AIUI, the shipbuilder kinda lied when they said the ships could be "easily converted" to cats and traps. They can be converted. It's just not easy. Or cheap.Indeed. I've read the brief flirtation with a conventional layout and F-35C ended because the ships were designed with steam catapults in mind, but they did not have wiring/generating for EMALs catapults.
Maybe at the mid-life refit, or on the successor class in 45 or so years...
AIGF,
Doing this however means no Anglo-German Naval Agreement, part of which was explicitly to prevent Germany from doing this. That means the UK is less inclined to cut Germany slack anywhere else, which is bad for Germany. Germany's OTL fleet was a political statement that they were going to follow international norms, thus they were given more slcak than they otherwise would. A more militarily effective fleet that prevents one of Hitler's political victories is worse than a less effective fleet that does not. If the UK decides to start rearming in earnest 6-12 months earlier that outweighs anything these surface raiders could achieve, much less if a low probability outcome (backing France over Rhineland, retention of the Stresa Front) occurs
All for the low low price of 1 billion pounds and at least 2 years in the yard per ship and making all those new F-35 Bs useless for the ship and thus RAF only planes and making the UK buy another 60 or so F-35 Cs
My understanding is that the initial design could have gone either way, but once the RN/Government decided on STOVL there stopped being any consideration for CATOBAR operations in the design process. As it stands, I think that converting to CATOBAR would involve a fairly substantial and costly refurbishment.
Yes it would have to change, Part 2D of the AGNA said Germany was limited in what she could build by categories (ie 35% BB, 35% CV, 35%CA etc.), and that this would apply to a future Naval Limitation Treaty. Article 4 of the 2LNT signed 10 months later defined Panzerschiffe as a category, with an allowance of 0, ergo Germany could not build any new ones without violating the treaty except with the consent of the UK, who would say no, as 35% of 0 is 0
Yeah, there'd be no point building the T44 if the T42's are all batch 3-esque with the Type 988 radar. Though, I think that without big flat tops the T43 probably lacked a mission and with CVA-01 you end up with enough Type 82's to make the T43 unnecessary.
I wonder how bad they would have turned out if the initial choice had been for them to be STOBAR carriers so the government could hedge its bets over aircraft choice.
Probably would have been easier to convert them to full CATOBAR since they'd already have an angled deck and arrester gear. It's adding EMALS or a steam generator for steam catapults that'll be expensive.
I'd expect that it wouldn't save that much same since it's fitting the catapult equipment that's the big bit, but STOBAR is a bit of a worst of both worlds. Aircraft have the same take-off weight restrictions as short take-off but lacks the flexibility and ease of vertical landing. Also, AFAIK the only western fighters that are optimised for short take-off are also designed for vertical and unarrested landings. I expect that the F-35B could be modified for arrested landing, but why would you bother? Given the weight difference and lack of a lift-fan I imagine that an F-35C would be far from ideal for short take-off launch and at best wouldn't be able to carry much in the way of stores or fuel.
I agree with most of what you have said except the bit about needing 4 NGS mounts. I could see a need for a single twin 8 inch mount using a very similar design to the 155mm AGS . My main problem with AGS was poor range for ballistic projectiles and insufficient magazine capacity of 100nm range land attack projectiles. The ship itself was under equipped with self defence so I agree entirely on a 2 version ship with same electronics. 1 Missile ship and one NGS ship. Benefit is that both ships can defend themselves and a fleet and one can then help Amphibs. Also large calibre NGS really stops aggressive posturing. Just look at Beirut when the 16 inch started falling. 6 inch is too small and 8 inch is very good at making big craters to be remembered by.
There were numerous proposals back to the BBG and assault ship concepts of the '50s.
