And they want a presence in the Pacific! We can't even protect shipping routes properly in the MEst.

It seems there are plans to increase them in the near future as the defence secretary says there are 8 new destroyers in the works. But it's sad they let the navy suffer this much especially with the Chinese spending so much and increasing their fleet. Though there's still a question mark as to the quality of anything the Chinese have plus their expertise in delivering. Tony Blair started this rot and cuts and successive governments haven't done enough thereafter.

@@samsonokoro5036 Never underestimate your enemy. They may send us junk but....

@@samsonokoro50368 isn’t 14

Nor personnel

It works perfectly for the 'old boys' network in this circus of a country.. Bring back Guy Fawkes.

@@Dave-hu5hr Yeah because burning things down is always the best way to build stuff...

I mean if you are going to cite the Wikipedia page why didn’t you see fit to mention that half of these flag officers are only nominally in the Navy and are either defense attachés to various nations, MOD advisors or taking some sort of NATO position, what I mean by that is that they could basically hold a rank in any of the service and do the same job but they do need a rank. Another significant portion of flag officers exist for training, personnel, engineering and medicine. That’s how there are so many flag officers for the number of vessels now what you personally consider as a “main” vessel is unknown to me. But maybe that didn’t fit the argument.

@@ddandymann Get on with the times and "Build Back Better". Navy is for force projection, you do not have force. Accept it and move on.

its a title granted after years of usually distinguised service, most are advisors and are not in command of anything. You can also kick them out and hire them as external consultants for triple the money for the experience and expertise they bring.

There will be space for 80-100 marines on the Type 31 Frigates and room in the mission bay for combat vehicles or a spare helicopter, so the Royal Marines will still have some expeditionary capability.

They got plastic small boats now stop crying 😅

I don't even think the bean counters in the Treasury realise that either.

2 destroyers, 4 are out of service

The new frigates should fix that problem as well as the astutes

11 submarines if you include the SSBNs.

@@JollyOldCanuck They would never be used for any warfighting other than at the last resort so its pointless to include them in the available totals.

​@@bobandrew8884they could be used against surface combatants as they have torpedoes

No only as a last resort would they use torpedoes as to so would reveal their position.

@@bobandrew8884 It would be a last resort yes but they are incredibly stealthy. If there was an attack on a submarine it would be devastating. If they attacked a ship then the only whereabouts the crew would know is what side the submarine came from. Saying that if the torpedo had to abort on its first attack then it could turn around and attack again on the other side of the ship.

nelson did not have the idiots behind him spending money on giving kids sex changes and ensuring our feelings are all in order. i would prefer ships, but as long as morons are allowed to vote, we aint getting away from the problem. and the next generation........................lol, 'they/them' are a bunch of peace loving pansies in the making.

"Mi casa, su casa" - America Your navy isn't a joke when it works so closely with ours.

@jimmyyates3510 no! Lol I meant were friends.

You reap what you sow.

@jimmyyates3510 'The money is there' Is it? Is it really? We currently have a budget deficit of 5.4% of GDP and a debt to GDP ratio of over 100%. In case you don't understand economics that's bad, really bad. If a less wealthy nation had those figures they'd be on the verge of default and national bankruptcy. Basically unless you're willing to pay a lot more in tax the money really isn't there.

You do realize Britain was the second or third largest economy in the world back during WWII, right? It's now barely holding onto 8th place and falling.

While I'm all for increasing the size of the Royal Navy, you need to be realistic. In WW2, Britain was responsible for 27% of the world's population. Today, it is responsible for 0.4% of the world's population.

Need to increase defence budget. Only solution.

@@darthknight1 WW2 Britain had colonies to loot and rely on for manpower and taxes. That is the bigger reason.

​​@@death_paradethe colonies didn't fund the British empire. Quite the opposite , the royal navy was the reason empire became a thing in the first. The problem with today's royal navy is bureaucracy and lack of adequate investment.

