Publication:Sea Talk Spring 2003/Between the wars
In 1909 the Commonwealth Government authorised the construction of a powerful Australian fleet unit, at a cost of £3.695m, that was to remain under its absolute control in peace and war.
On 4 October 1913 this unit, led by the battlecruiser HMAS Australia, proudly sailed into Sydney Harbour to the wild acclaim of the public.
In just four years Australia had created a potent naval deterrent against potential enemy raiding forces.
By late 1919, the RAN's strength had peaked at a battlecruiser, four cruisers, six submarines, twelve destroyers, four sloops, plus auxiliaries.
However, despite the clear deterrent value that the RAN had provided against an enemy raiding threat during World War I, the Navy struggled for the next two decades to maintain a credible force, as the will to invest in an effective and independent navy declined.
The national feeling that the creation of a powerful navy had heralded Australia's coming of age had been displaced by the growing ANZAC mythology, whereby the nation's independence had been bought with blood on the shores of Gallipoli.
The service of 5,000 RAN personnel paled against the 421,809 men of the AIF and its 215,585 casualties. The national psyche and sense of nationhood shifted firmly from a naval to an army focus.
Both victors and vanquished were crushed by the experience of 1914-18, and in its aftermath international anti-war feelings ran high. Popular feeling in Australia and other western nations was decidedly opposed to armaments and militarism. There was strong public and political pressure on successive Australian Governments to reduce military spending and divert funds to social benefit schemes.
The Armed Forces faced increasing financial stringencies. The Australian Government ended the war with loans of £ 262.5m, or 68 percent of GDP. By 1934, with ongoing repatriation and pension expenses, the total cost of the war had grown to £831.3m.
The Great Depression saw the defence budget slashed by 21 percent in 1930/31 and another 17 percent in 1931/32. By 1932 the RAN could muster only three ships in full commission, one in partial commission, and two in reserve. Personnel numbers were cut to under 3,000 and wages slashed by up to 25 percent to save money.
The RAN also faced attack from the Army and RAAF, as each fought to retain its share of the depleted defence budget. The RAAF in particular argued that air power alone could protect Australia's local sea lines of communication and prevent invasion.
While the air power argument was not fully accepted, successive governments seriously considered dispensing with the RAN and either distributing the task of naval defence to the Army and RAAF or returning it to the Royal Navy. Naval funding allocations suffered accordingly.
Doctrinally, the Royal Navy's focus on trade protection had shifted from that of the pre-war period. To fulfil the trade protection mission along the vast sea-lanes of the Empire it was thought that many small cruisers were better than a few battlecruisers.
Wishing to achieve parity with the Royal Navy and restrict the Imperial Japanese Navy, without incurring the cost of a naval arms race, in 1921 the US president called a conference between the USA, Britain, Japan, France and Italy to advocate mutual naval arms limitation. Faced with massive post-war debts all parties agreed.
The immediate result of the 1922 Washington Five Power Naval Treaty was that Britain, America and Japan scrapped a number of capital ships. Among the British tally, with the full concurrence of the Australian government, was the battlecruiser Australia. Henceforth Australian naval deterrence would rely on cruisers for local and Imperial trade protection.
As the depression eased, and faced by Japan and Germany building powerful navies, the Australian Government looked again to the neglected RAN. To provide a more useful trade protection force, the Government placed successive orders for nine new ships.
Nonetheless, expenditure on the RAN continued to decline as a proportion of overall defence spending, reaching just 26 percent in 1939. When war was declared on 3 September 1939 the RAN had just two heavy cruisers, three new and one old light cruisers, five World War I vintage destroyers and two sloops.
Australian naval deterrence between the wars was a victim of an unfortunate series of circumstances, which saw the RAN reduced from a formidable fleet unit in 1919 to a limited trade protection force in 1939. This decline would have serious repercussions for Australia and the RAN when Japan thrust southward in 1942.
This text is an expurgated version of Semaphore Issue 5 July 2003. For the full text, contact the Sea Power Centre Australia Editorial Officer, Mrs Kim Le, on (02) 62876361.
