John KThe 1970 Conservative government basically went along with the 1966 decision to end carrier aviation, and the 1968 decision to pull out from East of Suez. The only good thing they did was to keep Ark Royal in service after the 1972 deadline which Labour had set, but they went along with the plan to turn the Royal Navy into a North Atlantic ASW orientated fleet, with very little out of area capability. They could have Phantomised Eagle and cancelled the conversion of Hermes into an LPH, but chose not to. The main political aim of the Heath government was to get Britain into the EEC, they were focussed on a European future for Britain, so saw little use for a navy with world wide reach.
John KNope. The USSR never called its helicopter carriers destroyers (“large anti-submarine ships”, similar to the original designation of the Invincible class), & S. Korea calls its flat-tops LPHs – ship numbers LPH-6111 & LPH-6112. They’re not really helicopter carriers, either: they’re amphibious assault ships, with a dock, vehicle deck & troop accommodation as well as a helicopter hangar.
Don’t the Russians term their carriers as “aviation cruisers”, possibly as a way of circumventing the ban on carriers traversing the Dardanelles?
John KThe more I look into the subject the more I think the CVA01 was affordable, as would CVA02.
I agree. If you add the £30 million spent on Ark Royal, £15 million on Hermes, £5.5 million on Blake and £13.25 million on Tiger, that’s CVA01 almost paid for at 1960s prices. Given that three CVS were built in the 1970s, you have to say that two if not three CVAs could have been bought, if only the navy had played its hand better, and deferred CVA01 by a few years.
One problem is that the CVA01 vs F111K debate was framed in the context of providing air power East of Suez. The F111K was chosen in 1966, but then cancelled in 1968 when the East of Suez commitment was abruptly abandoned. At that point CVA01, if it had been chosen, might have been cancelled anyway. However, if the navy had kept its existing carriers into the 1970s (even Denis Healey agreed the carrier force should run on until 1972), it would have been possible to demonstrate to the 1970 Conservative government that carriers provided both a global reach for Britain, as well as a valuable contribution to NATO. Providing commando support to Norway was a key British responsibility in NATO, and trying to do that without carrier protection would have been an exercise in futility.
John KI didn’t know about the 25 million to turn Hermes into a LPH, thats a lot of money. I don’t know about buying 3 CVAs but I’d certainly think that 2 was possible.
Your comment prompted me to check my sources, and it seems that Hermes’ conversion to an LPH “only” cost £15 million (at a time when a frigate might cost £3 million). It was still a lot of money to pay to convert a good carrier into an LPH, when we already had 2 LPHs.
I agree that if the Navy had kept its carrier capabilty, at little cost, into the 1970s, then it would have been quite able to have afforded two CVAs, if not three, but that in itself would have maintained the Navy’s ability to defend British interests around the world, and would have prevented the Falklands War for a start.
John K[QUOTE=Riaino;1988036]Correct me if I’m wrong here, but I read that Polaris was paid for out of a tri-service vote; so it didn’t come out of the RNs procurement budget alone, all 3 serivces kicked in. In contrast Trident was paid for wholly by the RN.
QUOTE]
Be that as it may, the money for the deterrent still has to come from somewhere, and once spent on the deterrent, it is not available for anything else. The Navy got Polaris, and to try and push for CVA01 at the same time was foolish. HMS Hermes was still in the fleet until 1984, and after thorough rebuilds, Hermes, Victorious and Eagle were all in effect new ships in 1966, with fully angled flight decks and Type 984 radar, and all could have served through the 1970s. Ark Royal could not, and yet the money was spent on her! The £30 million spent on the Ark, plus the £25 million spent turning Hermes into an LPH, and the £18 million spent on Lion and Tiger would have virtually paid for CVA01, which, added to the fact that we did build three ASW carriers in the 70s, tells me that with a bit of planning and better political understanding, the Navy could have had three new CVA type carriers in the 1970s, if only the leadership had been there.
John KIt can indeed be argued that the upheaval over the cancellation of CVA01 ended up costing more than building the ship would have done, since the demise of carrier aviation meant the RN was recast as a North Atlantic ASW navy and nothing much else.
My problem with the Admiralty was their lack of political nous in thinking they would get Polaris and CVA01 at the same time, when defence spending was, as ever, under pressure. Giving the navy the deterrent role was a body blow to the RAF, for which strategic bombing had been pretty much its raison d’etre. The idea that the RAF, which had lost TSR2 and Bomber Command, would roll over and let the Navy get Polaris and CVA01 was naive in the extreme.
