This is an entry in a year-long project to post-blog the demobilisation experience for British servicemen at the end of the Second World War. See here for an introduction to the project and here for a brief overview of the demobilisation process.
A Times leader reflects on the dramatic changes in technology and strategic mission which the British armed forces are having to wrestle with, now the war is over:
The aircraft carrier [appears ready] to take the place of the battleship as the major unit of the battle fleet.
For the Army the situation is more difficult still, since a large proportion of it is carrying out tasks of occupation, which are in effect police duties, calling for lighter weapons and equipment than those used in war and unsatisfactory from the point of view of serious military training. At the same time it has to prepare as best it can for the permanent tasks which these police duties interrupt, the defence of the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth, and to make sure that the heavy weapons which it must provide for that purpose are of the right kind.
The RAF has to face the extraordinary developments in aircraft of many types which marked the closing stages of the war and are likely to continue for some time. Behind all these are the uncertainties typical of the period immediately after a world conflict, in which the planner may feel he has been set to work on a moving stairway ...
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