ABSTRACT
Lack of troops and conflicting priorities made it difficult for the War Office to reinforce Palestine at the onset of the two main outbreaks of violence during the 1936–39 Arab revolt. Cruisers and capital ships could reach a scene of action ashore quickly and carry out a very wide range of activities ashore for lengthy periods. (The same could be said of the destroyers at Aden a decade later.) Imperial policing was one of the roles for which the Mediterranean Fleet existed and, in addition to Royal Marine detachments in the larger warships, the Navy maintained a Landing Party in each ship of destroyer or sloop size and upwards, trained to provide military assistance to the civil power ashore. The ships stationed at Haifa 1936–38 were successful in their tasks there and yet remained available, dependent on priorities, both for current operations caused by the Spanish Civil War and also the major naval conflict then possible in consequence of the Abyssinian crisis. There is no better example of the flexibility and utility of naval forces than at Palestine in this era. The requirement to maintain Landing Parties in surface warships ended in the late 1980s and tasks necessitating forces of that kind are now undertaken on a grander scale by amphibious warfare vessels with an embarked force. These are biased to that role and their capability for purely naval warfare is necessarily more limited.
