A series of assumptions: a Britwank on a budget?

Endgame

Riain

Banned
Despite the loss of Sir Galahad and damage to Sir Tristram the noose was tightening around the Argentine forces as more and more troops moved forward by helicopter and sea and in several battles took the heights around the town. It was this more than destruction by air attack of naval gunfire which restricted the Argentine’s ability to fight back. The installation of Rapier on the western slopes ended supply flights to Stanley and the success of Type 64 combos in shooting down exocets meant they were sent back inshore to conduct NGFS.
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However the Argentines had one more shot in their locker, and on the night of 13 June it was fired. On Sunday a number of Canberras were detached on stand-by to Rio Gallegos to fly night-support missions for the Argentinian troops in Port Stanley, Falklands Islands. Two B.62 Canberras were tasked and readied along with two Mirage IIIEAs as fighter escort. Take off was 21:00 local time and the B.62s climbed to 36,000ft setting course for Mount Kent. The Mirages took off some time later and held steady about 20 miles behind while the Canberras positioned to the south for their bomb run from 36,000’. Both B.62s ran in and dropped their loads and made a 180 degree turn to clear the area. Just after the escape turn, B-108, the lead aircraft, was hit by a Sea Dart fired from HMS Bristol.(1) Meanwhile HMS Cardiff and HMS Battleaxe were conducting naval gunfire against Port Stanley airfield they detected a pair of fast moving contacts, calling ‘Handbrake’ Cardiff shot one missile down with a Sea Dart while the Battleaxe downed the other with a Sea Wolf.(2)

The following day the Argentine forces in Stanley surrendered.
  1. IOTL this Canberra was shot down by Cardiff
  2. IOTL the 2nd land based exocet attack occurred on 12 Jun hitting HMS Glamorgan killing 14 people and damaging the ship
 
New Toys

Riain

Banned
The post Falklands years were a boom period in British defence circles. The British economy had returned to growth and in 1983 the Conservative Party was reelected with a very strong majority while the Labour Party espoused ‘The longest suicide note in history’, roundly rejected by the electorate. Despite the feeble attempts to say the Defence Minister Nott’s 1981 review was correct it was obvious that it wasn’t and with little fanfare parts were quietly overturned as Prime Minister Thatcher engaged in the Second Cold War with US President Reagan. In a mood of national confidence it seems all manner of things were possible for Britain, a great turnaround after decades of decline and contraction.
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In this environment of great national confidence, loosened purse strings, recent high intensity war experience and a commitment to ‘rollback’ of the Soviet Union things got done and problems got solved. One of the first things to change was the computer in the Trident AEW, the GEC4080M selected back in 1977 was replaced with the newer model GEC 4090 with Am2900 bit-slice processors with 32-bit addressing extensions and 4 MB of memory. This quadrupling of the core memory solved the Trident’s worst problems almost overnight, as the computer and bus with a total of 5.4 MB memory could finally integrate the data from the ESM, IFF, INS and radar.(1) These would be complemented by the Royal Nay’s purchase of the E2 Hawkeye to replace the elderly Gannets on the carrier decks.(2) The two Type 42 destroyers and Type 21 frigate(3) were ostensibly replaced by a pair of Type 22 frigates, however the ability of even a medium power to put enough aircraft in the air to overwhelm the Royal Navy’s CAP and Air Defence Destroyers saw the resurrection of the Type 43/44 destroyer with a stated requirement for four of these double ended Sea dart MkII ships.(4) The P3T project was also given a huge boost as it was decided to replace the MM38 Exocet on surface ships as well as being developed into a standoff land attack missile for the RAF and RN.(5)
  1. IOTL the GEC 4080M had 1 MB of memory and the bus another 1.4, it was too small to integrate all the data.
  2. IOTL the RN acquired 13 Sea King AEW2/5
  3. IOTL two Type 21 frigates were lost
  4. IOTL the Type 22 programme was to stop at 8 ships but 2 Batch 2 were ordred to replace ships sunk in the Falklands and batch 3 were developed and 4 were built.
  5. IOTL the Harpoon was selected to replace the Exocet in 1984 and the land attack Golden Eagle was not developed
 
