New Royal Navy on show at Spithead

Press, 6 July 1977, Page 20

New Royal Navy on show at Spithead

As part of the celebrations marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s accession to the throne in 1952, the Queen last week reviewed the Royal Navy at Spithead. The first Spithead review marked Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. On the morning of the latest review “The Times” commented:

“As the royal yacht circumnavigates the fleet at Spithead today the Queen might reflect that it all looks very different from the last naval review 24 years ago. The fleet itself is smaller, partly because Britain’s resources and global interests have diminished and partly because we have remained more or less at peace during that time. The ships too are diminutive, or at least they seem so beside the memory of the battleship, seven aircraft carriers and eight cruisers that the Royal Navy was able to exhibit in Coronation Year. Guided missiles, for a variety of reasons, do not require such massive platforms. “There is a temptation to over-sentimentalise about the Royal Navy. Big ships, like steam engines and the French Foreign Legion, have acquired an aura of romance which can cloud rational analysis. The fleet of 1953 had been largely designed for the Second World War and was

already something of an anachronism. As a symbol .of imperial power it was impressive, but that power was in abrupt decline. “The fleet of 1977 has some of its origins in the 1966 decision to abandon naval plans for a new class of strike carriers. Having come to terms with economic necessity, the Admiralty refocused on the 1980 s and started to build a different kind of navy. As these new hulls now take to the water it is arguable that the fleet of Jubilee Year is more relevant to its time than that more picturesque display of 1953.

“It is certainly possible to exaggerate the decline in British seapower. A guided missile is not only more lethal than a shell, but is much more accurate. In terms of firepower the Navy on show today is the most destructive that the country has ever had. It is also the most efficiently propelled with gas turbine engines replacing steam and nuclear power adding a new dimension to the submarine. It is substantially smaller than navies of the United States and the Soviet Union and, in the number of hulls and men, than the Chinese naVy too. But it is still the fourth largest in the world and the most übiquitous in Western Europe — if only just.

“Morale among sailors is still remarkably high. They have adjusted to their more restricted role in the Eastern Atlantic with less trauma than one might have had reason to expect. The fact that 70 navies from all over the world still send their ships and sailors to be trained here is a tribute to British expertise and to our continuing status as a maritime nation.

“This is not to be selfsatisfied, still less to ignore disquiet over the future. So far the Navy has managed to preserve a balanced fleet,

with a little of everything. Even the Fleet Air Arm has been thrown a lifeline with the introduction of the Invincible class of antisubmarine cruisers and their Harrier fixed-wing component. These new cruisers, the first of which was launched earlier this year, will act as command ships for the antisubmarine task forces whose operations in the Altantic would be a central function of the Royal Navy in any future war.

“But with rising costs and shrinking resources it will become increasingly difficult

for the Navy to preserve this balance during the next twenty-five years. There will be pressures for the Navy to build still smaller ships, just as there will be pressures to build bigger ones, or more submarines, or more oil rig protection vessels . . . The possible need for more ballistic missile submarines to replace the present Polaris fleet in the 1990 s could further impinge upon conventional shipbuilding schedules.

“Perhaps the most powerful argument that the Navy can deploy in resisting these

pressures, is that N.A.T.O. can hardly afford to see the British fleet further diminished, either in over-all size or the individual capability of its ships. Seventy per cent of allied warships in the Eastern Atlantic are provided by Britain, as are the only nuclear-powered submarines committed to N.A.T.O. by Western Europpean navies. So if there is anxiety over its future, Britain can still take substantial pride in its fleet today — and hopefully, tomorrow too.