The plan was never for a single carrier, as you've said that couldn't provide the single ship East of Suez at all times required by HMG. Had HMG chosen the carrier solution and remained East of Suez we'd have built CVA-01& CVA-02 and substantially rebuilt HMS Eagle (much more than the bare bones "phantomisation" Ark RO9 actually got) There's your 3 carrier fleet out to the mid '80s. At that point economics may have dictated a reduction to two ships, with the second CVA built in the early 70s and the final Audacious class paid off ~1983.ArmChairCivvy wrote:Interesting. If 3 gave the availability of 1.5, one would have given the availability of ??Ron5 wrote:the Navy had wanted 4 but that was reduced to 2 by the MoD and then to 1 by the Treasury. Estimated cost 56 million. Speculation was that the Treasury didn't trust the 56 million price tag, hence the restriction to one.
- i.e the military utility would have been restricted to offensive campaigns, planned well in advance
- how many did we have in the top drawer, at the time?
Hence ordering one would have been rational only for the purpose of nurturing the capability and ordering more later.
- perhaps the Gvmnt saw 1967 coming
Also, the availability of the 3 carrier fleet was more like ~1.8 (with one ship at high readiness in the UK and one forward deployed East of Suez).
Let's not forget that the RAF plan with TSR-2 was nearly as expensive as the projected CVA programme. ~£1000mn for "island bases" and ~£1200mn for 2x CVAs et al. It was also far less able to deliver the required mission than the carriers and many of the proposed bases would've been politically difficult to actually set up.