Royal Navy vessels prepared for the 1900 Fleet Review. Ships are mainly battleships and cruisers.Spectacular view from Royal Navy ships prepared for another of the usual Fleet Reviews, this time performed in 1908. Up to fifteen large ships can be viewed. At that time, the Royal Navy was the most powerful Navy in the World.More than twenty warships can be seen in another magnificent group of Royal Navy warships. On this occasion the image is from the year 1912.Malta has always been an essential base for the Royal Navy. From this island, there is always an optimal exit to control the Mediterranean waters at any given time. In this picture from the 1920s, three Royal Sovereign class battleships are seen along with three cruisers. In the background there is a battleship inside the dry dock.Here we have the British HMS Eagle, HMS Furious and HMS Courageous aircraft carriers during the interwar period. Courageous was sunk in 1939 as it was Eagle in 1942, the Furious was the only survivor of the WWII and was scrapped in 1948.A general view of Malta Naval Base in WWII. There are two Kent class heavy cruisers in the background, a Queen Elizabeth class battleship, and a Nelson class battleship in the foreground. In addition, a few support ships are seen, all from the Royal Navy.Royal Navy’s HMS Royal Sovereign and HMS Revenge battleships waiting to be scrapped in the 50s, after a long life of services and fighting.Ten submarines from the Royal Navy’s 1st. Submarine Squadron remain moored in the Gosport Submarine Base, near Portsmouth in the 1960s. This naval base has been the most important within the Submarine Service from 1904 to 1999.HMS Montrose, belonging the Duke frigate class, along with the RFA Sir Geraint logistic vessel. They were moored in 2004 on one of the Portsmouth’s dock. This Naval base is one of the most important within the Royal Navy.Aerial view of the IJN Nagato battleship next to the IJN Akagi aircraft carrier from the Imperial Japanese Navy before the WWII. The Akagi was sunk in June of 1942 during the Battle of Midway, whereas the Nagato had a less honorable end. This battleship was sunk in 1946 during the American nuclear tests performed at the Bikini Atoll, Marshall Islands.The Austro-Hungarian Navy had a short life, from 1867 to the end of WWI in 1918. At the beginning of WWI was composed of about 20,000 people, 12 battleships, 12 cruisers, 18 destroyers and 6 submarines. In this image we can see some of the “dreadnought” type battleships prepared for a Naval Review.This aerial image shows a magnificent panoramic view of the facilities of Pearl Harbor in 1941, previous to the famous Japanese attack. We can see an aircraft carrier with two battleships, followed by a line composed by three more battleships, in a similar layout to the one they had on the day of the attack.This image corresponds to the Pearl Harbor’s “battleship’s row”. From right to left a freighter ship followed by 7 battleships is clearly visible. This layout, so usual in the World Navies, was exploited by the Japanese in the attack, because it was practically impossible that ships could initiate any evasive maneuver.On December 7, 1941, there was a bold attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy, which according to many naval experts was “impossible” to perform it. Unfortunately for Americans, it was done, and the effect was devastating for the surface ships of the Pacific fleet. This picture was taken shortly after the deadly raid. On the left we see the USS Maryland, and on the right it can be seen the USS Oklahoma hull’s bottom to the air. In the middle we can see a battleship still burning.The attack on Pearl Harbor cost the United States to lose control of the Pacific Area for a long time. Directly cost them: 2,235 dead, more than 1,000 injured, 4 sunken battleships, 13 damaged ships, nearly 200 destroyed aircrafts and 160 damaged aircrafts. In addition, the Naval base facilities were badly damaged. Instead, the Japanese only had 64 dead, and lost 29 planes and 5 mini submarines.Nearly 80 years have passed, and few people understand how the Japanese could catch the US Navy “totally unprepared”. In 1932 there were several warning reports that an attack of this kind was “feasible and possible”. The situation between the U.S. and Japan was so deteriorated that an aggressive action from Japan was foreseeable due to the damage suffered by the American embargoes. Not even the notice from an Australian Naval station, that reported on the sighting of a huge Japanese combat fleet some days before the attack, served them as a warning. This fact, coupled with the “coincidence” that none of the essential American carriers were that day at Pearl Harbor, has endorsed several hypothesis. One of them claims that “perhaps”, the attack was “allowed” by the United States to be able to finally enter on the World War II. It must be remembered that, at this time, American public opinion was in favor of maintaining neutrality. A neutrality, quite questionable indeed.To pay tribute to all the fallen that fateful day and not to forget that painful act, in 1989 it was decided to give the remains of the USS Arizona battleship monument treatment. Currently, we can visit and walk on a floating bridge installed over the sunken remains. In the upper left part of the image you can see the USS Missouri battleship being placed in the site where it remains as a floating museum since 1999.Here we see, from foreground to background, the USS Saratoga, USS Enterprise, USS Hornet (CV-12) fleet carriers along with the USS San Jacinto escort aircraft carrier during WWII. All these aircraft carriers belonged to the Pacific fleet and all survived the war.This aerial picture shows an impressive overview of the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard during WWII. During this period, 40,000 people worked there, more than 50 vessels were built and almost 600 were repaired. In this image we can see all types of combat ships such as cruisers, battleships, aircraft carriers, escort aircraft carriers, destroyers, logistic ships, freighters…In this image, from left to right, we can see the US Navy’s carriers: USS Coral Sea (CV-43), USS Midway (CV-41) and USS Hancock (CV-19). The first two belonged to Midway class, which represented a major step forward in the construction of aircraft carriers, considered after their modernization as the first “super aircraft carriers”. The USS Hancock belonged to Essex class carriers, the most important class of WWII.In this picture we can appreciate the launching of a US Navy’s Los Angeles class attack nuclear submarine (SSN). On the right there are two nuclear ballistic missile submarines (SSBN) from the Ohio class, one under construction, and another practically finished.Here we see two ships conceived for amphibious assault operations. The one on the left is the LPH-2 USS Iwo Jima helicopter carrier from the homonymous class. To its right is the LHA-4 Tarawa vessel, which gave name to its class, and which was curiously built to replace the ships from Iwo Jima class. Both ships are deactivated but currently the USS Tarawa is a floating museum.Here we see the LHA-4 USS Nassau with the BB-61 USS Iowa battleship. The USS Nassau participated in the Desert Storm and Desert Shield campaigns during the 1991 Gulf War being the Flagship of the Amphibious Task Force.This image shows the US Navy’s LHD-2 USS Essex amphibious assault ship, from the Wasp class. Next to her, two frigates, a destroyer and a submarine, surely from her escort group. Despite not being as big as the nuclear carriers, they are huge ships of more than 250 meters in length and 40,000 tons of displacement. They can carry helicopters, tiltrotors and attack aircraft and a Expeditionary Marine Unit with 1,700 soldiers.This picture, taken in 2005, shows a part of the US Navy’s Reserve Fleet in Bremerton, Washington. On the image you can see two O.H. Perry class frigates, a Spruance class destroyer and two aircraft carriers, being the one located to the right the CV-64 USS Constellation from Kitty Hawk class.
