CVF as an LHD would be a bad idea. The best way to protect a warship is to keep it moving, and to use the dock you have to stop and flood down, very close to the enemy’s shore. Sitting duck time. Also if you add a doxk then it will consume 5,000tons of the ships displacement, ie internal volume. The capacity of the ship starts to shrink and it carries less. Admittedly on a 60,000ton design that might not sound like much but even on a ship of that size there isn’t much room to spare. Something will have to go to accomodate the dock, along with a vehicle deck forward of it. Then there is the question of troop accomodation, and again something in the existing design will have to go to fit it in. Not impossible by any means, but a huge ship impact by any measure.

Add to this, the recent true test of “International Carrier” with the Deployment of the Ark with Spanish and Italian planes and I really don’t see a prob here

It was ‘Lusty’ not Ark, but point taken. The RN might not have much of a FJ force at the moment but it has always punched above it’s weight when required. Currently the two FAA Harrier sqns 800NAS and 801NAS are operating as a combined unit known as the Naval Strike Wing with a nominal complement of 12 GR7/9s (the two RAF Harrier sqns have 9 aircraft each) and I suspect this has more to do with a shortage of aircraft than pilots. Several sources have stated that they are only short of one QFI to stand up 801 to RAF standards (not vital by RN standards) and the ‘pilot shortage’ excuse was thought up to cover the real reason. The GR7/9 fleet was supposed to last until the F-35B arrives, but this has been postponed by at least six years now and at the current rate of use the existing fleet will have used up it’s airframe hours before then. Solution: reduce the numbers in the frontline fleet to eke out the airframe hours in order to stay operational until F-35B becomes available. This has meant only three and a third sqns worth of aircraft rather than four can be kept in service at any given time, hence the NSW.

Aye, it is. However, i wish the super hornets were cancelled. We should retain out F111 fleet.

The F-111s are worn out and very expensiveto keep flying. Retaining those examples in service beyond their current OSD would not only be prohibitively expensive, it could well prove impossible to extend them anyway. To keep any kind of F-111 fleet operational to bridge the gap until the F-35s arrive might mean buying second hand airframes from the US, and by the time they were brought up to standard the F-35s would be ready anyway.

A faulty fridge does not constitute ‘Falling apart’ by any measure. The Invincible’s equipment breakdown rate is not significantly higher now than it was when they were new back in the 80s. They have been exceptionally well maintained during their lives and all three have spent long periods in reserve followed by extensive refits to return them to service. For their age, they are relatively ‘low mileage’ compared to other nations warships of similar vintage and have plenty of life left in them.;) 😀

Minas Gerais and Karel Doorman were modernized and fitted with steam catapults in Holland… the others were all done in Britain.

Perhaps the Dutch were willing to look outside the “normal supplier” and consider another option.

The fact that Karel Doorman was fitted with a new, longer BS catapult during her second modernization (becoming 25deMayo), indicates that the Argentines felt the MS cat was underpowered for future aircraft?

I am guessing that KD was fitted with an MS cat also… but since she was modernized before MG, maybe not?

The ‘longer BS catapult’ fitted to Karel Doorman was installed at her first modernisation, in 1955-58. It was most likely refurbished in 68-69 prior to transfer but certainly did not ‘grow’ in length. I have a number of photos of the ship in Dutch service to prove this.

Probably correct, apart from Albion and Bulwark never had Steam catapults (BH3 Hydraulics only, also fitted to Centaur from completion in 54 until her 57-58 refit when BS4s fitted).

It looks like the Principe de Asturias because it is! The Spanish bought the plans from the US and ‘tweaked’ them with a bow ski jump, enlarged bridge with flagship facilities and Spanish CIWS. The design was later further modified to produce the Thai Chakri Narubet.

The RAF lost out just as much as the RN did, in some ways even more so- who is it who now provides the nuclear deterrent?

I think the Nuclear deterrent has proved to be a millstone for whichever service has to provide it; many writers have commented that the ’66 review was really down to the fact that the RN could have either Polaris or CVA-01, but not both. Whatever the truth, I would have been happy yo leave the deterrent role with the RAF if it meant we kept the carriers and the FAA intact.

The cancellation of CVA-01 was followed by an offer from the US to sell us three Essex class carriers, at the time it was not stated which ones they would be and most assumed they would be three of the six most capable SCB-27C/125 conversions, but even these were not Phantom capable, primarily because they had wooden flightdecks. The modernised Essexs could operate the large A-3 Skywarrior because it was relatively slow and did not have afterburners. McDonnel Douglas had already offered a version of the F-4K Spey engined Phantom to the USN as the F-4L (ie a variant suitable for use from smaller decks than the Midways or supercarriers) for operation from the Essex class, but were turned down by the Navy for this reason. The three Essexs selected would actually have been drawn from the unmodernised hulls so they could provide a ‘blank slate’ for conversion to RN standards, and this would mean a ‘Victorious’ style stripping to the Hangar deck and starting again almost from scratch, producing ships with steel if not armoured flightdecks and probably deleting the portside lift in favour of a waist catapult/longer angled deck, with the second catapult forward. Admittedly this would be easier to do with an Essex than a British Fleet carrier but would still mean three to four year refits for each ship. The RN estimated that the completed ships would only have fifteen years hull life left to them after completion of their refits (due to the fact that they were built during the war and had used up between a third and a half of their planned hull lives; War-built ships tended not to be expected to last too long and it is to the credit of those involved in their design, construction, operation and maintenance that so many lasted as long as they did), so represented a poor return on the money. The government had already decided to end Naval Aviation in the RN and the rundown of the carrier force was announced later than the CVA-01 cancellation, hence the US offer. The Americans at first thought that the problem was about the design of CVA-01, not a fundamental shift away from carriers altogether.