Importance To Royal Navy
The GIUK gap was particularly important to the British Royal Navy, as any attempt by northern European forces to break into the open Atlantic would have to do so either through the heavily defended English Channel, which is also one of the world's busiest seaways, or through one of the exits on either side of Iceland. When also considering British control over the strategic fortress of Gibraltar at the entrance to the Mediterranean, Ireland, Spain, France, and Portugal are the only European countries that have direct access to the Atlantic Ocean in a way that cannot be easily blocked at a choke point by the Royal Navy.
Read more about this topic: GIUK Gap
Famous quotes containing the words royal navy, importance to, importance, royal and/or navy:
“The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defence and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island.”
—William Blackstone (1723–1780)
“Whoever deliberately attempts to insure confidentiality with another person is usually in doubt as to whether he inspires that person’s confidence in him. One who is sure that he inspires confidence attaches little importance to confidentiality.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“In the United States all business not transacted over the telephone is accomplished in conjunction with alcohol or food, often under conditions of advanced intoxication. This is a fact of the utmost importance for the visitor of limited funds ... for it means that the most expensive restaurants are, with rare exceptions, the worst.”
—John Kenneth Galbraith (b. 1908)
“The interpretation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.”
—Sigmund Freud (1856–1939)
“The Navy is the asylum for the perverse, the home of the unfortunate. Here the sons of adversity meet the children of calamity, and here the children of calamity meet the offspring of sin.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)