MARITIME STRATEGY AND THE NUCLEAR AGE

MARITIME STRATEGY AND THE NUCLEAR AGE

By the same author AIR POWER AND THE ROYAL NAVY

Maritime Strategy and the Nuclear Age Geoffrey Till with contributions from John Hattendorf, Richard Hill, Barry Hunt, Peter Nailor, Bryan Ranft, Stephen Roskill and Craig Symonds

Geoffrey Till 1982 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1982 978-0-333-26109-5 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1982 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Companies and representatives throughout the world ISBN 978-1-349-04502-0 ISBN 978-1-349-04500-6 (ebook) DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04500-6

Contents Notes on the Contributors vii ~re b 1 An Introduction 1 (a) The influence of sea power on history 1 (b) The influence of history on sea power 5 (c) The principles of maritime strategy 8 (d) An anatomy of sea power 11 (e) Constituents of a maritime strategy 14 2 A Review of the Literature 19 (a) Maritime strategy in the age of the galley 19 (b) Maritime strategy in the age of sail 20 (c) The Colomb brothers 24 (d) Alfred Thayer Mahan (by Craig Symonds) 28 (e) The Jeune Ecole 34 (f) Sir Julian Corbett (by Bryan Ranft) 39 (g) Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond (by Barry Hunt) 43 (h) Continental maritime strategy 1918-39 49 (i) Reactions to the Second World War 54 (j) American thinking on naval strategy 1945-80 (by John Hattendorf) 58 (k) Admiral of the Fleet S. G. Gorshkov (by Bryan Ranft) 68 3 Sources and Elements 75 (a) A maritime community 75 (b) Resources 77 (c) Styles of government 79 (d) Geography and geo-politics 81 (e) Shipping 85 (f) Bases 86 (g) The fighting instrument 87 Conclusion 90 4 The Decisive Battle 91 (a) Introduction 91 (b) In the age of the galley 93 (c) In the age of sail 95 (d) In the twentieth century 101 v

Vl CONTENTS (e) Decisive battle and the Royal Navy (by Stephen Roskill) 106 5 Alternative Routes and Command of the Sea 111 (a) Introduction: The fleet-in-being strategy 111 (b) The fleet-in-being and the defence of territory 112 (c) The fleet-in-being and the German Navy 117 (d) The fleet blockade: General introduction 121 (e) The fleet blockade: Distant and close 122 (f) Command of the sea: General introduction 128 (g) Achieving command of the sea: A summary 132 (h) Command as a means to an end 133 6 The Exercise of Command 140 (a) Operations against the shore 140 (b) Defence against invasion 147 (c) The attack of maritime communications 150 (d) The defence of maritime communications 155 7 A New Environment for Navies? 163 (a) The political environment (by Peter Nailor) 163 (b) International law and maritime operations 167 (i) Before 1945 (by Bryan Ranft) 167 (ii) After 1945 (by Richard Hill) 171 (c) The new technology 175 8 Old Tasks for New Navies 181 (a) Navies in the nuclear age 181 (b) Securing command of the sea 185 (c) Sea control 188 (d) The defence of sea lines of communication 192 (e) The projection of power ashore 198 9 New Tasks for New Navies 203 (a) The protection of the offshore estate 203 (b) Naval diplomacy 209 (c) Strategic deterrence 215 (d) Maritime strategy: Past, present and future 221 10 A Survey of Present Practice 226 (a) 1979: A maritime review 226 (b) Naval aspects of the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 235 (c) Conclusions 239 References 240 Bibliography 254 Index 266 -

