A series of assumptions: a Britwank on a budget?

[Riain]

Geez... ! what an (OTL) mess. Nice to see AFVG going... somewhere. Same for the TSR-2, although it won't be all rosy for it, I guess.

It's the mess that makes this all possible. The GA Lightning was rejected but 138 Hunters were converted and 25 million pounds were spent on the P1154 only to have the P1127 which was developed on the cheap with some international help enter service.

And that's just one development thread.

 

[El Pip]

I'm not happy with the AF/UKVG, it's been in joint design with the French for 4 years with no prototype or even a mockup in sight. In contrast the P1154 was started in 1961 and by the end of 1964 metal had been cut for a prototype. I'm going to have to go back and do a rewrite, to at least get a mockup or something because at this point Britain has delivered 4 highly successful combat aircraft in the 60s: Lightning, Buccaneer Harrier and TSR2 so has the confidence in their industry that they lacked IOTL.

Of course a multi national project moves more slowly. Either country individually would work faster, but together they trip over each other and spend a long time waiting for decisions to be made.

When a problem occurs at the interface between a French section and a British section who has to change, who bears the cost of extra development work, which bit of the spec (or cost) is compromised? And who is to blame, which doesn't matter but I bet will still be argued over.

 

[groundhogday666]

I'm not happy with the AF/UKVG, it's been in joint design with the French for 4 years with no prototype or even a mockup in sight. In contrast the P1154 was started in 1961 and by the end of 1964 metal had been cut for a prototype. I'm going to have to go back and do a rewrite, to at least get a mockup or something because at this point Britain has delivered 4 highly successful combat aircraft in the 60s: Lightning, Buccaneer Harrier and TSR2 so has the confidence in their industry that they lacked IOTL.

"Go ahead, make my day !" The infamous anglo-french agreement of May 17, 1965 was kind of calamitous. Well, just like the 1962 one (Concorde) and the 1961 one - (Europa / Blue Streak) before it - what happened to these two, incidentally ?
I think the 1965 agreement can easily be butterflied away. Nobody will miss it ! (except, maybe, the Tornado origins since no AFVG nor UKVG although Germany could take the lead, fail, and then GB pick the pieces).

 

[Riain]

Short Belfast, by contrast - nice to see some more of them build. While payload of 78 000 pounds was not that big, the 16 ft diameter fuselage was unmatched except for C-5 and An-22 of course. Even today, it is quite useful. Note that the C-130 and C-141 fuselages had the same width of merely 10 ft.

Definitely looks like if they could’ve sorted the engine for the Belfast it could’ve had a decent British military career.

A stretched Hercules won't replace a Belfast. The later was closer from a C-141 in capabilities, except at merely half the speed...

I saw a Belfast at Cairns airport when I was on holidays about 10 years ago, it was still being used because it moved from when I first saw it and when I came back a few days later. Apparently it used to do the odd run to South Pacific Islands.

it's a classic case of what happens to an orphan fleet, it was built in small numbers to avoid redundancies and lacked the critical mass to be anything more than an oddity and burden. If 30 get built and the C160 enter service then the Belfast and it's Tyne engines build the critical mass it needs to survive, especially since the British don't cut and run from EoS in 1968-71 they drawdown closer to their 1966-75 schedule ITTL.

The stretch Hercules doesn't really replace the Belfast, rather it claws back some lost cargo space in the airlift fleet as the small fuselage in the Herc often maxed-out for space before it reached its weight limit. This won't happen with the much bigger fuselage in the Belfast and even the C160 had a much bigger cargo cross section than the Herc/C141.

 

[groundhogday666]

as the small fuselage in the Herc often maxed-out for space before it reached its weight limit

And the C-141A had the exact same illness. That's the reason why they stretched it into the C-141B.

What's wrong with Lockheed cargo transports of the 70's ? The C-5 was a fantastic... oh no, forget that.

 

[Riain]

Oh boy.

This is gonna get interesting, and by interesting I mean painful.

CVA-01 is a compromised design with some strange ideas about how a carrier should function and steam boiler propulsion that's going to be headache-inducing for the bean counters by the 1980s. There's going to be a strong temptation to tinker with the design, which could very well lead to a design spiral and lots of delays.

I'm comfortable with most of the CVA01 innovations, after all necessity is the mother of invention and the British invented everything that made carriers useable in the post war world: steam catapults, angled deck, mirror landing sight and ski-jump. Given they're 4 for 4 I'd say the Alaskan Taxiway and parallel deck will work well enough.

Speed will be crucial, Sea Dart will go and flight deck space will be maximised but not much else will change.

The steam boilers are a concern, the obvious fix would be Olympus Gas Turbines, making 44,000hp in the Bristol and 50,000hp in the Sheffield so easily replacing the 135,000hp steam of the 66 design and the steam required could be generated by making steam with the GT exhaust readily enough like a combined cycle power station. GTs offer MASSIVE advantages over steam, they drastically reduce refit time for starters by eliminating prolonged boiler overhauls at ever reducing intervals and weigh considerably less than steam which will help with the weight growth of the ship.

