Abstract Shot-peening was found to affect crack behaviour by delaying both crack initiation and crack propagation. Cracks were formed preferentially at the specimen edges, and crack propagation was found to be higher in the depth direction than along the surface, giving initial quarter-elliptical crack fronts with the major axis along the thickness direction. Shot-peeing significantly increases the ratio of initiation life to propagation life in comparison to unpeened specimens. Surface polishing was found to be detrimental to fatigue resistance. Indeed, it was observed that polishing had a similar effect for specimens of different peening intensities and thereby different depths of residual compressing stress. For high stresses with low lifetimes, the propagation period dominates, whereas for low applied stresses with long lifetimes the initiation period dominates. At high applied stress, cracks were initiated at the lower surface rather than the upper surface of the specimen even though a stress ratio R of −0.8 was used. This suggests that relaxation of residual stresses is more readily achieved by the action of the compressive stress in the fatigue cycle.