A British ‘Unofficial’ Aviation Mission and Japanese Naval Developments, 1919–1929

Journal of Strategic Studies

Volumn 5, Issue 3, 1982, Pages 416-439

  Ferris, John ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33044494167     PISSN: 01402390     EISSN: 1743937X     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01402398208437125     Document Type: Article

References (69)

1. All references cited are from British sources. Consequently, this study cannot pretend to accuracy upon the motivations behind the Japanese actions described. Further, most references cited are from British Foreign Office archives. It is, therefore, impossible to describe the departmental dialectic behind many of the Air Ministry, War Office and Admiralty actions described. Except where otherwise indicated, all references are from the Public Record Office, London.
2. FO 371/5358. Japanese Embassy to Foreign Office, No. 101, 6.10.20; Air Ministry to Foreign Office, S.13449/S.6, ‘Secret and Urgent’.
3. FO 371/5362. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1919’.
4. FO 371/5366. Tokyo Embassy despatch No. 324, 12.6.20; Captain Marriot, ‘Summary’.
5. Jentschura, Jung and Michael, Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy (London: 1977). Arms and Armour Press. The Japanese built few native designed submarines until 1921.
6. Captain S. Roskill (ed.), Documents Relating to the Royal Naval Air Service, London, Royal Navy Records Society, 1970. Geoffrey Till, Air Power and the Royal Navy (London: Jane’s Publishing Company, 1979).
7. FO 371/3819. Tokyo No. 332, 3.8.19. (Rear-Admiral Ley, No. 19, 28.7.19.) The Imperial Japanese Navy possessed 10 foreign designed but Japanese manufactured seaplanes, with 10 pilots, 14 other officers, and 114 other ranks, in January 1914. FO 371/2013. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1913’.
8. FO 371/9226. Tokyo No. 500, 29.10.23 (Colvin No. 19); FO 371/10309, Tokyo No. 202 (Colvin, 1.4.24).
9. AIR 5/810. RAF Monthly Intelligence Report, No. 13, 5.22.
10. R. M. Groves Diary, Imperial War Museum. AIR 6/13. 63rd Air Council Meeting, 22.11.18.
11. FO 371/5367. Bentinck to Wellesley, 16.10.20; Admiralty to Foreign Office, M.03137, 20.11.20; Air Ministry to Foreign Office, S.13901/S.6, 22.11.20. The Admiralty correctly noted that the Japanese were negotiating for aircraft sales with British firms, a fact which the Air Ministry curiously denied.
12. FO 371/3819. Tokyo No.288, 2.7.19 (Woodruffe No.44, 30.6.19); FO 800/155. Unnumbered Tokyo telegram, Alston to Lord Curzon, 30.9.19; FO 371/3819. Tokyo No. 332, 3.8.19 (Ley No. 19, 28.7.19).
13. FO 371/3823. Tokyo No. 274, 12.11.19 (Ley No. 21, 30.10.19).
14. FO 371/5358. Tokyo No. 426, 22.9.20 (Marriot 19.9.20, containing ‘Naval Department, Ministerial Secret’, K. Nomura to Marriot, 25.8.20).
15. FO 371/5358. Tokyo No. 462 (O’Gowan 28.9.20). There is no record of an official Japanese Army request for a British Air Mission, but it may well have been informally raised with the Air Ministry.
16. FO 371/5358. 12.20. ‘Memorandum’ (No author cited).
17. FO 371/5358. Admiralty to Foreign Office, M.02980, ‘Minutes’.
18. ADM 167/56. Board of Admiralty Minute, 980, 8.10.19.
19. ADM 1/8655. Dreyer 24.12.24, Field 9.1.25.
