HMS EAGLE in the Falklands

[Alanith]

Given that IOTL the Argentines couldn't even find the RN carriers let alone attack them effectively I think the threat of sinking is minor at best. ITTL with Buccaneers conducting continuous strike missions, Gannets providing low level radar cover, phantoms at barcap and sea harriers in close cap the chances of the 4 super etnards firing their 5 exocets at the CBG is very low indeed. But even if they did the 364lb warhead in the exocets is hardly going to sink a 45,000 ton WW2 carrier.

This. Eagle was built in an ancient time, when the shipbuilders art still included the mystical word "Armor". Oh don't get me wrong, an Exocet is going to do damage, maybe a lot of damage. But unless Eagle's damage control teams have been replaced by those from Akagi, she's not going down.

 

[Óstöðvandi]

No.

The dimensions of a Sea Harrier FRS Mk 1 were 47ft 7in x 25ft 3in. The nose on a Sea Harrier folded, but the wings didn't.

A Buccaneer's dimensions were 63ft 5in x 42ft 4in, but folded to 51ft 10in x 19ft 11in. So it's folded wingspan was only 80% of a Sea Harrier's.

A F-4B Phantom's dimensions were 58ft 3in x 38ft 5in. The nose and tail did not fold, but the wings folded to 27ft 7in, only 2ft 6in more than a Sea Harrier.

The F-4K Phantom was slightly shorter than the F-4B at 57ft 7in. However, the lifts on Ark Royal and Eagle were 54ft long so the F-4K had to have a folding nose. I don't know the length with the nose folded, but it had to be less than 54ft to fit the lifts.

You must also bear in mind that the hangars of Ark Royal and Eagle were 63ft to 67ft wide (depending upon which reference book is used). This means that only two Buccaneers or two Phantoms or two Sea Harriers could be stowed abreast.

Therefore my guess is that at most 5 Sea Harriers could be accommodated for every 4 Buccaneers or 4 Phantoms. Therefore you're only going to get 30 Sea Harriers for 24-26 Buccaneers and Phantoms.

Therefore (and as I wrote recently in another thread) there is only a marginal increase in the number of aircraft and a considerable decrease in potency.

Too bad. When I look at this pic I envision SHAR shoved in there aplenty. Too bad.

 

[Mumbles]

If that is the case, then Eagle may not be able to operate for long down south before the Weather stops operations. HMS Hermes and Invincible will not have that problem as much.

This. Weather affecting conventional carrier ops is a point often overlooked in this kind of discussion. Weather prevented a strike being launched from Vicentico de Mayo IOTL, and in the Task Force Commanders opinion would have hindered ops from an Eagle or Ark Royal significantly as well, while not affecting SHAR operations to the same degree. Serviceability affecting sortie rates with more complex aircraft is a another factor to consider. Taking Eagle or Ark Royal to the Falklands seems to be viewed as a panacea by some. but I don't think it's that simple.

 

[Óstöðvandi]

This. Eagle was built in an ancient time, when the shipbuilders art still included the mystical word "Armor". Oh don't get me wrong, an Exocet is going to do damage, maybe a lot of damage. But unless Eagle's damage control teams have been replaced by those from Akagi, she's not going down.

I agree. That’s why the Soviets had the Kh-22 Kitchen antiship missile. Its 2,200 lb. warhead was designed to kill CVs. You’re not going to stop a Nimitz or even an Audacious with an Exocet.

So, the Argentines need a bigger anti ship missile. What can they stick on their Canberras or 707s?

 

[SsgtC]

So, the Argentines need a bigger anti ship missile. What can they stick on their Canberras or 707s?

Nothing they can get in time. The Harpoon packs slightly more punch, with a 488 pound warhead verses the Exocet's 364 pounds, but that's unlikely to make a huge difference verses a fleet carrier. They're also limited in payload. A Canberra can only lug 8,000 pounds into the air. A missile life the Kh-22 with a 2,200 pound warhead weighs in excess of 12,000 pounds. So Harpoon is probably the biggest they could manage.

Also, mounting these on a 707 is a really bad idea. It makes their entire civilian airliner fleet fair game for the RN to target.

