleships: and between the wars they were quick to see that the future of the naval power lay with aircraft carriers. On land, however, they realised that, though railways were crucial, the traditional often single-track paths through "jungle" territory could be successfully used by men using bicycles. So their strategy was to capture lands first and build railways afterwards.
Cass -
Message 11
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Friday, 24th June 2011
Sorry, Cass, but no. The Japanese use of torpedo boats might have been - indeed was - crucial in the initial attack on Port Arthur, but Tsushima was decided by the heavy guns of the Japanese (British built) battleships and armoured cruisers against what Fullerton characterised as "The Floating Madhouse", and the Royal Navy, who taught the Japanese about Naval aviation in the first place, had three times planned - and once executed - the aerial equivalent of the torpedo boat attack on Port Arthur, and both they and the US Navy should have been alive to the prospect of the Japanese copying, and improving on, their mentors example. Even the Long Lance torpedo arose from a Japanese misunderstanding. They thought that the oxygen enrichment gear they saw in the Cherry Trees indicated that the British had solved the problem of using oxygen instead of compressed air for torpedos. That had previously defeated them, but they returned to the idea precisely because, if the British had solved it, they could too. Jellicoe's suggestion of basing a Pacific Fleet on Singapore and Sydney was much more likely to prove effective (within the severe limits posed by the Washington and London treaties) than the expedient actually adopted, of Singapore, with Ceylon as the fall-back position.
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Message 12
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 24th June 2011
Ur-Lugal
I did refer to the "use " of new technology not necessarily its development..
As Sir Charles Napier (?) tried to expose in his "Turbinia" stunt, the Navy in his era was rather conservative in adopting new technologies. This is perhaps hardly surprising when you are established as number one.
The Japanese after the Meiji Revolution had a clean slate and were able to pick and mix from the what appeared to be most progressive and advanced, and it was perhaps significant that they modelled their new Constitution on Germany. Of course the Germans set great store on developing new military technologies, leaving the German Government at war with interesting decisions like the ones Hitler had over the V-weapons.
Which reminds me that a very intelligent Japanese pupil I taught about a decade ago commented when we were studying Nazi Germany, that she believed that in Japan Hitler was still seen as a great man.
Cass -
Message 13
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Friday, 24th June 2011
Cass - not Napier, Parsons. Your point about RN conservatism however, is marginally, but only marginally, valid.
Consider Dreadnought.
Consider the introduction of submarines.
Consider naval aviation.
BTW - I reject the "Meiji Revolution" as portrayed by the Japanese. They didn't choose it, it was forced on them by the arrival of Perry and his "Black Ships of evil mien".. -
Message 14
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 24th June 2011
Yes. Parsons ..Thanks.
Re the points that you make.. I am not a close observer of military technology, but the "playing catch up" shown graphically in the Turbinia incident seems to sum up a British tendency.
The first British ironclad the "Captain", that perished at sea with enormous loss of life in 1870, looks like a response to the "industrialised warfare" involved in the American Civil War: while the Boer War- [with Germany very pro-Boer and the Kaiser pointing out to his uncle King Edward the weakness of the British effort by German standards], and then the Russo-Japanese War- were further evidence of the capacity of non-great powers to pose a threat. All additional motives for the arms race before 1914. Hence the developments that you mention.
And the British would argue (I would suggest) that the British military developments were essentially aimed at defending stability, the status quo and measured change, whereas Japanese military development, from the Korean adventure that then brought the Japanese into conflict with the Far Eastern outreach of the Russian Empire, does seem to have been based upon an aggressive expansionist policy and strategy, to which the Western Great Powers were vulnerable because of their very long lines of communication ( as in the cumbersome trailing of the Russian Baltic Fleet all the way after the destruction of the Pacific Fleet at Port Arthur)
Re the Meiji Revolution being "forced upon" the Japanese, the Japanese might argue that it is only sensible to embark upon change when the logic of the times forces it upon you. The American intrusion into Japanese waters was not unlike the Western policies towards mainland China which had argued that the Chinese would have to accept the international law of the sea and set up arrangements to deal properly with piracy, and shipwreck and the ability of men of the sea to conduct their various trades. The American forced opening of Japan was followed soon afterwards by the Anglo-French military expedition all the way to Peking and the Emperor in his Heavenly Palace.
