Royal Navy Fleet Tactics on the Eve of the Second World War

Geoffrey Till titles the introduction to his festschrift for Professor Bryan Ranft ‘British Naval Thinking: A Contradiction in Terms?’. ¹ His question is only partially facetious. The formulation, elaboration, and articulation of what we today call ‘doctrine’ was never strongly or consistently pursued in the Royal Navy. The practicalities of drawing a fleet into line of battle, manoeuvring it, and signalling between its constituent ships were written down, the first two in a continuing series of fighting instructions, the latter in the ongoing development of a signal book. ² But what we would call tactical and operational doctrine, the setting down of principles and ‘best practice’ guidelines for the employment of ships, squadrons, and fleets in combat was largely neglected. That Nelson before Trafalgar thought it necessary to enunciate such precepts for captains who had been engaged at war for over a decade is indicative of the absence of a uniform, articulated, and universally understood doctrine.

In the First World War, Admiral Sir David Beatty, while commanding the Battle Cruiser Force and later the Grand Fleet, took some steps to remedy this apparent deficiency. ³ He had witnessed the stolid performance of the battleships of the Grand Fleet at Jutland and had not been pleased. Nothing exemplifies the lack of imagination and initiative displayed by most of the British fleet at Jutland better than the notorious utterance of Vice Admiral Martyn Jerram, commander of the 2nd Battle Squadron. When an opportunity arose late in the day to close with the fleeing German High Seas Fleet, Jerram told an excited subordinate begging him to attack: ‘We must follow our next [squadron] ahead.’ ⁴ Vice Admiral Cecil Burney, Rear Admiral Hugh Evan-Thomas, and Captain William Boyle of the battleship Malaya all showed a similar, stunning lack of initiative that day. Too many admirals and captains had contentedly awaited orders that never came. If the Royal Navy had a doctrine in 1916, it consisted largely of acting by rote and gazing up the chain of command for guidance. However, in the 1930s, as Jon Sumida and others have so persuasively argued, much work was done to improve British tactical and operational thinking in order to escape the rigidities of 1916. The culmination of that process can be found in the Royal Navy’s 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’.

This article will investigate these Instructions in the context of the battle-fleet tactics of the United States and Japan. It will also take a short look at the issues of gunnery fire control, which, in the 1930s, was believed to have created new opportunities for fighting at great ranges (up to and above 30,000 yards). The article will also include brief sketches of three battleship engagements from the first half of the Second World War – the action off Calabria in July 1940, the battle of the Denmark Strait in May 1941, and the second battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942 – in order to broaden and deepen our insights into how realistic and applicable pre-war tactical thinking was. The first step, however, in understanding Royal Navy tactical thinking on the eve of the Second World War involves briefly discussing a seminal article published by Dr Jon Sumida in 1992.

Our current understanding of British interwar battle-fleet tactics relies on three essential sources: Sumida’s article ‘The Best Laid Plans: The Development of British Battle-Fleet Tactics, 1919–1942’; Joseph Moretz’s book The Royal Navy and the Capital Ship in the Interwar Period; and Andrew Field’s Royal Navy Strategy in the Far East, 1919–1939. ⁵ Of these, the most important is still Sumida’s article. However, it was written before the Royal Navy’s 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’ were released to The National Archive. ⁶ Nevertheless, Sumida’s article was critically important in breaking the Marder/Roskill consensus propounding the overall hidebound sterility of Royal Navy tactical thinking in the interwar years. It is therefore valuable to examine how Sumida viewed British tactics going into the Second World War before we examine the 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’.

Sumida convincingly demonstrates that post-1918 improvements in gunnery fire control and airborne spotting of the fall of main armament battleship shot made the battleship a more lethal weapon, especially at ranges over 20,000 yards, than it had ever been. Thus, the power of the battle fleet was rising, not declining, throughout the 1920s and 1930s. However, the Royal Navy, strapped for cash and spending less on the modernization of its battleships than either of its most dangerous potential opponents (the United States and Japan), understood that tactical innovations were essential if materiel could not be uniformly improved. While the Americans and Japanese spent vast sums on rebuilding their battleships (adding extra armour and increasing the elevation, and thereby the range, of their big guns), the British revised their tactics. The Royal Navy stressed short-range action and night fighting to compensate for the relative inferiority of the range of its guns and the strength of its ships’ protection against long-range plunging fire. Fighting at close range (10,000–15,000 yards) by either day or night had the added benefit of making it difficult for an enemy fleet to disengage from action, as Scheer’s High Seas Fleet had done at Jutland. The British also experimented with decentralizing the battle-line by dividing it into semi-autonomous divisions that could manoeuvre independently. This would give the British greater tactical flexibility than operating in the old line ahead. Divisional tactics also helped reduce the potency of air attacks compared with the older single battle-line.

