Could the UK have done a better job of maintaining carrier based air power?

uk 75

uk 75

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With the benefit of hindsight there have been lots of suggestions in threads here as to how the UK should have shaped its carrier airpower from1945 to the present day? But in reality could they have worked?
The background is well known The limitations of a feeble economy and industrial weakness.
The first decisions that could have been different were the choices of carrier to be retained or built postwar?
The next opportunity comes between 1957 and 1962 with the need to buy replacement ships.
Finally, the replacements for those ships in the period after the Cold War.
The aircraft for these carriers can either be limited to real world types or paper projects if you prefer.
I have looked again at the choices that were made.
Were Ark Royal and Eagle the best choice for fleet carrier construction instead of the larger Malta and New Zealand?
Could the Illustrious Victorious rebuild fiasco have been avoided?
Could Hermes and Centaur or similar sized new carriers been given a worthwhile airgroup?
Was CVA01 simply too complex and expensive as an Eagle replacement? Or could Eagle rather than Ark have served.
The three Invincibles were remarkably successful within their ASW/Sea Harrier role. Would alternative designs have been better?
Was the UK right to want a new generation of carriers after the Cold War ended? Could simpler less expensive ships and aircraft been in service sooner?
 
Coronation Review of the Fleet, 15/6/53: HMCS Magnificent, HMAS Sydney: both "count" as "Team RN+Friends" (as would HMAS Vengeance, FNS Arromanches and HrMs Karel Doorman², busy elsewhere). HMAS Melbourne, HMS Ark Royal, Victorious, Warrior were in modernisation, HMS Albion, Bulwark, Centaur, Hermes onway in yards. Ocean was in Korea; Eagle, Theseus were in the Review...legitimately, 4xIllustrii were there too...not so. Perseus was there, not explained to VIPs as a spare deck/floating workshop. Available Air Groups left much to be desired, and that was less the fault of My Lords than of Ministers (hoping) to protract last piston types, to by-pass poor payload/range centrifugal jet types, to move straight to better (Eagle first commissioned with Firebrands!)

All this was the achievement of 1SLs Cunninghams and Fraser, facing a PM who long retained his 21/1/46 view, challenging need for “a large fleet ready for instant action as there is no one to fight”: UJ was our valiant Ally. Chances for Big Guns were “slim indeed” E.J.Grove,Vanguard to Trident,BH,87,P12/20. Surely...this was wondrous. What more could RN realistically have sought? Was not the reason for protraction (30/6/50-14/1/58) of Victorious' modernisation much the same as R&D on Typhoon, F-35B being measured in decades: if anything of an electronics bent exists, it's obsolete.

Be truly grateful for what RN received: it could have been reduced to Trade protection and garrison nourishment.
 
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In your order of questions.
Could they have worked?
Some more than others.
First post war opportunity is rather than rebuilds from 1950.
The best choice instead of Ark Royal or Malta types would be the Davenport limited CV Malta study.
A third Ark Royal type would kill the Illustrious rebuild concept.
Malta was too big for the infrastructure. Better to fund that upgrade in infrastructure first.
Hermes types would do ok with a multirole type.
Yes.
Yes Eagle was in better condition.
Possibly but it depends.
Yes.
Yes.
 
YES, yes, yes, and definitively, yes. Uk75, you should register at AH.com this matter has been discussed at leat 25 times since 2005. Including by myself.

From all this, my gut feeling, from the land of the frogs, Clemenceau, Foch, and Charles de Gaulle carriers, is the following.

Bet everything on the Centaur fleet. Keep them homogenous as a fleet, never turn them into helicopters or ASW carriers by removing the catapults. And never sell Hermes to India.
How long did it last, HMS Hermes, in Indian Navy service ? 2016, you said 2016 ??!!!

No, really, put all that scarce post-war RN budget on the Centaur fleet. They are nearly as good as the Foch and Clemenceau, which lasted from 1960 to 2000. And they are much more than two hulls, rather 4 or even 6 ( from memory, can't check Wiki presently).

If you need something bigger than Centaur, bet on HMS Eagle. Dang, retire that cranky Ark Royal and use it for spares !!

With HMS Eagle plus all the Centaurs available, the RN can sail (lame pun entirely assumed) through the entire Cold War and even slightly beyond. Then, waiting for the Q.E, retire HMS Eagle after the end of Cold War and gradually deflate the Centaur fleet until the Q.E enter service.

And please, past 1960 scrap everything that is not a) a Centaur or b) HMS Eagle. Forget all the others - either they are too small for jets, or too slow, or cranky old lemons.

Radical and brutal, but that's the way the French Navy survived through the Foch and Clemeceau years, until C.D.G was ready. Arromanches was used to the bones until 1974 and then retired.
 
The Centaur Option is certainly a plausible one.
But it really needs a multirole type of Fighter Attack aircraft by the 60's.

On a side note. If going to AH.com avoid the political section, stick to your AH scenarios and don't expect many to be helpful.
Ian the Admin is very quick to ban people for fairly minor transgressions as he sees fit.
 
Zen: don't start me on this !! I was a member from February 2008 until November 2017. And then I was banned. I have to say that my deep and sometimes irational hatred of Maggie Thatcher did not helped - I was crass and gross sometimes, talking about the old witch (oops, I did it again !) :p :p :p :p :p :p :p
More seriously

avoid the political section, stick to your AH scenarios and don't expect many to be helpful.
Ian the Admin is very quick to ban people for fairly minor transgressions as he sees fit.
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We have a winner here. This is 100% what happened to me. From 2008 to 2015 I stuck with space matters and aeronautics in the post-1900 section. Then you know what happened to France - Charlie, Bataclan, Nice, 250 killed in 18 months, shot and smashed by trucks. While I did not turned neo-fascist or anti-muslim after that (I'm miles above that fast-growing bullshit), I certainly grew a little more cynical / desperate afterwards. Also a perfect storm of a burn-out and mid-life-crisis probably did not helped - 2014, the year of ISIS - hell of scary, shitty year. My mind went the Iraq / ISIS way - a total meltdown, Fukushima style. And then Charlie Hebdo happened. Bataclan. Nice. Hell on Earth. I was lucky enough to be safe and insulated from all three slaughters, but it doesn't help a nascent recovery watching your own country going the same way as your own mind - carnage all over the place.
And I was finally banned.
The French political thread got me, probably. The 2017 presidential election really scared the hell out of me until the last minute - Fillon, Melenchon, Le Pen, geez, would you prefer catching the Black Death, The Spanish Flu, or plain old Smallpox ?
You guess that kind of not-so-subtil comparisons did not exactly went well with AH.com mods and by november, zap, La Guillotine !

"Hey, executioner, will you please show my head to the people here afterwards ! It is worth it !" Danton, 1793. "Tu montreras ma tête au peuple, bourreau ! Elle en vaut la peine."