Rework

Riain

Banned
Perhaps even more important than flashy new equipment was the rework of existing equipment, which the war had shown was required but budgets had never allowed. The Martel missile was reworked to enable the selection of its available search frequencies in flight(1) while the Royal Navy’s Sparrow inventory was sent through BAe for a rework to incorporate as many Blue Jay components as possible. The Tyne standardisation project was undertaken, ostensibly so that the Belfast and C160s would have a single variant of Tyne engine to reduce sustainment costs, however the Belfasts gained 15% more power and a welcome increase in performance. In addition the Dutch goalkeeper CIWS was widely fitted to RN vessels as last ditch anti missile defence.(2)

For the Royal Navy’s fleet of carrier aircraft was in a precarious position. Prior to the war the RN had ~40 Phantoms and ~60 Buccaneer which was enough to fill 2 full air groups. However some 9 aircraft had been lost to operational accidents and combat which pared the numbers to the bone, in a few years with attrition the RN would not be able to fill out 2 CAGs. Replacing these aircraft with an entirely new fleet was not practical or affordable as the Buccaneer and Phantom still had years of life left in them anf the F14 was too big and expensive, the A6 no better than the Buccaneer and the emerging F/A18 too small. The decision was made to acquire used F4J from the US and do a major fleet mid-life upgrade and bring the combined fleet of carrier aircraft up to 110 in total.(3)
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The F4J required major work to being them to F4K standard, in particular the replacement of the J79s with Spey and the associated airframe modifications as well as the elongated nosewheel, BLC and drooping ailerons. The engine fitted was a newer version of the Mk202 that powered the existent Phantom fleet known as the Mk205. The radar and avionics were upgraded using off the shelf items in service with newer British aircraft like the Vegnance and Jaguar while the conformal belly tank was fitted. The extant F4K fleet was then run trough the same upgrade programme to standardise on a single configuration. The Buccaneer fleet saw the biggest change, primarily because it’s old 11,000lb thrust Mk101 engines were replaced with the non-afterburning version of the Mk205 known as the Mk105 which produced almost 13,000lb of thrust. Similarly the less sophisticated Buccaneers avionics upgrade gave it a huge boost in capability, including the ability to utilise the new Sea Eagle anti-ship missile as well as the in development Golden Eagle land attack missile. The programme changed the balance of the fleet, where previously Buccaneers had outnumbered Phantoms now the situation was reversed with 60 Phantoms F/A2 in service compared to 50 Buccaneer S3s and a service life expected to be another decade.
  1. IOTL the French upgraded their Martel to Armat in this way
  2. IOTL Goalkeeper was fitted to two Invincible and the Albion LHDs
  3. IOTL the RAF purchased 15 used F4J to stand up a new fighter sqn and replaced all the Sea Harrier and GR3 lost during the war with new production.
 

Riain

Banned
I think that's about it, the next update will be an epilogue.

Maybe, like Red Dead Redemption, I'll do 2 Epilogues.
 
Comparing the costs of warships from the middle of the 1960s to the middle of the 1980s is "rather difficult" to put it politely due to the high rates of inflation, especially in the 1970s. However, I'm going to have a go.

According to Leo Marriott in Royal Navy Aircraft Carriers 1945-1990 published in 1985:
  • The estimated cost of CVA.01 in 1966 was 70 million;
  • The actual cost of Invincible in 1980 was £184.5 million, and:
  • The actual cost of Ark Royal in 1985 was £220 million.
IIRC contemporary editions of Jane's Fighting Ships said that estimated cost of Invincible in 1973 was £60 million.

According to the Bank of England Inflation calculator £70 million in 1966 was worth:
  • £92.26 million in 1971 when the TTL CVA.01 was ordered;
  • £107.83 million in 1973 when the OTL Invincible and TTL CVA.02 were ordered;
  • £227.30 million in 1978 when the TTL CVA.01 was completed;
  • £304.10 million in 1980 when the OTL Invincible and TTL CVA.02 were completed;
  • £369.49 million in 1982 when the OTL Illustrious was completed and;
  • £430.38 million in 1985 when the OTL Ark Royal was completed.
Therefore, the estimated cost of CVA.02 was 80% more than Invincible in 1973 and the actual cost of the ship would have been 65% more than Invincible in 1980.

My estimates do not allow for any savings made by the TTL CVA.01 class having gas turbines instead of steam turbines and fitting Sea Wolf instead of Sea Dart. They do not allow for increases in cost that were not due to inflation.

