CVA-01 Queen Elizabeth - Cancellation
The real battle for survival commenced after the election in October 1964 of the new Labour Government of Harold Wilson with a mandate to reinvigorate Britain’s defences, and contain costs. With no material work done, Minister of Defence Dennis Healey made the decision that the CVA-01 program was too costly as a package [the aircraft and the ship itself]. CVA-01 was cancelled due to inter-service rivalries, the huge cost of the proposed carriers, and the difficulties they would have presented in construction, operation, and maintenance. The 22 February 1966 British Defense White Paper stated "The present carrier force will continue well into the 1970s; but we shall not build a new carrier, CVA 01. This ship could not come into service before 1973. By then, our remaining commitments will not require her, and the functions for which we might otherwise have needed a carrier, will be performed in another way....
"There are limitations on the use of our present forces. These limitations are likely to grow more severe. This has been the background to our assessment of the case for keeping a British carrier force in the Far East in the 1970s. Experience and study have shown that only one type of operation exists for which carriers and carrier-borne aircraft would be indispensable: that is the landing, or withdrawal, of troops against sophisticated opposition outside the range of land-based air cover. It is only realistic to recognise that we, unaided by our allies, could not expect to undertake operations of this character in the 1970s — even if we could afford a larger carrier force.
"But the best carrier force we could manage to have in the future would be very small. The force of five carriers, which we inherited from the previous Government, will reduce to threee in a few years' time. Even if CVA 01 were built, the force would be limited to three ships through the 1970s. The total cost of such a force would be some £1,400 million over a ten year period. For this price, we should be able to have only one carrier permanently stationed in the Far East, with another normally available at up to 15 days' notice. We do not belief that this could give a sufficient operational return for our expenditure.
"We also believe that the tasks, for which carrier-borne aircraft might be required in the later 1970s, can be more cheaply performed in other ways. Our plan is that, in the future, aircraft operating from land bases should take over the strike-reconnaissance and air-defence functions of the carrier on the reduced scale which we envisage that our commitments will require after the mid-1970s. Close anti-submarine protection of the naval force will be given by helicopters operating from ships other than carriers. AEW aircraft will continue to be operated from existing carriers, and subsequently from land bases. Strike capability against enemy ships will be provided by the surface-to-surface guided-missile ...."
In the two-day debate on defence in the House of Commons on 07 March 1966, Dennis Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, said that the biggest single saving resulting from the Defence Review would be in the aircraft programme of the previous government. "Here we should save £1,200 million over the next ten years, partly through buying aircraft more cheaply from abroad and partly through having a more cost-effective mix of aircraft for the tasks we envisaged. Our capability in certain directions would be substantially increased; we should be getting the C-130 next year, five years earlier than we could have expected the HS.681; the Phantoms would come into service in 1968 and the P.1127 in 1969. "We do not believe there was any chance of getting the P.1154 until 1972. Certainly, we had to pay dollars for the aircraft which we needed, but the net additional cost of the whole of the programme outlined in the Defence Review was only £165 million spread over ten years." There was only one role of the carrier which the Government considered necessary and which there was some difficulty in carrying out more cheaply by other means, and this was the protection of ships at sea. This role would be taken over in part by RAF aircraft operating from land bases in close cooperation with the Navy; in addition a small surface-to-surface guided weapon would be developed for use against missile-firing ships.
Mr Enoch Powell, Conservative defence spokesman, said that the Government's decision not to huild a new aircraft carrier meant that, from the early 1970s onward the UK should not have the power to carry out amphibious operations except across narrow waters — unless integrated in the task force of an ally which did provide offensive power of the Navy as hitherto conceived lay th the aircraft carrier. The Government's decision meant a makeover to the philosophy of the surface-to-surface missile, which today was "hardly in the very earliest stages of introducing that new weapon system which must supersede the power of the carrier."
The Admiralty Board had always argued that Britain’s east-of-Suez posture required a capable aircraft carrier force — in the 1950s Britain’s contribution to the UN during the several years of the Korean War had included a permanent carrier presence. Thus the decision in February 1966 to abandon on cost grounds the future large carrier, known as “CVA01”, was the most traumatic shock to the Royal Navy of the whole postwar period — all of naval experience during and after the Second World War had demonstrated the necessity of fixed-wing naval aviation to a balanced fleet.
To everybody's utter amazement, the entire Admiralty Board tendered their resignations, the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Sea Lords plus the Chief of Staff and the Deputy Chief of Staff. The Navy Minister, Christopher Mayhew MP, also resigned. The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir David Luce, decided to offer his head only, releasing the others. First Sea Lord asked Commander-in-Chief Portsmouth, Admiral Sir Varyl Begg, to become the First Sea Lord on the understanding that the rest of the Board would stay to support him. Admiral Begg agreed.
Rear-Admiral John Adams was a highly successful captain of a commando carrier - HMS - during the Indonesian confrontation in the 1960s, which confirmed him to be on course for the highest rank; but he was then sacked for maintaining that the Navy should not scrap aircraft carriers; his conviction, based on his own experience, was later proved correct. When Admiral Sir David Luce resigned as First Sea Lord, Adams found himself chairman of the Future Fleet Working Party, reporting to Admiral of the Fleet Sir Varyl Begg, a gunnery officer who believed that missiles would replace aircraft.
When Adams' working party recommended a "through-deck cruiser", which would deploy helicopters and vertical take-off fighters, Begg was adamant that he did not want this. Adams was told that he was not to be recommended for further employment, and he retired in 1968. The last full re-design of the Royal Navy took place in the mid-1970s – itself largely in response to the abandoning of the CVA01 carrier program in 1966. The three Invincible Class carriers were originally intended as escort carriers to complement the CVA-01 project. After its cancellation, a design for a 12,500 ton command cruiser was put forward capable of carrying six Sea king helicopters. This later increased to nine helicopters and the design revised to a 20,000 ton ‘through deck cruiser’. Adams was invited to the launch of the aircraft carrier Invincible in 1977, and his ideas for the shape and size of the fleet were vindicated over the next quarter-century.
The through-deck-cruisers procured during the 1970s provided a compromise which enabled Britain to retain carriers by stealth. These were used in an anti-submarine warfare role with a few aircraft embarked for air defence. The end of the Cold War in the late 1980s has enabled them to become ‘true’ aircraft carriers in an environment where the enemy is not a first rank power.
