Two Navies Divided; The British and United States Navies in the Second World War. By Brian Lavery. Seaforth Publishing, Barnsley, Yorkshire, 2023
Reviewed by Tim Coyle
At first glance, the title Two Navies Divided, might indicate this book might be about divisive relationships between the two great English-speaking navies. This is not the case, as the author Brian Lavery explains in the first paragraph. It is based on the supposed comments by George Bernard Shaw that ‘England and America are two countries divided by a common language’.
Lavery goes on to background the historical relationships between the navies in which the Americans readily admitted their naval origins and culture stemmed from the Royal Navy. Even during the War of 1812, the legendary Captain Thomas Truxtun admitted: ‘…notwithstanding the prejudice that exists in our nation against the British government…yet I think none can be so much so, as not to acknowledge them, …the first maritime power on the globe, with respect to naval tactics. discipline, and the general management of ships of war…’
Two Navies Divided is therefore an examination of how the Royal and United States Navies fought the Second World War, highlighting their differences in national characteristics, culture, equipment, and operations at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of maritime combat. It is a work of encyclopaedic proportions comprising over 600 pages and, while there have been many books written on World War Two British and American naval operations and materiel, this book is arguably unique combining and comparing the two.
Brian Lavery was a senior curator at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, has authored over 30 books and been a consultant to the conservation of HMS Victory. Lavery uses all-ranks personal memoirs and extracts from contemporary operational publications to provide an absorbing coverage of how officers and sailors were trained and went about the business of global maritime war, and the differences between the two navies in their application.
Two Navies Divided therefore emphasises the personal aspects of the naval war. Apart from the individuals’ experiences, Lavery provides a comprehensive background to contemporary life and social attitudes in Britain and the US. National attitudinal differences are reflected, and assessments made, of the effectiveness of ships, aircraft, weapons systems and warfare techniques employed by the two navies.
The Chapters comprise topics such as: The Structure of Naval Power, Naval Society and Culture, Officers, Ratings, Enlisted Men and Marines. Materiel aspects include Ships, Weapons and Electronics before examining the naval warfare disciplines of the Battle Fleet, Naval Aviation, Submarines, Anti-Submarine warfare, Coastal Navies (coastal forces, mine warfare) and Amphibious Forces. Additional Chapters discuss the naval profiles of Enemies (Germany, Japan and Italy) and Allies (the Soviet Union, ‘Lost Allies’ (France, Poland, Norway) and the Commonwealth and Empire. That the overwhelming number of naval personnel were ‘Hostilities Only’ showed the ability for Britons and Americans to rapidly assimilate technical skills, a characteristic not existing to the same extent in the enemy navies. The chapters on the Coastal and Amphibious Forces particularly bear this out.
Notwithstanding the generally high level of detail evident in the book, Lavery tends to go ‘off-piste’ with errors and unreferenced statements which are difficult to assimilate:
On page 244, in discussing American manufacturing of the Swedish 40 mm Bofors gun, Lavery states: ‘…The Chrysler Corporation of Detroit, part of General Motors, the apostles of mass production, took the lead…’. The Chrysler Corporation was never part of General Motors, it being one of the ‘Big Three’ of the US automotive industry in ferocious competition with GM and Ford.
Page 338 – A drawing depicts a US Navy SDB Dauntless dive-bomber pilot using a plotting board to navigate. The text states: ‘Unlike his British equivalent, a US Navy pilot was expected to do his own navigation’. True enough, but it might have been useful to explain why – RN strike aircraft carried a trained Observer – details of which are fully described on page 316.
Page 357 – Submarine Officers and Crews: Lavery states the volunteer status of RN submariners was changed by a 1942 Admiralty Fleet Order whereby ratings could be drafted to submarines: ’Some tried to get out of it by deliberately making themselves liable to detention, but demand was not great and the system could not cope’. The meaning of this statement is unclear. Are we to believe that the RN could not deal with malingers and what was ‘the demand’ and the reason for not ‘coping’? He then says 12 percent of trainees failed the course, so that should have weeded out those unhappy in the submarine service.
Page 345 – Naval Aviation: In listing RN Fleet Air Arm shore bases, Lavery states: ‘The Eastern Fleet used Colombo racecourse in modern Sri Lanka and Australian bases’. Firstly, why not just say ‘Ceylon’ as in other parts of the book and secondly, I can find no references to Australian bases for Eastern Fleet aircraft. There were however six FAA bases on the Australian east coast supporting the British Pacific Fleet (David Hobbs, The British Pacific Fleet Appendix D – British Pacific Fleet Air Stations and Air Yards). Could Lavery have confused the Easten Fleet with the British Pacific Fleet?
Page 387 – Anti-submarine warfare: ‘The anti-submarine control officer, or ASCO, was a key man in an escort vessel, the authority on any underwater contact, and able to direct the hunt for a U-boat. But their training was short, and they had difficulty in keeping up with what was expected of them. Often the ASCO had to rely on the experienced leading submarine detector’. What a condescending and generalised comment! First, we are told the ASCO is the ‘key man’ and ‘able to direct the hunt’ and then insinuated that they weren’t up to the mark. Of course, the ASCO would rely on his ASDIC team and respect his leading operator’s advice, particularly if he was new and the operator was more experienced. But to generalise like this is vacuous (for further comments on A/S training see below).
However, for the Australian reader, Lavery’s treatment of the Royal Austrlaian Navy is disappointing, clumsily expressed and error prone. This is in stark contrast with the authoritative attention given to the other countries in the ‘Allies’ chapter:
A. Page 539 – ‘Australia was colonised from 1786’. The First Fleet, under Captain Arthur Phillip RN, arrived in what became known as Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788 and the colony of New South Wales was formally proclaimed on 07 February 1788.
