CHAPTER TWO

1966 and All That

The Prime Minister’s room in the House of Commons was not the usual venue for a gathering of the Cabinet. It was an unusual time as well. It was already dark outside, at six o’clock in the evening on that Monday, 14 February 1966.

The assembled ministers had already met once in the morning, in the normal surroundings of the Cabinet Room in 10 Downing Street. It was a big day, and it would end up being a long one. The Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, was in the chair. But at the centre of the day’s deliberations was the burly figure of the Defence Secretary, Denis Healey. The topic of discussion was the government’s critical defence review. It had been set in motion almost as soon as the new Labour Government had taken office sixteen months earlier, ending thirteen years of Conservative administration. Since then there had been seemingly endless meetings, studies, and papers, and increasingly anguished debate. Now it was time for the Defence Secretary to lay his proposals before his colleagues. It was time for decision.

It was also two-and-a-half years since Healey’s Conservative predecessor had apparently given the green light to CVA-01. But the problems, and the questions, had persisted.

Even as Peter Thorneycroft had been making his earlier announcement in the House of Commons, his proposal for a joint Navy/RAF aircraft, the P.1154, was unravelling. Among themselves, senior naval officers were wondering if it was politically feasible to come out in opposition to the project. The two services really had two very different requirements – the Navy for an all-weather interceptor, the RAF for a ground-attack aircraft. And the Navy was increasingly unhappy that it was being asked to accept more and more limits on its version’s performance. As a joint programme, the P.1154 would soon founder. By early 1964, Thorneycroft was writing to the US Defence Secretary, Robert McNamara, to enquire politely about the possible purchase of US-built Phantom aircraft.

The Treasury had also continued to place obstacles in the path of the carrier. And Carrington was soon complaining that he was ‘very disagreeably surprised’ at the lack of progress. Indeed, because of a Treasury embargo on further research and development, and the purchase of long-lead items, the programme had been ‘positively set back’.¹

Strikingly too, even within the Navy, controversy still simmered about whether the course that had been set was the right one. Just a month after the Thorneycroft announcement, the then new First Sea Lord, Admiral Sir David Luce, had felt the need to send an extraordinary signal to senior commanders around the world to explain the thinking behind the Admiralty Board’s decision to go for this new carrier. ‘I realize,’ he said, ‘that there are officers in the Fleet who genuinely do not understand why the Board have been so convinced that carriers – and a viable Fleet Air Arm – must continue to be an integral part of the Fleet in the military atmosphere of the 1970s. It is of the greatest importance that such officers should be fully apprised of the background’.²

When the Labour Party took office in October 1964, there was a widespread acceptance – even among the chiefs of staff – that the defence programme that it was inheriting was unsustainable. It was in that atmosphere that Denis Healey took up the reins at the Ministry of Defence. Already a strong and impressive political figure, he would certainly leave his mark, although possibly not in quite the way that he had originally intended.

Initially, neither Wilson nor Healey was in the business of cutting and running from Britain’s world role. Labour’s policy at the outset was to maintain it as far as possible. Healey observed that, when Labour came to office, Britain still had more troops East of Suez than in Germany. And, in his view, given the instability and upheavals in the Middle East and Far East, they were probably of more immediate use in maintaining international peace and security than the British contribution to NATO. There was the very real and ongoing Indonesia confrontation, with Britain’s forces apparently providing an effective deterrent to escalation, a firm lid on that particular pressure cooker.

There was no escaping a sense that this was all finite. Britain’s possessions overseas would inevitably dwindle. But, for the time being, there were treaty commitments and obligations to allies – key Commonwealth partners, and especially the Americans, who were making it clear that they would take a dim view of a British pull-out. So it was decided that the government’s plan should be to achieve the least possible reduction in Britain’s status as a world-wide power, against the background of acute economic pressure. The trouble was, that pressure was even more acute than most of Labour’s incoming ministers realized.

There was an almost immediate sterling crisis. Cuts had to be made in public spending. At a crunch meeting at the Prime Minister’s country residence, Chequers, in November 1964, senior ministers settled on a target – to reduce the strain of defence on the economy by cutting its share of the national cake from seven per cent to six per cent. That equated to a cap of two billion pounds on the defence budget at current prices by the end of the decade – 400 million pounds below the previous government’s plan. And the Treasury clearly had its own specific targets as well – the RAF and Navy ‘sacred cows’, TSR.2 and CVA-01.

