CVE Class Aircraft Carriers

[Zen]

Theres a thought, such 'cruisers' are more like mini-carriers, escort carriers in fact.

And rather useful in amphibious operations, supplying CAS/BAI with STOVL aircraft (VSTOL as they think at first).

Theres been a interesting debate over on Warships1 about whether it would've been better to turn a couple of the Colossus carriers to commando/ASW carriers rather than convert the last Cruisers to take four helicopters.

Harrier would just be the icing on the cake under such circumstances.

[Thorvic]

Theres a thought, such 'cruisers' are more like mini-carriers, escort carriers in fact.

And rather useful in amphibious operations, supplying CAS/BAI with STOVL aircraft (VSTOL as they think at first).

Theres been a interesting debate over on Warships1 about whether it would've been better to turn a couple of the Colossus carriers to commando/ASW carriers rather than convert the last Cruisers to take four helicopters.

Harrier would just be the icing on the cake under such circumstances.

The Tiger and Blake conversions were not great and the last of the Colossus class would have been ideal as ASW Carriers. The problem was the manpower was shrinking in the 60's RN so the cruiser guns probabaly proved to be the deciding factor in the choice.

HMS Centaur the sister ship of Bulwark and Albion, could have been adapted to the ASW role, she hadn't had the Commando conversion as she acted as cover whilst Hermes & Eagle were completed in their Class A configurations. By the mid 60's Centaur was reduced to operating purely a sqdn of Sea Vixens with Gannet AEW and ASW helicopter as she was to small for a Buccaneer S2 Squadron. Onlce Eagle joined the fleet Centaur was reduced to an alongside harbour facility and spare source for her sisters.

She however woul;d have been ideal if refitted with an enlarged Superstructure for the additional command and control functions with a complement of ASW helicopters and possibly a token AEW flight.

Both Hermes and Bulwark went to swing role in the 70's as Commando/ASW carriers whilst the VTOL carriers were sorted out.

G

[Lawman]

How about keeping one of the older carriers on in the CTOL role purely for AEW and ASW coverage for the 'big' carriers? Operating half a dozen S-2 AEWs (with a UK radar), and a dozen Sea King ASW choppers, they free up the larger carriers to carry mostly fighters. With the compromise in the CVA-01 at 45,000 tons, the RN still wish to carry 36-40 fighters, and see the small carriers as a great way to allow this. As such, the RN get to keep three smaller carriers, to act as AEW/ASW escorts, and as commando carriers as needed. They always escort the three CVAs, and can act as flagships.

An alternative might be to actually build a small fleet of modest size carriers, with, say, three to act as commando carriers, and three to act as AEW/ASW ships. The ships are simply updated Centaur class carriers, but using far more advanced technology, and built to peacetime build standards. The commando carriers retain the catapults, which come in handy for routine resupply using carrier-onboard delivery US-2s. Furthermore, after the failure of the UK's VTOL efforts (the Harrier having been cancelled on cost grounds), the UK realises that the small carriers can operate the UK's new close support aircraft, the A-10, in its carrier version. It becomes routine for the commando carriers to carry a mix of CH-3 ramp equipped Westland Sea Kings and A-10s.  

[Zen]

Post cancelation of the '1952 carrier' the RN looked at small cheap carriers, starting with a 20,000ton study. But to make it fit with modern equipment they had to take it upto 24,000tons which just afew hundred tons away from HMS Hermes (we're talking standard tonnage here not full load).

They then went to a 28,000ton ship with 38 aircraft and 100,000shp for 28.4kts deep and dirty (six months out of dock in the tropics at full load which is likely 33,000tons).
This ship was considered too small for a fleet carrier and yet too large for a patrol/escort carrier.

So its possible in the mid 50's for a decision to be taken to go down the route of small patrol carriers of a sort of advanced Hermes type.

Such ships would be roughly like Hermes, though slightly faster and could certainly operate Scimitar and SeaVixen. In the 60's they thought of operating Hermes as a strike only carrier with no fighters, just Buccaneers.

