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HMS Queen Elizabeth

6K views 55 replies 19 participants last post by  Clyde 
Proof of the cube root law. About 2/3 the tonnage of a Nimitz class, and less than half the aircraft complement. And the STOVL F-35Bs further cut the effectiveness of the air wing vs the catapult/arrested landing F-35C the USN will get.
 
Well, there's this: We fought the Vietnam war with primarily 27000 ton CVAs, the Essex class.
The strike air wing of the angled deck converted Essex CVS carriers consisted of F-8s and A-4s, later replaced by A-7As. F-4s and A-6s were too heavy to operate from them, so although they operated more aircraft than the Queen Elizabeth there's no real direct comparison. Later the CVS carriers were all relegated to ASW use and replaced off Vietnam by bigger carriers.

The supposed reason for dropping catapults and arresting gear from the Queen Elizabeth was cost, but to me it seems like it'd cost more to get the same capability with the STOVL F-35B - in essence putting the catapult and arresting gear on the airplane!
 
Harriers have pretty crappy payload/radius. The Misguided Children like them because they don't have to tote around catapults and arresting gear for unprepared/short field operation, and because they've never had to come up against any serious air opposition.

Since the STOVL F-35B design pretty much drove the whole program, delaying it and running up costs, it was obviously a bad idea. But its all sunk costs and time, so the question now, which they seem to be avoiding, is how bad is the loss rate going to be?

And is anyone ever going to wake up and recognize what the total cost is, including the loss in combat capability?
 
The heaviest full load displacement weight I could find on the Midway was 68,000 tons. But that didn't include the unsuccessful 1986 rebuild with bulges for more displacement capacity that ended up reducing the rolling period by so much that deck operations in heavy seas were impossible.
One website, http://www.midwaysailor.com/midway/specifications.html lists the full load displacement at 70,000 tons which sounds reasonable for the 1986 rebuild.
 
One would think that with advancing missile and drone technology large slow objects would be relics. I did see some above links on the f35 controversy which compared the it with the f-111. If true we are in trouble.
A carrier isn't a cargo ship or small British destroyer built to a budget like in the Falklands. it's not easy to penetrate to and hit a large thick skinned heavily defended target that's moving, however "slow". You need a big warhead for a carrier and by the time you get done building one that can launch from outside the protective envelope of the ship, is fast enough, maneuverable enough, and has the needed targeting and countermeasures the size and cost of the missile get out of hand.

Plus the USN has been able to handle conventional ASMs since production of the Phalanx began 35 years ago. And Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense capability will be in 38 escort vessels by 2015, using the Aegis and SM-3 missile systems.

Aside from the STOVL requirements for the F-35B the F-35 requirements aren't nearly as out of sync between variants as the F-111A (USAF) and F-111B (USN) were. Those, the TFX requirements, were just outrageous.

The USAF wanted a medium weight low level penetrator, really a significant upgrade in performance from the F-105 mission.

The Navy had a major program for the long loiter time subsonic Douglas F6D Missileer, which looked similar to an enlarged F3D Skynight (AKA "Drut") which would carry 6 AAM-N-10 Eagle missiles, but that was put on the back burner in 1960 because of concerns that it'd be defenseless once its missiles were launched, and because of cost growth.

The "Whizz Kids" of DDR&E, Department of Defense Research and Engineering, who had a very shallow knowledge of aircraft design, then pushed a swing wing tactical fighter bomber as a solution to both services needs, regardless of the impossibility of shoehorning the Navy carrier requirements into the USAF low level strike mission. Then SecDef McNamara, an arrogant fool, ignored a navy request to be the lead service because their requirements were more stringent, and kept the USAF as lead, directing them to manage the competition.

Then to top it off McNamara overruled the design competition choice of the Boeing design for a General Dynamics one, ostensibly because of lack of "commonality" between versions, but also because the Boeing design used a lot of titanium and he'd misunderstood Kelly Johnson's explanation of the difficulties of the development problems of titanium in the secret A-12 with that of applying the knowledge gained in that program to the Boeing design.

The USAF run design competition went on a stupid point scale, with only 10 of the 1000 possible points going to carrier suitability! The GD design got a ZERO on CV suitability.

My own opinion is that there would just have been a somewhat different set of problems with the Boeing design, because the TF-30 P1 turned out to be very sensitive to inlet airflow disturbances and the over and behind the cockpit inlet of the Boeing design would have been worse for that than even the under wing GD inlets. But the real problem was a basic incompatibility between the USAF mission and carrier suitability.

All of the F-35 missions, on the contrary, are compatible. But the combination of the STOVL F-35B and the cost constraints, especially for foreign participation, sized the aircraft down so its not as effective as it might have been and raised the cost of the whole program. These are sunk costs now, so its too late to cancel and save money.

And the usual weight growth from an overly optimistic estimate of the STOVL design and its lift system and VSTOL controls resulted in an expensive delay for the whole program and a cost increase thanks to the weight reduction program. And another reduction in STOVL mission performance from the baseline variants.

By comparison the F-111B went through multiple weight improvement programs, getting up to a "SWIP" (Super Weight Improvement Program) No. III or IV. GD would also lie about the weights to McNamara, sticking in their hoped for weight reduction as if it was real, or just reporting part of the weigh growth. McNamara's ignorance as acting chief engineer let them get away with this and our office had to play catch up, which usually just got McNamara angry at us.

