Royal Navy with F-8 Crusader instead of F-4 Phantom II

There was certainly the aspect that McDD thought Spey F4 could garner more sales.
On paper the performance looked much better and the future of turbofans over turbojets was already apparent. J79 was reaching the end of it's development path.
Spey was just beginning.
 
A fascinating discussion throwing up a lot of info.
The RN came pretty close to a CVA01 carrier by keeping Ark Royal in service until 1979 with Phantoms and Bucs.
If Eagle and Ark had been in better shape maybe both could have been Phantomised with one serving alongside either CVA01 or Hermes as CVS until the mid 80s.
Perhaps the real elephant in the room was not the RAF or even Polaris but BAOR. Keeping three divisions and RAF Germany required even more organisational acrobatics and sucked up a large share of the budget. But it was the one NATO commitment we could not rat on.
 
The most annoying thing about the RN from an alternative history perspective is there's no single contentious decision that if reversed can eliminate a number of bad things and/or foster a number of good things. Every thread that makes up RN capability has to be fostered individually, although some decisions will impact others.
 
uk 75 said:
Perhaps the real elephant in the room was not the RAF or even Polaris but BAOR. Keeping three divisions and RAF Germany required even more organisational acrobatics and sucked up a large share of the budget. But it was the one NATO commitment we could not rat on.
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Has that ever been well tested here?
 
Unfortunately the Western European Union commitment along with the East of Suez commitment are deeply political.
They continue the agonizing between the wars about establishing a British Expeditionary Force or arming the Singapore base.
In both periods the Treasury looms large wanting to keep "sound" money and spend money on social issues like housing and health.
The UK is faced with harsher choices than the USA for example because of its economic and industrial decline in the 20th Century.
Neither the US nor West Germany would let the UK out of its WEU commitment. This did not stop London from doing what it could to reduce expenditure on BAOR and RAFG.
 
Drifting from TwoSader...but why not?

Let's not blame "Treasury" for non-spend issues we may disagree with: Treasury has never stopped anything. Ministers do. The Chancellor (UK Finance Minister) puts up an either, or...(say, operate 4 CVs with Air Wings, or...XX) and the collective of peer Cabinet Ministers says, ah, Yes, welll, ummm... they are all responsible. Ministers, including at Finance resign, noisily, when they believe the collective decision is plain wrong. So do Chiefs. In recent times only 1 has, over Nott, Navy, 1981.
 
Cabinet decisions are the ultimate driver of force structure. The F8-RN wasn't selected because Cabinet had decided in the early 60s that going forward the RN would have big (F4 capable) fleet carriers, because it was cogently argued that a slight increase in ship cost meant a great increase in capability and therefore better value for money.

Its important to keep in mind that the British Cabinet ministers of the early 60s had spent their 20s fighting WW2 and their 30s in the postwar recovery(rationing) era and were used to making tough decisions. My guess is that this constant state of crisis might have caused them to think short term fixes would address longer term problems more than they should have, but they weren't rubes who were ignorant of the military nor afraid to show real leadership if the issue was important enough.

I think the crux of the F8-RN argument is that people believe CVA01 was cancelled because it was too expensive 53,000t and therefore a ~40,000t ship would be cheaper so wouldn't be cancelled. I don;t believe this is true.
 
The elephant on the room on choices for carriers and fighters is AEW....and the system of control.

We get carried (ha!) away by specifics of this or that carrier or fighter aircraft, but miss the systemic overview.
Fighter performance must be high when time is short, and the faster the attacker and the shorter the detection range....The more performance must be achieved by the Fighter and the more it costs.
This distorts our perspective as we obsess over squeezing the biggest, fastest and most capable Fighter aboard.

While the UK had pioneered this during WWII, postwar this looms as the greatest failure.
Ultimately the cheap option of US sets for Skyranger and later Gannet was not followed by new systems.
Domestic and US options were seriously on the cards. Yet each time things didn't work out.

You can have F8, if you can put up better AEW.
 
Not many. A Tracer is a bulky plane, with one Tracer taking up about as much space as 1.5 Buccaneers.

CVA-01 was designed to accommodate 4 similar planes, and Eagle and Ark Royal might be able to fit a reasonable number without cutting into fighter/striker numbers, but Victorious and Hermes probably don't have the space to do that.
 
_Del_ said:
The only reasons to pick the Crusader over the Phantom by the mid-60's is if your carrier is not physically capable of operating a Phantom (France) or as an austerity measure.
In hindsight, arguably the RN is better off buying off the shelf Crusaders than pouring money into redesigning the F-4 to accomodate Speys, but that wasn't remotely apparent at the time when the RN still had sights on bigger carriers. It was better than the Sea Vixen needing to be replaced, but the bar is pretty low. Financially, it's a lot cheaper than redesigning the Phantom to use for 10-15 years.