WE ARE DESTROYING OURSELVES ON PURPOSE

For many years I have felt the Royal Navy is vastly undersized and I've deplored the cuts in vessel numbers we have seen. However since the Ukraine war, where Ukraine with no navy has taken on the Russian Black Sea fleet, I am now starting to question the relevancy of large capital vessels. I am now starting to think that the future might be smaller vessels (consequently more affordable) which can still carry lethal missile systems..... So maybe there's still hope for the RN.

@@UR_HR Russian navy figured that out two decades ago.

@@richardmarsden5610 Except that they tried to use and lost their precious Moskva last year.

@@RokeJulianLockhart.s13ouq Moskva was an old Soviet-era (commissioned 1979) guided missile cruiser and was overdue for either modernization or decommissioning and replacement by a newer VLS equipped warship. The sinking of the Moskva did wake the Russians up to the fact they were fighting a proxy war against Nato, not just Ukraine. Russian navy size is 291 ships, RN is circa 80 ships. Russian Black Sea Fleet is 40 surface ships and 7 submarines.

Yes, isolationism is hard on the numbers.

@@dbyers3897 Actually is is the desire to be a global player like the Royal Navy did in the past that presents the disconnect between what government expects from the Royal Navy and the British Government. An Isolationist Government wouldn't have committed to AUKUS and a standing presence in the Pacific, an Isolationist wouldn't send ships to the red sea to defend merchant shipping. The irony is that the Royal Navy would be fine if Britain was ruled by an Isolationist government. We have seen an the cost of all things military increasing a much rate than official inflation for the last twenty plus years. The services have absorbed this cost by cutting force strength. You see it across the west, not just in the UK. It is now hard to believe how big the UK armed forces used to be, yes funding is half what it was back in the days of the cold war in real terms, but strength is down may more than half. If we don't get serious about bring the cost of maintaining a military under control, the situation will only continue to get worse.

Lol even they are stretched

Maybe underfunded but also a massive waste of funding too because of sh it decisions and sh it management

your navy is cute

can Grant Shapps justify his existence?

Exactly.

thats tory maths for you. theyve gutted the Royal navy and now we so desperatly need them. we need to realise we are a island nation and nearly all our trade is done on the seas. The navy needs alot more ships. We need to reduce our forign aid and increase our defence budget to a minimum of 3% GDP

@@KiingOfKombat Except it was Labour's decision to axe the order.. 🥔

except tories have been in power for 13 years. we all know tories have aboslutely gutted the armed forces. the entire blame is for the tories, @@Dave-hu5hr

Politicians are great at lies though , they do not realise that most normal people are far more intelligent than they are so long as they have not been brainwashed by the MSM or gone through indoctrinataion...

I though she was going to include some rubber boats as well.

No we're not, because we will be part of a larger combined NATO force in any large confrontation with any actual threat.

We still spend massive amounts, its mostly the inefficiency of spending, billions wasted, same with our NHS. They both need reforms in procurement. I remember when I was in the Navy, we had to pay 10x the market rate for equipment from a supplier than a civilian would pay. Blew my mind, we need to name and shame these companies. American companies mostly feel honoured to support their Armed Forces and may even give better rates. British companies see the Gov as a cash cow, ready to milk. Recruitment wise, we need to lower our training requirement standards to be more on par with other Western Countries, only 5% of people who walk into an Armed Forces Recruitment office make it to finish basic training. I know this sucks, but needs must.... It is all well and good having the toughest training, but not when we cannot crew ships. High quality can only get you so far and be in 1 place at a time.

Yeah we prefer to spend our money on things that are relevant in 2024. Hopefully the global reduction in arms overall continues on it's current path!

@@FriendlyFreeSounds It's the same across the board, businesses see x council or whatever public authority and up the prices.

@@FriendlyFreeSoundsthe UK governments have destroyed our nation since the end of the war by making themselves and the wealthy richer but the middle and working class poorer and this is why many skilled workers are leaving for Canada and Australia! They have put budget on our armed forces and rely on NATO but the British people won’t fight for this nation like they did during WW2 because most people haven’t got the pride anymore and don’t respect parliament for what they’ve done ! Especially allowing us to be invaded by these illegal migrants

Global reduction in arms? I think the US Australia Japan Poland china many other countries would say otherwise. Everyone is preparing for World War III

I would focus on SSNs as well. Britain's expertise in this area is top notch, but there are too few.

