Drax held a series of senior naval appointments between the wars. From 1919 to 1922, he was Director of the
Royal Naval Staff College at Greenwich. He then served as President of the Naval Allied Control Commission in
Germany from 1923 to 1924. As a
rear admiral, he served as second in command of the
1st Battle Squadron of the
Mediterranean Fleet from 1929 to 1930 and second in command of the
2nd Battle Squadron in the
Atlantic Fleet in 1930. From 1930 to 1932 he was ashore in the
Admiralty as Director of
Naval Mobilisation Department that became the Department of Manning. In a 1929 memo, he argued that there were three aspects to a naval battle, namely "geometry" (the movements of ships), "tactics" (the use of weapons to sink the enemy warships) and "morale" (the spirt of the crew). Drax argued that morale was the most important of his trio, and to win a battle required aggressive officers prepared to take risks by engaging the enemy fleet head-on and close-in. Drax along with Herbert Richmond claimed that admirals of the Great War such as
John Jellicoe had been insufficiently aggressive. Promoted to
vice admiral on 24 September 1932, he held from 1932 to 1934 the command of the
America and West Indies Squadron. From 1935 to 1938, he was
Commander-in-Chief, Plymouth. In 1935, Drax rewrote the War Plans to call for officers to be aware of their commanding admiral's plans before a battle occurred instead of waiting for orders from the flagship during the battle, and an aggressive mentality in a ship's officers that called for them to take advantage of any unexpected chance that might emerge during a battle. In a lecture given later in 1935, Drax gave as examples of what he did
not want to see happen in battle, namely a war game where the captain of a cruiser came within sight of the fleet playing the "enemy" who waited for orders to engage the "enemy" and another war game where the commander of a destroyer flotilla again waited for orders to engage the ships playing the "enemy". Drax charged that too many Royal Navy officers were too passive and would not act unless ordered to. Drax maintained that in wartime a captain of a ship should open fire on an enemy warship upon sight instead of passively waiting for orders from his admiral to open fire as he argued the latter was a highly dangerous practice. In a letter to Admiral
Roger Backhouse in September 1935, Drax wrote the type of battle envisioned in the standard Battle Instructions was the one most least likely to occur in reality, and that changes were needed in Battle Instructions to prepare officers for the type of battle that they would actually be fighting. Drax retired in 1938, but was brought out of retirement by the First Sea Lord, Admiral
Roger Backhouse as the best man to plan out how to execute the
Singapore strategy. In the event of a threat from Japan, British planning called to send out a strong Royal Navy force to
Singapore, the main British naval base in Asia, to hopefully deter Japan from war or to be ready to confront the Imperial Japanese Navy in the South China Sea if war should come. Backhouse felt that the increasing aggressive Japanese behavior as demonstrated by the
Second Sino-Japanese War made it imperative to finally work out how to best implement the Singapore strategy. Backhouse's plans to execute the Singapore strategy had called for sending a force of five or four battleships to Singapore, but Drax changed the Singapore strategy by calling for a "flying squadron" to be sent to Singapore with more forces to go east if necessary. A memo stated: "Drax favored relying on small, mobile forces to deter the Japanese from interfering and overrunning British interests in the Far East. Drax felt that a "flying squadron" of two battleships or battlecruisers, an aircraft carrier, a cruiser squadron, and a destroyer flotilla would be ideal for this purpose". In addition, Drax called for another aircraft carrier to be sent to the Indian Ocean for the protection of both Australia and India. Drax's plans called for the "flying squadron" to confront the Japanese fleet in the South China Sea while he also called for another force to be stationed in Singapore that was to consist of 8 cruisers, 17 destroyers, 15 submarines, 12 motor torpedo boats, and two minelayers for the protection of the trade routes and for the defense of Singapore itself. Drax admitted that his plan would require the British to stay on the defensive on the account of the numerical superiority of the Japanese Navy and it would be impossible to deliver a "knock-out blow" against Japan with the forces envisioned. Drax wrote that the Royal Navy would be able to take the offensive against the Imperial Japanese Navy only in the event of more British naval forces to be sent to Singapore and/or if the United States was involved, stating a combined Anglo-American fleet would have the necessary numbers to take the offensive against Japan. Drax argued that Britain needed control of the
Mediterranean Sea both to supply and reinforce the forces in Singapore and to allow the necessary numbers to take on Japan. Believing that Benito Mussolini would try to take advantage of Britain being engaged in a war with Germany and/or Japan, Drax called for the Royal Navy to deliver a "knock-out blow" against the
Regia Marina first before turning east to focus on Japan. Drax noted that the location of Italy in the central Mediterranean required any British naval forces going east to enter the Suez canal on the way to Singapore to first sail past Italy, which led him to argue that the
Regia Marina had to be eliminated first to execute the Singapore strategy. Drax argued that in the event of war, the Japanese would try to capture Singapore. Drax argued that there were two ways that the Japanese would come, namely the "direct approach" of a landing at Singapore or the "step-by-step approach" of first capturing Hong Kong and Brunei as the prelude to taking Singapore. Drax argued that the defenses of Singapore had to be strengthened to prevent the "direct approach" while in the case of the "step-by-step approach", British aircraft, submarines and light vessels should try to interdict Japanese ships in the South China Sea. Finally, Drax argued that the battleships of the "flying squadron" should be of the modern
Queen Elizabeth class, which he felt to be the best battleships to face the Imperial Navy Drax wrote that the "superior training" of the Royal Navy's crews would make the decisive difference while he used the Japanese obsession with secrecy as almost nothing was known about the latest warships of the Imperial Navy other than that they existed, which led him to argue that it was quite possible that the Japanese warships were inferior. == Mission to Moscow ==