Edit: IF they can manage to get their hands on them (unlikely due to treaty restrictions on selling long range missiles) they could use TASM (Tomahawk Anti-Ship Missile). They mounted a 1,000 pound warhead designed to penetrate (so that 4" belt on Eagle might as well not be there). Only thing is, Tomahawk was never operationally deployed as an air launched weapon. Surface and submarine use only.

 

[Riain]

A word on the Sheffields exocet hit.

An email trail between myself and a RAN officer who transferred from the RN.

I served in 2 Type 42s (BIRMINGHAM & NEWCASTLE) and a Type 21 (ALACRITY), among others while in the RN and can attest that the T42s were built entirely of steel. In the case of both T21s ARDENT and ANTELOPE, they were abandoned (and ARDENT was already sinking and beyond saving) well before fire took hold of the superstructure. The later Type 22 Frigate had some aluminium in the superstructure, the Types 23 and 45 are all steel.

It is also forgotten that the Exocet that hit SHEFFIELD did little structural damage to the ship. She was abandoned because the fire was out of control and it was feared that the Sea Dart and 4.5 magazines were at risk of explosion, in the event the automatic spray systems and their reserve tanks prevented this from happening and she was revisited later with a view to salvage. She eventually sank under tow some days later because the rough seas were gradually filling the hull through the missile's entry hole and other open hatches. Had SHEFFIELD suffered the same damage in the English Channel she could easily have been towed to (say) Portsmouth and dry docked.

The attached image show sonar scans of the wrecks of ARDENT and ANTELOPE respectively and while both ships' backs are broken, the steel hulls are complete and recognisable but the aluminium superstructures are completely gone.

As an aside, the BOI reports to all 4 losses are available on the MoD website and make interesting reading.

See also USS BELKNAP but note also that the new Independence-class littoral combat ship is made of aluminium.

I've read that the Sheffield's water main was united (or not united, I don't know what it means) to facilitate weapon loading and that had something to do with fighting the fire.

So Navy types are out there, can anyone make any sense of the above gibberish?

The Type 42 had a fire main than ran around the ship on 2 deck. There were 4 fire pumps, one in each of the main machinery spaces (engine rooms). At action stations, all 4 pumps were brought on line and connected to the fire main which was configured as a single loop around the ship. The idea was that if 1,2 or 3 were lost, the remaining 3,2 or 1 pump(s) would continue the supply of water. It missed the fact that the ring main was at almost the exact height that a sea skimming missile would hit the ship. SHEFFIELD's fire main was ruptured by the missile and so pressure was lost throughout the ship. That quickly let the fire gain hold and soon power to the pumps was lost. The back up fire pump was a Rover gas turbine that could be connected to the fire main or directly to a hose but they were notoriously temperamental.

Post Falklands, the doctrine changed. During cruising watches, the firemain remained configured as a single loop with 1 pump running an 1 on standby. At action stations the firemain was isolated into 4 sections, each fed by a different fire pump. Now a single event could not take away water throughout the ship. If a pump was lost, its firemain could be connect to an adjacent section and if the main itself were split, hoses could still be run in from adjacent sections. The Rover pump was supplemented by diesel driven 'Godiva' portable pumps and in subsequent designs of ship, the firemain is at different levels on each side of the ship.

The SHEFFIELD BOI report is on line and goes into more detail.

I think I get it. If the firemain was used in 4 sections the exocet would have only broken that section and knocked out that pump but the other 3 would have been OK and fought the fire and contained it. Since then they've moved the firemain to different levels which I imagine makes the change in doctrine even more effective.

But what about the weapon loading thing, that was given as a reason to keep the firemain in a single loop? Do they use the mains pressure to ram missiles up to their launcher rail or something?

Keep in mind I read this ages ago and didn't really understand it, so might be way off base.

Your understanding of my rambling about the fire main is correct. With regards to the weapons, the gun and Sea Dart missile systems used hydraulic power to load shells and missiles (each system had its own pump). The problem was the magazines. Each one is a large space filled with a lot of explosive. They pretty much fill most of the space between the bridge screen and the gun and extend down to 4 deck. A fire in there would require a lot of water very quickly to flood the magazines; even all 4 pumps would struggle to keep up with that much demand. The solution was a large tank of water, pressurised by a compressed air bottle. If one of the spray heads in the magazine went off, the tank would supply the initial demand while more pumps were brought on line (and in the case of inadvertent operation, you shut valve 254 to close the supply).

