The British Carrier Strike Fleet. David Hobbs
Navy as a whole and particularly to those who are concerned, in any capacity, with the provision and use of aircraft which are the spearhead for the Navy’s attack and defence’. Despite its importance and undoubted success, the journal ceased publication in January 1946 amid the austerity that followed the end of the war and demobilisation.
It left an important gap, however, which was filled by a revitalised Flight Deck, introduced as a quarterly journal by DNAW in the winter of 1952. The incumbent Fifth Sea Lord, Vice Admiral Anstice, said that the new Journal was ‘to provide up-to-date information for those who fly our aeroplanes and for those who, though not aviators, are concerned with the operation of aircraft and should be aware of their capabilities. The whole of the Navy of today is included in this latter class.’2 The First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir Rhoderick McGrigor, added that ‘Progress in the air is rapid. It affects all naval activities and it is essential that all officers should fully appreciate developments and the effect they will have on naval warfare.’ This edition had, as its opening article, an extract from a lecture delivered by Vice-Admiral Sir Maurice Mansergh to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in 19523 Mansergh had previously commanded the 3rd Aircraft Carrier Squadron and, between 1949 and 1951 had been the Fifth Sea Lord and Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff responsible for air matters.
The Task of Naval Aviation
Mansergh began by stressing that aircraft had become ‘part and parcel of the daily round and common task of the Navy’ like guns, torpedoes, boats or ‘any other manifestations of naval life’. The ‘Air’ was now included in the term ‘Sea Power’. By 1952 the RN had emerged from the post-war manpower crisis but faced an uncertain future. British politicians focused their attention at the time the procurement of atomic weapons and the retention of powerful land forces in Germany to defend Western Europe, if necessary, against Soviet forces from behind the ‘Iron Curtain’ as the Cold War developed. The need for sea power to maintain trade and vital lines of communication was not forgotten but was undoubtedly given a lower priority. Mansergh’s lecture to RUSI was intended to emphasise the continuing need for a powerful navy to a wide and informed audience but the fact that an extract was printed in Flight Deck showed the importance placed by the Admiralty on making its own officers aware of the important role sea power still had to play. Interestingly, Mansergh did not claim that naval aviation was a panacea but noted the effective achievements of RAF Coastal Command in the recent Battle of the Atlantic together with the extensive minelaying operations carried out by Bomber Command. Arguably, he even over-stated some of their achievements in order, perhaps, not to be accused of a partisan approach. The combination of land-based and carrier-borne aviation was accepted as relevant and important by the Admiralty but, as we shall see in later chapters, similar views were not held in other Government departments.
Carrier-borne aircraft were described by Mansergh as vital in the performance of three main fighting roles. In order of importance these were:
(a) Anti-submarine warfare.
(b) The air defence in depth of fleets at sea and convoys of merchant ships.
(c) Air strikes against surface ships and land targets.
A further important role was identified as the tactical or close support of land forces, the task being performed very successfully by the light fleet carriers in the Korean war zone at the time, but this would have to be carried out by the aircraft designed for tasks (b) and (c) above. The role did not, therefore, merit inclusion in the list of main tasks and in addition to the fighting roles there were a number of subsidiary requirements for naval aircraft to perform including the training of aircrew and ship’s companies in the use of their anti-aircraft systems.
The anti-submarine role was believed to require an aircraft with relatively long endurance, able to carry out visual and radar searches for ‘snorkelling’ or surfaced submarines so that they could be avoided by surface forces or attacked. The same aircraft was to be able to localise a dived submarine with sono-buoys and to attack it, when possible, with a homing torpedo or depth charges. The new Fairey Gannet was designed from the outset to be a ‘hunter/killer’, able both to search for and strike at an enemy submarine in the same sortie at a significant range from the carrier. Mansergh was one of the first to draw attention to the important role that was becoming apparent for helicopters in this field. He said that the board was interested in the capability being shown by these innovative aircraft as ‘short-range search aircraft able to deal with the submarine that eludes the normal search and gets towards a position from which it could attack’.4 In this role, he said, it would have to deal with submerged submarines and would have ‘a sono-buoy receiver and good communications with surface craft; later it might carry an anti-submarine weapon’.
Air defence was described as the ability to hold, or seize, command of the air in areas threatened by enemy air attack and through which surface forces or convoys must pass. Mansergh broke this broad requirement down into two distinct categories. In the first he noted the need to defend convoys by destroying shadowing aircraft which might be working with submarines and a shore headquarters with the potential to order air strikes. The second involved the defence of the strike fleet by preventing weapon release by anything up to full-scale, escorted air attacks in waters that were within range of the enemy’s highest-performance bomber and fighter aircraft. Attacks of this kind could be expected in all conditions of light and weather and so this second category was further divided into two. Under good weather conditions by day the Admiralty felt that pilots had less need of interception aids5 and could be brought into visual contact with the enemy by direction officers using the carrier’s radar. In bad weather or at night, the fighter needed to be fitted with air-intercept radar with an observer trained as a second crew member to operate it and guide the pilot into cannon range of the target,6 say 250 yards down to 100 yards depending on whether the target was manoeuvring.
The best aircraft for the defence of convoys was thought to be a two-seat, radar-equipped fighter of good performance but not necessarily as good as the fighters required for the air defence of the fleet. These would have to be of the highest performance and the need to intercept high-speed bombers before they could release their weapons was felt to be sufficiently obvious to need little stress. Achieving that high performance might need endurance to be sacrificed and that had led the Admiralty to consider deck-launched interception7 rather than the maintenance of CAP. Lessons from the Pacific War had shown the need for airborne radars capable of detecting enemy attacks made beneath the fleet’s radar coverage and this requirement was to be fulfilled by the transfer of fifty Skyraider airborne early warning aircraft to the RN by the USN under the NATO mutual defence assistance programme (MDAP). Although the ideal fighters for fleet air defence and convoy defence were not identical, the need to reduce the number of different aircraft types in service meant that a single type of night fighter would have to be procured for both roles and in the short term, the de Havilland Sea Venom would be used for the task. The day fighter was to be the Hawker Sea Hawk.
The strike role was the least well advanced at the time, following the cancellation of the large, specialised aircraft types in 1946. The ideal strike aircraft was to be capable of attacks on ships and land targets and also capable of the close support of military forces in amphibious operations and, when necessary, further inland. The only dedicated strike aircraft in service in 1952 was the Blackburn Firebrand and delays developing its intended successor, the Westland Wyvern, meant that it would be already be considered obsolescent when it eventually achieved operational capability.
Innovation – The ‘Rubber Deck’
Deck landing trials with Sea Vampires highlighted the limitations imposed by the slow acceleration rates of early jet engines8 and changes in both carrier technology and deck landing technique were obviously needed. Scientists predicted that the next generation of fighters designed for supersonic performance could add further problems with swept wings designed for high performance at altitude leading to much higher landing speeds. To make matters worse, ‘high-speed’ wings were expected to be too thin to accommodate the substantial undercarriages needed to absorb the impact velocities of heavier aircraft deck landing at unprecedented speeds. The one good feature of jet operation, apart from the obvious high-speed performance,