Clio13 wrote:
Well all I can add is that if I was an influential political voice in the inter war years and knew that my country had nearly been brought to its knees by submarine warfare a couple of decades before, I would make mightly sure I had the means to meet that submarine threat in the future, no matter what direction that threat emanated from.
Having the means to safeguard against any theoretically possible opponent is the best position in which to be.
However, the different demands have to be weighed against the economic constraints.
And in such circumstances of budgetary restrictions, you'll have a hard time convincing any parliament to increase spendings to defend against a non-existant threat.
Clio13 wrote:
My means would be intelligence, convoy ASDIC sets (that really worked) mines and oh, destroyers, destroyers and more destroyers.
Well, as I said previously, not only destroyers counted as ASW ships - sloops and later corvettes and frigates were also extremely useful.
Regarding the destroyer situation, the number available was limited given the commitments, but the situation was not immediately awful.
There were a lot of WW1 leftovers (S and V&W classes).
And during the 30's, the RN ordered one flotilla (of 9 ships in general) each year, and took preliminary measures to improve the old ships (WAIR and Long Range conversions) even though too few were completed before the war
Another budgetary problem is that not only the building of the ships is costly, but there are also very significant costs incurred to keep the ships active (maintenance, crew pay ...).
This explains why many destroyers were scrapped of disposed of during the 30's (Valhalla, Valkyrie, Vectis, Venturous, Violent; Shakespeare, Spenser; Bruce and a host of S-class).
This seems bad policy, but numbers are not everything. IIRC, Brown states that those old ships (he refers to S-class) would have been a liability during WW2.
IMHO, there were more problems (which could have been solved for less) in the Coastal Command than in the escorts buildup.
Clio13 wrote:
Did Britain really need so many capital ships ? I mean they proved such a decisive factor in WWI didn't they ?
As long as other navies had battleships, the RN could not escape to have its own battle fleet.
Moreover, their value is not as small as one could consider as seen from today. The usefulness is not only evaluated through the number of ships they sank or the number of shells they fired, but also through the impact they had on enemy moves.
Why do you think Tirpitz never attempted a breakthrough ? Why Scharnhordt and Gneisenau did not sortie from Lorient to the Atlantic but towards Germany ?
And in the Med, there seems to be a correlation between the lack of battleships and high losses for the UK (admittedly, it's more an opinion than a data-grounded deduction as I still have to dig said data)
Perhaps a case can be made for scrapping the Rs (and I do not really like the idea), but the RN could not contemplate not keeping all other BBs.
Clio13 wrote:
Call me a dreamer if you like.
No.
You make interesting points - even though I disagree with some of them, I think we can gentlemanly discuss before starting accusations, nitpickings and strawmen
