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Noble went on to tell Admiral King the Royal Navy did not need its carriers for Operation Overlord, the invasion at Normandy.

The side-show that had been called Admiral Sommerville’s Eastern Fleet could no longer be justified, and increasing numbers of effective capital ships and carriers were now slowly being committed.Īs early as January 4, 1944, Admiral Sir Percy Noble, head of the British Admiralty Delegation in Washington, began advocating the deployment of a British Pacific Fleet. It argued that its few fleet carriers were already too thinly stretched across the Arctic, North Atlantic, Mediterranean and Indian Ocean theaters.īut, with the Italian fleet surrendered and the remaining units of the German navy neutralised, Britain was forced to turn her attention towards her responsibilities in the Far East. The Royal Navy had repeatedly turned down pleas for support from US chief of naval operations Admiral Earnst King during 19. The British Pacific Fleet was born in a maelstrom of political compromise.

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