And it worked! SHEFFIELD was finally abandoned because the fire was working its way forward and was approaching the magazines. There was no fire main pressure to back up the water tank and if either magazine went up there would be very little left. However, the spray tank worked and stopped the fire in its tracks. Footage of the ship taken a day or 2 later shows the burnt out centre section scorched and still smouldering but the forward part of the ship is unmarked. There are similar systems in other magazines and none of SHEFFIELD's went up.

 

[Riain]

The only air weapons option available to the Argentine air force capable of inflicting heavy damage are 1000lb dumb bombs and perhaps 2000lb dumb bombs if they had them. The final etenard-exoct attack was accompanied by a pair of skyhawks armed with dumb bombs, they were to follow the exocet smoke trail and attack what they found. I can't recall if it worked or if the exocet went nowhere.

 

[NOMISYRRUC]

• Height: 18 ft 11 in (5.7 m)

Sooooo nope

Wessex is

• Height: 15 ft 10 in (4.83 m)

Seaking

• Height: 16 ft 10 in (5.13 m)

For comparison Seaknight

• Height: 16 ft 9 in (5.09 m)

I suspected as much. Do you know what the projected height of the Westland WG.11 was? Although the RAF would have operated it my suspicion is that it had to be short enough to fit inside the hangars of Albion and Bulwark.

 

[Riain]

Check out the first Buccaneer on the right, its one of the two Buccaneers in the squadron configured as a 'maxi-tanker' with a permantly attach slipper tank on the right pylon and the buddy tanking pod on the left pylon. I can't see it in this picture but it would also have the bulged belly tank as well as a tank in the bomb bay. The squadron techos could remove all of that stuff in a few hours, but its not a job that would be undertaken lightly.

Too bad. When I look at this pic I envision SHAR shoved in there aplenty. Too bad.

 

[Triune Kingdom]

Interesting TL, watched.

So, FAA only has some 20 F-4s, is there a possibility of acquiring more from somewhere, USA possibly, but some other nations did operate F-4s as well.There were differences between US and UK F-4, but would Eagle be able to operate both of them?

Lastly, after this, what would be the fate of carrier aviation in UK, since the big carrier and conventional aircraft prove themselves?

Great work so far, keep it up.

 

[L4a1]

Interesting TL, watched.

So, FAA only has some 20 F-4s, is there a possibility of acquiring more from somewhere, USA possibly, but some other nations did operate F-4s as well.There were differences between US and UK F-4, but would Eagle be able to operate both of them?

Lastly, after this, what would be the fate of carrier aviation in UK, since the big carrier and conventional aircraft prove themselves?

Great work so far, keep it up.

.

There are also the survivors of the 20 F-4Ks delivered directly to the RAF in the late 1960s and IIRC operated by No. 43 Squadron since 1969. The RN might borrow some of them.

Hello No. 43 Squadron Commander your Squadron has been attached to the RN for the duration, your carrier conversion training will begin in the morning.

IOTL ten RAF GR.3 Harriers deployed along side the RN FRS.1 Sea Harriers operating off HMS Hermes

 

[Ak-84]

Given that IOTL the Argentines couldn't even find the RN carriers let alone attack them effectively I think the threat of sinking is minor at best. ITTL with Buccaneers conducting continuous strike missions, Gannets providing low level radar cover, phantoms at barcap and sea harriers in close cap the chances of the 4 super etnards firing their 5 exocets at the CBG is very low indeed. But even if they did the 364lb warhead in the exocets is hardly going to sink a 45,000 ton WW2 carrier.

A Carrier which has had little by the way of upgrades, whose armour is 30 plus year old and no longer had the same protection level. A crew which had no experience or ability to fight solid rocket motor fires.

The Gannet carried the 30 year old WW2 vintage AN/APS-20. The it had not processing equipment, the operator needed to read the raw data. It was not designed for work against low level attackers.
It would become victim of fairly rudimentary ECM.