20. ADM 1/8676. Contains a specific example involving Vickers and the IJN from 1925.
21. FO 371/5358. S. 13449/A.6, op. cit., Admiralty to Foreign Office, M.02980, ‘Secret and Immediate’, 7.10.20.
22. Ibid., Wellesley 17.10.20; M.02980, 22.10.20 ‘Minutes’; War Office to Foreign Office, 027/974 (MIR), 5.10.20. See also Domville Diary, 15.10.20; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
23. FO 371/5358. Eliot, Tokyo No. 423, 13.11.20.
24. Ibid., Curzon 8.11.20, 15.11.20; Lampson 9.11.20; Foreign Office to Nagai, F 2761/193/23, 12.11.20; Nagai to Foreign Office, 25.11.20; Nagai to Curzon, ‘Private’, 30.11.20; Foreign Office to Nagai, F 3188/193/23, 22.11.20.
25. AIR 5/209, Admiralty-Coastal Area Head Quarters Conference, 29.11.20. ADM 1/8571, DCNS 11.3.20 refers to a file, which apparently no longer exists, dealing with the ‘Hydrodrome’ aircraft carrier.
26. AIR 2/234 (Annex to S.22012).
27. CAB 5/3 C.I.D. Paper, 120-C. A somewhat more favourable appreciation of Japanese pilots appeared in the RAF Intelligence Report of May 1922. AIR 5/810, op. cit.
28. FO 371/6693. Lampson 20.7.21.
29. FO 371/5367. Japanese Embassy to Foreign Office No. 130, 7.12.20. Lampson 9.12.20, Wellesley 10.12.20.
30. FO 371/6693. Guest to Curzon, 4.8.21.
31. FO 371/11023. Sempill 7.5.24.
32. FO 371/6693. Foreign Office to Air Ministry F 1439/421/23, 3.5.21; Air Ministry to Foreign Office S. 13415, 9.6.21. Sempill, however, in spring 1922 argued against Brackley’s desire to leave by saying that ‘as we are out here as direct representatives of H.M. Air Force’, he should not leave until the Japanese were placed upon a ‘sound footing’. F. N. Brackley, Brackles, 1952, privately printed, p. 130 (copy in British Library).
33. FO 371/6693. Churchill to Curzon, 28.7.21; Curzon to Guest 4.9.21; Curzon to Churchill (date illegible); Lampson 20.7.21, 11.8.21.
34. FO 371/6693. Tokyo No. 609, 8.11.21 (Marriot 8.11.21).
35. Ibid. Wellesley 20.12.21.
36. The section on the Mission’s work in Japan is based on three sources: reports from the Tokyo Embassy personnel, ibid. and FO 371/6701, ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1920’; Brackles, a biography compiled by the widow of the British pilot with the longest period in Japan; and a report written in early 1924 by the Mission’s fighter instructer, Flying-Officer Vaughan-Fowler, contained in AIR 5/358. Each is biased in some sense. Neither Eliot, Marriot nor Colvin had much practical experience in naval aviation, nor much contact with the Mission proper. Their prime informants were Sempill and the Mission’s Second-in-Command responsible for administration, Lieutenant Colonel Meares. Vaughan-Fowler’s paper was written to forward his attempt, unique within the contemporary RAF, to build a case for a Japanese Air Menace to the British Empire. He was a sound observer, if prone to fantasies regarding the ‘Yellow Peril’. Brackles contains the best raw material on relations with the Kaigunsho. The three published studies which refer to the Sempill Mission (Till, op. cit., p. 64, Stephen Roskill, Naval Policy Between the Wars, Volume One (London: Collins, 1968), pp. 245 and 530, and Arthur Marder, Old Friends, New Enemies (Oxford: Clarendon press, 1981), pp. 343–344 are based mostly upon Brackles.
37. FO 371/8050. Tokyo No. 69, 6.2.22 (Marriot 1.2.22).