Actually unless we are going to build another Carrier, for once we have enough (or have ordered enough as each had plans to accommodate about 24 and we will eventually have 48 soon and 78 total though it should be 120+ to accommodate max capacity maybe) but more funding for the airforce to buy enough tempests or f35A sure

@@cjjk9142 we deffo don’t have enough even at that pithy little number, it should’ve been 138 allowing for at least 36 fighters per carrier, no point having carriers that large with only 12-24 planes each

Two carriers need a lot more than that. The Air Force are also sharing the planes. 70 odd planes is enough fir one carrier. Operational availability requires nearly double the amount. Training, maintenance and other repairs means you are looking at maybe 60% available at any one time.

@@davidrobertsemail the carriers carrying about 36 f35’s is good enough when it can also carry a bunch of other bits too, and heck they would be carrying more f35’s than a US carrier does, but again it’s the friggen government. Have at least 84 for carrier use at any given time and around 48 odd for the raf, that would be enough considering we may get over 120 odd tempest fighters.

💯% well put. Currently we have a situation where nobody thinks about the wider country, private firms just rinse all of the government sectors for cash. On top of this government sectors pay poorly and have had their one remaining benefit (good pensions) slashed. This government is confident of its ideology of free market capitalism. They believe that "picking winners" or industrial strategy is inefficient. It dates back to 1800s and 1900s when "commerce" and free market capitalism were/are seen as the reasons the empire took off. It just so happens that this strategy benefits the current conservatives and their friends because they have access to all the contracts.

The Royal Navy only exists now to push narratives for the ultra wealthy its literally a chess piece they don't care about any of the serving members that's why they can't recruit anyone lol

thought this was a reasonable critique then you dropped into Russian propaganda babble so you really should stop drinking the kool aid

That doesn’t sound like much but in modern warfare it’s actually pretty feasible even against Russia. But of course we do need more as is what is agreed by everyone. I’m Just gonna be happy once the new batch of vessels are made including the dreadnought submarines, type-26 and type-31s are produced. We will have far better naval supremacy once they are made! 👍🏽🇬🇧🇬🇧

@@sovkhan4359 You will not just fight Russia if we go to war with them.

@@sovkhan4359copium. We can barely deploy 3 ships at a time

A nuclear powered sub has ballistic missiles that can hit a target up to 4000 miles away.

No to fight. It’s much less than that. 6 destroyers half of which are combat ready. So 3. And 11 frigates half of which are combat ready. So 5. We have enough escorts for one carrier to go to sea in anger and 5 hunter killers subs. 3 of which are available. So if the balloon goes up we can muster for war 3 destroyers 5 frigates 1 carrier 3 hunter killer submarines 1 trident carrying nuclear doomsday submarine. Not even a flotilla. We would be as well to scuttle what little we have left of a fleet embrace pacifism and learn mandarin sharpish.

We’ll be lucky to have a rowboat by the end of the decade

A carrier isn't required. We have an actual airfield in range (Akotiri) as demonstrated by recent strikes

Which is thousands of miles away limiting the aircrafts payload@@Orbital_Inclination

A review is not inheritly bad. The time scales, or more accurately the speed type incentives it offers are not waranted in this application... potentially. So.... you going to sign up to fill those fleet roles then?

Triple the defense budget an raise taxes about 50% to pay for it. Good night

@@paxundpeace9970 Again.. You man it. I'll listen.

@rogerc7960 and how does an impoverished UK raise the money to double the fleet?

@@grahamepigney8565 The fleet was far bigger in the 1980s when the UK economy was in a truly terrible state, because we spent a significantly bigger proportion of our GDP on defence. It's a political choice, that's all, it's about priorities. Successive governments made the decision that they care about the NHS and welfare and that they don't care about the armed forces.

take a look at the russian navy to see what it could be like.

@@itwoznotme I would rather look at chinas, that’s the one to watch

Brittania rules the waves has nothing to do with military power, the song and term has to do with the British lead in ending the slave trade.

