They say a picture paints a thousand words. Whilst these two are not the best in terms of quality, they should make the point.
1. An illustration from a book, describing task group air defence/AAW. Whilst the distances stated are questionable, particularly as naval SAMs have longer ranges than when that book was written in the early nineties, and the range of a CAP station is given as 100 nm, it does prove a point. The blue area represents the area that can be defended by aircraft from the carrier. A similar thing applies to ASW protection involving carrier based aircraft.
Moving the battle outwards and defence in depth are for winners.
2. From the eighties periodical
Warplane, a map of the GIUK gap and the Atlantic theatre. The text mentions particularly the role of the F-14 Tomcats and E-2 Hawkeyes aboard the American carriers, and the Sea Harriers and Sea Kings aboard the RN ones. The illustration includes all the US carrier based aircraft types, and our Sea Kings.
