A brief glimpse into the past

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against the Kingdom of France.

Royal Navy Submarine Service

The Royal Navy Submarine Service is one of the five fighting arms of the Royal Navy. It is sometimes known as the Silent Service, as the submarines are generally required to operate undetected.The service operates seven fleet submarines , of the Trafalgar and Astute classes (with four currently planned or under construction), and four ballistic missile submarines (SSBN), of the Vanguard class.

Royal Navy officer rank insignia

Royal Navy ratings rank insignia

This is a list of British Royal Navy ratings rank insignia.

Royal Navy Dockyard

Royal Navy Dockyards were harbour facilities where commissioned ships were either built or based, or where ships were overhauled and refitted. Historically, the Royal Navy maintained a string of dockyards around the world; these publicly owned establishments were officially designated Royal Dockyards or HM Dockyards until the late 1960s .

Royal Navy Medical Service

The Royal Navy Medical Service is the branch of the Royal Navy responsible for medical care. It works closely with Queen Alexandra's Royal Naval Nursing Service.

Royal Navy ranks, rates, and uniforms of the 18th and 19th centuries

Royal Navy ranks, rates, and uniforms of the 18th and 19th centuries were the original effort of the Royal Navy to create standardized rank and insignia system for use both at shore and at sea.

Royal Navy Burying Ground (Halifax, Nova Scotia)

The Royal Navy Burying Ground is part of the Naval Museum of Halifax and was the Naval Hospital cemetery for the North America and West Indies Station at Halifax, Nova Scotia. It is the oldest military burial ground in Canada.

Royal Naval Air Service

The Royal Naval Air Service was the air arm of the Royal Navy, under the direction of the Admiralty's Air Department, and existed formally from 1 July 1914 to 1 April 1918, when it was merged with the British Army's Royal Flying Corps to form the Royal Air Force, the world's first independent air force.

Royal Naval Reserve

The Royal Naval Reserve is the volunteer reserve force of the Royal Navy in the United Kingdom. The present RNR was formed by merging the original Royal Naval Reserve, created in 1859, and the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR), created in 1903.

British Army

The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of British Armed Forces. As of 2019, the British Army comprises just over 79,300 trained regular personnel and just over 27,200 trained reserve (part-time) personnel.The modern British Army traces back to 1707, with an antecedent in the English Army that was created during the Restoration in 1660.

British Army other ranks rank insignia

The term used to refer to all ranks below officers is "other ranks" . It includes warrant officers, non-commissioned officers ("NCOs") and ordinary soldiers with the rank of private or regimental equivalent.

British Army during the Second World War

At the start of 1939, the British Army was a small volunteer professional army. At the beginning of the Second World War, 3 September 1939, the British Army was small in comparison to its enemies, as it had been in the First World War.