You say Ian, and I said Calbear. Better not to start discuss that person here, because the only words that will come typing out of my keyboard would be extremely offensive.
Then I discovered that, as far as hacking a new account when permanently banned goes, AH.com is, of all Internet discussion boards, Hitler Eagle Nest or Wolf Lair. Geez, it is a freakkin' Festung Internet.
I learned from this experience I have zero skills as a wannabee hacker. At least I learned a lot about VPNs. :p:p:p:p:p:p
Still trying to hack them and get an account (I hate losing a battle, even a silly one), but zippo so far.
 
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I am grateful to everyone for bringing the information from the many older threads here and on other sites.
 
zen said:
The Centaur Option is certainly a plausible one.
But it really needs a multirole type of Fighter Attack aircraft by the 60's.

On a side note. If going to AH.com avoid the political section, stick to your AH scenarios and don't expect many to be helpful.
Ian the Admin is very quick to ban people for fairly minor transgressions as he sees fit.
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The question would how effective the French carriers really were at various offensive and defensive roles, with the possible exception of the anti-ship role once Super Etendards with Exocets were fielded.
Otherwise more a status symbol with limited real world capability (not really any better than British Harrier carriers, and with some real disadvantages).

And for the period it existed the F-4s and Buccaneers air wing was of a different league in capacity when compared to that made up of F-8s and Etendards.

It comes down to what the British wanted there carriers for and for which roles.
Once the decision was made to abandon/ scale back “East of Suez” commitments then their carriers were focused on roles directly opposing Soviet forces. Once that was the case you either needed full US-style super carriers and the capabilities of their air wings or you focused on more niche roles like anti-submarine (which could potentially carry Harrier-like aircraft along for the ride).
The UK decided it just couldn’t afford the former and went for the latter (and by a combination of luck and excellent engineering had the best Harrier-like aircraft there was).
There was little perceived need or appetite to pay for Foch type carriers or the limited in number and capacity air wing it could have carried. And new Hermes-sized Harrier carriers also weren’t on any UK agenda.
The UK was making rationale decisions based on cost benefit analysis of what they could actually afford. And it is worth noting that after the French carriers no one built non-V/STOL carriers of that approx. size again.
For example the closet in size is the Charles de Gaulle and it is substantially larger.
Also the CTOL Soviet/ Russian/ Indian/ Chinese carriers (all highly related to each other) are similarly larger and some allegedly have issues around their aircraft and real-world operational weights (may relate to use off heavy weight Flanker variants).
 
So the questionof effectiveness is a good one and the answer is again "it depends".
Certainly if there is a fleet of 8 Centaurs of increasingly Hermes standard and above. Then assuming the right aircraft, the system of systems is reasonably potent in number, when deployed in multiples.

An expensive way to get a force in theatre, but a more distributed one is more graceful in degredation.

And a more scalable to the mission than the simpler but 'all or nothing' approach of sending a single large CV to fly the odd Anti-fleet shadower ops.
 
The question would how effective the French carriers really were at various offensive and defensive roles, with the possible exception of the anti-ship role once Super Etendards with Exocets were fielded.
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Not too bad although limited, for sure. Rather by the attack planes themselves than the carriers: the Etendard IV was inferior to the Skyhawk, the SEM barely equal to late models Skyhawks. Had they been given Skyhawks right from the beginning, their strike power would have matched that of the late Essex carriers used in Vietnam. Same tonnage, size, except the Foch were younger by 15 years than the Essex so had benefited from progress in carrier design right from the beginning, plus no wooden deck of course.

A-7 is a strong alternative, was considered by the French in 1972, to be produced under a Vought licence in Toulouse, but Dassault screwed the idea, of course. If A-7s can go on Foch carriers, hence no problem on Centaur.

Yeah, that's how I see it - if the RN is clever enough, they can milk out their Centaur fleet just like the USN maxed potential and life of the Essex until 1980 (or even 1993 with good old Lexington !). And since Foch lasted until 2000 in French service, and Viraat, 2016 in India...
Plus Great Britain has a major asset the French and Americans don't have: Harriers don't need the catapult and can save life out of them. Foch and clemenceau catapults really aged badly and were constant trouble after 1980-85. Harrier don't care. BUT not for air defense: use the Harrier as the RN Skyhawk / Super Etendard, the subsonic attack bird. And then use the catapults only for a supersonic interceptor plus,e ventually, support aircraft - AEW, obviously, those Gannet AEW-3 that were so thoroughly missed OTL, in the Falklands :p
Unfortunately Foch and Essex proved E-2 Hawkeye were too big for them. BUT there is a great, often forgotten, AEW platform: the E-1 Tracer, the Stoof-with-a-roof ! The USN retired them by 1978, and Trackers can certainly land on Foch, just ask the Brazilians that welcomed Argentina birds onboard our old Foch in the 2000's.
What's more, the Tracker could be re-engined with turboprops: Turbotracker, so the E-1 would become a... TurboTracer !
I can see an Anglo-French buyout of E-1 Tracer in the late 70's, at bargain price from the USN which is retiring them.
Incidentally, AEW for Foch belonged to the Breguet Alizés... d'oh ! Guess why in Red Storm Rising, the Foch end at the bottom of the sea ? :eek:
So the anglo-french buy second-hand E-1 Tracers and eventually upgrade them with turboprops for more punch, and perhaps, a better AEW radar - hopefully, this can distract the British away from the looming Nimrod AEW-3 cataclysmic failure...

As for the supersonic interceptor, a Spey Mirage F1M is tempting. Phantoms are expensive and borderline on Foch, Essex, Centaurs... or maybe an upgraded Crusader as discussed elsewhere.
 
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Hmmmm....
Spey A4 and Spey F8....
Cap it off with A7 later....still with the Spey.

But it's not quite good enough as the numbers per CV would be quite low. Hence the preference for a multirole type.
What's needed is the Mirage G.

Actually what's needed something with a pair of engines of 8-9,000lb dry and 12-15,000lb reheated thrust.

Which is exactly the engines required from 1954.....and very much like the lineage of the RB.153 to RB.199.
 
An anglo-french Mirage G with a Spey and in place of (altogether) AFVG, Jaguar, Mirage F1 and Tornado, plus a naval variant, would be completely awesome.
Can be done starting in 1965 in place of AFVG if Jaguar is stuck at Hawk / Alphajet level of subsonic trainer and only that.
 
It could start earlier with the Type 584/585.
As I've said elsewhere, if the V in VTOL and V/STOL is dropped with the lift jets and diverter. Then the 584/585 is close to the Flogger and Mirage G in the early 60's.
 
