We Are Still One Fleet: U.S. Navy Relations with the British, Canadian, and Australian Navies, 1945–1953

In the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. Navy broke with its traditional avoidance of peacetime alliances by building close ties with the British, Canadian, and Australian navies.This fundamental shift in American naval policy occurred between 1945 and 1953.Drawing upon their close connections with the U.S. Navy during the war, the British and Canadians in particular built a web of connections within the U.S. consisting of naval representatives in Washington as well as liaison and exchange officers.Beginning in late 1946 the British, Canadian, and American militaries agreed to standardize their procedures, doctrine, and equipment.However, the failed efforts to create a common sonobuoy showed that standardization of concepts would occur before standardization of weapon calibers.To that end the three navies wrote common communications and tactical publications that by 1952 allowed their ships to operate together on short notice.These publications were written by the Canada-United Kingdom-United States (CANUKUS) Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW) Working Group, a hitherto little known organization that worked to standardize ASW doctrine and equipment between the three fleets.In addition, the British and American anti-submarine training schools, in Ireland and Key West respectively, began hosting visits by ASW ships and aircrafts from each other's fleet beginning in 1947.Cooperation between the British, Canadians, and Americans was strongest within the field of ASW, reflecting shared concerns about the vulnerability of the Atlantic sea lanes to Soviet submarines.iii Despite the overall movement towards closer ties, individuals could still play a significant role in shaping navy to navy relations.The American naval attaché to Australia, Commander Stephen Jurika, played a major role in cutting off Australian access to classified American information between 1948 and 1950.Rear Admiral George Dyer's style of command damaged relations with the Royal Navy during the Korean War in 1951.Dyer's approach was based on the U.S. Navy's experience fighting the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II which emphasized mobile operations by carrier task forces against a strong airborne threat and a minimal submarine threat.This Pacific style of warfare also shaped the U.S. Navy's approach to exercises with the British, Canadians, and Australians, exercises that occurred with increasing frequency beginning in 1946.These exercises provided wide swathes of personnel from each navy with experience operating with their foreign counterparts and built upon the reservoir of combined operating experience built up during World War II.This regular contact created relationships, confidence, and trust between personnel of these four navies.The importance of this trust was clearly demonstrated when the Korean War broke out in June 1950.The British and Commonwealth navies rapidly joined up with the American naval effort and the Americans placed a senior British officer in command of naval operations on the Korean west coast.The Korean War also served as a test of the progress made in standardization between the British, Canadians, and Americans.Although at the war's outset the British and Commonwealth ships largely adopted American methods and practices, by the end of the war the communications and tactical publications written by CANUKUS were in use in Korean waters.iv Dedicated to Ashley.

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