 

[Nick P]

Phantoms available in 1982:
FG.1 = 48 delivered, 12 written off pre-82.
FGR.2 = 118 delivered, 32 written off pre-82.

This does not take into account the possibility of more Phantoms crashing as a result of HMS Eagle having a longer service life or flying different missions at different times. It may well be that some airframes were 'hangar queens' and permanently used for engineer training and spare parts.

Filling the Eagle with a full Phantom load out is quite practical. There are bound to be ex-Phantom pilots around the fleet who just need a quick refresher course.

 

[Riain]

A Carrier which has had little by the way of upgrades

Eagle had a 5 year rebuild 1959-64 which was designed to give her 20 more years.

whose armour is 30 plus year old and no longer had the same protection level.

She was designed in WW2 when the armour needed to keep out 2000lb bombs, even if her armour deteriorated (which is didn't, it was upgraded in her rebuild) she only has to stop a 364lb exocet warhead.

A crew which had no experience or ability to fight solid rocket motor fires.

Why is a solid rocket fire any different to other fires that crews were trained to fight? HMS Glamorgan's crew handled her exocet hit well enough, and she was a much smaller ship.

The Gannet carried the 30 year old WW2 vintage AN/APS-20. The it had not processing equipment, the operator needed to read the raw data. It was not designed for work against low level attackers.

The Gannet was no Hawkeye, but that doesn't make it useless and in fact it was quite useful at tracking low level targets, flying at about 3000' it could detect a fighter at 65nm.

It would become victim of fairly rudimentary ECM.

The Argentines didn't even have that. IOTL the only ECM were the 8 slap-up Blue Eric pods on Harriers and the internal and podded ECM on the Vulcans.

 

[RodentRevolution]

She was designed in WW2 when the armour needed to keep out 2000lb bombs, even if her armour deteriorated (which is didn't, it was upgraded in her rebuild) she only has to stop a 364lb exocet warhead.

Strictly speaking the armour belt needs to stop a sub 1,480lb (some of the solid fuel will have burnt off) Exocet rather than just its warhead but that belt could lead to the premature detonation of said or even better its disintegration. There is also the chance that it might hit some spot other than covered belt. However the Eagle has internal defences that destroyers and frigates lacked built into her structure and a lot more people to throw at any fire fighting mission.

 

[hipper]

A Carrier which has had little by the way of upgrades, whose armour is 30 plus year old and no longer had the same protection level. A crew which had no experience or ability to fight solid rocket motor fires.

The Gannet carried the 30 year old WW2 vintage AN/APS-20. The it had not processing equipment, the operator needed to read the raw data. It was not designed for work against low level attackers.
It would become victim of fairly rudimentary ECM.

4 inches of steel is still 3.98 inches of steel 30 years later...it does not get weaker It just rusts a bit.

amazingly enough the UK kept fiddling with the AN/APS-20 radar for 30 years, Its a bit different from the original 1945 model
this in a nice piece from Flight talking about the AN/APS-20 system

Developed from the original 1940s American APS 20, the present radar is the F series with further improvements carried out in Britain.
Power is 2mW delivered from two a.c. generators on Nos 1 and 2 engines, giving a maximum effective range
of about 200 miles. The radar picture on the APS 20F(I) is, unlike its early-model predecessors, ground-stabilised from the aircraft
Doppler. It is also north-stabilised, i.e. north is at the top of the display. There is no height-finding capability
in the AEW.2 Shackleton, which can tend to make life a little more difficult when directing a Lightning
interception though not so with a Phantom, the radar of which is rather more powerful of course. Because airborne
early warning aircraft almost by definition these days would be working in a relatively heavy electronic countermeasures
(ECM) environment, the AEW Shackletons retain the Orange Harvest wideband homer passive ECM
of the maritime aircraft. This is sufficient for its purpose at the moment though it is limited in range and is in
some ways more suitable for the maritime role and dealing with submarine-based ECM.

 

[Mumbles]

So, FAA only has some 20 F-4s, is there a possibility of acquiring more from somewhere, USA possibly, but some other nations did operate F-4s as well.There were differences between US and UK F-4, but would Eagle be able to operate both of them?

