HL Deb 30 March 1922 vol 49 cc1036-48

THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW rose to ask the First Lord of the Admiralty whether his attention had been drawn to the statements made in another place on March 21 in the course of which it was alleged that "It is already proved that one bomb can sink the most powerful battleship in a few minutes"; and whether the Admiralty holds the view:—(1) That the post-Jutland capital ship will be defenceless against the under-water explosion of bombs dropped by aircraft; (2) that the recent developments in aircraft and in the methods of attack from the air have substantially reduced the fighting value of the capital ship;—and to move for Papers.

The noble Marquess said: My Lords, I put this Question on the Paper because the issues that it touches have been much before the public of late, both in discussion in another place and in the public Press, and without, so far as I am aware, and so far as I am able to judge, the Admiralty making any very clear or adequate statement as to their views on the matters raised. This much is clear, that there has been a persistent and deliberate campaign of advertisement—for that is what it has been—directed to impressing Parliament and the country with the important part that air power is to play in the next war.

It is within the memory of all your Lordships that the Report of the Geddes Committee, as it is called, did touch upon the question of the existence of the Air Service as a Service separate from the two older Services, and I think it is natural that those who have knowledge of, and interest in, the Air Force, should seize this opportunity to press their case upon Parliament and upon the public. I think that a recital of some of the statements made by at least one very important personage in another place will convince the House that that enthusiast has been at pains to improve the case in favour of aircraft, by making the claim that the modern capital ship is more or less defenceless against attack from the air.

The Secretary of State for Air used these words in another place on March 21:— It is already proved that one bomb can sink the most powerful battleship in a few minutes. A battleship may survive a direct surface hit, but you cannot protect it from the explosion of a bomb underneath its water-line. That might have been an expression which slipped from the lips of the right hon. gentleman in the warmth of his advocacy, and the full force of which he hardly appreciated. But he went on, a moment later, to draw his conclusions from this premise, and he used these words:— In ten years' time I believe that a combat between the forces of the air and the forces of the sea will have become a grotesque and pathetically one-sided affair. If that conclusion, so clearly stated by the Secretary of State for Air, is accepted by His Majesty's Government—it may be right or it may be wrong: I do not know—it must, of course, radically affect the whole of the naval policy of this country now and for the future. But, in any case, I submit that such a statement, being, as in truth it is, a. statement concerned entirely with a naval question, ought to have been made by the First Lord of the Admiralty as being the political head of the senior Service, and the political head of those whose duty it would have been to take adequate steps to meet these new conditions. I submit further that the public is entitled to a clear and definite statement upon this question from those on whose shoulders the heavy burden of responsibility in this matter does, in fact, lie.

Needless to say, the lead of the Secretary of State for Air was loyally followed by some of his adherents in the House of Commons, and Lieut.-Colonel Moore-Brabazon delivered himself thus:— I know it does us immense harm to exaggerate the powers of the Air Force, but I do ask those honourable members who are interested in the subject to read up what happened in America with regard to depth charges. It is not a question of hitting a ship, but only a question of dropping a depth-charge near, or even within 200 yards, of a big vessel—not a very difficult thing to do even from a height of 10,000 feet. He went on to say:— We heard the other day on the Navy Estimates that we had deteriorated, and become less than a one-Power nation on the sea. I heard no protest from anybody. Surely at last people are realising that such a change has happened in the world that the Navy to-day is obsolescent. Your Lordships will notice that the picture has grown more lurid as the responsibility of the speaker has grown less. A bomb is now to be fatal when dropped within 200 yards, and the senior Service is obsolescent!

Shortly after that, along comes a gallant Admiral, Admiral Sueter, and he, with great economy of words, and with as much clearness, exposed what I venture to think is the real objective of this assault. He said— The experiments in America and France show that the battleship now is quite obsolete, and I should like to see some of the money voted for the Navy turned towards the Air Force. This assault in Parliament, as I call it, has been supported in the Press. There has been a regular and steady bombardment of the Press, and I had provided myself with a few extracts, but at this late hour of the evening I do not propose to read them to your Lordships. All I would say, in measuring the value of such statements, is that it is perhaps reasonable and safe to recollect that orthodoxy never has very much attraction for those whose main purpose is self-advertisement.

