Strategic sea transport is defined here as:-
“Moving troops and their impedimenta by sea in wartime between owned regular ports”.
It therefore excludes amphibious assaults onto enemy-held beaches.
The enemy, of course, will try to prevent such movement since it must be the prelude to being attacked by land or sea.
In the 20th Century two World wars led to really vast strategic sea transport, which will be described briefly. [Where not referenced specifically figures are generally from Wikipedia articles.]
The Great War 1914-1918
To help the British to fight the Germans in France there came from the Anglo-Saxon nations of the Empire about ¾ million Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. The French ally brought ½ million men from their colonies, mostly across the Mediterranean but also from as far away as Madagascar and Indo-China. In 1917 both countries engaged Chinese labourers to release soldiers for the front line from Lines of Communication work:- about 140,000 between British and French. In 1917 a corps of 55,000 Portuguese joined, probably by sea as Spain was neutral.
The British Empire also transported about 1 million troops from India to fight the Turks in the Middle East.
These numbers were dwarfed after the United States of America declared war on Germany on 6th April 1917 and eventually began to take a share of the battles in France. Fig. 1 below shows how the American forces were built up.
Fig.1 (charted from Ref.1, linked)
By the time that the Germans asked for and were granted an Armistice on 11th November 1918 a total of 2.08 million soldiers had reached France to form the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). They had been carried by a mixture of ships, as described in Ref.1. British ships carried 52%.
Two of these were Cunard “superliners”, the Mauretania (32,000 Gross Tons*1 , maiden voyage 1907) and Aquitania (45,600 grt, 1914). The British government had lent £2.6M (£220M in today’s money) for the construction of the Mauretania and her sister Lusitania, at an interest rate of 2.75%, to be paid back over twenty years, with a stipulation that the ships could be converted to armed merchant cruisers if needed. When the war came that conversion was seen as un-necessary. The Lusitania had been sunk by a U-boat in 1915, notoriously, while still in passenger service. The loss of US lives gave President Wilson a push towards war with Germany, but he was then still “too proud to fight”.
*1. Gross Tonnage is a cubic measurement derived purely from the dimensions at 1 Gross Ton per 100 cubic feet. It is not to be confused with the Displacement (ie Weight) which governs the ship’s speed.
Page 2 of 8
The USN provided most of the convoy escorts against German U-Boat attack. The Admiralty senior officers were effectively over-ruled by the UK PM so as to institute a convoy system in July 1917 in time to control that potentially-disastrous menace.
At a ceremony on 4th July 1917 the famous words were spoken by a member of the AEF:-_
“Lafayette, nous voila!” (Ref. 2, linked).
The soldiers in each case had to be supported by other ships to move their impedimenta although weapons may have been supplied by the British or French. This was certainly true for the US troops, whose artillery, tanks and aircraft were French. The Americans would have received their rations from the USA, i.e an ongoing commitment, since there was no spare food in France. Altogether, the AEF received 7.5 M tons of cargo (Ref. 1).
At the end of the war, of course, nearly everyone had to be returned to their homes by sea.
Fig.2 RMS Mauretania (bbc)
As delivered from the shipyard in light grey for photographic purposes, later Cunard black hull.
The two ‘Queens’
In July !929 the new German liner Bremen (52,000 grt) broke Mauretania’s 20-year old Blue Riband record for the fastest Eastbound crossing of the North Atlantic by the considerable margin of nearly 7%. Cunard wished to respond to this and needed two new ships anyway of a speed to enable them to offer weekly departures on the Southampton/New York route where the trade was most valuable.
Despite the “Wall Street Crash” of October 1929 a new ship of 81,000 grt and over 1,000 feet long was laid down on December 1930. However, the spread of the economic depression (the Atlantic Fleet mutinied against a badly-handled pay cut on 15/16 September 1931 and Great Britain had to devalue the pound from the Gold Standard on 21 September) led Cunard to halt construction in December 1931.
Page 3 of 8
Two years later, on condition that Cunard amalgamated with their old rivals White Star, the government lent £3M to finish the ship on the stocks – which was named Queen Mary (81,000 grt)– and a further £5M to build another super-liner – which became the Queen Elizabeth (84,000 grt)- (the total loan being equivalent to £400M today). This was unemployment relief and it is unlikely that in 1934 a need for wartime strategic transport was envisaged.
A necessary extra expense was a new dry-dock built at Southampton to handle ships of 1,000 plus feet which cost over £2M (£100M). It was completed in 1934.
The Queen Mary’s maiden voyage was in May 1935 and, after a tussle with the French super-liner Normandie (79,000 grt),she re-took the Blue Riband in 1938 at 31 knots and held it until 1952.