The idea of an all Centaur fleet along Centaur lines is intriguing but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
Hermes did not commission until 1959 to the modified standard, so either her three sisters would have to be delayed in construction until 1959-61 or rebuilt during the early 1960s which would have cost a fair bit of money and most of them would have then been unavailable until the mid-1960s.
The small airgroup would be a concern too, 12x Sea Vixens and 7x Buccaneers each is a rather small airgroup and I'm not sure that it would have been particularly cost-effective.
The Commando carriers were equally, if not more, strategically important. What would replace the historical Bulwark and Albion conversions? Retain a couple of Colossus class?
It makes the Sea Vixen replacement even more thorny, does it saddle the FAA and RAF with the potential hot potato P.1154? Do they try and go it alone with Jaguar M when Dassault throws it out of the pram?
They would still be rather dated and need replacing by the 1980s, finding engineering crews for steam turbines gets steadily harder, the material condition would have deteriorated and they lacked decent enough command and control facilities and radars (Hermes in 1982 still had 1950s radars). (Before anyone points out again Hermes lasted until 2016, how many times did she actually put to sea in the last 20 years of her life?) Can't see Thatcher's government shelling out too many readies to build a couple of fleet carriers but there might have been no choice.
 
alertken said:
All this was the achievement of 1SLs Cunninghams and Fraser, facing a PM who long retained his 21/1/46 view, challenging need for “a large fleet ready for instant action as there is no one to fight”: UJ was our valiant Ally. Chances for Big Guns were “slim indeed” E.J.Grove,Vanguard to Trident,BH,87,P12/20. Surely...this was wondrous. What more could RN realistically have sought? Was not the reason for protraction (30/6/50-14/1/58) of Victorious' modernisation much the same as R&D on Typhoon, F-35B being measured in decades: if anything of an electronics bent exists, it's obsolete.
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I disagree with this. In 1944/early 1945 the RN senior leadership were living in a fantasy land, proposing a post-war fleet far more expensive in manpower and money terms than the one that had existed in 1939. The originally drafted 1945 construction programme included the two Lion class battleships and continuation of the Malta class. The RN acquired large parts of formerly civilian owned Keyham, Plymouth and Devonport with the intention of turning that base into a vast facility, complete with a new basin and multiple 1,250ft dry docks, to support all these new large ships. Attlee merely pointed out the obvious, with the US as an ally, Germany, Italy and Japan defeated and Soviet industry ravaged there was no enemy to fight. In reality the big Soviet shipbuilding programme didn't get going until about 1950. The residents of Plymouth and Devonport progressively got their land back and all the big ships were cancelled. Attlee was under no illusion of the nature of the Soviet Union which is why he supported the UK nuclear weapons programme and various clandestine anti-communist activities, he just understood that creating a huge modern navy with no enemy to fight was a wasteful exercise.

The Victorious rebuild decision goes back to this time. The intention was to modernise the Illustrious class right from the end of the war, the designs kept evolving even after work on Victorious began which became one of the cost drivers in that programme though the project also seems to have suffered from appalling project management. The initial cost estimates look to have been incompetent rather than just wrong but one also can't ignore the fact that the RN went from Wyvern to the Buccaneer in the space of a decade. The result though was a superior ship to Hermes. Talk of bringing Centaur class ships up to Hermes standard seems rather glib, the ships were very different, everything from elevator positions to C2 facilities and equipment. It would have been an expensive exercise to produce a ship that was really the minimum viable size/configuration for Buccaneer/Sea Vixen and too small for Phantom, and one with comparatively poor survivability characteristics.

Which leads us to the fact that kaiserd is, unusually, correct. The RN designed its carriers for high intensity combat in an all out war scenario, essentially with Soviet equipment and doctrine in mind, for a while between 1958 and 1966 this was transposed to the far East rather than the Norwegian Sea but the threat profile remained the same, hence NIGS/OR.346/AST.1193 and NA.47 before that. The Invincible class took a simpler, and less dependable, approach to this threat but they were still designed to it.

Foch/Clemenceau were of very dubious utility as anything other than imperial police force ships, e.g. Arromanches at Dien Bien Phu, or ASW carriers in the Atlantic. In a hot war with the Soviet Union it is hard to imagine how they could have achieved anything in the Eastern Mediterranean other than absorbing a couple of Soviet KSR-2s, the Centaur class fall into the same category. The French, of course, knew this which is why they designed PA-58 and ultimately built the Charles de Gaulle.
 
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The idea of an all Centaur fleet along Centaur lines is intriguing but I'm not sure how feasible it is.
Hermes did not commission until 1959 to the modified standard, so either her three sisters would have to be delayed in construction until 1959-61 or rebuilt during the early 1960s which would have cost a fair bit of money and most of them would have then been unavailable until the mid-1960s.
...
The Commando carriers were equally, if not more, strategically important. What would replace the historical Bulwark and Albion conversions? Retain a couple of Colossus class?
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And they were laid down in 1944 ! Why waiting so long to put them into service, and how could they stay in construction for 15 freakkin' years, is beyond my understanding.
Finish them postwar, one every three years if needed, gradual introduction in the fleet. Scrap older ships or keep them as commando carriers you mention which are indeed important.

The small airgroup would be a concern too, 12x Sea Vixens and 7x Buccaneers each is a rather small airgroup and I'm not sure that it would have been particularly cost-effective.
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Buccaneer and Sea Vixen are indeed large aircraft. Then again the Sea Vixen took nearly an entire decade to get into service and while excellent, subsonic in 1959 was DOA when Crusader was coming.
Buccaneer is outstanding, but keep it mostly with Eagle and Ark Royal. When Ark is scrapped, pass the birds either to the Centaurs or... to the RAF. C'est la vie. Buy smaller A-4 and later A-7 to boost the attack group. Foch and Clemenceau never got the luxury of Buccs class attack aircraft.

It makes the Sea Vixen replacement even more thorny, does it saddle the FAA and RAF with the potential hot potato P.1154? Do they try and go it alone with Jaguar M when Dassault throws it out of the pram?
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2-seat Crusader with Spey in a more viable option and can happen as early as 1962-63. Either the French Navy (and SNECMA) jump into that bandwagon, or the RN will go alone.

They would still be rather dated and need replacing by the 1980s, finding engineering crews for steam turbines gets steadily harder, the material condition would have deteriorated and they lacked decent enough command and control facilities and radars (Hermes in 1982 still had 1950s radars).
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Fair enough. Turbine, we can't do anything about this. Radars can be upgraded, if Centaurs are the main game in town in the 60's (screw you, CVA-01 debacle).

(Before anyone points out again Hermes lasted until 2016, how many times did she actually put to sea in the last 20 years of her life?)
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I understand, the Indian Navy is no RN and so old Hermes got a very quiet end of life. Same as Foch with Brazil, didn't do much.

Can't see Thatcher's government shelling out too many readies to build a couple of fleet carriers but there might have been no choice.
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A lot will depend from HMS Eagle fate. Without CVA-01 and Ark Royal in the way, using the later for spares a proper upgrade can be done in the late 60's to extend Eagle well into the 80's.

The deal is to gradually deflate the Centaur fleet after 1975, starting from four ships this leave some ample margin to the end of cold War. With perfect hindsight of course ! Yet if the Harrier still happens, Centaurs can have a kind of "new life" as "super Invicibles" (which doesn't exist ITTL either, or only as helicopter carriers, HMS Ocean style).
A mix of Crusader, Harrier, and either A-4 or A-7, is a powerful air group well into the 80's. Just ask the Midway carriers that were too small for Hornets and Tomcats, although they had Phantoms, admittedly.

