The British Pacific Fleet formally came into being on 22 November 1944, when Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser struck his flag at Trincomalee as Commander-in-Chief Eastern Fleet and hoisted it in the gunboat HMS Tarantula as Commander-in-Chief British Pacific Fleet. He later transferred his flag to the more suitable HMS Howe. BPF's main base was at Sydney, Australia.
As well as its base at Sydney, the Fleet Air Arm established Mobile Naval Air Bases (MONABs) in Australia to provide technical and logistic suppport for the aircraft.
The Pacific war environment was unfamiliar to the Royal Navy, which needed to establish a fleet train that could adequately support an active naval force at sea for weeks or months.
Relationship with the United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN), which had control of Allied operations in the Pacific Ocean Areas, gave the BPF combat units the designation of Task Force 57 (TF-57), and later made them part of Task Force 37 (TF-37).
The Admiralty had proposed an active British role in the Pacific in early 1944 but the initial USN response had been discouraging. Admiral Ernest King, Commander-in-Chief United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, was reluctant to concede any such role and raised a number of issues, including the requirement that the BPF should be entirely self-sufficient. These were eventually overcome or discounted and, at a meeting, President Roosevelt "intervened to say that the British Fleet was no sooner offered than accepted. In this, though the fact was not mentioned, he overruled Admiral King's opinion" (Churchill, The Second World War).
Once in theatre, however, inter-service relations were positive and cordial.
Australia and New Zealand, as well as fighting ships and men, made significant contributions towards the support of the BPF.
Active service
Major actions in which the fleet was involved included the invasion of Okinawa in 1945 and, towards the end of the war, it had sole responsibility for operations in the Sakishima Islands. Its role was to suppress Japanese air activity, using gunfire and air attack. The carriers were subject to heavy and repeated kamikaze attacks but, because of their armoured flight decks, the British aircraft carriers proved highly resistant to kamikaze attacks, and survived direct hits with only superficial damage.
Battleships and aircraft from the fleet also attacked the Japanese home islands. The BPF would also have played a major part in a proposed invasion of the Japanese home islands, known as Operation Downfall, which was cancelled after Japan surrendered.
Fighter squadrons from the fleet claimed a total of 112.5 Japanese aircraft shot down. No. 1844 Squadron FAA (flying Hellcats) was the top-scoring squadron, with 28 claims.
