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Cameron is right - Britain doesn’t need two carriers
Crispin Black: One carrier is enough if dockyard workers can again perform the heroics of the past
Question: what do David Cameron and the late Lieutenant Commander Robert Dixon of the United States Navy have in common? Answer: they both get rid of aircraft carriers.
Dixon sent the famous radio message 'Scratch One Flat Top' after sinking the Japanese aircraft carrier Shoho at the battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942.
Cameron appears strongly minded to scratch at least one of the two 'flat tops' currently being built for the Royal Navy on the Clyde - HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.
We need two apparently because we might be unlucky and have one in repair or refit when the next war or conflict kicks off. It's a dubious and extravagant argument, however, and the prime minister is right to smell a rat.
Ships can put to sea and fight even in the middle of repairs. In May 1941 a previous HMS Prince of Wales, a battleship, sailed with civilian contractors still aboard when she was ordered to sea in pursuit of the Bismarck. The patriotic but seasick dock workers grumpily going to sea made for a light-hearted scene in the 1960 film Sink the Bismarck.
Even severe battle damage can be overcome quickly, if necessary. The battle of the Coral Sea wasn't all about Lieutenant Commander Dixon dishing it out.
Japanese dive-bombers hit the carrier USS Yorktown three times, killing 66 American sailors and causing extensive damage deep into the ship.
She limped back to Pearl Harbor for repairs which naval architects estimated would take three months. Japanese intelligence thought she had gone down. In an epic story of sheer American 'can do', dockyard workmen made her sea-worthy in 72 hours.
A few days later Yorktown contributed decisively to victory at the Battle of Midway (the US Navy's Trafalgar) where she was sunk in heroic circumstances. If the Yanks could do it with 1940s technology why can't we Limeys do it today?
The answer is that our naval architects do not appear to have thought about it. The shipbuilders' own publicity for the carriers makes much of the 'computer-aided design' and other clever ideas incorporated in the carriers, but no mention of a rapid refit/repair capability.
If they need any really clever ideas they might look at the German army's Leopard 2 tank designed a quarter of a century ago.
If a Leopard 2's engine or gearbox needed anything other than a quick running repair, a lorry would arrive with a couple of efficient looking Bundeswehr mechanics who would twiddle a few bolts inside the tank and then lift the stricken engine out with a small crane.
They would then install another engine, re-twiddle the bolts and the tank would once again be ready to roll 15 minutes maximum. Vorsprung durch technik as they say.
It is not too late to introduce such ideas into the design of HMS Queen Elizabeth - which should be our only carrier. The Royal Navy can safely make do with one as long as it is built with the Yorktown and the Leopard 2 in mind. ·
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All we need is an army to defend our sovereignty over our own island instead of the useless UK Border slobs. We then point our nukes at everybody else and get on with our lives.
One is absolutely useless.
A 70,000 ton ship can spend as long as 18 months in refit.
Ideally you need 3, but 2 is an absolute necessity. 1 is a waste of time and money, and represents absolute stupid logic.
Greatest utility I can see for an aircraft carrier is to carry out a US poodle Mission
Leaving aside nations atttacked by the USA, how many nations without an aircraft carrier have been conquered over the last few decades?
@Maninshed - what's this laser nonsense? Surely you mean Phalanx as a missile defence system.
Laser dazzle weaponry was developed in the UK and used in 1982. It was subject to a Parliamentary Investigation due to complaints by the Argentines. Lasers with a class of emission able to disrupt missiles do exist but the accurate targeting is not yet fully available.
An interesting comparison of modern naval warfare and the Battle of the Coral sea, did the Japanese have an equivalent of the exocet missile, I think not!
I would imagine that in this day and age there are plenty of air to sea missiles that could put a carrier out of action with one successful strike.
The problem is that if you only have one carrier then losing it means you've lost the war. The Russians are selling Mach 3 missiles that are almost undefendable against ( unless you have lasers - and due to the political decision to run on fuel oil the power for them won't be available on the UK's out of date before they are built white elephants ). We won't have the surface fleet or the subs to defend these carriers or the aircraft to operate off them.
The truth is they should be scrapped - they were never a military project anyway - and replaced with a step change in technology - UAV's flying of smaller Invincible sized carriers - which we can afford to build, man, defend and run.
Absolutely. The Govt keeps telling us that we have to stop paying for things that we can't afford, so clearly we need to pull out of Afghanistan immediately.
Britain either needs no aircraft carriers or it needs two, or even three. Having one is putting too many eggs in one basket. Ships break down.
Wrong. Britain doesn't need *any* carriers. Britain needs to spend its money on the *tax-payers* who contributed it, and *not* on yankee-doodle gutless wars.