[uk 75]

I used to follow the thread on Warships with great interest and remember a splendid entry by an Ex RN type who said that what really killed off carriers was that sailors and officers preferred serving on frigates/destroyers because they got more shore time and better living conditions. The old British carriers were very uncomfortable and ancient ships.

Most of the options raised were looked at by the RN at some stage as well as alternatives such as US or even French ships. However, it always came back to the problem of money and manpower versus the available requirements.

Ideally, the RN needed big enough platforms to carry a balanced fighter/strike force (the Phantom becoming the main benchmark) coupled with ships to carry ASW and Commando helicopters, which until the late 60s and the Seaking were not very successful British types with poor loadings, range and maintainability.

In the absence of the US style CVA 01, a permutation of Ark Royal and Eagle became the only viable platform for a worthwhile quantity of Phantoms and Bucs. Albion, then Hermes, and Bulwark provided the baseline quantity of helicopter spots.  The only wrong turn was on the Tiger class which were converted for political reasons as noone wanted to admit they should have been scrapped in the 1957 Defence Review and replaced by modern missile/helo ships like the French and Italian navies went on to do.

The idea of an affordable Hermes size platform like the French Clemenceau with BAC 583s/Jaguars is attractive to modellers but did not meet the MOD/NATO requirement for UK ships and was always rejected as too little for too much money.

The later emergence of the Invincibles as Harrier carriers rather than simple ASW ships owed as much to the relationship with the US developed with Phantom and Seaking procurement as to the single minded support of some in the Industry and MOD.

The Colossus platforms, Centaur and Victorious look good on paper, but they would have been unloved by crews and maintenance people and sucked resources from the vital Submarine and missile ships.

UK 75

[Zen]

The old British carriers were very uncomfortable and ancient ships.

An argument for new carriers if ever I heard it.

However, it always came back to the problem of money and manpower versus the available requirements.

Yes and no. It comes down to the size of the aircraft, and that is dictated in part by the performance requirements they are to have.

Ideally, the RN needed big enough platforms to carry a balanced fighter/strike force (the Phantom becoming the main benchmark) coupled with ships to carry ASW and Commando helicopters, which until the late 60s and the Seaking were not very successful British types with poor loadings, range and maintainability.

F4 dictated the size of the carrier, in terms of the angled deck length, catapult length, lift size and hanger size for a decent airwing. Once you factor all that with the requirements for sortie generation and operability you are pretty much pushed towards something like CVA-01. You can go smaller, but it gets marginal.
Add to this that they wanted something like the OR346 machines to succeed the F4 and CVA-01 is closer to the minimum for a decent airwing.

Change the machine and you change the driver that forces such a large ship.

The problem with the larger CV's is the comensurate larger crew requirements which is a through life cost, and the berth/drydock requirements which is a greater up front cost.

A 60,000ton ship of say 1000ft length, would certainly have solved the need for the Spey F4, and provided an adequet airwing, and while a slip was long enough at Devonport for her construction, there was no drydock and berth large enough. Its also to be noted that such ships with around 4000 crew would drain the RN of personnel to operate just two such ships. The economies of scale would not have prevented their abandonment during the 1970's.

In the absence of the US style CVA 01, a permutation of Ark Royal and Eagle became the only viable platform for a worthwhile quantity of Phantoms and Bucs. Albion, then Hermes, and Bulwark provided the baseline quantity of helicopter spots.

Had the 1952 Carrier been built she'd certainly handle the F4 as well as Eagle if not better, in that I suspect the need for te Spey could be dropped. But its the F4 that is forcing all this.

The only wrong turn was on the Tiger class which were converted for political reasons as noone wanted to admit they should have been scrapped in the 1957 Defence Review and replaced by modern missile/helo ships like the French and Italian navies went on to do.

Can't agree with that, its ONE of the mistakes, not the only one.

The idea of an affordable Hermes size platform like the French Clemenceau with BAC 583s/Jaguars is attractive to modellers but did not meet the MOD/NATO requirement for UK ships and was always rejected as too little for too much money.

