Читать книгу The British Carrier Strike Fleet - David Hobbs - Страница 13
Оглавление5 ‘Cold War’, NATO and the Middle East
The years after 1945 saw the RN matched against a new threat as the relationship between the Western Powers and the Soviet Union deteriorated. Its ability to react to that threat was constrained by limited funds, the post-war manpower crisis and the need to develop and absorb new and emerging technologies.1 There were many analysts who believed that the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 had rendered all conventional forces, especially navies, obsolete and that the concentration of ships into task forces or convoys merely provided more suitable targets for atomic weapons dropped from land-based bombers. In reality, however, the early atomic bombs were not available in large numbers.2 Numbers were so limited, in fact, that if war had broken out before 1952, the newly-formed USAF Strategic Air Command (SAC), planned to use the few atomic bombs that it did have in an opening shock attack against the Soviet Union to be followed by a conventional bombing campaign using the weapons and tactics of the Second World War. The supply of weapons-grade uranium took a considerable time to build up and for this reason the USAF strongly opposed USN plans for nuclear-powered submarines because the provision of material for their fuel would slow the rate at which bombs could be manufactured.
The Cold War
Early in 1948 the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia stimulated a sense of imminent crisis in the West3 which was heightened in June when Soviet forces tried to cut off the Allied sectors of occupied Berlin which lay many miles to the east of what had already been referred to by Churchill as the ‘Iron Curtain’. The subsequent Berlin Air Lift by Allied transport aircraft carried food and fuel into West Berlin for over a year before a negotiated settlement ended the immediate crisis. The British Cabinet’s Defence Committee held a series of urgent meetings throughout 1948 to consider the national response. They decided that the economic reconstruction of the nation must come first but that the UK must be sufficiently strong at sea and in the air to act as a deterrent to a hot war and to provide a foundation for fighting the Cold War at a political level. The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), was formed in the same year to counter the possible threat of a conventional attack on Western Europe by the Soviet Union. Significantly this was the first time that the world’s two largest navies, the USN and RN, had joined a peacetime alliance to act together against a potential aggressor and the alliance was named after the ocean that linked the member states together. The chiefs of staff were asked for their views but the recently-appointed Minister of Defence A V Alexander, who had been the wartime First Lord of the Admiralty, put forward his own less expensive proposals for the size of the fleet that was to be retained in commission and these were the ones accepted by the Cabinet. His decision not to retain battleships in commission led to the scrapping of some famous old ships including Nelson, Renown and Queen Elizabeth and the gradual reduction of the King George V class to reserve after a spell in the Home Fleet Training Squadron.
Throughout the Cold War, Allied intelligence agencies had a tendency to overestimate Soviet capability but, despite this, the view was taken in 1948 that the danger of an all-out war in the next five years was small. By 1957, however, the Soviet Union was expected to have created a greatly increased arsenal of nuclear weapons together with the means to deliver them. By then the threat of war was expected to be grave and British re-armament with weapons reflecting new technologies would be needed. Since some years would elapse before the period of maximum danger, government policy tended to concentrate on the longer-term development of weapons systems that were believed to offer the most effective means of fighting a major conflict after 1957. In the short term, the armed forces in general, including the RN strike fleet, were to make do with adequate aircraft and ships procured in minimal numbers and to ‘skip a generation’ of development. If, by miscalculation or design, war was forced on Britain before then, the nation would have to fight with such forces and weapons as it possessed.4 The Government’s top defence priority at this time was stated to be the creation of a medium bomber force equipped with nuclear weapons as quickly as possible; second priority was the reconstruction of the RN with powerful air and anti-submarine elements to oppose Soviet surface warships and submarines in the North Atlantic.
A war against the Soviet Bloc in the late 1940s or early 1950s would almost certainly have seen nuclear weapons used from the outset but they were neither powerful enough nor numerous enough to win the conflict outright. They would, instead, have changed the way in which a largely conventional war would have been fought and the period up to 1952 can be thought of as an initial phase of the Cold War. SAC calculated, probably very optimistically, that it would take it a minimum of six weeks for a bombing campaign to force the Soviet Union to halt a conventional attack against Western Europe and allow the Allies to dictate the terms for a ceasefire and subsequent peace settlement. Large conventional forces were still required to hold ground and buy time for the bomber offensive to gain momentum. Powerful navies were still required to fight convoys across the Atlantic with reinforcements, ammunition and food. In this phase the USA gradually built up its nuclear arsenal to the extent that such weapons could be used tactically as well as strategically. The Soviet Union had nowhere near the same number of nuclear weapons in 1952 and was deterred from making a conventional attack against NATO in Europe by the threat of ‘massive’ US nuclear retaliation. The first British atomic bomb was detonated in the frigate Plym near Monte Bello island off the remote north-west coast of Australia in 1952.
While nuclear weapons caught the popular imagination and would have changed the manner in which a largely conventional war would be fought, other new technologies had a greater short-term impact. These included fast submarines, jet fighters and guided weapons. Each of these, in their own way, rendered obsolete large numbers of warships that had successfully fought the recent war and required countermeasures that would be time-consuming and expensive to develop. All of the threats needed to be detected, intercepted and destroyed over large areas of ocean and carrier-borne aircraft were recognised as the most effective and economical method of achieving this aim, reinforcing the importance of naval aviation to the modernised RN. Of interest, it was soon appreciated that all three of these new threats were difficult to counter in the final stages of an attack on a task force or convoy and that they would more effectively countered ‘at source’ by destroying submarine bases and the airfields from which aircraft could attack the fleet. At the very least, fleet fighters would need to destroy aircraft carrying guided missiles before they reached a position from which they could detect the fleet and launch them.
