During the last five years the center of gravity of the Cold War has moved eastward, and the underdeveloped countries of Africa and Asia have replaced Europe as the primary target of aggressive Communism. This has greatly increased the need for an effective Western military presence in the theater which the British call East of Suez, for this region includes many of these current Communist targets.
The theater is a vast one. It stretches from the Red Sea and the east coast of Africa, across both the Indian Ocean and the East Indian archipelago to the China Sea and the western Pacific, where it overlaps an area dominated by American maritime power.
The overlap enables the British to limit the strength that they have to deploy on the eastern fringe of the East of Suez theater. They maintain a permanent flotilla of small naval craft for local defense at Hong Kong. Other, larger units visit the area to support the Hong Kong flotilla, to conduct exercises with Allied forces, and to show the flag on courtesy visits.
The main strength of the British East of Suez theater force is deployed between the East Indies and the Red Sea. The British have maintained forces in this area for centuries, and for much of this time have been the dominant military power in it—as they became once more at the end of World War II. The subsequent break-up of their imperial system struck at the roots of their power, depriving them of many of their bases and of their theater strategic reserve—the old Indian Army.
Such sweeping changes led to a period of uncertainty of purpose, which lasted until the mid-1950s. Then it began to become apparent that a continued and effective Western military presence in the area was essential to Free World strategy. The British accepted the burden of providing this presence, and began to reshape and reinforce their forces that were still in the area to make them capable of effective action away from the dwindling number of scattered bases that still remained open to them.
This new role for the British East of Suez forces was first stated in an important Defense White Paper published in the spring of 1957 to announce and explain the results of a major review begun after the Suez debacle to determine the broad lines of British defense policy for the next five years. The White Paper naturally reflected the dominant features of worldwide defense thinking at that time—the heyday of the doctrine of “Massive Retaliation” and of the strategic air forces that were designed and equipped for its implementation.
Against such a background, it was inevitable that the main themes of the 1957 White Paper should be priority for the development of an independent British nuclear deterrent intended to prevent major war and the abolition of conscription in favor of smaller, all-regular forces in order to economize the manpower and production resources committed to defense. Both these themes tended to reduce Britain’s capacity for limited war, so it was almost anomalous for the same White Paper to announce a planned increase in naval strength East of Suez specifically to provide a capability for speedy intervention in peacetime emergencies and in situations that seemed liable to lead to limited war.
In implementing this part of their new policy, the British drew heavily on their recent experience at Suez. That short and abortive campaign had taught them important lessons about the sort of forces needed for the effective conduct of brushfire and limited war operations in often politically confused Cold War situations.
The key lesson was the vital importance of being able to put ashore quickly small numbers of high quality light infantry—provided that they managed to achieve surprise and had the support of ground attack aircraft to make up for any lack of the usual military supporting arms.
Another important lesson of Suez was to confirm the value and effectiveness of naval aviation, particularly in limited wars away from established bases. In the months preceding Suez, opponents of the aircraft carrier had been making a particularly vicious and determined attack on the Fleet air arm. Suez, however, gave the lie to the carrier force’s critics.
The Build-up of Strength. Because of the priority given to the nuclear force, the buildup of strength East of Suez announced in the White Paper could proceed only slowly. At first it consisted mainly of resources that became surplus to the needs of other stations. The exception to this was the addition of a Royal Navy aircraft carrier, an intention announced in the White Paper.
This was an important reinforcement. Since the end of the Korean War, Britain’s carrier force had been concentrated at home and in the Mediterranean. The permanent presence of one of these ships East of Suez considerably increased Britain’s ability to exert influence in territories not under its control.
The most obvious weakness of the East of Suez force at this early stage of its build-up was its lack of any means of putting effective numbers of troops ashore in trouble spots at short notice. As soon as the 1957 White Paper had been published, the British Government set to work to rectify this weakness and to translate its broad intentions into detailed policies. This translation divulged the dangers of relying too exclusively on nuclear armaments and recognized the increasing danger of non-nuclear war in both the Far East and Persian Gulf areas.