FWIW Sea Wolf might have been a more appropriate weapon for the CVA.01 class, but I doubt that it would have been cheaper.
My recollection that contemporary editions of Jane's Fighting Ships said that the original estimated cost of Invincible was £60 million turned out to be correct and they usually agree with Marriott by saying that the cost of Invincible was £184.5 million at 1980 prices.

The earliest cost estimate for the Invincible class in Jane's Fighting Ships is in the 1976-77 edition. It says that the original estimated cost for Invincible was £60 million and that the final bill per ship was likely to be £150 million. That's well ahead of the rate of inflation because £60 million in 1973 was worth £101 million in 1976.

The next editions that I have access to are 1978-79 and 1979-80 which say that the estimated cost was originally £60 million, but had risen to £167 million at 1976 prices and that the estimated cost of later ships was £200+ million.

The 1980-81 Edition says that the estimated cost of Invincible at 1980 prices was £210 million and does not give any costs for the other ships of the class.

I don't have access to the 1981-82 Edition. However, the 1982-83 Edition says that the in the early 1970s the estimated cost was approximately £60 million and that the final estimated cost of Invincible was £184.5 million at March 1980 prices. It doesn't have the estimated costs for Illustrious and Ark Royal. The editions for 1984-85, 1986-87 and 1987-88 say the same.

The entries on the Invincible class in Jane's Fighting Ships 1988-89 and 1989-90 don't have any cost estimates. The Internet Archive does have some later editions of Jane's in it, but I haven't looked at them.


However, Hobbs says that the estimated cost of CVA.01 was £60 million instead of the £70 million that Marriott quoted.

According to the Bank of England Inflation calculator £60 million in 1966 was worth:
  • £79.08 million in 1971 when the TTL CVA.01 was ordered;
  • £92.42 million in 1973 when the OTL Invincible and TTL CVA.02 were ordered;
  • £150.29 million in 1976;
  • £194.83 million in 1978 when the TTL CVA.01 was completed;
  • £260.66 million in 1980 when the OTL Invincible and TTL CVA.02 were completed;
  • £316.71 million in 1982 when the OTL Illustrious was completed and;
  • £368.90 million in 1985 when the OTL Ark Royal was completed.
Therefore, the estimated cost of CVA.02 was 54% more than Invincible in 1973 and the actual cost of the ship would have been 42% more than Invincible in 1980.

The 1976 price of CVA.02 is the same as the estimate of for Invincible of £150 million in JFS 1976-77 and less than the £167 million 1976 prices for Invincible and £200+ million for subsequent ships quoted in the 1978-79 and 1979-80 editions. Even if the 1973 price of CVA.02 is multiplied 2½ times to £231.05 million its still only 54% more than £150 million and 38% more than the £167 million.

The TTL version of the CVA.01 class is likely to be cheaper than the OTL version because it has gas turbine engines instead of steam turbines.

These prices seem far too good to be true and I'm an advocate of the "steel is cheap" theory. Either the 1966 cost estimates for CVA.01 quoted by Hobbs and Marriott were wildly inaccurate or Dennis Healey made a very bad decision in February 1966.
 
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Weren't there estimates of an actual cost around 100 million?
I don't know. Do you know when, by whom and what it included?

Different cost estimates may not be comparable because they may not include the same things.

For example there is a story (which may not be true) that the estimated costs that Dennis Healy quoted for CVA.01 in the 1966 Defence White Paper included CVA.02 and 8 Type 82 destroyers.

Another example is the difference between the costs of converting Blake and Tiger into helicopter cruisers. Some sources say that the £13.25 million spent on Tiger's refit included the cost of her Wessex helicopters and that the £5½ million spent on Blake's didn't. (According to the Bank of England Inflation Calculator £5½ million in 1968 was worth £7.23 million in 1972.)

I've often written that the rebuilt Victorious was better value for money than Hermes because the former cost £20 million and the latter cost £37½ million. Both figures came from Marriott. However, I have since discovered that the cost of Hermes included her aircraft.
 
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I've really enjoyed reading this @Riain and am, as always, envious of your ability to get the words out! Particularly enjoyed the ATL Falklands chapters. I was at Secondary school at the time and remember being glued to the TV news and avidly reading the paper when it dropped on the doormat of a morning.
 

