Welcome to Andrew Arthur's guide to the Royal Navy of World War 2.
Here you will find data, listings, plans and pictures of the ships that fought the War, as soon as it is available.
All ships will eventually be available, but those struck-through are not up-loaded yet.
Please mail me if you would like to be sent a file not up yet :-)
This section is written with some help from Bruce T. Swain - thanks, Bruce!

Click on these links to read about the battleships of the Royal Navy, the most powerful heavy fleet in Europe all throughout the whole of the war.

Click the above links to read about the notoriously underarmed, but very fast Battlecruisers. Only Renown survived the war, a testament to their weaknesses.

Click above links to read about the Royal Navy's small force of rather lightly armoured and armed heavy - or 8" gun - cruisers.

Click above to read about the proliferation of Royal Navy light cruisers. Interesting examples are the high speed cruisers of the "E" class and the 'trade route cruisers' of Arethusa class.

Click above to read about the large force of small Dido class Light Anti-Aircraft cruisers. Their sole armament of any size was the less than satisfactory 5.25" DP twin turret, although war shortages led to 4" Starshell AA and 4.5" DP guns working their way in.

Click above to read about the Royal Navy's mielaying 'cruisers,' really just large minelaying destroyers in all but size. They were very fast, 41 kts in the Manxman class, very lightly armoured and had a useful AA armament of twin 4" AA guns.

Click on the above links to read about the Royal Navy's indestructible armoured carriers, the old and vulnerable conversions or the huge amount of USN transferred and lesser numbers of home-grown escort carriers.

Click above links to read about the small but none-the-less excellent pre-war fleet destroyers, the comprimised 'utility' type of the war years, armed and powered with whatever was available, the old WW1 era destroyers that were converted into escort destroyers and the Anti-Aircraft destroyers not completed in time for the war, but bristling with AA guns and cannons.

Click above links to find out about the Royal Navy's elite force of escorts, or the old WW1 minesweeping sloops converted to makeshift coastal escorts and even the small interwar force of sloops, heavily armed with 4" AA guns to protect a convoy from heavy air attack.

Clicking the above links will lead the Royal Navy's supreme anti U-boat escorts. The 'frigate', previously being the same type as a 'cruiser', was re-kindled into a destroyer sized escort, with AA and A/S weaponry but suitable for mass producton and losing the destroyer's high speed for superb sea-keeping.

Following the above links will lead to pages about the economy, mass produced and - initially - poorly armed stalwarts of the Atlantic convoys. Bad seekeepers, too small, too slow, atrocious rollers and lacking a powerful gun, the corvette none-the-less dominated escort groups and proved itself a capable hunter.

These links lead to the pages about the hotch-potch of escorts used in coastal convoys, from ex- USCG cutters to WW1 "Q" ships.

Follow these links will lead to the pages about HM s/m's, or His Majesty's Submarines. Forever overshadowed by the Kriegsmarine 'U-boats', the RN boats nonetheless exacted a heavy toll on German shipping off of the Norweigian coast, and held the Mediterranean to stranglehold, decimating the Italian fleet and stopping Afrika Korps supply convoys taking vital supplies to Rommel's panzers.

Take the above links to read about the large amount of RN minesweepers, built in huge numbers wartime, adapting to acoustic, magnetic and pressure mines as the came around or the small but efficent force of coastal minelayers, protecting British convoys and ports by laying, removing and tending protective minefields.

These links lead to the pages about the coastal and gunboat forces of the Royal Navy, the 15" gun monitors for shore bombardment, the river gunboats from China station that were lost to Japanese or Nationalist Chinese forces to the fast but vulnerable Steam Gunboats of the Grey class.