The next annual Defense White Paper, published at the beginning of 1958, spelled out these dangers in greater detail, and announced measures to deal with them. The White Paper stressed the vastness of the area, the need for speedy intervention and the versatility of sea power; then went on to announce that the Government had decided to provide the East of Suez force with a Commando Carrier as soon as possible.
The Admiralty was thus set the problem of obtaining a ship that could both operate helicopters and carry a full Commando of over 600 Royal Marines. It did not possess any ship equipped for these roles, and could not afford to wait for a new one to be built, so it decided to convert an existing fixed-wing carrier to the new role. The ship selected was HMS Bulwark, a 22,000-ton carrier which had taken part in the Suez operation with a conventional air group.
Preparatory work on conversion drawings began immediately, and this enabled the Bulwark to be taken in hand for modification by Portsmouth Dockyard on her return from her last commission as a fixed-wing carrier towards the end of 1958. This work was done under full naval direction, and so could be given full priority; but other aspects of the conversion were not so fully under Admiralty control. The most important of them was the provision of the helicopter air group. Because of the over-all priority still being given to the nuclear delivery force by the British aerospace industry, there was a shortage of suitable helicopters.
As a result, the Bulwark had to be provided with Whirlwinds, which were primarily antisubmarine helicopters. They had a limited lifting capacity even under favorable conditions, and their performance was significantly reduced under the tropical conditions that prevail in most parts of the East of Suez theater for a large part of the year.
In these circumstances, the converted Bulwark was inevitably something of a makeshift, but within her limitations she was an effective new weapons system.
The Bulwark was commissioned for service in her new role with the 600-man Number 42 Royal Marine Commando embarked, in January 1960 and, after completing a short period of work-up and trials in home waters, sailed for East of Suez that same spring.
Shortly after the Bulwark's arrival, the conclusion of the negotiations for the independence of Cyprus enabled further reinforcements to be moved east from the Mediterranean. They included an important additional capacity for transporting and landing military forces in the form of an amphibious warfare squadron consisting of a headquarters ship (small), three LSTs and three LCTs. The arrival of this squadron provided the East of Suez theater with a heavy lift capacity for armor and artillery which was complementary to the Bulwarks light infantry force, but which suffered from one serious limitation— the slow speed of its LSTs and LCTs, which had proved a drag on the Suez assault convoys four years earlier.
The total force now East of Suez was still a small one for so large a theater, but with the Bulwark and the amphibious warfare squadron, British power in the area now had a new dimension. The limited war capability envisaged by the Government three years earlier was taking definite shape, and had been created in time for the unknown crises that lay in the future.
The Kuwait Crisis. The test of the new East of Suez capability came in the summer of 1961 as a result of a change in the relationship between Britain and the Persian Gulf Sheikdom of Kuwait. Up to this time, Kuwait, although effectively independent, had had the formal status of a British Protected State. This rather old-fashioned situation could too easily be represented as colonialistic by aggressive anti- Western propaganda; so, on 19 June, the two countries put their relations on a new footing in a Treaty of Friendship, under which Kuwait became formally and completely independent.
Britain gave the new state guarantees of assistance, should it request them in time of need. These guarantees had to be implemented far sooner than anyone could have foreseen. Within a week, Premier Abdul Karim Kassem, the fiery and intemperate dictator of Iraq, called a special press conference at which, using the most provocative and insulting language, he laid claim to the territory of Kuwait. The Iraq; press and radio promptly took up the claim in a campaign notorious for the violence of its threats.
