DBWI-Reverse the Post-WW2 fates of the Royal Navy and US Navy

Today the Royal Navy's newest aircraft carrier, HMS Ark Royal, the third of the new Inflexible class, was launched to great fanfare in Southampton.

CVN78b.jpg


Meanwhile in America, the US Navy just commissioned USS Antietam, the largest aircraft carrier built for the US Navy since the WW2-era Midway class.

53c81bdfceae5.jpg


Antietam is supposed to mark the US Navy's return to large carriers after the decommissioning of the last Midway class carriers in the early 1990s. Looking at the disparity between the US Navy and Royal Navy today, it's hard to believe that at the end of World War 2, the two navies had reached parity in size and strength. Would it be possible to create a scenario where the two situations were reversed?
 
The only reason for the size of the RN was the size of the Empire. As the Empire shrank the RN had to shrink with it. You need a reason for a big Navy and Britain doesnt have that reason.
 
The only reason for the size of the RN was the size of the Empire. As the Empire shrank the RN had to shrink with it. You need a reason for a big Navy and Britain doesnt have that reason.

Exactly, the Navy still patrols the waters of the Empire and Dominions, there's that massive naval base in British North America at Halifax and Alexandria is still one of the premier ports and bases in the entire region. Don't forget Singapore, Sidney...the list goes on. Somehow you'd have to have the Empire 'go away' and with it the Empire's spending power. You'd also have to have the US be more interested in being a multi-national power, there's still a very strong isolationist streak there and the USN's perfectly good for its role and the navies mission, ensuring the protection of the East and Western seaboard and their pacific holdings. A big strain on naval commitment came with the independence of the Phillipines in 86.
 
Knocking down the Royal Navy is trivially simple: have the Empire fracture and most of it go independent, and then there's no reason to maintain such a large Royal Navy.

Building up the US Navy isn't that much harder, really: right now the purpose is national defense, and so it needs to be able to dominate coastal waters (defining 'coastal' broadly), secure the Panama Canal, and maintain a strong naval base in Pearl Harbor to protect Hawaii. You don't need to be world-spanning like the Royal Navy to manage that, and the US Navy is still arguably the second most powerful fleet in the world, even if it's a distant second.

The only possible naval threat to the United States comes from the Royal Navy, so...why build up bigger, when force projection is already covered by an ally? A smaller Royal Navy means the United States would probably want to be able to do force projection themselves - certainly nobody else has the money or the desire to fund such a fleet - and that alone might be enough to lead to the full reversal.

So: break up the British Empire, and you've got your goal.
 
Knocking down the Royal Navy is trivially simple: have the Empire fracture and most of it go independent, and then there's no reason to maintain such a large Royal Navy.

Building up the US Navy isn't that much harder, really: right now the purpose is national defense, and so it needs to be able to dominate coastal waters (defining 'coastal' broadly), secure the Panama Canal, and maintain a strong naval base in Pearl Harbor to protect Hawaii. You don't need to be world-spanning like the Royal Navy to manage that, and the US Navy is still arguably the second most powerful fleet in the world, even if it's a distant second.

The only possible naval threat to the United States comes from the Royal Navy, so...why build up bigger, when force projection is already covered by an ally? A smaller Royal Navy means the United States would probably want to be able to do force projection themselves - certainly nobody else has the money or the desire to fund such a fleet - and that alone might be enough to lead to the full reversal.

So: break up the British Empire, and you've got your goal.

That's a tall order, given the closeness of the assorted dominions of the Empire. In the past four decades we've had two Africans and one Indian as Prime Minister. Perhaps Britain is more resistant to Imperial reform in the pre-WW2 era?
 
That's a tall order, given the closeness of the assorted dominions of the Empire. In the past four decades we've had two Africans and one Indian as Prime Minister. Perhaps Britain is more resistant to Imperial reform in the pre-WW2 era?

You'd probably have to go back to about 1916 if not earlier.
 
Why worry about the Empire at all? Have Stalin not order Molotov to issue the Berlin Proclamation of 1948. Prior to that there was a lot of concern the Soviets were planning to build at the very least an empire of client states in Eastern Europe if not even perhaps try and roll further west. With the Soviets going all inward looking, "Disengaging to build perfect socialism in one country," whatever that means and these days we really don't know enough about what goes on there to be sure, well a lot of the reason the US might have had to worry went away.

Rather than build down the Brits maybe build a bigger threat?
 
Why worry about the Empire at all? Have Stalin not order Molotov to issue the Berlin Proclamation of 1948. Prior to that there was a lot of concern the Soviets were planning to build at the very least an empire of client states in Eastern Europe if not even perhaps try and roll further west. With the Soviets going all inward looking, "Disengaging to build perfect socialism in one country," whatever that means and these days we really don't know enough about what goes on there to be sure, well a lot of the reason the US might have had to worry went away.

Rather than build down the Brits maybe build a bigger threat?

Of course, that all turned out to be hot air in the long run, given how the Soviets simply used more covert means to keep the communist governments of Eastern Europe in their orbit.
 
Of course, that all turned out to be hot air in the long run, given how the Soviets simply used more covert means to keep the communist governments of Eastern Europe in their orbit.

That's more a political thing, though - if the USSR's military was larger, then there would need to be more troops available. It's debatable whether this would mean the US Navy would be built up, or whether the US Army would just station troops in Europe permanently, though.
 
Top