The UK went into the CVF project with a quite terrifying lack of knowledge about the details of building very large aircraft carriers. In the early days, a phrase often heard about CVF around the corridors was 'air is free and steel is cheap' - I was told that senior officers had convinced themselves that aircraft carriers were 'basically a big box'. The phrase was used here.This was, I believe, a genuinely held opinion. It was pants.
Ahhh bless, diddums.......