This brought about an immediate crisis. The Kuwaitis rallied behind their Sheik, but had no hope of resisting attack unaided. The Iraqi armed forces were nearly as numerous as the whole population of Kuwait, and Kassem’s army was well-equipped with modern Russian arms, bought with the aid of an enormous loan granted on very easy terms. Much of this army was in the north, where Kurdish discontent with Kassem’s rule was about to boil over into open rebellion; but a complete infantry division had remained in the south. It included an armored brigade stationed near Basra, a mere 50-mile drive along a good road from Kuwait.
Kuwait could put up no worthwhile resistance to the Iraqis. Her own army consisted of a single battalion group. It was well- equipped, as befitted so rich a state, and its personnel were tough Bedouins, but there were only 1,500 of them. So small a force would not even suffice to hold up an Iraqi attack and win time for Kuwait’s friends to come to her aid.
The situation was extremely serious, because a successful Iraqi seizure of Kuwait would alter the delicate balance of power in the Middle East, and alter it moreover in favor of an Iraq that was already heavily committed to the Soviet Union, and which seemed likely to fall under the control of its native Communist Party at any moment.
This was as alarming to the other Arab countries as it was to the nations of the Free World, and several of them joined Britain in sending offers of aid.
The difficulty facing the Sheik was that, if he were to take up these offers, Kassem might well treat this as an act of aggression and launch an immediate attack. This meant that it would be safe for the Sheik to ask for aid only if he could be sure that the requested help would arrive almost as soon as the news of his action reached Bagdad.
Only Britain could provide aid with the speed and strength necessary to deter aggression. Britain had, however, to act with the greatest caution in preparing for intervention at short notice. It also had to guard against the danger of provoking an Iraqi attack. As a Western power, its position was especially delicate, and any overt preparations it might have made would have been open to misrepresentation by Kassem, who might have used them to try to foment latent anti-Western and anti-colonial passions, in an attempt to isolate Kuwait from the other Arab countries.
The British were determined to give Kassem no opportunity to do this, and took the greatest care to avoid any action that might be labelled provocative or imperialist. This made it impossible for them to move any troops or land-based aircraft nearer to Kuwait in anticipation of a call for aid. They did not even take the risk of reinforcing the two battalions stationed in the island state of Bahrein, some 250 miles from Kuwait.
In these circumstances, it was Britain’s recently acquired seaborne limited war capability that enabled it to make dispositions which would allow it to respond quickly to an appeal for aid from Kuwait. By exploiting the secrecy and neutrality of the high seas, the Royal Navy was able to assemble a spearhead force in the immediate vicinity of Kuwait, without providing Premier Kassem with any excuse for either aggression or anti-Western propaganda.
Both elements of Britain’s seaborne military forces were within reach of Kuwait when the crisis broke. A small force of armor was already afloat in the Persian Gulf, embarked in an LST, HMS Striker. It was a detachment provided by the British forces in Aden. The local command had foreseen that the slow speed of the amphibious warfare squadron’s LSTs and LCTs would make it impossible to transfer armor quickly enough from Aden to the Gulf in a sudden emergency, so for some time one of the LSTs had been stationed in the Gulf with a full load of tanks embarked. The tank crews and their tanks were changed round by periodic reliefs; and with the good luck that so often attends wise planning, the latest reliefs were also in the Gulf, embarked in a civilian LST hired for the ferry work. This meant that a complete squadron of Centurion tanks was available.
The Bulwark was at Karachi when the crisis began, having put in there to make a courtesy call and to refuel on her way from East Indian waters to the Muscat area, where she was scheduled to carry out special hot weather trials. She was ordered to cut short her stay, and proceed at high speed to Kuwait. She sailed from Karachi on 29 June.
A variety of other naval units, including the fleet carrier HMS Victorious were also ordered to the Kuwait area to provide support and cover for any landing and military operations.
There was just sufficient time to achieve an adequate concentration before the crisis came to a head. Until 29 June, Kassem had seemed content to watch reactions to his claim to Kuwait, without doing anything to enforce it; but, on that day, intelligence reports began to indicate that Iraqi reinforcements, consisting mainly of armored units were moving to the Basra area.
