VANGUARD TO TRIDENT : British Naval Policy since World War Two by Grove, Eric J

Annapolis 1987, USNI, Pr, US First edition, hardbound w/dj, 7x10, VG/VG cond, 487 pages, illus, notes, appendices, bibliog, index. -----------------------------------------This ground-breaking new work represents the first serious attempt to analyze the influence of British politics and economics on the evolution of postwar naval policy in Great Britain. Thorough and well-documented, this study clearly demonstrates how cabinet-level decisions have shaped the Royal Navy, its size, capabilities, and activities.The author, Eric Grove, who taught strategic studies at the Royal Naval College in Dartmouth, England, for a decade, draws on recently released archival documents to detail the British government's attempts to come to terms with the financial realities of an austere postwar world in planning a future fleet. Described here for the first time, for example, is the Churchill government's highly secretive process of defense review and strategic revision, after acknowledgment that the country's defense effort had to be cut back despite growing confrontation with the Soviet Union.In reviewing the operations of the Royal Navy since 1945, this book sheds new light on the Yangtze incident and British thoughts on military action against the Nationalist Chinese in China's civil war. It describes plans for military intervention in Egypt in the early 1950s as well as British naval activities in the Korean War. In addition, it reveals little-known events in the Falklands some thirty years ago that presaged more recent actions there.Grove also examines the way the Royal Navy used the Suez crisis to challenge the Duncan Sandys defense review of 1957-58 and the defense reviews of the Wilson government in the 1960s, taking a fresh look at the controversy that led to the abandonment of the aircraft carrier program. His analysis of the factors that shaped the navy of the 1970s leads to an astute discussion of the ,John Nott defense review of 1981 and a full account of the Falklands War. The book concludes with a valuable assessment of British naval policy today, which Grove argues is at a major crossroad.Among the many illustrations that accompany the text are some fascinating drawings, reproduced here for the first time, of projected warships that never proceeded beyond the design stage.