I don't see why not, if Eagle was properly equipped to operate F-4's. USN and USMC F-4's cross-decked and flew from Ark Royal routinely (and RN FG.1s likewise did the same from USN carriers). This is an F-4B aboard Ark Royal (with 892 Sqn fin markings applied from memory to avoid political issues when the carrier docked in Malta with that aircraft aboard when it and the US military weren't supposed to be there).

 

[Cryhavoc101]

A Carrier which has had little by the way of upgrades, whose armour is 30 plus year old and no longer had the same protection level. A crew which had no experience or ability to fight solid rocket motor fires.

The Gannet carried the 30 year old WW2 vintage AN/APS-20. The it had not processing equipment, the operator needed to read the raw data. It was not designed for work against low level attackers.
It would become victim of fairly rudimentary ECM.

OTL the Argentine Airforce and Navy Airforce despite punching well above their weight failed to conduct a single attack successful or otherwise on HMS Hermes or HMS Invincable and yet somehow despite Eagle being able to operate further East because of the better ranged Aircraft and having AEW aircraft round the clock.....is somehow more vulnerable?

Nope!

 

[Alanith]

A Carrier which has had little by the way of upgrades, whose armour is 30 plus year old and no longer had the same protection level. A crew which had no experience or ability to fight solid rocket motor fires.

The Gannet carried the 30 year old WW2 vintage AN/APS-20. The it had not processing equipment, the operator needed to read the raw data. It was not designed for work against low level attackers.
It would become victim of fairly rudimentary ECM.

Please explain precisely how the Argentinians, despite at no point managing to attack the two preexisting carriers, much less hit them, have now somehow become super competent and are homing directly into Eagle, which is further away, with their entire air force at once. Worse come to worse, the British are back to OTL, and they STILL win with the Sea Harriers.

 

[flasheart]

After reading the message from Northwood HMS EAGLE’s commanding officer Captain Jock Slater half expected the next message to read “April fools”. With no such message arriving Slater made a pipe for the various work parties involved in offloading stores and equipment to cease what they were doing and for the heads of departments to muster causing some confusion amongst the ships company and kick starting the rumour mill.
With the senior officers assembled the CO explained to them that they had been ordered to prepare their elderly previously soon to be decommissioned ship to deploy to the South Atlantic soonest. Once the initial moment of shock and disbelief had passed they set to work working out how this could be achieved.

Some of the obstacles were daunting. The ship would have to be stores would have to be replenished fully which with more than two and a half thousand mouths to feed would be a very time consuming evolution. With the ship previously planned for only one more voyage a lot of maintenance work had been deemed uneconomical and not carried out. The marine engineering officer winced at the thought of how much work his department was going to have to carry out to give this worn out ship a reasonable chance of being able to operate in the unforgiving environment of the South Atlantic away from any support facilities. There would be little sleep for the stokers over the next few days and an enormous bill for the dockyard workers overtime.
Aviation operations in particular were a concern. The air group had been in the process of winding down and some of the flight deck equipment and personnel had already been transferred ashore. The men and equipment would now need to be located and recovered as soon as possible. It had been a while since the ship had carried a full air group meaning that an intensive work up period during the transit south would be necessary. The commander of the air department was set to work planning this and coordinating with the squadrons at RNAS Yeovilton and RAF Honington.
Before the CO dismissed his officers to their various tasks there was one last rather pressing matter. Who was going to tell the crew that their runs ashore had just been cancelled?

