The most interesting feature of the design was that it was intended to be ‘suitable for conversion to operate VTO [vertical take-off] aircraft’. These were an exciting prospect at the time, although no design was mature enough to offer the prospect of operational capability in under a decade. It was assumed that VTO aircraft would always land with their nose into the relative wind, but that the ship need not turn into wind for it to do so. A circle 72ft in diameter was projected at the centre of deck movement on which VTO aircraft would land and then taxi clear into the deck park, leaving room for the next aircraft to land seconds later. So that funnel smoke would not interfere with cross-deck landing, the design included two funnels, the one furthest from the landing circle being selected for use as appropriate. Details of how to mount masts, radar arrays and aerials on the small island were not worked out in detail but, viewed in hindsight, the design has more merit than the later Invincible Class, in which cross-deck landing was severely impractical but not impossible. Not all aircraft types would have become VTO at once, of course, and these ships might have offered a ‘crossover’ capability if they had retained their catapult and arrester wires, giving the latent ability to operate a mix of Kestrel/Sea Harrier/AV-8 and Gannet AEW aircraft with helicopters and legacy fighters such as the Sea Vixen, used for electronic attack.
Unfortunately, as things turned out, the design was not taken forward because VTO technology was considered to be too immature to justify the cost of investment and there was too little potential for strike warfare with large aircraft like the projected Blackburn NA-39, which was to become the Buccaneer. Like the 1952 carrier, this sketch was never given a formal name.
Undaunted by the rejection of the N-113/VTO convertible carrier, the DAW made another suggestion in late 1953, aimed at producing an inexpensive trade-protection carrier capable of operating the new generation of high-performance fighters. It would also be capable, when required, of embarking suitable aircraft to augment the strike fleet. Like the small carrier just described, the new sketch produced by DNC in February 1954 was based on the 1942 light fleet carrier hull, and there is evidence in their ships’ covers that consideration was given to converting some ships to this standard. The key to the operation of heavier and more powerful aircraft was acceptance of the fact that they could not be launched and recovered at the same time. A landing area angled 2 degrees to port was to be offset slightly to port of the centreline, with its sponson’s weight balanced by a long sponson on the starboard, giving room for a deck park around the new island structure in Fly 2. Two new lifts stressed for heavier aircraft would have been installed closer together than those in the 1942 design; the after one was forward of the four Mark 13 arrester wires. A new steam catapult with 180ft stroke was projected for the starboard side of Fly 1, with the catapult aircraft line-up equipment (CALE) gear aft of it, level with and to starboard of the forward lift. Both lifts obtruded into the landing area and needed to be up during a recovery; the forward lift needed to be up during catapult launches. Some space on the starboard side of Fly 1 was available for use as a deck park during recoveries, but the angle was not great enough to make much of it available. The only defensive armament would have been twin Mark 5 Bofors mountings, one sited forward and aft of the port and starboard sponsons. The island, masts and radar arrays were not worked out in detail, but would probably have resembled smaller versions of those with which the 1943 light fleet carriers were completed at about the same time. The air group would have been about twenty, with a smaller deck park than the earlier concept but a larger hangar.
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