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I know that my atempt is not very well connected to the political and economic capabilities of 1950-1990 GB, which were dreadful at times. It is rather an atempt at rationalizing the largest fleet and the most capable ships in the RN carrier fleet. The older hulls like Victorious, oh please, forget that. Or turn them into commando carriers, NOT the larger and better Centaurs.

And please rationalize fate of the two largest and most capable ships, Eagle and Ark Royal. The former was better than the later clunker, yet guess what happened in 1970-72 ? Ark Royal was allowed to agonize until 1978 when Eagle far better shape screamed for another upgrade. The siliness of the decision is criminally short sighted, those whitehall politicians should have been hanged by their testicles (although I'm not even sure they actually had any balls at all).

en.wikipedia.org

List of aircraft carriers of the Royal Navy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Past 1950 Majestic and Colossus are good for nothing, in the jet age they are toast. Well, sell truckloads of them to whatever navy is interested, and use the money to modernize the other carriers, damn it. Not THAT complicated, for frack sake.

And then there is the case of the 4 Illustrious and 2 Implacables. Let's examine the case of these six ships. that the two older Illustrious were worn out by their war service, OK. That leave the last two Illustrious (Victorious among them) and the two more capable and more recent Implacables.

and guess what does the RN do in the 50's ? Of the four aforementionned, they bet all the money into a huge modernization of... one of the two Illustrious, and the plan goes so bad, the two more modern and capable Implacables are left out in the cold. And the other Illustrious, too, but that's not a waste, overall, Ilustrious were too old. But wasting the two Implacables like this ??!!! THIS IS CRIMINALLY STUPID.

Ok, then you want Commando carriers ? Well, then use the surviving, least worn out of the Illustrious (2 out of 4) and add the Implacables (2) on top of them.
Bam, 4 commando carriers, and no dumbass Victorious upgrade lasting a decade and sucking all the carrier money into a black hole. For the cost of that lone siliness, plus the Tiger cruiser complete waste of money, intelligent things could be done instead of throwing truckloads of Pounds Sterlings into the sea, with big led ballasts to ensure Whitehall will be furious for the next two decades.

Soooo... let's say that by 1960, the RN carrier fleet is something like
- 4 commando carriers - two Implacables and two Illustrious
- 4 Centaur medium attack carriers
- 2 Audacious class

Everything else, is gone. BASTA !!!

Theng radually deflate that fleet according to the harsh realities of the 60's - 70's. The old Illustrious goes first, then Ark Royal. then gradually deflate the Centaur fleet.
 
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From all the discussions I could read since 2006, some post-1945 rationalizing of the RN carrier fleet could follow these lines.

- do better in 1945, Maltas included
Scenario 1: all the Maltas (4), all the Audacious (4), and all the Centaurs (8). 16 "large carriers"
Scenario 2: finish Maltas plus what is being build. Then it becomes: all the Maltas (4), all the Audacious (3), and all the Centaurs (6). 13 "large carriers".
So whether 13 or 16, build the post-war "attack carrier fleet" around those three classes.
Everything else - Ilustrious and Implacables - is for training and later commando carriers.
Everything smaller - Colossus and Majestic - sell the godamn hulls to foreign navies.

- do better in 1945 without the Maltas
then back to square one, Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 minus the Maltas.
Scenario 3: all the Audacious (4), and all the Centaurs (8). 12 "large carriers"
Scenario 4: finish only what is being build. Then it becomes: Audacious (3), and Centaurs (6). 9 "large carriers".

I think scenario 4 is the most realistic, since the Maltas were vaporware in 1945, as were the late Audacious and late Centaurs.

In the end it boils to: what could the RN have done with 3 Audacious and 6 Centaur hulls ? Plus rationalizing the surviving Illustrious and the 2 Implacables ?

Damn, that 13 - THIRTEEN - 25 000 tons+ hulls (minus the two older Illustrious). Give such a number of carrier hulls to the contemporary (miserable) French Navy carrier fleet stuck with Dixmude, Arromanches, Bois Belleau and Lafayette - and it will jump up and down in joice !

no, really... management of the post-war RN carrier fleet become an embarassing... "embarassement of riches". So many good hulls for a start in 1945, and so many waste - Victorious and Hermes upgrades lasting forever, Eagle vs Ark royal, waste of the Centaur fleet, CVA-01 debacle... NO, NO, NO, it is a nightmare.

Imagine if the freakkin' USN had done that, wasting 2/3 of their Essex and even the Midways, into silly upgrades, only rationalizing the fleet when the Forrestal and Kitty Hawk come ! Congress and USAF would have both teared the USN a second... oh well.

More on this. A case could be make that,

- Of the six ships in the Illustrious / Implacable lineage, HMS Victorious modernization sucked all the budget... and all five other siblings died soon thereafter.
- Of the four Centaur class carriers, HMS Hermes modernization sucked all the budget... and the three other Centaurs died gradually, becoming separated, unmodernized, less capable fleet / units.
- Of the two Audacious, HMS Ark Royal sucked most of the budget... and HMS Eagle IN FAR BETTER SHAPE was retired first.
(bangs my head against a brickwall)
By this point, I'm left wondering if those three extremely stupid moves were not carefully planned right from 1949 onwards, to piss off Whitehall like crazy, and sink definitively the RN carrier fleet. I'm not conspirasionist, really, but such a siliness !!!
That plus of course the CVA-01 miserable fiasco.
 
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Please consider the post above as a harsh /rationale look from an outsider living in a country whose navy was always carrier-starved (2 hulls and shut up, 1 hull since 1999). Being external to politics and economic realities is a little hypocritical when giving lessons, obviously, but it also have advantages.
Sorry for the walls of text above, but, just think about how infuriating it is - starting from a potential of 6 to 13 excellent, big carrier hulls in 1945, to end with the RN OTL 1970 situation, is completely insane and a criminal waste of money. There was once in AH.com a member with the pseudo "Anywhere but OTL". This really applies here. :mad:
 
The question is could UK have done better.

I'm not all buffed up on our CV's, but have a reasonable overview.

basically yes -we seem to have scrapped or sold reasonably useful carriers that we could have kept.

We kept a heavy weight force(Sea Vixen, F4, Buck) when others went to a mid weight - F8, etendard.

Just have to point out , F4 is still in service - so we could have nursed Ark Royal or similar along for a good while.

Budgets and political will or lack of etc got us to the through deck cruisers, reminds me the Japanese are building Destroyer Helicopter ships - its a small carrier!

Then we have gone full circle and built 2 full size carriers, but limited their capabilities to VTOL/STOVL. I guess the F35 capabilities will redress some of these limitations, but I cant see what will give CV based fuel tanker, other than buddy buddy, which seems like a criminal waste of F35 - we need the a UAV tanker. Maybe some V22?

so could have been better, probably, some hindsight in play, and we did win the cold war, so, overall it ended well.
 