BUT, and this is a big but, can I handwave them in? I know they require a lot of exhaust trunking but I doubt this is a show stopper.

 

[Riain]

Nobody seems to have noticed that Japan got 2 SR.53, 2 SR.177, the design of the SR.187 and all the equipment that had been built for SR.177 production in 1958/9.

 

[McPherson]

steam catapults, angled deck, mirror landing sight and ski-jump

steam catapult? Italians played with it first, but abandoned it for Aquila.
angled deck? Americans played with that one with their "hybrid aviation cruiser design studies" in the 1930s.
mirror landing system... stolen from the Japanese who were using it in 1943.
ski-jump... that was British

 

[groundhogday666]

Nobody seems to have noticed that Japan got 2 SR.53, 2 SR.177, the design of the SR.187 and all the equipment that had been built for SR.177 production in 1958/9.

I did ! *Area 88* and *Hayao Miyazaki* will LOVE the MONSTER, BRUTISH SR.187 design... and Mazinger, too. Those E.T from Vega hidding behind the Moon will have a nasty surprise...

Area 88 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[CV12Hornet]

I'm comfortable with most of the CVA01 innovations, after all necessity is the mother of invention and the British invented everything that made carriers useable in the post war world: steam catapults, angled deck, mirror landing sight and ski-jump. Given they're 4 for 4 I'd say the Alaskan Taxiway and parallel deck will work well enough.

Speed will be crucial, Sea Dart will go and flight deck space will be maximised but not much else will change.

The steam boilers are a concern, the obvious fix would be Olympus Gas Turbines, making 44,000hp in the Bristol and 50,000hp in the Sheffield so easily replacing the 135,000hp steam of the 66 design and the steam required could be generated by making steam with the GT exhaust readily enough like a combined cycle power station. GTs offer MASSIVE advantages over steam, they drastically reduce refit time for starters by eliminating prolonged boiler overhauls at ever reducing intervals and weigh considerably less than steam which will help with the weight growth of the ship.

BUT, and this is a big but, can I handwave them in? I know they require a lot of exhaust trunking but I doubt this is a show stopper.

The exhaust trunking is less of a problem than the keel stresses. Ships are very particular about heavy weights and where you're placing them, and changing keel stresses is a very dangerous thing when ships tend to be designed to very specific keel stresses.

Now, since the CVA-01 design is still only on paper this is less of an issue, but the designers would still need to recalculate keel stresses to account for the removal of most of the boilers, and likely have to significantly tweak the hull design to account for it. This could result in anything from "Okay, we just shuffle a few compartments" to "oh shit we need to redraft all the plans".

Granted, none of us here are naval architects, so if you want to handwave it towards the lower end of needed design work that's fine. There's even precedent; the US Navy IOTL switched from steam to gas turbine propulsion for the eighth Wasp-class LHD, USS Makin Island, with what was by all accounts a minimum of fuss. Especially since with a combined-cycle setup already for the steam catapults you don't need to replace the entire heating infrastructure, too.

 

[Riain]

steam catapult? Italians played with it first, but abandoned it for Aquila.
angled deck? Americans played with that one with their "hybrid aviation cruiser design studies" in the 1930s.
mirror landing system... stolen from the Japanese who were using it in 1943.
ski-jump... that was British

That's grasping at straws, it's backwards research of seeing something that worked in the 50s then looking back to find similar things. If the steam cat, angled deck and MLS were developed in the 30s and 40 then they would have been used in WW2, and certainly there wouldn't have been any attempt at the rubber deck. IIUC the first steam cat the US got was British built.

 

[Riain]

The exhaust trunking is less of a problem than the keel stresses. Ships are very particular about heavy weights and where you're placing them, and changing keel stresses is a very dangerous thing when ships tend to be designed to very specific keel stresses.

Now, since the CVA-01 design is still only on paper this is less of an issue, but the designers would still need to recalculate keel stresses to account for the removal of most of the boilers, and likely have to significantly tweak the hull design to account for it. This could result in anything from "Okay, we just shuffle a few compartments" to "oh shit we need to redraft all the plans".

Granted, none of us here are naval architects, so if you want to handwave it towards the lower end of needed design work that's fine. There's even precedent; the US Navy IOTL switched from steam to gas turbine propulsion for the eighth Wasp-class LHD, USS Makin Island, with what was by all accounts a minimum of fuss. Especially since with a combined-cycle setup already for the steam catapults you don't need to replace the entire heating infrastructure, too.

USS America and JFK switched from nuclear to oil fired and went on to have long service lives, troubled perhaps but not nearly enough to see them scrapped or relegated to reserve early or whatever. Makin Island is promising, perhaps the compromise is that the GTs go in but the ships have niggles that take a long time to work out.

 

[CV12Hornet]

USS America and JFK switched from nuclear to oil fired and went on to have long service lives, troubled perhaps but not nearly enough to see them scrapped or relegated to reserve early or whatever. Makin Island is promising, perhaps the compromise is that the GTs go in but the ships have niggles that take a long time to work out.

America was fine, but JFK was not. The US Navy did try to relegate her to reserve early during the 1990s, which didn't work out since they wanted her to be able to "surge" back into active service.