The more redesigning of the Crusader, the less obvious the financial advantage (I don't recall the numbers, but I believe the Spey Phantoms ended up costing over twice as much as the RAF buy when the project was amortized over the airframes). Redesign doesn't make much sense unless you get the USN onboard somehow, and that seems very unlikely. French participation helps, but they are looking at the financial aspects, too.
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The USN realized how much of an improvement Spey made in the A7 that they retired all previous types.

I'd bet that the USN would happily help pay for the redesign retroactively once the first Spey Twosader flew.
 
CV12Hornet said:
Not many. A Tracer is a bulky plane, with one Tracer taking up about as much space as 1.5 Buccaneers.

CVA-01 was designed to accommodate 4 similar planes, and Eagle and Ark Royal might be able to fit a reasonable number without cutting into fighter/striker numbers, but Victorious and Hermes probably don't have the space to do that.
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so 4 would cost you 6 Bucs probably a bit less after removing Gannets, but your are probably gonna be stuck with a single squadron of fighters 12-16?
 
Rule of cool said:
HMAS Melbourne had 6 trackers, 8 A4s and 6-8 helicopters. Does an E1 take up far more hangar space than an S2 Tracker?
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No it didn't. The E-1A Tracer and S-2D Tracker both had folded wingspans of 27ft 4in. The former was slightly longer than the latter at 45ft 4in v 43ft 6in. Those dimensions are according to 1960s editions of JAWA.

According to the same sources:
  • 44ft 00in x 19ft 11in for a Gannet AEW.3 with the wings folded.
  • 51ft 10in x 19ft 11in for a Buccaneer with nose and wings folded.
  • 42ft 11in x 27ft 05in for a A-4C/E Skyhawk which didn't have folding wings.
 
Rule of cool said:
HMAS Melbourne had 6 trackers, 8 A4s and 6-8 helicopters. Does an E1 take up far more hangar space than an S2 Tracker?
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Except, according to the Standard Aircraft Characteristics an E-1 consumes considerably more hangar space than a S-2.
  • 45 for both marks of Tracer (25 flight deck & 20 hangar).
  • 76 for the C-1A Trader.
  • 76 for the S-2A & S-2C Tracker.
  • 61 (33 flight deck & 28 Hangar) for the S-2D & S-2E Tracker.
With the exception of the S-2D/E (which is for a CVA-34 class ship) all of the above are for a CVA-19 class ship. Except that CVA-19 was the SCB-27C/SCB-125 Hancock and CVA-34 was the SCB-27A/SCB-125A Oriskany, which were effectively the same design. The documents didn't say what the spit between the flight deck and hangar was for the C-1A, S2A and S-2C.

According to the Standard Aircraft Characteristics the Hawkeye consumed no more hangar and flight deck space than a Tracer.
  • 46 E-2A Hawkeye on a CVA-19.
  • 47 E-2C Hawkeye on a CVA-19.
  • 45 C-2A Greyhound on a CVS-10 (which is a SCB-27A/SCB-125 Essex).
The Hawkeye was considerably longer than a Tracer (56ft 4in v 45ft 4in) and had a slightly greater wing span (29ft 4in v 27ft 4in) according to the sources I used for Post 135.

The Standard Aircraft Characteristics for both marks of the Tracer said the folded wingspan was 30ft 5in rather than 27ft 4in. This is probably because the wings on the E-1 folded into a different position (beside the fuselage) than the C-1 & S-2 (above the fuselage).
 
Rule of cool said:
HMAS Melbourne had 6 trackers, 8 A4s and 6-8 helicopters. Does an E1 take up far more hangar space than an S2 Tracker?
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answered quite nicely and now I am stuck with a reply that I can't back out of... so the only thing I can add is the Hawkeye is a bit taller except for one variant that had a dipping dome that was a huge PITA and only used on the Midways.
 
NOMISYRRUC said:
Except, according to the Standard Aircraft Characteristics an E-1 consumes considerably more hangar space than a S-2.
  • 45 for both marks of Tracer (25 flight deck & 20 hangar).
  • 76 for the C-1A Trader.
  • 76 for the S-2A & S-2C Tracker.
  • 61 (33 flight deck & 28 Hangar) for the S-2D & S-2E Tracker.
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How can that be true? Isn't SAC just the footprint, which is length by width when folded?
 
CV12Hornet said:
You also can get rid of all the picket destroyers the RN needs without good AEW. Some of the more pie-in-the-sky DDG numbers are predicated on needing half the force for picket duty.
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Indeed it's similar for the RAF's overspecced fighter requirements all predicated on ground based radars for warning and control.

And it only gets more vexing when we take into account the efforts on automation, datalinks and system such as the CDS, Type 984 etc.

And as we get into NIGS, Type 985, and ADA to ADAWS we can see how AEWACS would have fundamentally changed the outcomes.
 
Rule of cool said:
I don't doubt you, you're all over this stuff. But the source seems strange, what are the calculations that go into the SAC?
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We don't know. The documents don't say.

