Originally Posted by
Bing
I'm sure I've read somewhere the thinking was that the Treasury were only going to fund two carriers, irrespective of how big they were or weren't.
As one who was there in the good old days of the Staff Target, there was no such assumption. It really was a capability driven choice. All the operational analysis pointed to needing more than the FW capacity of a CVS-a-like. That also allowed you to do different packages with more capability and flexibility.
Which meant you either brought three CVS and took two to any significant party, or two larger ships of which you could make a useful contribution with a single one.
After that, you're into relative costs, including infrastructure and manpower. Bigger decks require less chockhead effort - less respotting and fewer
fewer movements, plus two crews vice three. If the availability could be made to work - it has - then you get more bang for buck.
But the size increase over CVS confused a lot of people, leading to many letters to Tellywelly from retired Pongoes who assumed that bigger equals much more expensive.