The Royal Navy hasn't had a decent aircraft carrier since Ark Royal was decommissioned in 1978. They had designed what was called CVA-01 in the early 1960s, a large decked carrier of around 63,000 tons full load, but the budget people axed it. So they built three of the so-called through-deck cruisers of the Invincible class, which were really only intended for ASW, but which carried Harrier jets that acquitted themselves well in the Falklands War. Now the Brits are building two new carriers, the Queen Elizabeth and Prince of Wales, which are to be about 65,000 tons, making them smaller than a circa 92,000 ton U.S. Nimitz class and larger than a circa 40,000 ton French Charles de Gaul and about the same size as a 67,000 ton Russian Kuznetsov. OK, sounds good on the face of it. But then I hear that the boys at the x-checker think they're going to cost too much so they want to commission both carriers and then either mothball one of them or sell it off. And they've already delayed them from 2016 tp 2020. Apparently it would have cost too much just the cancel it. Say what!!!??? Are they nuts??!! Apprently they are. The Brits have been suffering from this syndrone since World War II, letting the money men decide what ships they can afford rather than what ships are going to insure the security of the nation. We have gone through something similar and it always sucks. At least that's what I think. Nice looking carriers, though.
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