I was fortunate enough to command HMS Illustrious in the mid-nineties which saw a period of continual change and concluded with the Ocean Wave Global Carrier deployment in 1997. The Invincible class was a product of the 1966 Wilson Government’s cancellation of the CVA-01 aircraft carrier programme. The CVA-01 decision was precipitated by a change in foreign policy that dictated a withdrawal of national interest East of Suez which was the main argument for sea- based air power at the time. The result was the loss of independent power projection by the UK and a refocusing of defence priorities on the heartland of NATO’s central front shaped by Cold War threats. The RAF were to provide air defence to the Fleet in conjunction with surface-to-air missile systems in new destroyers.
Within this smaller role for the Royal Navy, CVS was originally designed to accommodate twelve anti-submarine helicopters as defence against a large Soviet submarine force assessed as the main threat to the NATO alliance at sea. The offensive capability of the navy was to rest in its nuclear submarine fleet and amphibious capability deployed to protect NATO’s northern flank.
The Soviets invested heavily in long range patrol aircraft such as the Tu-95 ‘Bear’. RAF interceptors could not meet response times which put surface units at risk from long range anti-ship missiles, most notably amphibious shipping. To counter this threat the Sea Harrier was born, increasing the CVS aircraft complement to seventeen.
The 1981 Nott Defence White Paper directed a swathe of cuts in the naval order of battle including amphibious shipping and the sale of Invincible to Australia. 1982 highlighted the white paper’s erroneous assumption as Invincible and our amphibious forces became the bedrock for success in the Falklands. Another lesson re-learnt was the lack of organic airborne early warning (AEW) resulting in the loss of six ships. Post conflict, 849 Squadron re-commissioned with AEW Sea Kings and Invincible’s air group swelled to 21.
By 1991 the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact had collapsed – ‘Options for Change’ heralded the promise of a ‘defence dividend’. 1991 also saw the first Gulf War and the beginning of an unpredictable world after the Cold War’s relative ‘stability’. The Balkans conflict, increased tensions in Iraq and the Kosovo War followed in quick succession with an Invincible-class ship always present.
The RAF’s Harrier force had lost its raison d’etre with the fall of the Berlin Wall and became vulnerable to defence restructuring that followed. New Labour’s Strategic Defence Review resulted in the formation of Joint Force Harrier (JFH); this drew together the strengths of land-based and maritime-based aircrew expertise. Concluding that an expeditionary force structure required assured combat air power, the UK once again committed to carrier air power thirty-two years after the cancellation of CVA-01. Sierra Leone in 2000 witnessed an amphibious operation, supported by JFH embarked in Illustrious. The next year Illustrious was conducting Exercise Saif Sareea off Oman when New York’s Twin Towers were struck. The US response was swift with a surprise attack from the sea and Illustrious was re-configured with CH-47 Chinooks to deploy Special Forces into the mountains of Afghanistan.
As Nick Childs amply demonstrates in this excellent and very readable account of the life of one of the Royal Navy’s most significant modern warships and the worlds from which she sprung and into which she emerged, the ‘Age of Invincible’ can be summarised as one of continual change. Designed for one role, developed for another within a Cold War strategic context, Invincible was pivotal for air power provision during the Falklands War and grew to accommodate a variety of global tensions spawned from the collapse of the Soviet era and ensuing unforeseen conflict areas. An agile ship in every respect, she has demonstrated the range of effects that aircraft carriers provide. Her gift was to extol the virtues of carrier air power and give the compelling operational evidence for CVF. Now and in future years UK forces on can be assured of air power provision at a time and place of military and political choice. CVF will be a Joint Defence asset, fit for the twenty-first century and at the heart of expeditionary operations – this will require an education process. Wielding significant influence amongst our US and European allies she will offer military planners a wider range of options and effects against potential threats to UK interests.