Thinking the Unthinkable: British and American Naval Strategies for an Anglo-American War, 1918–1931

Abstract

a friendly meeting between the British ambassador to the United States, Sir Esme Howard, and the US secretary of commerce, Herbert Hoover, in July 1927, an unusual conversation took place. The two men had previously agreed that public opinion in both Britain and the United States needed to be convinced of the 'absurdity of contemplating the possibility of war between the United States and the British Empire'. When they met over lunch to make plans, however, their conversation turned to the strategies each side would adopt in the event of war. Hoover predicted that, as Canada would declare its neutrality, the United States would limit its offensive strategy to trying to cut off Britain's transatlantic trade, to which Howard replied that Britain would try to do the same for the United States. Both men assumed that 'the battle fleets of neither country would cross the Atlantic in view of the extreme risk attaching to the loss of capital ships.'1 These were the views of amateur strategists. Naval officers on both sides of the Atlantic held entirely different ideas during the inter-war period about the correct strategy in an Anglo-American war. US war plans drawn up during Hoover's own presidency between 1929 and 1933, for example, were framed on the assumption that as Canada would be a belligerent, naval operations would be strategically defensive, subordinated to an overland invasion of Canada. Meanwhile, in Britain, the navy did plan to send a battle fleet across the Atlantic.