During the Moroccan crisis Admiral Fisher ordered exercises in the Baltic as a way of emphasising the deterrent power of the Royal Navy. At the same time he formed a war planning cell led by Captain (later Admiral) C A Ballard. The usual close blockade was no longer an option in the face of increasingly effective sea-going torpedo craft (destroyers). Without it the British could not prevent enemy warships from emerging to destroy their vital trade. Ballard saw the British Isles as a stopper in the throat of the North Sea. British cruiser forces north of Scotland and in the Channel could block German access to world trade. Surely the Germans were so dependent on foreign trade that they would feel compelled to come out to fight – and be destroyed (Tirpitz imagined that he could force the British to come to him and fight a losing battle near his base). The British battle fleet had to be based be far enough from Germany that it could not be destroyed at the outset by a surprise destroyer attack. In 1904 the Japanese had tried exactly such an attack against the Russian Pacific Fleet at its base at Port Arthur. The attack had not been particularly successful, but it might well point to the future – and Tirpitz was led a former torpedo craft commander. Hence the creation of a secret northern base: Scapa Flow.
HMS Warspite was surely the most famous of all British Second World War battleships. After reconstruction she joined the Mediterranean Fleet, but in October 1939 she was transferred to the Home Fleet. As part of that fleet, she fought successfully at Narvik. Once Italy entered the war in May 1940, she was transferred back to the Mediterranean to become fleet flagship. Off Calabria on 9 July she hit the Italian flagship Giulio Cesare at a record range of 26,400 yds, putting the Italian ship out of action for four months. On 28 March 1941 she led the British fleet at Matapan in a successful night battle, helping to sink two Italian heavy cruisers. In this action she demonstrated just how well the Royal Navy had learned to fight at night: five or perhaps six of the shells of her initial broadside were direct hits. Damaged by a bomb while covering the evacuation of Crete, she was repaired by the US Puget Sound Navy Yard. While en route there, she visited Pearl Harbor, where her crew was surprised by how little anti-aircraft armament the US battleships there had. Upon completion of the refit on 28 December 1941, she became flagship of the British Eastern Fleet, returning home via Durban and Freetown between March and May 1943. She then joined the Home Fleet (Force H) to cover the Salerno landings – where she was nearly sunk by a German guided bomb. Partially repaired, she supported the Normandy landings the following year, being mined en route back to the beaches. She returned to bombardment duty after emergency repairs. On 10 September she shelled enemy gun positions at a range of 32,000 yds using air spotting. Although ordered into Category C reserve, she was selected in October to support the seizure of Walcheren, supporting the landing there on 1 November 1944. Warspite is shown as part of the Eastern Fleet, off Madagascar, June 1942. The other two modernised Queen Elizabeths were earmarked for this fleet at the time, but they did not join until January 1944.
The British had to know when the Germans emerged and where they were going. Their final pre-war manoeuvres showed how difficult that could be, given North Sea mists. No one seems to have realised that the Germans also would have no idea of where the British were. Thus a policy of Grand Fleet ‘sweeps’ in the North Sea, designed to lure the Germans out, turns out to have been pointless (except to keep the Grand Fleet active) because the Germans had no idea at all that they were being conducted. The only reason the British were aware of German sorties (hence could meet them) was their use of signals intelligence. When the Germans finally solved the problem of poor radio security, it turned out that the alternative, a submarine patrol off German ports, was ineffective. When the British focus turned to the Far East after the First World War, they paid great attention both to submarine patrols off Japanese ports and to various forms of air reconnaissance. The British could not afford to shift their attention completely from the Mediterranean to the North Sea, since the Mediterranean was the sea route to India and the East. Since the Germans were allied to Austria-Hungary and to Italy, a war with Germany would involve the Mediterranean. Once the Austrians and the Italians began to build dreadnoughts of their own, in 1909, it was no longer clear that the British could maintain sufficient strength in both the North Sea and the Mediterranean. In 1912 the Royal Navy concluded an informal understanding with the French: in the event of war, the British would secure the French Channel coast and the French would be responsible for the Mediterranean. In August 1914 the main remaining units of the British Mediterranean Fleet were two battlecruisers, stationed there because the French had no comparable units. In effect they balanced the German Mediterranean Division of one battlecruiser (Goeben) and a light cruiser.
HMS Valiant is shown at the surrender of the Italian Fleet, September 1943. She had been assigned to the Home Fleet upon completion of her reconstruction and then transferred to Force H (a separate fleet despite its non-fleet designation) upon its formation on 28 June 1940. As such she took part in the attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July 1940. She joined the Mediterranean Fleet in August 1940, fighting at Matapan and then at Crete. At Alexandria she (with HMS Queen Elizabeth) was severely damaged by Italian manned torpedoes. She was temporarily repaired at Alexandria (completed May 1942), then refitted at Durban (15 April 1942 to 7 July 1942). This amounted to modernisation: she received a full radar outfit (Type 273 in the lantern on the fore starfish, gunnery radars [Types 282, 284 and 285] and a new air-search set [Type 281 instead of the earlier Type 279]). She was also given ten Oerlikons as an interim close-range upgrade. During a further refit at Devonport (4 March to 28 April 1943) the quadruple 0.5in machine guns on the roofs of ‘B’ and ‘X’ turrets were replaced by pairs of twin power Oerlikons and two more twin power Oerlikons were fitted; she also received fifteen single Oerlikons, including two on the roofs of each of ‘A’ and ‘Y’ turrets, which can be seen in this photograph. Her catapult was removed. Two more octuple pom-poms may have been mounted at this time, abreast the funnel (they were certainly present later on). On completion of this refit, she was assigned to the bombardment force planned to support the Salerno landing. She returned home in October 1943 for a refit at Devonport (completed in December) prior to joining the Eastern Fleet originally having been proposed for that fleet in August 1941. After having supported several operations, she was badly damaged when the floating dock (AFD 28) she occupied in Trincomalee collapsed on 8 August 1944. She was sufficiently repaired to return home (arrived Devonport 1 February 1945). At that time plans for the post-war fleet included her. She was refitted between February 1945 and April 1946, becoming stokers’ training ship as part of HMS Imperieuse. Note that the two high-angle directors atop the bridge were at different heights, so the rangefinders, which overlapped, could clear each other.
When Fisher took office in 1904 his two main fleets were the Channel Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet. That October fleet structure was reviewed. Despite the turn towards France, Fisher had to be able to face the possibility of hostilities with the French (or the Russians, via the Dardanelles). To gain agility, he created a third (swing) Atlantic Fleet based at Gibraltar, which could reinforce either of the two main fleets. Fisher’s new reserve fleet policy made it possible to create a ready reserve Home Fleet as a deterrent against the Germans. Its readiness would be higher than that of the other reserve formations and its cruisers would be more or less fully active.
As the German threat developed, the Home Fleet became the focus of the Royal Navy. In 1909 the Channel Fleet was merged into it, leaving the Atlantic Fleet as a link with the Mediterranean. In the First World War the Home Fleet became the Grand Fleet plus other formations (Admiral Jellicoe was styled C-in-C Home Fleets). After the war the strategic situation changed radically. Now the next two sea powers were the United States and Japan, both wartime