Your Lordships will remember that the Government, as the result of the first phase of this agitation in Parliament and in the Press, last year set up a Committee which inquired into this matter, and the result of the deliberations of that Committee was that the capital ship was acclaimed as the substantial basis of sea power. Since then various experiments have been carried out in America and other countries to determine, I suppose, the facts of the case. Most of the data obtained by those experiments are secret, but the outline of the result obtained in the case of one series of experiments on an obsolete or an old German battleship in American waters was made very much of, and was extremely well advertised in the Press. I hope I shall be able to persuade the First Lord of the Admiralty, on this substantial point which is said to have been finally cleared up by these experiments on a battleship in American waters, to give us this evening some definite information as to the view taken by the Admiralty experts of the value of these experiments.

Apart from the question of the protection afforded capital ships against enemy aircraft by the toughness of their own structure, there is of course the point as to how far it is possible for friendly air machines to protect capital ships against attack by hostile aircraft. I observed with some surprise that the Secretary of State for Air, whose duty and whose pride I should have thought it would have been to have assured the country of the gallant things which our own aircraft would do in the matter of protecting our capital ships in the next war, was completely silent on this point. Are our airmen to stand—or, I suppose I ought to say, fly—idly by while enemy machines hover at a low elevation over our battleships, and drop bombs on them or near them? That is extremely unlikely so far as I have had the opportunity of observing the activities of our airmen in the war.

With the much debated question of the future organisation of the air arm I do not intend to deal, but I think that it would be a thousand pities, and show a most unworthy suspicion of the capacity and sense of responsibility of those on whose shoulders lies the duty of directing the constructional and general naval policy of this country, if it were to be supposed that their minds were likely to be prejudiced in the least against this great and potent innovation—the fighting air-machine—by the fact that it is a new Service, and uncontrolled at this moment by their own Department. I do not believe such prejudice exists, or would weigh with the Admiralty experts for one moment.

I found myself in this view upon the fact that before the war, and indeed almost up to the end of the war, the development in aircraft, and particularly the extremely fruitful development in the co-operation between aircraft and surface ships, both in reconnaissance and in the observation of gunfire, was encouraged and fostered on every side by the Higher Command at sea, from the Admiral Commanding in Chief downwards, and I think that the Secretary of State for the Colonies was perhaps a little too anxious to make his points as regards the future of the Air Service, and a little too careless of the past, when he said, during the course of the same debate on March 21, talking about the difficulties of persuading Generals and Admirals to take the modern view:— To give this new arm, this new auxiliary, entirely into the hands of Generals and Admirals would, I am certain, be to crush it in the period after the war, just as those Generals and Admirals did their hest to crush it in the period before the war. I can only say that my home is very near a sheet of water which sheltered for a long time during the war a very important part of our sea forces and during the many conversations that I had with naval officers on this general question of aircraft and their usefulness to the sea forces, I never heard one word which did not express the greatest admiration for the Air Service, and the most enthusiastic belief and confidence in the value of the fighting air machine as an essential element of the modern Fleet-in-being.

Whatever may be the views of the technical advisers of the Admiralty on these matters, I hope the noble Lord, in his reply, will tell us whether in his opinion, due weight has been given, in the case made out against the capital ship, to the fact that we are a world-power, and that the next naval war, for all we can tell, may be fought not within the narrow limits of the home seas but upon the great oceans that divide continent from continent. It will be difficult, almost impossible, to estimate within thousands of miles the spot where the fleet action will take place. Difficulties of all sorts will mitigate against any aeroplane based on the land taking an effective part in any general action and even as regards those air machines which are to be based on aircraft-carrying vessels there will be difficulties of long distance flying and bad air weather, about as severe as can be conceived. I hope I have persuaded the First Lord of the Admiralty to make a specific reply to the points I have raised, and, in particular, to those I have set down in my Question. I beg to move.

THE FIRST LORD OF THE ADMIRALTY (LORD LEE OF FAREHAM)

My Lords, were I to follow the Ministerial custom which prevails in another place I might, perhaps, answer the Question on the Paper very briefly and laconically, but at the same time with complete accuracy, by saying that my attention has been drawn to the statement referred to and that the answer to the first and to the second Question is in the negative. But I feel that it would not be courteous to the noble Marquess to make quite such an uncommunicative reply as that in answer to the very serious Questions he has raised in your Lordships' House. I thought he rather chided the Admiralty for having, so far, made no reply to the series of statements which have been made broadcast both in Parliament and in the Press, and I feel it would not be fair to the. Admiralty or to the public that I should leave uncorrected some of the extreme statements that have recently been made. At the same time, I must apologise to your Lordships at this late hour for embarking upon what I fear must be a statement of some length, but the matter is so serious from a national point of view that. I think the noble Marquess's Questions ought to be answered here and now.

