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109 5 Fleet Sustainability and Its Effect on Auxiliary Ship Design When looking at the general attributes of either the Royal Navy or the U.S. Navy by the end of World War II, arguably their most outstanding capabilities could be characterized as mobility, flexibility, and sustained high-intensity striking power. These were the legacy of their struggle to achieve strategic flexibility and sustainable air-offensive capability, which were the embodiment of a new form of oceanic warfare discovered in the Pacific. Protecting or trying to extend this core competency during peacetime in anticipation that any future conflict might be equally complex and sophisticated presented a number of different challenges. Not the least of these was the design and procurement or appropriate ships with the right equipment that would allow naval strategies to be pursued with confidence and vigor whether in peacetime or at war. Lord Fisher once wrote, “Strategy should govern the types of ships to be designed . Ship designs as dictated by strategy should govern tactics. Tactics should govern details of armaments.”1 The trouble is that development rarely follows such a neat prescription, for the challenges imposed on design are always complex , often at different levels, and usually interreactive. This chapter will explore some of the ramifications in peacetime upon worldwide fleet sustainability, particularly as each navy tried to determine how much future logistic support should be concentrated on traditional fixed bases or dispersed by deploying mobile fleet trains. Each choice posed different criteria for establishing minimum acceptable endurance requirements for warships and auxiliaries alike, as well as replenishment speeds to counter certain operational threats. Such challenges affected warship and auxiliary design including whether to convert or build new purpose-built auxiliary ships to meet the demanding Fleet requirements for more speed and flexibility in replenishment capability. General Appreciation of the Shipping Situation No study of logistic considerations can ignore the enormous impact that shipping availability and production would have on virtually all aspects of naval planning during this period. The essence of the problem was that, in peacetime , shipyards usually specialized in one type of ship with successors varied 110 | Development of Mobile Logistic Support in Anglo-American Naval Policy only slightly, according to the preferences of future owners. Changing from one type to another reduced the production rate, which had unattractive economic and strategic consequences. At the beginning of World War II, U.K. merchant ship production had been falling for some time, and serviceable available tonnage was therefore small, given expected losses. As a result, the same types of merchant ships continued to be built in wartime as had been built in peacetime, thereby minimizing disruption to production schedules and preserving material . Having studied the merchant ship programs over two world wars, the Admiralty concluded in 1947 that any merchant ship program must be continuous in peace and in war.2 The problem for the Admiralty, therefore, was how to incorporate wartime requirements into peacetime ship design without compromising commercial economy and efficiency. Exercise “Trident,” a conference held at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich , in April 1949, took this a stage further. Designed to apply the lessons of World War II to a possible war in 1956–57, the conference incorporated a study by the Ministry of Transport (MOT) of the various political, geographic, and economic differences that could affect the shipping position between 1941 and what might be applicable by 1957. The study’s main conclusion was that there was every reason to assume that general shortages would be no less critical in later years than during World War II, when every major military operation was affected either in time or scope by shipping considerations. It must be remembered that such operations were rarely sequential but concurrent, and this exacerbated the gap between demand and supply. If the Allies were to maintain their war-making capacity at maximum level and still possess strategic mobility, “which is their greatest asset against the enemy,” then ensuring the most economical use of such shipping for all purposes was considered by the study to be “essential.”3 Supporting evidence showed that in September 1939, 2,870 dry cargo ships (10.814 million gross tons) were registered under the British flag (including Dominion). By 1948, this had become 2,733 (12.092 million gross tons), reflecting the postwar priority for export recovery by concentrating shipyard resources on merchant shipbuilding, repairs, and conversions.4 The projection out to 1952, however, showed only a very modest increase in gross tonnage...

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