@@georgebarnes8163 and how did we end the slave trade? With the biggest navy of the time

@@XTSu-sl1bb mostly by employing pirates actually.

Also the ageing remnants of the Hunt- and Sandown-Class. By no means capital ships and all scheduled for decommissioning starting from this year. Even the River-class ships shouldn't count.

Completely agree, the Royal Marines are essential for the British military as a whole and would be able to hold the Wildcats and potential F35s for operations

Not enough sailors to man them.

Yep

Why stop at 2? Why not 200???

@@jmg8246 That seems a rather stupid and pointless question.

Why would you want to join nowadays when they're advertising for everyone but you.. ?

do you want to pay a bit more tax for a bigger navy? the money has to come from somewhere

To inform the British public. It the kind of thing any half baked any agency could find out with ease so no loss in secrecy.

It would be my opinion that with the current numbers, the carriers would have a thinner protective defense than what is needed for independent operations. IM Dunn USN (ret)

No, it's not true. But it would require pulling ships from other duties.

Like pulling them from repairing

@@davidhouseman4328which would require other forces to cover those duties?

@paulcosens9022 practically they would be covered, required is hard to define. Something like a frigate in the gulf is a reasonably high priority but I'm not sure if it's required,

It's the 17 destroyers and frigates that's scaring me!. These ships are the backbone of the Royal navy and if you go by the rule of three only about 5 are active at any one time.

​@@tigerland4328what threat are we likely to face alone with more military punch than us? Russia? Not alone. China? Not alone. Argentina? Hardly a threat. It's like people forget that European defence is resourced and managed around the concept of collective defence from NATO. If you factor in the surface fleets of all other NATO members, we are part of the largest maritime military force on the planet.

@@Orbital_Inclination still need more destroyers and frigates

We lack the servicemen to support more ships

@@JimCarner I honestly thought we would go smaller and build something about 56Ft in length.. Something you could fit a container on. Quite comfortably. Give both forces something to worth with or from.

@@JimCarner Pilot house rear, Containerise weapon station. Use something akin to a Nemo, and deploy. Think standardised parts and multiple configs, less bespoke weapons. and yes. in theory you can fit a wildcat on a shipping container. just not length ways. The point was to use the doors was it not? also budget torpedo boat.

@@JimCarner Dude, i didn't think this far forward... i just think this is something worth exploring. Sub detection? Eh.. ??? Most likely would become seal deployment.

😅😅😅😅😅😅👉👍👍

More small boats - to ferry new arrivals across the Channel?

What year did you try to join?

@@ppo2424 Back end of 2021

@@joewhatcott7824 Well that depends on what the problem was with your ankle, but six months is too long to make a decision. And I wouldn't suggest being too critical of the mod before you've even been accepted.

@@joewhatcott7824 I appreciate the frustration, its probably just a question of not having enough admin, but most businesses seem to take forever these days. I'm just suggesting,keep your head down, people have come croppers before posting stuff on social media in relation to employers etc .Im sure you'll be fine and good luck in what will be a great career !

only their computers

120bn on the NHS, where does that go, when you can't get to see a doctor? The entire public sector is a gravy train, with no interest in delivering value to the tax payer.

Nonsense.