I am sure he will recognise that I am placed in a position of some difficulty because, whilst I naturally dislike having to enter into anything like a public controversy with those who have advanced these very extreme claims, doubtless wider the stress of enthusiasm, I cannot in my present position permit public confidence in the Navy and the Admiralty to be undermined, perhaps I should say in this ease to be bombed, without making some reply exposing the absurdity of some of the claims which have been advanced. If these claims are well founded, if the statement to which the noble Marquess draws attention is true, then the maintenance and, still more, the building of capital ships would be quite inexcusable, and not only the Naval Staff and Admiralty in this country but the Naval Staffs of all great naval Powers would be culpable in the highest degree, and quite unfit to exercise the responsibilities which now rest upon them.

While I want to be as uncontroversial as possible and to deal in my reply with matters not of theory and imagination but of ascertained fact, I will say at once that the statement to which the noble Marquess refers—namely, that "it is already proved that one bomb can sink the most powerful battleship in a few minutes" is not only untrue but is admittedly based, and solely based, upon the experiments in America last year. With regard to those experiments I will leave out of account the fact that they were conducted under conditions which bear no resemblance whatever to war conditions. They were conducted against a stationary and unresisting target. There was no defence, passive or active on behalf of the ship, and they were also conducted in ideal weather, which is not always prevalent on the ocean, at a time when there was no risk from low-lying clouds, fog, rain, snow, or darkness, or any of the other difficulties with which attacking aircraft would have to deal.

Further, they were conducted from a land base against a ship which was stationary. There, have been no experiments in America, or elsewhere, against a modern capital ship properly defending itself not only by action but by its movements, and to deduce these tremendous conclusions from the experiments with the old German battleship "Ostfriesland," and the subsequent experiments with the still older American battleship "Iowa," is really stretching the case altogether too far.

In the case of the "Ostfriesland" they were conducted on two days during last July. In the course of the first day this stationary target was hit by low-flying aeroplanes in great numbers thirteen times, by bombs varying from 250 to 500 lbs. As a result the ship, being at the time completely out of condition and unseaworthy in many ways, was considerably shaken, and the next day she was down by four feet in the water, no attempt haying been made to sheer up her bulkheads or to protect her in any way. On the second day she received three more hits at close range by bombs of 1,000 lbs., and finally, two 2,000-lb. bombs were dropped close alongside, and she eventually sank. She was a very old type of ship, in bad condition, with strained hull and no special under-water protection of any sort or kind. There was no crew on board who would, naturally, have assisted in sheering up bulkheads; and she would have been an equally easy prey to one torpedo discharged from a destroyer or submarine, or, indeed, to a very moderate amount of gunfire.

The fact is that the same result—her sinking—could have been obtained with much less cost and more certainty by any of the ordinarily accepted naval methods of attack. Therefore, I say that no conclusions of this character can be drawn as applying to existing modern capital ships under Service conditions, not even to ships we have had for some time, such as the "Royal Sovereign" class, and still less to our latest designs. I thought that was made sufficiently clear by the official report of the American experiments. The report was made by a joint board of naval and military men with General Pershing as chairman. They issued their report in August last and said that they had arrived at conclusions with which I will not trouble your Lordships at length, as you are probably familiar with them. They reached the conclusion, among others, that had the target been moving at high speed on varying courses the probability of hitting would have been greatly reduced, that had the target vessel been protected by effective anti-aircraft armament it would have still further reduced the number of hits, and that it would have been practically negligible had the target been protected by effective pursuit aeroplanes.

They pointed out that. the effect of the direct hits had been purely local and had done no real damage to the fighting portions of the ship, and in their final conclusions they said:— The battleship is still the backbone of the fleet and the bulwark of the nation's sea defence. The aeroplane, like the submarine, destroyer and mine, has added to the dangers to which battleships are exposed, but has not made the battleship obsolete. The battleship still remains the greatest unit of naval strength. There is a great deal more with which I need not trouble your Lordships, who have no doubt seen the report. The main conclusion is that there was nothing whatever in these experiments against the "Ostfriesland" to support the extreme theory which was advanced in another place, because, as I have pointed out, one torpedo would have been equally effective in the circumstances, and our ships, after all, even those which are not of the latest designs, are so constructed as to be able to withstand the impact not merely of one but of several torpedoes, which, being in contact with the sick of the ship, are of far greater effect than any bombs dropped close alongside could possibly be.

