WI the British had build Ark Royal Carriers instead of armd deck Carriers

What if the Royal navy had if laid down more carriers of the Ark Royal Class
Then the Illustrious Class , Indomitable , and Implacable Class Carriers ,
How would this of changed the War if these carriers all carried at less 72 modren WII Aircraft .
 
Generally for the better, I imagine, though not in any major ways—but to be sure, "armoured flight deck" is a very specific thing. Remove it and the whole design of the carrier would change. If it's something the American Essex class that's probably good, but perhaps the British come up with a poor non-armoured design. (Wiki says the Ark Royal had design flaws, not to mention only 50-60 modern aircraft…*not 72.)

However despite the superior performance overall of wooden deck carriers the armoured flight deck did present somewhat better protection in the short term so it's possible the British lose a carrier they don't OTL (either in the Med or when facing kamikazes).

Post-war though the British have a bunch of usable carriers, as opposed to the beat-up expensive refit stuff they had IOTL.
 
The design flaws in the Ark were largely driven by naval treaty limits, not because the Brits couldn't design carriers. The Ark carried 54 planes at her peak, but this was before large deck parks were introduced. If the Brits followed on with improved Arks instead of the armoured hangar then there is every chance that the RN would have had much greater achievements. For example imagine Taranto conducted with a carrier that carried 40 swordfish instead of 24. However the Brits would have to modify their flying arrangements if they wanted to launch 'pulse' strikes like the USN and IJN, since the FAA usualy flew predictive flying with limited surge capabilities.
 
Interestingly the original spec for Ark Royal was a flight deck length of 900ft and carrying 72 aircraft but 900ft couldn't be managed on 22,000tons.

Given the dry-dock problems that have hit all postWW2 RN carrier attempts that 900ft is an interesting requirement, would probbaly require quite a large overhang at the stern.
 
That's also a major reason the Brits kept cancelling carriers post-war—they didn't have the drydocks (plus the cost, of course).
 
Britain has drydocks which can cope with hull lengths of about 900ft, which is why the Malta class, CVA01 & 02 and the CVFs are all about the same 900ft-ish length. Any longer and the already staggering cost of new carriers is driven up by the need to enlarge drydocks to cope with the extra size. I think that even the US is up against this limitation now at 1100ft-ish , which is why the Nimitz class is getting fatter but not longer.

Not that Ark follow-ons would come up against this limitation, that was the job of the Malta class. However if the RN did go improved Arks then they may have built the Malta class, even if it was postwar, because they would quickly see the value of large airwings and pulsed strikes. The Malta did have an armoured deck, but not an armoured hangar so postwar mods wouldn't have been so difficult/expensive as the Victorious/Eagle/Ark Royal-07.
 
How would a commitment to large aircraft carriers alter the post-war British military?

They are, after all, incredibly expensive (I couldn't find out much a new Kitty Hawk costs but refitting one was 700 million+ USD so it has to be a lot). With that many aircraft and the Navy required to support them there's no possible way the British can afford the stuff they bought IOTL.

What goes on the chopping block? Missiles are probably tossed since the RAF and the Navy will push hard on aircraft (which would also have major consequences for the RAF). Anything else?
 
The Ark had a 16ft overhead clearence and two hangar decks, the Illustrious kept this 16ft but had 1 armoured hangar, the Indomnitables had 2 armoured hangars of 14ft clearence and the Eagle was bigger to get back to, or improve on, the 16ft with 2 hangar decks.

The postwar reduild of the Victorious focused on increasing the size of the armoured hangar, as such it was bloody difficult/expensive and the double hangars of the Indomnitables meant that a similar rebuild was even more difficult/eexpensive. So you have the situation where a carrier which was finished in 1941 and fought for 4 years was rebuilt from 1950 but carreirs which were finished in 1944 and only fought for 1 year were unmodernised. The higher hangars of the Eagles made their rebuilds a bit easier, but the unarmoured deck of the Essexs and unarmoured hangars of the Midways were easier to rebuild by an order of magnitude.

So I think that if the RN went the improved Ark Royals and then to Maltas they would have been able to stretch these big ships into the 80s. The rebuilds would have been cheaper than OTL Victorious/Eagle/Ark Royal 07 and would have resulted in better carriers which would have handled the big, fast planes of the 60s much better than the OTL RN carriers.
 
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