Thinking Wisely, Planning Boldly: The Higher Education and Training of Royal Navy Officers, 1919-39

"Thinking, Wisely, Planning Boldly" examines the style, content and manner of Royal Navy executive officer higher education and training between the World Wars. Based on official and private archival records, oral histories and the secondary literature extant, this book traces the changes the Navy made in how it prepared its midlevel officers following the First World War, contrasts this approach with that of the British Army and Royal Air Force and addresses the use the Royal Navy made of the officers so trained. In the process, the work offers a fundamental reappraisal of the inter war Royal Navy challenging many of the accepted conclusions rendered by earlier authors who failed to actually examine the style and content of officer education and did not weigh the many competing factors the service had to balance in any professional development program. Along the way, it offers insight into the relative centrality of the Battle of Jutland in inter war training and concludes that contrary to received wisdom its role was a secondary one at best and that the experience of most relevance in the Navy’s educational efforts was the Dardanelles campaign.

This work is original in scope and original in interpretation with no other book-length volume in print now or previously covering the subject. Beyond saying something valuable about the 1919-39 Royal Navy, it discusses issues that resound with contemporary military officers faced with the eternal question of what to teach, how to teach it, and the pitfalls faced in preparing officers in an uncertain world. It sheds fresh light on such noted figures as Admiral Sir Herbert Richmond and Major General J. F. C. Fuller and offers insight into such events as the Washington Naval Treaty and the Invergordon Mutiny not previously considered.

Though many writers have had much to say about inter war training, none actually took the time to examine what was taught, how instruction was imparted, and the aims that the Navy sought to achieve. Thinking Wisely, Planning Boldly fills the void and in the process speaks to the continuing issues facing professional military education.