AE90I could be wrong but that was the story as i understood it.
nah, just drove down there, it’s definitely dead, i don’t go anywhere near the water very often(don’t go anywhere much apart from the airport and back anymore) and when i do it’s not something I’ve noticed
it’s a shame: Lusty, Ark Royal, a large chunk of the 42’s and 23’s, Causeway, Conveyor not like it was only minor.
AE90They no longer exist, they went into receivership after they failed to deliver one of the Bay class ships to the RFA. Shipyard was purchased by an Indian shipbuilder who dismantled all the equipment and shipped it to India for their own Shipyards.
Wow. didn’t know that and i live about 10 miles away.
AE90Thanks for the great info. My own estimates are probably close (I’m the first of the metric generation so I’d have to get my calculator out to double check what 636ft is).
haha, just shy of 195m cant give an exact figure, too much clicking to get to the calculator on the computer (636×0.3048), Industry tells us to use both, not sure what the benefits of the metric system are if we still have to use the old one aswell.
you could get more exact measurements for causeway/conveyor if you gave swan hunter a bell.
AE90Well, both countries prefer a SSN vs SSK and many other would likely follow if not for the high cost. Even the UK has switched from a mixed SSK/SSN Fleet to purely Nuclear one.
that was due to cost of having a large SS fleet it wasn’t really viable to bin the Swiftsure’s that still had 10 years life+ in the early 90’s let alone the Trafalgars that were younger and they couldn’t really be sold. The older SSN’s (Churchill’s, Valiants) were binned and Upholders were dropped from 12 to 4 and then sold off shortly after entering service.
It’s my firm belief that the RN will return to a mixed SS fleet in the not too distant future, ordering a class of SSK’s so the MoD doesn’t have to fork out for enough SSN’s to cater for the RN’s needs (7 Astutes?. RAN could provide an ideal partner for this as dates would roughly coincide late 2020’s-2030’s but problems would be that the next gen Aussie submarines are going to be High end SSP’s that perform SSN tasks while the RN ideally would require a formidable yet cheap to operate SSK.
AE90Get the hulls now and hope the situation vis a vis procurement improves in the future.
ha, we can only hope. it can’t get much worse and if it does the repercussions will be huge, BAE have already threatened to leave the UK if the government doesn’t provide them with enough contracts.
AE90I’m not too sure that the Airwing on a CVF is that small, there is almost definitly room to increase it in the future.
max capacity is 36x Lightnings(FGR.1?), 4x ASaC(Merlin ASaC.4?) 6x Merlin HM.1(with 30 or less Lightnings embarked)
airwing of 40 on a carrier displacing 65,000T isn’t great but IIRC STOVL Lightnings have a greater logistics footprint’s than the CATOBAR variant owing to the lack of a folding wing
and it has already been covered that there may be some problems with Japan actually owning a proper carrier, i know there was some discrepencies around the Italian navy’s Harrier carrier in the 80’s, so we can assume that Germany and Japan are subject to the same, although after 60 years i’m sure it would be waivered
A lot of navies would definitely benefit from a moderately sized CTOL carrier (in the 800ft 40000T region?[possible airwing of 24 fixed wing fighters, and 4? rotary wings and 3 E-2’s?]) if they could procure and operate one at a reasonable price which is where the idea falls down
AE90To put it crudely Successful Designs are a compromise of technical superiority and affordability the better the mix the more successful, Lightning wasn’t really built as a compromise.
AE90Slowest at altitude, fastest on the deck. Best acceleration, best range (a more fuel-efficient engine), best T/O distance, best payload. Hardly the “least capable”.
Much maligned. The top speed suffered partly from the engine (not so good at altitude & high speed), partly from the aerodynamic deficiencies caused by having to fit in a fatter engine. But at the altitudes & speeds at which the Phantom normally operated, performance was better, not worse. The Spey Phantom could lift more off a carrier deck, which was very valuable with the comparatively small British carriers.
But too expensive. Development cost (largely needed because of the fuselage rebuilding needed to fit the engine, I think) & production tooling pushed the unit price up.
