The Royal Navy and Nuclear Weapons

This work examines British thinking about nuclear weapons in the period up to about 1970, looking at the subject through the eyes of the Royal Navy, in the belief that this can offer new insights in this field. The author argues that the Navy was always sceptical about nuclear weapons, both on practical grounds and because of wartime and pre-war experiences. He suggests that this scepticism can teach us a good deal about military technological innovation in general.

Both the defensive and offensive implications of nuclear weapons are considered, using recently declassified documents to show that "broken-backed warfare" - the 1950s idea that a war between the East and West could continue after a nuclear exchange - had considerably greater intellectual and practical foundations than has previously been acknowledged.

Examining naval involvement in the British nuclear weapons programme in detail, this work argues that the Navy's interest in a share of the strategic deterrent role has often been considerably overstated.