War overtook the completion of Queen Elizabeth and she left the Clyde quietly in March 1940, not fitted-out for civilian accommodation.
The Queens as strategic transports
The full story of the Queens in WW2 is given in Ref.3 (linked). While bringing US troops to Britain they landed them at Gourock on the R. Clyde*2 .
*2. The author as a small boy well remembers seeing the Queen Elizabeth in the river in late 1942.
The ships were each eventually able to carry 15,000 troops. They sailed un-escorted relying on a cruising speed of 28 knots, zig-zagging and Ultra-based advice to avoid U-boat concentrations.
A tragic event occurred because of zig-zagging on 2nd October 1942 when Queen Mary rammed and sank an escorting cruiser, HMS Curacoa, with great loss of RN sailors. Post-war court action finally apportioned blame as 2/3rds to the naval ship. The bow damage to the QM was comparatively slight.
The PM, Churchill, took passage on board QM on four occasions when crossing the Atlantic with large staffs to attend conferences with President Roosevelt:- 5th May 1943 (to New York, in company with 5,000 German POW and their guards!); 5th August 1943; and 5th September 1944 (the latter two to Halifax). He also returned on the QM from New York from the 20th September 1944.
Altogether during WW2 the Queens transported 1,250,000 men (Ref. 3, linked).
Fig.3 HM Transport Queen Mary in 1945 returning US troops to New York (themaritimeexecutive)
Note the covered cable along the hull by which she was “degaussed” against magnetic mines.
Page 4 of 8
The Queens and Normandie
For a short time in 1940 both the Queens and Normandie were berthed together in New York, as shown below. Note the QM has already been re-painted grey.
Fig.4
After the USA entered the war, work began to fit the Normandie as a troop transport. In an accident not unusual with workmen on board she caught fire on 9th February 1942. Pumping water into her she rolled over. Eventually, though refloated, she was cut up for scrap. It had been intended to re-name her USS Lafayette and the old sailors’fear of ill-luck on re-naming a ship came true!
The Aquitania
The 1914 ship Aquitania, 25 years old, still did duty as a troop transport in WW2, the only one of the pre-WW1 super-liners to do so. She then went back to normal service until 1949.
WW2 1939-1945
From 1935 to 1938 “… the English-speaking peoples…unwisdom, carelessness and good nature allowed the wicked to rearm”, as Churchill later put it. The result was that on 3rd September 1939 Great Britain was again at war with Germany
As in WW1 many Canadians came to Great Britain to fight, i.e. were brought to the UK by strategic transport. Specific figures are elusive but seem to show about 400,000 soldiers and 250,000 airmen.
Australians and New Zealanders fought in the Middle East and but not in WW2 in France. Ref. 3 describes the large convoys which transported them. Later the Australians were taken back to fight the Japanese near to their home continent. British troops were transported to the Far East, including the unfortunate 18th infantry division which was delivered practically directly to a Japanese POW camp in Singapore. Troops were also transported from the USA to Australia.
Page 5 of 8
As in WW1 the figures for the Commonwealth nations were dwarfed by the sea transport of US military personnel to Europe from the United States after being forced into a full-scale shooting war on the 7th December 1941. Fig.5 below, copied from Contribution No. 2, extended for June-August 1944 from Ref. 4, shows the personnel transported up to August 1944, mostly by sea.
Figures for the rest of the war in Europe do not seem to be available, but it is known that General Eisenhower had 3 million US soldiers in May 1945 (Ref. 4). With about 0.5 million USAAF it would amount to 3.5 million brought to Europe.
The mastery of the seas
As remarked in the introduction, the Germans tried very hard in both World Wars to prevent the transport of huge numbers of US troops to Europe. Their surface ships having failed them, they resorted in each conflict to U-Boats. The adoption of convoy – returning eventually to the practice which had seen off Napoleonic raiders – had occurred in time to permit the 1917-1918 flow. In WW2 the very dangerous new submarine tactics of attack on the surface at night by centrally-radio-co-ordinated “Wolf Packs” had to be overcome by more and more-powerful escorts, aircraft, Ultra-guided diversions, better radar and high-frequency radio direction-finding before there was a safe passage for the USA. The defensive actions were accompanied by a huge ship-building programme.
The Battle of the Atlantic is summarised in Contribution No.2 at PP. 23-25.