Spey phantoms had increased power, range and low level acceleration due to the higher bypass engine and the intakes had to be made about 20% larger among other things.
AE90Whilst I agree with most of your choices, I humbly submit that the Victor was in fact more adaptable than the Vulcan. Apart from it’s original bombing role, it had a strategic recce role and obviously a tanker role. It could carry far more bombs than the Vulcan, could radar map an area the size of the Mediterranean in a single sortie, and lasted in service longer than the Vulcan. In fact, it outlasted the Cold War!
I reckon if only one V-bomber should have been produced, it should have been the Victor.:)
Victor was definitely more adaptable but i don’t think any of us have the heart to say no to Vulcan.
AE90This was a not a Labour problem but one of pure economics. Examine the pursuit of escorts for the CVA-01 concept and it becomes apparent that the whole idea was bordering on unaffordable from the start. Also remember that Nott defence Review (conservative) would have ripped the heart out of the Navy. The harsh reality is that full size fleet carriers were unaffordable and were only going to get more so.
The Type-19 would have been a very poor purchase, Type-12 weapons maybe but appalling sensors, The only reason the ship was expensive was because of the ludicrous machinery set she got for her 40knots. A sensible British frigate design of the era were the Type 17 studies but these were too expensive to have with CVA-01’s and Type 82s. Slow ASW assets were anything other than wise in a post Type-XXI world that was rapidly moving towards SSN’s. The actually highly effective destroyer conversions produced vessels that could make a good speed in heavy seas, a must really. Although I would agree with the WW2 era frigates needing to be abandoned.
The problem with Diesel engines is that they are a greater maintenance burden and a bulkier than gas turbines, the decision by the RN to move towards a standard frigate and destroyer gas turbine machinery set seems sensible
certainly in the light of day what you’ve said sounds much more plausible and i do concede now that the WW2 destroyers- T15 ASW frigates wasn’t bad, they were effectively new ships but i still can’t advocate the half arsed conversions of T16’s it would have been much wiser to convert more T15’s and allow most of the other ww2 era ships to be binned earlier
as for T17, I’m not too sure about the potency of a ASW corvette in the 1000t, 200ft region
Again you’re right about speed being a large drawback on the T11’s, i was under the impression that they were capable of 27kt which would suffice and now that i think about it we got T12’s instead of T11’s making it ******* stupid to put it lightly.
T21 was not a desirable ship in the 70’s when they were commissioned, being made of ally and commissioned with an obsolete SAM system
thats not even touching on the larger escorts
AE90My point exactly. I was just tyring to correct the impression some have that the British CV force was withdrawn from service because they were worn out and couldn’t last any longer. Eagle was withdrawn only eight years after completing a five year refit that at the time was stated to have extended her life by at least twenty years (ie to around 1984). Had a strike fighter been developed in the 1960s that could operate from decks as small as Centaur’s then the whole carrier replacement program is cast in a different light. Centaur, for example, had only spent ten years at sea when withdrawn from service. Victorious was practically a new ship when recommissioned in 1958, new Boilers, engines, wiring, piping etcand everything above the hangar deck level. Yet she also served barely nine years. She was by all accounts in far better material condition than Ark Royal. Hence my assertion that the Carrier force didn’t need a replacement program (CVA-01 class) as early as they did. If the Navy had kept the new CV programme on the back burner until the early 70s for example then they wouldn’t have been in direct competition with the RAF’s big budget programmes like TSR 2. Inter service rivallry could have been avoided to a large extent.
