Wrath
In terms of carrier capabilites pre SDSR, I suspect we'd be looking at about 6 airframes as a sustainable effort, and maybe 12-14 for a very short burst. To do this would have utterly knackered the GR9 force, which was down to 10 FE@R and had no funding to do more than this.
Meanwhile we'd have also run out of AORs, support ships and so on, and by now we'd have had to have replaced the carriers on station without any supporting dedicated stores ship, which in turn means that the carrier would have been really rather limited in what it could do.
6 sustainable airframes for an investment of 1100 personnel on the carrier, plus roughly 1000 more in the escorts, plus you'd still need an air/land bridge to get top ups of munitions, fuel and supplies to the RFA to in turn replenish the tanker. Unfortunately some people still cling to the fantasy idea that our RFAs have a dimensional portal in them which gave them unlimited supplies, and get upset when reminded that the carrier is ultimately reliant on land / air support to keep it floating.