The next day, after receiving further threatening reports, the Sheik of Kuwait asked his allies formally for military aid. The British Government replied that it would honor its engagements and Saudi Arabia made a a similar announcement.
The Bulwark was then steaming at high speed up the Gulf, and was sent orders to land her Commando the next day, Saturday 1 July. She arrived off her objective next morning and found the LST Striker, HMS Meon, headquarters ship of the amphibious warfare squadron, and the frigate HMS Loch Alvie already on the spot.
This must have been an anxious moment for the commanding officer of HMS Bulwark, the senior naval officer present. The operation he had been ordered to undertake was a bold one which involved a calculated risk. The force had no fighter protection, HMS Victorious was still on her way from the Singapore area, and there were no shore-based fighters at Kuwait; so the ships would have to rely on their guns for defense against any air attack. They were also exposed to the possibility of attack by 12 ex-Russian patrol boats based at Basra.
Apart from its own guns, the British ships had two other defenses against these two threats. The first was surprise, that cardinal factor in war; their presence would not be confirmed until they began landing operations, and it seemed reasonable to expect that a considerable time would elapse before the Iraqis could receive the news and react to it. This was the main factor that influenced the British in taking their calculated risk, and shows that the lesson of their ultra-caution at Suez had sunk in. The other defense was a natural one, and a matter of chance: the weather. There was a wind of over 30 knots, which was raising a sandstorm that reduced visibility to about a mile and gave the ships concealment from any hostile aircraft.
Since the Kuwaiti army was already deployed on Mutla Ridge, the best defensive position north of the capital, to guard against an overland attack, the first task given to the Bulwark's Commando was to secure Kuwait airport against a coup de main by Iraqi airborne forces. This was vital; the airport was essential both as a fighter base and for the transport aircraft that would fly in the main British force.
The Bulwark had all 16 of her helicopters serviceable, and the high wind enabled the Whirlwinds to take off with a full load despite the heat. Their greatest difficulty was finding their objective in the sandstorm. A Kuwaiti helicopter sent to guide them in lost the way itself, but, with the help of directions from the Bulwark's radar, the first lift, a maximum effort sortie, reached its objective shortly after midday and put down the first group of over 60 Royal Marines.
As soon as this airhead had been established, the Bulwark took advantage of the cover provided by the sandstorm to move as close inshore as possible and anchor. This enabled her to operate her helicopters in a stream, sending them inshore singly or in small groups as soon as they were loaded, which was far quicker than waiting until large groups were loaded and ready. The last man reached the airfield by 1700.
Well before that, R.A.F. Hunter jets had begun to arrive from Aden to provide an air defense and ground support capability. In addition, two companies of infantry flew in from Bahrein, and the Striker landed her tanks over a beach in Kuwait harbor.
By nightfall, therefore, a proper airhead had been established. The airfield was held by infantry and armor, and was covered by the Kuwaitis holding Mutla Ridge. Naval gunfire support was available, with more ships on the way, and the process of building up a land-based air force had gotten off to a good start. Kuwait was already secure against a coup de main, although it was still vulnerable to a deliberate attack in strength. Finally everything was now ready for the arrival of the main British force.
The Bulwark spent the night landing her commando’s transport. It proved a lengthy task. The vehicles were too heavy to be lifted ashore by helicopter, so they had to be ferried five miles from ship to shore. It was not an easy task in the prevailing wind, and even with the help of the amphibious warfare squadron it took the whole night to land some 50 vehicles.
Meanwhile the Commando had been ordered to move up to Mutla to occupy defensive positions on that key tactical feature. A small advance party reached the area to reconnoiter the ground on the evening of the first day, the main body moved up first thing next morning using the helicopters, their own transport, and hired local vehicles to speed the move.
