Gosport Buses HMS Vanguard Blank Birthday Fathers Day Card by Malcolm Root

This view overlooks the home of the Royal Navy's Reserve Fleet and shows a scene from the mid 1950s when HMS Vanguard, the last battleship built in Britain was the flagship. Built at a time of great change in naval tactics, the supremacy of the aircraft carrier as the main ship of any fleet was unquestionable by the end of WWII, leaving both the USA and UK with a number of large ships that had few uses in a post-war navy. The USA would adapt several of their battleships into floating anti-aircraft batteries and later arm them with cruise missiles, the British ships, such as those of the King George V Class and Vanguard herself would not be so lucky, Vanguard being sold for scrap in 1960.