In fact, the first to feel real pain was the RAF. In the early months of 1965 the programme for the P.1154, which the RAF had continued alone after the Navy pull-out, was finally cancelled, and so too an advanced transport aircraft, the HS.681.

Most wounding, though, was the cancellation of the TSR.2, in April 1965. It was an astonishing looking aircraft, and no doubt a technical tour de force that would have been ahead of its time and a world-beater in many ways. It is still referred to in hushed tones and with the same reverence in most British aviation circles as CVA-01 is in naval ones. But it was hugely complex, had become massively expensive, and was set to become even more so.

Indeed, it may not have been, by then, quite the talisman for the most senior members of the Air Staff that CVA-01 was for the Navy. Michael Quinlan knew that his boss, the Chief of the Air Staff, now Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Elworthy, was one of the doubters. And there was at least a consolation prize for the RAF – instead of the original hope of 150 TSR.2s, there would be an order for 50 of its supposedly cheaper and more cost-effective American rival, the swing-wing F-111, an aircraft to which Denis Healey seemed to have become especially attracted.

These reductions helped carry the government more than half-way to its savings goal. But more cuts were needed. The spotlight was soon focusing once more on the Navy and the carriers.

While the political manoeuvres continued to play out in Whitehall, two hours to the West by train from Paddington Station, a small but dedicated design team of naval constructors in Bath was struggling with another set of problems, of how to reconcile the various conflicting pressures to produce a workable design for CVA-01. It was proving to be a monumental task all by itself.

CVA-01’s original chief constructor, the head of its design team, was a somewhat dour but wise Scot, James Lawrence. Under him, much of the key outline design work, and the basic appearance of the new ship, had been agreed. The artists’ impressions of the time must certainly have excited high expectations, at least for Fleet Air Arm pilots. The design seemed so much in advance of the ships from which they currently flew, like a scaled-down version of the new American carriers, but with a huge domed structure above the bridge that would house a new Anglo-Dutch radar of great sophistication. For the Navy as a whole, though, such images may have done as much harm as good.

In 1963, there was a change in the design team. Lawrence was replaced as chief constructor by Louis Rydill. For Rydill, the next three years would be a demanding, frustrating, and unhappy time.

A short but determined man of strong views, Rydill was actually born in New York in 1922, after his parents emigrated to the United States. But, with the Depression and unemployment, they returned, disembarking after their transatlantic voyage in Plymouth, where the family settled. Rydill went to work as an apprentice in Devonport dockyard in 1938. The pressures of the Second World War intervened and gave him the chance – unusually for his background – to become a naval architect. But, before taking over the CVA-01 project, he had actually spent most of his professional time working on submarine designs, including for that first nuclear-powered vessel, Dreadnought.

Carriers are, of course, a massively complex design proposition. CVA-01 would end up with some 1,200 compartments. And, despite the various studies that were carried out over the years, there had not been a fully-fledged British carrier design since the Second World War. Moreover, the demands had changed so dramatically with the advent of bigger, heavier, and faster aircraft, imposing massively greater shocks and stresses on ship structures, requiring much more complicated support facilities, and setting much more complex operational problems. Rydill certainly had no carrier design experience. He argued strongly that he needed a bigger team. But he was told that the nuclear-powered submarine projects had priority. Yet again, Britain was trying to stay in the game with meagre resources. And, while Louis Rydill and his team had no direct contact with the political arguments and frictions on display in Whitehall, they certainly felt their effect.

In London, all the agitation was over whether CVA-01 was too big, too ambitious, and too extravagant – a potential monument in steel to a persistence of national self-delusion and naval over-ambition. The Navy had carefully marshalled its argument that a ship like CVA-01 was more cost-effective than the smaller options which were being promoted in different quarters.

But Rydill’s team of designers were constantly exasperated by the requirement, as they saw it, to squeeze an effective strike carrier with the capabilities that the Navy wanted into a vessel of only 53,000 tons, much smaller than the Americans’ equivalent vessels. Rydill himself was frustrated that the Admiralty Board had settled on what seemed like an arbitrary figure. Somehow 53,000 tons was deemed politically acceptable for the size of the ship, but 55,000 tons was not. He could certainly have done with that extra tonnage and more as the designers made their calculations.

Bit by bit, items disappeared from the Navy’s shopping list of equipment for the new ship. One of the air defence missile launchers was sacrificed. The Ikara anti-submarine missile system was another casualty. As another saving, the new carrier would do without what had been one of the cherished traditional comforts and conveniences for senior officers on the Navy’s big ships – separate sea and harbour accommodation.