The build-up of strength now began in earnest. The basic plan was to provide a reinforced brigade group, formed around a nucleus provided by 24th Infantry Brigade, which was stationed in strategic reserve in Kenya, precisely to meet emergencies of this kind. Its own infantry battalions were to be reinforced by a parachute battalion and parachute field battery from Cyprus and by a second Royal Marine commando and a squadron of armored cars from Aden.
Another infantry brigade, normally based in the United Kingdom, but actually on its way to a NATO exercise in Portugal, was diverted to Kenya to replace the 24th Infantry Brigade and acclimatize itself, in order to be available as a reserve for the forces actually committed.
Number 45 Royal Marine Commando was the first of the new arrivals, and by the evening of 2 July there were over 3,000 British troops in Kuwait. It was on this day, 2 July, that Britain asked the U.N. Security Council to consider the threat to peace created by the Iraqi threats to Kuwait. This was a measure which Britain had felt unable to take while Kuwait was wide open to attack, for fear of provoking Kassem to violence.
From this point the build-up of British forces went on smoothly and without incident. Apart from the ground troops already mentioned, further air force reinforcements included two squadrons of Canberra medium bombers and a second squadron of Hunters. The arrival of HMS Victorious provided not only an air group of all-weather fighters and fighter/ground attack aircraft, but also one of the most powerful and modern air defense radars in service anywhere. A second angled- deck carrier, HMS Centaur on her way home from East of Suez was ordered back to the Persian Gulf, and passed through the Suez Canal with her escort of three destroyers on the night of 5 July.
The Bulwark meanwhile was providing a variety of logistic and administrative support both for her own Commando and for the rest of the military force. The arrival of the army units had allowed her commando to be withdrawn from the Mutla position to provide a highly mobile reserve held in readiness to move out in its helicopters to counter any attack around the desert flank.
On 8 July, the intervention began to achieve its purpose by producing an important reaction from Kassem. The dictator called another press conference to explain that his earlier remarks had been designed to do no more than establish a formal claim to Kuwait. He refused to withdraw the claim, but offered assurances that he would not try to enforce it by aggression.
With this statement, the crisis came off the boil, and the main problem now became one of providing the continued security of Kuwait in case Kassem had another change of mind. The strength in which the British had intervened was one guarantee of this. It had been designed, by the size of force deployed, to demonstrate Britain’s complete determination to stand by Kuwait. This was something that Kassem was unlikely to forget, but it was no substitute for adequate strength on the ground to hold off a surprise attack.
The difficulty was how to provide this strength for a prolonged period. Kuwait lacked the manpower to do it from her own resources, and the British were most unwilling to maintain a continued military presence in an independent Arab state. In these circumstances, both countries looked to the Arab League, of which Kuwait was now a member, to provide a force to relieve the British and give long-term protection. There was a precedent for this in the arrangements that had been made under rather similar conditions in Jordan in 1958.
It took some time to complete the negotiations about the force, and then to assemble the troops and transport them to Kuwait. The formal agreement between Kuwait and the Arab League on the composition of the force and its terms of service was signed on 12 August, but the first contingent did not reach Kuwait until 9 September. This was in sharp contrast to the speed of the British intervention at the beginning of July. The total Arab League force was 2,500 men. The largest contingents came from Saudi Arabia and Jordan, with smaller numbers from the Sudan, Tunisia, and the U.A.R. The British ground forces began to withdraw on 19 September; the Bulwark and her commando, having performed their specialized role of advanced guard in the opening phase, had been withdrawn long before this.
Apart from winning time for Kuwait to outlive Kassem, the intervention had another and more positive result. It confirmed the importance of the British East of Suez forces, and led to their being further strengthened.
The most obvious result was the conversion of a second carrier to the commando role, and an increase in the strength of the Royal Marines to enable them to form an extra commando. The decision about the carrier had, in fact, been taken some time before, and HMS Albion was already in hand at Portsmouth. She was a ship of the same class as the Bulwark, but was much more extensively modified to incorporate the lessons learned from her sister ship.