A few days later on the morning April the 4th Captain Slater was pleased with the various progress reports he was reading. The previous days ammunitioning serial had been completed without incident meaning that apart from a few aircraft and machinery spares the ship was pretty much fully fuelled and provisioned. The marine engineers and various dockyard workers and contractors continued to work around the clock as once they sailed there would be no more opportunities for serious maintenance meaning that every job no matter how small had to be completed within the next 48 hours. Indeed the hulk of the former HMS ARK ROYAL anchored in the Tamar had seen more activity over the past 3 days than it had seen in the past 3 years as workmen scoured the ship for any parts.
Commander Nigel Ward nicknamed Sharkey CO of 892 Naval Air Squadron who would be providing EAGLE’s compliment of Phantoms had been good enough to phone Slater and appraise him of his squadrons progress.
He was confident that he would be in a position to provide the demanded 14 Phantoms (it had been decided to swap EAGLE’s usual compliment of 6 Sea King HAS.5 ASW helicopter’s for an extra pair of Buccaneer’s and an extra pair of Phantoms). All major maintenance work to the aircraft that he would be bringing had been completed and he was now in a position to start sending some of his engineers to Devonport to join the ship. His aircrews had been practising intercepts and air combat manoeuvring against RAF Hawks as these aircraft were felt to be the UK’s most comparable aircraft to the Argentinian’s Skyhawks. While he had every confidence in his crew’s abilities in the air his main concern was the lack of recent experience of carrier operations amongst some of them. Many would need to be requalified for carrier landings.



Having read the various readiness reports Captain Slater proceeded ashore to a meeting of all the various CO’s involved in the upcoming operation codenamed CORPORATE. On the way he regretted that he hadn’t been able to give some of his men even a day off to be with their families (or in the case of the younger members of his crew to have one last night ashore in Union street) but with the workload there simply wasn’t the time.
The meeting had been called to provide them with the latest situation and intelligence updates and to discuss the various threats they may face.
The Argentinians showed no signs of withdrawing (not that anyone had expected them to at this early stage) but there was still a possibility that once the task force got going that they may blink first. They listed the names and positions of the various ships and submarines that already sailed or were at sea when the crisis began. Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward had already been designated as the task force commander and was currently embarked aboard the destroyer HMS GLAMORGAN where he had been observing an exercise in the Atlantic when the crisis began. He would be moving his flag to HMS EAGLE as soon as was practical.

The meeting then turned to the threat posed by Argentine forces. The principle threat to the carriers was felt to be the French built Exocet anti ship missile carried on Argentine navy frigates and destroyers and Super Etendard strike aircraft. The assembled commanders were aware that their ships were woefully ill prepared to deal with this threat as only the two brand new Type 22 frigates HMS BROADSWORD and HMS BRILLIANT were equipped with the Sea wolf pint defence SAM, the only effective defence against an Exocet. The only other defence was chaff or helicopters trailing radar decoys. However, these required sufficient warning to be launched in time. The only real defence would be to destroy the ship or aircraft in question before they could launch.
Captain Slater thought to himself that while an Exocet strike probably wouldn’t be enough by itself to sink a large armoured carrier like EAGLE it could certainly cause enough damage to end flying operations and thus her participation in the operation. The prospect of one of those things detonating inside a packed hanger didn’t bare thinking about.
Something that could sink his ship however was the pair of modern Argentine type 209 SSK’s the ARA SAN LUIS and ARA SALTA. While the RN was probably the most competent ASW force in the world these new German built submarines if handled with skill could easily give them the run around and extract a few lumps of flesh. Many in the room were old enough to remember what happened the last time the RN faced German built submarines and some wondered whether removing EAGLE’s ASW helicopters was a wise move.
Against the Argentine A4 Skyhawks and Mirage III’s the commanders felt that the combination of Phantom’s, Sea Harriers and Sea Dart equipped destroyers should provide adequate protection. However, the numbers were definitely more in the favour of Argentina.
With the meeting eventually concluded the various officers returned to their commands.

On the morning of April the 7th HMS EAGLE slipped her moorings and sailed past the breakwater out into the channel to embark her air group and rendezvous with the HERMES and INVINCIBLE that were sailing from Portsmouth.
Unlike the fanfare and crowds surrounding the departure of the Portsmouth based carriers the departure of EAGLE was a more subdued affair mostly due to the early hour. That said a respectable crowd was present to see the ship off and many a union jack was visible along the shoreline.
With their flight decks full of aircraft and equipment most media attention was on INVINCIBLE and HERMES, something that Jock Slater was made aware of with his aircraft unable to embark until his ship was far out to sea. He turned to his executive officer and as various members of the bridge crew later reported was heard to say “When this is over I will have ensured that for better or worse every man woman and child in the country knows the name of my ship”.