Victory at Sea Quotes

“Thus, in 1950 it still had twelve carriers and twenty-nine cruisers, while the pages of Jane’s Fighting Ships for, say, 1952 still show a very considerable navy. It was not to be until after Suez (1956) and the defense-policy revolution of 1957 that the further drastic erosion occurred, and by 1970 the Royal Navy’s surface fleet had shriveled to three carriers and three cruisers.”
― Paul Kennedy, Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II

“Had the US Navy somehow not existed, this British Navy with its enhanced Fleet Air Arm would have been the most powerful naval force the world had ever seen. Yet that hypothetical condition did not exist in 1945, and America’s giant power was evident to all. The Royal Navy was far, far larger than any other naval service in the world apart from that of the United States; the badly battered French Navy was way behind in third place, and perhaps Australia or Canada was in fourth.”
― Paul Kennedy, Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II

“The first was to secure uninterrupted control of the sea-lanes supplying the British Isles, the great future base for the Allied invasion forces, but that had meant the defeat of the U-boat menace, which came only in the summer of 1943. The second was to attain command of the air, not just over France but also over the Reich, and that was properly secured, interestingly enough, only by early 1944.23 The third and absolutely critical prerequisite had been of course the entry of the United States into the war and the commitment by the American government to a Germany First strategy, for only its vast productive power could guarantee that the Allies would be strong enough to push their way into France. Yet there was also a fourth great factor at work, though it was far to the east, namely, the vast Nazi-Soviet struggle that sapped so much of the Third Reich’s resources and was still pinning down the majority of the German Army’s divisions in 1944.”
― Paul Kennedy, Victory at Sea: Naval Power and the Transformation of the Global Order in World War II