Perhaps the most important development was the provision of a new helicopter, the turbine-engined Westland Wessex, which was a much better weapon than the Whirlwind. It had greatly increased lifting power, particularly under tropical conditions, and so could carry more men and put the whole commando ashore in far fewer sorties. In addition, it could lift practically all the vehicles, solving the problem that had embarrassed the Bulwark at Kuwait.
Another important new development was the provision of a measure of integrated fire support for the commando to enable them to tackle tougher tasks without having to rely on the presence of other units. This took two forms. In the first place a troop of the Royal Artillery equipped with modern light guns was attached to each Commando, and embarked with it in the carrier to provide integrated artillery support by day or by night. The other innovation was the arming of the helicopters to enable them to provide a measure of fire support in addition to their primary role of troop lift. They were fitted to carry both fixed forward-firing weapons to provide neutralizing and harassing fire and with a short range guided missile to enable them to tackle targets of precision, including tanks.
The Albion was the first ship to be provided with these new features; after she had commissioned for operational service, they were incorporated retrospectively in the Bulwark.
The pay-off for the increasing resources put into the mobile East of Suez forces came at the beginning of 1964, after the Zanzibar revolution had sparked off army mutinies in the newly independent East African states of the British Commonwealth. This new and sudden crisis occurred at a difficult time. British forces East of Suez were already heavily committed. Civil war in the Yemen, meant that considerable forces had to guard the frontiers of Aden and the South Arabian Federation; other resources, including a considerable portion of the mobile force, were committed to aiding Malaysia to withstand the Indonesian “confrontation.”
At the time of Kuwait, Britain would have lacked the resources to act with decisive speed and force in a third crisis, but the continued build-up had now given it sufficient reserves of strength to do so. What happened demonstrated the new flexibility of its forces. The only true commando carrier on the station, the Albion, was committed in the East Indies, but the conventional carrier, HMS Centaur had just arrived at Aden outward bound from the United Kingdom.
The order for this ship to switch to the commando role was given during the forenoon of 20 January. She sent ashore some of her fixed-wing aircraft and in their place embarked No. 45 Royal Marine Commando, with its vehicles and 70 tons of military stores. The Centaur’s own squadron of six antisubmarine Wessex helicopters switched to the troop lift role and were reinforced by two large R.A.F. Belvedere helicopters from the forces in Aden.
When the Centaur left Aden in the early hours of the next day, she had over 600 extra men on board. Although most of them were accommodated in her hangar, she was still able to operate her Sea Vixen all-weather fighters. Two days later, the independent government of Tanganyika asked for British aid to suppress her mutinous troops. The Centaur, which was already off Dar-es-Salaam, received her order shortly after midnight on 24 January. The first lift of commandos left her decks at 0610 and broke the mutiny in a single swift action. There was a sharp exchange of fire at the entrance to their barracks and just before 0700, the mutineers ceased fire and began to surrender.
This success did not complete the commandos’ task. That afternoon, a company of them was flown 340 miles inland in locally hired aircraft to Tabora, where another mutinous battalion was stationed. Before midnight, the Royal Marines had surprised these mutineers, seized their armory and arrested their leaders.
Almost simultaneously, and again acting at the request of the independent national governments, British army units stationed in Uganda and Kenya suppressed the mutinies in those countries.
These swift, but humane, actions extinguished brushfires that threatened to consume three new and independent states, giving their properly constituted governments a renewed lease of life.
The need for a Western military presence in the East of Suez theater has grown steadily more apparent during the 1960s. The threat of further brushfire situations in eastern Africa remains very real. The forces available to the national governments in that area are so small in proportion to population that there is a constant possibility that a handful of determined men could carry through a successful revolution. The situation is a standing invitation to aggressive Communism, which although thwarted in 1964 on the mainland, did succeed in establishing an offshore bridgehead in Zanzibar. Such a situation demands constant vigilance by the Free World.