Political Theories and a Series of Defence Studies
In the latter part of 1948 an Inter-Service working party was set up under the chairmanship of Edmund Harwood, a senior civil servant who had spent the war years in the Ministry of Food and was considered expert in the achievement of economy. The RN representative was Rear Admiral Charles Lambe, who had commanded the aircraft carrier Illustrious in the BPF and was to be a future First Sea Lord. The committee considered the role to be played by the armed forces in the years from 1950 to 1953 and took as its baseline the expenditure ceiling placed on the armed forces’ budgets for that period by the Treasury, £700 million. At the time the UK was spending 10.8 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP), on defence compared with about 3.8 per cent by the USA.5 The report was submitted to the Minister of Defence in February 1949 and recommended that the UK must continue to meet its existing commitments and wage the Cold War effectively. Beyond that it confirmed the existing priorities by recommending that some new weapons should be procured as limited insurance against the possibility of accidental war in the short term but maximum effort should be devoted to developing longer-term weapons against the more likely threat of war in 1957 or soon after. Harwood placed the greatest emphasis on the RN capability to defend sea communications to the UK, perhaps naturally given his wartime experience with food imports, and it was taken for granted there would be American support from the outset of a major war. The Review also recommended drastic reductions in the number of ships deployed outside the UK in the Far East, Middle East, Mediterranean and West Indies. This was seen as a risky policy by Alexander and the Chiefs of Staff, however, who argued that the withdrawal of support for Commonwealth countries would place them at risk from Communist influence. In July 1949, therefore, a further working party was established under the chairmanship of Sir Harold Parker, Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Defence.6
The result of this committee’s deliberations was a recommendation that led to a scheme for a ‘revised, restricted fleet’ of adequate shape and size to meet the RN’s wide-ranging tasks. It was accepted in turn by the Admiralty Board, Ministry of Defence and Cabinet in late 1949 and represented the status quo in 1950 when the Korean War broke out. Eagle and Ark Royal plus the four 1943 light fleet carriers were to be completed and it was hoped, optimistically, to have them in service by 1952. There was also to be a modest expansion in the size of the air groups available for embarkation in them. The decision, recommended by successive studies, to insure against short-term conflict led to production orders for some aircraft that had only been expected to fly in prototype form. These included the Supermarine Attacker, sixty-three of which were ordered to contract 6/Acft/2822/CB.7(b) on 29 October 1948.7 Subsequent batches were ordered in small numbers but it is worth noting that the Admiralty’s slow procurement of new aircraft types was not due, as some critics have claimed, to a lack of interest in aviation but rather to an attempt to keep pace with the strategy and cost ceiling required by the Ministry of Defence. The Sea Venom was ordered as a short-term priority to replace the obsolescent Sea Hornet in the night fighter role although interest remained in a longer-term ‘definitive’ night fighter.
The Korean War and the return of Churchill as Prime Minister led to a further study of British defence policy in 1952. The exercise began with a meeting of the Chiefs of Staff8 at the Royal Naval College Greenwich in February 1952. Significant input was also made by Sir Ian Jacob, formerly the military assistant secretary to the War Cabinet during the Second World War, who had subsequently become Director General of the BBC. Churchill demanded9 his appointment to the Ministry of Defence as chief staff officer. He was released by the BBC as the chiefs of staff produced their initial draft and, on reading through it, felt that it was too obviously an uneasy compromise between the Services, with the mark of three different authors. He asked for the chiefs and their secretary, Brigadier F W Ewbank, to produce a more coherent document that could be put before the Prime Minister. Discussion about a revised draft continued through the spring; Sir Pierson Dixon of the Foreign Office became involved and the first part of the revised paper was amended on his advice. The result was a document known as the Global Strategy Paper which set in context the Conservative government’s defence policy until the next review which was planned for 1957.
The Paper contained three principal objectives, the first of which, ‘to provide the forces required to protect our worldwide interests in the Cold War’, was straightforward and implied an emphasis on conventional peacekeeping and limited war forces. The second was also logical and required little argument: ‘to build up with our allies in NATO forces of a strength and composition likely to provide a reliable deterrent against aggression’. It was the third that was most open to argument about interpretation although the stated objective ‘to make reasonable preparations for a hot war should it break out’ seemed straightforward enough. By then the first phase of the Cold War was ending as the USA had built up a sufficiently large stockpile of nuclear weapons to plan on using them for tactical, as well as strategic, strikes. The Soviet Union exploded its first atomic weapon in 1949, some years earlier than expected by the Western powers but it was still unlikely that a sufficient stockpile of nuclear weapons would be ready before 1957. In 1952 the USA exploded its first hydrogen bomb and work on similar weapons was being carried out in the UK and Soviet Union. At first these weapons were massive and only large bombers such as the B-36 or B-52 could carry them, but work to reduce their size continued as a matter of the highest priority.10 The first US production H-bombs appeared in 1954 and SAC stockpiles increased steadily. The Soviet Union surprised the West by detonating a prototype H-bomb in 1953 although this was a crude device and it took several years to produce operational bombs in quantity. The first British H-bomb was not detonated until 1958.
The period between 1952 and the later 1950s constituted a second phase of the Cold War in which Western governments calculated that the large stockpile of atomic bombs and the growing number of H-bombs were capable not just of inflicting major damage on the Soviet Union but of destroying it. At the same Soviet medium bombers and intermediate-range missiles were capable of destroying the UK and most of western Europe although few Soviet systems had the capability to reach the USA. A war between the West and the Soviet Union, therefore, was no longer seen as a nuclear exchange followed by a prolonged period of conventional warfare but came to be seen as a single, mass-destructive strike against the Soviet Union using the resources available at the outbreak of war whilst using such resources as there were left to counter the riposte. The term ‘mutually-assured destruction’ came into use and adequately described this concept. A war that would end in days, possibly even hours, meant that there would be no need for reinforcements or convoys to bring them across the Atlantic. The creation of the H-bomb led to renewed questions about the need for conventional weapons and the global strategy paper was already out of date. Rather than wait, the Government ordered a new review of UK defence which evolved into the radical review described in the next chapter.
The Royal Navy in 1954
While all this political argument was going on, the RN had emerged from the years of manpower crisis and was playing a major part in the British war effort in Korea. The dockyards were full of warships, although many of these were wartime hulls laid up in low-category reserve. Many more ships were retained in dispersed reserve bases at harbours and shipyards up and down the country. These would have been required in a prolonged war but there was no need for them in a short nuclear exchange. The following figures11 give an idea of the size of the RN in February 1954 as the first phase of the Cold War ended:
The number of ships operating on ‘trials and training’ duties demonstrates the Admiralty’s success in keeping ships running with reduced complements so that they could be brought forward rapidly for operational service if needed in the danger period expected after 1957. Triumph, for instance, had replaced the cruiser Devonshire as the training ship for cadets from the Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth. Extra accommodation, classrooms and a gunroom were built into the forward and central hangars but a flight of Boulton Paul Balliol trainers was embarked and struck down into the after hangar. Capable of both catapult launch and arrested landing, these aircraft were used to give air experience to cadets, an ideal arrangement in the new air age but one that proved too expensive to sustain and frigates took over the training task in 1956. Implacable and Indefatigable had been kept running in the Home Fleet Training Squadron to maintain them in satisfactory condition for modernisation but by 1954 it was recognised that work on the scale required was neither technically nor financially feasible with Victorious still some years from completion. Ocean and Theseus, both far cheaper to run, were modified for service as training ships. Several light fleet carriers were being completed for the RAN and RCN but Hercules12 and Leviathan13 were laid up incomplete.
