The Cruiser was in examination more efficient than the Destroyer. This emerged in comparison studies between notional cruisers and Type 82 'Destroyer'.
Essentially one Cruiser could mount twice the AAW capability and four times the helicopter capacity (including space enough for Chinook operations) while possessing the full ASW capability.
I actually think that highlights the flaw with those types of analysis (my last job was dealing with this a lot). It suggests the studies were poorly set up wrt assumptions because that doesnt match observable reality where a large cruiser is harder to get to sea than a frigate and cost of using it for anything is far higher and this dissuades that being done. It demonstrably doesnt have twice the AAW because it cannot cover twice the area or twice the key nodes. 4 times the helo capability is wrong because 0 to 1 is a vast, vast increase in capability but 1 to 2 or 4 is not the same order of magnitude. In short, the gains arent linear is my estimate, more a reverse exponential where the first helo is a very steep gradient, 3 to 4 relatively flat.
And from quite early on the Escort Cruiser started to resemble a Light Fleet Carrier.
Quite. And then you have CVF where your light fleet carrier starts to resemble a fleet carrier. And then it starts to resemble a CVN yet a fleet of nothing but CVN is clearly bonkers.
Much as there might have been more scope for this scenario if say the Carrier/GWS of 30,000tons had gone forward instead of being cancelled for pure aircraft carriers.
Or put the escort cruiser tonnage into the CVA and build 70-80k carriers that would be far less compromised and perhaps not cancelled.
As I’ve said before, the 30k CVS is a sweet spot and personally I’d rather we built 3 of those vs 2 QEs. But it wasnt on the cards for the RN at all in the 50/60s. I think to be fair STOVL is one of a small handful of “ambitious” things tried that have worked well, hence we now look back and say “of course it was the thing” but we dont do the same for dead ends, eg HTP powered weapons. The RN at the time had no idea how good STOVL would be/become. Nobody did.
A sort of British Kiev class. The Sea Kestrel could fit quite nicely in that scenario.
Kiev was a stepping stone, like the Invincibles because they couldnt have anything better, in their case due to lack of experience at that point. Their curtailment of the Moskva class is clear evidence for me that the escort cruiser concept was as flawed as I assert, and that they then curtailed the next step, the Kievs, to go for a near proper carrier. The Italian history of the Andrea Dorias to VV and then GG shows the same. Noting they got 2 ADs but only one of the larger ships.
For the RN in the early 60s, it is already at the point of being able to design and operate proper carriers, so pre 66 can go direct to it.
Ships built to Cruiser standards had greater self support capability and capacity and generally were built to higher (tougher) standards than ships built to Destroyer standards.
That is a very commonly put about position and one I’ve unquestioningly accepted in the past, but actually I’m not sure about it. I think it’s more about having the crew size to have the pyramid of specialisms and expertise (and management) plus sheer number of hands to do a greater breadth and depth of maintenance/repair activity organically.
That can be seen with the Type 23s today. Deployed their crew is circa 230 (rammed in!) partly because both underway and when they go alongside it gives them more hands and the specialists to do things that otherwsie arent done until they go alongside and shorebased personnel do them when back home. This is because otherwise you’d get very low utilisation of the ships on deployment and the priority of their taskings mean they simply have to be able to deal with stuff without delay or diversion. They also have a lot more spares, tools and test equipment on board that they don’t have in home waters for the same reason, and spend half a day trans shipping all this to their replacement when they swap.
The maintenance and repair activites are the same, but its how you resource the ship (or not) to do them. The same happens with every other class of ship, and in land and air units.
I find it hard to think of a maintenance/repair task that a “cruiser” could do vs a “destroyer” (in a modern context this is) noting we only have one set of ship design rules where this distinction doesn’t exist at all. I personally doubt any post war “cruiser” had any real technical self support difference to the large DLG/FFGs that have emerged and become the norm - other than the human aspect mentioned by virtue of large crew size.