In the case of Japan, however, the logic of history was merely repeating itself. Almost a thousand years before the original "kame kazi" came in a kind of Spanish Armada moment when Japan was threatened with conquest by a huge fleet from China. A terrible storm wind destroyed the Chinese force and saved Japan. But the opportunity was seized. Japan realised that China had a stronger and therefore superior civilization and radically remodelled their own importing many aspects of Chinese Civilization.
Once there was convincing proof of the power of Western Civilization the Japanese just repeated the exercise. Amongst other things Western History showed how military strength and competence had allowed a small and formerly weak state based on a group of island offshore from a continent with older and more powerful Empires to aquire vast territories and the resources essential for the industrial strength that lived in an inter-dependence with the military strength.
Cass -
Message 15
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 25th June 2011
The whole question of the Shogunate and its rise and fall does seem to be closely connected with Japanese contact with "the West".
I remember back in the Sixties reading a biography of Will Adams (?) the first Englishman in Japan. He was a sailor from the West Country working for the Dutch East India Co in the very early years of the Seventeenth Century, and he seems to have had something of a Marco Polo experience, rising in the Imperial service which was happy to avail itself of new input.
But, as in China and elsewhere, the global outreach of Europe's bitter religious wars brought Christian missionaries (notably the Jesuits) who were anxious to win over converts to "their side" recruiting new "soldiers of Christ"- as happened very much in the European colonies in North America.
The Dutch struggle for Protestantism against the might of the Spanish Empire resulted in that country producing the first army which really harnessed the new developments in science and technology. And during the English Civil War the financial power of London, which financed a New Model Army and an improved fleet, showed the development of a situation in which even without a monarch a rule of the Major Generals was likely. The "commonwealth of arms" produced a Europe in which the right of monarchs to have standing armies and, when relevant ,Navies was crucial to the lives of the various states.
Writing in 1941 C. Delisle Burns observed that this modern Europe of warring states had only failed to tear-itself to pieces and reduce Europe to rubble before "now" because they had spread their conflicts over the whole world. But the "virgin lands" "living space" was running out.
By the middle of the Seventeenth Century the Japanese decided to try to isolate themselves from such dangerous aliens. All aliens were asked/made to leave and Japan tried to shut itself off from the dangerous tide of history, as a land that knows a great deal about tidal waves.
But this was very obviously already "an armed and arming world", and that change in policy towards embattled isolation elevated the "men of war"- as Churchill was elevated during Britain's period of feeling isolated, The Shoguns as heads of the Japanese military establishment assumed the effective control of affairs- until Commander Perry's visit showed just how wide a gulf now existed between the power of the Japanese and that of the "barbarian at the gate". A new policy/strategy was needed for these times of globalisation.
Cass -
Message 16
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 25th June 2011
Sory, Cass, but Captain - built against the wishes of the Navy, wasn't, by any manner of means, the "first ironclad", nor even the first turret-armed ironclad, built for that service. The succession of Chief Naval Constructors, from Reed, to White to Watts to D'Eyncourt, produced radical designs which set the standard for the battleship for the entire pre-Dreadnought period, and up to the point where a combination of the Washington Treaty and financial restrictions, forced the abandonment of the "Invincible" class battleships, and the literal truncation of the Cherry Trees. That might not have mattered so much if American pressure hadn't led to the cessation of the Anglo-Japanese treaty, but it did generate a new and entirely unneccessary rivalry in East Asian waters.
I think, however, that we are straying dangerously far from the topic here, and it might be better to cover this stuff in a seperate thread. -
Message 17
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 25th June 2011
Ur-Lungal
Thanks for that correction.. I came across the Captain conroversy in a book on government and politics compiled in out of the writings of some leading academics of the Sixties.. Just shows how right I was not to trust them at the time.. But one could usually expect them to get basic facts right.