Soviet Threats to be Countered
The Cold War threats that the RN had to face came in all three elements; Sverdlov class cruisers on the surface, medium bombers of the Soviet Naval Air Force including the Tupolev Tu-16 ‘Badger’ in the air and ‘W’ class submarines below the surface. The Sverdlov class cruisers were designed with noticeable influence from captured German technology and Allied intelligence was aware that large numbers were under construction with the first vessels launched in 1950.14 Eventually seventeen were launched but only fourteen were completed for active service. They were armed with twelve 5.9in guns in four triple turrets, twelve 3.9in guns in six twin turrets, thirty-two 37mm anti-aircraft guns and ten 21in torpedo tubes in two quintuple mountings. They had mine-rails on the quarterdeck as a standard fitting and were reputedly able to carry up to 250 mines although what other weapons would have to be sacrificed when the full load was carried was never clearly understood in the West. Powerful machinery of 130,000shp gave a maximum speed of 34 knots and they had a complement of just over 1000. These were clearly powerful ships but little was known about them until 1953 when Sverdlov attended the Coronation Review at Spithead and one of her sister-ships visited Sweden.
Given the recent wartime experience of the German attack on shipping, the Admiralty had to assume that these vessels were intended, if a ‘shooting war’ broke out, to sever the Atlantic link between America and the UK by attacking convoys. The RN could not hope to retain enough cruisers in service to seek them out and engage them individually and so the threat posed by the growing number of new Soviet cruisers gave added impetus to the requirement for a new generation of carrier-borne aircraft to find them and attack them from long ranges. The new surface-search capability offered by the Skyraider AEW 1 was obviously critically important and impetus was added to the development of the NA-39 strike aircraft. Whilst Wyverns could attack with conventional bombs and rockets, it would take a large number of them to score sufficient hits to neutralise a Sverdlov. Airborne torpedoes remained an option but closing in to 1000 yards when opposed by radar-laid medium-calibre gunfire appeared to be an increasingly suicidal method of attack. The need to sink or badly damage a 19,000-ton cruiser with the minimum number of attack aircraft meant that they had to be equipped with the most accurate weapons delivery system available. The NA-39 specification required the aircraft to use its search radar to provide data for an accurate toss-bombing technique that would allow bombs to be released beyond the maximum effective range of the target’s anti-aircraft guns.15 As the potential for the UK to produce a relatively small, tactical nuclear bomb became apparent in the mid-1950s, the resulting Red Beard weapon was added to the specification. Using the standard toss-bombing technique, a single Red Beard could destroy or severely incapacitate an enemy cruiser even if it missed by several hundred yards.
The Admiralty was also concerned that some protection would need to be given to naval task forces that did not include an aircraft carrier. This is why Vanguard was retained in commission and some of the King George V class retained at reasonably short notice into the early 1950s, to provide heavy, radar-laid gunfire far beyond the range of a Sverdlov. The wartime cruisers also had some value as escorts and as flagships on the various naval stations around the world. Both battleships and cruisers were expensive to run, however, and their numbers declined rapidly through the 1950s as re-equipment programmes had to be funded. The Soviet Navy also retained battleships into the early 1950s. Two dated from 1914 and the third was the former Italian Giulio Cesare, ceded to the Soviet Union under the terms of the Italian peace treaty in 1949. None of them were regarded as mechanically reliable by Western intelligence agencies. Over 100 new ‘Kotlin’ and Skoriy class destroyers were being completed in this period, giving the Soviet Union a considerable sea-going fleet which was numerically larger than the Royal Navy but much less capable in terms of striking power. The US Navy remained pre-eminent in terms of both size and it ability to strike targets at sea and on land.
German U-boats with high underwater speed went into service too late in the Second World War to affect the Battle of the Atlantic but their technology was acquired by the Soviet Navy and applied to a new generation of submarines. From 1950 ‘W’ class submarines were being built in a number of yards across the Soviet Union; by the late 1950s more than 170 were in service. They were known to be supplemented by an improved ‘Z’ class with twenty in service by 1960. Again the Allies looked back to the threat posed by German U-boats and assumed that the Soviet Union planned to use this large force for an attack on Allied shipping. With the wisdom of hindsight it is now believed that, together with the Sverdlov class cruisers, the ‘W’ class submarines were intended more to protect the homeland against attack by the Allied carrier strike and amphibious forces that had so impressed the Soviet leadership in 1945 than to launch an attack on Western trade. Stalin had presumed that with nuclear weapons and such powerful, mobile forces at their disposal, Western leaders must be considering a pre-emptive attack on the Soviet Union before it recovered from the Second World War. Whatever their true purpose, the huge submarine-building programme produced boats that could have severed Europe’s ‘lifeline’ across the Atlantic in the event of open hostilities if they were not effectively countered.
The ‘W’ class had a dived displacement of 1180 tons and were armed with six 21in torpedo tubes.16 They had German-designed diesel engines and electric motors that gave a surface speed of 17 knots and a dived speed of 15 knots for short bursts. All of them were fitted with ‘snort’ (snorkel) masts that allowed them to run their diesels at periscope depth, either to charge their batteries or to achieve higher underwater speed than could be sustained on the electric motors alone. It was the high dived speed that worried the Admiralty since it created relatively broad limiting lines of submerged approach, inside which boats would be able to get into an attacking position on a convoy. The best anti-submarine vessels of the Second World War were the RN ‘Loch’ class but these ships had a maximum speed of only 18.5 knots and would be hard-pressed to get into an attacking position on a ‘W’ class boat, even with their ahead-throwing anti-submarine mortars. It is easy to see why the Type 15 and 16 destroyer conversions were given such high priority since they gave dedicated anti-submarine warfare vessels with a speed in excess of 30 knots. By the mid-1950s the new Type 12 anti-submarine frigates with their advanced sensors and weapons were given a high production priority despite the expense of their construction.