Riain

Banned
I think I've seen 100 million but who knows what it included, the quote for 2 cva and 8 t82s was when numbers of t82s were fluctuating between 6 and 8.
 
I think I've seen 100 million but who knows what it included, the quote for 2 cva and 8 t82s was when numbers of t82s were fluctuating between 6 and 8.
FWIW I've been thinking of your CVA.01 as a "Super Invincible" rather than the OTL CVA.01 with gas turbines.

That is, it would have the Invincible class sensors and C3 facilities fitted into a larger hull with Sea Wolf instead of Sea Dart, steam catapults, arrester gear, larger lifts and six Olympus gas turbines instead of four. Therefore, the extra costs would have been the larger hull, steam catapults, two Olympus gas turbines and the difference between the costs of the OTL lifts and the TTL lifts.

My "guesstimate" was that the building cost would be no more than twice the the building cost of the OTL Invincible class.
 
Earlier in the thread you mentioned that Brian Hanrahan still says this...
Was he still with a platoon of Gurkhas when the Argentine surrender was announced?

As I remember their British officer said, "Bloody marvelous!" after hearing the news on the radio. Then he told his men (in Nepalese) and they were devastated.
 
Earlier in the thread you mentioned that Brian Hanrahan still says this...
Was he still with a platoon of Gurkhas when the Argentine surrender was announced?

As I remember their British officer said, "Bloody marvelous!" after hearing the news on the radio. Then he told his men (in Nepalese) and they were devastated.
Ahhh love em :)
 
It's been a great story. If anything you've been too cautious, because you haven't allowed for the measurable improvement in the British economy (small reduction in the rate of unemployment and smaller balance of payments deficits) or that the extra spending on the RAF IOTL would be offset against the cost of building and operating the "proper" aircraft carriers ITTL.

E.g. you still have the Shackleton replacing the Gannets in the AEW role and the Nimrod AEW programme, albeit with a different aircraft. However, the decision to reinstate the CVA.01 class was taken early enough for the conversion programme to be abandoned. The money required for a larger 849NAS from 1972 ITTL would be offset by not having No. 8 Squadron from 1972 IOTL.

Therefore, there's no requirement to replace the Shackleton AEW Mk 2 so no Nimrod AEW, but there would be a requirement for an aircraft to replace the Gannet. The choice is a revived HS Brough P.139 or the E-2C Hawkeye. The money that was spent on the AEW Nimrod IOTL aught to be enough to pay for enough to pay for 15-20 Hawkeyes and perhaps leave enough change to convert the 11 redundant Nimrod MR 1 airframes to MR 2s. Then the RAF can have 7 Boeing Sentries with the money spent on them IOTL.

Or the MoD (Navy) selects the P.139 with results that may be even worse than the OTL Nimrod AEW programme. OTOH the navy's specification may be less exacting than the RAF's so it might work.
 
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Riain

Banned
I've really enjoyed reading this @Riain and am, as always, envious of your ability to get the words out! Particularly enjoyed the ATL Falklands chapters. I was at Secondary school at the time and remember being glued to the TV news and avidly reading the paper when it dropped on the doormat of a morning.

Thanks, I've really enjoyed putting together the decision-action chains then pulling them apart and putting them together 'properly'. I've had the idea in my head forever but got motivated by @tomo pauk Lightning what-if and wank and @Peg Leg Pom VC10 a commercial success threads which came up at about the same time and got me thinking about this stuff again.
 

Riain

Banned
It's been a great story. If anything you've been too cautious, because you haven't allowed for the measurable improvement in the British economy (small reduction in the rate of unemployment and smaller balance of payments deficits) or that the extra spending on the RAF IOTL would be offset against the cost of building and operating the "proper" aircraft carriers ITTL.

E.g. you still have the Shackleton replacing the Gannets in the AEW role and the Nimrod AEW programme, albeit with a different aircraft. However, the decision to reinstate the CVA.01 class was taken early enough for the conversion programme to be abandoned. The money required for a larger 849NAS from 1972 ITTL would be offset by not having No. 8 Squadron from 1972 IOTL.

