{"id":24118,"date":"2016-01-22T06:00:12","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T19:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=24118"},"modified":"2016-01-22T13:50:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-22T02:50:38","slug":"aspi-recommends-understanding-victory-naval-operations-from-trafalgar-to-the-falklands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/aspi-recommends-understanding-victory-naval-operations-from-trafalgar-to-the-falklands\/","title":{"rendered":"ASPI recommends ‘Understanding victory: naval operations from Trafalgar to the Falklands’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"51iGCLly7vL._SX313_BO1,204,203,200_\"<\/a>Part of my summer reading has been British naval historian Geoffrey Till\u2019s excellent 2014 book Understanding victory: naval operations from Trafalgar to the Falklands<\/a><\/em>. At first glance it doesn\u2019t seem to offer much to anyone who has read a bit of naval history. In its slim 200-odd pages it looks at the Battles of Trafalgar and Jutland, the sinking of HMS Repulse off Malaya in 1941 and the travails of HMS Glamorgan in the Falklands campaign in 1982. Given that there are shelves of books on each of those four topics, a new angle\u2019s required to produce a worthwhile contribution to the literature.<\/p>\n

Till does that by two devices. First, he tells the story from the viewpoint of a single ship, and not always the obvious one. For example, central to the account of Trafalgar is HMS Belleisle<\/a>, rather than the much better known Victory or Royal Sovereign. And the much analysed Battle of Jutland is from the viewpoint of HMS New Zealand. The second device is a deconstruction of each battle into components of capability, rather than a retelling of the story of the battle and its key figures. The subtitle of this book would be more accurate if it was \u2018the fundamental inputs to capability in naval warfare\u2019, <\/em>because that\u2019s what it\u2019s actually about: the front line platform being the tip of a much bigger iceberg.<\/p>\n

The Belleisle is interesting for various reasons, including the fact that it started life with the French Navy before being captured and pressed into the Royal Navy. Till describes it as a \u2018Death Star\u2019 of its time, and observes that it had \u2018more firepower than Napoleon\u2019s entire army at Austerlitz\u2019. But as impressive as that is, I think the main reason for shifting the focus from the flagships to a ship further down the line is to allow Till to develop his main theme of the enablers of victory.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a focus that\u2019s lost in far too many discussions of military capability. The Royal Navy wasn\u2019t victorious at Trafalgar because it had better ships\u2014Till makes it clear that French naval engineering was ahead of Britain\u2019s in many ways, as the Belleisle attests\u2014but because of all of the other elements that had to come together for success. Most militaries have their own list of capability inputs, varying in the way they\u2019re broken down but ultimately covering much the same ground. (See the American, British and Australian definitions<\/a>.) Till breaks them down into these 11 categories, a longer list than militaries usually employ:<\/p>\n