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Agreed that they are all flawed. But as with everything else in life there are compromises to be made. The Illustrious/Implacables are IMHO not worth the effort of reconstruction and by the 1960s Victorious was too small. The Centaurs (first 3) are OK for the 1950s but are too small when you come to the 1960s and the need to operate the Buccaneer and an aircraft larger/more powerful than the Sea Venom. Hermes is like Victorious.The best solution would have been a completely new design in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Whether that should be CVA-01 or not I can't make up my mind about. Opinions on that design in everything I read seem to be divided. But whatever way you look at it, by about 1960 for a conventional carrier with a meaningful sized airgroup to operate state of the art strike & fighter aircraft seems to need a ship of 55,000+ tons deep displacement. Larger would have been nice but the facilities don't allow (another case of lack of investment since the 1920s). But no one wants to actually write the cheque for that so we kept patching up what we had to last a bit longer until the money could become available. Which of course it didn't until the 1997 Defence Review leading to the QEs. Light at the end of the tunnel after 30+ years.
Agreed that they are all flawed. But as with everything else in life there are compromises to be made. The Illustrious/Implacables are IMHO not worth the effort of reconstruction and by the 1960s Victorious was too small. The Centaurs (first 3) are OK for the 1950s but are too small when you come to the 1960s and the need to operate the Buccaneer and an aircraft larger/more powerful than the Sea Venom. Hermes is like Victorious.
The best solution would have been a completely new design in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Whether that should be CVA-01 or not I can't make up my mind about. Opinions on that design in everything I read seem to be divided. But whatever way you look at it, by about 1960 for a conventional carrier with a meaningful sized airgroup to operate state of the art strike & fighter aircraft seems to need a ship of 55,000+ tons deep displacement. Larger would have been nice but the facilities don't allow (another case of lack of investment since the 1920s). But no one wants to actually write the cheque for that so we kept patching up what we had to last a bit longer until the money could become available. Which of course it didn't until the 1997 Defence Review leading to the QEs. Light at the end of the tunnel after 30+ years.
