Malta and British Strategic Policy, 1925-43

Douglas Austin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781135769383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

A major reassessment of a key aspect of British strategy and defence policy in the first half of the twentieth century.

The main contribution of this new study is an investigation of the role of Malta in British military strategy, as planned and as it actually developed, in the period between the mid 1920s and the end of the war in North Africa in May 1943. It demonstrates that the now widely accepted belief that Malta was 'written off as indefensible' before the war was mistaken, and focuses on Malta's actual wartime role in the Mediterranean war, assessing the numerous advantages, many often ignored, that the British derived from retention of the island. The conclusions made challenge recent assertions that Malta's contribution was of limited value and will be of great interest to both students and professionals in the field.

1
The Base at Malta in the 1920s

MALTA's ROLE IN IMPERIAL STRATEGY

It is not easy now to appreciate the value attached to Malta by the British government in the period between the two world wars. Malta, after gaining its independence in 1964, became a republic in 1971, and although British and NATO forces continued to use the island's military facilities for several years, the last British naval, army and air force units left the island in April 1979. The first task, therefore, is to understand why Malta was held to be of such importance in the pre-war years, and to seek the reasons for this we need to return to the 1920s.

After the end of the First World War, one of the many decisions facing the Admiralty was the distribution of the fleet, and, in particular, the strength and composition of the force to be stationed in the Mediterranean. There was, however, no question about the most suitable base for such a force. Since Malta had become a British colony in 1814, and especially after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, the island had become the Royal Navy's main base in the Mediterranean. Valletta's fine harbours had docks capable of handling the navy's largest ships, and its extensive repair and storage facilities had been continually modernised and expanded to meet the navy's changing requirements. Moreover, the position of Malta in the centre of the Mediterranean made it a natural base from which to watch over British interests in the area. Prior to the First World War, therefore, the Malta-based Mediterranean Fleet had at times included as many as 14 battleships, although all of these were steadily withdrawn before 1914 to meet the threat posed by Germany¹. The post-war decision about the Mediterranean Fleet became the more urgent because attempts to support anti-bolshevik armies from the Black Sea in 1918–20, and the subsequent British involvement in the Greek conflict with Turkey which led to the Chanak crisis of 1922, had already compelled the Admiralty to transfer additional ships to the eastern Mediterranean.²

Practical considerations of this kind, as well as broader issues of naval policy, confronted the Board of Admiralty in the early 1920s when it was considering where to place its fleets. In resolving this matter the Board had to take account of two new post-war developments. First, by virtue of financial pressures that saw the naval estimates fall from £158 million in 1919–20 to £58 million in 1923– 24,³ and the effects of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922, the total number of the navy's ships, and particularly its battleships, was very significantly reduced. Second, the Admiralty had, since 1919, felt it necessary to consider the possibility of war with Japan.⁴ The Anglo-Japanese Treaty, which had made Japan an ally in the First World War, was not renewed in 1922, and although she had accepted a 60 per cent limitation on her capital ships compared with the United States and Great Britain,⁵ the Admiralty felt it could not ignore the potential threat posed by Japan's fleet of ten capital ships. It was this concern which led to the decision by the Cabinet, in June 1921, to authorise the construction of a new naval base at Singapore, albeit at a pace which would preclude its completion for many years.⁶

In its post-war deliberations about fleet distribution, the Admiralty adhered to what it considered to be the correct principles of naval strategy. These were set out clearly in a memorandum prepared by the Oversea Defence Committee (ODC), paragraph 10 of which pointed out, ‘Our naval strategy…is based on the principle that a fleet of adequate strength, suitably disposed geographically and concentrated against the enemy's fleet, provides the “cover” under which security is given to widely dispersed territories and trade routes.’⁷ The vital importance of fleet mobility was also emphasised, and, in order to maintain this mobility, ‘defended bases are necessary at strategic points throughout the Empire’. With these precepts firmly in mind, the Board of Admiralty in 1923 decided, as part of its post-Washington Treaty strategy, to strengthen the Mediterranean Fleet at Malta.⁸ It gave two reasons for so doing. First, the Mediterranean was a vital area in terms of British and imperial interests. Through it ran the principal trade route to India and the eastern empire, and although plans were made to divert shipping around the Cape in an emergency, this would add considerably to the costs of imperial trade.⁹ Furthermore, the incipient bellicosity of fascist Italy, demonstrated in the Corfu incident in 1923, although as yet an irritant rather than an immediate danger, could not be wholly ignored. In addition, Britain needed to ensure the safety of the Persian Gulf and Iraqi oil fields, now that its economy and armed services were becoming increasingly dependent on oil. Nevertheless, these interests might have been safeguarded by basing at Malta a squadron of battleships and support ships, to be reinforced as necessary from the Atlantic Fleet, as was the policy in the immediate post-war years.

