[14] Equally worrisome to him was the increasing cost of warships owing to technological innovation, which led him to express concerns that the necessary political will to spend millions of pounds upon the Navy was being eroded.

[21] The American historians Williamson Murray and Alan Millet wrote that the Royal Navy in the interwar period did a superb job in training admirals and captains in the style of the 18th and early 19th centuries, so that "...in the future there would be few of the egregious errors that marked the Battle of Jutland".

[22] Rear-Admiral (S) Sir Rowland Jerram who served under Chatfield for 20 years as his private secretary described him as: "an officer of the old school in upbringing, but certainly not lacking in imagination and breath of view; of the highest ability as a seaman, a leader and in the higher ranks, a debater, sure of himself and 100% trusted by the Navy".

[23] The British historian Andrew Gordon described Chatfield as a man of the "upmost integrity, humourless, very just, very aloof, very charming, very tactful, supremely efficient and an intellectual" and "quite possibly the best peacetime First Sea Lord the Admiralty ever had".

[26] With a weak foreign secretary and a prime minister leading a rump party in the coalition National government, the influence of the Treasury, which considered naval spending wasteful, was in the ascendency.

[31] As First Sea Lord, Chatfield had a marked tendency to play up the threat from Japan when addressing the Defence Requirements Committee in 1933–1934, which had the task of planning British rearmament for the next five years.

[36] Chatfield's efforts for a larger naval budget was undercut by a series of highly alarmist stories in the British newspapers about the power of strategical bombing to inflict a "knock-out blow" within a matter of days by razing entire cities, and along with the claim that the Luftwaffe possessed such a bomber force.

[38] The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Neville Chamberlain, protested that the costs of a naval arms race with Japan; sending another large expeditionary force to aid France; and building up a strong RAF would be too much of a financial strain and that choices had to be made.

[43] In 1929, the German fleet consisted of six old battleships, none of each were over 10, 000 tons; six light cruisers; 12 destroyers and 12 torpedo boats, which was a force that was far too small to pose any danger to British command of the sea.

[46] Owing to the lengthy period of time it took to construct warships, Royal Navy planners predicated that the Kriegsmarine would not be a threat in the 1930s and the earliest the German fleet could pose a danger would be sometime in the 1940s.

[50] As Baldwin had made a point of running on a platform on emphasising support for the League of Nations and collective security in the general election of that year, it was expected that Britain would have to take some sort of action if Italy invaded.

[53] Chatfield was personally hostile towards the League of Nations, arguing that the principle of collective security could embroil Britain in wars where no British "vital interests" were at stake.

This strategical advantage is so great that it is highly unlikely that Italy could make any serious effort with naval forces to interfere with our control of the two exits to the Mediterranean except by action of her submarines, which could not prove to be decisive.

[56] Chatfield admitted that if Britain did go to war with Italy, it might led to the Regina Marina temporarily taking control of the central Mediterranean, which in effect would be the same thing as severing the Suez canal, but he did not expect this advantage to last as he had low opinion of the Italian admirals, whom he noted were promoted on the basis of loyalty to the House of Savoy rather than merit, which was the case with the Royal Navy.

[59] Through Chatfield expressed much confidence that the Royal Navy's Mediterranean fleet was capable of defeating the Regia Marina, in a memo to Vansittart, he wrote: "I was surprised to find how unready the other two services were and how long it would take before they could give effective resistance to Italian action by land or air.

[72] Moreover, it was known that Admiral Erich Raeder, the commander-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine favoured the traditional battleship-centric fleet designed to win a decisive battle of annihilation and did not care much for the guerre de course strategy.

[85] Darlan expressed much concern about the Italian and German intervention in Spain on the Nationalist side and was especially worried about the prospect of Italy obtaining naval and air bases in the Balearic Islands.

[85] Darlan suggested that Britain and France take action to stop Italy and Germany from obtaining any bases in either archipelago which might change the naval balance of power in the western Mediterranean and/or the eastern Atlantic.

[85] Chatfield was surprised that Darlan had come all the way from Paris to see him about the Spanish Civil War instead of having Charles Corbin, the French ambassador to the court of St. James, discuss the matter with him.

[85] The idea of sending Darlan to London had originated with a Labour MP Philip Noel-Baker who was a close friend of the French socialist leader Léon Blum who just become the premier of France.

[87] Darlan reported to Blum that Chatfield was blasé about the prospect of a Nationalist victory, saying that he disliked the Republican government and viewed General Francisco Franco as a "Spanish patriot" who would never grant bases to either Germany or Italy.

[88] The British historian Jill Edwards wrote that Chatfield's sympathies with the Spanish Civil were "more White than Red", but he did not hesitate to use the war in Spain as a "stick with which to beat the Government with".

[91] In January 1938, Roosevelt dispatched Captain Royal E. Ingersoll of the United States Navy to London to hold secret talks with Chatfield about plans for a war with Japan.

[92] Chatfield soon discovered during the talks that Ingersoll had no real power to negotiate anything, the purpose of his visit was more for information-gathering, and that Roosevelt had wanted the British to take the lead in confronting Japan as the president did not feel that Congress would grant him the necessary authority to go to war.

[96] Having been appointed to the Order of Merit in the 1939 New Year Honours,[97][98] in February Chatfield succeeded Sir Thomas Inskip as Minister for Coordination of Defence in the government of Neville Chamberlain, despite having a non-political background.

[100] Adding to the bitterness of the debate was the sudden decision on the part of the Chamberlain cabinet to abandon its long-standing "limited liability" defence doctrine and make the "continental commitment".

[102] In addition, Chamberlain was always keen to keep British foreign policy coordinated with the Commonwealth, and the governments of Australia, Canada and South Africa all expressed strong opposition to an Anglo-Soviet alliance.

[103] In cabinet debates Chatfield along with Halifax, Hore-Belisha, and the Home Secretary Samuel Hoare tended to favour broadening the "peace front" to include the Soviet Union as all had doubts about the ability of Poland to stand alone against Germany.

[113] At the key meeting of the Foreign Policy Committee of the Cabinet on 26 June 1939, Chatfield pressed for the Singapore strategy to resolve the Tientsin crisis if necessary by force, but Lord Halifax stated that Britain could only run the risk of war with Japan in the event of French and American support, neither of which was likely.

[118] The plans for a British naval expedition into the Baltic were a fixture with Churchill who upon appointed First Lord of the Admiralty again on 3 September 1939 pressed for the operation to be launched under the codename Catherine.