I do not know whether your Lordships appreciate the immense significance of the difference between an explosion which takes place in contact with the side of a ship and what has been called in the discussions a "near miss." The difficulty of this latter method of attacking a battleship by a bomb from aircraft may be judged by the fact that the effect of a bomb which is not in contact varies with the cube of the distance away from the side. This leads to the most extraordinary conclusions. For example, a 4,000-lb. bomb, which would carry 2,000 lbs. of high explosives, dropped ten feet distant from the side of the ship and at the right distance under the water, is equivalent only to a bomb carrying 250 lbs. of explosives which is in actual contact with the side—that is, considerably less than that carried by the ordinary service torpedo. It would actually take a bomb of 8,000 lbs.—larger than any suggested by these enthusiastic gentlemen—bursting at a distance of ten feet from the side of the ship, to equal the effect of one torpedo exploded in contact with the ship. When I see such a distinguished authority as General Groves writing in The Times a series of articles, to which great prominence has been given, stating that a 4,000-lb. bomb, dropped thirty yards from a modern battleship, would be destructive, I would only remind your Lordships that the effect of that bomb would be no more than that of the explosion of 3 lbs. of explosives in actual contact with the ship itself.

I have been referring so far to ships which are actually in existence, but, of course, as your attack develops, so do the methods of naval construction to meet it, and, while it would not be in accordance with the public interest to give any details of new designs, I can only assure your Lordships that the large experiments which have taken place and are still in progress have made it quite clear that the new designs which we are proposing to construct will certainly be immune not only from direct hits from bombs of the size suggested but even from this very potent "near miss" to which reference has been made. In fact, it is technically and practically possible to protect the bottom of battleships against any size of bomb which can be dropped from aircraft. The noble Marquess referred to some remarkably enthusiastic speaker in the recent debate in the House of Commons, who said that it was only necessary to drop a bomb of 4,000 lbs. within 100 yds. of the doomed ship. The actual effect of a 4,000-lb. bomb dropped at 100 yds. would be equivalent to the explosion of between 2 oz. and 4 oz. of high explosive against the ship itself, which would not have the slightest effect even upon a torpedo boat. My imagination boggles at the calculation with regard to 200 yds., which was suggested by another speaker, but I think I have said enough to show that this kind of claim can only be described as fantastic rubbish, and it is really trifling with Parliament and with the public to make such statements, which are only calculated, without any excuse or justification, to undermine confidence in the Navy.

At the same time, I do not want it to be supposed that the Admiralty are in any way indifferent, or are not alive, to the possible developments of air attack upon ships at sea. They are devoting a great deal of time, thought and experiment to the elucidation of these matters, but at the present stage the battleship holds its own, not only for the reasons that I have given, but also because of the necessary inaccuracy under existing conditions of any attack from the air.

I spoke of the "Ostfriesland" experiment. There were later experiments on another ship, the "Iowa," which was electrically controlled, and therefore under way, but only at a speed of 8 knots. Again, it had no defence, but although attack was made upon it at comparatively low altitudes, only 15 per tent. of hits were made, and the official report states that in the Boards opinion there would not have been more than 5 per cent. of hits under Service conditions. That, refers to direct hits upon the ship itself, but if, as has now appeared, a direct hit on the ship is not going to do any fatal damage, and what is wanted is to drop a bomb within a few feet of the side, then the size of the target is reduced to about one-fifth of the area of the ship, and the number of hits will probably be reduced from five per cent. to one per cent. We must remember that each attacking aeroplane has only one of these huge bombs, and in order to get another it has to travel several hundred miles.

It might be said that accuracy will improve, and we hope it will, for many reasons unconnected with this problem. All the best minds in connection with the development of the air were engaged on this problem for four years of war, endeavouring to perfect the accuracy of bomb dropping, and so far no solution of that vital problem has been reached; but in any case, as the noble Marquess pointed out, this form of attack upon warships by heavy bombs dropped from aircraft is only possible from a shore base, and therefore is really only applicable to coast defence. The extreme range of these great bombing craft is within, say, 300 miles from their base, and as each plane can only carry one bomb, and if it drops it and misses has to go back all these miles, and as the inaccuracy of bombing is so great, even for the purpose of coast defence this cannot be regarded as a menace which would prevent a modern fleet from attacking a shore objective. In any case operations close to the shore are very minor functions of a modern fleet, at any rate of a British fleet, whose principal function is to protect far-flung trade routes over wide oceans.

