Rebuilding The Royal Navy

This fourth and final volume in this series on Royal Navy warship development presents an in-depth and lucid account of British warship construction in the challenging half-century since World War II. After considering the wartime legacy and lingering austerity, the authors cover some of the ambitious ideas for the bigger ships like the reconstruction of the carrier Victorious, and the conversion of fleet destroyers into anti-submarine frigates. But most of the book is devoted to new construction with chapters on all the major categories and new information on designs that remained on the drawing board. It concludes with a survey of the most significant technological innovations and an analysis of the impact of the Falklands War. D. K. Brown's personal knowledge and experience and George Moore's in-depth research on declassified material add up to a crowning finale to an internationally acclaimed series.

This design history of post-war British warship development, based on both declassified documentation and personal experience, is the fourth and final volume in the author’s masterly account of development of Royal Navy’s ships from the 1850s to the Falklands War. In this volume the author covers the period in which he himself worked as a Naval Constructor, while this personal knowledge is augmented by George Moore’s in-depth archival research on recently declassified material. The RN fleet in 1945 was old and worn out, while new threats and technologies, and post-war austerity called for new solutions. How designers responded to these unprecedented challenges is the central theme of this book. It covers the ambitious plans for the conversion or replacement of the bigger ships; looks at all the new construction, from aircraft carriers, through destroyers and frigates, to submarines (including nuclear and strategic), to minesweepers and small craft. The authors pay particular attention to the innovations introduced, and analyses the impact of the Falklands War. At the start of the twenty-first century the Royal Navy is still a powerful and potent force with new and a number of innovative classes, both surface and sub-surface, coming on stream. This book offers a fascinating insight into how the post-war fleet developed and adapted to the changing role of the Navy.

When first published in 1990 Before the Ironclad was highly regarded and wholly unique. Brown's work challenged old assumptions and started a reevaluation of British contributions to naval developments of the period. This book traces the transition from sail to steam power to the construction of the HMS Warrior, the first iron hulled warship, and this new edition will feature more extensive illustrations. Written by an eminent naval architect, Before the Ironclad is both a balanced account of general developments in shipbuilding and an in-depth study of the ships themselves.

This book fills an important gap in the literature on the history of the modern Royal Navy. Eric Grove provides the only up-to-date, single-authored short history of the service over the last two hundred years, synthesizing the new work and latest research on the subject which has radically transformed our understanding of the story of British naval development. Grove offers a concise and authoritative account of Royal Navy policy, structure, technical development and operations from the end of the Napoleonic Wars to the close of the eventful twentieth century. Ideal for both specialist and general readers, this essential introduction explains how the Royal Navy maintained its pre-eminent position in the nineteenth century and how it coped with the more difficult problems of the twentieth, in times of peace and war.

In this readable and informative book, John Ballard tells the story of ten of the most significant ships in the Royal Navy.

This book examines the development of nuclear propulsion in the Royal Navy from the first proposal in 1946 to the start-up of the last core improvement for the first submarine reactor power plant PWR 1 in December 1974. Drawing from unreleased records and archives, the book answers questions around three main themes. Political: what problems were encountered in transferring nuclear knowledge from the USA to the UK in the post-war period, and how much support was there for the development of nuclear propulsion? Military: why was there a requirement to develop nuclear propulsion, and in particular, why submarines? Technical: were the problems associated with nuclear energy fully appreciated, and did the UK have the technical and engineering capability to develop nuclear propulsion? Aside from the political considerations and military motives for developing nuclear propulsion in the Royal Navy, the author focuses on the technical problems that had to be overcome by all participants in the Royal Navy’s development of nuclear propulsion, adding significantly to naval historiography. Providing a critical analysis of the political, technological, operational and industrial issues of introducing nuclear propulsion into the Royal Navy, the author situates his research in the context of the evolving Cold War, changing Anglo-American relations, the end of Empire and the relative decline of British power.

"Prominent in building Britain's maritime empire in the eighteenth century, the Royal Navy also had a significant impact on politics, public finance and the administrative and bureaucratic development of the British state. The Navy was the most expensive branch of the state, and its effective funding and maintenance was a problem that taxed the ingenuity of a succession of politicians, naval officers and bureaucrats. The Navy, in many ways a victim of its own success, grew faster than the infrastructure that supported it and the public purse that funded it. By the middle of the century the difficulties this growth created had become critical, and the challenge this presented was taken up by Admiralty Boards led by Anson, Egmont, Hawke and Sandwich. Resolving these problems introduced administrative reforms and innovations in the Navy's administration and in public finance, some of which pre-figured later bureaucratic development. There was however a political price to pay, when the management of the Navy and its apparent unpreparedness for the War of American Independence made the Earl of Sandwich and the Navy a focus for political opposition to an unpopular government and a disappointing war."--BOOK JACKET.