Ooh, it keeps getting better. Just got to the but about
When our then Defence Secretary, the Right Honourable Denis Healey MP, decided that Britain no longer needed Strike Aircraft Carriers and cancelled the new carrier project CVA01, he did so on the explicit advice from the Royal Air Force that “the RAF could and would provide effective air defence for the Fleet throughout the oceans of the world and therefore Strike Aircraft Carriers were not needed.” The Defence Secretary accepted this forcefully presented argument which was supported by totally misleading/false data concerning what land-based air could actually do many miles from shore or from friendly airfields.
It makes me feel all warm and glowing inside to know that the RAF's conspiracy over the decades is still managing to bring so much angst into the Bearded Idiot's declining years.