Widger,
You're right, I'm a simple chap. But perhaps my previous post was too obtuse for you. I'm not really interested in your bio, especially as you're so quick to discount my own experience (that you guessed at rather wrongly I might add). Put it in your profile if you're anxious for people to know it. And I'm not very interested in your photo album, your polarized subjective opinion and arbitrary statement of 'Widger-facts' that the QE cannot be operated part-time.
Do you have some hard facts and figures that show the accident/incident rate aboard shot up when JFH took to doing part-time naval ops? If the accident rate didn't go up and the boys still met their operational tasking, what's your point? I don't think we're in the business of perfecting carrier ops into an art form just for the sake of it. Good enough is all we're after i.e. good enough to achieve the planned operational tasking which, to my knowledge, it was.
Also how do you justify the fact that the USMC Harriers do manage to do part-time naval aviation rather well? What about the French, Spanish & Italians who all only have one deck and so are compelled to do part-time naval aviation to some extent? On what basis do you discount the Operational Capability of everyone who's not a SHar-boy from the 80s?