Harwich Force selected young officers for independent thought and gave them demanding experience in close-range and night fighting. One explanation for its exceptional later reputation combines that selection with the opportunities wartime service gave officers to develop. Its officers helped create night-fighting methods that carried into interwar practice. Aggression meant seeking an attack even against stronger-looking opponents while working out how it could succeed. Training inherited that approach through exercises that specified objectives without prescribing every ship movement. Promotion rewarded officers whose aggressive solutions achieved those objectives and kept an opponent uncertain about the next attack.
Chapter · 3:42-8:24
Harwich Force turns aggression into a method
Harwich Force's night-fighting experience informed exercises that gave officers an objective and left them to choose an effective attack.