What is the collective noun for 3 Ark Royals?

.....Or how does the Royal Navy have 3 Ark Royal Class Carriers in service before Sept 1939

We had quite a good discussion around the USN building 2 or more Yorktown's (Which if memory serves results in Wasp being a Full sized Yorktown and an Additional unit built before OTL Hornet)

https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=356746&page=7&highlight=USS+Yorktown

Anyway I though we might try the same exercise here with regards to the HMS Ark Royal Design which turned out to be a one off class of Aircraft carriers and manage to get her and 2 sisters built.

How could this have been achieved?

And when?

And because we love that sort of thing - what would they be called?

My understanding is that the Ark Royal was delayed by several years mostly as a result of a dip in the Defence Budget between 1930 and 1933 and was only ordered as part of the 1934 defence programme and laid down in 1935.

Had that dip been 'resisted' then its possible the Ark gets laid down during this period - say 1932 with a 2nd unit (HMS Invincible?) laid down in 1935 (when the OTL Ark was laid down)

What I am struggling with is when does the 3rd unit (HMS Inflexible?) get ordered / laid down

Also regarding balancing the fleet size what has to give treaty wise?
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Ark Royal, Mary Rose, Peter Pomegranate.

(I'd love for those to be carrier names.)

Anyway. I think what's likely is that you have Japan being more noisy and the Italians less - that way, long-range air-heavy carriers may be seen as the way to go. It's a tricky one - the armoured carrier was a correct design choice given the constraints that RN carriers would be operating under - but at the time of Ark Royal the air-heavy armour-light carrier design prevailed. Have that school dominant and you'd get three non-AFD carriers.

The plus side is that if Italy then starts making more noise, you might get the AFD carriers too.
 
Ark Royal, Mary Rose and Henry Grace a Dieu, what a combo.

The Furious and Argus were classed under the WNT as experimental carriers and not subject to treaty limitations on their replacement within the tonnage limits, so the treaties are no obstacle. The cash would be the problem, as would the RAF owning the FAA.
 
This is how I did it.

This is part of a scenario where an extra £50 million per annum is spent on defence between 1919 and 1939. Don't ask me where £1 billion over 20 years comes from because I haven't worked that out yet. The £50 million is split: £20 million Air Ministry including Civil Aviation; £15 million British Army; and £15 million Royal Navy.

G) The Ships
3) Aircraft Carriers
a) Fleet Carriers

The Royal Navy built up an impressive force of seaplane carriers and shore based aircraft during the First World War. Furthermore a number of its capital ships and cruisers had been fitted with flying off platforms on top of their gun turrets. It also had the light battle cruiser HMS Furious and the cruiser HMS Vindictive that had some of their guns replaced with flying off and landing on decks. However, the air turbulence their superstructures created made landing hazardous which led to the invention of the flush deck aircraft carrier. The first of these HMS Argus was completed in September 1918 and 2 more true aircraft carriers were under construction when the war ended 2 months later.

This is when things began to go wrong. The restricted naval budgets of the interwar period resulted in HMS Eagle and HMS Hermes being completed 18 months and 2 years behind schedule. The scheme to convert the 3 light battle cruisers (Courageous, Furious and Glorious) to flush deck carriers was not completed on time and each ship was delayed by 2 to 5 years and in 1924 Vindictive was converted back into a cruiser.

The Washington Treaty set the service life of an aircraft carrier at 25 years, except Argus, Eagle and Hermes which were classed as experimental ships that could be replaced at any time. The Admiralty planned to scrap them and build 4 ships of 17,000 tons to be ordered in 1924, 1928, 1931 and 1934 for completion in 1928, 1932, 1935 and 1938. However, first new carrier was not ordered until 1934. This was Ark Royal which was completed in 1938.

When rearmament began it was planned to order 10 aircraft carriers in the 1936-40 programmes to give the RN a force of 14 ships (the 10 new ships plus Ark Royal and the 3 converted battle cruisers). This total would provide 8 ships for fleet work, 5 for trade protection and 1 for training. However, only 6 were ordered 1936-39 instead of the 8 planned because rearmament was overheating the economy. Furthermore they took longer than intended to complete. The carrier ordered in the 1940 programme could not be laid down until 1942 and was not completed until 1951. Another 2 fleet carriers were laid down during the war, but one of them was cancelled in 1946 and the other one did not complete until 1955. These were the Irresistible class. 4 even larger aircraft carriers of the Malta class were ordered in 1943, but none were laid down before the war ended and were cancelled soon afterwards.

In this version of history the only change before 1918 was that 5 E class cruisers were built instead of the Cavendish class. They were too small to be converted to aircraft carriers so a second Hermes class carrier named Vindictive was built and she was completed in September 1918.

