Originally Posted by
LowObservable
Per Mr Boffin's point about carrier experience... By that time, it was 30 years since Newport News and the Navy had designed and built Nimitz, which in turn was a significantly evolved Forrestal. And say what you like about UK industry, but they seem to have done much better on the QEs than the US has done on Ford.
The rather significant difference being that NAVSEA/NAVAIR maintained a number of offices (including some very interesting ones inside the old airship hangars at what was Navy Lakehurst) staffed by people whose sole purpose was to study carrier deck ops and launch/recovery systems, literally write the book on them and dream up improvements to ships, systems and practices. Not something that remained in the UK unfortunately, as Engines has outlined. The Carter-era CVV exercises would also still have some veterans lurking around as well as all the supporting work. In the UK, we had the remains of the CVA01 archive in the NMM, the CVS work from the early 70s (which of course was really a helicopter carrier) and errrr, that's it.
Lots of those US ideas were harvested by the various UK design teams who went to see them and adopted for QE. Many more still will find their way into Ford and I would imagine that time will show their value.
I doubt that Ford and JFK will be the disasters some are keen to portray, just as QNLZ/PoW will prove to be very successful ships for the RN. Once the hype disperses and they're in service, their value will become apparent.