The Royal Navy began WWII as the largest in the world, still (in spite of a concerted and relentless effort by the USA, even pre-WWII, to surpass the Royal Navy) In some regards _it did_ even by the mid-late 1930's (arguably, in terms of quite a lot of aspects of naval aviation, though not all it must be said) But it wasn't until roughly 1943-1944 ish where the US Navy could credibly claim to have notably surpassed the Royal Navy. That said, it should be noted that the Royal Navy had been heavily engaged with the Kriegsmarine, Regia Marina and the IJN for quite a while before 1943/1944 and by 'quite a while' I mean, 'from 1939 onward' in the case of the Germans and of course just about as long as the Americans found themselves at war with the Japanese (the Japanese attacked British Hong Kong on the same day as the events at Pearl Harbour, which is often overlooked because of the historical significance and magnitude of the consequences of what happened at Pearl, but let's face it, the Japanese were attacking _everyone in their path_ in several directions and ran riot for about 6 months (as Admiral Yamamoto accurately predicted; the second part of his wise prediction, being the bit when that momentum inevitably ran out, and the sleeping giant that was American industry, snapped back hard) The British were responsible for essentially containing and largely defeating the Germans _and_ Italians at sea. The Italians never feature in any other theatre than the Mediterranean, in terms of naval warfare. An old squadron or two of Italian aircraft were involved in the Battle of Britain (little known fact) however, the Italians had obviously flown those North overland, nothing more. The Italians were soundly defeated in a number of important battles in the Mediterranean (Cape Matapan, Taranto and Spartivento, come to mind) It wasn't that the Italians were 'weak' as a navy, nor did they lack a kind of gusto or passion for what they were doing/trying to do. They had some beautiful battleships. It's just that, they were outclassed operationally, even by a contingent of the Royal Navy (under the superb leadership of Admiral Cunningham) which just made the most out of whatever they had and were consistently very good at what they did. Setbacks happened, even for a navy as professional and experienced as the imperial era Royal Navy. There is a tendency in modern, 21st century, self-appointed naval 'experts' and the usual whining commentariat, to make a meal out of any small accident or mishap. Two Royal Navy ships of lesser types collided in port in Bahrain just the other day, and now allegedly the sky is falling down and the Royal Navy is 'finished' according to rejoicing Anglophobes and misguided residents of the British Isles alike. It's bad that this happened, yes, though it's hardly as though there weren't accidents and collisions in the past. Some rather notorious ones occurred, even at the height of the British Empire. For instance, HMS _Victoria_ was lost in 1893, in a freakish and terrifying collision with HMS _Camperdown_ in which some 358 crew and officers were drowned. A routine training exercise and manoeuvre, went horribly wrong, and in a disastrous 15 minutes of madness, the _Admiral_-class pre-dreadnought battleship, HMS _Camperdown_ of some 10,600 tons, collided directly with HMS _Victoria_ of the _Victoria_-class pre-dreadnought battleship of some 11,020 tons. The routine 'fleet evolutions' insisted upon by Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, on board HMS _Victoria_ (and during this collision as well) meant that the British Mediterranean Fleet under Tryon's command, were constantly doing fleet exercises to 'keep taut and well-honed', so to speak. He was a stickler for discipline and keeping the crew's readiness at high levels. However, it should be remembered that this was still in a time when wireless wasn't ubiquitous in the navy or merchant navy. They were basically using flag signals, semaphore and signal lamps. And using these very retrograde techniques was fine and dandy even later by WWI (until the level of coal/oil smoke obscured the flag and lamps trying to signal etc etc) Nevertheless, the fatal accident which saw the death of Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon and 357 other men, that fateful day in 1893, was largely avoidable. He was quoted by witnesses (Lord Gillford, his flag-lieutenant, and his staff-commander, Thomas Hawkins-Smith, separately, during the court hearing) to have openly admitted, "It was all my fault" (and/or) "It is entirely my doing, entirely my fault" (Vice-Admiral Sir George Tryon, at least according to them, accepting the collision was his fault) Without going into all the technical and nautical reasons for how and why the collision occurred, suffice it to say there were errors of judgement, miscommunications, failings