Overall, Sumida contends that the Royal Navy overhauled its tactical systems between 1916 and 1939 to increase flexibility and reduce the impact of material deficiencies. Sumida also argues that in 1939 the aircraft carrier was not yet a decisive weapon because of the limited range and payload of carrier aircraft (an argument that almost all British, American, and Japanese admirals would that year have endorsed). ⁷ Given this reality, the Royal Navy’s emphasis on its battleships fighting in conjunction with carriers, cruisers, and destroyers was not, in 1939, misplaced. And it is this conception of an integrated fighting fleet that we will see exemplified in the 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’.

The effective title page of the ‘Fighting Instructions’, over the signatures of admirals Sir Charles Forbes and Sir Dudley Pound, respectively the commanders-in-chief of the Home and Mediterranean fleets, states: ‘The Fighting Instructions are promulgated herewith giving the guiding principles for all arms of the fleet in certain war operations and minor actions. They are instructions for general guidance and are not to be regarded as orders.’ Although use of the term ‘doctrine’ is something of an anachronism, it can be said that the Royal Navy in the 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’ was hesitantly grappling with just such a concept.

What principles were the ‘Fighting Instructions’ attempting to convey? The stress throughout the document is on officers exercising ‘a strong offensive spirit’, boldness, ‘pressing the enemy’ without remorse, while not being ‘influenced by the possible damage their ships may receive’. In fact, the loss of ships to enemy action ‘should be no deterrent to the carrying out of the operation’. ⁸

Initiative was seen as essential. The British understood that ‘unforeseen circumstances … always arise’; captains who found previous orders inapplicable ‘must act as their judgment dictates’. Ships and aircraft were to maintain contact with the enemy under all but the direst circumstances, and it was deemed ‘vital’ that the admiral commanding should be kept fully informed of enemy strength and movements: ‘When in doubt, it is better in action to give too much information than too little.’ ⁹

The ‘Fighting Instructions’ dealt with four combat scenarios: battle on parallel course; battle on reverse courses; chasing a fleeing enemy; disengaging from a lost fight. ¹⁰ In night action, which was planned for and encouraged, the emphasis was to be on speed and decisiveness. The admiral commanding was to alert his forces to the position and course of friendly vessels – anything sighted that did not conform was to be treated as hostile. Admirals and captains were to engage any potential threat quickly, as it was believed that the first ‘minute or so’ of contact would prove decisive. Playing things safe was not part of the game plan. ¹¹

In the operational phase, or approach to battle, the goal was simple: ‘When the enemy has been located the Admiral will manoeuvre his forces to obtain a good tactical position or force a bad one on the enemy.’ ¹² The British envisaged approaching the enemy fleet in a circular formation, with the capital ships and aircraft carriers in the centre protected by a close screen, while two rings of cruisers and ‘Tribal’ class large destroyers, one 10 miles out, the other 18, kept watch for the enemy. ¹³ If possible, an enemy fleet was to be fixed and slowed by carrier air attack delivered by aeroplanes of the Fleet Air Arm. Once in contact, the fleet was to close with the enemy: ‘In general, a short range should be aimed at.’ ¹⁴ Furthermore, ‘At such a range the superior fighting qualities and stamina of the British race should tell, as they have so often in the past.’ ¹⁵ The evidence of their careers strongly indicates that Forbes and Pound were not posturing here. ¹⁶ They believed instinctively in honouring Nelson’s last flag signal at Trafalgar, to ‘engage the enemy more closely’.

Once in action, the job of the battle fleet was clear: ‘The objective of the battlefleet is the destruction of the enemy’s battlefleet by gunfire.’ ¹⁷ Cruisers and destroyers were to deploy primarily in the van of the fleet, with some smaller number assigned to the rear. Battlecruisers were to deploy to the van of the battle line, and all the fleet’s capital ships were to operate in divisions of two to five ships each. Once deployed, ‘Division commanders have full authority to manoeuvre their divisions so as best to achieve the destruction of the enemy.’ ¹⁸ Ship captains were under compulsion to open fire whenever they were in a position to damage the enemy, without waiting for orders from the fleet or their division commander.

Divisions were to ‘snake’ or zigzag in order to throw off enemy gunnery. Divisions could also manoeuvre independently to avoid torpedoes or frustrate attacking enemy aircraft, but were to remain in contact with the enemy. If the enemy turned away to avoid action or escape, then the signal ‘Chase’ was to be expected. In a chase, faster ships were to leave the line and pull ahead so as ‘to make full use of their speed to stop the enemy’. ¹⁹

To sum up, the job of the British battle fleet was to get in close (15,000 yards or even nearer), hit the enemy hard, and maintain contact until he was annihilated. Tactically, the fleet was to charge in by steering a course as directly as practicable at the enemy (even if this meant that only forward turrets could fire at the enemy line), then, once in close, open ‘A’ arcs (that is, switch course to parallel that of the enemy), and finally, when the enemy broke, pursue him ‘relentlessly’. ²⁰ Admirals Andrew Cunningham in the action off Calabria, Lancelot Holland at the battle of the Denmark Strait, and John Tovey in his duel with the Bismarck all employed such closing tactics.

