AH might not have been as effective as Harriers but they were better than nothing.
Granted, but they were IMHO no more effective in tactical terms than another pair of jets at Gioia would have been.
In other forums, I was advocating their deployment on board HMS Ocean right from the beginning. Most of the activity was occurring within 3-5 km of the sea ...
Er, no, actually. I wouldn't say
most. Depends, of course, what you mean by 'activity'.
... and they could have prevented Gadaffi's forces from using the coastal highway with such impunity. Remember all the to-ing and fro-ing between Tripoli, Misurata, Ras Lanuf, Ajdabiya, etc?
So I take it you believe that 2 AH could have stopped movement over something like 900NM of coast? And what makes you think they might have been any better than jets? Did you notice any difference at all in the PGF ability to manoeuvre after AH was deployed? No, nor did I. In any case, the trick was not striking the movement, it was detecting and identifying it over that vast area, and once you've done that, getting someone there to deal with it. Call me bluff and old-fashioned, but I believe a pair of 540kn jets just off a tanker might be able to cover a larger area in an hour than a pair of 110kn helicopters. There are other problems with this line of argument but I'm not going to go into them in an unclas forum.
By the time the UK and French AH arrived, most of Gadaffi's forces had left Tripoli and entrenched themselves in other locations, mainly strung along the coast.
Clearly we were looking at vastly different int pictures. I could also say "By the time the UK and French AH arrived, Gadaffi's forces had been beaten back from the centre of Misrata to outside artillery range, and were no longer posing a threat to Benghazi". In any case, if they were "mainly strung along the coast", then why didn't AH make mincemeat of them if it was such a game-changer?
I'll reiterate that I don't want to take anything away from the AAC guys who did an excellent job at great risk. However, to suggest that AH was a game changer, or that it would have been had it only been deployed earlier when Gadaffi's forces were in better shape, is disingenuous. I think the Telegraph pointed out that AH had a massive effect in the Gulf war, "when the US deployed 238 of them". Do you think that deploying one-fortieth the number over about five times the frontage was likely to have the same effect?