Derek Nudd's Blog - Posts Tagged "british-pacific-fleet"
Forgotten Fleet
In fact this book covers two forgotten fleets: the British Pacific Fleet and the East Indies Fleet. After the eye-watering Japanese advances of late 1941 and early 1942 there was little Britain could do except hang on grimly to its few footholds remaining. Pre-war plans for rapid reinforcement were overtaken by events in the Atlantic, Arctic and Mediterranean, and the most of bases for that reinforcement were gone.
Winton tells the story of the Royal Navy's gritty recovery from such an unpromising start, including the improvisation from scratch of a fleet train to support the Pacific Fleet in mid-ocean and learning to integrate its operations with the US Navy's vastly greater resources. The Brits had one great advantage in overcoming Washington obstructionism at local level - the USN was 'dry' while the RN wasn't. A bottle (or for really big favours a crate) of whisky could do wonders.
British carriers' armoured flight decks proved their worth under constant attack by suicide pilots. As Indefatigable's USN liaison officer put it after a strike, 'When a kamikaze hits a US carrier, it's six months repair at Pearl. In a Limey carrier it's a case of "Sweepers, man your brooms".'
On the subject of suiciders, it is interesting that some of the officers who graduated from the SOAS crash course in Japanese went to sea and listened in to the control aircraft instructing the kamikazes (who in the nature of things were inexperienced) which ships to go for and what tactics to adopt. This gave the targets a little bit of valuable time to react.
Personally I would have liked a bit more attention given to the East Indies Fleet, and especially its submarine component. Once the big American boats had made the oceans an extremely hostile environment for the Japanese it fell to the 8th Flotilla's S and T class boats operating at the limit of their (and their crew's) endurance to tackle the coastal trade.
The first two appendices list the ships which made up the two fleets at VJ Day. The lists are impressive, doubly so when we consider that these forces - enormous by our standards - were dwarfed by the US component.
Bearing in mind that this work dates from 1969 and much material has been declassified since then, it remains a worthwhile read.
Winton tells the story of the Royal Navy's gritty recovery from such an unpromising start, including the improvisation from scratch of a fleet train to support the Pacific Fleet in mid-ocean and learning to integrate its operations with the US Navy's vastly greater resources. The Brits had one great advantage in overcoming Washington obstructionism at local level - the USN was 'dry' while the RN wasn't. A bottle (or for really big favours a crate) of whisky could do wonders.
British carriers' armoured flight decks proved their worth under constant attack by suicide pilots. As Indefatigable's USN liaison officer put it after a strike, 'When a kamikaze hits a US carrier, it's six months repair at Pearl. In a Limey carrier it's a case of "Sweepers, man your brooms".'
On the subject of suiciders, it is interesting that some of the officers who graduated from the SOAS crash course in Japanese went to sea and listened in to the control aircraft instructing the kamikazes (who in the nature of things were inexperienced) which ships to go for and what tactics to adopt. This gave the targets a little bit of valuable time to react.
Personally I would have liked a bit more attention given to the East Indies Fleet, and especially its submarine component. Once the big American boats had made the oceans an extremely hostile environment for the Japanese it fell to the 8th Flotilla's S and T class boats operating at the limit of their (and their crew's) endurance to tackle the coastal trade.
The first two appendices list the ships which made up the two fleets at VJ Day. The lists are impressive, doubly so when we consider that these forces - enormous by our standards - were dwarfed by the US component.
Bearing in mind that this work dates from 1969 and much material has been declassified since then, it remains a worthwhile read.
