Keep RN carrier strike going

I think the best carrier building program post-war is to go entirely clean sheet. There is no need to rush hulls into service anymore and time should have been taken to devise a new design to take into account the experainces of the war, and the greatly increasing size of newer aircraft.
The Centaur, Audacious and Malta class hulls under construction should all be scrapped. The most beaten up of the Illustrious and Implacables can be paid off whilst the rest kept on with minimal updates to keep them useable in the short term. The Majestic and Colossus class ships can be disposed of as OTL, though perhaps a few are kept in RN service longer to cover any gaps resulting from not building the Audacious pair. Probably Leviathan and Hercules are completed and accepted into RN service in the late 40s.

Then something like the 1952 Fleet carrier is built in the late 1950s, as a four ship class. As the newest capital ships consmtructed during the reign of a new monarch, the are almost certainly named the Queen Elizabeth class, with the others getting traditional capital ship names. Duke of Edinburgh being likely for the second, three probably gets named Ark Royal, and maybe Warspite for four. All the remaining war vintage carriers are then retired along with remaining Colossus class ships, perhaps the two aforementioned Majestic class ships are retained as commando carriers. They are probably eventually retired and repalced by dedicated helicopter carriers in the mid-70s, which also dual role as ASW group command ships. The four fleet carriers probably get attrited down two or even three by a combination of budgetary pressure and accumulated wear. Its probable either Duke of Edinburgh or Queen Elizabeth gets sold to India in the early 80s, the other is probably retained in reserve as a parts source for the other two.

Ark Royal and Warspite soldier on till the 90s, by that time likely operating Hornets or equivalents, when they are replaced by a two ship class of 60-70 kton conventional carriers.
 
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While the british economy and defence budget is more or less fixed the way it is used/apportioned and the way development was squandered is not.

Lets not forget that the aircraft for CVA01 & 02 were indeed purchased and operated for their full 20-25 year service lives in the RAF. Nor should we forget the RN operated 2 carriers and 2 or 3 combat jets squadrons at sea until at least 2006 and maybe 2010.

I believe that a few better political and administrative decisions could get the RN big carriers over the line and running until the present time.
 
Certainly France managed to maintain a CTOL carrier fleet right to the present day despite having a similar sized economy. The big difference is that they managed their economy better so there wasn’t the same cycle of Stop-Go that impacted in planning. To prevent this you need to have a complete change in economic policy and corporate culture, so that there’s more emphasis on investment and involving engineers more in the design.

I agree that many of the post war carriers should have been scrapped early on and either the Maltas or the 1952 carrier design built. While many British carriers weren’t that old by the mid 60’s, they were being superseded by the rapid pace of aviation technology. The Centaurs were way too small, Hermes commissioned in 1959 but couldn’t effectively operate the Buccaneer because her deck was too short, in truth she was better suited to service as a CVS or LPH.

The French Armed Forces paid the price of upgrading its equipment slower than its counter parts in NATO, esp. The French Army.

Challenger I entered UK services in 1983 while the Leclerc entered French service in 1992.

Tornado IDS entered service in 1979 while Mirage 2000 entered service in 1984.
 
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Certainly France managed to maintain a CTOL carrier fleet right to the present day despite having a similar sized economy. The big difference is that they managed their economy better so there wasn’t the same cycle of Stop-Go that impacted in planning. To prevent this you need to have a complete change in economic policy and corporate culture, so that there’s more emphasis on investment and involving engineers more in the design.

I agree that many of the post war carriers should have been scrapped early on and either the Maltas or the 1952 carrier design built. While many British carriers weren’t that old by the mid 60’s, they were being superseded by the rapid pace of aviation technology. The Centaurs were way too small, Hermes commissioned in 1959 but couldn’t effectively operate the Buccaneer because her deck was too short, in truth she was better suited to service as a CVS or LPH.

The French Armed Forces paid the price of upgrading its equipment slower than its counter parts in NATO, esp. The French Army.

Challenger I entered UK services in 1983 while the Leclerc entered French service in 1992.

Tornado IDS entered service in 1979 while Mirage 2000 entered service in 1984.
I agree with the effect, but not necessarily the cause. AFAIK first the wars first in Vietnam and then Algeria followed by the French nuclear weapons programme absorbed money that would have otherwise been spent on equipping the French conventional forces.

The French had their equivalent of the British 1957 Defence Review in 1958 when they disbanded a third of their fighter squadrons and cancelled or curtailed most of their manned aircraft programmes, Mirage III being one of the few survivors. The aircraft carrier PA58 was another victim of these cuts.

IIRC from Friedman in the Postwar Naval Revolution the French naval plans in the late 1940s were for 6 fleet and 4 trade protection carriers, which was the same as the British plan under the Revised Restricted Fleet. However, we know that what they actually had in the middle 1960s was 3 ships (Arromanches, Clemenceau and Foch).

