McPherson
Banned
CVA-01 would have been more than capable of operating the heavy late war US carrier aircraft, even the giant Tomcat (though hanger space issues would make operating the type impractical). A phantom and buccaneer air group would have mulched anything the Argentinian Navy ventured to oppose it.
The Junta may have been dumb enough to pick a fight with a Britain armed with proper fleet carriers, but they would bitterly regret it.
They were dumb enough to engage a nuclear weapon armed power with a nuclear powered submarine force. Think about what I just wrote and put this addenda to work. The RN was trained and equipped for the SLOC mission in the North Atlantic against the Soviet Naval Aviation, which flew LRMP aircraft that launched H/A plunging cruise missiles, each the size of a MIG. The RN, when it tried to find Argentine conventional diesel electric subs, failed miserably. The RN was trained and equipped to search and fight noisy Russian nuclear boats. The RN when it confronted an Argentine air force trained and equipped by the French and the Americans failed miserably, because they were not prepared for low level cruise missile and toss bomb attacks right out of the French and American playbooks for killing RUSSIAN surface action groups. The RN radar systems, AAA, and missile systems were not suited to track and engage Skyhawks and Exocets. Now to be honest, any navy I know of the era would have had a tough time with the Argentine air force. Those guys were a heck of a professional outfit, and with the defective means they had, put up an awesome and terrifying show with the little they actually had.
None of those problems are alleviated by moving to a ski jump and SHARs.
I never said that anything would change the situation for the better. It is my understanding that the Crown government of the time, just before Thatcher, was intent on the social welfare state and that the decision was to concentrate the military, such as it was, on home defense and NATO obligations, and to weasel out of as many NATO obligations as possible, because the monetary means to meet those obligations was lacking. This goes into economic policy and political philosophy. Let me be brief about it: the British people elected the governments they chose because of those policies that were well known and clearly enunciated. It is not my place to comment on the decisions of the British people. I can however comment on what the lack of money allocated and intent of will by those chosen governments to fail to build not only the proper attack carriers, but the proper bodyguard ships, underway replenishment ships, proper aircraft mixes and outfit an entire task force with the proper defenses to operate in a medium air threat environment would mean for the two carriers above, insofar as the RN mission would be strictly convoy defense, they would be converted to that mission profile.
A ski jump conversion would only happen for budgeting reasons, not problems with the layout of the ship.
I maintain that a insular parochial view of British defense needs would have just as much as an undersized and badly designed aircraft carrier, would have led to another pair of Hermes in the ATL being postulated here. Work space for the air wing, flight deck parking, air-ops and the things I have previously mentioned would be bolos.
ontop of that if the RN has two phantom capable carriers and a decently sized naval airwing then it's unlikely to spend the money developing the SHAR.
Why not? Her Majesty's government had already committed to Harrier in the ground attack role for Central Europe. The bird would be built. A short skip to Sea Harrier follows.
and if there is no SHAR, there is no really practical possibility of a Ski jump conversion, so budgetary problems would probably result on one carrier being mothballed.
But... part of the Ground Attack Harrier program is a portable ski-lift for autobauns so the bird can fly off burdened and carry a usable bomb-load. It, again, is a short step to use a ski-ramp for naval Harrier for rolling take-off purposes from a carrier, unless you are the Americans and have a different way to pitch the plane into the air, burdened.
The CVA-01 would have been able to operate Phantom, if it can launch and retreive Phantoms, it can do the same for any later aircraft. Tomcats would be possible, but impracticle due to the cramped nature of the hanger and flight deck. The RN wouldn't operate them, instead sticking with Phantoms until the 90s when they would replace them with carrier-EFA or Hornets.