The Tupolev TU-16, codenamed ‘Badger’ by NATO,17 was used by both the Soviet Air Force and Navy. The Navy used the ‘Badger B’ variant which could carry up to 20,000lbs of free-falling weapons in an internal bomb bay over a radius of action of about 1000 miles. Of greater concern, it could also be armed with two KS-1 Komet air-to-surface missiles known to NATO as the AS-1 ‘Kennel’. These were carried on pylons under the outboard wings and were effectively small swept-wing aeroplanes using MiG-15 technology, powered by a small turbojet engine and armed with a 1000lb warhead. They can be thought of as early cruise missiles. The parent aircraft would fly at high level, up to 38,000ft, and search for target ships with radar. Once a target was located, the ‘Badger’ would home on it and launch one or both ‘Kennels’ at it at the weapon’s maximum range of 50nm. Initially the ‘Kennel’ would fly on the bearing of launch using an inertial navigation system. Its own radar searched ahead and once it had locked onto a radar echo it controlled the terminal attack phase until impact. The system was relatively crude in that neither the ‘Badger’ nor its missiles could positively identify a target; if they were hoping to hit a high-value unit within a task force they could only choose the largest radar echo and hope. To compensate for this shortcoming, Soviet Naval Air Force units practised attacks in regimental streams of twelve aircraft, all of which attacked on roughly the same bearing and fired their missiles together in salvoes intended to saturate the defences. ‘Badgers’ did not enter large-scale service until the second half of the 1950s and were one of the major reasons for developing the improved generation of fighters intended for service from 1957. The Sea Hawk/Sea Venom generation had only a marginal excess of speed over the ‘Badger’ and would have been hard-pressed to intercept them before weapon release. They would have been capable of engaging the missiles after launch but in the congested battle space of a regimental attack, success could not have been guaranteed without a large number of fighters. The ‘Badger’ itself had a maximum speed of 540 knots at low level, Mach 0.75 at 38,000ft and a maximum all-up weight of 170,000lbs.18
Task forces and convoy defences would have had the advantage of defence in depth in the open sea. Incoming bombers would have been detected first by airborne early warning aircraft, then by the long-range air-warning radars fitted in carriers and other large warships. First to engage would be the fighters vectored from their CAP stations who would try to break up or destroy the bomber stream; after missile launch warships would attempt to jam their radars or deceive them with chaff and then open fire with medium and then short-range guns inside 7000 yards. Ships fitted with Mark 6 directors and ammunition with variable-time (VT) fuzes would stand a good chance of shooting down the early subsonic missiles which flew on a steady course and speed; older ships with wartime HACS directors would not have been effective and there was no money to upgrade the hundreds of destroyers and frigates laid up in reserve with more modern systems. In the mid-1950s Western intelligence agencies believed that the Soviet Union was developing several larger bombers capable of long-range open-ocean surveillance. One of these emerged as the Tupolev TU-20 ‘Bear’, a large bomber which was unusual in having swept wings and four turbo-prop engines. It had a wingspan of 163ft, a maximum all-up weight of 370,000lbs and a radius of action of about 3000 miles.19 The ‘D’ variant was developed for the Soviet Navy in the early 1960s and is still in service more than sixty years later.
NATO Exercises
I do not intend to describe every exercise or every British aircraft carrier’s participation in them but the following examples give a good idea of RN strike fleet operations in support of NATO during this period.
Exercise ‘Castanets’ in June 1952 involved the warships and aircraft of nine member nations and covered a large area of the North Atlantic. Indomitable served as flagship of Rear Admiral Caspar John CB, Flag Officer Heavy Squadron, Home Fleet.20 She had 820 and 826 (Firefly AS 6s) and 809 (Sea Hornet NF21s) NAS embarked plus the first RN Westland Dragonfly HAR 1 detachment to act as a ship’s SAR Flight. She was joined by HMCS Magnificent with 871 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 881 (Avenger TBM-3s) NAS embarked and between them the two ships formed a carrier task group. The emphasis in this group was anti-submarine and night fighter operations in defence of a convoy. The two carriers sustained operations around the clock, aided by the short summer nights but the weather was often unpleasant and favoured the enemy. The convoy phase was followed by a simulated offensive against a known submarine transit area. Sono-buoys were deployed effectively and co-operation with surface ships in accordance with the new NATO doctrine resulted in several ‘attacks’ on submarines that were assessed as ‘kills’ by the exercise umpires. This phase reflected well on the aircrew of Indomitable since they had only one opportunity to practice against a live submarine before the exercise. ‘Castanets’ also involved command and control, live firing and tactical phases in which Captain W J W Woods DSO* RN of Indomitable strove to get his whole ship’s company involved. He was pleased to note in his ROP that the first submarine sighting of the exercise was made by Boy Signalman Wilmhouse who had only been on board for two weeks. The starboard forward 4.5in battery earned a high reputation by shooting down a towed drogue target off Portland with their first salvo during the live weapon training period.
Eagle, fresh from sea trials, working up exercises and deck landing trials with new types of aircraft took part in ‘Castanets’ as a strike carrier with 800 and 803 (Attacker FB 1s), 827 (Firebrand TF 5s) and 814 (Firefly AS 6s) NAS embarked. Successful strikes were flown against a number of targets and, as the largest carrier ever built for the RN at the time, she attracted a number of visitors who wanted to see the ship in operation. The most significant ‘bag’ on a single day included the First Lord of the Admiralty, the Secretary of State for Air, the Minister of Supply and the Flag Officer Air (Home).
Exercise ‘Mainbrace’ in September 1952 was the largest peacetime naval exercise ever held and the fact that it was held so soon after ‘Castanets’ underlines NATO concern that a high degree of readiness needed to be demonstrated to counter a potential Soviet attack on Western Europe. Overall command was exercised by Admiral McCormick USN, Supreme Allied Commander Atlantic. The RN task force was under the command of Admiral Sir George Creasy CB CBE DSO MVO, Commander-in-Chief Home Fleet and Commander, NATO Forces North-East Atlantic, who flew his flag in the battleship Vanguard. USN ships included the aircraft carriers Franklin D Roosevelt, Wasp and Wright and the battleship Wisconsin.