Even more dangerous situations exist in several other parts of the theater, some of which have already passed beyond the brush- fire stage. The last 18 months have seen the Indonesian confrontation of Malaya grow steadily more serious. If Britain had not shown its complete determination to support Malaya by deploying very powerful forces in its support, the situation would in all probability have degenerated into open war.
The greatest danger area of all lies to the north of Malaya, where the growing strength and cohesion of Communist China represents a steadily increasing threat to every neutralist or Free World state along the great arc that extends from India around to Korea. Many of the threatened states on this arc lie in the East of Suez area. Now that China has a nuclear saber to rattle, its threat to India, the most important of these states, has greatly increased. This creates a new defensive commitment for India’s friends that seems likely to last for at least a generation.
Further east, the mainland states of southeast Asia, especially those nations bordering on long-tormented South Vietnam have the same need of support against the menace of Communist China and its tools.
To counter these growing dangers, the British have continued to build up their East of Suez forces. In the 1965 White Paper on Defense, the Government has re-affirmed its determination to make a major contribution to the preservation of peace and stability in this troubled and threatened area, and is providing a variety of forces for this purpose.
Sea power is perhaps the most important ingredient of those forces. It has a vital role to play in every threatened area. It provides the primary means of dealing with brushfire situations; it gives general support to the ground and air forces, where these are the first line of defense, and it provides the vital link between all the threatened areas and the sources of Free World power.
The naval forces provided to fulfill these roles now exceed 80 ships. They are divided between the two commands into which the East of Suez theater has been split—the Middle East (Aden) and the Far East (Singapore). The Indian sub-continent is the natural boundary between the two commands, both of which have unified headquarters with an inter-service staff serving a single over-all Commander-in-Chief.
Some of the East of Suez ships are allocated on a relatively permanent basis to one or the other command, and would only be deployed outside its boundaries in a major crisis; other units exploit their inherent mobility to move between the two commands as the day-to-day situation demands. This is particularly the case with the aircraft carriers and their screening and logistic support ships.
The declared policy for these key units is to maintain a total of three of them, including the commando carriers, East of Suez. The usual arrangement seems to be for the total to be made up of two fixed-wing and one commando carrier—but the arrangement is a flexible one and for several months in 1965 there were two fixed-wing and two commando carriers in the theater.
The main carrier strength seems to be currently concentrated in the Far East Command, but the movement of these ships appears to be arranged so that one of them is usually available to deal with any sudden crisis in the Middle East Command. The planning of their movements to achieve this may be simplified by the fact that those units on rotation must transit the Middle East Command.
The make-up of the carrier force demonstrates the priority that is being given to having maritime forces of the highest possible operational effectiveness East of Suez. Thus, at the end of 1964, the Royal Navy’s largest and best-equipped carrier, HMS Eagle, arrived on the station, having been sent there as soon as she had worked up to full effectiveness after a major modernization which lasted over four years and cost twice as much as her original new construction price.
It is not possible to give a detailed breakdown of the other naval units deployed East of Suez, partly because of a veil of security drawn over ships engaged on semi-operational tasks and partly because the ships are constantly changing as they rotate between home and overseas service. The naval force kept in the Middle East Command appears, however, to have remained fairly constant since the beginning of 1965 when the latest Defense White Paper stated it as being made up of one escort squadron, the amphibious warfare squadron, and one minesweeping squadron.
One of the roles of these forces is to maintain a naval presence in the Persian Gulf, where they come under the local subcommand of the Senior Naval Officer, Persian Gulf, who is based in Bahrein. Besides the ships and craft, the Middle East Command naval forces usually appear to include fleet air arm helicopters and a Royal Marine commando, both based ashore in Aden. These forces have been engaged in frontier skirmishes in the South Arabian Federation, but they are also available at very short notice to be embarked to deal with a sudden brushfire crisis such as the East African mutinies.
