Royal Navy capital ships

The war is generally seen as the twilight of the capital ship. Stephen Roskill, in his official history, concluded that the navy had not achieved a proper balance in 1939 between capital ships and aircraft carriers. However, no major navy abandoned the construction of capital ships before the war, and international comparison of capital ships and aircraft carriers launched between 1936 and 1945 (table 4.1) does not suggest that the Royal Navy was unusually conservative. The German navy s Z Plan of January 1939 aimed at having a fleet of six battleships and two battle-cruisers, but only two aircraft carriers, by 1944. In... 

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