born out of obsessive adherence to routine, bureaucratic box-ticking and generally a bit of aloofness from Tryon, procedurally. However, it is also fair to say it was an exceedingly rare happenstance in that era. A freak accident, ironically almost bound to happen the way things were so rigorously adhered to with such rigid mindsets. It was also a product of the nature of the Royal Navy of the 1890's having become much more obsessed with the 'spit and polish' of naval operations, than thinking about the realistic pragmatism of how some of their ways of doing things, would really play out. They were very stubbornly focused on observing the rigidly obsessed over class system, and subordinates would literally rather drown than question orders at times. And fear of demotion, and a stagnation brought on by elitism creeping into the Royal Navy for several decades by that point, meant that there were some warships which looked very pretty and superbly well-maintained, though they were actually not in the best hands at all junctures, so to speak (often captained by some rich dude whom had wormed his way into command because he had the right connections or had blagged his way up the chain of command for long enough) There was a phrase thrown around in Britain, even back in the 1890's; "When the ships were made of wood, the men were made of iron; but now the ships are made of iron, the men are made of wood". And that is neither entirely fair or the only iteration of how that saying went (I paraphrase) though it is basically what was meant by it. That there was this overt nostalgia for the Nelsonian Navy and the times when the British had asserted themselves as the predominant naval power on Earth. And yet. And, yet. The Royal Navy had been starved of major naval engagements for decades at that point. They thirsted for a New Trafalgar that never really came, and this lasted generations over. The British were far from weak at sea. It's just that they wanted to sink their teeth into an enemy worth their time and effort and as strange as that sounds, it's _completely_ accurate to how things were perceived back then. They really didn't want to languish on patrol duty, blockade duty or routine exercises forever ad nauseum. They wanted to kick the tar out of a worthy adversary and prove a point. The closest you get in Royal Navy history, to Trafalgar 1805, in the next 30 years after it, is the Battle of Navarino in 1827, in which a British led Allied fleet (British, French and Russians) fought the Ottoman Turks. The Ottomans were crushed, rather unsurprisingly, though even on a political level, the British government were very resentful that Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Codrington (whom had led the allied fleet and his own British ships) had even put himself in that situation. Codrington was a renowned Hellenophile (someone whom loves Greek aka Hellenic history and culture) and literally attended meetings of the Philhellenic Society (basically Greek stuff lover society) in London. Let's just say he really didn't like the Turks and had an active interest in helping the Greeks achieve independence. So he metaphorically stuck his oar into the events and somewhat exceeded his mandate to the extent of crushing the Ottoman Navy outright in a very one-sided naval battle. And it was quite the battle, but _nothing_ to the scale and significance of Trafalgar or the Nile had been a generation prior. The Ottomans were no match for the Russians let alone the French or especially the British (and let alone, all three working together) They were ripped apart. But there was not much bigger a naval engagement for the British, for the rest of the 19th century. They hungered for action. It sounds odd, I know, but they were a navy built on tradition and long established feats in battle, going back to Tudor times and earlier. They wanted a scrap, basically. They wanted to fight the Russian Navy in the Crimean War (but the Russian Imperials were not dumb enough to bother obliging them this bloodlust, because they knew that it was completely futile to auto-seppuku the Russian Imperial Navy against the hilariously superior Royal Navy of the British Empire; in the same sort of era, the 2nd best navy in the world was the French Navy, and the Royal Navy was 4 times stronger than it and operationally as well as technologically superior in basically every single way possible. But with nobody willing to fight them for about three generations (and I mean a REAL fight not the odd skirmish or dumb despot - see Anglo-Zanzibar War, all ~38 minutes of it) the Royal Navy kind of did become more of a tell not show navy. Their reputation preceded them. Their old laurels of victory, withering on the vine as every year passed. Between 1914 and 1813, the Royal Navy never lost a single naval battle. Until Coronel, that is.