Notes on the Contributors JOHN HATTENDORF is a Professor of Strategy at the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island. He is co-editor of The Writings of Stephen B. Luce and has written a number of articles on the history of naval thought. RICHARD HILL is a serving naval officer who has made a particular study of the international law of the sea and its application to and enforcement by maritime forces. He was an adviser to the United Kingdom delegation to the United Nations Law of the Sea Conference at Caracas in 1974. BARRY HUNT is an Associate Professor of History at the Royal Military College of Canada. He has published several articles on British and Canadian naval history and co-edited War Aims and Strategic Policy in the Great War 1914-18. He has also written Sailor-Scholar: Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond 1871-1946. PETER NAILOR is Professor of History and International Affairs at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich. He has written widely on maritime affairs and has just produced a major study of the Polaris programme. BRYAN RANFT is Visiting Professor in Maritime History at King's College, London. He has written widely on maritime affairs and has edited Technical Change and British Naval Policy 1860-1939 as well as a recent edition of the works of Sir Julian Corbett. STEPHEN ROSKILL has just completed a major study of Admiral Beatty. Among his many earlier works are The War at Sea (3 vols), Naval Policy between the Wars (2 vols), Hankey: Man of Secrets (3 vols) and Churchill and the Admirals. CRAIG SYMONDS is a Professor ofhistory at the US Naval Academy, Annapolis. His books include Charleston Blockade and Navalists and anti-navalists, a reinterpretation of early US naval policy. vii

Preface A few years ago, Neville Brown pointed out that there were schemes afoot to use cyclones to destroy enemy fleets and tidal waves to drown enemy bases. 'When naval communities pay attention to ideas as quaint as this', he remarked, 'it is a sign that they are lacking something. That something is good contemporary naval doctrine. Our seafarers have yet to complete their intellectual adjustment to the disappearance of the battleship and the approach of thermonuclear sufficiency. Books and articles on sea power still derive far too many of their judgements from the axioms ofyesterday.' 1 One aim of this book is to investigate whether this is really so. What is contemporary naval doctrine? Is it still as defective as Neville Brown claimed it was in 1964? Is it too closely wedded to the 'axioms of yesterday'? In any case, how different is- or should be- the naval present to the naval past? Because they affect every aspect of naval development, these questions are, and in fact always have been, crucial to seafarers and to those interested in their activities. By a survey of the writings of the maritime strategists of the past, this book tries first of all to identify what those axioms of yesterday actually were, and then to see how well they stand up to modern conditions and the axioms of today. What follows is essentially a general tour d'horizon, aiming to raise issues of past and present that need thinking about. It is intended to be an aid to thought, not a purveyor of illusory conclusions about the universal truths of maritime strategy. But since the right answers to particular problems at particular times depend on the right questions being asked in the first place, this limited objective seems, to me at least, both necessary and worthwhile. I would, first of all, like to thank my contributors, who are listed separately, for their hard work and general support. They should not, however, be regarded as responsible for, or necessarily agreeing with, views expressed in this book outside their own particular sections; nor should their views, or in fact any views expressed in this book, be taken necessarily to reflect official policy in this or any other country. I would also like to record the very real help given me by the many naval officers with whom I have discussed these issues over the past few years. Although they are too numerous to name individually, they will know who they are and I hope will accept this general expression of my gratitude. I am particularly grateful to those who read and commented ix

X PREFACE on parts of the manuscript. More specifically, I would like to thank for their help: Lt Cmdr Philip Bosscher of the Royal Netherlands Navy; Major Donald F. Bittner of the USMC Command and Staff College, Quantico, Virginia; Prof. Keith W. Bird of the University of Bridgeport, Connecticut; Prof. Donald C. Daniel of the US Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California; James M. McConnell of the Center for Naval Analyses, Arlington, Virginia; Ray Kipling of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the editorial staff of Portcullis, the newspaper of HM Customs and Excise; Mr Alan Pearsall of the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; Contre-Amiral F. de Queylar of the French Navy. I have also made considerable demands on Judithe Blacklaw, Ian Mitchell and Bob Durham in the library of the Royal Naval College Greenwich, and on Kathy Mason, Secretary of the History Department. I would like to thank them all for their efforts on my behalf. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Cherry, who has deciphered the indecipherable, corrected the text, located quotations and laboured mightily over the typewriter. This book is dedicated to her. 28 july 1980 GEOFFREY TILL