It would be helpful to see what carriers and airgroups the RN actually deployed in the post war era so we can compare with realistic alternatives.
The Seahawk and Sea Venom generation were the heyday of Albion and Bulwark which join Eagle in 1956 at Suez.
The two ships cannot operate useful numbers of Sea Vixens and Scimitars so become Commando Ships in the early 60s. Though Centaur in 1961 operates Sea Vixens with helos when it intervenes in Tanzania.
The big 4 carriers in 1962 can all operate Sea Vixens and the new Buccaneers.
The Hermes still features but is not able to operate the F4. The USN keeps its Essex equivalent with F8 and A4 solely because of Vietnam. They then become CVS anti subships until the 70s when the new S3 goes aboard the big Forrestals and nukes.
The US could not afford separate CVS ships so the UK offer to NATO of specialised ASW ships for the forward protection role in the Greeland Iceland Norway area is welcome. As a trade for one carrier Ark or CVA01 NATO sees the ASW as more useful. Buccaneers and F4s are still available from land bases and can hit Sov surface ships.
An updated Hermes or Essex sized carrier might have been more suitable for the one off Falklands war but the high end ships we deployed were what NATO wanted
 
So beneath the headlines lie a series of limitations that underpin why events panned out the way they did.
From drawing office staff to trained welders to the limitations of research and testing facilities the RN just couldn't go the USN route as much as they wanted to.
Shafts and props were limited to 50,000shp. If only they could go to 70,000shp.....

Drydocks really Davenport No.10. If only a few more had been upgraded in the 30's.

This is why I repeatedly state that something like the Medium Fleet CV studies is the realistic answer to those limitations.


Really these studies should have begin earlier, a design chosen and then drawn up for construction.
A steady build (through recycling of metal) would sustain the fleet, industry and capability for the RN.

Similarly on aircraft the engine side of things nearly hit the sweet spot but got dran away by the lure of cheaper Gyron Juniors.
The radar was on the right track but lacked funding.
Airframes....a long story. Occasionally on the right track.
The missiles.... really just have to bit the bullet and pay the price and accept that next generation would be better. Timr effort and learning was needed.
 
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The immediate post-war problems were many and they shaped the fate of the carrier fleet out to the 1960s;

a) the wartime Illustrious class had been heavily used, battle scarred and their closed armoured hangars made them difficult to stow larger aircraft, the Indomitables were slightly younger but they too had limited hangar height which was a concern as aircraft like the planned Spearfish, Sturgeon etc. were big beasts. The comparison between them and the Maltas was staggering in terms of size to operate such aircraft. Everyone knew aircraft would keep getting bigger and heavier even with the advent of the turbojet.

b) the RN had to seriously trim manpower with demobilisation and money rapidly dried up and fleet shrank alarmingly, that cut the enthusiasm to man a larger carrier fleet and reduced the need for a large standing fleet without a serious rival until 1950.

c) the war ended just as the late war building programmes were ramping up and most of them were not close enough to completion to quickly replace the wartime Illustrious class
3 Audacious class - all building, the original Eagle being cancelled January 1946, arguably should she have been retained in the building programme?
4 Malta class - didn't even get off the draughtsman's plans, they were all cancelled with haste in October-December 1945, BUT before we get all misty eyed we have to remember that those contracts had been suspended since 24 April 1944. The Maltas were a headache, pushing the boundaries of existing support infrastructure and it was better to complete what was already on the stocks rather than wasting materials and scrapped the Audacious class for these. Even if construction had begun in 1946-47 its hard to see them completing much before 1955 given the continually moving goalposts (see my next argument below).
6 Majestic class - all building and all halted in 1945 in varying stages of completion, only suitable for trade escort for the RN that role had vanished and so they served as kickstarters for Australian, Canadian and Dutch carrier aviation - Hercules and Leviathan even hung around until the 1960s, one finally being sold to India and the other to the scrapman.
8 Centaurs - 6 were building, like the Maltas those not laid down or just begun were ruthlessly axed as surplus to requirements in October 1945 so that left 4. Could the original Hermes and Arrogant have been saved? Perhaps but with the Colossus class just completed and the Majestics already surplus to requirements the RN had more than enough light carrier hulls. What the RN wanted was fleet carrier hulls and the only ones it had any realistic chance of completing were the Audacious class.

d) Evolving technology made completing the carriers more difficult than expected. The USN did not have the same problem, its wartime carrier programme was more or less complete by 1946 and they did not build any new carriers until the Forrestal class in the early 1950s and they were clean sheet designs. Jet technology threw up new questions on how to operate them, axial decks were not ideal, then the flexible deck idea took up a lot of time and effort before the angled deck and steam catapult came along. Recently completed ships had to receive these innovations in refits as schedules allowed but the wartime ships still on the slipway posed a problem. Was it best to just finish them and then take them back out of service for a lengthy and expensive refit or do you stretch out the building and incorporate what you can? The approach was mixed, but it meant that Ark Royal did not complete until 1955 and Hermes until 1959.

e) The problem was worse with the wartime closed hangar types, were they still in adequate material condition? Was it better to build new? The Maltas had shown the scale of ship needed but the economic problems that were hampering construction of the last wartime ships was not conducive to ordering new ships and infrastructure improvements were still low on the priority list. The 1952 carrier designs showed what was needed but the money and capital investment was not there. Existing carrier hulls were limited but all they had, with only 2 Audacious class hulls left they had to get some use out of the wartime survivors. It was a stretch too far, it was done but it was costly. The Essex and Midway proved more adaptable.

The opportunity to do something about the situation was lost by 1953-55, at least one new carrier along the lines of the 1952 designs should have been ordered around 1953-54, it would not have completed until 1960 but it would have been new and purpose built and could have served alongside Ark and Eagle. Of course that would have left a gap in effective carriers between 1955 and 1960 but Victorious' rebuild was not the hoped for easy interim fix. It would have affected CVA-01 no doubt, the argument for two or one new hull would have been bitter, but it may have meant less urgency to fill her full of innovative goodies that cost a lot and may have meant at least one might have been built, although the withdrawal from Empire would still have been a powerful incentive to stop spending money on carriers. The 1952 design might have lasted until 1982 as a single ship, backed up by Hermes. What may have followed is wide open to speculation and whiffery. But the decline of the carrier fleet seems rather set in stone no matter how you arrange the cards, the money and political will was just not there.
 
Hood: excellent post. Partially recoup my thinking above, although I have difficulty figuring what was the original goal for the Centaurs. Were they light or medium or large carriers ? Hermes ended as pretty impressive in capabilities, maybe I'm biased by the completely different philosophy of Foch and Clemenceau. I know the RN requirements were not the same as the French Navy so maybe the Centaurs can't play a Clemenceau role for decades.

