ABSTRACT
Admiral Styer’s visit was timely. During 1946 the Americans were concerned, as they put it, to provide ‘… a more sharply headed up organization …’ to deal with the anti-submarine aspects of Operational Readiness and Fleet Operations. As a result, Styer was assigned additional duty as the ‘Coordinator of Under-sea Warfare’ throughout the USN.1 Early in the following year, Styer, a submariner by profession, and a team of USN officers visited every British anti-submarine establishment, as well as all the command headquarters and staff divisions. The visit impressed Styer and he left with the firm conviction that the British anti-submarine warfare planning system ‘… is excellent, well organized, and is worth consideration for our adoption either in toto or a suitable modified form.’2 He was given a series of briefings, including one by Ashbourne which reviewed the Admiralty’s and Air Ministry’s perception of the problems of future anti-submarine warfare. This only dealt with the ‘Short-Term Problem’, and Ashbourne outlined the naval and air force technical and tactical issues that influenced the choice of defensive dispositions round convoys and Fleets, which, in turn, were driven by two major factors:
(a) Submarines are less likely to be on the surface when concentrating or shadowing, so that the presence of our forces in the deep field is less likely to provide warning of the submarine’s approach, and will be less hindrance to the submarines.
