Zumwalt "borrows" (and adapts) European carrier designs...

[CV12Hornet]

By this point, having learned about HMS Africa I think an all-out Audacious class building (four of them) might be the RN best case scenario. With perfect, 20/20 hindsight, they are the one and only just big enough to handle Phantoms - 15 years in the future, 1945 - 1960. Four of them would be appreciable. Maybe this would help nixing the impossible-to-rebuild 2-1-3 Illustrious class.

Not all of it. The RN plan was for 12 carriers when those rebuilds were decided on. But with four fleet carriers in the offing it would be scaled back to two ships and then probably just Victorious, with the Implacable rebuilds.

Things get more interesting in 1954 and 1957 as the carrier fleet shrinks.

 

[Volkodav]

The CVV and CVA-01 designs are definitely about the minimum viable fleet carrier. Any smaller and you have to start operating smaller aircraft, with noteworthy penalties in this era of aircraft design.


Maltas are bigger, but they don't really change the fundamentals of the RN's postwar carrier problems (aging WW2-era hulls and machinery; much painstaking refit work needed to bring them up to modern aviation standards; oversized planned force structures).

That the French would have copied them is a laughable proposition. The Clemenceaus are far more modern, and more importantly, French-designed and built.

The UK needed to build its 1000' carrier concept from the 1950s instead of rebuilding Victorious and Eagle.

 

[CV12Hornet]

The UK needed to build its 1000' carrier concept from the 1950s instead of rebuilding Victorious and Eagle.

Unfortunately, that's probably impossible. The 1000-footer was too large for too many of Britain's ports. More to the point, with the existing carrier fleet the priority was replacing the Centaurs rather than any of the fleet carriers, and Victorious' modernization was funded and designed under a completely different fleet plan and decade.