The immediate post-war problems were many and they shaped the fate of the carrier fleet out to the 1960s;

a) the wartime Illustrious class had been heavily used, battle scarred and their closed armoured hangars made them difficult to stow larger aircraft, the Indomitables were slightly younger but they too had limited hangar height which was a concern as aircraft like the planned Spearfish, Sturgeon etc. were big beasts. The comparison between them and the Maltas was staggering in terms of size to operate such aircraft. Everyone knew aircraft would keep getting bigger and heavier even with the advent of the turbojet.

b) the RN had to seriously trim manpower with demobilisation and money rapidly dried up and fleet shrank alarmingly, that cut the enthusiasm to man a larger carrier fleet and reduced the need for a large standing fleet without a serious rival until 1950.

c) the war ended just as the late war building programmes were ramping up and most of them were not close enough to completion to quickly replace the wartime Illustrious class

3 Audacious class - all building, the original Eagle being cancelled January 1946, arguably should she have been retained in the building programme?

4 Malta class - didn't even get off the draughtsman's plans, they were all cancelled with haste in October-December 1945, BUT before we get all misty eyed we have to remember that those contracts had been suspended since 24 April 1944.
The Maltas were a headache, pushing the boundaries of existing support infrastructure and it was better to complete what was already on the stocks rather than wasting materials and scrapped the Audacious class for these. Even if construction had begun in 1946-47 its hard to see them completing much before 1955 given the continually moving goalposts (see my next argument below).

6 Majestic class - all building and all halted in 1945 in varying stages of completion, only suitable for trade escort for the RN that role had vanished and so they served as kickstarters for Australian, Canadian and Dutch carrier aviation - Hercules and Leviathan even hung around until the 1960s, one finally being sold to India and the other to the scrapman.


8 Centaurs - 6 were building, like the Maltas those not laid down or just begun were ruthlessly axed as surplus to requirements in October 1945 so that left 4. Could the original Hermes and Arrogant have been saved? Perhaps but with the Colossus class just completed and the Majestics already surplus to requirements the RN had more than enough light carrier hulls. What the RN wanted was fleet carrier hulls and the only ones it had any realistic chance of completing were the Audacious class.

d) Evolving technology made completing the carriers more difficult than expected. The USN did not have the same problem, its wartime carrier programme was more or less complete by 1946 and they did not build any new carriers until the Forrestal class in the early 1950s and they were clean sheet designs.

Jet technology threw up new questions on how to operate them, axial decks were not ideal, then the flexible deck idea took up a lot of time and effort before the angled deck and steam catapult came along. Recently completed ships had to receive these innovations in refits as schedules allowed but the wartime ships still on the slipway posed a problem. Was it best to just finish them and then take them back out of service for a lengthy and expensive refit or do you stretch out the building and incorporate what you can? The approach was mixed, but it meant that Ark Royal did not complete until 1955 and Hermes until 1959.

e) The problem was worse with the wartime closed hangar types, were they still in adequate material condition? Was it better to build new?

The Maltas had shown the scale of ship needed but the economic problems that were hampering construction of the last wartime ships was not conducive to ordering new ships and infrastructure improvements were still low on the priority list. The 1952 carrier designs showed what was needed but the money and capital investment was not there. Existing carrier hulls were limited but all they had, with only 2 Audacious class hulls left they had to get some use out of the wartime survivors. It was a stretch too far, it was done but it was costly. The Essex and Midway proved more adaptable.
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Very interesting. As far as large hulls goes (25000 tons and counting) classes were
- Illustrious
- Indomitable
- Centaur
- Audacious
- Maltas

Maltas are only paper, unless the war last until 1947 or 1948 they are toast. Shame.

Illustrious are worn out
Indomitables are in a better shape, and slightly improved.

So what else ? Audacious and Centaurs only. Hence better not to waste any of them.

To me it sounds obvious, makes the Audacious and Hermes the backbone of the fleet by carefully managing the hulls from 1945.
Those 3 Audacious and 6 Centaurs are crucial. Screw one of them, future of the fleet up to 1960-1970 take a major hit, because any other hull is too old or flawed.

As for the Illustrious and Indomitables, considering their difficulties (well explained by Hood bove) use those six for training and eventually, commando carriers. Helicopters are smaller than fast jets, and easier to handle on an old hull.

As for everything else, Colossus and others - good for nothing, pass them to anybody interested.

Surely enough, with 24 Essex (over 32 planned at some point) the USN was pretty lucky. Plus the three Midways, and voilà, only 2 different major carrier types. A pool of 27 carriers, indeed, was plenty enough to wait for the Forrestal in the mid-50's.
Although two Essex had been very badly crippled in 1945 and never really recovered from the kamikaze onslaught that holed them.
 

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Hood: excellent post. Partially recoup my thinking above, although I have difficulty figuring what was the original goal for the Centaurs. Were they light or medium or large carriers ? Hermes ended as pretty impressive in capabilities, maybe I'm biased by the completely different philosophy of Foch and Clemenceau. I know the RN requirements were not the same as the French Navy so maybe the Centaurs can't play a Clemenceau role for decades.
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The Centaurs were planned in 1943 to be improved Colossus class ships but with improved aviation facilities to handle the newer generation of late-piston aircraft and more speed so they could be operated alongside the fleet carriers. This bumped up their displacement by 4,000 tons and length by 20ft and beam by 10ft. Importantly they moved away from the merchant scantlings of the Colossus to become more like warships in their subdivision. So they were light fleet carriers, slightly smaller than the Illustrious and Implacable classes but not far behind in terms of airgroup size.

As to the Implacables, they had amazingly short lives for modern fleet carriers, begun in 1939 but not completed until 1944 and seeing only 1-2 years frontline service; Indefatigable was refitted 1948-49 but by 1952 was a training carrier, reserve 1954 and sold the next year and Implacable spent 1946-1950 in reserve then used for training before also being put into reserve in 1954 and scrapped. The nail in their coffin was the useless 14ft high hangars (14ft was the lowest usable height, between the deck beams it was 16ft) that just couldn't accommodate modern aircraft and made the planned reconstruction too complicated. Victorious at least only had one 16ft hangar which they thought could easily be 'spliced' to make it higher. They could not have even served as Commando carriers as helicopters would not have fitted in the hangars (the Westland Whirlwind was 15ft 7.5in high, the Wessex 15ft 10in). The 45 x 22ft lifts might have been problematic too for helicopters.
 
Certainly a third Audacious class aircraft carrier would remove some of the drive to modernise the Illustrious class. Scrapping the Centaurs would leave more capacity for a fourth Fleet Carrier. As would the Illustrious and Indomitable class.

I certainly agree the 1952 effort was sound.
 
The nail in their coffin was the useless 14ft high hangars (14ft was the lowest usable height, between the deck beams it was 16ft) that just couldn't accommodate modern aircraft and made the planned reconstruction too complicated. Victorious at least only had one 16ft hangar which they thought could easily be 'spliced' to make it higher. They could not have even served as Commando carriers as helicopters would not have fitted in the hangars (the Westland Whirlwind was 15ft 7.5in high, the Wessex 15ft 10in). The 45 x 22ft lifts might have been problematic too for helicopters.
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So much for my idea... the only things that come my mind is that


So they were light fleet carriers, slightly smaller than the Illustrious and Implacable classes but not far behind in terms of airgroup size.
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Excellent. And at least Centaurs had a proper hangar, damn it ! This explain why they were "expanded" as commando carriers, Arromanches style, when their capabilities could have made them Foch and Clemenceau attack carriers.