However, it is pretty obvious looking at the documents that geometry matters as much as hard dimensions. Eyeballing the docs, I would say the radome and by extension the wing-folding geometry are the culprits. A folded E-1 is basically a rectangular box, while a folded S-2 offers more options for jigsaw puzzle fits.
 
It's heartening to see people talking about the E1 as better AEW aircraft rather than the P.139B. Just as ludicrous is the Gannet AEW7.
 
The E 1 is available right now at at knock down prices . As well if you already operate the S 2 Tracker most of your spare parts problem is solved.
As an aside has anyone ever produced drawings of the Gannet AEW 7 ?
Late edit found some ,.
 
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The Gannets AEW 3 was introduced in 1959, so I'd say the airframes are good until the early 80s. They could be fitted with a better radar at some point, perhaps the Searchwater from the Nimrod MR2, and other electronics.
 
It help to move from analogue Bellhop TV signal of the radar picture, to a digital datalink. Which would tie in nicely to a new AEW radar.

This would tie in with the move to ADA as well.

And where this feeds outwards is as we move to ADAWS on AAW ships the AEW platform can share to them.
 
Rule of cool said:
The Gannets AEW 3 was introduced in 1959, so I'd say the airframes are good until the early 80s. They could be fitted with a better radar at some point, perhaps the Searchwater from the Nimrod MR2, and other electronics.
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Reminds me a lot about the Breguet Alizés. Served 1957 to 1997, and just like you suggest, they got new radars along the way.
 
Rule of cool said:
The Gannets AEW 3 was introduced in 1959, so I'd say the airframes are good until the early 80s. They could be fitted with a better radar at some point, perhaps the Searchwater from the Nimrod MR2, and other electronics.
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How much generator power can you stick in them?

I mean, Tracer to Hawkeye went from something like 1500hp per side to 4500hp per side, not least to power the bigger radar!
 
zen said:
Rather more than 1,500hp

en.m.wikipedia.org

Armstrong Siddeley Double Mamba - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org en.m.wikipedia.org
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2875hp, then.

While the Hawkeyes went to 4500 and then 5100 per engine, with associated extra power available for electrical generation. Granted with a much larger airframe, but I'd still want roughly that 4500-5100hp level of power for a Gannett AEW.7 or whatever number you want to call it for the updated versions with new radars.
 
All sorts of (IMHO) false economy decisions drive following options which lead to more false economy decisions.

Joined up thinking with the end goal as operational reality rather than bean counting expediency would give better options throughout the life of the asset, a carrier in this instance.

A real pity we do not get that.
 
Rule of cool said:
I don't doubt you, you're all over this stuff. But the source seems strange, what are the calculations that go into the SAC?
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For what it's worth I couldn't comprehend it either. That's why double checked by reading my pdfs of the documents in case I made a mistake on my spreadsheet and I hadn't. That is, except for the folded wingspan of the Tracer.
 
Scott Kenny said:
2875hp, then.

While the Hawkeyes went to 4500 and then 5100 per engine, with associated extra power available for electrical generation. Granted with a much larger airframe, but I'd still want roughly that 4500-5100hp level of power for a Gannett AEW.7 or whatever number you want to call it for the updated versions with new radars.
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ASMD.83,875 hp (2,890 kW) (2 x ASMa.6) used on Fairey Gannet AEW Mk.3

But considered the work on AS Viper RR did later on it's quite possible to get upto that level.
 
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I wouldn't expect miracles from any Gannet AEW upgrade. Ultimately the fleet will either die along with the conventional carrier fleet or be replaced by the E2 when older carriers incapable of operating E2s leave service by the early 80s. However a bit more radar range and much better signal processing and communications isn't too much to ask the electronics of 1970 compared to those taken from the early 50s Skyraider AEW and jammed into the Gannet.

To bring it back to the thread, better AEW isn't going to make up for the shortfalls of the F8 because the RN will be stuck with what they have.
 
F-8 has issues but they are better than nothing which is the only other option. I would advocate for another usually but an F-8 WITH a spey has HUGE endurance advantages: It adds 42-45 minutes of loiter.
 
bobtdwarf said:
F-8 has issues but they are better than nothing which is the only other option. I would advocate for another usually but an F-8 WITH a spey has HUGE endurance advantages: It adds 42-45 minutes of loiter.
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The F8 is the only option in a scenario where the Hermes is the centrepiece of the RN conventional carrier fleet. However the Eagle was rebuilt and Ark refitted so the F4 becomes an option, and its a better plane. Someone said earlier in the thread that the F8 is a backup choice for those (like France) can't get a better fighter. This is correct and the RN with Eagle, Ark and CVA01 was right to choose the F4 over the F8.
 
The RN made a fundamental mistake in basing its arguments for a carrier force on "East of Suez" rather than contributing to NATO's Atlantic Striking Fleet.
CVA01 and Ark/Eagle become defensible as a two carrier force.
The RN was never going to get two CVA new builds unless it stretched procurement over two decades. CVA01 should have entered service in 1972 with CVA02 following in 1982.
But things in 1963 looked very different and East of Suez was still seen as essential.
 

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