By then Eagle had replaced Indomitable as flagship of the Home Fleet’s Heavy Squadron. She was not yet considered fully worked-up but embarked the same air group with the addition of 812 (Firefly AS 6s) and two aircraft from 849 (Skyraider AEW 1s) NAS. Bad weather curtailed some of the planned sorties but valuable lessons were learned that helped to bring the ship’s company to full operational efficiency. The exercise was intended to demonstrate the ability of the NATO nations to work together seamlessly and was split into two phases. The first involved escorting a convoy of reinforcements across the Atlantic from west to east, followed by a second in which 1500 US Marines were landed on the Jutland peninsula to reassure the Scandinavian countries that they were not being ignored by NATO and that they could be defended against aggression. This phase ended with the strike fleet providing maximum effort to support NATO land forces in Norway and Denmark in the worst of the weather. The exercise was considered to be a success and demonstrated that the strike fleet could not only neutralise the ‘enemy’ surface fleet and submarines but also continue to provide realistic air support for forces ashore when land bases were closed by weather or simulated enemy air attacks. The post-exercise critique, or ‘wash-up’ as such meetings are commonly known, was held in Eagle’s upper hangar in Oslo and was honoured by the presence of His Majesty King Haakon of Norway21 and Crown Prince Olav. Also present were General Matthew B Ridgeway USA, who had replaced General Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), in May 1952 and Admiral Sir Patrick Brind, Commander-in-Chief Allied Forces Northern Europe. Two hundred officers from eight nations attended the wash-up and the fact that Eagle was chosen as the venue shows how the maritime dimension was central to early NATO thinking. Sea-based forces could concentrate anywhere on the European littoral to counter aggression and the major investment by the Soviet Union in counter-maritime strategy shows respect for this capability. Regrettably it was not as well understood by Western politicians, especially those in the UK who took sea control for granted without realising that it had to be gained and maintained.
Theseus, a light fleet carrier recently returned from Korean operations, joined another carrier task force during ‘Mainbrace’, operating with HMCS Magnificent and the escort carrier USS Mindoro. Theseus had 804 (Sea Fury FB 11s), 820 and 826 (Firefly AS 6s) NAS embarked22 and Magnificent had the same air group she had operated in ‘Castanets’. In the first phase of the exercise this task force escorted a convoy to Bergen from Rosyth. A submarine attack carried out inside May Island was disallowed by umpires as it was outside the designated exercise area but there were a number of air attacks from ‘enemy’ shore bases. Flying continued despite bad weather and produced several submarine contacts. In the second phase, the task force escorted the amphibious force to Denmark and covered their landings. Magnificent’s Avengers were awarded a submarine ‘kill’ at night which underscored their high state of training. When Theseus disembarked 804 NAS at the end of the exercise, her flight deck team showed their efficiency by catapulting nine Sea Furies with an average interval of 36.2 seconds between them, an RN record. The value of running carriers in non-operational roles with reduced ship’s companies that could be brought back into full operation in an emergency was demonstrated by Illustrious, the trials and training carrier. On 30 August 1952 she embarked the Royal Netherlands Navy’s 860 (Sea Fury FB 11) NAS for ‘Mainbrace’. They were joined by 824 (Firefly AS 6) NAS on 3 September. HMS Triumph, the deck landing training carrier, also took part with Firefly FR 4s of 767 NAS embarked.
A storm range on Eagle’s flight deck during the Home Fleet spring cruise in 1953. The aircraft are Firefly AS 6s of 814 NAS and a single Skyraider of 849A NAS. Note that the cockpit covers of the forward two Fireflies have been blown off and the cockpit canopy of the left-hand aircraft has blown open, allowing considerable amounts of salt water to get in and ruin equipment. (Author’s collection)
Other RN Carrier Activity in this Period
The early 1950s saw Anglo-Egyptian relations deteriorate and one of the sources of friction was the large British garrison maintained in Egypt to defend the Suez Canal Zone. The British Army had been deployed in Egypt since the nineteenth century and had undoubtedly been a stabilising factor in Middle East politics. Despite defending Egypt against the Turks in the First World War and the Germans and Italians in the second, growing Arab nationalism during this period made the British position less tenable. In 1947 British forces were withdrawn from Cairo and other regional centres into the Canal Zone itself and a year later British forces left Palestine when the new state of Israel was created.23 However, most of the oil used by Britain came from the Middle East and passed through the Suez Canal and so the British continued to regard the defence of the canal as being of critical importance; its disruption or closure would mean tankers having to travel by the long sea route around Africa. Fervent nationalists in Egypt saw the defeat of its army by Israel in 1949 and the continued occupation of the Canal Zone by the British as equal humiliations. In October 1951 the Egyptian Government unilaterally abrogated the 1936 Anglo-Egyptian Treaty which formed the basis of the British presence24 and a period of violent protest began in the British-occupied areas. The canal was owned by a joint Anglo-French company and the cruiser Gambia was sent to Port Said to protect British interests and other warships secured the southern end. A system of patrols by boats and landing craft along the canal was instituted and the Chiefs of Staff formulated a contingency plan for military intervention in Egypt if the situation got out of hand, codenamed ‘Rodeo’. It involved two phases; the first involved moving troops from the Canal Zone into Cairo and the second deploying troops from Cyprus into Alexandria. Both were intended to protect British lives and interests. In January 1952 British forces were involved in an incident with the Egyptian Police in Ismailia and riots broke out in Cairo. ‘Rodeo’ was ordered to come to 48 hours’ notice but, faced with the reality of the situation, the Chiefs of Staff were advised by senior officers on the spot that the Egyptian armed forces would resist, leaving foreign civilians to the mercy of armed mobs in places where they could not be reached and, potentially, there was the prospect of attacks the canal itself by Egyptian armed forces. The scope of ‘Rodeo’ was, therefore, reduced to an armed evacuation of British and Commonwealth citizens.
