Any similarities between this and Post 334 in the alternatehistory.com thread The third Audacious class carrier - what might have been ? by someone with the user name NOMISYRRUC are absolutely deliberate
As I still have the book open the decision to complete the Tiger class was made because (AFAIK in July 1954) the ships would have cost £6 million and taken 3 years to complete while new ships of comparable size and armament would have cost £12 million and taken 5 years each to build.
According to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator £6 million in 1954 was worth £7.06 million in 1959, £7.13 million in 1960 and £7.38 million in 1961. So after allowing for inflation each ship cost about double the estimate.
New ships of comparable size and armament would probably taken longer than 5 years to build at a cost more than the estimate of £12 million (or £14.12 million in 1959, £14.26 million in 1960 and £14.76 million in 1961 after allowing for inflation). However, I doubt very much that they would have escalated to nearly double the estimated cost of completing the Tigers.
For a start the armament and electronics would have cost the same. Furthermore the following changes had to be made:
- all the superstructure, gun supports, minor bulkheads and most of the services were stripped out;
- all the auxiliary machinery and equipment had to be modified or replaced so that it could operate entirely AC electrical system.
So it looks as if when completed in 1959-61 all that was left of the ships as they existed in the middle of 1954 was the hull up to the main deck and the machinery.
It might have been just the hull up to the main deck because Brown says that re-boilering was considered but was ruled out by the Admiralty, as the advantages would not compensate for the delay and expense incurred.
Not in the original post on alternativehistory.com were the building costs of the Tiger class (which are according to Brown & Moore and Jane's 1962-63) were as follows:
£13,113,000 Tiger completed March 1959
£14,375,000 Lion completed July 1960
£14,940,000 Blake completed March 1961
Some other things that Brown and Moore wrote that I didn't include in the original post were that there that were clearly severe limitations for the by the time the ships were complete they would have been in the water for at least 12 years, whilst their hulls and machinery were of pre-war design and layout in all respects. There was also going to be considerable congestion within the hull structure with accommodation standards being low due to the incorporation of equipment not specified in the original design.
