Painting depicts the full Coronation Review in 1953, before the bloody politicians of both so-called Parties, the so-called Civil Service, along with all the peace-lovers, the Lefties, the disarmament crew; along with the bean counters, decimated the means by which we were able, in every term of the word, to patrol and defend our Trade Routes. We are an Island Nation, and once-upon-a-time, we had a Royal Navy worthy of the Name.
Our very history stems from the fact that, from the earliest days of trade, our national need for imports and exports have demanded a competent naval force to protect our island’s interests. From the ‘King’s Navee’ to the masterful force which was the Royal Navy in the years just after WW2, we have had, made and determined policy by the presence and actions of Navy warships.
The names cascade down British history’s ledgers: Anson, Hood, Drake, Frobisher, a dip into any historical archive shows that seamanship, service and above all, loyalty and dedication to the rigours and rules of the Navy handed we Brits a stacked deck almost every time our Island Nation was tested. Apart from the defeats by the Dutch Admiral De Ruyter, Britain, or rather England, ruled the waves as never seen before or since. The British Crown and Navy took on Napoleon in his various disguises as a republican general, and then a dictator masquerading as an Emperor, and virtually dictated the course of the wars fought at sea; ending with the defeat of the French at Trafalgar by the naval genius of Lord Nelson.
The Great War saw Britain’s Fleet take on the German Grand Fleet, and after Jutland, where the navies clashed for perhaps the only time, saw the Germans holed up in their anchorages, with the British Fleet guarding the boltholes. The Germans nearly succeeded in starving Great Britain with the U-boat submarine fleet, but once deterrent measures were introduced, the subs were denied access to the North Sea, and were defeated.
The Second World War saw Britain’s naval forces, as usual, emasculated by politicians who just did not want to understand that, although Defence does not win headlines, if properly funded, it wins victories. Our Navy was badly funded and run during the peacetime years, and when the great conflict began, naval forces were stretched to breaking point by stupid decisions made by politicians with ideas of grandeur.The Royal Navy was partly modernised in the second half of the 1930’s, but the upgrade missed HMS Hood (sunk with a single shell from Bismarck), HMS Barham (torpedoed despite alleged anti-torpedo upgrade) and HMS Repulse (sunk by the Japs after sailing without any air cover whatsoever).
We managed to win through, partly because the Krauts made more mistakes than we did; but mainly because the Japs attacked Pearl Harbour, and America came into the war, and saved the West for the second time in twenty years. The calibre of the Royal Navy’s officers and men were such that a naval action between the destroyer Glowworm and the German heavy cruiser Admiral Hipper, a vessel ten times the size of the destroyer; and where the destroyer sank after attacking and ramming the Hipper, allowed the Admiralty to place the Glowworm’s captain to receive the Victoria Cross posthumously on the recommendation of the German Cruiser captain, and his captured log.
After the War was over, the inevitable rush to demobilise, to ‘save’ money by not building ships that worked and mattered, grew ever stronger. From one of the mightiest Navies this world has ever seen, the Royal Navy has slowly deteriorated into a pale shadow of the Service which, literally, saved our bacon. The bloody politicians, and the weaselling civil service of the Ministry of Defence who follow their masters’ call, have slowly but surely disembowelled the Service upon which Britain’s fate depends.
And what do we have now?
We have six Daring class destroyers. All six of which have been in the hands of repair workers for large portions of their sea time, because the shoddy BAE Systems design of the engine rooms meant that they could not operate correctly in bloody WARM SEAWATER.
We have twelve frigates, at least six of which are laid up because we haven’t got the skilled and qualified men to sail in them. There are also two frigates building, but that is very slow, because we don’t have the money when its needed.
We have four Ballistic Missile submarines, inclusive of at least one sub where broken bolts were GLUED back on to reactor vessel supports.
We have eight fleet nuclear submarines, with at least two unavailable being repaired after damage at sea.
And then we have the pride of the Royal Navy; two Aircraft Carriers. Well not quite. We do have the HMS Queen Elizabeth, which is, when at sea, a competently sailed vessel, but, due to the so-called Ministry of Defence “experts” changing their minds at least four times DURING construction, has no angled deck, no catapults, has a ramped bow instead, so that the only jet aircraft capable of using the flight deck is the F-35, which has to have vertical landing and short take-off capabilities. We used to have our own British designed Harrier VTOL jets, which helped us win the Falklands War, but the M.o.D. decided that we didn’t need them, or we couldn’t afford them: or another such lie.
As I stated previously, we don’t have two carriers; we only have one which actually works. The other one? That would be the HMS Prince of Wales. That has to be the real pride of the Fleet? No, that wasn’t the term I would use. More along the lines of £3.1 billions-worth of expensive scrap steel. When the ship was being built, in three of four sections all around the Nation, just so it could have British workers doing all the ‘work’; this bunch of cretins couldn’t lay the proverbial “straight” piece of string stretching from the propellers, down along the various huge bearings carrying both prop shafts to the Engines. As a result, the bloody £3.1 billions ship put to sea, and immediately broke down, because big ship propeller shafts have a diameter of around two-odd metres, and they don’t bend easily, if ever.
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