Maxburner - I happened to be 801 Sqn's FC during exercise SS II. I can assure you the squadron was far from welded to the deck. We went up to 8 jets, and maintained a high sortie rate. We undertook CAP missions overland and defending the task force as well as fighter sweep. It was the most challenging and rewarding time I had as a Fighter Controller - seeing the smiles on the boys faces as they walked into the crew room to show us the tapes of them schwacking the oppostion made all the hard work in planning worth while. The SS II work was all in addition to planning for possible ops over Afghanistan, which we directed had to be prepared for right up until the time we disembarked to go back to the UK.
We also did a lot of stuff that hadnt been done since the cold war - ie silent recoveries to the CVS, FA2 radar off, CVS radars off - at night as well. You werent on Illustrious - and neither were the GR7 boys for more than a few days, so dont comment on what the FA2 can and cant do from a CVS.
As for gunboat diplomacy there is still a lot to be said for it. The record for a British warship getting from Portsmouth to the Straits of Hormuz is eleven days I believe (at 30 knots you can do 720 miles a day), so you can get warships around the world quicker than you think. I also remember being in an exercise of Northern Spain in May 2000, and four days later being off Sierra Leone. Certainly gave the Spanish boys in the Canaries a wake up as we went hurtling through there at 30 knots!
History has a strange way of repeating itself. Twenty years ago a whole load of ships and equipment from the Navy was to be scrapped and along came the Falklands. I predict the FA2's will deploy to the Gulf on Ark Royal, and get some kills and earn a deserved reprieve (whilst the F3's sit on CAP somewhere near Riyadh).
Last edited by timzsta; 1st Jan 2003 at 21:47.