It would have made far more sense to have spent £5 million on Phantomising Eagle, and to have run the other three carriers on into the 1970s with the existing Sea Vixen and Buccaneer air groups. Money not spent on Phantomising Ark Royal, converting the Tiger class into futile helicopter carriers, defanging Hermes and turning her into a commando carrier, and on building three Invincible class ASW carriers, would surely have paid for at least two if not three CVAs. Not to mention the last four County class destroyers, which should either have been cancelled and built as Type 82s. or at the very least had their Sea Slugs converted to semi-active homing, beam riding being obsolete almost as soon as it had been developed.
So many defence procurement decisions made at this time simply defy belief. Why, for instance, when you had two commando carriers, Albion and Bulwark, would you spend £25 million turning a decent enough aircraft carrier, Hermes, into a commando carrier, and then discard Albion, the better of the two existing ships, and keep Bulwark? Why would you spend £30 million on Ark Royal rather than £5 million on Eagle, again, the better of the two? Why would you discard Victorious, which had been completely rebuilt over eight years, when she suffered £20,000 worth of damage from a fire? The level of waste and incompetence was absolutely sickening, it almost makes you wonder how many agents the Russians had in the MoD, as the thought that we did this to ourselves is just too appalling.
John KI agree with these comments.
If the RN had agreed to defer the CVA01 programme until after the completion of the Polaris programme, it would still have been possible to have kept the four existing carriers going into the 1970s at a minimal cost. As has been said, money was found to waste on the two Tiger class helicopter cruisers, as well as on the building of the three Invincibles. Given the end of the East of Suez commitment in 1971, a three CVA force might not have been built, but even a two ship force would have given the RN a powerful NATO role, allied to the continued ability to project power out of area, and hence very likely no Falklands War.
The Navy’s problem was that it was trying to get CVA01 at the same time as Polaris, and that was always going to lead to a major batle with the RAF over who gets what. I am amazed that the Admiralty did not seem to have appreciated this, and fought their corner so badly.
John KSome very interesting information on that thread.
In my opinion, the Royal Navy played their hand very badly over CVA01. Rather than adopt an all or nothing approach, it would have made a lot of sense in the mid 60s to defer the new carrier into the 70s, and keep the existing four carriers in operation. Eagle could have been Phantomised for just £5 million. I’m not sure if it would have been worth Phantomising Ark Royal, or indeed Victorious and Hermes, if it had been possible. The Sea Vixen would have remained viable into the 70s, and we could have kept a four carrier force. I would not have spent any money on Lion and Tiger, nor would the Invincible class have been built, the money thus saved going towards the new CVA fleet.
John K“Australian government to consider buying up to 24 new F/A-18 Super Hornet fighter-bombers in a decision that would sharply reduce reliance on the troubled Joint Strike Fighter”. Statement from Aussie press.
There are ongoing rumblings of cuts to the JSF programme with the possible cancellation of at least one, if not two variants?
The US is going to be taking a realistic look at what it actually needs, wants, and can actually afford. It has been suggested that the US Navy does not actually need the F35C and Lockheed have not yet confirmed that they have been able to Fully Resolve the tail hook problem. Instead it is being suggested that the Super Hornet and it’s replacement will suffice. Likewise it is also being muted that the US Marine Corps does not actually need a high tech fifth generation Stealth Warplane to support Amphibious landings. The fact that the F35B is also the most expensive of all the variants is not helping!
The F35A is seen as a necessary relacement for the F16 in the USAF, add to that the fact that it is the cheapest F35 with the majority of overseas orders being for this type. The only overseas orders for the F35B come from the UK and Italy in very small numbers so far, with the USN being the only proposed operator of the F35C.
In the absence of the F35B would the UK be forced back to Cats & Traps?
I don’t think many people appreciate the depths of the US government’s financial problem. The US national debt under Obama went from $10 trillion to $16 trillion, and the US government is only kept afloat because the Federal Reserve buys 90% of the bonds it issues. In that context, the F35 might begin to seem an unaffordable aircraft. If the F35B were cancelled, Britain could go back to cats & traps, but that might just be both too expensive and too humiliating for the government to contemplate. Maybe some sort of STOBAR arrangement could be contemplated, perhaps we should give the Russians a call?
John KMath? Where are you from? A yank pretending to be British in order to disrupt this board?
BTW, the USA spends over twice as much per head, & almost twice as much as a share of income, on health care as we do. And still they die younger, & more of their babies die.
