Churchill's Navy: The ships, people and organisation, 1939-1945

by Brian Lavery

In this remarkable book, now reissued in paperback, Brian Lavery examines every aspect of the Royal Navy, both ashore and at sea, during the Second World War, and casts a lucid eye over the strengths and weaknesses of an organization that was put under acute strain during the period, yet rose to the challenge with initiative and determination.

Divided into twelve sections, the book delves into the structure of naval power from the Board of Admiralty and shore commands to officers and crews, their recruitment and training, daily life and discipline. The roles of the Reserves, Merchant Navy, Royal Marines and Wrens within this structure are also explained. Developments in ship design and technology, as well as advances in intelligence, sensors and armament are all discussed and set in context. The different divisions are dealt with one by one, including the Submarine Service, Fleet Air Arm, Coastal Forces, and Combined Operations. The text is complemented by over 300 illustrations and the personal accounts of those who served.

Genres: Naval History, History

288 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2006

About the author

Brian Lavery is a British naval historian, author, and Curator Emeritus at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

Reviews

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

Churchill’s Navy provides an excellent overview of the Royal Navy in the Second World War, cramming in oodles of information covering all sorts of elements. It covers the structure of the Admiralty, the scope of the different commands, but also gets into details of logistics like messing arrangements, and even references rope-handling. Importantly, it generally has a people-based focus, discussing the topics in the context of what they meant for the ratings or officers, in a way that is often overlooked in more ‘clinical’ works. While it doesn’t cover anything in the detail a subject would be covered by with its own dedicated book, the amount of detail it does contain is very impressive, and makes the book probably the single-best “one volume overview” of the Royal Navy during the Second World War (as an organisation – it is not an operational history). The book as a whole is an excellent achievement.

The book is very well written with clear, interesting and accessible prose. It is also generally very well presented, with many well-chosen photographs, diagrams, drawings, maps and similar, which are reproduced in good quality and, where possible, in colour (throughout the book). A strength of the book is the generally well-chosen quotes, which convey a sense of atmosphere or feeling that underlined the human element of the wartime Royal Navy.

The only parts about the presentation I would have preferred changed were the rare but noticeable occasional pages with black text on a middle-grey background with not quite enough tonal differentiation between the text and the background to make it entirely comfortable to read.

There were some issues with the text - as is often the case, the quality of the broader ‘scene-setting’ information about British politics and society appears a bit sketchier than the rest of the work, with things presented in often very black-and-white ways when, at the very least in some cases, the reality is likely to have been a good deal more nuanced. For example, of the three quotes taken to describe British society in the pre-war period, two are from Nazi sources and are unsurprisingly extreme! This crops up again when discussing “Enemies and Allies” – that the Japanese first learned about naval aviation from a British mission in 1921-22 is off the mark (the IJN carried out the first attack on a ship from a ship-based aircraft, in August 1914), and the treatment of the Regia Marina is almost (surely accidentally) jingoistic in its narrowness and inaccuracy. In another example, VADM Emory Land would be surprised to learn that the Liberty Ship program was actually run by Henry Kaiser (Kaiser was one of a number of shipbuilders that built Liberty Ships for the US Maritime Commission, under Land’s leadership)! The book claims the F4F-3 entered service with the USN and USMC in 1937, which is an impressive effort for an aircraft whose first production version wasn’t ready to fly until February 1940, and which the was delivered to the Fleet Air Arm (July 1940) before the USN (December 1940). This tendency of ‘scene setting’ and ‘broader’ material missing the mark isn’t unusual (indeed, it’s far more the case than otherwise), but it is still part of the book (and often important when providing context for RN developments) and thus mentioned here.

The editing is of a high standard, with only a few small errors, and mostly missing ‘small’ words, or spaces – nothing material, and while there are a couple of errors that changed the meaning of the text, the context of the passages in question mean it isn’t hard to deduce what was actually meant. There are sourcing notes, and a brief index, as well as appendices summarising ship classes (albeit with some omissions), main aircraft types, the Board of the Admiralty, Commanders in Chief and rates of pay for substantive ratings – it’s let down by more typos than average in these kind of things, but it’s still a useful collection of mostly-accurate information in one place (particularly for me on the Board of the Admiralty/C-in-Cs).

There is also a bibliography with a strong selection of titles and clear evidence of original research, but with some odd inconsistencies and omissions as well (for example, it includes an article by J S Cowie on the British Sea Mining campaign dating from 1948, but it doesn’t include his more recent Mines, Minelayers and Minelaying published in 1949). Not surprisingly given the comments above, the bibliography is particularly weak when it comes to other navies – there are no referenced volumes relating to the Regia Marina, and the sole reference for the Royal Australian Navy was published in 1948, when far more authoritative works have since become available (in particular, Gill’s official histories) – for a book that touches on relations with the Dominion navies, and their part in basing and supporting the RN during WW2 (there’s no mention, for example, of the development of the Captain Cook Graving Dock in Sydney and its implications for the basing of the BPF), this is something of an oversight.

There are also minor issues of detail for the material on the RN – they were rare, and generally cropped up in relation to either technical matters or comparisons with other navies, but they did exist – that the book falls into the somewhat oversold story (near-myth) of the RN lagging behind in AA gunnery and armament is a shame.

The book gets far, far more right than it does wrong, and it goes into impressive detail, and by-and-large presents it excellently both visually and in terms of the quality of text and chosen quotes. It is a shame if is let down, however, by what are presumably poor choices of sources in some areas providing a misleading impression of things. Given this, it’s just not possible to give it the full five stars. It’s a very solid four, and well worth reading for anyone interested in the RN in WW2, and an incredibly impressive achievement – it was just slightly overly-ambitious at times which leads to errors that hold it back from being the out-and-out classic it could have been.

[Robert Hepple · Rating 4 out of 5]

Published in 2006, Churchill's Navy looks at the equipment and organisation of the Royal Navy during WW2. Chapters break this down into manageable chunks, like Naval Society and Culture, Officers and Ratings, The Battle Fleet, Naval Aviation, Submarines, and many others. The level of detail included is more than basic, yet never too high either which means that it is always quite readable. The supporting illustrations are just amazing, the pics are well chosen and unusual, whilst reproduced pages from official documents are an insight into an area not often shown. A useful addition to the plethora of books on RN operational history.

[Peter Timson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent review of the Navy and Naval Forces in WW2. The book is heavy in weight and one needs to sit at a table to read in - or support it on one's lap while sitting. Perhaps more of a book to dip into rather than read from cover to cover but it is good to do the latter as the chapters follow each other in a logical manner. I've been visiting museums and Portsmouth recently so it all meant a little more to me too.

[Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an excellent book, especially if, like me, you are researching an ancestors life in the Royal Navy. So readable and comprehensive. Fascinating - even my grown up children who wouldn't usually pick up a book like this have enjoyed browsing its contents and remarked on how interesting it is.