It was, however, the second reason that had the greater influence on the decision to position a major fleet at Malta, and this was the intention that this fleet would proceed to the defence, or relief, of Singapore should this become necessary.¹⁰ A fleet based in Malta could reach Singapore ten days earlier than one sailing from home waters, and this time saving was regarded as critical.¹¹ At first sight this may seem a strange decision, since Malta is over 6,000 miles from Singapore, and it was estimated that it would take at least six weeks even for a Malta-based relieving force to reach Singapore. There was, however, little choice in this matter simply because the navy's ports east of Suez could not accommodate its modern battleships. Prior to the First World War docking facilities at Singapore, Hong Kong and Colombo were adequate for the battleships of that era, but the increasing size of more recently built capital ships had not been matched by a comparable increase in dock size at those ports. Although the Admiralty maintained a force of cruisers and destroyers at Hong Kong, Britain had agreed, by the terms of the Washington Treaty, not to expand facilities at this port, while other ports on the route to Singapore, such as Bombay, Trincomali and Rangoon, could only be developed as supply and refuelling stations. It was this very problem which had prompted the decision to build a completely new base at Singapore, but, until it was completed, Malta was the closest fully equipped fleet base. Even at Malta there were difficulties. In the first place, Valletta's harbours were not large enough to accommodate all the ships allocated to the expanded Mediterranean Fleet, and Gibraltar had to be used as an ‘overflow’ base.¹² Second, Malta's graving docks would not be wide enough to take the fleet's largest capital ships once anti-torpedo bulges had been added to their sides. This problem was met in part by towing a floating dock out from England, but it was also agreed that half of the fleet would return to home ports each year to refit.¹³

Despite these unavoidable difficulties, Malta was chosen as the base for what was soon to be designated the ‘Main Fleet’, and this decision was reinforced in 1924–25 when the Admiralty's Far East plans were affected by major changes in government policy. The initial shock was the decision of the first Labour government in 1924 to cease work at Singapore.¹⁴ Although this decision was reversed later in that year when Baldwin was re-elected, the new Chancellor, Churchill, then launched a vigorous attack on the financial implications of the Admiralty's strategic plans. To help them in these discussions the Cabinet invited the CID to assess the current and foreseeable risk posed by Japan, and the CID, in April 1925, endorsed the judgement of the Foreign Secretary, Austen Chamberlain, that ‘aggressive action …on the part of Japan within the next ten years is not a contingency seriously to be apprehended’.¹⁵ The upshot was a Cabinet decision which effectively deferred completion of the Singapore base until 1935.¹⁶

In the course of these discussions the Cabinet had enquired what the Admiralty's interim war plan was ‘in the event of war occurring before the base at Singapore was capable of sustaining a British fleet superior to the Japanese navy’. Admiral Beatty, the First Sea Lord, responded to this at a meeting of the CID in April 1925,¹⁷ and although no notes were taken of his statement, the Admiralty's plans of August 1924¹⁸ show that virtually all of the Mediterranean Fleet, except possibly the older, coal-burning, Iron Dukebattleships, were to proceed to Singapore. Although the Admiralty reserved its decision about the command of the Main Fleet when it reached Singapore, it ordered that ‘the C-in-C Mediterranean will, during peace time, be responsible that the arrangements for the rapid passage of the Fleet to the East are kept fully prepared’.¹⁹ In compliance with these instructions, Admiral Sir Roger Keyes, the Commander-in-Chief (C-in-C) of the Mediterranean Fleet at that time, carried out a number of exercises with this object in mind.²⁰

The importance of Malta in the mid-1920s should, therefore, be seen in a global context rather than simply in Mediterranean terms. Although the defence of area interests was an immediate and important task, the Malta-based Main Fleet also bore the ultimate responsibility for protecting India and the whole eastern empire. The continued postponement of work at Singapore inevitably placed great weight on the strength and mobility of the Mediterranean Fleet and made it all the more important that Malta, with its vital docking and repair facilities, should be secure from attack. As the Director of the Admiralty's Operations Division pointed out in 1923: ‘One bomb on the floating dock would be fatal.’²¹

THE DEFENCE OF OVERSEAS PORTS

Malta, however important, was only one of Britain's many naval ports around the world, and the system that operated in the 1920s to ensure that these bases were effectively defended now needs to be examined. The CID, which advised pre-war governments on all defence matters, in turn appointed various subcommittees to investigate particular problems. However, even before the CID was constituted in 1904, the ODC was charged with the responsibility for the defence of overseas ports, while the Home Defence Committee kept under review the defences of ports in the British Isles. Although the ODC retained a prime responsibility for the overseas ports, particular matters were increasingly considered by a joint committee of the Home and Oversea bodies, referred to in brief as the Joint Defence Committee (JDC). This committee first met in March 1920, when it decided to set up a Technical Sub-Committee to examine, in the light of war experience, the defensive needs of each port.²² The planning staffs of the three services supplied the members of this sub-committee, and it is usually referred to as the Defence of Ports Committee (DOP). It is with the proceedings, papers and reports of the JDC and the DOP that we will be most concerned in the following pages, although some questions continued to be dealt with by the ODC.²³