Hermes is not Clemenceau, in a host of areas. Clem's could certainly handle larger aircraft than they did.
No Type583 met AW406, thats a fact, its not the machines ability to meet the requirements that see's the F4 favoured, its time.
Also Type 583 is far more capable than a Jaguar.
At the time the F4 was chosen as the quick and simple option to succeed the SeaVixen, with the expectation that it would in turn be replaced by the OR346 type aircraft.
The engine change was sold as an equaly quick and cheap option to ensure the F4 could operate form existing UK Carriers Eagle and Ark Royal.
By contrast the Type583 was seen as a merely a development type on the way to the OR346 machine and would take too long to develope.
Reality was of course that the salesmen got it wrong, and the F4 took as long as the expected development time for an all new machine, they where also wrong over the performance which had been a key selling point.
F4 was a quick and cheap way to get high performance, yet it was neither quick  nor cheap, nor as high performance as expected.
Of course had the RB106 continued development instead of being canceled in 1957, that might have altered this scenario.

Look at the timing of all this, SeaVixen is chosen around 1952/53 after DH has told the RN that their favoured option the Super Venom (not much left of a Venom on it) is supposedly beyond their capacity at the time.
But the funds for this are not released until 1957, and then only because its seen as a quick way to get a fighter into the RN with minimum changes rather than the prefered major changes which would've made it supersonic, it does'nt even get the SARH AAM. Its given the green light because D.Sandys has said it will be the last fighter in the RN!
SeaVixen enteres service around 1958/59, some 5-6 years after its chosen, by which time its becoming increasingly out of date in performance terms.
What might have kept it going for longer was that SARH AAM and paring it up with the Saunders Roe P177, but that was canceled.
So the RN is getting rather desperate and of course casts covetous eyes over the 'pond' and see's the mighty F4......

Not as if its any better with the Scimitar, which never gets the reheat and radar it was expected too when finaly chosen to enter service. Can't make out but its possible the RN was looking at a Scimitar variant as an alternative to the SeaVixen at one point.
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The favoured ship was a 35,000ton study, which is as far as I can ascertain thats its standard displacement, NOT its full load, which is likely between 42,000tons and 45,000tons. Such a ship is large enough to operate the F4, but would be marginal in numbers, closer in fact to Eagle and requiring the Spey engined F4.
She was of considerable interest from around 1954 to 1956 and its possible beyond to 1957, but we don't have the documents to prove it either way.
With three Y300 plants on three shafts she had 135,000shp and did 29.4kts 'deep and dirty' (suggests a speed at standard and clean of over 32kts) using a crew of 2,400. By my estimates her hull is likely not far from Akagi in size, about 770ft waterline length and likely 820ft overall.

1959 and we see the RN planning a fleet of three 45,000ton CV's, described as Guided Weapon Ships, this clearly relfects Mountbatten's favouring of canceling the cruiser effort and using a fleet of destroyers (what became the Counties) resupplied by a Carrier.

The loss of the Saunders Roe P177 clearly had an influence on all this, its likely the 45,000ton ships are equipped with SeaSlug themselves (worste case, though it could be Tartar) besides carrying stocks for other ships.
Driven by the lack of such a fighter its why things became more urgent for a SeaVixen successor, especialy after 1964 when the USSR revealed its long range anti-ship missile. Thats why the Colossus users jacked in the multirole use and focused on ASW. They lacked suitable airacraft to counter this threat.

The Colossus platforms, Centaur and Victorious look good on paper, but they would have been unloved by crews and maintenance people and sucked resources from the vital Submarine and missile ships.

Victorious is not a Colossus sized carrier, theres quite a difference.
The chief problem with a Advanced Hermes type or the 28,000ton (likely 33,000 full load) study is the size of the aircraft left them somewhat lacking. Had something like the Swift (a prototype did do trials) been available and other small aircraft, the numbers would alter this.
The cruiser team was the one that went on to work on SSN's.

