"Sure it did some good stuff once we had it, but it was precisely becasue we had it that we were able to buy toy carriers instead of proper ones and that meant we didn't have to field real fixed-wing jets at sea. Imagine if we'd had to find proper replacements for Phantom and Buccaneer"
Do you REALLY think that a full size carrier would have survived the budget cuts of the mid - 70's early 80's???
It was only because we could do carrier-lite that we had anything at all