Under Plan Bleu of the early 1970s the intention was to build 4 nuclear powered helicopter carriers which would include replacements for the 3 existing aircraft carriers. However, Arromanches was scrapped without replacement and one of the Clemenceau class was downgraded to a helicopter carrier.

Then in 1980 it was announced that 2 nuclear powered CTOL carriers would be built to replace Clemenceau and Foch. IIRC both were to be in service by 1992, but as we know only one ship has been built so far and she was delivered several years late.
 
Tornado IDS entered service in 1979 while Mirage 2000 entered service in 1984.

While the Tornado entered service in 1979 the Mirage F1 (derived from the bigger F2) entered service in 1973, pretty much the same time as the TSR2 or F111K would have. The Tornado is a result of failure of procurement programming, not success.
 

Jack1971

Banned
Put the nuclear deterrent on flight decks instead of submarines.

Not a wise move at all, but it keep strike carriers in service.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Put the nuclear deterrent on flight decks instead of submarines.

Not a wise move at all, but it keep strike carriers in service.
Maybe not all the deterrent, but maybe if the RN copied the USN and interegrated the airwing into their version of the SIOP and that would let the RN make the case that the carriers are needed.
 
Maybe not all the deterrent, but maybe if the RN copied the USN and interegrated the airwing into their version of the SIOP and that would let the RN make the case that the carriers are needed.

That would be a good NATO task for RN carriers when the East of Suez role finishes. The Buccaneer was cleared to carry the WE177, with a 450kt yeild it was given theatre-strategic roles in the RAF, it could do the same with the RN once the carriers were within certain designated positions.
 
That would be a pretty astute move by the Admiralty and would cultivate a niche capability that the Senior Service is able to fill.

Really enjoying this discussion.
 
That would be a good NATO task for RN carriers when the East of Suez role finishes. The Buccaneer was cleared to carry the WE177, with a 450kt yeild it was given theatre-strategic roles in the RAF, it could do the same with the RN once the carriers were within certain designated positions.

Very, very much this. Indeed even after the 1967 Review effectively went bust with devaluation, one could go down this road. Let second/third-rate frigates, second and third large-regiment battalions, and minor garrisons wither. Concentrate the Army on BAOR and Norn plus a working 16 Para Bde for Norway et al., to the exclusion of almost all else (and much else with No. 1 Boots shifted to the still-relatively-large Cold War era TA.) Bulwark until replacement at the head of an amphibious group to put 3 Cdo into Norway (or Belize or Cyprus, if needed.) Two carrier groups with Ark Royal and Eagle fitted properly and work done to get the T82s right (so fewer carrier-escort hulls because they're multirole, some efficiencies in crew numbers and more in maintenance and stores), get about six to eight T22s (probably no T21s sadly unless desperately needed to keep down the red fires of union revolt) to put one bleeding-edge towed array with each carrier in peacetime, two in war (plus one "rollin' rollin' rollin'/towed-array patrolin'" in the GIUK Gap.)

So two carrier groups, each with Buccs that have the longest range of non-Bomber Command strike with the WE177Bs, the big 450kt bastards. Resolute-class with Polaris but no Chevaline program, possibly an effort to build a MIRVed bus for the A3TK but only as funds come available. Jaguar-then-Tornado get the 10kt WE177A, probably two or even more per airframe, in the true theatre role. Save perhaps three squadrons of Vulcan B.2s to fit their bays with launch cradles for the American-made AGM-86B cruise missiles as they come online (you can launch from over Frankfurt or the Oslofjord and hit Moscow; given some penetrative capability for the Vulcans and wartime expectation that they're not coming home to base because base may be glassed you can hit further than that.) Then you've offered the Americans a true "British SIOP", from dual-key Lance with BAOR and WE177As cutting off Pact reinforcements, to WE177B strategic warheads on forward sub pens, Soviet forces in Northern Norway, a Kiev-class covering carrier or two, etc., ALCMs from Vulcans that fly in under the Soviet ABM shield to hit Moscow, and Polaris for "countervalue" (cities and factories) throughout European Russia.

This recognizes reality -- that to stay "in the game" the UK has to start trading size for capability no matter how much the jobs-for-the-boys flag officers howl, and that the biggest capability offers the UK could make were (1) a real and to some degree unrealized (bc of cost) nuclear capacity, (2) the Royal Navy as a strategic player in the Atlantic (carriers and SSNs, not dozens of Rothesay-class equivalents), (3) high-quality aerospace honed to a point (Tornados and Vulcans oh my, not "enough squadrons to keep all the old WWII bases open"), and (4) quality not quantity in the forward armo(u)r tripwire plus a handful of really good door-kickers for out of area. (And really -- though we could get bogged down in a debate about training quality, strain of rotation, etc. -- if HMG wanted to get truly serious about Norn filling up the ranks of all those wartime TA battalions and rotating them through NI in larger numbers would get "skin in the game" for the British public to make a choice about whether OP BANNER was worth it, and put more boots on more street corners than the regulars could afford to do.)