The noble Marquess asked whether our naval policy still recognises that we are a world power. Most assuredly it does, and it would indeed be a sad day for the British Navy if it was to be confined to home waters, within range of bombing craft operating from shore bases. That, of course, does not cover the question of attack from aircraft carriers. but no aircraft carriers, either actual or projected, or permitted by the Naval Treaty concluded at Washington, can carry these huge bombing machines at all, and even if they could, and these machines could be launched from them, the machines could not return and land on their mother ship. Therefore, this weapon of attack in its present stage of development, is effective only against battleships operating from a shore base as coast defence. In that connection no doubt it may play a useful function, and be encouraged to the utmost degree both by the Admiralty and I assume by the War Office.

In all this controversy so far nothing has been said from the naval side with regard to defence against attack—defence which is both active and passive—or to the counter-attacks that would be made upon attacking aircraft both by the warship itself and its attendant fighting aircraft. General Groves, in very interesting articles, asked his readers to imagine the picture of an attack by aircraft, which first of all make a great smoke-screen, out of which would emerge a flight of aeroplanes, each carrying a torpedo, which they would launch against the battleship and then disappear again in the smoke-screen. Apart from the fact that at present low-flying aeroplanes are very vulnerable to attack by modern gun-fire, the task which the writer sets them might equally be performed by destroyers, which carry six torpedoes each and can stand a considerable amount of punishment and fire before being disabled, whereas a small shell of any description would wreck an aeroplane. That shows that the picture contains nothing new and something less effective than the existing methods of attack, and unless it be assumed that the Navy would be doing nothing in such circumstances, and would not reply by gun-fire or its fighting planes, the picture which is drawn does not cause us any acute apprehension.

As a matter of fact, although there again it is not in the public interest to give details, we are hopeful that by gun fire alone, and the development of gunfire, it may be possible to make warships in the near future practically immune against air attack of any description. But, simultaneously, we are developing, and are hoping to develop much further, the defence in the air of a very far-reaching and aggressive character, carried out front aeroplane carriers, which are going to play a most vital part in the fleet of the future. So far from it being true that the Navy or the Admiralty are seeking either to stifle or to discourage the development of the Air Service in connection with the Navy, the fact is that they are convinced, and have long been convinced, of its vital importance, and are continually pressing for more progress in this direction.

It cannot be denied that the British Navy at this time is far ahead of any other Navy in connection with the development of the Air Service, and while, as I said just now, I am not at all satisfied with the progress which has been made and for other reasons upon which I do not wish to dwell on this occasion, it is well known, I think, that a special Committee has just been appointed by the Cabinet to inquire into the relations between the Admiralty and the Air Ministry. As that matter is now, so to speak, sub judice I do not intend to do more than say that the statement which the noble Marquess read, accusing the Admiralty and the Admirals of seeking to crush and discourage the Air Service, was entirely unjustified and in direct conflict with the facts. On the contrary, we feel nothing but good will and indeed deep anxiety for the development of the Air Service, and are giving it every assistance in our power.

I only want to add this, that I greatly regret and deprecate that there should be any controversy between the two great Services, but it has been forced upon me, and I felt, it was essential to explode some of the more extravagant and fantastic claims which have been advanced. As I have said, the capital ship remains practically unchallenged as the ultimate basis of sea power. That, very point was the subject of a most exhaustive inquiry conducted by the Government as recently as last year, and it is a curious thing that similar inquiries, conducted in almost every great naval country independently, have resulted in the arrival unanimously at the same conclusion—a conclusion which was confirmed at the Conference at Washington and which certainly stands.

So far as my knowledge goes, and that of the Admiralty and the Naval Staff, nothing whatever has occurred in connection with recent developments in aircraft or methods of attack from the air substantially to reduce the fighting value of the capital ship. The attacks to which it may be exposed from the air are being provided against, and more than provided against, by improvements in its passive and active defence, and it is to-day the considered opinion both of the Naval Staff and of the Board of Admiralty that defence against aircraft, so far as capital ships are concerned, is, and will keep, fully abreast of attack, whether by aircraft or by submarines. I hope that I have fully answered the Questions which the noble Marquess addressed to me. If there is any point which I have omitted I shall be very pleased to reply to him.

THE MARQUESS OF LINLITHGOW

I merely wish to thank the noble Lord for the very full statement which he has given, and to ask the leave of the House to withdrawn my Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

House adjourned at ten minutes past eight o'clock.