Mog, belated thanks for your reply. 'One snag was that SHAR training for ground attack was cursory during conversion and CBUs were not even in the RN inventory,'
Got me thinking, were the custard bombs, that were delivered in response to your suggestion, confined to Hermes? In their absence would you have been expected to have used 2-inch against parked aircraft etc.
? I understand 1(F) used both CBUs and 2-inch against troop poditions?
Also, I wonder if 'you know who' had CBUs on his wish list when he was flying the relevant desk. Funding them is a different question, one tends to forget how tight things were, as some one put it to me he was thinking aalong the lines of 'soon we'll be alongside and the pipe will be, for exercise the ship is now at sea'. 'No way, anti-armour weapon - not a Navy role.'