In the words of an old friend who was a late-Cold War/early-wars-of-liberal-intervention Royal Navy alum, it lets HM Armed Forces be a "hard as nails David, not a hollow Goliath."
 
Very, very much this. Indeed even after the 1967 Review effectively went bust with devaluation, one could go down this road. Let second/third-rate frigates, second and third large-regiment battalions, and minor garrisons wither. Concentrate the Army on BAOR and Norn plus a working 16 Para Bde for Norway et al., to the exclusion of almost all else (and much else with No. 1 Boots shifted to the still-relatively-large Cold War era TA.) Bulwark until replacement at the head of an amphibious group to put 3 Cdo into Norway (or Belize or Cyprus, if needed.) Two carrier groups with Ark Royal and Eagle fitted properly and work done to get the T82s right (so fewer carrier-escort hulls because they're multirole, some efficiencies in crew numbers and more in maintenance and stores), get about six to eight T22s (probably no T21s sadly unless desperately needed to keep down the red fires of union revolt) to put one bleeding-edge towed array with each carrier in peacetime, two in war (plus one "rollin' rollin' rollin'/towed-array patrolin'" in the GIUK Gap.)

So two carrier groups, each with Buccs that have the longest range of non-Bomber Command strike with the WE177Bs, the big 450kt bastards. Resolute-class with Polaris but no Chevaline program, possibly an effort to build a MIRVed bus for the A3TK but only as funds come available. Jaguar-then-Tornado get the 10kt WE177A, probably two or even more per airframe, in the true theatre role. Save perhaps three squadrons of Vulcan B.2s to fit their bays with launch cradles for the American-made AGM-86B cruise missiles as they come online (you can launch from over Frankfurt or the Oslofjord and hit Moscow; given some penetrative capability for the Vulcans and wartime expectation that they're not coming home to base because base may be glassed you can hit further than that.) Then you've offered the Americans a true "British SIOP", from dual-key Lance with BAOR and WE177As cutting off Pact reinforcements, to WE177B strategic warheads on forward sub pens, Soviet forces in Northern Norway, a Kiev-class covering carrier or two, etc., ALCMs from Vulcans that fly in under the Soviet ABM shield to hit Moscow, and Polaris for "countervalue" (cities and factories) throughout European Russia.

This recognizes reality -- that to stay "in the game" the UK has to start trading size for capability no matter how much the jobs-for-the-boys flag officers howl, and that the biggest capability offers the UK could make were (1) a real and to some degree unrealized (bc of cost) nuclear capacity, (2) the Royal Navy as a strategic player in the Atlantic (carriers and SSNs, not dozens of Rothesay-class equivalents), (3) high-quality aerospace honed to a point (Tornados and Vulcans oh my, not "enough squadrons to keep all the old WWII bases open"), and (4) quality not quantity in the forward armo(u)r tripwire plus a handful of really good door-kickers for out of area. (And really -- though we could get bogged down in a debate about training quality, strain of rotation, etc. -- if HMG wanted to get truly serious about Norn filling up the ranks of all those wartime TA battalions and rotating them through NI in larger numbers would get "skin in the game" for the British public to make a choice about whether OP BANNER was worth it, and put more boots on more street corners than the regulars could afford to do.)

In the words of an old friend who was a late-Cold War/early-wars-of-liberal-intervention Royal Navy alum, it lets HM Armed Forces be a "hard as nails David, not a hollow Goliath."

The problem is, the Brits need a certain amount of quantity to cover NATO commitments sufficiently. Tripware strategy was abandoned once West Germany rearmed and gained a lot of influence by contributing a large portion of the NATO forces.

Also, whether US will sell ALCMs to UK and whether UK will want to do dual key arrangement, esp. when UK did plan quite many independent non-NATO nuke deployment. The survival ability of strategic bombers based in UK make them not suitable as deterrent, esp. when UK is likely to be able to afford only one part of the nuclear triad. SSBNs are the safest choice which ensure post-attack survival.
 
I'd have the TSR2 and Buccaneer squadrons back up the Polaris force, they provide flexibility and redundancy for a very low cost. Keeping the V bomber in service and development of a warhead for a cruise missile is a very expensive way to mostly duplicate the Polaris capability.

There was a thread on chevaline a few years ago. Given the constraints Britain works under it was a good decision at the time.

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/wi-different-or-no-chevaline.365108/

Just as a matter of interest BAOR reduced from 80,000 to 53,000 in the 60s and bought a brigade home in 1968 but sent it back to Germany in 1970.
 
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