Editing Royal Navy (section)

===Interwar period===
At the end of World War I, the Royal Navy remained by far the world's most powerful navy, larger than the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] and [[French Navy]] combined, and over twice as large as the [[Imperial Japanese Navy]] and [[Regia Marina|Royal Italian Navy]] combined. Its former primary competitor, the Imperial German Navy, was [[scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow|destroyed at the end of the war]].<ref>{{Cite book|last=Johnson|first=Paul|url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/24780171|title=Modern times : the world from the twenties to the nineties|publisher=[[HarperCollins]]|year=1991|isbn=0-06-433427-9|edition=Rev|location=New York|oclc=24780171}}</ref> In the [[Interwar Britain|inter-war period]], the Royal Navy was stripped of much of its power. The [[Washington Naval Treaty|Washington]] and [[London Naval Treaty|London Naval Treaties]] imposed the scrapping of some capital ships and limitations on new construction.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/naval-conference|title=The Washington Naval Conference, 1921–1922|publisher=Office of the historian|access-date=1 January 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171229003632/https://history.state.gov/milestones/1921-1936/naval-conference|archive-date=29 December 2017|url-status=live}}</ref>

The lack of an imperial fortress in the region of [[Asia]], the [[Indian Ocean]], and the [[Pacific Ocean]] was always to be a weakness throughout the 19th century as the former North American colonies that had become the United States of America had multiplied towards the Pacific Coast of North America, and the [[Russian Empire]] and [[Japanese Empire]] both had ports on the Pacific and had begun building large, modern fleets which went to war with each other in 1904. Britain's reliance on Malta, via the Suez Canal, as the nearest Imperial fortress was improved, relying on amity and common interests that developed between Britain and the United States during and after World War I, by the completion of the Panama Canal in 1914, allowing the cruisers based in Bermuda to more easily and rapidly reach the eastern Pacific Ocean (after the war, the Royal Navy's Bermuda-based ''North America and West Indies Station'' was consequently re-designated the ''America and West Indies station'', including a [[South America|South American]] division. The rising power and increasing belligerence of the [[Japanese empire|Japanese Empire]] after World War I, however, resulted in the construction of the [[Singapore Naval Base]], which was completed in 1938, less than four years before hostilities with [[Japan]] did commence during [[World War II]].<ref>Morris (1979), p. 453</ref>

In 1932, the [[Invergordon Mutiny]] took place in the [[Atlantic Fleet (United Kingdom)|Atlantic Fleet]] over the [[National Government (1931–1935)|National Government]]'s proposed 25% pay cut, which was eventually reduced to 10%.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-38340159|title=Respectful rebels: The Invergordon Mutiny and Granny's MI5 file|publisher=British Broadcasting Corporation|website=BBC News|first1=Hamish|last1=MacDonald|first2=Louise|last2=Yeoman|date=20 December 2016|access-date=1 January 2018|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20181028222824/https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-38340159|archive-date=28 October 2018|url-status=live}}</ref> [[International relations (1919–1939)|International tensions]] increased in the mid-1930s and the [[British re-armament|re-armament of the Royal Navy]] was well under way by 1938. In addition to new construction, several existing old [[battleship]]s, [[battlecruiser]]s and [[heavy cruiser]]s were reconstructed, and [[Anti-aircraft warfare|anti-aircraft weaponry]] reinforced, while new technologies, such as [[ASDIC]], [[Huff-Duff]] and [[hydrophones]], were developed.<ref>{{Cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=azuIDwAAQBAJ&q=hydrophones+are+arranged+in+a+%22line+array%22&pg=PA39|title=Underwater Acoustic Signal Processing: Modeling, Detection, and Estimation|last=Abraham|first=Douglas A.|date=2019|publisher=Springer|isbn=978-3-319-92983-5|language=en}}</ref>