INTRODUCTION

By the sumnler of 1917, Britain was beginning to run short of manpower. Sustaining for the first time a mass conscript army of millions, subject to enormous casualties, Britain was also building up incomparably the world’s greatest air force and at the same time functioning as the principal arsenal, coal supplier and industrial base of the Entente. In these circumstances, the Royal Navy was finding it difficult to man new ships, by this time largely light cruisers and flotilla craft. It was proposed that several pre-dreadnoughts of the Channel Fleet should be paid off and replaced by four of the older dreadnoughts from the Grand Fleet, themselves to be superseded by four American battleships [244], The Navy Department declined the request on several grounds. American admirals (Sims being the notable exception) remained faithful to the rigid Mahanite ‘fetish’ of battlefleet concentration and were resolved not to dribble it away in penny packets. They feared that the United States might have to meet an undiminished German fleet alone should the shaky Entente collapse. Even if this were not the case, the untrustworthy Japanese might take advantage of the scattering of American naval power to switch sides and stab the United States in the back. The US Navy had a paranoid fear of such a strike but even more so of a two-ocean conflict with both Germany and Japan. Furthermore, the British had given little indication of the use to which they intended to put the American dreadnoughts and certainly nothing of an offensive nature. The US Navy was equally short of trained personnel and four battleships with full war complements would drain the pool still further. Daniels believed the British supply system would be put under unacceptable pressure by their demands. In any case, he observed to Wilson, the British already enjoyed a capital ship superiority over the Germans of 2.5:1 and therefore required no reinforcement. Sims, exasperated, pointed out that, since the United States was fighting alongside the United Kingdom, the Grand Fleet represented the concentrated battlefleet and thus America was at liberty to strengthen it without rejecting Mahan’s doctrine.

Washington remained adamant in its refusal until Benson himself visited the war zone and was impressed with the awesome might of the Grand Fleet and the warmth of his reception.