When the Chiefs of Staff were preparing their first Annual Review of Imperial Defence Policy in 1926, Sir Maurice Hankey, Secretary of the CID, produced his own memorandum about the many matters that had been considered since 1920, and Part II of this described the work carried out in the preceding five years by the committees considering the defence of ports.²⁴ As he explained it, the initial work of the JDC was ‘overhauling, in the light of war experience, the general principles on which our coast defences are based’. This led to the presentation to the CID in July 1923 of a memorandum entitled ‘Coast Defence. Forms of Attack and Forms of Defence’, and this was subsequently revised in November 1927.²⁵ Assessments of the ‘Scale of Attack’ that might be expected at each port were the responsibility of the relevant service, and these were continually revised to reflect changing circumstances. The result of all the discussions about a particular port was the preparation of a ‘Defence Scheme’, which was a very detailed manual specifying how attacks were to be met, and in which the roles of all three services were clearly set out. The 1935 Malta Defence Scheme, for example, runs to over 300 typed foolscap pages.²⁶

The obvious need to conserve resources and allocate them efficiently led to the production of two further documents. The first was an ‘Order of Priority for Installation of Armament’, in which Malta was placed sixth after Singapore, Hong Kong and the ports east of Suez, while the second was a ‘Classification of Ports’, which the JDC recommended to the CID in June 1928.²⁷ This second paper divided all the many defended ports into three categories, within which ‘Category A’ ports were those ‘at which adequate defences should be installed in peace time to be fully manned and efficient before the outbreak of hostilities’. Malta was placed in this category. It was within the terms set out in this elaborate but flexible conceptual framework that the various committees charged with the updating of port defences began their work in the 1920s. In early 1926 the attention of the DOP was directed to the Mediterranean ports, that is Malta and Gibraltar.²⁸

Although the navy was the principal beneficiary of ports defence, its doctrines of mobility and concentration of force precluded its taking a significant part in the defence of any port. The basis of the Admiralty's strategy was that, if any port were subjected to attack, an appropriate force would be concentrated and sent to its relief. Consequently, the ‘period before relief’ became an important element in the planning of a Defence Scheme. The result of this thinking was that the navy's only committed contribution to port defence was the provision of light coastal forces, and such passive measures as harbour booms, anti-torpedo baffles and anti-submarine nets. It was the army that was primarily responsible for the defence of overseas ports. First, it provided a garrison of a size and composition determined by the port's strategic importance and its vulnerability to potential attack. This might include one or more battalions of the regular army, supported in some cases, as at Malta, by local militia under British officers. Its second obligation was to provide guns and their crews. Before the First World War this meant heavy, fixed, coastal artillery capable of engaging enemy warships at long range, together with some mobile field artillery to support the anti-invasion role of the garrison. To this was added, after the war, a growing requirement for antiaircraft guns.

However, it was the contribution of the RAF to the defence of Malta that was to present the greatest difficulty, and indeed dispute, throughout the inter-war period. This will be traced in the following chapters, but it will be useful at the outset to introduce two major strands in the doctrine established for the RAF by its first Chief of the Air Staff (CAS), Sir Hugh Trenchard. First, Trenchard, in his fight to maintain the independence of the RAF, insisted that the proper function of an air force was to attack the enemy's sources of production and supply. He did not believe that fighter defence against bomber attack was possible and defensive measures were taken, in the main, only to meet public and political demands.²⁹ One consequence of this thinking was that the RAF's limited resources were devoted to bomber development and production at the expense of fighters. When a 52-squadron Home Defence Air Force was agreed in 1923, Trenchard proposed that the bomber squadrons should outnumber fighters in the ratio of two to one.

A second element in Trenchard's thinking was his insistence that the RAF could and should take over certain imperial defence responsibilities from the other services. Among these was his claim that the RAF should play a larger role in the defence of ports. His basic thesis was that, in ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• List of Maps
• List of Tables
• Series Editor's Preface
• Foreword by David French
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 The Base at Malta in the 1920s
• 2 The Failure to Strengthen Malta's Defences, 1930-35
• 3 Malta in the Abyssinian Crisis, 1935-36
• 4 Prelude to War, 1936-39
• 5 Final Preparations for War
• 6 The Threat of Invasion
• 7 The Initial Onslaught
• 8 The German Intervention in the Mediterranean in 1941
• 9 Malta's Contribution to 'Crusader'
• 10 The 1942 Siege of Malta
• 11 Malta's Contribution to the Recovery of North Africa
• 12 Conclusion
• Appendix: Axis Supply and Shipping Losses
• Notes
• References
• Index