826 NAS Avengers over HMCS Magnificent during exercises with the Canadian Atlantic Fleet. (Author’s collection)
In July 1952 King Farouk was overthrown by a military coup and his infant son Ahmed Fuad was named King although real power lay with a Military Council under General Neguib. In June 1953 Neguib deposed the young king and declared himself president of a new Egyptian Republic. In 1954 Egypt and the UK signed an agreement that British troops would leave the Canal Zone by June 1956, although Britain retained the use of its large supply depot at Ismailia to support action in the event of external aggression against Turkey or the Arab League unless that aggression came from Israel. The depot was to be run by civilians with no uniformed presence. Neguib himself was deposed in November 1954 by a new military council led by Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser who assumed presidential powers although he did not actually become president until 23 June 1956 after an election in which voting was compulsory but he was the only candidate.25 The Suez Crisis of 1956 will be described in a later chapter.
British aircraft carriers were involved in a number of differing roles as the situation in the Middle East unfolded during this period. In June 1951 Warrior and Triumph ferried the Army’s 16 Parachute Brigade and much of its equipment from the UK to Cyprus.26 In November 1951 Illustrious and Triumph ferried the British 3rd Infantry Division and much of its equipment from Portsmouth to Cyprus as part of a build-up of capability in the region. In January 1952, during the fighting in Ismailia, Ocean was held in the eastern Mediterranean with 802 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 825 (Firefly FR 5s) NAS embarked as part of a Mediterranean Fleet task force which also included the cruisers Glasgow and Euryalus to prepare for the defence and evacuation of British nationals if it became necessary. When the situation eased she passed through the Suez Canal to join the FEF and replace Glory for operations in the Korean War zone. HMS Glory demonstrated how interlocked strike fleet operations had become when she returned to the Mediterranean after Ocean relieved her. In July she was operating in the eastern Mediterranean with 807 and 898 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 810 (Firefly FR 5s) NAS embarked. She was in Istanbul with HMCS Magnificent on an official visit when the crisis over King Farouk’s departure broke and she sailed at short notice to join a concentration off Cyprus intended to cope with any eventuality. The crisis eased and in October she sailed for the Far East to relieve Ocean. The British Government considered the presence of an aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean Fleet to be critically important and several ships were deployed on the station. Indomitable detached from the Home Fleet to the Mediterranean in January 1953 with 804 (Sea Fury FB 11s), 820 and 826 (Firefly AS 6s) NAS embarked. Unfortunately on 3 February 1953 an explosion destroyed the aircraft oxygen generation plant, killing eight men and wounding many more. Since she was near the end of her projected operational life, no repairs were carried out and the compartment was filled with concrete. After returning to the UK she took part in the Coronation Review at Spithead and then paid off into low-category reserve at Rosyth. Theseus re-commissioned after a post-Korean refit in January 1952 and alternated between the Home and Mediterranean Fleets until October 1954 when she was modified to relieve Implacable as flagship of the Home Fleet Training Squadron. She was in the eastern Mediterranean in September 1953 when Cyprus suffered an earthquake and formed part of the RN task force assembled off the island to give support to the civilian population.
Although the Middle East featured strongly in the news bulletins of this period, carriers also played a significant part in RN operations all over the world. In October 1953 Implacable carried a battalion of the Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders in a high-speed transit from Devonport to Trinidad as part of a British reinforcement of the region following unrest in British Guyana. In March 1954 Triumph was ordered to Algiers in support of the destroyer Saintes which was standing by the burning British troopship Empire Windrush. A month later, in April, Eagle, escorted by Daring, searched for wreckage from a de Havilland Comet airliner which had gone missing during a flight from Rome to Cairo. Several bodies were found and recovered. In July 1954 the ferry carrier Perseus carried relief supplies for Korean children from Singapore Naval Base. In August 1954 Warrior was serving in the FEF with 811 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 825 (Firefly AS 5s) NAS embarked and had relieved HMAS Sydney on operations off Korea to monitor the ceasefire. On 25 August she was tasked to evacuate refugees from North to South Vietnam following a request to the British Government from the Prime Minister of Vietnam. Hong Kong Dockyard fitted bunk beds and extra heads and washing facilities into the hangar and she sailed for Vietnam on 31 August 1954. The evacuation began on 4 September and by 13 September she had evacuated 3000 civilian refugees. Three babies were born at sea with the help of the ship’s medical staff. She returned to Hong Kong Dockyard for the removal of the extra accommodation arrangements and then sailed for the UK. In October 1954 Warrior was awarded a Special Unit Citation by the President of Vietnam for her humanitarian work. In October 1954 the new light fleet carrier Centaur, which had recently joined the Mediterranean Fleet, withdrew the last British troops from Trieste where a small occupation force had been maintained since the end of the Second World War. She was the first British carrier to be fitted with an interim angled deck, fitted shortly after her completion and she operated a transitional air group comprising 806 (Sea Hawk FB 3s), 810 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 820 (Avenger AS 4s) NAS. Early in 1955 she carried out combined exercises with the US Sixth Fleet, reinforcing the close links forged between the two navies in the Pacific in 1945 and in Korea. By then the RN had adopted the USN system of signals for its batsmen as part of a standardised system which was used across NATO in British, American, Canadian, French and Dutch carriers. The same system was adopted by the Royal Australian Navy.
Perseus in use as a ferry carrier in 1952, seen being loaded in Southampton with cocooned Sea Furies for the FEF on deck together with an array of trucks, buses and even private cars. A Whirlwind HAR 21 of 848 NAS is landing on the clear space aft. The ship ferried the unit to RNAS Sembawang in Singapore for operations in Malaya. (Author’s collection)
Naval air squadrons themselves continued to demonstrate versatility, underlining the fact that they could work perfectly well when disembarked to a shore base. In 1955 the British command in Cyprus began Operation ‘Apollo’ which was intended to prevent ships from smuggling arms onto the island for EOKA terrorists who were engaged in an insurrection against British rule. 847 (Gannet AS 1s) NAS was commissioned specifically to carry out daily patrols from Nicosia in support of warships operating off the coast, a task which continued until 1959 when the unit flew back to the UK to disband. In October 1952 the RN re-commissioned 848 NAS at RNAS Gosport with ten Sikorsky Whirlwind HAS 21 helicopters provided by the USN under MDAP, to become the first operational helicopter unit in the RN. With their sonars removed and troop seats fitted, the squadron deployed to RNAS Sembawang, Singapore in Perseus and worked up as the first ‘commando’ squadron. It was employed on support operations for the security forces fighting the communist insurrection in Malaya. 848 NAS moved to an advanced base near Kuala Lumpur in February 195327 and brought unprecedented mobility to military units operating in the jungle, for which the unit was awarded the Boyd Trophy for 1953. Operations continued until 848 NAS was de-commissioned in December 1956. In February 1953 there was severe flooding on the east coast of the UK and in Holland. RN helicopters deployed to both locations and were used extensively on humanitarian relief operations; the first time that helicopters were used for this sort of task. The commanding officer of 705 (Dragonfly HAR 1s) NAS at RNAS Gosport was subsequently awarded the MBE for leading the operations and coordinating the work of a number of helicopters operating from widely-spaced forward operating locations.