In this version of history there was enough money to build 4 modified Ark Royal class carriers which were completed in 1928, 1932, 1935 and 1938 respectively. They had wider hangers than the real Ark Royal which enabled them to carry 72 aircraft and conventional lifts rather than the unsatisfactory double deck type of the real world. The 1924 and 1928 Carriers replaced Argus and Eagle and took their names. The 1931 Carrier would have replaced Hermes and Vindictive, which were to be converted to seaplane carriers. However, the 1936 London Treaty abolished the 135,000 ton limit set by the Washington Treaty so it was possible to retain Hermes and Vindictive as aircraft carriers. The 1934 Carrier, Ark Royal would have replaced Furious if the 135,000 ton limit had not been abolished.

Ark Royal cost £3,750,000 in the real world, so the 3 extra ships cost the British Taxpayer £12 million, a sum that their service to the nation repaid with a huge amount of interest.

In this version of history 10 aircraft carriers were ordered in the 1936-40 programmes. The quartet of ships ordered in the 1936 and 1937 programmes was laid down in 1937 and completed in 1940. The pair ordered in 1938 was laid down the same year and completed in 1941. The 1939 ships were laid down in 1939 and completed in 1942. The 1938 ships were named Invincible and Inflexible and the 1939 ships were Indefatigable and Implacable.

The 1940 ships were named Irresistible and Audacious. They could not be laid down until 1942 due to the yards being full. However, the earlier completion of the pre-war carriers and Vanguard allowed more work to be done on them so that they were completed in 1946. Another pair of fleet carriers was ordered in 1942. HMS Eagle was laid down in 1943 and completed in 1951. HMS Ark Royal was laid down in 1944 and completed in 1955. 4 Malta class fleet carriers were ordered in 1943, but none of them had been laid down before the war ended.
 
This is part of a scenario where an extra £50 million per annum is spent on defence between 1919 and 1939. Don't ask me where £1 billion over 20 years comes from because I haven't worked that out yet. The £50 million is split: £20 million Air Ministry including Civil Aviation; £15 million British Army; and £15 million Royal Navy.

And there in lies the problem

I had the Dip between 1930 and 1933 not happen (because of.....need to keep a shipyard open.....) or not be as severe in order to get Ark Royal laid down earlier with the 2nd unit laid down in 34/35

I guess it would be possible for Britain to build a 3rd unit while building the Armoured deck Carriers?
 
And there in lies the problem

I had the Dip between 1930 and 1933 not happen (because of.....need to keep a shipyard open.....) or not be as severe in order to get Ark Royal laid down earlier with the 2nd unit laid down in 34/35

In my scenario the first of the 3 extra carriers was laid down in 1924 and the third was completed in 1935. Ark Royal cost £4 million so the total extra cost is £12 million spread over 12 years.

Borrowing £1 million a year between 1924 and 1935 which will put £12 million on a National Debt that was already between £7 and 8 billion will not cause the British Empire to collapse under a weight of debt.

However, these ships will have bigger crews than the ships that they replace, i.e. about 4,800 vs 1,800 (Source Colledge and Lenton). Plus the increase in the cost of the Fleet Air Arm, not just the larger air groups, but the larger second-line to support them. Although the FAA was part of the RAF it was actually paid for from the Navy Estimates through an appropriation in aid which was a total of £12,795,300 between 1925-26 and 1935-36.

Adding the extra running costs won't break the bank either, but the RAF wouldn't have been happy about it arguing that the money should be spent on completing the 52 squadron scheme.

And the disarmament lobby won't like it either.

Also the Treasury seemed to be reluctant to spend money on new carriers when there were already 6 relatively new carriers already in existence.

And the Admiralty seems to have partially agreed with that and spent the money that was available on modernising older parts of the fleet.

I guess it would be possible for Britain to build a 3rd unit while building the Armoured deck Carriers?
Possible, but not probable. The Admiralty wanted to order 8 armoured carriers 1936-39 but only ordered 6 because of the damage rearmament was doing to the British economy.

And the 6 armoured carriers should have taken 3 years each to build. They all took longer than that. If Implacable and Indefatigable had been completed on time they would both have been in service by the end of 1942. Building an extra carrier probably means that they take even longer to build. 8 armoured carriers are built in my scenario because the extra construction in 1924-35 means more shipbuilding capacity is available afterwards.

Though you could build 6 improved Ark Royals instead of the armoured carriers. Then you get more aircraft per ship and it reduces the demand for armour plate.
 
William Beardmore ran a shipyard in Dalmuir, Clydeside, and built HMS Argus, and some posh Italian liners. The RN had nothing going, and the Italians, under Mussolini, thought Italian shipyards were a good idea, so that was that. Billy went belly up in '30. Got any trade?
 
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