The British Carrier Strike Fleet. David Hobbs
channels.
Sir Guy Royle continued to argue for this scheme when Curtin visited the United Kingdom for talks with the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. While Churchill’s arguments had considerable merit, which Curtin recognised, he gave the impression that the British were merely trying to solve their own manpower crisis by obtaining Australian sailors to commission new ships which could not otherwise be deployed in 1945.10 The British offered two light fleet carriers on free loan, possibly Venerable and Ocean, although the exact choice of ships would have depended on completion dates and manpower availability but John Curtin continued to hold the line that the need for Australian carriers must be examined as part of a study of post-war force structures. He did eventually accept the offer in February 1945, however, four days after the BPF arrived in Sydney to an enthusiastic welcome but the war ended before the scheme could be implemented. Had it been taken forward, the ships would have been ‘mix-manned’ with the RAN providing the executive department and the RN the squadrons and the bulk of the air departments like the arrangement that had proved successful in the RCN-manned escort carriers. During 1945 a number of RAAF Spitfire pilots transferred to the RANVR to fly Seafires in the BPF. The scheme was cut short by the unexpectedly early end to the war on 15 August but there were many more volunteers than could be trained. Many of these would, no doubt, have found their way into the squadrons embarked in an Australian light fleet carrier. Also, judging by the experience of the BPF, there would have been many volunteers among the sailors in their air departments to transfer permanently into the RAN.
Admiral Sir Louis Hamilton relieved Sir Guy Royle in 1945. He was to be the last RN admiral seconded to Australia to act as the Chief of the Naval Staff and was determined to settle the issue of aircraft carriers for the RAN. He commissioned a study into the need for Australian naval aviation and entrusted Lieutenant Commander V A T Smith DSC RAN,11 who had served with the RN Fleet Air Arm as an observer for much of the war, with the task. Unlike his predecessor, Sir Louis Hamilton ‘cultivated’ Sheddon and worked on Mr Chifley the new Prime Minister. He had to inform them that in Great Britain’s difficult post-war economic circumstances it could no longer offer light fleet carriers free of charge and Australia would be expected to bear some of the burden of defending Commonwealth interests in the Pacific. Mr Chifley accepted this and agreed with Smith’s recommendation that the post-war RAN should be centred on two carriers, at least one of which would always be available and capable of both defensive and offensive action in an independent task force or as part of a coalition fleet. Despite hostile opposition from the RAAF which argued that all forms of aviation should be land-based and operated only under its own control, the Australian Government finally agreed to purchase two light fleet carriers from the Admiralty as part of a five-year defence plan. After some negotiation, the Admiralty agreed to sell two ships of the Majestic class to Australia for the estimated build cost of one.12 The programme cost was, therefore, £2,750,000 for the two ships plus £450,000 each for their initial outfits of stores, a total of £3,650,000 but against this could be set £427,000 raised by public subscription in Australia for a replacement after the loss of the cruiser Sydney in 1941. Legislation could easily apply this sum against the cost of the first of the new ships after it was decided to name it after the cruiser. Many Australian citizens were therefore able to feel that they had contributed directly to the procurement of the nation’s most powerful warship and the fact that it was an aircraft carrier showed that the RAN was moving into a new era.
Despite Hamilton’s hard work mistakes were made and, unfortunately, the Admiralty made no allowance in the quoted price for the improvements that would be necessary to support new generations of aircraft at a time of rapid change in both aircraft and their supporting systems. Considering the far-reaching and expensive work being undertaken in the UK at the time on projects such as the rubber landing deck13 and steam catapult this oversight is surprising. In the early post-war years the Australian Government was suspicious of every penny spent on what some critics viewed as a large aviation component within a small navy and what appeared to be cost over-runs did not help.14 As the Fleet Air Arm became ‘Australianised’ and RN influence diminished, the Five Year Defence Plan made good progress and these fears abated but they were to surface again in the Australian carrier replacement debate during the late 1970s. Arguments about procurement and cost were not simple to resolve but the concept that embarked aircraft formed a critical element in naval warfare was not, at first, obvious to the RAAF and it sought to block the procurement of the two carriers. Even after they were accepted as part of the Five Year Defence Plan in 1947, the Minister for Air insisted that the RAAF must provide the aircraft, aircrew and infrastructure. His intransigent view was all the more difficult to understand, given the success of the obvious ‘role models’ in Great Britain and the USA and the outcome of Commander Smith’s Study which had been accepted by Government. Despite further objections from the Minister for Air that the establishment of a Fleet Air Arm in the RAN was ‘not in the best interests of defence’,15 the Prime Minister accepted that the RAN’s air component would wear naval uniform, be under naval operational control and backed by naval shore stations and facilities.16 If the RAAF had had its way, Sydney might have started life with a nominal air group that was institutionally averse to the concept of carrier aviation and could not have done as well as she did in Korea and, perhaps, could not have deployed at all. The failure of the RAAF to recognise that aviation forms an important and legitimate part of its sister-service’s operational capability left a political legacy that proved difficult to eradicate. It was particularly unfortunate that men who believed themselves to be proponents of ‘air power’ actively sought to eradicate the RAN’s Fleet Air Arm and its ability to provide an important tactical capability in the national interest.
20 Carrier Air Group was formed for the RAN at RNAS Eglinton in Northern Ireland on 28 August 1948;17 it comprised 805 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 816 (Firefly FR 4s) NAS. A second air group, 21 CAG, was formed in Australia at RNAS St Merryn in April 1950 comprising 808 (Sea Fury FB 11s) and 817 (Firefly FR 5s) NAS and subsequently took passage to Australia in Sydney. To provide the aircrew for its new squadrons the RAN entered thirty-five ex-Second World War aviators at Flinders Naval Depot in January 1948 with the rank of Acting Lieutenant RAN.18 Also four lieutenants from the Royal Australian Naval College, RANC, started flying training with the RN in the UK and five ex-RAAF pilots already serving on short-service commissions in the RN were transferred to the RAN. On its formation 20 CAG comprised the four lieutenants from the RANC, the first six of the aircrew who had entered Flinders in January, fifteen RN pilots, six RN observers and six aircrewmen recruited into the RAN from the RN. The air group commander and the two squadron commanding officers were both RN at first but by 1952 the only RN officers in the Australian Fleet Air Arm under the rank of commander were the small number of exchange officers retained in squadrons as a permanent feature to broaden the knowledge of tactics and ideas at unit level.
The ship that became HMAS Sydney 3 was laid down in Devonport Dockyard as HMS Terrible in April 1943 as one of sixteen 1942-design light fleet carriers,19 part of the massive expansion of naval aviation within the RN during the latter part of the Second World War. The 1942 design was divided into two classes, the Colossus class of ten ships and the improved Majestic class of six ships which were capable of operating larger and heavier aircraft. Four ships of an even larger 1943 design were built for the RN but they were considered to be beyond the RAN’s ability to man and operate in the early 1950s. The Majestics were laid down slightly later; all were suspended incomplete soon after the Japanese surrender and none saw service with the RN. Terrible was laid up in Devonport before she was bought by the Australian Government on 3 June 1947 but work re-commenced immediately to complete her to the original design and she was handed over to the RAN in December 1948 and commissioned by Mrs J A Beasley, wife of the Australian High Commissioner in London, on 5 February 1949.20 Her first commanding officer was Captain R R Dowling DSO RAN who maintained the very close links between the RN and RAN. Even those who worked so hard to establish an Australian carrier strike force did not realise how effective the Fleet Air Arm would become in a very short time; just over a year after her arrival in home waters, Sydney deployed to the Korean War with the outstanding success described in the previous chapter.