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At the beginning of the Second World War, the Royal Navy was the strongest navy in the world. It had 20 battleships and battlecruisers ready for service or under construction, twelve aircraft carriers, over 90 light and heavy cruisers, 70 submarines, over 100 destroyers as well as numerous escort ships, minelayers, minesweepers and 232 aircraft.
At the start of the war, the Royal Navy was the largest navy in the world. In the critical years 1939–43 it was under the command of First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound (1877–1943). As a result of the earlier changes the Royal Navy entered the Second World War as a heterogeneous force of World War I veterans, inter-war ships limited by ...
At the start of World War II in 1939, the Royal Navy was still the largest in the world, with over 1,400 vessels. [73] [74] The Royal Navy provided critical cover during Operation Dynamo, the British evacuations from Dunkirk, and as the ultimate deterrent to a German invasion of Britain during the following four months.
British Destroyers & Frigates: The Second World War and After. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 1-86176-137-6. Friedman, Norman (2009). British Destroyers From Earliest Days to the Second World War. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-081-8. Hague, Arnold (1993).
Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy in the Second World War (1991) Marder, Arthur. Old Friends, New Enemies: The Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy, vol. 2: The Pacific War, 1942–1945 with Mark Jacobsen and John Horsfield (1990) Roskill, S. W. The White Ensign: British Navy at War, 1939–1945 (1960). summary
The Hunt-class destroyers was a class of escort destroyer of the Royal Navy. The first vessels were ordered early in 1939, and the class saw extensive service in the Second World War, particularly on the British east coast and Mediterranean convoys. They were named after British fox hunts.
During the Second World War nearly one third of the world's merchant shipping was British. [149] Over 30,000 men from the British Merchant Navy died between 1939 and 1945. More than 2,400 British ships were sunk.
Ships of the Royal Navy: The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy (Rev. ed.). London: Chatham Publishing. ISBN 978-1-86176-281-8. Collins, J.T.E. (1964). The Royal Indian Navy, 1939–1945. Official History of the Indian Armed Forces in the Second World War. New Delhi: Combined Inter-Services Historical Section (India ...