The Board was reorganised in October 1912. The office of Controller as such was eliminated (but Third Sea Lord retained his responsibility for ship and other major materiel characteristics). A new Second Civil Lord was appointed to supervise contracting and ship construction and a new Directorate of Naval Equipment (DNE), was created. DNE became responsible for ships’ bridge configurations and also for requirements for ship modernisation in the mid-1930s. During the inter-war period, as electrical machinery became more important, a separate Department of Electrical Engineering (DEE) was created. I have referred interchangeably to departments and to their chiefs. Shipyard work was the responsibility of Supervisor of Contract Work (SCW) and Director of Dockyards (D of D). Ship modifications were generally a Royal Dockyard responsibility, hence involved D of D.
Before 1912 there was no naval staff as such, but the Naval Intelligence Department (NID) performed many staff functions. A Royal Naval War College formed in 1902 conducted special studies to help set ship characteristics. Little of its record seems to have survived, but its 1902–3 studies were printed as NID documents. They helped determine the character of battleships designed at that time and as such they are relevant to the Dreadnought story. The nascent war college appears to have lost much of its impact with the death of its founder Captain May in 1904.
Winston Churchill was appointed First Lord specifically (in theory) to create a naval staff. He did so largely by rearranging NID, which already carried out many staff roles. The new War Staff does seem to have been the first to explicitly connect ship characteristics with war plans. In 1913 Churchill stated to the Cabinet that the Board had reconsidered ship types in 1911–12 (in connection with the decision to build the Queen Elizabeth class). It seems likeliest that he was referring to War Staff recommendations – few of which unfortunately have survived. It is not clear to what extent War Staff or other tactical changes were directly related to the Queen Elizabeths and to other changes in the capital ship programme.
During the war the War Staff was greatly expanded to handle the demands of worldwide operations. The Naval Staff and the Board were heavily reorganised in 1917. Lloyd George made the civilian Sir Eric Geddes Controller of Ship Construction. Geddes was already famous for his success in disentangling the railway system in France. He was brought to the Admiralty to accelerate naval and merchant shipbuilding, both badly strained. To some extent Geddes’ appointment was possible because the heavily-reorganised staff included naval officers specifically responsible for setting requirements for ships and weapons. After the war the office of Controller reverted to a naval officer (Third Sea Lord). The pre-1917 War Staff was primarily an operational organisation: the Directorate of Operations (DOD) survived the reorganisation.
Under the reorganisation, First Sea Lord was double-hatted as Chief of the Naval Staff. He was assisted by a Deputy Chief of Naval Staff (DCNS, not on the Board, later redesignated Vice Chief). DCNS supervised the Naval Staff and was directly responsible for war planning (Directorate of Plans [D of P]) and for Naval Intelligence Division (NID). In this book I often refer to the directors of staff divisions, e.g., DTSD for Director of Training and Staff Duties Division. In what follows, I indicate the directors’ designations after the names of the Divisions.7 The Plans directorate had little impact during the First World War, but became important after the war, for example in connection with arms control negotiations and in formulating the capital ship programme. On a more detailed level, D of P commented to a 1936 proposal to limit the endurance of the new King George V class battleships.
Assistant Chief of Naval Staff (ACNS) sat on the Board until 1931. He assisted Controller, supervising the Tactical Division and the Staff Duties Division (later the Division of Training and Staff Duties [DTSD]), which prepared and circulated draft Staff Requirements. Typically Controller asked for a draft Staff Requirement for circulation for comment among the Staff Divisions. Requirements were also sent to DNC so that a draft sketch design could be produced as a test of feasibility. In theory, writing a Staff Requirement was the first step in a design, although in practice sketch designs might be developed informally in advance of actual staff requirements.
Staff weapon divisions were intended to formulate requirements for weapons and for fire control (gunnery). The Division of Torpedoes and Naval Artillery (DT&NA), which was conceived to determine weapons requirements, lapsed after the First World War. A Gunnery Division (DGD), concerned mainly with fire control (it seems to have been created specifically for Captain Frederic C Dreyer, Admiral Jellicoe’s fleet gunnery officer), survived and in 1941 became the Directorate of Gunnery and Anti-Aircraft Warfare. A separate Division of Torpedoes and Mining (DTM) was created. Despite its name, it was responsible for other precision ordnance equipment. Thus DTM supervised the design of the inter-war Admiralty fire-control computers. Although the Royal Navy lost control of the Fleet Air Arm between 1918 and 1939, its Naval Air Division formulated policy and aircraft requirements (DNAD); the Admiralty paid for the aircraft and provided many of the aircrew.
The reorganisation created the Directorate of Navigation.8 D of N was responsible for the Navigating School and for staff requirements for navigational instruments and for bridge arrangement, among other roles. For this book his greatest significance was that in 1931 he was made responsible for plotting, the key to fleet situational awareness (hence, among other things, to night combat) and later for the Action Information Organisation (the British equivalent to the US CIC).
During the 1920s a separate Admiralty Signal Division (ASD) was concerned with wireless (much later, radar). Prior to 1917, wireless development was carried out mainly by HMS Vernon, the torpedo and mining school, which had first become involved in electrical work via its work on controlled mines. Vernon was also responsible for searchlights and for fire-control wiring connecting transmitting station (plot and later computer room) with guns and directors.
The Royal Navy relied mainly on a large private shipbuilding industry. Here HMS Resolution completes at Palmers, 1916. The down-side of relying on private industry was that the drought following the Washington Conference destroyed much of the British naval industrial base – as Admiral Beatty feared while leading the British delegation.
The private industrial base was supported partly by foreign orders, which became a potential reserve when Britain went to war in 1914. The Royal Navy put three ships, including the Chilean Almirante Latorre, into service with the Grand Fleet (she became HMS Canada). Almirante Latorre is shown as modernised at Devonport in 1929–31 with machinery supplied by Vickers-Armstrong. Alone of the South American dreadnoughts she was blistered. She was converted to oil fuel, reboilered and re-engined. Re-engining turned out to be significant, because its success convinced E-in-C that it was feasible to re-engine British battleships, beginning with Warspite. Re-boilering considerably reduced the number of boilers. On initial post-modernisation trials Almirante Latorre made 56,000 SHP, corresponding to over 24 knots. Re-engining and re-boilering turned out to be crucial to the success of the Warspite reconstruction project, because it released so much space and weight. In addition, the ship’s Dreyer Table Mk IV was modernised, and the elevation of her 14in guns increased to 25° (anything more would have required removing the turrets for modification). The Chilean navy asked for something more modern, but the Royal Navy allowed nothing beyond the Dreyer upgrade (it offered an AFCT as part of the abortive cruiser deal of the late 1930s). Four 4in high-angle guns were mounted atop her after superstructure with a director between them; the control system (presumably a Vickers commercial type) was designated HAC I in Chile. It proved effective during a 1931 mutiny precipitated by pay cuts. Note that, as modernised, Almirante Latorre had a catapult on her quarterdeck, the position the Royal Navy then favoured (it was later removed). During the Second World War, the US Navy did not provide Lend-Lease