Neglected Skies: The Demise of British Naval Power in the Far East, 1922-42

by Angus Britts

Overview

Neglected Skies uses a reconsideration of the clash between the British Eastern Fleet and the Imperial Japanese Navy’s First Air Fleet in the Indian Ocean in April 1942 to draw a larger conclusion about declining British military power in the era. In this book, Angus Britts explores the end of British naval supremacy from an operational perspective. By primarily analyzing the evolution of British naval aviation during the interwar period, as well as the challenges that the peacetime Royal Navy was forced to confront, a picture emerges of a battle fleet that entered the war in September 1939 unready for combat. By examining the development of Japan’s first-strike carrier battle group, the Kido Butai, Britts charts both the rise of Japan as a wartime power as well as the demise of the Royal Navy. Japan, by concentrating their six largest aircraft-carriers into a single strike force with state-of-the-art aircraft, had taken a quantum leap forward in warfighting at sea. Simultaneously, British forces found themselves outmatched in this Eastern theatre and Britts makes the case, by looking at a set of key battles, that this is where the global supremacy of Britain’s naval power ended.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781682471586
Publisher:	Naval Institute Press
Publication date:	10/15/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

ANGUS BRITTS is a qualified historian from Australia who specializes in military studies, and who has enjoyed a background in the subject since his childhood in the 1970s. His studies have included politics, international relations, and a variety of historical subjects.

Table of Contents

List of Maps and Tables viii

Acknowledgments ix

A Note on the Text x

List of Abbreviations xi

Introduction 1

1 The Battle: 31 March-9 April 1942 13

2 Scylla and Charybdis: The Policy Dimension, 1919-39 26

3 In the Outhouse: The Carrier-Borne Air Weapon and the Interwar Royal Navy 48

4 Broad Oceans, Narrow Seas: The Test of War against Germany and Italy, September 1939-April 1942 70

5 Niitaka Yama Nobore! The Imperial Japanese Navy, 1920-41 93

6 Force Z Revisited: December 1941-March 1942 113

7 Supremacy Surrendered: The Eastern Indian Ocean Showdown 134

8 From Juno to Ten-Ichi: The Status of the Forgotten Decisive Battle 158

9 Beyond Singapore: Operation C and the "Two Ocean Dilemma" 169

Conclusion 181

Notes 185

Bibliography 219

Index 231

Editorial Reviews

"Neglected Skies provides good reflection on the tactics used previously by the Royal Navy against the Italians in the Mediterranean and against the Germans in the Atlantic." --Aerospace

"This book ... gathers together a host of useful thoughts about the problems of block obsolescence and the integration of new capabilities within a fleet in peacetime." --Naval War College Review

"Given how much has been written on both of the world wars, it is rare to identify an entirely new angle and shed light on a subject that has truly never been detailed before. This unique freshness is what makes Angus Britts' Neglected Skies: The Demise of British Naval Power in the Far East, 1922-1944 such a worthwhile read. Neglected Skies covers a wide period of history, as noted by the title, that takes the British Navy from the heights of its might to the point of near decay when the world needed them most to succeed. Well-researched and clearly written with a passion for both naval and aviation history, Neglected Skies does a service to the ever-growing trove of world war accounts." --Air and Space Power Journal

"Britts's work is a success…. [He] communicates the depth of naval strategy and the technicalities of naval aviation well enough that one unfamiliar with these things before picking up the work can easily make sense of what is an understandably complicated field." --H-War

"Engagingly written,​ Neglected Skies ​provides an accessible combination of a detailed operational history of an often-overlooked naval battle and a succinct explanation of the Royal Navy's relative decline in the interwar period." --The Journal of Military History

From the Publisher