First of all, let me state that I was having a particularly bad day yesterday and so I was unnecssarily grumpy in my posts. I will get off my high horse but I do get annoyed when people continuously accuse the RAF of being anti-carrier. This is not so, and I personally am in favour of their procurement - but that dosen't mean we shouldn't debate the issues. To wit:
Allthenick,
Point 1: (a) It wasn't as simple as that. One of the issues is that the RN provided observers, not pilots to the maritime part of the RAF, and they did not push aircraft specifications as pilots might - they were, after all, seaman officers on a short tour - compare to the problems the AAC had when their officers were mostly five-minute wonders. But anyway,
(b) I really do think it is different today. everybody is much more joint, the single services do not control procurement to anywhere near the same degree and we are (generally) more interested in achieving joint effect rather than securing a bigger slice of the budget than the other two services. I am not suggesting that the RAF should own everything that flies, merely pointing out that there might be scope for efficiency here.
Point 2: Of course you're right that going to sea is unappealing to people who are used to working at MOBs. But so is living in dusty tents in hot places - I expect you could run a poll about that and get similar results. At the end of the day, we do as we're effing told. Although actually I think that it would be much better for the maintainers and other key surface-employed individuals in the carrier strike capablitiy to be RN, so that the capability of the ship is maximised. I was really just talking about the pilots, who will do the same job whether they're RN or RAF. I don't think you'll find many of them on e-goat.
GOLF_BRAVO_ZULU,
Read some Doctrine. Carrier air is a joint asset, not a ship's weapon system. It is not the RN who will decide how carriers are used, but CJO. A carrier can be either a taxi for embarked aviation, or part of a group with a discrete task.