In August 1954 Warrior was tasked to evacuate refugees from North to South Vietnam following a request to the British Government by the Prime Minister of South Vietnam. This is the scene in her hangar in early September as she evacuated 3000 refugees. Her air group was disembarked but note the spare Firefly main planes and propellers still secured to the bulkheads. (Author’s collection)
Operational and Administrative Control of Naval Aviation
The Admiralty was not just a government department responsible for the administration of the Navy. Until 1964 it was the operational centre from which orders and instructions were given to the various fleet commanders. A civilian politician known as the First Lord was head of the department but by the early 1950s he had ceased to be a cabinet member. All matters of national policy and budget had, therefore, to be referred to the Minister of Defence for ultimate approval, if necessary at Cabinet level. The operational and professional head of the Royal Navy was the First Sea Lord (1SL) and Chief of the Naval Staff, responsible for directing the Commanders-in-Chief of the three major fleets and various Commands and Stations at home and overseas to implement agreed Government policy. The Admiralty Board member responsible for naval aviation matters was the Fifth Sea Lord (5SL), also known as the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, with additional responsibility for the development of tactics and operational capability across the fleet. Under 5SL there were various Admiralty departments responsible for naval air matters. These included the Directorate of Naval Air Warfare (DNAW), and the Directorate of Naval Air Organisation and Training (DAOT), both headed by senior captains, RN. A third captain, the Adviser on Aircraft Accidents (AAA), was responsible directly to 5SL on all matters of flight safety in the 1950s but this task was eventually absorbed into DNAW. The design and development of aircraft carriers, like all warships, was the responsibility of the Third Sea Lord (3SL), also known by the historic title of Controller. As with every other Branch in the RN, naval air personnel were the responsibility of the Second Sea Lord (2SL), and his Department. By the early 1950s the RN had been in full administrative and operational control of its air element for over a decade, had expanded it rapidly to fight a global war and contracted it in the subsequent demobilisation. The administrative and operational systems were well understood and worked effectively.
The procurement of new aircraft and weapons for all three Services was the responsibility of the MoS, and within that organisation the senior RN representative was known as the Vice-Controller (Air) and Chief Naval Representative MOS/Chief of Naval Air Equipment.28 He took direction from both 5SL and the Controller and had responsibility for ensuring that the MOS fully understood naval staff requirements and acted on them effectively. He had three departments under him, the Directorate of Air Equipment and Naval Photography (DAE), the Directorate of Aircraft Maintenance and Repair (DAMR), and the Directorate of Naval Aircraft Development and Production MoS (DNDP). DAMR was headed by a Rear Admiral (E), the other two by captains, RN. When the MoS ceased to exist, this group of directorates became part of the naval staff under a rear admiral with the title Director General Aircraft (Navy) (DGA(N)), retaining the same directorates.29 In 1951 5SL was a vice admiral and the Vice Controller (Air) was a rear admiral.
Examples of the first generation of RN jets in formation, photographed from a Meteor T 7. Nearest the camera is a Sea Hawk, probably an F 1, then an Attacker FB 1, Sea Vampire F 20 and a Meteor T 7. (Author’s collection)
Operational command of carrier strike forces came under the Commanders-in-Chief of the Home, Mediterranean and Far East Fleets in which they served, through their Flag Officers Second-in-Command. As carrier deployments came to be less rigid and the ships were no longer operated in formalised aircraft carrier squadrons, the post of Flag Officer Aircraft Carriers (FOAC), was introduced with worldwide responsibility. He administered all carriers in commission and took operational command of a task force, when necessary. He took over responsibility for working up ships and naval air squadrons to operational efficiency and for setting standards and practices to be achieved by all carriers and their embarked squadrons from the Flag Officer Air (Home). The Cs-in-C of the Home and Mediterranean Fleets in 1951 were admirals, that of the FEF, a vice admiral. FOAC could be a junior vice admiral or a senior rear admiral. The relevant fleet also directed the tasks of naval air stations within their areas. Carriers were not normally allocated to overseas stations such as the West Indies or South Atlantic but could be deployed for a specific operation under FOAC or the nearest FO2.
Day-to-day administrative control of naval carrier strike forces throughout the RN was the responsibility of the Flag Officer Air (Home), a vice admiral in 1951, who could give advice and support as necessary to overseas fleets and stations. He directed the work to be carried out by the trials carriers and oversaw an organisation split into three sub-commands, each run by a rear admiral. The first two were the Flag Officer Ground Training (FOGT), responsible for the naval air stations at which technical training of officers, artificers, air mechanics and naval airmen were carried out and the Flag Officer Flying Training (FOFT). The latter was responsible for all the air stations at which advanced and operational flying took place,30 the output of aircrew from the training ‘pipeline’ to meet the needs of operational squadrons including, when necessary, the ability to surge numbers in order to form new squadrons quickly in an emergency. FOFT was also responsible for the tasking of the training carrier. The third sub-command was headed by a rear admiral (E) known as the Rear Admiral Reserve Aircraft (RARA), whose reserve aircraft organisation underpinned the worldwide operation of naval aircraft and covered a wide range of disparate tasks.31 These included:
(a) The maintenance of a substantial reserve of aircraft and engines at varying degrees of readiness, both long and short-term, so that peacetime and emergency requirements could be met with the minimum of delay.
(b) Fulfilling the function of Air Equipment Authority including the provision of replacement aircraft for those damaged, lost or due for major overhaul; for re-arming existing naval air squadrons and for the formation of new squadrons.