What role did the Royal Navy envisaged for its carriers, cruisers, and destroyers in the battle-fleet-centric ‘Fighting Instructions’? British carriers had four roles: to find the enemy battle-fleet; to ‘deny the use of aircraft to the enemy’ by sinking his carriers; to slow down and damage enemy battleships prior to the battle-fleet engagement; to observe the fall of shot from Royal Navy capital ships once action commenced. ²¹ These roles had been practised in pre-war exercises, ²² and the officers understood the vital importance of carrier air power. Nevertheless, given the continued emphasis on the (still potent) battleship fleet, the ‘principal duty’ of carrier aircraft was to find, fix, and keep under observation the enemy’s fleet. ²³ Aircraft were also deemed essential for fleet defence against submarines: forcing an enemy sub to dive after it was spotted reduced its mobility up to 75%, thus making it a much less capable weapons platform. ²⁴ Carrier strikes were to involve coordinated attacks by dive-bombers and torpedo bombers, while fighters were seen as important in shooting down enemy reconnaissance planes and breaking up air attacks on the fleet. ²⁵ Despite a clear understanding that carrier air power was a vital asset, financial and industrial constraints (plus an underestimation of Japanese capabilities) radically circumscribed the development of the Fleet Air Arm in the 1930s.

The role of cruisers was to aid in the search for the enemy fleet, keep enemy cruisers from observing the British battle-fleet, and drive off enemy destroyers once battle commenced. They were also to escort carriers as they operated with (but were not strictly tied to) the fleet. ²⁶ Destroyers were to ‘fire torpedoes from such a position close to the enemy battlefleet that a large number of hits is obtained’. Their secondary functions were acting as submarine and aircraft screening forces, and counter-attacking enemy destroyer attacks. ²⁷

It was with this overall conception of operations that the Royal Navy went to war in September 1939. The British largely eschewed technological solutions, favouring aggression, decentralization, initiative, and technique to get them through. However, technology was changing, and although the Royal Navy did not privilege it, the Admiralty tried on a fixed budget not to neglect it (especially in the field of radar). As we shall see, the United States Navy (USN) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) fervently embraced technology and worked its ‘wonders’ into their operational and tactical thinking. It is to the arcane technology of naval gunnery and fire control that we must now turn.

Naval gunnery is somewhat analogous to hitting a moving object with a rifle. ²⁸ You must ‘lead’ the target. The objective is to aim your guns at the spot an enemy ship will be at anywhere from 20 to 90 seconds or even more (depending on range) after you unleash a salvo. This is harder than it may sound. For, unlike the target shooter with a rifle, the ship that unleashes the salvo is itself moving. And, at any range beyond a few thousand yards, the trajectory of the shells launched at an enemy vessel is not flat, like that of modern rifles, but arced, and therefore can hit an object only directly beneath the point where the shells fall at a steep angle. The rifle bullet will hit any object in a line between the muzzle and the point aimed at. The naval gunner must hurl his projectiles high in the air to attain the required range, and like a basketball player shooting at a hoop, land them directly on the spot he intends to hit. If a ship’s aim is off even by a tiny percentage, the shells miss.

To hit an enemy vessel you must have an excellent idea of the enemy ship’s range (determined by long baseline interference or stereoscopic visual rangefinders in the period before radar), speed, and course; you must also know your own course and speed exactly. Other factors that came into play were wind speed and direction, and air temperature. All this data was collected and relayed to a compartment deep in the ship (called by the British the ‘transmission station’) where the variables were manually fed into a large mechanical calculating machine, a form of analogue computer known in British parlance as a fire-control table. British battleships and battlecruisers of the Second World War era had either a Dreyer Table IV or V, or the more advanced Admiralty Fire Control Table. ²⁹ These room-sized machines produced a firing ‘solution’ that provided the gun turrets with the proper direction to aim and the correct elevation of their guns in order (theoretically) to hit the target. By observing how ‘off’ the fall of shot was, corrections to the data could be fed to the fire-control table in order to produce increasingly accurate solutions. All this had to function under combat conditions with both the British and the enemy’s ships changing course and speed unpredictably, while shells fell all around buffeting the equipment (and rocking the ship) and splashes interfered with the optical rangefinders.

In all this the rate of change of range – or to put it a different way, the prediction of where the other ship would be, given changes in course and speed over time by both ships – was hardest to calculate. The British initially reached an approximate solution with their Dreyer Tables. The Americans developed a more precise device for performing this calculation, the Ford Range-Keeper. This device, along with very long baseline stereoscopic rangefinders, gave them confidence that they could engage enemy battleships at long range. This confidence was to have major implications for the development of US Navy battle-fleet tactics.

