Chief of War Staff
Sturdee was promoted to vice-admiral on 13 December 1913. By the end of 1913 Sturdee was considered for the position of Chief of Admiralty War Staff. Draft notes in Churchill’s papers suggest that he may have been the second choice after Prince Louis of Battenberg had given what Nicholas Lambert describes as “uncharacteristically fierce resistance” to appointing his former superior Reginald Custance. Heathcote states that he took office as Chief of War Staff at the Admiralty in July 1914.
On 24 July 1914 Sturdee submitted two memos deploring the new planned “HMS Polyphemus” class, a semi-submerged torpedo cruiser armed with eight torpedoes. There had been an argument about the naval estimates at the start of 1914, with Liberal opinion, including Chancellor of the Exchequer David Lloyd George, objecting to ever-escalating naval expenditure, especially with a general election due within a year or so. Churchill’s motives were purely financial, aiming to save up to £900,000 off the naval budget, and his plans had been outlined in memos on 1 and 14 June 1914. He aimed to substitute 14-16 submarines for a planned "HMS Resistance" and 6-8 Polyphemuses for a planned "HMS Agincourt" (the name was reused for a different battleship), and to cease all destroyer building except for two or three large ones for use as flotilla leaders, and build submarines instead. Sturdee criticised the high cost of the Polyphemuses, as well as their low freeboard (making them unusable in rough seas) and vulnerability to enemy destroyers. Christopher Bell writes that, contrary to Nicholas Lambert's claims, no final decision had been reached on “substitution” (of submersible craft for battleships) prior to the outbreak of war.
On 9 August 1914, with Britain now at war with Germany, Churchill instructed Battenberg and Sturdee to draw up plans to seize Ameland in the Dutch Frisian Islands. This was the genesis of the eventual plan to land at Borkum (as a possible prelude to seizing the Kiel Canal and sending a British fleet into the Baltic. Bell gives the date of Churchill's Ameland instruction as 8 August in his text then 9 August in a footnote.
Sturdee objected (16 August 1914) to the Order in Council about blocking trade with Germany through neutral countries. He doubted the “political expediency of adopting an attitude the practical efficacy of which is very doubtful, and which I think is just as sure to raise trouble with neutrals”. Admiral Edmond Slade recorded similar thoughts on 18 August.
Sturdee wrote two “dismissive minutes” (25 September 1914) about the Cabinet’s wishes to mine the eastern North Sea as far south as Rotterdam and Flushing. Nicholas Lambert comments that Sturdee “a self-proclaimed naval theorist of the Mahanian school, was notorious for his monochromatic view of sea power and his dogmatic insistence that the primary objective must remain decisive victory in a fleet engagement”. Captain Herbert Richmond complained in his diary that “he produced the old, stale claptrap that what we want to do is not to keep the enemy in but to get him out & fight”. While Churchill was away at Antwerp Sturdee had persuaded the First Sea Lord Prince Louis of Battenberg to join him in a joint statement that it was not British policy to lay mines (the document is not in the archives, according to Nicholas Lambert – it is only mentioned in the 1 October diary of Captain Philip Dumas, the “Director of Mining”). Churchill (1 October) ordered the Admiralty to draw up a schedule for mining the North Sea, reconfirming instructions given by Prime Minister H.H. Asquith while he was away at Antwerp.
In Nicholas Lambert's view Sturdee shared some of the blame for Admiralty blunders for which Churchill was blamed by the press – the escape of the Goeben and Breslau, and the loss of the Aboukir, Cressy and Hogue. Christopher Bell writes that Churchill, who had vainly urged that the three cruisers be stationed more safely further away from the German fleet, was unfairly blamed in the press. He had appointed Battenberg and Sturdee and so bears some responsibility for their errors, but nonetheless the fault for the loss of the three cruisers lies with them. On 1 November 1914 the Royal Navy suffered a demoralising defeat when it lost two armoured cruisers commanded by Christopher Cradock at the Battle of Coronel. In The World Crisis (his First World War memoirs, published in the 1920s) Churchill later put the blame for Coronel on Cradock (to the displeasure of his surviving relatives); in Bell's view he should have been more critical of Battenberg and Sturdee for failure to transmit clear orders.
Admiral Fisher, returning as First Sea Lord in Battenberg's place, sacked Sturdee (4 November) – he was “the first to go” in Nicholas Lambert’s words. Stephen Roskill (in Man of Secrets, his biography of Maurice Hankey) described this as personal “headhunting” by Fisher. However Nicholas Lambert comments that Captain Philip Dumas wrote in his diary on the day of Fisher’s return (30 October) that “the great hope here is for Sturdee & Leveson to go”. “Blinker” Hall also thought similarly.