 

[Deleted member 94680]

steam catapult? Italians played with it first, but abandoned it for Aquila.
angled deck? Americans played with that one with their "hybrid aviation cruiser design studies" in the 1930s.
mirror landing system... stolen from the Japanese who were using it in 1943.
ski-jump... that was British

Wrong - Aquila had German compressed air cats.
Wrong - angled flight deck was developed by Captain Dennis Campbell, RN.
Wrong - mirror landing aid was developed by Commander Nicholas Goodhart RN. The USN even gave him a Legion of Merit for it.
At least you got the last one right.

Pretty sure the USN put them all into use first, if that makes you feel better.

 

[Riain]

I have changed 'The French' post, it was surprisingly easy, I just changed the continuation contracts issued to change the AFVG into the MRCA into a contract to continue detail design work and build a mockup.

 

[McPherson]

That's grasping at straws, it's backwards research of seeing something that worked in the 50s then looking back to find similar things. If the steam cat, angled deck and MLS were developed in the 30s and 40 then they would have been used in WW2, and certainly there wouldn't have been any attempt at the rubber deck. IIUC the first steam cat the US got was British built.

Is it? Not in the case of the Japanese, who used the meatball method to automate their landings and for night operations and the Italians who could not get the steam cat to work because they ran out of time. The case for the angled deck is a little more nebulous, but offsetting the flyoff to clear the forward 8 inch guns on the American hybrid cruiser was actually Springsharped.

The oddity that was the Flying Deck Cruiser ...
Stenz...

I have replied to your objections. It is like Alexander Graham Bell was the American who invented the telephone...

Just good British press.

 

[Riain]

Is it? Not in the case of the Japanese, who used the meatball method to automate their landings and for night operations and the Italians who could not get the steam cat to work because they ran out of time. The case for the angled deck is a little more nebulous, but offsetting the flyoff to clear the forward 8 inch guns on the American hybrid cruiser was actually Springsharped.

The oddity that was the Flying Deck Cruiser ...
Stenz...

I have replied to your objections. It is like Alexander Graham Bell was the American who invented the telephone...

Just good British press.

Yes it is, because once the war was over none of those things were adopted and had to be 're'invented (at best, at worst these attempts were unworkable crap) and developed a decade later, which was done by the British to address their looming carrier problem. I will however walk back the 4 for 4, it's really 4 for 5 because the flexible deck was a dud.

In any case I'm confident that the British gave the parallel deck and Alaskan Highway a lot of thought, both were variations on existing themes, and they would work in practice.

 

[Deleted member 94680]

Stenz...

I have replied to your objections. It is like Alexander Graham Bell was the American who invented the telephone...

Just good British press.

Disagree. I imagine the Americans in the government and military that awarded a Legion of Merit disagree as well. It’s not “just good press” when there are patents, designs and correspondence to prove it.

 

[McPherson]

Disagree. I imagine the Americans in the government and military that awarded a Legion of Merit disagree as well. It’s not “just good press” when there are patents, designs and correspondence to prove it.

To Riain and Stenz...

As I have patiently explained, the Japanese used mechanical light aids in land ons for aircraft carriers in WW II. The Americans were prepared to build a prototype angled deck aviation cruiser (19350 to circumvent the aircraft carrier treaty tonnage limits.

Awarding of patents means Jack Squat as to who actually invented the device as Nicholas Tesla would attest.

 

[Riain]

By 1970 a pair problems had begun to emerge that put Britain in a particularly difficult position. The first was Anti Ballistic Missiles, throughout the 60s the US had been developing an ABM system initially known as Safeguard using the Spartan long range exoatmospheric interceptor missile and the Sprint short range atmospheric interceptor missile. While the capabilities of the system became more known the aims for it’s deployment were wound back, initially from a CONUS wide city protection in 1966 to a more limited system to protect US nuclear forces in 1969 known as Sentinel. The Soviet Union was known to be developing ABMs also and talks between the US and USSR to limit ABM deployment had been mooted as far back as 1967. ABMs placed the UK in a particularly precarious position, with each Resolution class SSBN carrying a mere 16 warheads(1) while the strategic backup of Blue Steel V bombers had been retired early(2) due to the defence cuts following the devaluation of 1967.

The second problem was that NATO ASW strategy for a major war against the Soviet had developed into closing the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, meaning that in time of crisis leading up to war and in war itself this area would be flooded with NATO and Soviet submarines and ASW forces seeking to locate one another. The range of British A2K Polaris, whilst more than the 1,500nm of the USN version it was less than the 2,000nm required to enable patrols outside the GIUK gap. (3) This meant that exactly when it was most important to remain undetected the UKs SSBNs would be surrounded by NATO and Soviet subs, ASW ships, MPA and helicopters intent of locating one another.

1. IOTL Polaris A3TK had 3 warheads per missile, so an R class had 48 warheads.
2. IOTL Blue Steel was planned to retire as late as 1972-74 and actually retired in 1969.
3. IOTL Polaris A3TK had a range of 2,500nm, Chevaline reduced that to 1,950nm