End of the Marines

SIR – Our forces would not undertake an opposed landing in the manner of D-day (Letters, October 28). As in the Falklands, a lodgement would be achieved with air superiority provided by the two new large fixed-wing strike carriers before serious fighting began.

A key feature of the landingplatform docks HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark is their superb commandand-control and communications capability, enabling them to coordinate a divisional-scale operation. Bay-class vessels have no such capability. The landing-platform docks also have over four times the shipshore lift.

Loss of Albion and Bulwark would mean the end of Britain’s amphibious capability and effectively the end of the Royal Marines.

Has there been any change to the strategic environment to provoke this decision? Of course not; it is nothing other than a savings exercise.

Britain would live to regret loss of our hard-won amphibious capability. Once gone it is very hard to recover. Admiral Lord West of Spithead (Lab) London SW1