The SS United States
There was, in effect, a large P.S. to the WW2 services of the British Queens, written by the United States in 1950. By then the Cold War with Soviet Russia had become the proxy Hot War in Korea. It seemed possible that the USA might have to form another Expeditionary Force and ship it overseas. As a precaution a super-liner capable of being converted to a 15,000-man troop ship was authorised on a basis of a 2/3rds contribution by the government. The result was the United States, 53,300 grt, costing $79 M (said to be equivalent to $829 M in 2021).. The opportunity was taken to make her a ship fast enough lift the Blue Riband from the Queen Mary, which had held it from 1938. This she duly did in her maiden voyage in 1952 at 34.5 knots, an increase of 11%.
Fig. 6 SS United States
The United States, fortunately, was never needed as a troop-ship. She remained in the Atlantic passenger trade until 1969, 17 years, but after the first flights of Trans-Atlantic passenger jet aircraft in late 1958*3 her days of profitable service were numbered. As a stripped hulk she remains afloat in Philadelphia.
Page 6 of 8
The fates of the Queens
To complete the story of the Queens:- happier than the United States the Mary remains afloat as a hotel and tourist attraction in Long Beach, USA, but her condition is now poor; the Elizabeth began to be converted in Hong Kong into a “Seawise University” but fire broke out in January 1972 and, like the Normandie 30 years previously, the water pumped aboard to extinguish it caused the ship to roll on her side and become a total wreck only fit for scrapping.
*3. Before the War the author enjoyed the sight of the Queen Mary and Normandie in the Solent. The latter ship did not berth in Southampton but picked up and landed passengers for England by tender (the British ship did the same at Cherbourg). Twenty years later the author was on the Rolls-Royce team which produced the Avon jet engines which powered the re-designed de Havilland Comet IV on the first jet-powered Trans-Atlantic passenger flight on 4th October 1958. This sounded the death-knell for the super-liners on regular schedules.
The liberation of the Falklands
“Strategic sea transport” is defined as between friendly ports. Amphibious operations have not been included because these were by specialised transports and landing craft, “Assault-loaded”.
The author is here going to describe a special operation which was a mixture of both types – the sea movements which led to the liberation of the Falkland Islands after the invasion by Argentina on 2nd April 1982.
The course of the un-declared war is described in Contribution No. 9 at C4.
The troops of the task force were transported to the Falklands, 8,000 nautical miles from the UK, by two large ships “Taken up from Trade” (TUFT):-
Canberra (45,000 grt), then engaged in cruising*4;
Queen Elizabeth the Second (70.000 grt), then providing Transatlantic and cruising voyages.
*4. Some years before the Canberra was TUFT she had been surveyed as a possible troopship (private information from a crew member).
Altogether 50 ships were TUFT for the expedition. They were manned by selected volunteers from their regular crews.
Canberra left Southampton on the 9th April 1982 – an astonishing mere week after the invasion, having been adapted to carry 2,400 Marine Commandos and paratroops and with an added heliport.
Queen Elizabeth 2 was a second thought of the number of men required for the task. She left Southampton on 12th May with 3,000 Guards and Gurkhas aboard. She had required strengthening for two heliports and a refuelling-at – sea arrangement.
The Canberra was risked to take her troops into San Carlos Bay, where a beach-head was formed. This became, possibly to some surprise, a far-from-friendly port! Fortunately, the aggressive Argentine fighter-bomber pilots thought that this white-painted ship was a hospital ship and did not attack it directly. See Fig.7 on P.7.
The Queen Elizabeth 2 was kept far away from the Bay and the Canberra relayed her troops to the beachhead.
Mastery of the sea around the Islands was secured by the presence of 5 nuclear attack submarines, one of which sank an Argentine cruiser on 2nd May 1982. This caused the Argentine Navy to retreat to its bases.
Just sufficient control of the air was provided by Harrier VTOL fighters launched from 2 carriers to permit the operation to be completed successfully (the crews of the 5 ships sunk and 2 badly damaged by aerial attack might dispute that).
Page 7 of 8
Fig. 7
Canberra in San Carlos Bay
References
- https://worldwar1letters.wordpress.com/the-adventure-unfolds/watchful-waiting-1917/bridge-of-ships/
- https://www.encyclopedia.com/history/dictionaries-thesauruses-pictures-and-press-releases/lafayette-we-are-here
- https://ww2db.com/other.php?other_id=44
- The Second World War, Vol. VI W. Churchill Cassell 1954.
An Appendix on P.8 provides data on the ships mentioned.
Page 8 of 8
Appendix
L = Length; B = Beam; D = Draught; SHP = Shaft Horsepower.
SLMS = [(Length-ft)^0.5 x (Draught-ft)^-0.8 x (kSHP)^0.19]
