The British Carrier Strike Fleet after 1945

58.91 MB·English

by  David Hobbs

Eagle launching a range of Sea Hawks, Skyraiders and Gannets, c. 1957. (Author’s collection).
HMS

Copyright © David Hobbs 2015
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Seaforth Publishing,
Pen & Sword Books Ltd,
47 Church Street,
Barnsley S70 2AS
www.seaforthpublishing.com
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-1-84832-171-7
PDF ISBN: 978-1-84832-413-8
EPUB ISBN: 978-1-84832-412-1
PRC ISBN: 978-1-84832-411-4
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing
of both the copyright owner and the above publisher.
The right of David Hobbs to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
Typeset and designed by M.A.T.S., Leigh-on-Sea, Essex
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgements
Glossary
1 Manpower, Fleets and Changes
2 The Korean War
3 Assistance for Commonwealth Navies
4 Invention, Innovation, New Aircraft and Rebuilt Ships
5 ‘Cold War’, NATO and the Middle East
6 A Royal Occasion and the Radical Review
7 The Suez Crisis
8 New Equipment and Another Defence Review
9 Helicopters and Helicopter Carriers
10 A Range of Carrier Operations
11 The Evolution of Strike Warfare
12 Brunei and the Indonesian Confrontation
13 The British Nuclear Deterrent and the End of the Admiralty Era
14 The Cancellation of CVA-01
15 Rundown of the Carrier Force
16 Capability, the Beira Patrol, Aden and Belize
17 Small Carriers and Vertical Landing
18 The South Atlantic War
19 A Decade of Operations
20 New Defence Reviews, Carriers and Aircraft
21 Reflections
Notes
Bibliography
Foreword
[Sailors have always] learned, in the grimmest schools, precision and resolution. The sea endures
no makeshifts. If a thing is not exactly right it will be vastly wrong. Discipline, courage and
contempt for all that is pretentious and insincere are the teaching of the ocean and the elements and
they have been qualities, in all ages, of the British sailor.
John Buchan
I do not usually begin my books with a quotation but these words by John Buchan seemed so apt for
the opening page of a book about the Royal Navy’s carrier strike fleet after 1945 that I decided to
begin it with them. Unlike any other form of warfare that I have been involved with, operating fixed-
wing aircraft from a carrier in the open ocean really does ‘endure no makeshifts’ and has to be
‘exactly right’, especially at night or in bad weather. Naval aviation also delivers a whole range of
capabilities that have proved to be invaluable in the defence of the United Kingdom and its interests
around the world, often when nothing else was available.
In my earlier book about the British Pacific Fleet I explained the great effect that Fleet was to have
on the post-war Royal Navy. In this book I take that story forward and give examples of the many
operations in which British aircraft carriers have played a critical role and describe the ships and
aircraft that achieved so much. In the seventy years since the end of the Second World War the RN
and its integral Fleet Air Arm have undergone huge changes and, despite their conspicuous success,
aircraft carriers have had to undergo greater scrutiny than any other British weapons system. The
Fleet Air Arm has had to fight not only against the nation’s enemies but also against politicians who
have often failed to understand what an enormous asset these ships and their aircraft are. The
independent Air Force has been principally concerned about preserving its own identity and has often
been less helpful than it should have been, despite the Government’s attempts to promote joint
activity. In order to show how this see-saw balance developed I have alternated examples of carrier
operations with descriptions of a succession of defence reviews with comment on their impact. I have
described how technology evolved from the simple Seafire FR 47 operating from the ubiquitous light
fleet carriers in 1946 to the technologically complex Lightning II Joint Strike Fighter in 2015 and the
Queen Elizabeth class carriers that are to operate them. Carrier strike operations were inevitably
compared with the British nuclear deterrent and I have included a chapter on how the deterrent force
evolved for comparison.
It is, in part, my story for I served as a fixed and rotary-wing pilot for over thirty years, during
which I served in seven aircraft carriers, a number of naval air squadrons and two appointments in
the Ministry of Defence. Lest readers should feel that I lack knowledge of the RAF and how it
operates when commenting on it, I might also add that I did my advanced flying training in the RAF’s
Number 4 Flying Training School, flying Gnats, and completed two exchange appointments, in one of
which I flew Hunter FGA 9s and in the other Canberra B 2s and T 17s. I am one of the few pilots to
include qualifications on Gannets, RN and RAF Hunter variants, Canberras and Wessex helicopters
in their log books and take enormous pride in having carried out over 800 deck landings. After
leaving the RN, I served in the Naval Historical Branch for a period and then became the Curator and
Deputy Director of the Fleet Air Arm Museum at RNAS Yeovilton. In both those appointments I was
able to carry out a prodigious amount of detailed research into naval aviation which I have put to
good use in this book. I have included the activities of a number of people to create a balance
between what happened, why it happened and an informative level of human interest. I am, of course,
conscious that for every name mentioned there are literally dozens of others that I have omitted but, at
