If the USMC ever fly GR.9’s i’m a Dutchman.

By the time they are returned to flight they won’t be GR9s anymore, they’ll be USMC standard AV-8Bs. Try reading between the lines of the link, the Marines are looking to transition to all STOVL fleet, they need to replace the Hornets anyway and overall adding these 74 Harriers to their fleet will reinforce their case for the F-35B.

The forward island is absolutely irrelevant for the positioning of the second catapult, as it would have been positioned there nonetheless.
There is nothing wrong to the second cat being there. Remember Ark Royal IV? It had the very same arrangement.

Eagle too. She was the first RN carrier with that arrangement. Remember the flight deck is governed by the needs of three deck operations, Launching, Recovery, and Parking. The third is so often forgotten, probably because most who are unfamiliar with carrier ops still believe aircraft are struck down to the hangar when not in use. Not true, the hangar is for maintenance only. Aircraft ‘resting’ between sorties, waiting to be refuelled and rearmed (two procedures only ever done on deck, never in the hangar) will always be parked on deck somewhere. Back in the 60s the RN realised the best way to accomodate the air group was to move flight ops to the port side of the deck (hence the ‘waist cat’) and deck parking to starboard. CVA 01 with her ‘parallell deck’ concept was the logical next stage in this thought process. Having only one cat on the foredeck creates a permanent deck park, and as space is always at premium aboard a carrier the deck park is just as important as the angled deck and the cats.

Even without the F-35Cs (don’t hold your breathe about them being based at Heron, not if the crabs have any say in the matter!), the two bases are the minimum necessary to support the present and future helicopter strength of the FAA. There’s more to RN air bases than SAR as well…

what is this about a 65,000 ton carrier? I thought India was making a 40,000 tonne carrier with the Italians?

are there any models? art work? etc
tell me kind people

IAC 1 (now named INS Vikrant) is a 40,000 tonne ‘super Cavour), but IAC 2 (possibly to be named INS Vishul) will be a 65,000 tonne development, expected to be CATOBAR.

They ain’t £2 billion any more. Building delays (imposed by politicians) & adding catapults have put that up. They should still be cheaper per ton than US carriers, but you’re not comparing like with like. US shipbuilding is notoriously expensive, even compared to British yards, different propulsion, etc. A true comparison would be a 100K ton US-built nuclear carrier with a 65K ton US-built nuclear carrier.

The CVF programme coers more than the cost of building two ships, it also covers the cost of reorganising the entire UK warship building industry and the reconstruction of the Rosyth drydock (incl. purchase and assembly of the Goliath crane for the dock), which meant a lot of money was spent before the first steel was cut for the carriers. The actual unit cost of the CVFs still isn’t far beyond the £2 Billion figure, and the press reports should be judged in the light of their own particular bias and that of whoever is feeding them the latest scare stories. Extract the political interference (the delays to completion and changes to the specs at the last minute) and the price stabilises back down again.

Nuclear power really does distort the price comparisons too, far more than most realise. Which is one reason the CVFs don’t have it, as it would mean the difference between affording two ships or just one, as happened to the French with CdG.

Why have separate launch and landing deck areas, in that case? Would it not be more efficient to use the same (smaller) deck for both, if it’s never going to be simultaneous?

The efficiency of an aircraft carrier, i.e. it’s overall ability to operate aircraft increases exponentially with the size of the ship, which is why carriers get bigger whenever the opportunity arises. As ship steel is relatively cheap compared to other aspects of warship design, you save little and cause problems for your crew by making the ship smaller, but gain greatly at little cost by making the ship bigger. The US CVNs are capable of simltaneous launch and recovery as a by product of their size and design, not because it was an important design requirement. If a notional 65,000 tonne CV costs say £2 Billion, reducing the size of the ship to 40,000 tonnes will not save a third of the cost, you will be lucky if it saves 2-5%. For that miniscule saving, you get a far less capable ship with reduced potential for future developments. American carriers designed and built in the early 50s (Forrestal class) were able to adapt without major modification to aircraft that were not even concieved when they were. If they were still in service today they would have no difficulty operating the current and future generations of naval aircraft. The smaller Essex class could not do this, and the Midways (at least CV 42 and 43) would struggle. Size matters with carriers

Once again the ‘Simltaneous Launch and Recovery’ red herring raises it’s head. Yes, USN CVNs can do this, but in practice they don’t. There is no operational need for this capability, and it is only practiced during inspections. The RN and MN have never possessed CTOL carriers capable of simltaneous launch and recovery, and it has never caused a problem. Deck operations are cyclical, you are either launching aircraft, landing on aircraft, or re spotting aircraft ready for the next cycle. If an aircraft is returning to the ship with a serious problem requiring for instance rigging the Barricade, this in itself will need anything between two and ten minutes to rig depending on how well the crew are worked up. The returning aircraft will always give enough notice of it’s arrival to reconfigure the deck ready for whatever emergency it has to deal with. If the plane cannot stay airborne for these vital minutes then the pilot will have to eject anyway.

This gives time to respot aircraft which are parked fouling the angled deck away from the landing area, and any aircraft on the cats will be launched to clear (cats can launch an aircraft at between 30 and 45 second intervals, so we can assume moving an aircraft onto the cat, attaching it to the shuttle and hold back bar, performing checks, running up to full power and firing the cat can be done in this time or less). Also remember during normal landing ops, once the aircraft has caught the wire and come to a stop on the angled deck, it is then directed to taxi into Fly One to park whilst the next aircraft is on approach (landing about 45 seconds later. Or less). So the forward cat/cats will be unusable until the recovered aircraft are respotted aft or down to the hangar. Also the hangar is only used for maintenance of aircraft, not fuelling or arming. Planes are only taken down to the hangar when defuelled and disarmed, so empty weights of the aircraft are all that are needed when measuring lift capacity. The lifts on an Invincible class (and most ‘Harrier Carriers’) have a capacity of 18.5 tonnes, and F-35Bs which, when empty weight around 13 tonnes, do fit on them, albeit a tight squeeze.

Carrierfan:

You are correct of course, nonetheless the fact that our current monarch just happens to be Queen Elizabeth cannot be discounted, and must have an effect when government considers the ramifications of mothballing a nearly new carrier, as against converting it for CTOL operations.

Personally, I think we are overdue for an HMS King George VI. The late King was a naval veteran of WWI who surely deserves to have a ship in his name. Traditionally, the first capital ship built in a sovereign’s reign was named after him, thus King George V had a battleship of that name, but when the KGV class were being built in the late 30s, George V had another battleship named after him. Odd that.

The second KGV, nameship of the class of WW2 Battleships was supposed to be named HMS King George VI in honour of the new monarch, but he himself insisted she be named for his late father.