Thank you to both Bengo and Not_A_Boffin for those answers and as a follow-up to N_A_B were they at any stage considering steam catapults and if so I dread to think of the costs regarding any modifications.
I'm sure we all get rose tinted glasses as age overtakes us and I take aboard comments about adverse sea conditions affecting flying but the joy of a carrier is it is mobile and can attempt to move away from predicted bad weather. In other words see it coming and move to a more suitable location and make use of carrier borne tanking capability to make up for any extra distance. Yes STOVL can probably operate in rougher sea states, but when it gets rough, it can get rough and there can be no flying of any type but there would probably be no flying anyway??
I understand what you are saying about this 'early concept' but was it ever fully explained that this option was going to rule out any decent AEW capability and definitely no tanking. From the outside looking in it looks like we were never going to use these carriers to their full potential and surely even at that early stage of planning the government must have been told the only future aircraft for these ships would be the F35B or NOTHING and nothing is a possibility.
Not_A_Boffin
Are you surprised at the costs for those American super carriers compared to our ships?
The French are building TWO Mistral class warships for Russia and allegedly selling them for
$1.7 billion. Yes these ships are approximately a third of the size but they are still large warships and I wonder how much this French ship builder would have charged to fit the cats and traps..
I find it hard to accept the costings but the deal is done, the turns have been made and we are steaming up the creek with some very shaky paddles.
Thanks again for the constructive replies
John