The Postwar Navy

The nuclear bombs that ended the war promised to make obsolete long wars in which sea power had been most relevant. Nevertheless, the Naval Staff at the Admiralty could console itself that it would be some time before nuclear weapons would wreak their strategic revolution in full. Even when they did, naval forces would play a part in their delivery (or threatened delivery). Moreover, there would be ‘conflicts between small nations … and threats to our own territory which may be settled without the use of atomic weapons and in which a more or less normal navy would play its usual part’.1 This was the key to the Navy’s survival strategy for the postwar period.