Several disasters happened - e.g. the case of the Sinking of HMS _Victoria_ in 1893, and various other sinkings to things like really appalling hurricanes/other oceanic storms, and so on and so forth. However, what was really doing long-term damage to the Royal Navy of the late 19th century, was the fact that they had been the end product of literal generations of, how can we put this...blue balls. They were overloaded with armchair Admirals, posers, second or third sons trying to make a name for themselves in high society, and the Victorian elitist class system was in full-effect. It was basically impossible _not_ to get a bit arrogant or complacent. Nobody would fight them. Imagine being so feared for so long that entire Empires shuddered at the prospect of bothering to take you on at sea, or that generations had passed since anyone worth mentioning had bothered to even try and fight you? Imagine, psychologically, what this could cause to the Royal Navy from roughly the 1830's-1890's. It was bound to cause problems. And this wasn't to say the Royal Navy wasn't absolutely excellent as far as navies go, from the 1830's-1890's. Of course, it was still, arguably, in it's golden imperial century. It was nearly untouchable. But it didn't know or couldn't possibly have had any real idea, how turbulent the 20th century would be. A LOT of chickens were coming home to roost, so to speak, by the early 20th century. While few people dared fight Britain at sea, across the 19th century (by far the Royal Navy's worst foe in the 19th century post-1815, was the sea itself; storms and the like e.g. terrible storms in Calamity Bay - yes it was called that by the British - in the Crimean War in the 1850's, sank more military and logistical support ships, than the Russians _ever_ could), there _were_ a number of naval arms races being contested against Britain. France had a spirited but completely pointless attempt in the 1851-1870 timespan. The French never got close to _really_ being a real threat to Britain in the mid-late 19th century. They were nowhere near Britain in so many regards. Plus, the French investment in their navy backfired when they were invaded by the boisterous Prussians in the Franco-Prussian War. All those fancy warships the French had invested in to try and compete with Britain's shipyards, were mostly completely useless as Sedan and Paris were lost. Prussia humbled France in just 6-7 weeks flat. For the French, it was a total humiliation (only to be compounded in 1940, during the Fall of France) The Royal Navy had not lost a battle at sea since 1813 by the time the 1914 Battle of Coronel took place. And it demonstrates how the Germans, whom had gotten into a much more serious arms race with Britain in the naval arena, were the ones to exploit a transitioning, evolving Royal Navy, caught on the hop so to speak. The Germans get a lot of flattering and unfair over-praise, because of seeming to come along and 'teach the British a thing or two'. Well, yes, they were capable of presenting challenges to the British, but no, the Germans did not beat the British in terms of naval design and production. The British invented the Dreadnought, by 1906 (with HMS _Dreadnought_ of course), though the arms race raging between Britain and Germany from at least the 1890's, meant that it was very quickly made obsolete. Germany began to copy and rethink Dreadnoughts, and so lines of German dreadnoughts were constructed which were arguably better than HMS _Dreadnought_ 1906 (but the British kept clapping back with better ships of their own in turn) It went back and forth. And in this era when theoretical wars and the aim for naval deterrents were openly taken very seriously, it should hardly by surprising to realise that the Germans had the means to try and challenge Britain's naval dominance. Clearly, the French admitted they were no match for Britain at sea, but the fledgling German state unified, had no humility and tried to grasp at Britain's power itself. Again, it wasn't until late WWII when the Americans took the top spot. Britain, apparently 'humbled' since. But think of the context in which that happened. The two biggest wars in history back to back and with tense interwar years the entire time, involving financial collapses and struggling industries. The British were still impressive, though were caught on the hop, evolving their fleets. Admiral Cradock, slain with 1,600 crew and officers of the Royal Navy in the grossly unfair fight at Coronel, knew he was being sent to his death and said as much before being killed in that battle. He did everything that was expected of him, but was totally doomed. The British government caused their demise. They should never have been sent up against modern armoured-cruisers of the German Empire. They were soundly avenged at the Battle of the Falkland Islands, in which various German units were obliterated by the British battlecruisers in their element. The Germans received a taste of their own medicine at the Falklands. But before being killed, Maximilian von Spee had caused massive damage. Cradock was avenged, though his death and the deaths of 1,600 other men, should have been avoided. Going into WWI, the Royal Navy was hilariously overpowered. Going into WWII, it was still incredibly strong. But yes, in the mid-1940s the Americans took over as the most powerful naval faction. What happened next was obvious; the slow decline of the Royal Navy. Remember though, that the Royal Navy still operated 7 aircraft carriers into the 1960's. We still had a very strong navy during the Early-Mid Cold War. Not so much by the 1990's and the end of the Cold War (as it is traditionally understood) Nevertheless, it certainly wasn't, as you said, in 1919. That is rather crass. 1943/1944 is more likely. Royal Navy sacrifices in WWII helped to contain half or more of the Axis naval assets in WWII. The British led the way against the U-boats (in both world wars) and were much more important in defeating the Italian and German surface fleets, than the Americans were. The Americans did the most against the Japanese, obviously. Even in the 1950's and 1960's the Royal Navy was the 3rd strongest in the world. Now, it's nowhere near that. Alas.

We have 34 and more on the book (78 total) which is enough now to deploy as non total war cap of 26 ish because the navy likes their helicopters which takes up space