B. ‘In 1900 the five colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia came together to form the Commonwealth of Australia…’ Lavery has committed the usual error of leaving out Tasmania (to the intense chagrin of Tasmanians to this day). And it was on 01 January 1901, not 1900, that SIX colonies federated (New Zealand was invited but they declined – too bad for them).
C. The comment regarding the ‘decline’ in British immigration in the 1930s is misleading. There was a worldwide Depression and very few British or anyone else could afford, or indeed be motivated, to go to the other side of the world where there was high unemployment as at home. The ’10-pound Pom’ scheme, brought floods of Britons to Australia in the 1950s and 60s.
D. ‘The First Naval Member…Sir Ragnar Colvin…was succeeded by Sir Guy Royal, another Briton, in 1940’. Yes, because there was no RAN officer of flag rank until John Collins was appointed First Naval Member and Chief of Naval Staff at the rank of rear admiral in February 1948. Collins was in the first RAN intake of cadet midshipmen in 1913, so it stands to reason the RAN CNS would be British until there was an Australian ready to assume the post.
E. Page 540 – ‘…the Labor (not Labour) Party favoured a policy of isolation, but with a strong air force…’ The Labor Party were not ‘isolationist’ as all parties were pro-British Empire. Labor favoured the air force because they thought it was cheaper to acquire than expensive warships.
F. Two Tribal-class destroyers were programmed to be built in Australia at that time but the unreferenced ‘some motor boats’ is obscure. Does he mean the Fairmile B class motor Launches which were in RAN service during World War Two?
G. ‘Shropshire’ was given to the RAN as a replacement (for the loss of HMAS Canberra at the Battle of Savo Island), and King George decided to keep her original name in accordance with Australian wishes’. The Wikipedia entry for the ship, quoting Cassell, The Capital Ships p.129, states although the King had approved the ship being renamed Canberra, US President Roosevelt, at the same time, wanted to commemorate Canberra’s loss in action in company with US ships by naming a new construction Baltimore-class heavy cruiser USS Canberra. The RAN decided to retain the old name and accept the US honour.
H. ‘In 1933 the flotilla leader Stuart and four old destroyers sailed from Britain to join the fleet’. As a purportedly authoritative book, these ‘old destroyers’ should have been identified as ‘V & W’-class destroyers in the text and they weren’t that old in 1933. The RN had lots of them and got extensive wartime service from these ships. The RAN V & Ws performed gallantly, particularly as the ‘Scrap Iron Flotilla’ in the Mediterranean. Lavery omits to mention the four Grimsby-class sloops which also served with distinction, with two lost in action.
I. Page 541 – In discussing the RAN College (erroneously called the Australian Naval College): ‘It moved to Jervis Bay in 1915, then to Flinders Bay in 1930 as an economy measure’. The College indeed vacated its purpose-built campus at Jervis Bay (HMAS Creswell), to move to the RAN training establishment HMAS Cerberus (originally known as Flinders Naval Depot), located at Westernport Bay, Victoria in the depths of the Depression. ‘Flinders Bay’ is erroneous.
J. ‘Other candidates for commissions were selected at the end of recruit training and went on a sixteen-week course based on the working of a frigate’. This unreferenced statement makes little sense; it might have if there was a frigate attached to Cerberus for training but there was not. Presumably this is supposed to mean trainees were given additional naval leadership training.
K. Page 542 – ‘…with an anti-submarine school being set up in Balmoral, Port Jackson, in 1939’. This is wrong. The A/S school was set up in 1939 at the shore establishment HMAS Rushcutter, at Rushcutters’ Bay on Sydney Harbour (also known as Port Jackson). The Balmoral Naval Depot was newly commissioned in 1942 as HMAS Penguin, at Middle Head on Sydney Harbour, and served as a personnel accommodation, administration and hospital facility, and a base for Fairmile B Motor Launches. The Rushcutter A/S school trained ASCOs and operators; according to the RAN website on the history of the RAN Reserve, by September 1941, 98 Rushcutter-trained officers and 192 ratings had been loaned to the Royal Navy for service in North Atlantic convoy escorts. This might have been a useful comment to have included in the narrative (as indeed the augmentation, in 1945, of British Pacific Fleet pilots by Australians released from the Royal Australian Air Force and enlisted into the RANVR).
L. Page 542: ‘..and a great ‘Titan’ crane…’. Titan was a floating crane of 150 tons capacity – whether this could be regarded as ‘great’ is moot. Also, Garden Island is not ‘outside’ (whatever this means) the Sydney Harbour Bridge (check Google Earth).
M. Page 543 – in enumerating the RAN fleet strength in 1945, Lavery confuses the figures. Giving the destroyer strength as eleven, he repeats this in the same sentence as ’two old and nine modern destroyers’. ‘Fifty-three minesweeping corvettes’ is repeated erroneously as ‘fifty-three minesweepers.
All these deficiencies might have been avoided had the author consulted the official RAN and other authoritative history websites.
It is with some relief we leave this fractured treatment of the RAN and go to Canada, where the tone returns to a considered and apparently balanced and accurate narrative.
Admittedly, some non-Australian readers might not be unduly exercised over the comments offered by your humble reviewer; however, such is the divergence from the otherwise high standard in Two Navies Divided, I would be remiss not to flag these. If Two Navies Divided were to be re-published in the future, these discrepancies should be attended to.
In summary, Two Navies Divided is a most comprehensive compendium of the Royal and United States Navies in World War Two. In covering the whole range of naval warfare and the navies’ organisations and operations, Lavery provides a valuable addition to the naval history lexicon. Despite the above reservations, it is an absorbing read.
