Page 560 - Le Operazioni Interforze e Multinazionali nella Storia Militare - ACTA Tomo I

560 XXXIX Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

progressive withdrawal from empire reduced options further. This did not stop heavy
investment in major new bases in Kenya and then Aden, the former vacated in 1964
even before it was complete and the later evacuated in 1967 as Britain abandoned Aden
to insurgency.
Overseas bases were becoming a real problem for the British. To make matters
worse, host nation support was not even guaranteed in cases where the host depended on
British support for their defence. In 1961, during the Kuwait crisis, British policy was
hampered by the refusal of the Emir to allow British forces to be based permanently on
his soil. To have done so would have undermined the legitimacy of his rule. In the face
of an apparent threat of Iraqi invasion Britain initiated Operation Vantage and deployed
to Kuwait a reinforced brigade group, but London was aware of the need to withdraw
this force at the first opportunity. They were replaced rapidly by Arab League troops
that were less capable but more acceptable politically. That crisis also highlighted the
danger of third parties closing their airspace to military flights and without the maritime
contribution, unencumbered by such considerations, the early stages of Operation
Vantage would have been a shambles. 9
Indeed, during Vantage the only troops that arrived on time, ready to fight, with
all of their equipment and transport, were those that came by sea. Unlike their sea
based equivalent, the arrival of air transported troops depended on the agreement of
neighbouring countries, whose air space they had to cross. They also needed a secure
airport at which to land, providing the Iraqis with an obvious, static and largely
undefended target which, if destroyed, would have scuppered the entire plan. As it
was the air plan was badly disrupted by the temporary refusal of Turkey and Sudan to
allow over-flight of their territory which, in conjunction with the existing ‘air barrier’
presented by the refusal of Egypt, Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia to allow British military
flights over their territory, made the air lift of troops to Kuwait extremely problematic.
Even when these problems had been overcome airlifted troops arrived in non-tactical
formation and without key equipment, suffered disproportionately from heat exhaustion
and were so short of tactical transport that an Army study concluded that they were fit
10
for nothing more than a static defence.
The negative impact of maintaining a footprint on foreign soil was reinforced numerous
times. For example, in January 1964 President Nyerere of Tanganyika requested British
assistance in the face of an army mutiny. The response was immediate and effective.
Royal Marines from No.45 Commando were landed by helicopters from the aircraft
carrier HMS Centaur and restored order with minimum loss of life. It is noteworthy
that, while British forces intervened at the behest of the legitimate government and were
initially welcomed by the general population, as the weeks passed their presence began
to excite negative comment. London was well attuned to this and the marines soon
withdrew to poise out of sight offshore in amphibious shipping. At sea they provided a

9 See Ian Speller, ‘Naval Diplomacy. Operation Vantage, 1961’ in Ian Speller (ed), The Royal Navy and
Maritime Power in the Twentieth Century, (2005) pp.164-180.
10 For further details see Ian Speller, ‘The Seaborne/Airborne Concept: Littoral manoeuvre in the 1960s?’ in
Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 Feb. 2006 pp.53-92.