Efforts at innovation were made everywhere to try to make the most of the design, and they often provoked heated argument. By the time Rydill took over the design, it had been decided to move the island superstructure inboard from its traditional position on the starboard edge of the flight deck to create an ‘Alaskan highway’ – a passage outboard of the island just wide enough to manoeuvre aircraft from the aft lift to the forward catapult. Extensive studies had apparently suggested that this would minimize the disruption to operations on the rest of the flight deck. But, when Rydill came in, another set of experts looked at the Alaskan highway and pronounced it a dreadful disaster – just one aircraft breaking down as it was being manoeuvred could completely wreck launch operations at a critical moment. Everyone, it seemed, had an opinion, and every section of the Navy wanted to get involved.

Rydill had made friends with a US naval architect and carrier expert who had been seconded to Bath as a technical liaison officer. His friend had looked at the design and immediately pronounced it too small, with insufficient margins for future growth. At the time, the Naval Staff was arguing in London that the Americans had been nodding approvingly at the British design. Whatever the truth, the US Navy has managed to utilise the same, much bigger basic design for its carriers, with the odd refinement here and there, for half a century.

Back in Whitehall, the various protagonists prepared once again to join battle over the carriers. And, in one subtle but perhaps crucial way, the balance of power in the corridors of the Ministry of Defence had already shifted. In terms of its top leaders, the RAF now seemed to have a decisive edge. There was the new Chief of the Air Staff, Charles Elworthy, a charming, sensible, and persuasive New Zealander, and a lawyer by training. His right-hand-man in many respects was another outstanding officer, the Assistant Chief of the Air Staff (Policy), Air Vice Marshal Peter Fletcher – seen in naval circles very much as the ‘hatchet’ man when it came to the carriers. And there was Michael Quinlan. In comparison, the then First Sea Lord, Admiral Luce, was serious, honourable, but rather diffident. Neither he nor those others on the Naval Staff who joined the new round in the battle for the carriers really seemed to measure up to the RAF team as ‘Whitehall warriors’.

Whether or not Healey had preconceived notions, he gave the Navy plenty of opportunities to argue for the carriers. But August 1965 was a critical month, as the service chiefs submitted their cases. Charles Elworthy’s was typically crisp and to the point, with all the hallmarks of a barrister summing up a prosecution case in court. He pulled no punches. Four hundred million pounds a year needed to be saved. It was now estimated that the carrier force would cost 1,450 million pounds over ten years. At times, this would mean only the small HMS Hermes, with as few as five strike aircraft, would be available east of Suez. It was a poor return for the money. Carriers were also slow and potentially vulnerable.

Elworthy went on. There had been no scenarios of a war at sea that needed carriers since 1945, and it was difficult to envisage them. The carrier case was founded on intervention, to support the Army overseas, and it was only indispensable in a few highly unlikely cases. What was ‘a very narrow specification’, he argued, would get narrower as the range, payload, and performance of land-based aircraft increased. Giving up carriers, he declared, would make only a small difference to the range of political and military options available to the government. In fact, it ‘would not cause Her Majesty’s Government to withdraw from any commitments or to alter its basic strategy’.³

In black and white, it looked like a clinical indictment. Admiral Luce’s case seemed hamstrung from the outset. As the First Sea Lord acknowledged, ‘it has never been suggested that seaborne air power alone could sustain our national strategy throughout the world in the 1970s’.⁴

But this was still a bitter argument over what capability the RAF could really offer to fill the gap that would be left by sacrificing the carriers, as well as how much firepower the carriers could really bring to bear, and how quickly. There was a chasm of understanding between the two services of how the strategic costs of giving up the carriers were weighed against the financial benefits. And it was – in addition – an ideological fight over the provision of a key element of the nation’s air power.

Luce argued that, while carriers had some very particular advantages, the case for them rested on more general considerations as well: their flexibility, their deterrent value, the fact that – unlike island bases – they were politically invulnerable. He pointed to the effective use to which the US Navy was putting its carriers in Vietnam, and argued that this was bound to be having an impression on many nations around the world. ‘Our force, though smaller, would be similarly regarded’, he said.⁵

As well as the case on supporting the Army in an intervention role, the other issue on which the Navy and the RAF would not agree was the extent to which the latter could provide air cover for the former far out to sea in the absence of carriers, and the extent to which the Navy really needed it. The gap between the two positions on this was literally hundreds of miles wide. The Naval Staff was still inhabited by admirals who had seared on their memories the sinking by Japanese air attack of the battleship Prince of Wales and the battle-cruiser Repulse in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbour in December 1941. It was an event so shocking that, for many back in Britain, including possibly Churchill, it was the moment of greatest doubt about whether Britain would emerge victorious in the war.

