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THIS BOOK HAD its origins around 1978. I had a long fascination with things naval, and with battleships in particular. As I read more widely it seemed to me that the books of that day took an oversimplistic approach to the inevitability of the end of the age of the battleship. In particular, I considered that the evidence of the Second World War pointed to a complex operational picture. Competing and fast-developing technologies in the surface, air and underwater domains struggled for supremacy. The diverse theatres across which the war was fought required different approaches and different types of forces to win each campaign. The battleship, operating alongside the aircraft carrier, was still very much part of this picture in 1945, and further technological developments after the war could also play to its inherent strengths. So, there was an argument to retain the battleship, or its modern guided missile-armed ‘heavy ship’ equivalent. An early manuscript mainly researched and written in 1978–79 argued just this, but then the demands of a career in the Ministry of Defence and family life led to the work being suspended for nearly forty years. Little did I perceive at that starting point that many in the United States Navy and Marine Corps shared my perspective. The revival of the last surviving battleships was about to take place under the Presidency of Ronald Reagan. I followed the debate around those projects via the media, where it received quite a bit of coverage. The Soviet Union shared the vision of heavy surface warships as well, with their Kirov class of new guided missile ‘battlecruisers’. The final chapters of the Cold War generated a substantial naval arms race.