I agree about straying.. I suppose one could place your initial comment about the Meiji Revolution in the context of "gunboat diplomacy": and it was me who widened things out potentially hi-jacking the thread as I have often been accused of doing..
Cass Cass Cass is a Gas Gas Gas -
Message 18
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 25th June 2011
Ur-Lungal
But the facts about the Captain as you stated them were very much in line with the arguments that I was making..
The "Captain" was described in my source as "experimental", and you say that the Navy opposed it, taking a more conservative approach.. But by the 1870's the whole culture of power was really taking off, with the sections of British public increasingly favouring military or other forms of conflict solutions.
Darwin's struggle for the survival of the fittest was the new creed. Politicians were now having to pay attention to public opinion, as happened during the Crimean War. Christopher Hibbert brings out in his book about Lord Raglan that the war was a classic example of "mission creep".
The original Anglo-French mission was to drive the Russians out of newly occupied lands at the mouth of the Danube. When this was accomplished ,because the Russians were not prepared to fight on that issue, there was a great press campaign in Britain against Britain tolerating the Russian Naval base at Sebastopol. So Lord Raglan was sent new orders to undertake a mission that had never been planned properly.
Perhaps there is a lesson about Anglo-French missions.
I maintain that in many ways the generation that entered the First World War were in many ways already a "Lost Generation". They had been brought up with the image of "The Valley of Death" and the idea that with proper training, equipment, etc the outcome might be different.
Cass -
Message 19
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Saturday, 25th June 2011
Actually, Cass, Captain was less "experimental" than some of her predecessors - notably Cerberus, first of the breastwork monitors, which can (I'd argue should) be seen as the precursor of Devastation and Thunderer, where steam was adopted and sail abandoned. It was Coles' attempt to widen the a-arcs of the turrets whilst retaining a full rig which led to disaster - and poor design features, combined with building errors which gave her too low a freeboard, too high a metacentre, and an appalling righting moment. Oddly enough, many of these problems are thought to have played a significant part in the loss of the Mary Rose in Henry VIII time.
Re WWI - I suggest that, in line with their normal practices, the British entered WWI prepared to fight the Boer War, the Boer War ready to fight the Crimean War, and so on backward through time. Too many British generals, admirals, and air marshals, make pictures based on history without grasping the fundamental lessons they should learn from it - the Russo-Japanese war we've both mentioned should have taught them not to despise the Japanese military, a lesson which the fall of Tsingtao should have driven home even more forcefully. -
Message 20
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Saturday, 25th June 2011
Ur Lugal
Thanks for that..
As you infer it is more vital to understand the history of the Present and know "where we are at" than to understand "where we were".
Cass -
Message 21
Posted by VF (U5759986) on Tuesday, 28th June 2011
"By...'this left the RN to cover'...I assume you've included the NZ, Canadian and Australian Navy contributions. all 3 dominions having lengthy Pacific coastlines"
But have nothing larger than a heavy cruiser in the case of Australia and a few light cruisers in New Zealand's. Capital ships in the form of carriers and Battleships were what were required and the RN was seriously stretched by late 41 hence the rather meagre composition of Force Z. -
Message 22
Posted by Sambista (U4068266) on Tuesday, 28th June 2011
The British seem to have hoped and expected the old Dominions to have continued to fund major units after WWI, which they didn't - indeed, there was a press row when Hood's captain suggested, during the world cruise, that Canada, with both Atlantic and Pacific seaboards, really could do with at least one cruiser on each.