[roughneck06]

I recall reading somewhere and seeing some diagrams of RN carriers ( i.e. Formidible ) being looked at as missle ship conversions. Since the USA is developing Talos,Tartar, Terrier missles in the 1950s, the Soviet threat being what is was, need to provide Air defense and ASW protection to convoys- does the conversion of some USN CVEs to guided missle helicopter carriers have any merit? They'd have speed aqeuate to move and cover convoys, ability to do some refueling of DD/DEs during convoy and provide Air defense and ASW coverage. My proposal would be as follows.....

Mount 2 to 3 twin missle launchers for 3 T on forward flight deck.
Allocate hangar space as appropriate for missle reloads, equipment, etc.
Delete 5 in, 40mm and 20mm guns. Add 4-6 twin 3"/70 AA guns.
After flight deck and hangar to accommodate 6-8 ASW Helos.

Viable? Feasable?

Looking forward to everyone's imput!

P.S.- CVEs operating the Northrup NN-156NN fighter ( designed specifically to operate from CVEs ) If the USN does not go that route, perhaps develop them for export to friendly navies ala the F-5??

Who knows - if the CVE conversions to CGH proves useful- maybe the USN starts converting more beyond its needs and provides to friendly navies as well along w/ CVEs operating NN-156NN and Asw helos.

[Joe C-P]

I've seen those images, too.

This is an intriguing idea. Carriers would be easier to rebuild than armored vessels, and keeping the after flight deck for helos would make them doubly useful.

The USN also considered converting Essex class carriers to missile launchers, removing the after deck and erecting a gantry.

JoeP

[Archibald]

Sounds interesting! After all if CVE can't decently operate supersonic interceptors, why not replacing aircrafts by long-range SAMs ?

Hmmm CVE with BOMARC on board...

[fallenphoenix]

speaking of the N156NN... :
http://www.whatifmodelers.com/index.php/topic,18833.0.html

my first attempt at a profile

[roughneck06]

Great drawings of the NN-156 NN!

Any thoughts as to an air group w/ these and others ( i.e. # and types ) on various CVE Classes?

I'M Thinking perhaps 12 NN-156 and 6-8 asw helos or vice versa for CVE 55/CVE 105 classes.

[dy031101]

Any thoughts as to an air group w/ these and others ( i.e. # and types ) on various CVE Classes?

I'M Thinking perhaps 12 NN-156 and 6-8 asw helos or vice versa for CVE 55/CVE 105 classes.

I'm thinking 6-9 N-156NN and the same number of helicopters (small types such as SH-2 or Aérospatiale Panther; Lynx seems very compact, too, when it has its tail and rotors folded).

CVEs would probably depend more on her escorts for fleet situational awareness....... I could think of Gannet AEW otherwise.

[fallenphoenix]

since you want extremly small aircraft how about the SeaMew?

[dy031101]

since you want extremly small aircraft how about the SeaMew?

Come to think of it, sure.  I've seen a photo of a CVE running tests with a S-2 Tracker, but it's difficult to say if Tracker is really suitable in terms of size for CVEs.

Although to produce an AEW version...... wait until Searchwater radar comes along?  The fixed main landing gear might have had to be made retractable, too.

[roughneck06]

CVE 55 class converted as ASW helo and AAW missle escorts. CVE-105 as Northrup 156 fighter and SH-2 ASW helo CVES. size of convoy as X plus appropriate FRAM DD and DE ASW escorts. S-2 AEW or Blimp AEW supported by CVE 55 or CVE 105s.

After establishing USN needs.... export CVE 55 ASW helo/AAW missle escort and CVE 105 CVEs to other nations.... Candiadate nations and quantities? Remember- there are alot of the 55 and 105s in mothballs.


Follow on to these- SCS or VT " Harrier Carriers" plus a replacement for the CVHG 55? Perhaps a DD 963 w/ 4 ASW helos and Standard AAW missles??

Nominations and # for Other navies in the 1950/60 timeframe and their successors?