A natural consequence of the Indonesian confrontation is that the greater part of the East of Suez naval forces are currently deployed in the other command, the Far East. When the old light fleet carrier, HMS Triumph, was sent to Singapore late in 1964 after conversion into a heavy support ship, it was stated that she would be used to provide maintenance facilities for two of the new County- class guided missile destroyers, three escort squadrons, and two minesweeping squadrons.
Royal Navy strength seems to have remained at this level since then. Many of the ships are engaged in active operations countering the confrontation. They are assisted in this by ships of the Royal Australian Navy and the Royal New Zealand Navy, as well as by the ships and craft of the young, but rapidly expanding, Royal Malaysian Navy. Shore-based fleet air arm aircraft and helicopters are also engaged, and so are Royal Marine commandos.
There are two main operational areas, the territory of Sabah in Borneo, and the waters of the Malacca Straits around Singapore and the Malayan mainland, where Malaysian and Indonesian territories are only a few miles apart.
The Royal Navy maintains a standing force to patrol the Sabah coast. It is usually commanded by a frigate guardship. The most important naval contribution, however, is, fleet air arm helicopters disembarked from refitting commando carriers. There are no roads in inland Sabah, and travel by river or track is slow and laborious. Helicopters working from extemporized bases have revolutionized the movements of fighting men and their supplies, in sharp contrast to affairs across the border where badly supplied Indonesians have had to live off the country—and its inhabitants.
An important part of the helicopters’ work has been to rush medical emergency cases among the native I ban to far away hospitals for proper treatment—living evidence being provided by the plump young baby who was formally christened “Helicopter” for the very good reason that she would never have been born at all if her mother had not been whisked over her native forests for proper attention in a difficult birth.
Helping the Iban in this way, and living among them in not much more luxurious conditions, the helicopter personnel have played a big part in a “hearts and minds” campaign that has won their wholehearted support for the security forces.
In the other main operational area, the main naval task has been one of endless search and patrol to prevent Indonesian saboteurs and infiltrators from reaching Malaya. Much of this tedious task is done by coastal minesweepers which were built in large numbers in the early 1950s to counter a quite different Communist threat. These handy craft have proved highly suitable for the patrols that are such a feature of guerrilla war at sea. They are supported by frigates. The tedium of the task is relieved by occasional captures, which have sometimes involved sharp exchanges of fire. Ships that have achieved successes have included the frigates HMAS Teal and HMS Ajax, and the minesweepers HMS Fiskerton and HMS Wilkieston.
These operational commitments have not prevented the East of Suez forces from carrying out other important duties, including major exercises. The carrier HMS Victorious and the frigate HMS Whitby took part in this year’s SEATO exercise, Sea Horse, together with four major units of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary force of logistic supply ships.
The Far East Command held its own major naval exercise in March 1965. Over 40 Australian, British, Malaysian, and New Zealand ships took part, including two fleet carriers, a Commando carrier, and the Australian Light Fleet Carrier, HMAS Melbourne. Other regular exercises are the Jet series by Commonwealth ships, in which units from Australia, Britain, Canada, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Pakistan usually participate; and the Midlink series of SEATO exercises.
The second half of 1965 was marked by a succession of major crises in the East of Suez theatre. These shattering events left the longterm situation strangely unchanged. Their main effect has been to confirm and emphasize the requirement for a Western military presence, without significantly altering the nature and role of that presence.
With so many commitments to meet, the build-up of British naval strength East of Suez seems likely to continue. The present force is already a well-balanced and formidable one, but it is relatively thinly spread across its enormous theater. Future reinforcements will include units ordered in the early days of the build-up, specially to meet the needs of the theater. The most important are two new assault ships of the amphibious dock transport type, now nearing completion.
So the increase of strength will go on, as it has gone on ever since the experience of Kuwait proved the soundness of the basic strategic concept of providing a Western military presence based on sea power in this area. The effort that the British are making to do this ranks as perhaps the most important of their contributions to the defense of the Free World.