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Message 23
Posted by wollemi (U2318584) on Wednesday, 29th June 2011
As I understand up until 1939 imperial defence constituted a trade off
The RN supplied 'blue water defence'
The primary role of the dominions was to supply infantries -
Message 24
Posted by VF (U5759986) on Friday, 1st July 2011
<quote>Captain was less "experimental" than some of her predecessors - notably Cerberus, first of the breastwork monitors, which can (I'd argue should) be seen as the precursor of Devastation and Thunderer, where steam was adopted and sail abandoned. It was Coles' attempt to widen the a-arcs of the turrets whilst retaining a full rig which led to disaster - and poor design features, combined with building errors which gave her too low a freeboard, too high a metacentre, and an appalling righting moment. Oddly enough, many of these problems are thought to have played a significant part in the loss of the Mary Rose in Henry VIII time.</quote>
Edward Reed,the Director Of Naval Construction at the time had repeatedly pointed out the various flaws that HMS Captain possessed.If I remember correctly she was the only privately designed battleship built specifically for the RN (not including ships designed for foreign navies "bought in" such as HMS Swiftsure,HMS Triumph,HMS Erin etc) .
<quote>The RN supplied 'blue water defence'<quote>
Unfortunately by Dec 1941 they were having to do it across 5 oceans and the Med. -
Message 25
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 1st July 2011
"Unfortunately by Dec 1941 they were having to do it across 5 oceans and the Med."
As I commented before overstretch as the consequence of war-time destruction of the British fleets and policies of general disarmament..
But perhaps there are shades of recent comments to the effect that an expanding NATO (and a wider global "establishment") is happy to enjoy the greater sense of security created by the Post-1945 peace-process- taking benefits as long as the costs are low. The post-45 settlement avoided the some of the pitfalls of the Versailles Settlement and process- but it only works as long as the USA is happy to play "Big Daddy" with money, munitions and men for both NATO and the UN.
Of course people can point accusingly to the fact that there are some economic gains for even Great Britain in being able to show that it can still produce "cutting edge" technology, and argue that a thriving export industry in armaments creates a vested interest in war. But weapons do not make wars, though they may shape the conduct and direction, as in A.J.P. Taylor's "War by Time-Table" hypothesis.
Did I not read that the Clyde shipyards led the world in military shipbuilding? And were they the source of some of these private commissions?
As parents who have banned toy weapons for their children have discovered, the result is often the development of improvised weapons, as is happening in Libya and happened in the northern tribal districts of Pakistan during the previous Afghan Wars.
Cass -
Message 26
Posted by VF (U5759986) on Friday, 1st July 2011
"Unfortunately by Dec 1941 they were having to do it across 5 oceans and the Med."
As I commented before overstretch as the consequence of war-time destruction of the British fleets and policies of general disarmament..
But perhaps there are shades of recent comments to the effect that an expanding NATO (and a wider global "establishment") is happy to enjoy the greater sense of security created by the Post-1945 peace-process- taking benefits as long as the costs are low. The post-45 settlement avoided the some of the pitfalls of the Versailles Settlement and process- but it only works as long as the USA is happy to play "Big Daddy" with money, munitions and men for both NATO and the UN.
Of course people can point accusingly to the fact that there are some economic gains for even Great Britain in being able to show that it can still produce "cutting edge" technology, and argue that a thriving export industry in armaments creates a vested interest in war. But weapons do not make wars, though they may shape the conduct and direction, as in A.J.P. Taylor's "War by Time-Table" hypothesis.
Did I not read that the Clyde shipyards led the world in military shipbuilding? And were they the source of some of these private commissions?
As parents who have banned toy weapons for their children have discovered, the result is often the development of improvised weapons, as is happening in Libya and happened in the northern tribal districts of Pakistan during the previous Afghan Wars.
°δ²Ή²υ²υΜύ
Its all a bit" chicken and egg" so to speak Cass. The Washington Treaty avoided another naval arms race post 1919 which Britain really couldn't afford,it avoided the RN being unsurped as the No1 Navy in the world though they had to accept parity with the US.It also potentially avoided tensions with the US .
The problem with it was that the RN ended up having to cover the Empire with far fewer ships and apart from HMS Hood none of them incorporated the lessons of the war (especially those from the Battle of Jutland) Indeed even HMS Hood was hamstrung by the fact that she was designed before Jutland and was recognised by those within the Navy to still be flawed as although she had additional armour incorporated into her design she was not the ship the post war RN really wanted.