the very least, I hope to have kept the spirit of the Fleet Air Arm in these exciting years alive and
brought its magnificent achievements to a wider audience. The Fleet Air Arm has always been a
relatively small organisation but mobility gives it the ability to ‘punch above its weight’ and be there
when it is needed. I am proud to have been part of its story.
David Hobbs MBE
Commander Royal Navy (Retired)
Crail
February 2015
Acknowledgements
As always I have been helped and supported by my wife Jandy and my son Andrew together with his
wife Lucyelle. During a career that lasted more than three decades in the Royal Navy I met a number
of clever and inspirational people who broadened my knowledge of RN strike carrier tactics,
techniques and operations. It would take too long to name them all and invidious to name only some
of them but I thank them all wholeheartedly and those still alive will know who they are. As my focus
shifted from current operations and projects to a study of naval history, many people have provided
direct or indirect help, some of them in the margins of symposia and conferences around the world.
Among them are the late David Brown together with Christopher Page and Stephen Prince,
sequentially heads of the Naval Historical Branch, and their colleagues Jennie Wraight the Admiralty
librarian, Jock Gardner and Malcolm Llewellyn-Jones. Mike MacAloon has always had the
invaluable capacity not only to decide immediately which document would exactly answer a
particular question but, more importantly, the knowledge of exactly where to find it within the Branch.
The late D K Brown was a valued source of information on design issues that related to carrier
performance. Andrew Choong and Jeremy Michel of the Historic Photograph and Ship Plans
Department of the National Maritime Museum at the Brass Foundry in Woolwich have also been a
considerable source of information and encouragement; I have greatly enjoyed my all-too-brief time
with them poring over ships’ plans and drawings. I am also grateful to Graham Edmonds for keeping
me up-to-date with what is in newspapers and other publications.
Both in Australia at King-Hall Naval History Conferences and during his visits to the UK, I have
received valuable insight about both the RAN and the RN from my friend David Stevens, formerly the
Director of Strategic and Historical Studies at the Sea Power Centre – Australia, and much other
useful information from Joe Straczek. John Perryman, Senior Historian at the Sea Power Centre, was
kind enough to locate several RAN images and to obtain permission for me to use them. Rear Admiral
James Goldrick, whose father was a pilot in the RAN, has also contributed through discussions over
many years, to my knowledge of the part played by the RAN’s Fleet Air Arm.
From the United States I have learnt a great deal from my friend Norman Friedman, the pre-eminent
naval analyst of our generation, and from others with whom I have come into contact including A D
Baker III, Edward J Marolda, Thomas Wildenberg and, not least, Tom Momiyama of the Naval Air
Systems Command with whom I carried out the AV-8 Harrier trial on the Tarawa during 1981.
USS
The USNI digital News Daily Update provided important and relevant information.
Michael Whitby, Chief of the Canadian Naval History Team, contributed to my knowledge of the
RCN Fleet Air Arm, as did J Allan Snowie from whom I learnt a great deal about aircraft operations
from Magnificent and Bonaventure.
HMCS
As before, I have found it possible to illustrate the book largely from the photographic collection
that I have built up over many years but I am grateful to several people who were kind enough to help
fill the gaps. Among these were Steve Bush of Maritime Books who allowed me to use images from
the T Ferrers-Walker Collection, and the Crail Museum.
Discussions with Conrad Waters over my contributions to the Seaforth World Naval Review every
year have also stimulated my thought processes and been of considerable value, I am grateful for his
interest and support.
This publication contains Public Sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence
v 1.0 in the UK.
I am grateful to Rob Gardiner and Seaforth Publishing for their encouragement and support with
this book, as with its predecessors. Our successful partnership has lasted for nearly a decade now
and I have already started work on our next book together.
David Hobbs
Glossary
A/A Anti-Aircraft
A&AEE Aeroplane & Armament Experimental Establishment (Boscombe Down)
AAC Army Air Corps
AAG Advanced Arrester Gear
AAM Air-to-Air Missile
ACA Aircraft Carrier Alliance
ACNB Australian Commonwealth Navy Board
ACNS Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff
ACR Aircraft Control Room (in a carrier)
ACS Aircraft Carrier Squadron
ADA Action Data Automation
ADAWS Action Data Automated Weapons System
ADR Aircraft Direction Room
AED Air Engineering Department (in a carrier)
AESA Airborne Electronically-Scanned Array
AEW Airborne Early Warning
AF Admiral of the Fleet
AFC Air Force Cross
AFO Admiralty Fleet Order
AFWR Atlantic Fleet Weapons Range (USN)
AHU Aircraft Holding Unit
AI Air Intercept (radar)
AIM Air Intercept Missile
ALIS Autonomous Logistic Information System
AMRAAM Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile
AN/APS Army-Navy/Airborne Pulse Search (radar) (USN designation)
A/S Anti-Submarine
ASaC Airborne Surveillance and Control
ASM Air-to-Surface Missile
ASOC Air Support Operations centre
ASR Air-Sea Rescue
ASV Air-to-Surface Vessel (radar)
ASW Anti-Submarine Warfare