Preface

Summary

This is the final volume of a set of five. The first volume, Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1917–1919, was published in 1991, and the second, Anglo-American Naval Relations, 1919–1939, in 2010. Other publications (including three volumes for the Navy Records Society) have precluded the completion of the series. Mr Robin Brodhurst, author of a biography of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, is editing two volumes corresponding to Pound's time as First Sea Lord (June 1939– October 1943), one covering the years 1939–1941 and the second dealing with the period 1941–1943. The account in this volume begins with Admiral of the Fleet Sir Andrew Cunningham's assumption of the First Sea Lordship on 5 October 1943 and concludes with the formal surrender of Japan on 2 September 1945. This volume is entitled Anglo–American-Canadian Naval Relations, 1943–1945, for the very good reason that, by the end of the war, the Royal Canadian Navy was the third largest in the world, after its two great partners, and Canadian naval and air forces played a major role in anti-submarine warfare in the Atlantic, and rendered important service also in other theatres.

The period covered by this volume was the time in which victory was forged and the three major Allies enjoyed an almost unbroken series of maritime triumphs. In Part I , the relationships of the senior commanders, their services and their countries is discussed. Part II deals with the last stage of the fight against the U-boats, a war which by 1943 had spread to most of the world's seas. Part III deals with the Western Allies’ eventual return to north-west Europe. In Part IV, the final operations in the Mediterranean, including the landings in Southern France and at Anzio in Italy, are covered. Part V recounts the participation of the British Pacific Fleet in the concluding operations against Japan.

I have drawn on the Admiralty, Premiership and Chiefs of Staff Sub-Committee papers at the National Archives, Kew, London. The National Maritime Museum at Greenwich, London, has permitted access to the papers of Admiral of the Fleet Lord Fraser, C-in-C of the British Pacific Fleet. The Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College, Cam-bridge, has allowed access to the papers of Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, the Allied Naval C-in-C for the invasion of north-west Europe.