White Ensign: The British Navy at War, 1939-1945

Annapolis: United States Naval Institute, 1966. 2nd Printing. Hard Cover. Very Good/No Jacket. 9x6x1. Second printing. No jacket. Spine lightly faded, blind stamp on front free endpaper. 1966 Hard Cover. 480 pp. The lack of an Imperial fortress in the region of Asia, the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean was always to be a weakness throughout the nineteenth century as the former North American colonies that had become the United States of America had multiplied towards the Pacific coast of North America, and the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire both had ports on the Pacific and had begun building large, modern fleets which went to war with each other in 1905. Britain reliance on Malta, via the Suez Canal, as the nearest Imperial fortress was improved (relying on amity and common interests that developed between Britain and the United States during and after the First World War), by the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914), allowing the cruisers based in Bermuda to more easily and rapidly reach the eastern Pacific Ocean (after the war, the Royal Navy's Bermuda-based North America and West Indies Station was consequently re-designated the America and West Indies station, including a South American division). However, the rising power and increasing belligerence of the Japanese Empire after the First World War would result in the construction of the Singapore Naval Base, which was completed in 1938, less than four years before hostilities with Japan did commence during the Second World War. In 1932, the Invergordon Mutiny took place in the Atlantic Fleet over the National Government's proposed 25% pay cut, which was eventually reduced to 10%.[68] International tensions increased in the mid-1930s and the re-armament of the Royal Navy was well under way by 1938. In addition to new construction, several existing old battleships, battlecruisers and heavy cruisers were reconstructed, and anti-aircraft weaponry reinforced, while new technologies, such as ASDIC, Huff-Duff and hydrophones, were developed. At the start of World War II in 1939 and, the Royal Navy was still the largest in the world, with over 1,400 vessels[70][71] The Royal Navy provided critical cover during Operation Dynamo, the British evacuations from Dunkirk, and as the ultimate deterrent to a German invasion of Britain during the following four months. The Luftwaffe under Hermann Göring attempted to gain air supremacy over southern England in the Battle of Britain in order to neutralize the Home Fleet, but faced stiff resistance from the Royal Air Force.[72] The Luftwaffe bombing offensive during the Kanalkampf phase of the battle targeted naval convoys and bases in order to lure large concentrations of RAF fighters into attrition warfare.[73] At Taranto, Admiral Cunningham commanded a fleet that launched the first all-aircraft naval attack in history. The Royal Navy suffered heavy losses in the first two years of the war. Over 3,000 people were lost when the converted troopship Lancastria was sunk in June 1940, the greatest maritime disaster in Britain's history.[74] The Navy's most critical struggle was the Battle of the Atlantic defending Britain's vital North American commercial supply lines against U-boat attack. A traditional convoy system was instituted from the start of the war, but German submarine tactics, based on group attacks by "wolf-packs", were much more effective than in the previous war, and the threat remained serious for well over three years.--Wikipedia