The essence of American tactical thinking in the years prior to the Second World War was the massed battle-fleet operating in a single line ahead. ³⁰ This line would be nested within a circular formation of cruisers and destroyers deployed for all-around defence and mutual support in attack. Aircraft carriers would operate semi-autonomously in a scouting force of carriers, heavy cruisers, and destroyers, whose collective job was to find the enemy, sink his carriers, and harass his battleship fleet. Large submarines, referred to as fleet boats, would also contribute to searching for, shadowing, and attacking an enemy battle-fleet. All this appears completely sound doctrine.

Once the enemy had been found and pummelled by carrier strikes and submarine attacks, the operation would climax in a great daylight gunnery duel. The Americans expected their battle line to number 12 ships (3 older dreadnoughts still in commission in the later 1930s were deemed unsuitable for the big showdown). Vast sums were expended in the 1930s rebuilding gun mounts to raise main armament elevation and to install up-to-date fire-control systems on those ships destined for service in the battle line.

The desire was to approach the enemy so as to ‘cross his T’, i.e. to sail perpendicularly to the enemy’s fleet, bringing all broadsides of the American line to bear against the head of the enemy’s battle line. This would have been feasible only if all enemy air assets had been eliminated and the enemy’s cruiser screen knocked out – a possible but unlikely scenario.

Wary that communications under battle conditions might break down, American admirals were expected to prepare and disseminate contingency plans before battle, then signal at the opening of the action which plan they wanted executed. This was both a bit rigid and overly optimistic. The admirals expected to fight their great battleship clash at the extreme range of their main armament. Using spotter planes, they anticipated opening up while an enemy (Japanese) fleet was actually over the horizon (35,000 yards away). The notion was to gain firepower ascendancy as close to immediately after contact as possible by inflicting serious damage at long range. The fact that not all American battleships could reach out to 35,000 yards did not seem to undermine faith in the doctrine.

American doctrine stressed aggression and taking the initiative, but this would have been difficult given the preference for the single line ahead and the desire to fight on parallel or perpendicular courses at long range. Aggressive action seems to have been defined as getting on target rapidly rather than closing the range or manoeuvring against the enemy’s battle line. Likewise, American tactics were built on the assumption that (as Norman Friedman has phrased it) ‘any enemy would follow a steady course and speed’. ³¹

Until 1931 the United States Naval War College staff war-gamed possible encounters with both the Japanese and British fleets. They found their own battle line deficient in speed. Moreover, the US Navy had no counter to Japanese and British battlecruiser forces. These fast divisions might be able, in many scenarios, to cross the US battle line’s ‘T’. Therefore, the US Navy developed a manoeuvre much like the German ‘battle turn away’ of the First World War. The Americans imagined themselves entering battle on parallel courses, and then as the shells began flying making a simultaneous 180 degree turn of the whole battle-fleet so as to confuse the enemy, throw off his gunnery, and put his fast division in the wrong place. The Americans did not seem to see that this would then allow the enemy’s fast ships to concentrate against the rear of the American line. ³²

What emerges from a look at American operational and tactical thinking is that the Americans knew they had quality guns on stable gun platforms directed by state-of-the-art fire-control systems. These factors encouraged the USN to play to these strengths. The result, however, was a rather technocratic and mechanistic view of combat operations. On the one hand, at the operational level of fleet organization and approach to battle, American thinking was sound (and quite similar to British thinking). However, at the tactical level problems appear. By opening fire at the longest feasible ranges with the most guns possible, the American fleet would have to alter course to bring all guns to bear. In other words, the American tactical system was built on a battle on parallel courses (or reverse parallel course, which causes its own problems). Steering a parallel course immediately surrenders the initiative to the enemy, who can then: sum up his opposition and, if the odds are not to his liking, turn away and make smoke; decide to fight it out with you; or, turn towards you and close the range. Opting for the first or third scenario puts the American admiral in a difficult situation. His main armament and fire control had been developed to give him an edge at long range, but his ships lacked speed. In the first scenario the American early turn to a parallel course to engage the enemy with full broadsides at long range gives the opponent a chance to break off action, and the American fleet would have had little chance of catching any other major fleet of that time (Britain, Japan, France, and Italy all had faster battle lines than the Americans did). In the third scenario the American commander had either to let the enemy commander choose the range at which combat would take place, or to abandon doctrine by assuming the defensive and turning away to keep the range open. And the American emphasis on pre-battle planning would create dangers in a fluid situation if an enemy did not conform to pre-battle expectations. The Americans seem to have assumed that so much damage could be inflicted so quickly in a battle-fleet duel that the enemy fleet might flee, but it could not successfully attack.

