Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

2 Missing Pieces
By the outbreak of WW II technological advances had bred major tactical developments,
particularly in the US Navy (USN) and the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN), where the
power of air warfare had been brought to the naval battlefront. 3 As later events were
to demonstrate, it was now feasible to conduct that contest of wills over markedly
longer distances (250nm as a rule of thumb) and to achieve decisive results at that
range. Cooperation with a land-based air force could extend the radius of engagement
to over 1000nm. Control of the sea now also required control of the airspace over it.
This fact had to be learned the hard way — by the Italians at Taranto; by the Royal Navy
(RN) in Greece, Crete and through the loss of HM Ships Prince of Wales and Repulse
off the Malayan coast in December 1941 to Japanese aircraft; and, most dramatically,
by the USN at Pearl Harbor. The Japanese — master exponents of the new warfighting
methods — had this lesson read back to them by the Americans at Midway in June 1942.
And as the maritime battlefield expanded, so did the need for coordinated operational
intelligence support.
Some navies had the capacity to carry their wide-area air defence systems with them
in the form of strike and defensive aircraft operating from carriers. Those navies
without carriers were now compelled to operate either where effective cooperation
from land-based air power could be provided, or to shelter under an ally’s air umbrella,
to limit operations to times and conditions unsuitable for air operations, or to operate
only in areas relatively free from enemy air capability. The RAN fell into the latter
‘have-not’ category. 4
Finally, during WWII a plethora of amphibious operations created new rules for
command of the sea. The only recent Western experience was the British landings at
Gallipoli in 1915, and most of the amphibious tactics, instructions and material used
in WWII had to be created almost from scratch, while ‘amphibious warfare’ was not
even listed in the USN’s 1934 edition of War Instructions. The defence of beachheads
required specialised tactics and equipment to seize control of the contiguous seas and
hold them against possible stiff resistance. The loss of the ability to manoeuvre — to
choose a battlefield best suited to one’s own capabilities and otherwise avoid battle
— which had always characterised naval operations, now placed navies in situations
akin to those endured by their army brethren. These operations, in particular, called
for excellent operational intelligence.
• • • • •
Intelligence is the finished product that emerges from a number of interrelated and
largely sequential activities — the ‘intelligence cycle’. Planning and direction resulting
from a commander’s statement of information requirements are followed by collection
and processing, during which the information collected is converted into a useable
form. The production phase fuses relevant information from all sources to meet the