But, for all that, the Navy was struggling. For all the services, the coming decade was really about a holding strategy, how Britain could best fulfil its remaining obligations in the Far East, and help maintain regional stability, as it liquidated its residual colonial assets. Yet, even so, the way Luce put it for the Navy, it was hardly a clarion call to spend nearly one and a half billion pounds of the taxpayers’ money, or an agenda for the way ahead. ‘Just as, in the past’, he wrote, ‘the Navy was the spearhead of British influence, holding our position until it could be consolidated by land-based forces, so in future it will be the rearguard maintaining our presence in an area where we need to exert our political influence until we can withdraw with dignity and safety’.⁶

The Navy was certainly engaged by now in a rearguard action. Opinion against the carriers was hardening rapidly. A crucial blow came just a few days after these RAF and Navy exchanges, when the Army finally got off the fence. The Chief of the General Staff, General Sir James Cassels, summed up his feelings in a memorandum on 17 August. Urgent economies had to be made, he agreed, and cutting the carrier force would be the least painful way of making the necessary savings. It would not, he argued, cripple Britain’s defence capabilities.

In October, as the whole process was building to a climax, Healey went to see Harold Wilson to outline the way that his thoughts were leading. Britain could not afford more than three carriers in the 1970s. For all the objective arguments in favour of carriers, that was just not an effective force. It would mean only one East of Suez, and at times that would be the poor, limited Hermes. Giving up carriers would inevitably mean Britain’s options would narrow; it would no longer have the ability to land troops against a sophisticated enemy. But it all meant, he argued, a stronger case in favour of F-111s.

Maybe it suited Healey to set the services against each other. Maybe he had no choice, since the Navy and the RAF were completely at loggerheads, and it was best for them to fight it out, with the Army as the swing voter. Healey’s intellectual sympathy for the analytical approach, and for things American at the time, may have swayed him anyway towards the RAF camp and into believing only the best of the F-111. He relied a lot on scientific advice, but even that was divided. The influential Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Solly Zuckerman, had tended to favour the carrier case in the various studies that he had been asked to undertake. He continued to argue that the island strategy was untried and – in effect – unworkable. It was, he said, ‘a vast system of interacting human and technical components more complex than any we have ever achieved’.⁷ Carriers may be expensive, but at least they are proven, was his message.

But Zuckerman had been close to Mountbatten, and was not really trusted by Healey. And one of Zuckerman’s deputies, Sir William Cook, had also written to Healey. He said that he believed carriers were unnecessary; their offensive role was better carried out by the RAF, and the defensive role could also adequately be provided by land-based aircraft. He acknowledged that, without carriers, the Navy would no longer be an independent fighting service, but that was only a stronger argument for a root-and-branch review of its mission, size, and shape. As Healey sat and digested these words, he scribbled in the margins the words ‘very useful’.⁸

Of course, it was part of the Navy’s case as well that abandoning the carriers would have a fundamental impact on the Navy’s capabilities. In that sense, it was throwing down a political gauntlet. The abandonment of carriers inevitably meant a step down in prestige and power, since there was no way to replace their capabilities completely in the foreseeable future.

Still the agony continued. Robert McNamara at the Pentagon, answering an enquiry from London, sent Healey an offer of one of the smaller and older American carriers. A Royal Navy team rushed to Washington for talks. The Americans offered to transfer one carrier in 1970. A second might be possible between 1970 and 1974, for a total cost of 150 million US dollars. The best of the ships that might be on offer was the USS Shangri-La, although she had been completed in 1944.

The Naval Staff was open to the idea, but hardly enthusiastic, to the exasperation of some Fleet Air Arm pilots who would by now accept any offer to keep fixed-wing flying in the Navy. Other options to whittle away at the costs were put on the table: cutting the number of new aircraft to be bought; abandoning the plan to fit the Phantoms that were being bought with British rather than American engines; or soldiering on with just Ark Royal, Eagle, and Hermes, and no new carriers at all. But it was all too little, too late.