Perhaps, not too sure though the money still wasn’t there (lets face it bean counters wouldn’t spare the money to Phantomise Eagle so 1 or 2 new carriers of that size was a nonstarter).
maybe the funds would have slipped through If the RN had bitten the bullet in the mid 50’s and accepted the fleet was going to shrink drastically instead of building cheap crap frigates based on WW2 destroyers (T14,15,16 also a reduction of Bay and Loch class that survived WW2) and worked on new designs with far smaller numbers (small number of T11, slow diesel ASW frigate based on the Leopards this would have served as a cheap to mass produce combatant in the event of a war instead of the WW2 compromises) in which case by the late 60’s there would have been manpower and a little more money to spare to keep the carriers in service longer and the next generation escorts such as T82 and T19(effectively a 40knotter ASW frigate based on T12 weapons [IIRC she was binned and the cheaper tin can T21’s were ordered]).
that could have free’d up enough funds and resources to keep Vicky serving into the early 70’s(perhaps later if she could’ve been Phantomised) Ark Royal and Eagle serving until the early 80’s at least (on the likelihood of Ark Royal spending most of the 70’s in refit), leading to a replacement class in the 80’s in a high-low mix of 4 with 2 upper end carriers replacing Ark Royal and Eagle, and alot cheaper slightly smaller derivative without cats and arrestors running on diesels to replace Bulwark and Hermes in the commando carrier role
all of this said though chances are Labour would’ve still attacked the navy left, right and centre in the 60’s
urgh, what could have been if the eyes were open for it.
AE90Not just fewer but also more reasonable ones, stainless steel mach 3 interceptors and strategic bombers anyone?;)
shhh Avro 730 was perfectly Viable.
AE90The other problem was that Britain was rather short of cash in the ’80s – the willpower was there (Thatcher), but not the money…
Another possibility for the ’80s, though, would have been the government realising how close to the wire they were in the Falklands with the existing carriers. The government then settles on buying a pair of larger carriers, perhaps a little bigger than the CdG, but minus the nuclear propulsion. Invincible still gets sold to Australia, replacing HMAS Melbourne, to keep the Aussies happy!
They therefore select an ‘evolved’ CVA-01 cross-bred with PA-58 and other studies. They settle on a three shaft derivative of Invincible’s two shaft arrangement, i.e. six Olympus, to generate ~140,000shp, with a steam generator to power two C13 catapults, one bow, one waist. The first ship is ordered in ’84, and finally enters service in 1992, after a long trials period; the second enters service in late ’94. The two new carriers allow Lusty and Ark to be used for the commando role (sans Sea Dart), even though they aren’t ideally suited to the role… The new airwing is to be made up of the new BAE P110, which has been given full government support; plus an appropriate airborne early warning aircraft, and the new EH-101 Merlin for ASW. The P110 becomes Britain’s main fighter, replacing the Phantoms, Tornado ADVs (which might never be developed in this scenario, perhaps in favour of an interim batch of F-4s), and Jaguars.
This could work, but it would be a struggle, though giving work to the shipyards might have been a good move in the circumstances….
that creates a nice alternative, BAe P.110 was blatantly an Anglicised hornet with formidable A2A, seeing as it would only be Britain’s needs to be catered for we could have a much shorter development pipeline with pre production prototypes by 90 and entering service by around 96 (at the latest) which is an ideal time for the UK where the only real major RAF procurement was the GR7 upgrade (although the Navy were half way through acquiring Vanguards and T23’s and the Army Challenger 2’s
this would have potentially a larger export market than Typhoon as it would cost less. appealing to the self-defence shoestring budget airforces
AE90Yeh, i did exagerate a bit there.. ha i was away with the moment and the ideas came as i was going along. and when you take into account a T45 costs 550m my figures would be optimistic to put it lightly!
AE90My god the ignorance and arrogance in this thread is immense!! it has already been established that the UK Wont build it’s own national aircraft for bean counting reasons not that it can’t, Quite the opposite considering BAe’s fingers are in alot of aviation pies combined with vast experience of it’s predessesors and RR being argueably the most successful engine mfgr in Europe.
the systematic destruction of British aviation industry both civil and military in the 60’s by both foreign entities and the labour party definitely damaged British capabilities to make matters worse the truly brilliant british designs at the time didn’t acheive the export success they deserved(i could make a list but everyone knows what they are), Harrier and Hawk only mustered a slight reprise but the capabilities to create a go it alone project are still there
PS: anything i say on this subject is not to be taken seriously as i am a British Aerospace engineer, thus my bias is far greater than anyone else’s.
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