Royal navy 1940
 

How large was the Royal navy in 1940 (september).

How many:

Battleships
Carriers
Heavy cruisers
light cruisers

Where therer?

Cheers,

Sm

I think RN had at least 12 battleships or battlecruisers in Sep. 1940. They had 3 Battlecruisers(Renown, Repulse, Hood), 9 WWI vintage battleships (4 R-class battleships(Royal Oak was sunk by U-47 in 1939), 5 Queen Elizabeth class battleships), 2 Nelson Class battleships(Nelson, Rodney) and one new battleship, King George V. After WWI, RN scrapped many of her older battleships or battlecruisers when UK joined the Washington Naval treaty.

It seems to be that RN had 10 CVs or CVLs in Sep. 1940. Some of those carriers, especially CVLs, were assigned to convoy escort duties.

They also had about 16 heavy cruisers from Hawkins and County classes.

Think this from Wikipedia will be very handy.

In September 1939 (including Dominion fleets)...

15 Battleships & battlecruisers, of which only two are post-World War 1. Five 'King George V' class battleships are building.

7 Aircraft carriers. One is new and five of the planned six fleet carriers are under construction. There are no escort carriers.

66 Cruisers, mainly post-World War 1 with some older ships converted for AA duties. Including cruiser-minelayers, 23 new ones have been laid down.

184 Destroyers of all types. Over half are modern, with 15 of the old 'V' and 'W' classes modified as escorts. Under construction or on order are 32 fleet destroyers and 20 escort types of the 'Hunt' class.

60 Submarines, mainly modern with nine building.

45 escort and patrol vessels with nine building, and the first 56 'Flower' class corvettes on order to add to the converted 'V' and 'W's' and 'Hunts'. However, there are few fast, long-endurance convoy escorts.

http://www.naval-history.net/WW2CampaignRoyalNavy.htm

From that, for 1st September 1940, take off 1 battleship, 2 carriers, 3 cruisers (1 'heavy', 2 'light'), 36 destroyers (37 if you include Ivanhoe sunk on that day) and 19 submarines. All you need to do now is add in any new construction between September 39 and September 40 using the ship classes given above (eg no battleships and only 1 CV were commissioned in this period whilst only 1 light cruiser was commissioned as far as I can make out).http://www.uboat.net/allies/warships/

I would add that three carriers were launched by Sep. 1940 but those carriers weren´t commissioned yet. Those carriers were HMS Formidable, HMS Illustrious and HMS Indomitable. At that point, RN didn´t need desperately another carrier and they may have had a shortage of carrier planes and trained pilots for carriers.

Yeah but launched is a long way from being commissioned especially as Britain was desperately trying to churn out ships for convoy work which delayed the commission of a lot of the bigger ships as there just wasn't the capacity to finish them as quickly as otherwise would have been possible.

Illustrious still wasn't finished in May 1941 when it went chasing the Bismarck, Indomitable was still a year out from being commissioned in September 39. Formidable was a couple of months from being finished though so it would be reasonable to assume a lot of hard work could get her ready sooner.

That is true. Also British aircraft industry focused to build fighters and bombers for RAF. Carrier planes were not as important as to guarantee the air superiority over UK and disrupting German industry. It also quite likely that training new pilots for RAF fighters and bombers were more important than building a large carrier air forces.

I know that the Fleet Air Arm was stripped of pilots for the Battle of Britain (not that it was huge in the first place so it didn't release all that many pilots for service with RAF). There are also a number of sources which state that the pilots on Formidable and Illustrious were very inexperienced.

But that's kind of irrelevant when the ship itself is incapable of doing much more than potter from shipyard to shipyard waiting for some kind builder to fit the essentials ;) It was the same situation with the new battleships - they weren't the priority so their completion was delayed in favour of getting destroyers finished. Hence, Churchill wanting the 50 US destroyers to cover the gap until the British built ones were finished in 1941 (IIRC the lend-lease destroyers were made available (although not fit for service) in first week of September).

IIRC it was HMS Victorious that was the Home Fleet carrier during the Bismarck chase, and the other carrier involved was the Ark Royal of Force H. HMS Illustrious commissioned in May 1940 and was with the Mediterranean Fleet from September 1940 until she was seriously damaged by German bombing and had to be sent to the US for repairs. She was in America between May and December 1941.

Thanks for that Gladstone - I was reading the Victorious' ship class and not name :oo HMS Illustrious was the one carrier finished in the September 1939 - 1940 time frame. In my other posts please substitute HMS Victorious for HMS Illustrious.

In retrospect it might have been better to name the class after Victorious. After all she outlasted her sisters by more than a decade. The other carriers of the class decommissioned in the mid 1950s while Victorious soldiered on til 1969.

Heading slightly OT, but Indomitable often gets listed as a separate class all on its own because of the modifications made towards the end of production.

Might have a look at the destroyers commissioned in the time period later tonight and do a proper OOB for September 1940.

edit: can find 1 J-class and 7 K-class destroyers commissioned in the period of September 39 to September 40.

Yep, I believe she had "1.5 hangar decks" while the other three Illustrious-class carriers had only one. Indefatigable and Implacable of course had two full hangar decks and an extra turbine and shaft and therefore can more clearly be separated as a separate class than Indomitable.

What where their stations. Was the majority of them based at Scapa Flow or where a lot elsewhere?

I suspect that you must google all carriers and battleships. From example, HMS Hood was at Scapa Flow at September 1940. I guess that most of Royal Navy battleships and carriers were either at Scapa Flow, Gibraltar, Alexandria or India.

HMS Rodney was at Rosyth at that time possibly with Nelson.

Remember, that Royal Navy fought against Italian Navy at that time, so they had some ships to fight against Italian ships as well.

I have some information regarding Queen Elizabeth class battleships:

Queen Elizabeth and Warspite were probably at Alexandria. Valiant was probably at or near Gibraltar. Barham was near Senegal in orders to engage Vichy French battleship Richelieu if necessary. Malaya was also at Mediterranean.

Revenge and Royal Sovereign were probably at UK, specific location unknown.
Ramillies was at Alexandria. Resolution was at Dakar, Senegal, probably with Barham.

Renown was a part of Force H at Gibraltar while Repulse was probably at Scapa Flow. King George V was probably at Scapa Flow as well.