It may prove illuminating to take a quick look at what battle fleets and fire-control systems actually accomplished when war came. Three engagements have been chosen that shed light on the issue of battle-fleet gunnery. These engagements are: the action off Calabria (referred to by the Italians as the battle of Punto Stilo) of 9 July 1940; the battle of the Denmark Strait, 24 May 1941; and the second battle of Guadalcanal, which took place on the night of 15 November 1942. These battles are some of the rare examples of battleship-on-battleship combat in the Second World War; they did not involve forces that were badly mismatched and were fought under circumstances that represented pre-war ideas about a battle-fleet encounter (such being the cases of Mers-el-Kébir, the sinking of the Bismarck, the duel between the Massachusetts and the Jean Bart, the battle of North Cape, and the battle of Surigao Strait). ³³ The first two actions chosen for investigation were dominated by fire-control systems which were either in place or in the pipeline when war came in 1939. Second Guadalcanal was fought, on the American side, using radar and a fire-control system that were beyond anything in service in September 1939, and so provide an interesting comparison with the earlier actions.

As a baseline of performance, the battle of Jutland serves as our best repository for comparative data relating to capital ship gunnery. ³⁴ Overall, German battlecruisers hit their targets at a roughly 4% rate, while German battleships enjoyed about a 3% hit rate. British ships of the 1st and 2nd Battlecruiser Squadrons, which did the lion’s share of the shooting that day for the Royal Navy, hit their targets slightly less than 2% of the time. Interestingly, the older battlecruisers of the 3rd Battlecruiser Squadron scored a hit rate of 4.29%, perhaps because they had participated in gunnery practice just prior to the battle. Britain’s best shooting battleship was HMS Iron Duke, the fleet flagship, which scored an impressive 7 hits out of 43 rounds expended – a bit over 16% (these results were obtained, however, at only 12,600 yards through a timely break in the mist). Germany’s best shooting ship seems to have been the battlecruiser Lützow, which fired 380 shells and landed 19 hits, for a 5% hit rate. The battle was fought under relatively poor weather conditions of cloud and mist, and well into twilight, at ranges normally between 12,000 and 18,000 yards. When considering the performance of capital ships in the Second World War, these numbers from Jutland provide a valuable benchmark against which to judge both actual performance and overall improvements in gunnery. It was assumed by every major power that rangefinders and fire control had improved significantly between 1916 and 1939.

The action off Calabria on 9 July 1940 was the first battle-fleet action of the Second World War. ³⁵ The Italian fleet of Admiral I. Campioni comprised 2 modernized battleships (the Cesare and Cavour, each mounting ten 12.6 inch guns), 6 heavy and 8 light cruisers, and 20 destroyers. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham’s British fleet consisted of the modernized battleship Warspite, the unmodernized Malaya and Royal Sovereign, the old carrier Eagle (20 aircraft), 5 light cruisers, and 16 destroyers. Cunningham’s battleships were slower than Campioni’s 26 knot ships (Royal Sovereign could barely make 20 knots) and only Warspite could shoot at the same range as the Italian battleships. All three British ships were armed with eight 15 inch guns.

For our purposes the battle began at 3.53 in the afternoon, when the Italian battleship Cesare opened fire on Warspite at perhaps 24,000 yards. Within a minute, Warspite returned fire and straddled Cesare on her first salvo, at least a partial vindication for the Admiralty Fire Control Table (to straddle is to have shells in the same grouping or salvo fall both over and under the target). Both ships scored multiple straddles, and then Cavour entered the action. At 3.59 (according to the Italians) or 4.00 (according to Admiral Cunningham) Warspite hit Cesare at 26,000 yards, perhaps the furthest hit ever obtained by a battleship in action (the German battlecruiser Scharnhorst hit the British carrier Glorious at approximately the same range that June). Admiral Campioni believed that Cesare had been significantly damaged (the explosion, smoke, and topside fire initially appeared serious, although it did not turn out to be), so he ordered ships to make smoke and turn away. Warspite fired the last of her 17 salvos at 4.04. The first battle-fleet action since Jutland was effectively over. It had lasted 11 minutes.

Cesare had fired 74 rounds, Cavour 41, and collectively they scored no hits. Warspite had fired 17 salvos (between 68 and 100 rounds – the number does not appear in Cunningham’s official report or the secondary sources) and scored one hit. As at Jutland, when one side considered itself at a tactical disadvantage, it turned away and fled the scene. The Royal Navy lacked the speed to force a re-engagement, and the single hit on Cesare slowed her for only a few minutes (Eagle’s small air group scored no hits). The problem of forcing a reluctant enemy to fight had not been overcome, and long-range shooting had proved, despite several straddles and one hit, more difficult than anticipated. Pre-war doctrine was vitiated by a lack of speed and the failure of long-range gunnery and aerial torpedoes to slow the enemy. Tellingly, a Royal Navy gunnery officer on the light cruiser Neptune noted: ³⁶

Once battle was joined everything became very confusing and visibility was obscured by cordite smoke, smokescreens, and cascades of water from bursting shells … the confusion was added to by the need to keep shifting targets as cruisers and destroyers appeared through the smoke.