Well, since there is really nothing that can be done with the worn-out Illustrious and the hangar-doomed Implacables - screw them.
Per lack of alternate commando carrier alternative, we would thus need the six Centaur full strength fleet (8 would we even better, but paper carriers can only die in 1945, just ask the Maltas and that third Audacious).
Then split that between "attack carriers" and "commando carriers", perhaps 3/3 or 2/4.
Hello, that's more or less what the USN did with the Essex fleet: whichever couldn't get a SBC-125 / SBC-144 upgrade, was doomed to a secondary, non-attack role, CVS, things like that.

Ah, and Victorious hangar was different, now I understand why it was the one rebuild of the six. still a complete waste of pound sterlings, IMHO.

How many commando carriers did the RN wanted and needed ? Common, there must be a way to turn a pair of Illustrious and the pair of Implacables, into something "anything but the OTL Victorious" but still reasonably useful... they can't be wasted the way they were OTL...I'm really wondering, is there a "medium way" to turn an Illustrious / Implacable into a "decent-hangar / useful again carrier" - without the monstrosity that become the Victorious upgrade, that really, really went three bridges too far ?
 
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The light fleets were designed to allow the RN to get a large number of carrier decks to sea in wartime in the fastest time possible and were done so with then current or very near future aircraft in mind. As a result they suffered from a number of deficiencies, everything from poor survivability characteristics (armament, armour and sub-division), relatively low speed (albeit improved in the Centaur class) and poor quality steel prone to rusting.

As for post-war cancellations, I would suggest it's a miracle that Ark Royal and the Centaurs survived, they were taking up valuable slipways and materials that could have been used in the post-war reconstruction and export drives. I won't criticise the 1945 Labour government for coming out of six years of total war and preferring reconstruction and a cash generating exports drive to building warships to fight non-existent enemies.

Ever since the first studies in 1945 the plan had been to take each of the six Illustrious-Indefatigable class vessels and reconstruct them in turn to have 17ft 6" hangars, the ability to operate 30,000lb+ aircraft, revised armament (sextuple bofors, individually controlled 4.5" guns etc.) and latest available radar fit. This was essentially the modernisation signed off for Victorious in 1950, just with the 4.5" replaced by 3". The transformative decisions are associated with the pace of technology change; in particular in mid-1953 when it was decided to add a full angled flight deck and the Type 984 but even before then it had been realised that reconstruction was an inefficient way of generating capability - hence the 1952 effort. That said, as completed Victorious was a significantly superior ship to Hermes. Implacable and Indefatigable were the last of the class to remain in the reconstruction programme, only being dropped in June 1952.

It should be pointed out that both the 1952 carrier effort and CVA01 underwent very comprehensive study and in terms of size, speed, protection philosophy and air wing they came to remarkably similar conclusions. Ultimately, this discussion comes up so many times because so many people confuse having a carrier with having a useful carrier in the context of actual operational need.
 
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So to make the big carriers possible we need to alter the drydock issue.
Just one secure military drydock of 975ft-1,250ft Length and 130ft-140ft width is needed somewhere in the UK and this scenario will flow quite readily.

Malta will still be dropped bar the propulsion and gearing.

But when 1952 effort gets going there is no longer a major stumbling block in the way. While there might be changes in planned radar fit, the ship would roll forward as a process. No stops, no CVA-01. Or strictly speaking this would become CVA-01.
Without those blocks, delays etc...the first of class will enter service in the early 60's and it's inevitable logic would crush Ark Royal's modernisation and Eagle too.

But likely hit the buffers after -02 and the RN would have to adjust it's thinking to living with just two carriers.
 
Ever since the first studies in 1945 the plan had been to take each of the six Illustrious-Indefatigable class vessels and reconstruct them
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Scratching my head in disbelief

Why... but why do that when you have three perfectly good Audacious in the pipeline ? this is just plain stupid. Centaurs, ok, I see the point, they are kind of cheap / intermediate things.
But THIS ? Plus half of the Illustrious-Implacable fleet was badly worn out by war time service, for frack sake !

No really, reconstruct that old Illustrious from the keel up, in the hope of getting a modern carrier out of it, is really beating a dead horse.

The whole thing is beyond my understanding.

by this point, reading Zen last post, I'm tempted to say "screw the old hulls and any reconstruction, forget it, build three or four 1952 carriers.
Also try to get the French to jump into that ship, they have just build four prototypes of naval fighters and lost three of them and three pilots, all this for non existing carriers, the PA.28 Clemenceau.
(VG-90 -01, crashed, Claude Dellys dead. VG-90 -02 crashed, Pierre Decroo dead. NC-1080 crashed, Pierre Gallay dead. Leaving only the Nord 2200, not a bad bird except as heavy as a led brick, poor Nene engine...)


Finally they bought DH.112 Venoms (= SNCASE Aquilon) but can't land them on their existing carriers... (facepalm: at 211 m and 24 kt, Arromanches is long enough but too slow - while Lafayette at 31 kt but 185 m is the exact opposite: fast enough but too short ! aaargh... o_O - merde alors, pas de bol, screw the Aquilons, Suez will be fought with F-4U Corsairs).

Alternatively... finish the three Audacious by 1945, keep a pair of Illustrious or Implacable with them, screw everything else bar secondary roles, wait until the 1952 carrier and build four of them.

On the Centaurs, the jury is split. Maybe it is impossible to do something else than freakkin' commando carriers with them. The Falklands, however, proved the opposite. Geez.
 
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It is the endless circle of required capabilities versus costs (both direct financial costs and opportunity costs).
In some ways these British light carriers offered a false hope. They gave the UK and a number of other nations a relatively cheap way into and to be stay in the carrier game. But as modern combat aircraft got bigger and heavier that window closed and their air wings became increasingly ineffective and obsolete. And something similar happened to the French carriers.
The real answer is that the UK both for actual defence need and as a matter of perceived prestige did everything (arguable too much for too long rather than too little) to stay in the carrier game. Given other higher priority expensive defence programmes knocking about in the early 50’s and the apparently cheaper updates to existing carriers at approx. the same time any new UK carriers at that stage don’t look credible. Bluntly at this stage the UK was already spending far more than it could actually afford or sustain already.
CVA-01s likely can’t come any time sooner or be much more affordable. The UK faces the same decision in a NATO context and is highly unlikely to determine anything differently than it did in history. The UK could only afford ASW carriers (that could then become Harrier carriers) and did not follow the French example of maintaining fleet carriers with relatively ineffective air wings which the French did for various reasons specific to the French end-of-empire experience. Hence the anomaly is not that the UK got out of conventional carriers too soon or had any real alternative good options to do so, but that the UK hung on for so long wringing everything they could out of what they had.
 
