ABSTRACT
The Naval Defence Act of 1898 acted as an aid to self-discipline for the British and simultaneously signalled their resolve to preserve the Royal Navy's quantitative superiority over prospective challengers. Stanley Baldwin who served as Britain's prime minister three times during the interwar period openly despaired over the sheer size and complexity of the problems inherent in air-defence. The Sunderland, which was introduced in 1938 and subsequently underwent several refinements, was loosely based on the Empire, one of several large flying boats utilized by civil airlines on long-haul flights in the interwar years. The Italians were preparing for, as Mallett terms it, a Mediterranean Jutland' conducted by battleships, cruisers and submarines with land-based air support. Military capabilities take years and decades to develop, but political intentions can change within just hours and days. For much of the interwar era, many nations looked to the control and limitation of armaments by international accord as the primary means of consolidating their security.
