should have been more clear - the 50 aircraft figure was of course referring to the current peacetime load of a single USN carrier - complete with spares / munitions embarked. Carriers are exceptionally flexible and very capable ships - sure a bomber can do an overflight or two - but how many bombers + AAR tanekrs did it take to do black buck raids? To do that again would cripple our AAR assets at the same time as they are being used for other things- again carriers don't need that.
I still fail to see why people here argue against carriers - it is a floating airfield nothing more. There seems to be much hostility to the idea of carriers existing - is this due to inter service rivalry rather than rational thinking I wonder?