Royal Navy Home Fleet 1939–41: The last line of defence at Scapa Flow (Fleet, 5)

thank you

I generally respect the author as a most competent scholar after reading his recent brief on the Scapa Raid. It did a great job in giving a detailed, well researched narrative of the event while remain very succinct, a quality most books lack today.I am thus somewhat disappointed that I did not fine the same quality in this one. This book has many highly questionable claims while somehow missed many important publications about the Home Fleet.For example, the book claim that the Home Fleet has no doctrine to follow, which is a wild claim that the author failed to give either a quotation or a footnote to further explain. The Home Fleet, doctrinally, followed the 1939 fighting instruction. I knews this because the 1939 instruction was a major topic in the study of the Home Fleet at the start of the war in the naval war college. It was both developed from and a major deviation from the Great War doctrine of coordinated fleet operation under superior intelligence and put tremendous emphasis on the initiatives on the individual commanders and the offensive spirit to press the attack home. It specially called for the commander officers to leave the commands less 'rigid' to allow better interpretations by the captains in sharp contrast to the most rigid, complicated signal command of the Grand Fleet. The influence of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound and Forbes was most obvious and highly interesting. In 1999, James Levy wrote an essay titled 'Ready or Not? The Home Fleet at the Outset of World War II' (now free to access), which devoted a significant part to discuss it. Yet the paper was either cited in the bibliography list (despite far inferior or irrelevant works being present there) nor even mentioned once in the entire book.Other than pointing out its function as a battle fleet for the Home forces of the Royal Navy and a deterrent against invasion, the author wisely noted that the Home Fleet was tasked with supporting the local Home Comands, namely the three traditional channel commands, local commands in the easterna coasts, and the Northern Patrol under the Orkney command. However, the idea of using the Home Fleet as a 'central reserve' for the Royal, Empire, and later 'Allied' Navies was not mentioned at all. The Admiralty did not 'hoard' a battleship-heavy fleet just for its own function, it was also its reserve waiting to be diverted to other fronts. Admittedly, this was an issue of greater importance later on after 1941. However, even during this period, the Home Fleet played similar roles. Its battleships were used for Operation Fish and then detached to Halifax to cover the Canadian end of the Atlantic line. Its cruisers were detached to the Northern Patrol to assist the AMCs (just to note, no significant publications on the AMC was cited in this book) which saw extensive actions. When the danger of a war against Italy rose, the Home Fleet units, just like in 1935, were detached to Gibraltar and it was a most interesting topic highly related to the formentioned 'doctrine' topic. Admiral North's command in the North Atantlic station was terminated exactly because Pound felt that he failed to command the Force H, a not insignificant home fleet detachedment in his base operating autonomously. Was Pound right? Did his fighting instruction and insistance on the 'initiatives' cause issue? Or perhaps was North not 'Nelsonian' enough to take the initiative? The author talked little about all of these.Another highly interesting topic I expected from the author was the fleet air defence. The failure of the RAF to provide interceptors to protect Scapa Flow was as much a failure of the self-important air staff as the failure of Admiral Forbes himself. Forbes was fully aware of the many issues of Scapa Flow's defense. He personally paid for the blockships out of his own pockets. Yet he decided to move the bulk of the fleet to Scapa Flow, an underdefended forward base for the Battlecrusier Squadron and fleet carriers with no nearby airbase ready at the time . Why? How should we assess it? The book did not talk about it at all.Loch Ewe is a missed opportunity as well. The Special Operation to raid Scapa Flow did not end with the operation in the base. The U-boats were also operation near the alternative anchorage in Loch Ewe and put the Home Fleet heavy units constantly under its threat. How much danger was the fleet capital ships really facing? Could greater damage be down? Given the author's experty and familiarity with the Scapa incident, I expected more.Ultimately, I would not recommend this book, sad as it is. Levy, Roskill, or any other older book is better. I understand that this series sepcifically aims at a journalistic, rather than academic standard and only provides a brief account of the key events. But even that is missing. And we must aspire better. The author can do better. He is most capable of turning small popular publications into highly useful handbooks for those interested in further studies and I hold him to this standard, not that of some random word-smith grinding lines for a paycheck.

The British Royal Navy Home Fleet faced a variety of challenges as the Second World War opened in 1939. Its commanders had huge responsibilities and limited resources. Further, the transition to combat was uneven, as it often is.Author Angus Konstam has provided a concise survey of the Home Fleet during1939-41, struggling to cope with an aggressive opponent in Nazi Germany. The Home Fleet had its good moments and its disasters, as the text reveals. The text includes a nice selection of period photographs, maps, and battle diagrams. Well recommended as an introduction to the topic.

I enjoyed the author's style of mixing an engaging narrative, facts of the battle and analysis