Nobody has seen a Hornet by the time the Falklands War operate from a carrier yet. (Trials in 1982). That means the underpowered and overweight Tomcat which can only operate from the powerful catapults of USN carriers or from long land based runways is the F-4 replacement. I'm more concerned about the Buccaneer, which if it got into a fight with an Argentine Mirage, a Dagger or a Skyhawk is dead meat. I don't deny that the Phantom in the hands of a well trained pilot is a deadly foe, but I point out sourly that in USN dissimilar air combat training, which pitted Phantom pilots against Skyhawks, the Phantoms did not fare too well either. And pardon my French, but the Fleet air arm was not that hot. They bungled a lot of intercepts during the Falklands War. In a peculiar way, the Harrier was the right plane in the right place in the right time, because despite the bungled intercepts, the Harriers could get back into position to chase down the fuel conserving Argentine pilots and Sidewinder them in stern chase AFTER the Argentine pilots reached their bomb release points. This was good enough to attrite the Argentine air force below effective sortie rate. In other words, in the mad race between blown up frigates and splashed Skyhawks, the RN had enough ships to outlast the Argentinians, just enough to last until the ground was won.
Yes the CVA-01 was badly laid out and designed, but that would just impact the number of modern aircraft it could operate, not preventing them from operating them at all.
See above. Getting sunk is not operating aircraft.
Even if the Argies mission kill a carrier, guess what? The USN will instantly bail out one of THE most important members in NATO.
I was there. Nobody in Washington was happy at all that Whitehall had screwed up and placed the United States in the middle of a NATO / OAS mess. Don't believe the propaganda about the "special relationship". The Reagan Administration was split down the middle about what to do. The Haig faction wanted to let the British stew and simmer in the hot mess of their own making. Weinberger and Haig were at cross purposes, Bush was hands off and let's see what happens, It was Reagan who swung the deal Thatcher's way, but he demanded a lot of her in return. Confine the war to the Falkland Islands, let the US mediate if it could (Galtieri was a fool, he should have taken the deal, Haig offered.), and postwar, when the US called in her markers, Thatcher was to shut up and soldier. The British government took a lot of domestic heat for the US forward basing of Pershings and GLCMS IN BRITAIN. You think this was somehow Thatcher standing shoulder to shoulder with her American allies?
USS Forrestal or some such would have been immediately put up for "Sale" to the RN, 'renamed' Ark Royal or some such, and crewed by a bunch of Englishmen with funny accents.
Weinberger, who was not a fool, pointed out to Haig when that "genius" proposed the cockamamie idea, that for the Forrestal to be effective, she would need an AMERICAN air wing, an AMERICAN URG, an American naval staff and air division, and a YEAR at least to train the RN how to merely operate an "obsolete" American carrier. The two navies had different methods and procedures for almost everything aircraft carrier related. The British would have been better off borrowing the Foch. The French carrier was closer to their methodology and capability to operate a 1950s style attack carrier.
Or as was actually planned, USS Iwo Jima. I'm pretty sure the Argies are going to run out of ASM's before the Brits run out of hulls.
The Iwo Jima had no air operations center for offensive operations or proper task force fleet defense at sea. She would have operated Harriers no better than an Invincible did. Six more Exocets (On the way, during the war despite Britain's tacit agreement with France to stop further sales.) would have made even the Iwo Jima a mission kill.
Disagree - way I understand it, the Argies didn't think the UK would fight, not that they couldn't. Even with the respective inventories of OTL the UK armed forces significantly overmatched what the Argentinians could throw at them. The only way the war made sense is if those forces weren't going to be used, and the Argentinian leadership managed to convince themselves that they wouldn't be. Once that piece of mental gymnastics has been achieved, the presence or absence of a couple of fleet carriers is irrelevant. The decision was never made on the basis of a comparison of forces in OTL, and I don't see why it would be ITTL.
I agree. Everything I saw, indicated delusion in London and Buenos Aires respectively. Neither side believed the other was as capable or incapable as they proved to be on various fronts. Even to this day, I am surprised by the myths a lot of people hold about that war. Luck and a certain lack of skill demonstrated by both sides shaped the fighting and the results.