Used to be, the Royal Navy ruled the waves with ships and outposts in every corner of the globe, listening stations on little islands scattered about the Earth’s major oceans and battle fleets steaming across the Atlantic and the Pacific in proud fashion.
Now, with all British armed forces facing budget cuts and the Navy’s HMS Queen Elizabeth plagued with problems, military planners on both sides of the Channel are considering sharing an aircraft carrier, among other things.
It’s a shame for a fleet with such heritage but inevitable for Britain can no longer afford to pretend being a superpower. Some thirty years ago, it could though and via The Scoop Deck, we found some impressive footage from the BBC’s Sailor series which followed the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal on a five and a half month deployment to North America in 1976. Among the beautiful imagery, of particular note is the depiction of fixed wing aircraft operation in the Royal Navy before its demise near the end of the decade when Ark Royal was decommissioned.
At times, one may almost be inclined to miss the Cold War.
The Cold War was far from a good time for the Royal Navy; every major defence review from Duncan Sandys to John Nott saw to reduce naval systems and cut the size and spending. Today’s Royal Navy is the product of the Cold War naval policies whereas the navy of then was the shrinking giant which had once proudly sailed in the pre-1945 world. Such is the slow developing nature of defence (especially naval) policy. Also, I’d say, Britain hasn’t ‘pretended’ to be a ‘super power’ since 1956, and the Suez Crises, however, a global role has been maintained (conciously by some, forgotten by others) and this must not be confused with delusions of granduer, as it so often is in the media. If British Defence policy is to safeguard British interests, it must, by defenition, be global and thus its right arm; the Royal Navy, must also operate on a global footing or it should cease to exist.