ABSTRACT
In reviewing Royal Navy attitudes to nuclear weapons over the whole period to 1970, it is striking that even in a period of dizzying technological change and political tension a good deal of continuity is apparent. The acceptance of responsibility for strategic nuclear weapons, after initial opposition, might be put down in part to unreality – the unreality of conceptions of their use, and the unreality of fading memories of real war at sea. The importance of trade defence and extra-European roles to the Royal Navy waxed and waned in turn, but both subjects continued to attract more naval attention than nuclear strategy, which they pre-dated. New technology certainly affected the Royal Navy's thinking on nuclear weapons. Nuclear submarine propulsion made anti-submarine warfare more difficult and eventually forced the development of the nuclear depth bomb as a partial counter to the nuclear-powered submarine.
