Above, HMS Prince of Wales (RO9) and HMS Prince of Wales (53).
There is a lot of brouhaha now about the fate of the blast furnaces in Scunthorpe and how important it is from a strategic national interest standpoint to be able to produce virgin steel. This is indeed the case – in particular for building warships – especially submarines – an area I have a certain amount of first hand experience – all-be this being decades old!
My friend Dr. Richard North has a most excellent and well informed comment upon this situation (https://www.turbulenttimes.co.uk/).
Unfortunately, important decisions affecting the well being of nation states are sometimes taken by idiots; as the Good People of the USA are currently experiencing!
Well may you Dear UK Reader scoff at out cousins “across the pond” but we on this “side of the pond” have our own idiots to deal with – one of which is “Silly” Miliband! You see, “Silly” thinks it would be a jolly good idea to construct the pressure hull of a nuclear submarine from steel made by hydrogen and not coal as a reducing agent! Of course, “Silly” is not going to be aboard the boat when it makes it’s test dive prior to commissioning his His Majesty’s navy!
I have selected the two images of the two HMS Prince of Wales to make a point: Effective war fighting requires a complete array of vital components. At the simplest level; soldier, rifle, bullets! Of course, elite soldiers such as Royal Marines will in the absence of bullets make good use of their bayonets!
At a complex level we have capital ship, surface escorts, air cover. In the case of the battleship (53) she and her crew were lost after being bombed by the Japanese due to the lack of air cover. Today, battleships are no more. The aircraft carrier has taken it’s place as the capital ship. NB: Nuclear submarines are NOT capital ships due to the fundamental stealth aspect! A capital ship is required to project a visible presence. This is called Sea Power.
The Royal Navy has two fleet aircraft carriers; HMS Queen Elizabeth (R08) and the aforementioned HMS Prince of Wales (RO9). When ordered it was planned to acquire twelve Type 45 AAW guided missile destroyers to operate as carrier screens.
The USN – which is the most experienced of the world’s navies when it comes to operating aircraft carriers – insist that a carrier screen must have six surface vessel escorts and one under sea escort – in other words, at least one nuclear submarine.
BTW, for those such as the SNP and New Zealanders who would insist of a non nuclear boat, I suggest that they acquaint themselves with the history of the RN’s K Class submarines (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_K-class_submarine).
However the Royal Navy does not have twelve escorts – it only has six! This means that in order to put a carrier strike force together ALL the Type 45s have to be operational and this means each escort being fully crewed as well as having a fully crewed carrier! Since the Royal Navy’s manpower crisis is at such a parlous state the question of fielding such a strike group is now moot! And that is without mentioning the central aspect of a carrier strike group – an Air Wing!
The combined resources of the Royal Navy and the RAF are not able to put together a fully functioning and complete air wing! In other words, RN carriers can only sail in the company of other allies – and with an air wing made up mainly from the United States Marine Corps!
Therefore, since politicians such as “Silly” (and Tory idiots) have conspired to create this sorry mess, getting all agitated about the upcoming inability to make virgin steel is a tad pointless!