ABSTRACT
The Royal Navy's golden age in the sunshine of the Mediterranean, the Caribbean and the East had been interrupted, however, at the start of the twentieth century by the challenge of an upstart power in the grey waters of the North Sea. The Royal Naval Air Service, including personnel and aircraft based on ships at sea, became part of the Royal Air Force on its formation in 1918, most of its members happy to escape the control of the surface Navy. The very political sensitivity of the issues between the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force stifled any careful consideration of the influence of airpower on war at sea. Many of the existing accounts of British nuclear weapons policy, by concentrating on inter-service debates and rivalries, and diplomatic and political decision-making at the commanding heights, serve to emphasise the importance of nuclear weapons still further, and tend to cast the Navy, like the other services, in a bad light.
