Ernle Chatfield, 1st Baron Chatfield

Ernle Chatfield, 1933

Alfred Ernle Montacute Chatfield, 1st Baron Chatfield GCB , OM , KCMG , CVO , PC , DL (born September 27, 1873 in Southsea , Hampshire , † November 15, 1967 in Farnham Common , Buckinghamshire ) was a British Admiral of the Fleet and Peer . He had served as flag captain under David Beatty during World War I and commanded both the Atlantic Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet in the interwar period . In the run-up to the Second World War , he played an important role in preparing his country for this global conflict as First Sea Lord from 1933 to 1938 and as Minister for Co-ordination of Defense from 1939/40.

Life

Origin and early career

Chatfield was the eldest son of Admiral Alfred John Chatfield (1831-1910) and his wife Louisa, nee Faulconer. He attended St Andrew's School in Tenby , Welsh , near which his father worked at Pembroke Dockyard , before joining the Royal Navy in 1886 and serving as a cadet on the training ship HMS Britannia in Portsmouth . After a short stay on the battleship Iron Duke , at the end of 1888 he was transferred as a midshipman to the screw corvette Cleopatra , which set out for South America a little later. When he arrived at the South America station , he switched to the local flagship Warspite , on which he served for the next four years. The then flag captain Hedworth Lambton (later called Hedworth Meux) promoted Chatfield, who was promoted to sub-lieutenant before his return to England in 1892 . After being promoted to lieutenant in March 1894 , he was transferred to the battleship Royal Sovereign , flagship of the Channel Fleet .

From 1895 Chatfield completed the course at the Gunnery School HMS Excellent in Portsmouth and in 1897 came to the staff of the artillery training ship HMS Cambridge in Devonport . At the beginning of 1899 he moved as Gunnery Lieutenant on the battleship HMS Caesar of the Mediterranean Fleet, with whose commander, the later First Sea Lord Charles Madden , he soon became a close friend. He was one of the young officers whom then Commander-in-Chief John Fisher consulted. While he agreed with him on training issues, he was at the same time not very happy about his tendency to criticize superiors and his factionalism. After a year in the Mediterranean, Chatfield was transferred to the staff of the HMS Wildfire shooting school in Sheerness . A little later he aroused the displeasure of the Admiralty when he ran a destroyer at high speed up the Thames to Greenwich .

In 1902 he was Gunnery Lieutenant on the new armored cruiser Good Hope , the flagship of the First Cruiser Squadron , where he again served under Madden. After a year of service on this ship and stays in South African and Caribbean waters, he was appointed Commander in December 1903 and was given command of the battleship Venerable , flagship of the Deputy Commander in Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet. In March 1906 he took over as commander of HMS Excellent for three years until he was promoted to captain in the summer of 1909 . A little later he married Lilian Matthews, the sister of one of Excellent's students , with whom he later had three children. After the honeymoon, he became flag captain on the battleship Albemarle of the Atlantic Fleet, Colin Keppel's flagship . In 1911 Chatfield completed the war course at the Royal Naval College Portsmouth before Keppel called him again to command the RMS Medina on its maiden voyage, on which George V was promoted to his coronation durbar in Delhi . After returning to England temporarily on half pay, he was given command of the armored cruiser Aboukir , flagship David Beattys, during the summer maneuvers of 1912 . He then oversaw the completion of the light cruiser Southampton . In early 1913 Beatty asked him to be the flag captain for the battle cruiser Lion .

First World War and the interwar period until 1933

Under Beatty, the commander of the 1st Battlecruiser Squadron of the Grand Fleet , Chatfield took part as flag captain of the Lion in the naval battles at Helgoland in 1914, on the Doggerbank in 1915 and the Skagerrak Battle in 1916. In the latter, the ship narrowly escaped destruction. When Beatty succeeded Admiral Jellicoe as Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Fleet in November 1916 , Chatfield remained his flag captain, first on the Iron Duke and later on the Queen Elizabeth . He remained in this post until April 1919, when he was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George for his services . George V offered him command of the royal yachts, which Sir Alfred turned down, however, and he was subsequently given the position of fourth sea lord . Beatty, who became First Sea Lord that same year, made Chatfield his Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff in 1920 . In this capacity he took part in the Washington Naval Conference as an advisor to Beatty .

In September 1922, Chatfield left the Admiralty and took command of the 3rd Cruiser Squadron of the Mediterranean Fleet. In this capacity he was in the Dardanelles when the Chanak crisis rocked the nation in late 1922 . Only with the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 did his squadron return to Malta .

In 1925 Chatfield returned to the Admiralty as Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy , responsible for shipbuilding, shipyards and armament. In March 1926 he was promoted to Vice Admiral . He remained in the post as Third Sea Lord until the fall of 1928, when he was given command of the Atlantic Fleet . In April 1930, he was promoted to full admiral , in the same capacity for the Mediterranean Fleet and remained in this post until autumn 1932.

