SEABORNE PLANES NAVAL STRATEGISTS TAKING A FRESH LOOK AT CARRIERS

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 38188, 30 March 1973, Page 8

SEABORNE PLANES NAVAL STRATEGISTS TAKING A FRESH LOOK AT CARRIERS

t By

DESMOND WETTERN,

. in the “Daily Telegraph." London)

I Reprinted by arrangement) The Commander-in-Ghief of the Soviet Navy. Admiral of the Fleet Sergei Georgiyevich Gorshkov, was recently quoted as saying that “seapower without air support is senseless.” Yet for the past live years British defence policy has progressively been attempting to maintain at least a semblance of seapower while air support has l>een dwindling almost to vanishing point.

The last war demonstrated I the vital importance of integral air support at sea. The I protection of merchant shipiping is still very relevant land must remain, as it allways has been, the Navy’s i prime task, but unhappily, (nuclear weapons have (clouded the minds of many so that the defence of shipping today is too often regarded as an anachronism. The Navy’s role in a' nuclear age was first ques-l tioned when Mr Duncan] Sandys, in his 1957 Defence i White Paper, stated that the I role of naval forces was] I “somewhat uncertain.” It was! | not too great a step from I (that-to Mr Denis Healey’s '1966 White Paper which can-! celled the Navy’s new aircraft carrier in favour of the illfated. as it turned out, American Fill aircraft operating! from shore bases.

Retrenchment climate By 1968, when the Government decided to divest Britain of her few residual commitments East of Suez, there were fears within and outside the Navy that its role would soon be relegated to that of a coastguard force. In such a climate of retrenchment it was not hard for the i politicians of the day to convince the Naval staff that carriers were a “luxury” the nation could ill-afford and that their retention would be possible only with the sacrifice of planned nuclear submarines and frigates needed for a “European Navy.” Consequently only a small naval air “rearguard” in the Ser-] (vice remained convinced that ( even in a European context seaborne air support would continue to be vital. That the demise of the carriers and their aircraft would leave a yawning gap, many in the Service realised —but few cared publicly to mention, since a “Navy without carriers” was the Naval Staff policy of the time. This gap was, of course, the total lack of any offensive capability in the Fleet apart from] four 6in guns in two cruisers] and the submarines’ pre-war] de-anti-ship torpedo. In 1970, the new Govern-! ment recognised this gap and!

j( ordered the French Exocet - short-range ship-to-ship mise I site and the retention of the -(last carrier, the Ark Royal, t( “until the late ’seventies.” - Her sister ship, the Eagle, s was paid off, as Labour had , ] planned, to save about £5 s{ million that would have been ?,] needed to enable her to oper- ’ | ate the new Phantom fighters. I But even the Ark Royal’s | retention was intended, as a II member of the Admiralty -IBoard of the time admitted, 1 to be more of a sop to ;]N.A.T.O. (America's carriers ; I were heavily involved off s] Vietnam) than an operational s | reality. i s U.S. Navy’s change J The critics of the decision j to retain the Ark Royal] (looked for support to AmeJrica where obsolescence was] ’] creeping up on the 16-ship (carrier force. But with a new (Chief of Naval Operations, (Admiral Zumwalt, the Ameri-I .(cans began looking at small; . “Sea Control” ships carrying . a few vertical/short take-oft ] e and landing aircraft and . anti-submarine helicopters to > supplement the big carriers in the shipping defence role. 1 The £4oom or so that each . of the three new American 2 nuclear carriers, now building or on order, will cost, t inevitably means that the „ older carriers will not be re-1 j placed on a one-for-one but ! 3 rather a three-to-one basis, so I that by the early ’eighties] '(America may well have only J eight carriers. | In Britain, the question still ( j] remained unanswered on] [what would eventually re-1 '(place the Ark Royal. But a; Hclue to Ministry of Defence' J thinking was given with the] 1 start of a series of intensive ( exercises in which the Fleet! j relied exclusively on R.A.F. I t shore-based air support. At squadron level the 1 R.A.F. entered into this new > task with enthusiasm but at " higher levels there was eviI dence that air support of the 5 Fleet, like the Air MinistryI run Naval Air Wing of the ’twenties and ’thirties, was a jpoor relation whose needs [would be met only if money land aircraft were available (after satisfying other comImitments. ( Not, perhaps, surprisingly

