HMS Ark Royal IV

pride of leeds!

I have very fond memories of this old girl.
I had the good luck to have served onboard her twice.
1st with 892 Squadron (Phantoms)
2nd as part of her great crew.
Anyone from 4v1 mess will remember me - Big George from the top grot.

We lost her (scrapped) in 1978 - gone but never forgotten.

Good ship with a good crew

As Little Wilf used to say `kin hell. :-)

almost deffinately, Ark royal carring Buc's and Phantoms would have saved Many lives and most of the ships lost during that war, Shar's proved themselves, but lacked the range and speed of phantoms, same as raf harriers lacked the range and payload of bucc's and you can gaurentee this would've resulted in a proper carrier class being designed, built and commissioned by mid 90's, CVF may be late, but pair this with the capabilities of ships entering RN service by 2020, something to be proud of!!!

much more than that, there where huge navy cutbacks that didn't limit themselves to the surface fleet in the pipeline, there was even speculation/plans that the royal marines would be disbanded

falklands war taught us the need for real carriers, invincible class was never meant to be a carrier, RN in the cold war was designed for ASW do you need fixed wing for ASW?

If britain had built all the audacious class, the malta class, continued with the centaur class, used all the majestic class and colosuss class in reserve, plus modernised all the illustroius class like HMS victorious and had gone ahead with cva 01class, imagine what the royal navy would have been like by the 70s, let alone today.

Well, they got what they payed for. When you start borrowing bits off de-commisioned vessels you know you're in trouble.

I did hear that the French intended to purchase a modified varient (One with Catapults and Arrester Gear. The UK versions will be similar to Invincible with the Ski-Jump) because of ALL the trouble they've had with the DeGaulle (Type "How NOT to build an aircraft carrier" in any search engine for further details on that subject).

The QE will be a major improvement over what we currently have. With any luck they'll order a third (in addition to the one the French are buying) to supplement the class.

COULD HAVE cost dearly are the key words there... That conflict SAVED the UK's carrier program (Such as it currently is). Invincible was offered for sale to Australia, Ark-Royal would have been cancelled, and all Britian would have would be Illustrious... Falklands, Desert Storm, and Iraqi Freedom have all illustrated the need for REAL AIRCRAFT CARRIERS, and the new QE Class will appear to fill that void nicely...

Too true.

If the Argentinians had left it for an extra year we wouldn't have had light carriers either. Even though the small number of harrier thought well, the lack of a conventional carrier cost us dearly in that war.