As for the countries you’ve claimed have better systems – well, how do you think they’re funded? Germany, France, & Poland (ranked 27th out of 34 European states in the Euro Health Consumer Index, 15 places below the UK) all have state systems. In France, ‘out of pocket’ expenditure was 7.3% of total health care spending in 2010. in Germany 13.2%, & in the UK 8.9%. The state paids for 83.2% of all health spending here, 77.0% in France, & 76.8% in Germany. Big difference, eh?
You know what the real difference between health care in France & Germany & here is? They spend more. 20-30% more per head at the moment, & the gap used to be a lot bigger. In 1990, the differences were 50% & 80%. They have higher state spending per head on health than we do, & top it up with more private insurance.
I suggest that you shut up, stop ranting about your personal prejudices, & get back on topic. If you want to discuss health care systems, do so somewhere else – and learn a little bit about them first, or you’ll get ripped to pieces.
Sorry Sherlock, but it’s just a phrase. As for France, Germany etc, they have systems of social insurance for healthcare which produce far better outcomes than the neo-Stalinist NHS. This topic started because the NHS was held up as a sort of national shibboleth which is beyond criticism. It isn’t! If you’d rather be treated in a British hospital than a German one, good luck to you.
John KStudy conducted by the Royal Society of Medicine that finds NHS as second only to that of Ireland on cost Effectiveness, pretty much states it’s the second best in the world:
http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2011/08/07/JRSMpaperPritWall.pdf
I’ve seen others that more or less state the same thing included 1 that was commissioned by the US Government that also had the NHS as the second best in the world.
Personally think there’s quite a lot wrong with the NHS but an awful lot that is very good about it as well.
The Royal Society of Medicine eh? There’s nothing like disinterested, impartial research to settle a matter is there? If they think the Irish health system is the best in the world (which seems to be the logic of your statement) then they are seriously deluded. The NHS is a second rate socialist relic of the 1940s, which people cling to because they think it’s somehow free, and the envy of the world, even though no-one else has copied it, for some strange reason.
John KI’d second Fed’s story there. I guess some people have some bad experiences but its a damn sight better than its often portrayed (especially by those that don’t understand the system – Sarah Palin i’m looking at you).
There’s been work comparing several aspects of the health systems in the USA, UK, France, Germany, and one or two others. The NHS scored very well and came 1st or second out of those I mentioned.
And if you don’t like the NHS in the UK you are always welcome to go private. Suggesting you are locked in because you pay taxes is ridiculous, because even moving to a private healthcare system would require you to pay taxes to cover the poorest who cant afford care anyway, unless you go full American and just let the paupers lump it (that was in jest my yank amigos, no need to resort to lawyers or guns).
Back on topic, still waiting on those photos we were promised!
There’s been “some work” has there? Oh well, I take it all back. NHS cancer outcomes are on a par with Poland’s, and patients die of neglect, but the ghost of Clement Attlee must never be challenged it seems.
As for the USA, you may have heard of Medicare and Medicaid, not to mention Obamacare. They are following us on the road towards a socialist welfare state, and that means we spend money on welfare, not defence. Our welfare budget is £200 billion, our defence budget is £40 billion. You do the math.
John KYes of course John whatever :rolleyes:, when you need the help of the NHS you might just change your tune on that.
That’s just the point, in the UK we are locked into the NHS, we pay for it through our taxes, but are not treated as customers, it is the epitome of 1940s socialism. Did you read about Anne Clwyd at all? I know if I had the choice I’d much rather be treated in a hospital in Germany or France than the UK. You paid for your operation, there’s no magic money tree (unless you are one of the parasites who turn up from abroad expecting to be treated for free, but that’s another story).
John K(Just a quick bit of advise, if you are pranking the forum for British people attacking the National Health Service is pretty much the worse kind of insult a foreigner can make on our country! If you want a ban that would be a quick way to it…this is a British forum by the way)
Speak for yourself. The NHS is a relic of Clement Attlee’s post war socialism, and provides a basic standard of care at huge cost. Just read what Anne Clwyd MP had to say this week about the abysmal care her of her late husband. The NHS is a shibboleth which needs to be challenged, the standard of health care is much better in other Western European states with social insurance based health systems.
John KI’m assuming you meant the F111 was designed to replace the B52? It wasn’t, it was a totally different role, that at one point was going to be a carrier fighter.
I have been having a look at that point. It turns out that MacNamara, who thought that manned bombers were obsolete, did plan to scrap the B52 force and “replace” it with just 200 F111s, much to the disgust of Curtis LeMay. So although the F111 was not a replacement for the B52 in a functional sense, operationally it would have been, had MacNamara’s career not crashed and burned in Vietnam.
Sign In