Such was, and always would be, the difference between theory and practice.

The battle of the Denmark Strait took place on 24 May 1941 between the British battlecruiser Hood and battleship Prince of Wales, and the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. ³⁷ Hood and Bismarck each had eight 15 inch guns, while Prince of Wales was armed with ten 14 inch guns, although she was just from the builder’s yard and her gun turrets were not yet working properly. The battle lasted approximately 20 minutes. Vice Admiral Holland on Hood attempted (successfully) to close the range so that his flagship, weakly protected against long-range plunging fire, would be less vulnerable in action against Bismarck. Hood opened up on Bismarck but her initial shots were not very well directed by her obsolescent Dreyer Table V. Bismarck hit Hood on her fifth salvo as Hood changed course to open ‘A’ arcs and bring her rear turrets to bear. She blew up with the loss of 1415 men. Prince of Wales meanwhile had straddled Bismarck on her sixth salvo.

In all, Bismarck fired 32 rounds at Hood and scored one hit (a 3.1% hit rate) and 61 shells at Prince of Wales, of which 5 hit the target (8% hits; one struck the bridge, killing most of the command staff). Hood had fired 6 salvos with her forward turrets and landed no hits before the unlucky blow that caused her aft magazine (almost certainly that of X turret) to explode. Prince of Wales fired 55 rounds at Bismarck and scored 3 hits (5.4%), one of which caused significant damage and flooding forward and the loss of considerable fuel. Prince of Wales was forced to break off the action, but continued to shadow Bismarck.

The second naval battle of Guadalcanal, fought on the night of 14 November 1942, was an unholy mess. Exactly what happened that night is still not clear. ³⁸ Simply put, a bombardment force under Vice Admiral N. Kondo, consisting of the modernized battlecruiser Kirishima (eight 14 inch guns), two heavy and two light cruisers, and eight destroyers, was dispatched to neutralize American land-based air power stationed at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal. An American task force under the command of Rear Admiral Willis Lee comprising the new 16 inch gunned battleships Washington and South Dakota plus four fleet destroyers was sent to intercept and thwart Kondo.

As South Dakota and Washington approached the Japanese, they became separated and lost track of each other’s position. South Dakota engaged the enemy first, trading shots with Kirishima and two heavy cruisers. The Americans got the worst of the encounter, being hit by 42 shells of various calibres – but only one 14 inch shell from Kirishima; it is unclear whether this was a high explosive (HE) round or an armour-piercing one, as Kirishima had been loaded with HE rounds to smash Henderson Field. Significantly damaged (and suffering electrical problems unrelated to enemy action), South Dakota beat a hasty retreat from the scene. ³⁹

Meanwhile, Washington was quietly approaching the Japanese, using radar to determine enemy range and bearing. She opened fire on Kirishima at only 8400 yards (point-blank range) and scored 9 hits out of 75 rounds fired (12% efficiency). The Japanese were forced to turn away, and the action fizzled out as Kondo cancelled the bombardment and withdrew. Kirishima, a burning wreck, stayed afloat for three hours, then her crew scuttled her rather than have her bombed and sunk by planes from Henderson Field the next morning; it was the only way to get the survivors off with any chance of clearing the area before dawn.

The second battle of Guadalcanal was not a great vindication for battleship gunnery, night-time or otherwise. Kirishima fired an unknown number of shells and scored one hit on South Dakota, which ship seems to have utterly failed to hit Kirishima. Washington scored 9 hits out of 75 shots, using sophisticated radar, the Ford Range-Keeper, and shooting at point-blank range. Such results were good, but hardly the quantum leap from First World War style gunnery and fire control that many had expected. The heavier shells of the larger calibre guns that had become more prevalent in the Second World War seemed to deliver a greater punch. But hitting at great range was still unlikely: Hood was hit at considerably closer than 20,000 yards, while Prince of Wales and Bismarck fought it out for several minutes at 14,500–15,000 yards without either landing a knockout blow. The best results were obtained by Washington, using radar and firing at point-blank range, yet her shooting was no better than Iron Duke’s was at Jutland. Certainly the Japanese had in the interwar years expected much more from long-range and night-time gunnery, as we shall see in our discussion of their operational and tactical doctrine that follows.

Japanese battle-fleet tactics were an integral part of a larger overall operational plan predicated on attrition. ⁴⁰ But at the heart of all Japanese tactical/operational planning lay the concept of ‘decisive battle’. The IJN’s major surface combatants were in the 1930s envisaged as being divided into three groups: carriers with an attendant screen; a night action force of battlecruisers, heavy cruisers, and destroyers; and a battle force of battleships plus screen. The operational concept was to intercept an approaching (presumably American) fleet in a multi-stage, layered engagement over perhaps several days. The Japanese naval staff’s model was Togo’s victory at Tsushima, with new technology grafted on. Initially, submarines would spot and attack an approaching enemy battle-fleet. Once discovered, the latter would then become the focus of submarine assault, air strikes in daylight from carrier and/or land-based aeroplanes, and torpedo attacks at night spearheaded by Japan’s heavy cruisers (which, unlike American heavy cruisers that carried no torpedoes, were intended primarily as torpedo delivery platforms). If necessary, Kongō class battlecruisers were to be employed to break through American screening forces so that the torpedo craft could strike home at the American battle line. Night attack was to be directed from multiple vectors (complete encirclement being the ultimate goal) and pressed home vigorously.