McNamara could have saved $billions at any point in this process but first his arrogance and then the politics prevented an F-111B cancellation until well after he left DOD, despite its failing the first and only carrier suitability trials in July 1968. Capt. Mike Ames, who later became a VP of McDonnell, ran those tests and then was passed over for an Admiral slot when he refused to change his conclusions after 4 rewrites of the test report. The F-111A really should have been cancelled by that point too, but the politics of Texas based GD production stopped that.
 
Here's a good article on the Falklands which points up the problems of a cut rate navy in the modern age, which really began in 1944 at Leyte Gulf with the kamikazes. The USN learned its lesson there and at Iwo Jima and Okinawa, requiring armored carriers, lots of radar and radar directed interception, and lots of AA. And airborne radar and long range anti-aircraft missiles when they became available.

Against a USN carrier the Exocets would have failed. But the British fleet was unable to defend itself against even the conventional bombs of the Argentine A-4s.


The Falklands War
http://www.johnsmilitaryhistory.com/falklands.html

Budget cuts in the Royal Navy reduced the quality and quantity of the British Royal Navy in the late 1970s.(English 32) Embarrassing losses occurred as a result in the 1982 Falklands War.

Upon the aging of Britain's conventional aircraft carriers, they were replaced by small anti-submarine carriers with at most 18 helicopters and 12 airplanes each. (Hastings 346) The vertical takeoff Harrier was used in the Falklands conflict and was a good dogfighter, but it was inferior in range. The Harrier had a range of only 250 miles on attack missions compared to a maximum range of 1,600 miles of the Argentinean Pucara. (354) The radar used on the Harrier was not suited for the air-superiority mission it was given and was unable to detect aircraft flying at low levels over land or sea. (Braybrook 10) The small carriers were not equipped with airborne early warning aircraft which use sophisticated radars to detect enemy aircraft and coordinate their interception. (Grimes 57) As a result, little could be done to stop Argentine attacks with the sea-skimming Exocet anti-ship missile.

Exocet Missile

On May 4, 1982, two Argentinean Super Etendard aircraft skimmed the ocean surface, avoiding the two British Harriers on combat air patrol and located the task force. Two Exocet missiles were launched, one of which devastated the HMS Sheffield. (Miller 196-7) On May 25, 1982, a low level Exocet attack was launched with the intention of sinking the two British carriers. Once again the Harrier combat air patrol failed to intercept the attack. However, the British had placed the carriers in a less obvious position, so the Argentines unknowingly sank the Atlantic Conveyor, a transport carrying the helicopters the ground forces planned on using for airmobile operations. (199) It is unlikely the British could have continued the war with the loss of one of its two carriers, and indeed they were quite lucky the Argentines had only a half dozen Exocets.

The task force was also unable to deal with attacks from the 1950s vintage A-4 Skyhawk dropping conventional bombs. Skyhawks attacked the landing force at San Carlos sinking the HMS Ardent and damaging the HMS Antrim. Later attacks damaged the landing ships Sir Bedivere, Sir Galahad, HMS Glasgow, and destroyed the HMS Antelope. (Dublin 32-3) On May 24th and 25th, air attacks damaged two supply ships, the Argonaut, the Broadsword, and sank the Coventry. (English 28-9) Many of the damaged vessels were hit with bombs which failed to explode because they did not have time to arm properly. Had these bombs detonated, the amphibious landings would have been a complete disaster.

Many of the ships' weapons systems were not effective. Hundreds of anti-submarine weapons were fired at sonar contacts, but the one Argentine submarine in the area was not sunk. (Hughes 236) British Type 42 destroyers were armed with Sea Dart medium range anti-aircraft missiles whose ancient vacuum tubes required warm up time before launch, making them useless against surprise Exocet attacks. The obsolete Sea Cat anti-aircraft missile was guided by crewmen who relied on visual contact, and the close-in anti-aircraft weapons were also obsolete. (English 135) Only two anti-aircraft Type 22 ships with their effective Sea Wolf missile system protected the vital carriers. (Miller 197)



Seacat Missile System Chaff Launchers - created clouds of aluminum foil to send Exocets off target


On the whole, the Royal Navy was inadequate for the task, equipped with inadequate and often obsolete weapons. The Harriers shot down twenty Argentine aircraft while no Harriers were lost to enemy aircraft. (Braybrook 29) But the British had only twenty Harriers available and could not deal with the over 180 planes in the Argentine inventory. (Argentina A2) Ships of the Royal Navy shot down only 10% of the Argentine Air Force, (Hughes 162) but 75% of the British task force was damaged or sunk. (English 33) Surprisingly, luck made up for these deficiencies, and fortune favored the brave of the United Kingdom.

Works Cited

"Argentina Said to Avoid Britain's Blockade Zone." The New York Times 1 May 1982: A2

Braybrook, Roy. Battle for the Falklands (3): Air Forces. Men-at-Arms Series. Ed. Martin Windrow. London: Osprey, 1982

Dublin, Peter B. "Determined Attack From Bomb Alley." Military History Magazine Apr. 1986: 30-36.

English, Adrian, and Anthony Watts. Battle for the Falklands (2): Naval Forces. Men-at-Arms Series. Ed. Martin Windrow. London: Osprey, 1982.

Grimes, Vincent. "Five Planes in One?" International Combat Arms Mar. 1989: 57.

Hastings, Max, and SImon Jenkins. The Battle for the Falklands. New York: W.W. Norton, 1983.

Hughes, Wayne P. Fleet Tactics: Theory and Practice. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1986

Miller, David, and Chris Miller. Modern Naval Combat. New York: Crescent Books, 1986.

"U.S. Admiral Calls British Naval Cuts an Error." The New York Times 22 May 1982: A7.
 
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