In addition the Dominion Navies were counted as part of the RN as a whole so there could be no question of Australia or New Zealand filling the gap as they had done before,indeed both countries lost their capital ships and ended up with heavy cruisers.HMNZS New Zealand was scrapped and HMAS Australia was scuttled of Sydney Head in 1924.To add insult to injury limitations were put on the amount of cruiser tonnage that could be built for each nation so the dominions ended up having to have a share of that pot as opposed to have their own allotted tonnage .
The treaty also saw the end of the Anglo/Japanese alliance which meant that the RN ended up with an ex ally,a 1st class power at that as a potential enemy in an area of the world where we had no fleet.
Now the Japanese may well have dumped us in any case,they were already starting to flex there muscles and saw themselves as successors rather than disciples of the British,but its an interesting "what if" .As you pointed out the other huge implication of the treaty was that the UK arms industry went into free fall and a lot of skills,factories and infrastructure disappeared.Hen it came to re armament the UK simply did not have the capacity to do the job as efficiently as we had done in the past in the time available,indeed come 1939 Churchill commented that "We are fighting this war with the ships of the last" and he wasn't that far wrong.
The net result was that the RN was stretched almost to breaking point by Dec 1941,they had lost a large number of ships in the Mediterranean in addition to those lost in the Atlantic.You see this in the choice of ships sent to Singapore.HMS Prince of Wales was an obvious choice,she was the best we had,HMS Repulse however was an elderly ship,the only thing she had on he side was speed and a reasonably competitive main armament.But that was all that was on available.There was talk of sending the 4 "R" class battleships but they simply would have been murdered.The pre war plan had been to send Hood,the Nelson class and the modernised Queen Elizabeth class to Singapore with carriers.Hood had been sunk,Warspite was damaged,as were a number of the carriers and Nelson was needed at home.HMS Rodney was in desperate shape,HMS Duke of York was newly built and very green,KGV was needed to at home to tackle the Tirpitz.
Jellicoe in his world tour in the early 20's recommended that Singapore should have its own fleet.
The problem was that one simply didn't exist in Dec 1941. -
Message 27
Posted by CASSEROLEON (U11049737) on Friday, 1st July 2011
For hundred's of years- since the late Middle Ages states have not been able to afford to money costs involved in effective military systems, and this has been true of the USA during the Cold War- in spite of the high levels of taxation.. These issues are very important since they address directly the crises of "Western States" today.
England was able to create a workable system of National Debt which made it possible for people to invest in it as arguably the best "Future Project" that they had.
There were many reasons why this was not really possible after 1918, but they included a politics of stripping away the wealth that could have been used as in the past, most notably at a National Level with the policy forced upon the City of London by Lloyd George and Maynard Keynes of using the gold reserves of the Bank of England to pay the USA for the goods that we needed.
And the USA repaid Britain by:
(a) refusing to accept the responsibilities to the World economy that went along with possession of what had become its essential ballast.
and
(b) tending towards a "Brave New World" of anti-Imperialism and revolution as the "American" model and the solution to the problems of Europe, that undermined crucially the acceptance of the British Empire as a stabilising influence in a turbulent world, with the Royal Navy turning the seas into genuine "international waters" in the greatest ever expression of the concept of "pax Romana" in terms of surface area. E.M. Forster's "A Passage to India" has been credited with unprecedented politcal impact as it disseminated Forster's feel of guilt over the British role in India, while his earlier novels showed his family connections to the great founder of the moralising Clapham Sect, Henry Thornton.
In Revolutionary times of class struggle it seemed more vital to share wealth around than to build it up, and hence the kind of Finance that had made military expenditure "affordable" for hundreds of years was no longer possible.
This goes to the heart of the present crises of debt because those now able to lend will- as ever- only lend on good terms to people and countries with a credible Future Project that offers a probablity that what can not be afforded now will be affordable in the Future.
Cass
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