(c) Administration of the repair of aircraft and engines using the factories of manufacturers and contractors, naval air yards and RN Mobile Repair Units.
(d) Bringing into service new aircraft types direct from the manufacturers, testing and equipping them for the roles in which they were required.
(e) Preparing aircraft and engines for shipment to overseas fleets and stations and receiving shipments from abroad.
(f) The maintenance of records covering all naval aircraft and engines throughout their life from receipt to disposal.
All this work was co-ordinated from RNAS Arbroath and involved AHUs at RN Air Stations Abbotsinch, Anthorn, Culham and Stretton together with civilian-manned RN Air Yards at Fleetlands, Donibristle and Belfast. Reserve aircraft were very different from the ships held in the inactive reserve fleet. All aircraft not actually allocated to a squadron were classified as reserve and this included brand new machines straight off the production line. The great majority were in a ‘live’ state although a proportion were ‘embalmed’ for long-term storage. Admiralty policy was to keep aircraft establishments small by flying a relatively small number of aircraft in the front line as intensively as possible. When anything more than a minor repair was required by an aircraft, it was withdrawn from the unit and replaced. The policy that flying units should concentrate on flying their aircraft gave RARA’s sub-command the high pressure technical task of repairing, modifying, equipping and issuing aircraft to support the flying task. The maintenance of operational capability was achieved by providing the right replacements at the right time in the right place. The sub-command was required to maintain sufficient aircraft to meet the heavy demands of a national emergency and from that it naturally followed that normal peacetime requirements could be met.
Reserve aircraft were maintained in good condition by the ‘throughput’ process under which every aircraft, except those ‘embalmed’, was brought up to full operational standard and test flown at least once a year. Most aircraft were held in hangars in a preserved state that reduced deterioration. They were inspected weekly, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly and annually and any deterioration was immediately rectified. After a year in storage, aircraft were de-preserved, modifications and special technical instructions (STI), issued in the previous twelve months were embodied, the guns butt-tested and the compass swung. When all faults were corrected the aircraft was test flown by a fully-qualified maintenance test pilot, usually a lieutenant or lieutenant commander (E) (P). Any snags found in the air were rectified and further check flights carried out until the aircraft was signed off as being at operational standard. It was then considered available for issue to a user unit after which it was either despatched at once or held in a pool of serviceable aircraft which were inspected and test-flown weekly. About eighty aircraft underwent this process every month in 1952. Some aircraft were placed in long-term storage by ‘embalming’, a process similar to the ‘cocooning’ of gun mountings on warships in the reserve fleet. In this instance aircraft were completely sprayed to become encased in an impervious ‘skin’, inside which the air was kept dry by desiccants to prevent corrosion. The ‘skin’ was inspected and the desiccant renewed periodically to maintain the aircraft in good condition. Modification could be carried out but involved removal of a part of the ‘skin’ and re-embalming it, so modification and STI embodiment was usually held until the aircraft was brought forward and the complete ‘skin’ removed.
New aircraft were flown into an AHU by a ferry pilot without much of their Admiralty-supplied operational equipment. The latest modifications were also usually missing as the manufacturer could not hold up the production line to embody them. They were, therefore checked immediately to see that the contractor had supplied all the equipment for which he was responsible and then all the operational equipment required to meet the Admiralty Equipment Standard for that type was fitted (guns, radar etc). By then guns would have been butt-tested and the compass swung. A full functional test flight was carried out, after which the aircraft could be allotted to the serviceable pool. Once allotted to a squadron, aircraft remained with it until they became surplus to its establishment or it required reconditioning at the end of its planned hours-based ‘life’. It would also have to be replaced if it suffered damage beyond the capacity of the squadron or a mobile repair unit to repair or if it became a total loss. Repairs were the responsibility of the repair organisation within the air yards. Replacement aircraft were provided to squadrons from the serviceable pool, those being brought forward from storage or from the receipt procedure. In 1950 the number of aircraft issued to squadrons from RARA’s organisation totalled 859.
A cocooned Sea Fury FB 11, VX 758, shortly after being delivered in Australia for the RAN. Note the dates when the aircraft was inhibited and then ‘embalmed’ written on the coating so that it could be removed at the due date at the latest. (RAN)
RARA’s sub-command included the allotment control organisation to meet the demands of the Admiralty, FO Air (Home) and the Fleets. A total of 1900 aircraft and 1500 engines were allotted during 1950 and the despatch of aircraft, engines and equipment to foreign stations formed a significant part of the sub-commands work. In the UK aircraft were ferried from contractors to Receipt & Despatch Units (RDU), at two of the AHUs; from RDUs to other AHUs if necessary and from them to operational and training naval air stations and repair yards. They were also ferried from air yards to AHUs. The work was carried out by a civilian contractor who employed sixteen pilots for the task and their movement about the country to pick up aircraft was facilitated by the use of two light transport aircraft lent by the Admiralty for the purpose. In an average year there were some 1500 ferry flights, all co-ordinated by a central ferry control office in RARA’s headquarters. The civilian ferry pilots flew under naval regulations except those covering familiarisation on new types.
Aircraft that could not be flown were moved by one of three Naval Aircraft Transport & Salvage Units (NATSU). One of these was based at RNAS Abbotsinch, another at RNAS Worthy Down and a third, slightly smaller than the first two, at RNAS Eglinton in Northern Ireland. Their transport was the responsibility of civilian drivers but naval air mechanics dismantled aircraft and prepared them for movement. Salvaging crashed aircraft was a particularly specialised operation that often required considerable initiative since no two crash-sites were the same. The majority of aircraft for overseas shipment were embarked in the Glasgow area and there was some sensitivity caused by the berths needing to be used for commercial shipping. In one instance seventy-two aircraft were embarked in a carrier in 3 hours 30 minutes after close co-operation between drivers, handling and sling-fitting parties and the crane drivers. Disembarkation was usually carried out in Portsmouth, with aircraft being placed onto lighters. During 1950, the NATSUs moved 832 aircraft, 1823 aircraft engines and 1186 miscellaneous loads. They loaded 155 aircraft onto aircraft carriers and off-loaded 232 aircraft from them. NATSU vehicles travelled a total of 1,074,746 miles.
