The Army, Royal Air Force, and Royal Navy entered the war with different strategic assumptions, procurement priorities, and geographic focuses. The Army emphasized mechanized warfare, while the Air Ministry's dominant school expected strategic bombing to decide wars. The Navy planned heavily around a possible Far Eastern conflict, where British and Japanese warships had already confronted one another over merchant-shipping disputes. Limited budgets turned those incompatible preparations into institutional rivalry and made a joint operational organization necessary.
Chapter · 14:34-18:59
Why Britain needed Combined Operations
Interwar service priorities created the institutional rivalries that Combined Operations had to overcome.