I still think its a great Carrier though with a typical setup of 22 jets plus 2 hawks plus helicopters its the best carrier out there after the CVN classes. I know its not a big field but it aint bad.

it really isn’t a big field at all. let’s look at the current, in-service CATOBAR/STOBAR competition after the USN’s CVNs:

– charles de gaulle – very capable ship in theory, nothing but problems in practice. equipped with catapults capable of hurling fully-loaded rafales and hawkeyes into the sky, she would have to be considered the most serious and capable carrier out there after the USN’s flat tops.

– admiral kuznetsov – has had its fits and starts over the years. somewhat compromised by russia’s insistence on over-arming it’s carriers instead of relying on escorts, but she is a very big ship and an imminent modernization program could potentially lead to a carrier more capable than the CdG

– sao paulo – old, outdated, ancient air wing. not really worthy of inclusion with these other ships.

that’s it, after the USNs 11 supercarriers, and the 3 ships listed above, the only other carriers out there in the world’s navies are STOVL harrier carriers, some of which are very good and capable ships (the cavour and the invincibles come immediately to mind), but size and air wing constraints put them in a different category in my mind. so take your pick, after the USN, it’s either the CdG or the kuznetov for second place out of a field of what is really just only 3 (if the USN carriers are taken collectively as a single entry, and discounting the sao paulo).

In the eye of the beholder as they say.

certainly, but there are reasons why some women win beauty pageants and others don’t even bother entering them. i was merely extrapolating my own subjective opinion of the ship’s aesthetics out into the greater world of naval enthusiasts and surmising that the eyes of most of those beholders wouldn’t likely find this ship to be particularly attractive either.

not that attractiveness is all that relevant of a feature for warships. if the ship can perform her assigned duties and successfully fulfill the role(s) for which she has been designed, then those objective measures obviously FAR outweigh other considerations, but i did feel like mentioning aesthetics none-the-less because i find the jaun carlos to be such a fat pudgy beast, perhaps made egregiously so by the unflattering angle of that particular photograph.

i do hope that someone eventually plans to make a museum ship out of one of the invincibles. after the USN, the royal navy has been the most prolific builder of aircraft carrier hardware in the world with no museum carriers preserved for posterity to show for it, which is a shame.

i would have really liked to have seen ark royal (R09) or eagle (R05) preserved; it’s a damn shame that those mighty beasts were both scrapped.

this image of LHA-7 looks significantly different from the official rendering of LHA-6. i had always assumed that the second ship in the class was going to be identical to LHA-6. compared to the rendering below of LHA-6, the island of LHA-7 looks much smaller and pushed further astern for a much greater forward deck area. the island also looks like it’s been redesigned for low signature purposes.

does anyone know if LHA-7 will be a modified design with a significant increase in deck area, or is the rendering associated with the article above just wonky and/or out of date.

USS America – LHA-6

I have to agree they are fantastic looking ships and any navy would have been proud to have them in their fleet. even the yanks I bet

well, with their 11 nuclear powered, ultra-bad-ass, don’t tread on me, super-carriers, i don’t know how much more pride could be added to the USN fleet by the addition of the invincibles, but if we were to compare them to something a little more similar, such as the wasp class LHDs, then it’d be no contest in the looks department, the invincibles are clearly FAR more attractive ships. i know, i know, LHDs are designed and built for an entirely different type of mission, with their well decks and raw internal volume requirements leading to their boxy hulls, but going strictly by aesthetics alone, the invincibles are certainly among the best looking flat-tops currently in any fleet.

[size=3]Navy’s new carriers take shape in Scotland[/size]
Build programme ‘well under way’…

The Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA) is forging ahead on the Queen Elizabeth (QE) Class, having recently made contract awards worth £325 million that will drive momentum into the ongoing build of HMS Queen Elizabeth.

On 14 January, Secretary of State for Scotland, Jim Murphy MP visited Govan to welcome the contracts which have been placed in Scotland. Following the visit, he said

“These contract awards are great news for Glasgow, the Scottish economy and Scottish jobs. There has never been any doubt how important the aircraft carriers are to Scotland as a multibillion pound project securing thousands of jobs.”

full article: http://www.shippingtimes.co.uk/item_10274.html

HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH takes shape in Govan