Whenever I read of the 'inevitability of history', I know I'm reading a falsehood. Up until '66 the new carrier process was rumbling on and even afterwards the plan quickly became one of running on existing assets as far reasonable. Because the carrier was still needed despite claims to the contrary.

What had delayed and interrupted the process was another matter. But it was real until then. Even after '65.

What hit the RN and the Government after '82 was the inadequacy of the Invincibles to sustain fast jet airpower. For a period of a decade the delusion that helicopter ASW and a fractional component of fast jets would be viable for all the roles the RN would face in the Cold War.
Prior to '82 the plan was fast becoming virtually no surface fleet. This became far worse once the Cold War ended.
And was predicted by at least one government minister.
Strictly the UK offloaded it's carrier air in NATO onto the backs of the USN.
Arguably the failure to then achieve the goals for the SSN force is telling. There was ever less a serious intention to play the role claimed for the UK.
At heart this shows in the war matetial stocks held. Supposedly to last three weeks, but was more like three days.
 
It might be worth mentioning that the NATO requirement for a Carrier Striking Fleet in the Atlantic composed of two striking groups was met in part by Ark Royal between 1970 and 1978. This allowed a US carrier to operate elsewhere.
However, before 1966 the role of UK carriers had been "East of Suez". One or two of the in service carriers were there until the confrontation with Indonesia ends.
The crash of the UK economy in the mid 60s meant that the Defence Budget had to be reduced if the Government was to meet its agenda of much needed social expenditure.
Focussing on our NATO role and withdrawing from East of Suez made sense, especially after the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
We were especially good at ASW and the Royal Navy contribution to this from 1966 onwards was significant and necessary.
Political dogma limited the Invincibles to being built as "Escort Cruisers". A more carrier like ship ( like the US Sea Control Ship design bought by Spain) could have replaced the carriers and commando ships through the 70s. However, three hulls was probably the most we could build and operate within the constraints of the time.
 
I think we are overlooking just how difficult it was to build, equip and field an effective carrier fleet in this period. Only the USN managed that feat, by the luck of having a homogeneous and large carrier fleet at the end of the war which tided them over until new construction could be put in hand and that construction was for large 'supercarriers' which no other nation had the cash or infrastructure to build.

France had two decent enough medium fleet carriers when they were built but by the 1970s they were already lagging behind and their airwings were not that effective for all-weather strike and fleet defence, the Aeronavale becoming the only French aviation arm semi-reliant on US aircraft for frontline duties. The CdG and Rafale rectified from the late 1990s.
Britain we have discussed in depth here, did the best it could with what it had, not the optimal solution and slightly haphazard as is the British way. In aircraft terms the Vixen/Bucc combo was effective (Vixen was too late though) but its hard to see what home-grown Vixen replacement was the best solution and the F-4 seems the best choice.
Canada and the Netherlands got out of the carrier business once they needed second-generation jets, the Netherlands also losing its Empire role to justify keeping a carrier.
Australia carried on a little longer but in the early 1980s finally had to decide whether to replace their 1940s ship and 1960s aircraft or not and took the decision to bow out rather than join the V/STOL club.
India limped on with a small carrier and first-generation Sea Hawks for far too long (with the Alize for ASW) to maintain a weak capability.
Argentina and Brazil carried on the ABC naval race but didn't really get capable aircraft until the ships were worn out and Brazil is still in the game but now firmly rotary-winged.

Until the advent of the Harrier in the 1970s, capable carriers were hard to maintain. Ships were old wartime stock, aircraft were often surplus stock or overseas purchases. Only the USN had the resources for the full show. Arguably, the same holds true today (China is nearer but currently using what is essentially a 1970s ex-Soviet aircraft design on a 1970s ex-Soviet carrier design).

Its hard to see the RN doing much better, even if the 1952 carrier or CVA-01 had been built, the F-4/Bucc airwing was probably inevitable given the small number of aircraft required which made specialised development from UK manufacturers too expensive. The Illustrious carriers as ASW platforms were probably far more valuable to NATO and RN operations than one or two large strike carriers would have been. The RN since 1982 has wanted supersonic fighters for fleet protection and strike but has resolutely stuck to V/STOL solutions in an attempt to limit the cost of the ship. Time will tell if QE and PoW will be the swing-role successes they are lauded to be (personally I feel air-defence/commando carrier is an odd mix).
 
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What was revealed in '82 was how little extra was needed to get an RAF Harrier pilot safely on the deck of a RN carrier.
This has shaped the view since with only a short hiatus under the Coalition.
In essence the FAA can be supplimented by RAF V/STOL.
Ironically now this is accepted so is the concept of a 'rolling VL', which would have been as valid for earlier PCB types as it is for aircraft with a shaft driven lift fan.

So with good hindsight something like the P1154 Harrier on a ski-jump equipped CV is entirely possible.
 
France had two decent enough medium fleet carriers when they were built but by the 1970s they were already lagging behind and their airwings were not that effective for all-weather strike and fleet defence, the Aeronavale becoming the only French aviation arm semi-reliant on US aircraft for frontline duties. The CdG and Rafale rectified from the late 1990s.
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Prevent Dassault from getting its ugly hands on the attack wings with the Etendard family, and things can only get better. Skyhawks would be far more efficient. A-7 even better, although MTOW would probably uin of exceed the catapults capabilities very fast...
Crusader lasted too long, for sure. Waaaay too long. And more than half of the fleet (26 /42) was lost in accidents.
However with catapults limited to 17 mt and 33000 tons of tonnage, the Clemenceaus won't do miracles, I agree...

The sad thing is, Great Britain had too much committments and old hulls too expensive to upgrade; when France was hitting a "glass ceiling" of 3 carriers, no more (Foch, Clemenceau and Arromanches).
Shame cooperation could not be found at
- 1952 carrier level (PA.28, the first Clemenceau)
- 1959 PA.58 Verdun (the Clemenceaus were too small for the RN, fair enough)
- CVA-01
- Arromanches retirement / Invincibles / PH.75 (as the name entails, in 1975, plus Sea Control Ship, Principe de Asturias, Garibaldi...)
- and of course the great missed opportunity, the Q.Es...

how did the 1952 carrier compared to the later Clemenceau / Foch ?
 
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1952 CV ended up as a 54,000ton ship of 870ft overall length (although strictly that's it's flight deck but we're not talking much more) and 116ft waterline beam.
Airwing would likely end up as 12 Scimitar, 12 Sea Vixen, 12 Buccaneer, 8 Gannet, 4 AEW Skyraider then Gannet and 2 SAR dragonfly then Wessex.
 
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If the UK and France had recognised the brilliance of the Phantom/Buccaneer combination and agreed to build the AFVG as a EuroPhantom/Buccaneer for the 70s, perhaps the 70s could have seen a hybrid design capable of operating a sensible airgroup.
Instead of De Gaulle and the Invincibles, these ships could have been laid down at the end of the 60s and into service in 1974 onwards. But for the politics this would have given Europe at least three CVs, possibly five in the early 80s.
A simplified CVA01 Eagle sized carrier was well within the budgets of both countries.
 

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