Floating Airfields
exMudMover and OA:
Good comments. But there are some come backs I'd like to offer. Quote from one:
You fail to mention operating an effective Air Task Organisation and maintaining an effective Intelligence organisation – both essential tasks in war.
Yes, I did fail to mention them - my bad - but there were plenty of others I omitted. However, neither of these is a core 'RN' or 'RAF' skill - they need to be 'Joint' skills. And in both cases, exercising them on board a ship is not going to be the same as from a land base.
Going back to the Falklands to make a point is Ok, I suppose. Yes, at that stage, the RN was a little short on experience of actually developing close air support from carriers (wasn't everyone?), but this one is going a bit far, I think: :
In many cases the actions of those Senior Officers hampered or even negated the efforts of the hard-pressed RAF Ground Attack and Recce pilots, who were doing their utmost in the face of almost insurmountable operational difficulties.
Actually, I don't remember anyone down there, of any cloth, who wasn't 'hard pressed' and 'doing their utmost'. All aviators hard a hard job to do down there. And quite honestly, getting yourself across East Falkland on foot in one piece and engaging in close combat was probably a bit more 'operationally insurmountable' than working out how to fly a GR3 from Hermes. I'm glad I had to do neither.
Actually, we were making it up as we went along, and between all three Services, did a job that no other country in the world could have done - US included, by the way. It was an astounding military success, and everyone played a part.
You can't make carriers floating airfields by thinking that they are. The effective employment of air from these platforms demands different doctrine and CONOPS, different (but related) skill sets, and different priorities. In this way, you minimise the constraints of time and physical space on the ship, but maximise the advantages of mobile basing and freedom to manoeuvre.
OA actually makes the point very well, in my view - if we are going to get serious about maritime air, we will have to devote time, energy and resources to it that are currently doing something else. As to a 'separate RN cadre of FJ pilots identiaclly skilled to their RAF counterparts' - that, surely is not the aim. Why not have a 'cadre of skilled FJ pilots drawn from the RAF and RN'?