Originally Posted by
Wander00
...Probably been discussed before but I wonder why we did not have more, smaller, through-deck whatevers instead
Why? It's one thing to put a few jets on a small ship. It's entirely another to routinely launch and recover them in all weather conditions, and maintain them over a significant deployment period, and arm and fuel them during a shootin' war. For that you need something significantly bigger. Hence QE.