I just guessed the Hornet thing 5 minutes before posting, I can’t believe it’s correct, even if not for the reasons I suspected. I would have thought that with F/A18A-A7E transition a couple of light attack sqns would have been offline for a while, meaning something had to be done to replace these few sqns for a short period. I never guessed it would be to modify the cat.

As much as the A6 was a serviceability pain would having 2 sqns means that the carrier could conduct operations that it normally couldn’t because of the range, payload and avionics of the A6 compared to the A7? Perhaps loiter 100 miles further away from threats than usual, or something like that?

These interim 24 F14 and 24 A6E CVWs doesn’t make the 16 or so F4K and Buccaneer the FAA would have been able to squeeze onto ther Ark Royal in a war situation in the late 70s look quite so feeble.