Just
I'm not saying you didnt deploy - but a 7 week short embarkation is very different from a sustained work up, deployment that the RN used to do. I'm probably not far off the mark if I said that your 7 week deployment was the sole 2007 GR9 embarkation of any size? Thats the problem with the size of the available fleet once we went from SHAR to GR9 (a move which made a lot of sense to me) - a reduced FE@R meant we couldnt do both.
I still maintain that having looked at the size and capability RN CAGS since the war, the combined FA2 / GR7 airwings we put out in the late 90s, along with ASACs, Merlin, new escorts and good AORs were probably the single most capable carrier airwing the UK has ever operated.