Save Money and Get a Big Ship

Vincent J. Curtis

13 April 2016

The Battle of the River Plate took place on December 13, 1939, in the South Atlantic.  On the German side was the pocket battleship Graf Spee, while on the British side were HMS Ajax, HMS Exeter, HMNZS Achilles.  They were later joined by HMS Cumberland.

The Graf Spee displaced 16,000 tons, had a top speed of 29 kt, and her main armament consisted of six 11” guns in two turrets.

The Ajax (after which the town of Ajax, ON is named) and Achilles each displaced 7,400 tons, had top speeds of 33 kt, and their main armament consisted of eight 6” guns in four turrets.  The Exeter, 10,500 tons, 32 kt, and six 8” guns in two turrets.  Finally, the Cumberland 13,500 tons, 32 kt, and eight 8” guns in four turrets.

The outcome of the battle is well-known.  The Exeter suffered fearsome damage, and retired.  The Ajax and Achilles were also damaged.  The Graf Spee suffered damage to her water desalination system and crippling damage to her fuel oil filtration system.  The Graf Spee made for Montevideo harbour, a neutral port.  Three days later, the Spee was scuttled in the River Plate estuary.

What is remarkable about these facts is that the speed and power of any one of these ships – built over eighty years or more ago - was superior to every ship the RCN has and will have when the new construction program is complete.

A Halifax class frigate displaces 4,800 tons, mounts a single 57 mm Bofors gun, and has a top speed of a leisurely 29 kt, less than any British cruiser and equalled by the German pocket battleship.  Yes, the Halifax class carry anti-ship missiles and torpedoes.  But, an anti-ship missile is less versatile than a shell, and a ship with a phalanx Gatling gun can destroy an incoming a missile.

Canada’s new frigates, insofar as there is a plan for them, are unimaginative replacements of the Halifax vessels.  Yes, there will be technical updates, but, qualitatively, the entire new construction amounts to worked-over convoy escort vessels for the North Atlantic should WWII ever break out again.

The RCN is forsaking power and quality for numbers.  If sixteen ships cannot be had, then the job will be done with only twelve, or ten.  What no one seems to grasp is that if half the cost of a frigate is tied up in all the electronics, then you could put one electronic suite into a single, big vessel that displaced the weight of four frigates and recoup the cost of one and a half frigates through savings of electronics!

Four frigates could be merged into one really capable ship that displaces 19,000 tons at a cost potentially less than that of four frigates.  This capital ship could carry all the armament of four frigates, cruise missiles, and naval guns of large calibre.  The electronic suite would have to cover a perimeter less than that of four frigates, which is where you save money.

Yes, we need frigates.  But for Canada to possess an independent, strategic strike capability, she needs a capital ship.  The RCN is not even thinking about one.

It is fashionable in small naval circles to say that the age of the battleship is over, having been superseded by the aircraft carrier.  This is true if your battleship engages unescorted against a modern navy.  But the power of naval gunfire and of cruise missiles is undisturbed if your enemy doesn’t have a carrier, or an air force.

A capital ship is versatile.  Battleships were used for shore bombardment in Normandy, in the Pacific, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon, and fired Tomahawk cruise missiles off Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm.  To this day, the U.S. Congress requires that the USS Wisconsin (a WWII battleship displacing 52,000 tons, 30 kt top speed, and nine 16” guns) be maintained in a state of readiness.  Big calibre guns still have great utility even to the US Navy, and big ships carry really potent weapons systems.  In artillery, there is no substitute for calibre.

Canada’s new naval construction seems to take no cognizance of the enemies the RCN may actually face in the next thirty years.  There is a role for frigates, but real strategic power is found in versatile big ships, not little ones.

Canada today has vastly more economic power than Britain of the 1930s, which had entire fleets of capital ships.  We’re going to spend $26 Billion and get nothing but a fleet of slow-moving dwarfs.

-30-

 A version of this was published in Esprit de Corps magazine.