First sea lord

Under the 2nd National Government of Ramsay MacDonald , Chatfield, who had been addressed by his middle name Sir Ernle since the late 1920s , was appointed First Sea Lord under the Secretary of the Navy Bolton Eyres-Monsell . He successfully campaigned for the maintenance of a strong battleship fleet as the core of the Navy and even obtained government approval to maintain or build new cruisers (70 instead of 50 units) beyond the limits laid down in the London Naval Agreement of 1930 . Chatfield, who also chaired the influential Chiefs of Staff Committee , initially rejected the appointment of a Minister for Co-ordination of Defense under the Baldwin government in 1936 , but soon came to terms with the incumbent, Thomas Inskip . He used this as a middleman to persuade the government to hold onto the battleship and to spin off the Fleet Air Arm from the Royal Air Force and subordinate it to the Royal Navy (with the exception of the RAF Coastal Command ).

Chatfield, Admiral of the Fleet since May 1935 , also played a role in bringing about the German-British naval agreement of 1935. He was also of the opinion that the Italians who invaded Abyssinia at the end of 1935 had to be accommodated as long as British armaments had not yet started was. In the Spanish Civil War his sympathies were initially on the side of the nationalists under Franco . This did not prevent the international left from praising its later efforts to countermeasures against the de facto naval blockade of the republican side by Italy and Germany.

Chatfield proved to be an experienced and effective ruler of the Royal Navy during this difficult period, which resulted in his tenure being extended twice until he was succeeded by Roger Backhouse in August 1938 . In May 1937 he was raised to hereditary peer as Baron Chatfield , of Ditchling in the County of Sussex.

Minister for Co-ordination of Defense

In the winter of 1938/39, Baron Chatfield headed a commission that investigated the issue of arming the Army in India . The Indian nationalists of the Indian National Congress could not be expected to accommodate this issue, so that the commission finally proposed to modernize the Army in India at British expense.

Back in London in February 1939, Chatfield was appointed Thomas Inskip's successor to the Chamberlain Administration as Minister for Defense Coordination. As such, he tried to maintain a front against Chancellor John Simon's austerity policies , which hampered the necessary rearmament in view of the impending war.

With the outbreak of war in September 1939 and the formation of the Chamberlain War Government , Chatfield, along with the ministers of the three branches of the armed forces, was accepted into the narrow cabinet . However, he soon became skeptical of his role, having lost his previous influential posts as Deputy Chairman of the Committee of Imperial Defense and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee . As early as October 1939, he asked the Prime Minister to abolish the ministerial office and to keep him as a minister without portfolio in the government. In April 1940 Chamberlain accepted the first part of the proposal and appointed then Secretary of the Navy Winston Churchill in Chatfield's place as chairman of the Military Co-ordination Committee . Chatfield was to be rewarded for his resignation according to Chamberlains will with an international mission, but this refused to leave his country in times of war. When Churchill took office as Prime Minister in May 1940, he himself also took over the portfolio of the Minister of Defense . Chatfield was no longer offered a post in Churchill's government.

Late years and offspring

During the war years, Baron Chatfield headed a committee for the evacuation of the London hospitals (for example during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz ). He spoke on various defense matters in the House of Lords and wrote two books: The Navy and Defense (published 1943) and It Might Happen Again (1947). He later retired to Buckinghamshire into private life, where he died in 1967 at the age of 94.

His three children with his wife Lilian were:

• Hon. Angela Chatfield († 1943) ⚭ Sir Patrick Donner;
• Hon. Mary Katherine Chatfield (1911–2009) ⚭ 1947 Henry Duckworth;
• Hon. Ernle David Lewis Chatfield (1917–2007), who succeeded him as 2nd Baron after his death.

literature

• Thomas Anthony Heathcote: British Admirals of the Fleet, 1734-1995. Leo Cooper, Barnsley 2002, ISBN 0850528356 , pp. 40-44.

Web links

Commons : Ernle Chatfield  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Admiral Alfred Ernle Montacute Chatfield, 1st Baron Chatfield on thepeerage.com
• Newspaper article about Ernle Chatfield, 1st Baron Chatfield in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .
• Mr Alfred Chatfield at Hansard (English)

predecessor	Office	successor
Sir Hugh Tothill	Fourth Sea Lord 1919–1920	Sir Algernon Boyle
Sir Cyril Fuller	Third Sea Lord and Controller of the Navy 1925–1928	Sir Roger Backhouse
Sir Hubert Brand	Commander in Chief of the Atlantic Fleet 1929–1930	Sir Michael Hodges
Sir Frederick Field	Commander in chief of the Mediterranean Fleet 1930–1932	Sir William Fisher
Sir Frederick Field	First sea lord 1933–1938	Sir Roger Backhouse
Sir Thomas Inskip	Minister for Co-ordination of Defense 1939–1940	- Winston Churchill (as Minister of Defense )
New title created	Baron Chatfield 1937-1967	Ernle Chatfield