it {there was a lack of confidence ;- in the Navy that even its e] minimum air support require I, jments would be met. Grade ’’ ally there was a realisation J, j that the “carrier lobby” d which had been in the wilder--5 ness in 1968 was right, for n even exercises in the North ‘-[Sea involving virtually the ;. ] whole of R.A.F. Strike ComS’tnand showed that there a simply were not enough planes to go round. i, ( Certainly. R.A.F. fighters ojean and do intercept Russian s patrol aircraft far out in the f: Atlantic by means of in-flight ■1: refuelling from Victor tan[kers. Yet these occasional intercepts do not meet the requirement for round-the-clock I response to the needs of ships j ( at sea. s A Russian carrier ?( Moreover, the Russians bec gin to look like complicating ! >|the scene with reports that ' their first carrier is building. Moscow has, perhaps, bell come aware that, as our own Fleet Air Arm has long ?] known, one squadron of air--31 craft afloat is comparable to s at least four squadrons ashore, partly because of a 1 carrier’s mobility and partly 3 because of the far shorter distances a shipborne aircraft > has usually to fly to make B [an intercept or attack. But if J the shore-based fighter’s 1 (tanker becomes unavailable 3 for any reason the whole or jpart of the operation may * well have to be cancelled. . In addition, seaborne air- * I craft are less vulnerable be- \ cause they do not have to ' Irely on an unarmed tanker * I which, in order to rendez- ' vous with its fighters, has to '(break electronic silence. '( With any fighter crew flv- ‘ ing over the sea efficiency ■ starts falling off after 60 , minutes in the air and after - two hours is poor—yet it may take that time simply [ to reach a convoy in the ' Atlantic from a base in ' Britain. The crew of a sea- ' borne aircraft, on the other ; hand, can fly several sorties * a day since their base will be ’ near to hand. In addition, as ]' their ship is both base and : tanker, costs are much ' reduced. Costly tanker force One tanker is needed for each shore-based Phantom fighter operating, say, 1000 miles from its base." The total cost of operating the R.A.F.’s 30 or so tankers is some £5O million a year—thus the annual cost of the tanker force is nearing that of one of the new ThroughDeck Cruisers which the Navy is planning to operate helicopters and possibly Harrier vertical/short take-off and landing aircraft in th; late ’seventies and 'eighties. But each cruiser will have a life of at least 25 years and its £6O million cost is spread over eight years’ designing and building time. Any argument on costs must, however, take into consideration the potential (threat. While no-one prebends Britain’s forces are [likely to have to take on Russia single-handed there is no denying the importance of the Royal Navy’s contribution in N.A.T.O.’s eyes to Western security. So highly does N.A.T.O. rate the presence of a British carrier “holding the ring” on the northern flank in the Norwegian Sea until American reinforcements could, it is hoped, cross the Atlantic in [about a fortnight, that the Americans have made plain their intention to provide a (carrier in the area if the Ark (Royal is scrapped without replacement. ] We could not hope for long to stem an all-out Russian attack on Western shipping ! without recourse to nuclear weapons. In 1945 Germany still had a large U-boat fleet. —but long before that the High Command in Berlin had realised that the success of our defences made the cost too great—it is the Navy’s task today to make Moscow’ realise that an atatek on our shipping could not be made with total impunity. Since their naval missiles far outrange anything we have or will soon have in naval service, seaborne aircraft alone remain the only way to provide a counter to their vast missile superiority The new Through-Deck Cruisers are in no way new versions of the Ark Royal, but though their capital and running costs will be considerably lower than those for a new conventional carrier, even these could not be justified unless they have fixed-wing aircraft of some kind.