Therefore, there's no requirement to replace the Shackleton AEW Mk 2 so no Nimrod AEW, but there would be a requirement for an aircraft to replace the Gannet. The choice is a revived HS Brough P.139 or the E-2C Hawkeye. The money that was spent on the AEW Nimrod IOTL aught to be enough to pay for enough to pay for 15-20 Hawkeyes and perhaps leave enough change to convert the 11 redundant Nimrod MR 1 airframes to MR 2s. Then the RAF can have 7 Boeing Sentries with the money spent on them IOTL.

Or the MoD (Navy) selects the P.139 with results that may be even worse than the OTL Nimrod AEW programme. OTOH the navy's specification may be less exacting than the RAF's so it might work.

I wanted to be conservative, my aim was to do the minimum to get the result in a somewhat hostile political environment, so the extra employment and slightly better balance of payments get put back in other areas rather than defence.

The story of the AEW Shackelton is a bit different here than OTL. The 1963 study on how to deal with East of Suez said that the RAF would have to operate aircraft at 1000 miles but had no means of controlling them, it's from this that the early Shackelon requirement arises rather than the early 70 requirement to provide AEW over the North Sea and North Atlantic with the drastic reduction in carrier numbers. This is a big turnaround in RAF attitude because IOTL they weren't keen on AEW until the 70s despite Vanguard flight doing it's thing in the 50s.

The source of the radars is the same though. The RN received 50 Skyraider AEW through MDAP from 1952, the British then stripped the APS20 radars out of these aircraft and installed them into 44 Gannet AEW 3 for the 5 carriers they had or were getting plus spares etc, but even IOTL by 1965 there were only 4 carriers and only 3 of them were in commission meaning the Gannet AEW requirement is basically 3 embarked flights of 4 aircraft and a training/HQ flight of maybe the same size as the entire embarked fleet, another 12 aircraft. This leaves some 20 Gannet AEW 3 surplus to requirements for the RAF to take radars etc from. Of course there's always the recently replaced Neptune fleets that might also be stripped of APS20s to make up the numbers if need be.
 

Riain

Banned
Earlier in the thread you mentioned that Brian Hanrahan still says this...
Was he still with a platoon of Gurkhas when the Argentine surrender was announced?

As I remember their British officer said, "Bloody marvelous!" after hearing the news on the radio. Then he told his men (in Nepalese) and they were devastated.

If I haven't mentioned it then it hasn't changed although I have been remiss with the Gurhkas ITTL by bumping them from the 7 Jun Monsunen journey in order to save ~150 Welsh Guards from a terrible fate, but not reintroducing them specifically.
 

Riain

Banned
Just ruminating on Sandy's reach through time.
  • 1957 he declares manned aircraft obsolescent, but keeps GOR339 going.
  • 1965 GOR339/TSR2 cancelled and replaced by F111K, AFVG initial project starts
  • 1966 AFVG changed into mini F111K
  • 1967 France pulls out of AFVG, it becomes UKVG
  • 1968 F111K cancelled
  • 1969 UKVG is basis for MRCA
  • 1979 MRCA Tornado enters service
  • 1991 Tornado fights in PGW1
  • 2019 Tornado retires from RAF service.
That's 62 years where the RAFs main combat power was a direct result of Sandy's decisions.
This is just the tip of the iceberg, the Harrier arc went from 1960 to 2010, some 50 years. The nuclear arc went Blue Streak, Skybolt, Polaris, Chevaline, Trident and now they're on the 3rd SSBN class which will serve at least until 2057, some 100 years since Sandys made the decision to switch to ballistic missiles.
 
Of course there's always the recently replaced Neptune fleets that might also be stripped of APS20s to make up the numbers if need be.
Not necessarily.

150 Neptunes were ordered and 52 were delivered between January 1952 and November 1953. Six were written off between January 1954 and January 1957. 14 were transferred to the USAF between August 1957 and January 1958, which were in turn transferred to Brazil. Eight were transferred to Argentina in March 1958. This left four that were struck off charge on 08/08/1957 as CAT 5 (c) at No.63 MU Kinloss and 20 that were sold for scrapping between September and November 1958.

The UK Serials website and my copy of Air-Britain Royal Air Force Aircraft WA100 to WX999 don't say what became of the radars fitted to the 24 aircraft that were struck of charge or sold for scrapping.
 
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