Person
Bertram Ramsay
Vice-Admiral, Dover Command
Life: 1883–1945
The admiral who wrote the procedure for losing while he was not yet losing.
Retired in 1938 and recalled to command at Dover when the war began. Planning for Operation Dynamo started before any decision to evacuate, on 20 May, the day German armour reached the sea. What he designed was not a number of ships but a procedure — and he reinterpreted the East Mole, a breakwater built only for mooring, as a walkway, taking more than two thirds of the total off along it. Four years later he commanded the Allied naval forces for the Normandy landings in the same waters.
Strategic signature — write the procedure for losing before you are losing
Ramsay had been pushed out of the Navy once already: retired in 1938 and recalled when the war began to command at Dover. Planning for Dynamo started before any decision to evacuate had been taken — on 20 May, the day German armour reached the sea, he convened the meeting for it in the tunnels under Dover Castle12.
What he designed was not a number of ships but a procedure: which harbour, which route, how many men queued at which structure. Big ships could not come near the shallow beaches, so he turned the East Mole — a breakwater meant only for mooring — into a walkway for human beings. More than two thirds of the total, 239,555 men, went out that way.
Recurring patterns
Write the worst-case procedure first
Build the steps for losing before losing is decided. This is not pessimism; it is buying the time preparation needs.
Use infrastructure for something it was not for
A mooring breakwater became a pedestrian route. What is short is usually not the resource but the reinterpretation of it.
Think in throughput
He designed around how many men could be loaded per hour, not how many ships existed. An evacuation is a logistics problem, not a battle.
Strengths and weaknesses
Can build procedures for bad outcomes while there is still time.
If the procedure turns out not to be needed, the preparation appears in nobody's record. Precautions that were not used are not credited.
Can convert infrastructure into capability by reinterpreting it.
Reinterpretation only works while the site is intact. Had the mole been bombed down, two thirds of this operation disappears.
Where the signature showed — Dunkirk
Four years later the same man commanded the Allied naval forces for the Normandy landings. The same strait, the same officer, designed in the opposite direction. The experience of building a procedure for getting off was used to build the procedure for getting on.
Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay, Second World War, Imperial War Museum. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons
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