The Japanese, like the British, had determined that the first objective of their carriers was the destruction of the enemy carriers, after which attacks on the enemy battleships could commence under conditions of air supremacy. This would allow both continuous observation of enemy position, course, and speed, along with spotting of shot once the battleship fleets came within range of each other. Such observation was essential if the enemy was to be continuously engaged and worn down. The culmination of this attritional process would be the appearance, at the most propitious moment (preferably twilight or early morning), of the IJN’s battleships, after the enemy’s physical and mental strength had been worn down by ceaseless attack. Then, with help from spotter aircraft, firing would commence at 35,000 metres (the Japanese considered this, correctly, as about 4000 metres beyond effective American gun range). The Japanese, like the Americans, put great emphasis on ‘reach’. Japanese light cruisers and destroyers would simultaneously manoeuvre ahead of and behind the American battle-line, launching torpedo attacks further to whittle down American strength. Finally, Japanese battleships would close to ‘decisive’ range, between 19,000 and 22,000 metres, to deliver the coup de grâce. Any surviving enemy surface ships fleeing the scene would be hounded to destruction by light cruisers and destroyers. The aim was the total annihilation (in the best Nelsonic tradition) of the enemy fleet.

Given that the American battleship fleet, under any realistic scenario and in accordance with America’s Mahanite doctrine of not dividing the fleet, would be numerically superior to its Japanese counterpart, such an attritional approach makes perfect sense. America’s numerical advantage had been locked in at Washington and London, and was guaranteed by America’s vast industrial advantage over Japan. So some means of overcoming that advantage had to be found. The Japanese sought those means in attrition via the new technologies of the submarine and carrier air power, combined with the oxygen-fuelled Type 93 torpedo launched primarily from heavy cruisers. However, whether or not an operational plan like this would have worked out in all its systematic and schematized glory is more debatable. One respected American source goes so far as to accuse Japanese operational and tactical planning of embodying a ‘self-deluding formalism’, ⁴¹ but this is probably overstated. All war plans are stylized to a greater or lesser extent. And none, as Moltke warned us, survives first contact with significant enemy forces. American tactical planning likewise assumed a very obliging enemy, and American planning for the lead-up to battle was strikingly similar to that of the Japanese. And like American tactical thinking, Japanese doctrine called on the enemy to act in a very clear and predictable way that also happened to conform to the needs of the Japanese operational and tactical plan. Could naval planning have been otherwise? Given the difficulty of manoeuvring large numbers of ships effectively, and of formulating a base plan from which admirals might improvise, most naval tactical planning would have to be rather schematic and rigid. British tactical thinking was looser than its American and Japanese equivalents, but the Royal Navy was operating from a position of relative strength, enjoyed great confidence, had seen the mistakes made at Jutland first-hand, and was apparently more comfortable with dispersing authority among its clubby and largely homogeneous officer corps.

Ultimately, we must also understand that Japanese planning was stylized and dependent on an obliging enemy because Japanese naval officers needed to generate a scenario in which their navy could prevail. No military institution plans for its own defeat. No body of military men throws up its hands and tells its political masters that it has no chance of fulfilling its mission in defence of the national interest. The rose-coloured spectacles worn by Japanese naval planners in the decade before Pearl Harbor almost certainly were in place not because of some inherently ‘oriental’ lack of rational thinking, but because optimism and a ‘can-do’ spirit are present in military men everywhere. The IJN’s prestige, and its budget, depended on formulating a coherent plan that looked as though it could provide a victory. Japanese officers had a job to do, and sought some way (however unlikely) to do it. Tsushima gave them a template on which they could build. The result was their operational and tactical plan for ‘decisive battle’ developed before the Second World War.

One fact that should be kept in mind about naval tactics, as opposed to tactics on land, is the comparative rarity of naval combat. With the exception of convoy escorts and submarines (specifically in the battle of the Atlantic), most naval forces have historically spent little time in contact with the enemy. And this is not a recent phenomenon. Ship-on-ship and fleet-on-fleet combat doesn’t happen all that often. Nelson joined the Royal Navy in 1771, yet saw his first fleet action 24 years later at the battle of Hyeres in 1795. ⁴² That period included the entire War of American Independence and the first two years of the French Revolutionary Wars. Admirals King and Nimitz never in their illustrious careers actually exercised combat command with the fleet. Nor did renowned admirals ‘Jacky’ Fisher or Alfred von Tirpitz. Admiral Frank Jack Fletcher, victor of the battles of the Coral Sea and Midway, graduated from the US Naval Academy in 1906 – and engaged enemy ships for the first time in 1942.

