The Postwar Fleet: Volume 2, 1950-1957

A revealing documentary account of how Britain struggled to shape a modern navy amid Cold War pressures, rapid technological change and relentless financial constraint.


The Postwar Fleet Vol 2 reproduces key documents relating to the planning of Britain's postwar Navy from the period 1950-1957, as the Government tried to reconcile worldwide requirements with severe financial constraints. It begins in June 1950 with the outbreak of the Korean War, which marks the end-point of Volume 1. This event overturned many previous planning assumptions and initiated a short-lived programme of rearmament. Succeeding years saw an almost annual cycle of what were, in effect, fresh defence reviews as the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty tried to match resources and force levels to continuing commitments. Planners also had to respond to the increasing influence of technological change, especially nuclear weapons, computers and guided missiles.

The volume concludes with the publication of a major Defence Review in April 1957 which marked the beginning of a new, post-Suez Operation, phase in British defence policy.

Dr Jeremy Stocker is an Associate Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. He served as a Warfare Officer in the Royal Navy for 20 years, specialising in air defence, before transferring to the Royal Naval Reserve in 1996. Captain Stocker has seen active service in the Persian Gulf (1990) and in Afghanistan (2006). He retired in 2016. Jeremy's PhD was awarded by the University of Hull in 2003 for a thesis on British policy towards ballistic missile defence. His second book, Architects of Continental Seapower: Comparing Tirpitz and Gorshkov was published in 2021.