WI :HMS Eagle and Ark Royal refitted pre 1972?

What if HMS Eagle/ Ark Royal is refitted in 1972 would both survive to and through the Falklands war? What would the possible impact of one or both being available for the Falklands war?
 
What if HMS Eagle/ Ark Royal is refitted in 1972 would both survive to and through the Falklands war? What would the possible impact of one or both being available for the Falklands war?

Hasn't this been done more than a few times on the site?
 
Short answer, only the Government lets them. Eagle's 59-64 refit should have easily taken her to the 80s but it was decided not to Phantomise her, Ark's Phantomisation wasn't as extensive as Eagles and using cannibalisation of Eagle for parts she survived until late 78. The key thing is that after cancelling CVA01 in 1966 the Labour Government decided that carriers were obsolete and to run down the carrier force in favour of the Command/ASW cruiser concept, a decision the Conservative only partly reversed from 1970, after the Ark's shitty refit.
 
Labour was in power from 64 to 70 and decided to cancel CVA01 in 66, withdraw from east of suez in 67 and that carriers were obsolete in 68 with a redeployment to NATO tasks. If the Ark was in for an Eagle type rebuild in 1964 then this cascade of decisions might not occur in that order, regardless of the party in power.
 
What is that?
I think it refers to an exercise where the Ark played the part of an enemy carrier off the US east coast. Its strike planes buzzed several USAF fields and it proved difficult to locate and "sink". I'm on an iPad so can't link but if you google it you might find it.
 
Oh, that's pretty standard, I read a story where Midway was operating with another carrier off the Soviet coastline in the early 80s. The Sovs knew about the other carrier while Midways planes conducted simulated strikes against the Soviet targets on the reverse bearing undetected. After a few days or a week of this the Midway revealed herself by intercepting a shadowing Bear, after a week of seeing Tomcats seeing a Phantom with 'Midway' painted on the side made the Soviets go apeshit and scramble everything to find her.

In the Falkland's, despite the CBG being pretty much in the same place for 6 weeks the Argentines never detected them. They only had the vaguest idea of where the carriers were by where the SHars appeared/vanished on the radar plots., not enough to give an SE a chance to get a radar lock for Exocet shots.
 
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