This why would you use the Essex's unless you want more than just ARK and Eagle ? Realistically they could have been kept till the end of the cold war with the money that would have been spent on rebuilding Essex's or even what was wasted in OTL.....
British Essex Class
- Thread starter Peg Leg Pom
- Start date
This why would you use the Essex's unless you want more than just ARK and Eagle ? Realistically they could have been kept till the end of the cold war with the money that would have been spent on rebuilding Essex's or even what was wasted in OTL.....
Of the five carriers the RN were operating in 1962 3 of them were too small to carry a balanced airgroup of modern aircraft and needed replacing.
That's what the initial plan to buy 5 cva01 and 140-170 Phantom is for, but in the next few years that was whittled down to one or two cva01 and 52 Phantom.
I was thinking that with a bit of hindsight (or just good management) you would just spend all the money on keeping the best 2 ships in commission (ARK & E) as full CVs and maybe run some of the other (Centaurs ?) as ASW ships mainly with Seakings.
This would save a huge amount on not rebuilding the smaller carriers as much (and the Tigers) so should pay for keeping the 2 big CVs in good condition till the end of the cold war.
This just requires you to budget properly and accept cuts early rather than try to keep to much and not getting anything .......
This would save a huge amount on not rebuilding the smaller carriers as much (and the Tigers) so should pay for keeping the 2 big CVs in good condition till the end of the cold war.
This just requires you to budget properly and accept cuts early rather than try to keep to much and not getting anything .......
And a large part of that was the admirals refusal to accept the concept of good enough. They insisted that they had to have the very latest cutting edge equipment that should be ready in a year or two. The fact that those two years had a habit of stretching to 4 or more years and would cost 6 times as much as the original quote never seemed to register.
Or just plain gone for the 1952 design fleet carrier instead of various rebuilds, and saved themselves a world of hurt!
We had options to suit every budget.D
Thats why I like looking at alternatives to what actually happend.
Fair enough, it's just that no matter what condition the carriers were in this is probably one of the most expensive options, simply because of the clash between UK and US standards and design philosophies at the time.
A new-build carrier based on the updated Essex-class design is actually more plausible than refitting existing ones, but even then the amount of detail redesign work needed would be monstrous.
I'll have to check the books tonight for catapult length and lift/hangar size, but I think it would probably have been OK or at least capable of fairly simple modification. A lot of the features in CVA-01 were nice to have rather than critical, for instance the SAM battery - given the way they were going to operate it and the technology of the time it made sense, but they could certainly have done without and in the long run the weight and space were better used for aircraft.
One of the options I've thought about is a ship of roughly 30 to 35,000 tons heavily based on Hermes though the Navy would have to forget getting Phantoms. The F8 would be the most likely alternative, but I quite like the idea of a carrier version of the Draaken.
Cryhavoc101
Donor
Too much 'good idea fairy dust' was expended on the design - I want to shout at the committee that designed it until they cry!!!
Put the Ikara and Seadart on the bloody escorts where they belong and design something like the later US CVV design ie as big a deck and hanger as possible on a 55,000 ton design
Apply KISS - Keep it Simple Stupid
A 25+ knot ship with 3 or 4 Rapid fire guns a hanger for 55 odd aircraft, 2 deck lifts - 3.5 K tons of aviation fuel - include stabilisers (CVA-01 and CVV deleted them) 2 x 75 meter Catapults
Airgroup 20 Fighter 20 Strike 4 AEW - 11 assorted Helos (7 ASW / 2 SAR / 2 Transport) - more if a deck park is used
1952 Fleet Carrier design:
- 32 kts clean in temperate waters, 30 kts deep and dirty in the tropics
- 2,700 tonnes of aviation fuel of which 1/3rd is AVGAS
- 8 off 3"/70 twin mounts
- 52 aircraft (12 strike, 33 fighter, 8 antisubmarine)
- 2 deck lifts, at least one and probably both deck-edge
- 1 x 60m catapult, 1 x 45m catapult
Which is really pretty close - the catapults are just a bit shorter than you'd like, and the RFA requirement is a bit bigger. Catapults are quite awkward - make them substantially longer and they start to have major impacts on operations (as per Charles de Gaulle), while a bigger ship requires massive infrastructure work to support it in the UK which is probably outside the budget scope. Apart from that, the design is probably as close as you're going to get to your spec.
Cryhavoc101
Donor
They should have built the Queen Elizabeth Dock or what ever it was to have been called at Portsmouth and length be damned!
But yes the 1952 design would probably have been 'carrier enough' to have survived into the 80s - various government shenanigens not withstanding.