And the duration of naval battles was normally not all that long. The opposing main battle fleets at Jutland were in contact for perhaps 20 minutes. The American battle line at Surigao Strait also engaged the enemy (primarily the already crippled battleship Yamashiro) for about 20 minutes. The largest fleet action in the Mediterranean during the Second World War, the battle off Calabria on 9 July 1940, lasted approximately an hour and a half, with the battleships exchanging shots for all of 11 minutes. The most sustained (non-convoy) conventional surface battle of the Second World War, fought in and around Leyte Gulf, lasted about as long as the battle of Gettysburg (3 days). The brutal slogging matches one finds on land (Verdun, the Somme, Stalingrad, Kursk, the Bulge, Kohima–Imphal, Okinawa) simply have no naval analogues. Ships are not sacrificed the way men are, and the logistics of naval warfare makes sustained combat extremely difficult. So it must be kept in mind that navies do not have the same level of experience of combat to hone their tactics that armies do. This has led to a tendency to let the qualities of naval weapon systems dictate the nature of naval tactics. If actual fleets rarely come to grips with one another long enough to determine the merits and demerits of certain tactical ideas, then at least the weapons can be taken out and tested, and the results extrapolated into battle plans built on the latest technology. A classic example of this is the battle of Lissa, fought between Austro-Hungarian and Italian fleets in 1866, wherein one instance of ramming seriously influenced tactical thought and battleship design for a generation.

The USN did just this with its long-range guns and advanced fire-control systems. If we can steal terminology from war on land, American naval tactics going into the Second World War were heavy on fire, light on movement. The Japanese followed the same technology-driven formula with their long-range guns and aircraft and 24 inch oxygen-fuelled torpedoes. The Royal Navy, however, looked to aggressively crowding an enemy force, night action, decentralization, and ‘the superior fighting qualities and stamina of the British race’ to win battles. In short, they looked to men first, and machines second – psychological factors, then physical ones – to carry the day for the Royal Navy. This faith may have been mistaken (we will never know, as the great naval battle interwar theory postulated never materialized), but British thinking was in harmony with Napoleon’s maxim that in war the moral is to the physical as three is to one. We do not know, however, if this maxim applies to war at sea in the same way it may to war on land. Our field of naval history still has many unknowns. Exciting challenges lie ahead as we examine further the question: what makes for good naval tactics?

Naval history has no body of operational and tactical analysts to match even those of the western pre-industrial era: Vegetius, Machiavelli, Montecuccoli, de Saxe, Frederick, Guibert, Lloyd, Froissart, Bulow, and Clausewitz. ⁴³ The field of naval history is significantly behind war on land in its access to examinations of the nature and best practice of war at sea. ⁴⁴ A few texts exist, most notably Palmer’s work Command at Sea, but Palmer is at least as concerned with issues of command, control, and communication as he is with tactics per se. So, naval historians suffer from both a relative dearth, compared with warfare on land, of battles to study for comparative analysis, and a lack of theoretical underpinning for assessments. Naval historians are forced in their analysis of the quality and soundness of past commanders’ tactics to fall back on a rough-and-ready empiricism, and to appeal to the obvious – who won, and who lost. This makes every victorious commander’s tactics seem sound, and every loser’s tactics immediately suspect, if not presumptively flawed. But is this always the case? Without some abstract understanding of what makes for sound naval tactics, analysis is bound to be sketchy, idiosyncratic, and perhaps inconsistent.

British battle-fleet tactics on the eve of the Second World War appear sound, mixing as they did the proscriptive with the improvisatory, along with a healthy acceptance of risk and initiative. Sumida had intuited from earlier developments that the Royal Navy was moving in the direction of improved tactical flexibility as a response to perceived material deficiencies. The 1939 ‘Fighting Instructions’ bear out Sumida’s surmise. Comparatively speaking, American and Japanese tactical systems seem mechanistic, stylized, and lacking in a sense that not only must the enemy be effectively shot at, but he must also be physically and psychically coerced via manoeuvre. But, given varying scenarios, each of the three tactical systems discussed could have worked in a given situation. Daylight battle would normally have favoured the Americans, especially under conditions of excellent visibility. Night combat would have been a boon to the British and the Japanese. But all three fleets would have been vulnerable to the vicissitudes of fortune: a lucky hit, as the Japanese landed at the battle of the Yellow Sea or the Germans scored at the battle of the Denmark Strait, can throw all previous systems and training into a cocked hat. We need as a historical subfield to generate a more realistic and inclusive set of criteria by which to inform our judgement of the tactical systems of the past. Without a much improved understanding of what makes for sound naval tactics, our analysis will remain incomplete, even compromised.