38. Ibid., Wellesley 19.3.22.
39. FO 371/8051. Tokyo No. 291, 25.2.22 (Marriot, 9.1.22).
40. FO 371/8050. Admiralty to Foreign Office, M.0641, 19.5.22.
41. Brackley, p. 116. Till, op. cit., pp. 63–64.
42. FO 371/8050. Ashton-Gwatkin 24.5.22, Foreign Office to Admiralty F1793/1065/25, 7.6.22, Admiralty to Foreign Office M.0730, Ashton-Gwatkin 15.7.22.
43. Ibid., Eliot to Tyrrell, 21.7.22.
44. FO 371/8051. Colvin No. 12, 19.5.22.
45. Ibid., Admiralty to Foreign Office, M.01025, 2.10.22; M.01519, 17.11.22. Foreign Office to Eliot F 3521/1065/23, 27.11.22.
46. For the skeleton Mission, see Brackley, pp. 146–211.
47. Admiral W. A. H. Kelly Papers, KEL 27–28, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.
48. Brackley, pp. 162–168.
49. AIR 5/489. DCAS to DNI (Steel to Hotham) S. 12764, 27.8.23; Air Ministry to Admiralty S. 12764/S.6, 8.10.23.
50. Brackley, pp. 151–157.
51. Ibid., pp. 168–172.
52. The information would be in FO 371/11355–56. Three Admiralty files — ADM 116/2264–65, and ADM 116/2298 — contain a near-complete set of relevant departmental correspondence. However, though a note by the DNI refers to the representation at the conference in question, it does not include the reasons given for mistrusting Sempill. Trenchard to Tyrrell, 24.3.26, makes it clear that Trenchard did not feel it proper to commit his reasons to paper even in a private letter (ADM 116/2265).
53. Brackley, pp. 184–186.
54. Ibid., pp. 168–174.
55. Domville Diary. 27.1.28.
56. FO 371/10308. Sansom, No. 105B, Overseas Trade, 917124; DOT 13674 F.E., Foreign Office to Admiralty, F 2712/262/23, 14.8.24.
57. Ibid., Tokyo No. 362, 19.9.24; Eyre Crowe 16.10.24; William Tyrrell 16.10.24; Foreign Office to Air Ministry, F 3506/262/25, 24.10.24; DOT to Air Ministry DOT 14082/F.E.; Tyrrell to Nicholson, 14.11.24; Air Ministry to Foreign Office and DOT, S.24055/S.6, 6.11.24; Eliot to Wellesley, 20.9.24. See also AIR 5/388, AIR 5/1090. No. 95, 15.3.24.
58. FO 371/13966, Hill No. 35, 3.12.28; Ashton-Gwatkin 3.1.29.
59. FO 371/13966, Tokyo No. 82, 19.2.24 (Colvin 18.2.24).
60. Brackley, pp. 172–184, 195–199.
61. FO 371/10965. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1924’; FO 371/11707. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1925’, Naval Attaché reports 1.4.26, 8.6.26; FO 371/12523. ‘Annual IJN Report, 1926’, 24.2.27, Naval Attaché Report, 11.6.27; FO 371/13248. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1928’; AIR 5/754, Tokyo No. 254, 7.6.28, Naval Attaché Report, 1.6.28.
62. AIR 5/755, ‘War Office Intelligence Summaries, Japan’, No. 5, 31.8.26; No. 6, 30.9.26; No. 19, 30.11.27; No. 20, 31.12.27.
63. FO 371/10965 op. cit.
64. FO 371/11707, ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1926’; FO 371/12523. Tokyo No. 122, 24.2.27. (Captain Royle, Annual IJN Report, 1926.)
65. F0371/12523. Captain Robinson, 2.11.27; Tokyo No. 122, 24.2.27 (Captain Royle, ‘Annual IJN Report, 1926’).
66. FO 371/13248. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1927’; FO 371/13968. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1928’; FO 371/14756. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1929’.
67. FO 371/15520. ‘Japan, Annual Report, 1930’.
68. CAB 24/105, C.P. 1265.
69. FO 371/15520, op. cit.