And yet, the Naval Staff seemed to carry on with its hopes for CVA-01 as well. As late as December,1965, the design was finalized. The size had, in the end, crept up after all, to 54,500 tons. Overall length would have been 963 feet. And for an overall cost of seventy million pounds, the ship would have been able to carry a mix of thirty-six Phantoms and Buccaneers, four airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft, five anti-submarine helicopters, and two search-and-rescue helicopters. It would certainly be a more potent package than even the biggest of the Navy’s existing fleet carriers. The Naval Staff was even preparing to send out the formal invitations to the shipyards to bid for the contract.

The New Year dawned. 1966. One of the men who had been intimately involved in all the debates was Patrick Nairne, a highly-respected, serious, deliberate and dedicated civil servant. He had served in the Army during the Second World War. But when, after the war, he joined the civil service, he was assigned to the Admiralty in 1947. He remained there for nearly twenty years. He served as Carrington’s private secretary when he was First Lord. But, when Healey arrived at the Ministry of Defence, he called on Nairne to do the same for him.

Patrick Nairne had spent much of his professional life helping to draft the case for carriers in the Admiralty. Now he had to leave all that behind, and any residual loyalties to the Navy. He quickly developed a respect for and rapport with Healey. They were very different characters, but had interests that overlapped. Nairne was an amateur painter. Healey’s artistic flair found its outlet in photography.

Even at the Admiralty, Nairne had been uneasy with the development of the Navy’s ambitions. He had become increasingly involved in the discussions about the nuclear-powered submarine programme, its potential but also its prospective growing cost. But, at the same time, there was CVA-01, which seemed to him like an elephant lumbering unstoppably forward.

And now, he thought, it was in its almost inevitable death throes. On 10 January, Nairne wrote a long and considered note to Healey in the beautiful, meticulous, almost copper-plate handwriting that was characteristic of many of his submissions. ‘The Admiralty is mentally mixed up’, he wrote.⁹ Perhaps harking back to that Admiralty presentation five years earlier, he argued that maybe a full maritime strategy in the Far East would be the best solution, but the Navy could not construct, man, or afford to run it. The First Sea Lord, he suggested, realized this, but could not face the consequences of it.

Just a few days before, the Navy Minister, Christopher Mayhew, had launched his own final pitch to the keep the carriers. Mayhew and Healey did not get on. The junior minister had been largely sidelined by Healey in many of the discussions. He had become increasingly frustrated. And he had already complained that the government was failing to face up to the political realities: if cuts had to be made in already overstretched forces, then logically there had to be decisive cuts in commitments, he argued. There was at the centre of this defence review ‘a political vacuum’, he declared.¹⁰

His latest language was colourful indeed. Abandoning the carriers, he said, would mean ‘a Navy that cannot sail the high seas, cannot protect our shipping, and cannot fight’. And, by his estimate, the savings would be just thirty million pounds a year. ‘I can think of no more abject conclusion to this Defence Review than that we should risk so much for so little’.¹¹

Just under three weeks later, on 27 January 1966, the Admiralty Board approved the final design for CVA-01. It must have been a poignant meeting, since the axe was clearly poised.

At the beginning of February, Admiral Luce made his final plea to Healey for the carriers. There was an impression, he said, that ‘we stubborn sailors are completely sold on carriers and have wilfully refused to look beyond’. That was not so, he insisted, but there would be a ‘horrifying’ loss of capability without them. ‘The country will need an effective Navy as far ahead as we are committed to being a “World Power” and the only way of ensuring this is to build CVA-01’.¹²

It was no use. Denis Healey joined the Admiralty Board on 7 February with his mind made up. It was a gloomy affair. Admiral Luce again set out what the Navy saw as the risks of the Defence Secretary’s plan. If it was simply a question of cost, maybe there was still a way of bridging the gap at least to keep carriers throughout the 1970s. Denis Healey acknowledged that there would be some risks, and that there was always the possibility of the unforeseen. But, in all recent scenarios, he said, carriers had been useful rather than essential. And he returned to what was now the main theme of his argument, that a force of three carriers – the most that could be afforded – just was not viable.

Alistair Jaffray, who had taken over from Patrick Nairne in the Navy department, had for some time felt that CVA-01 was a lost cause purely on cost grounds. At the same time, he believed that the RAF’s island strategy was unworkable, a ‘cloud cuckoo land’ concept that would also prove expensive if pursued.

There were also clearly doubts elsewhere at the centre of government. The influential Cabinet Secretary, Sir Burke Trend, took issue with the RAF case as well as he briefed the Prime Minister ahead of the crucial Cabinet meetings. Trend also observed that it was doubtful that the Americans or anyone else ‘would take us seriously in the Far East if we were seen to be contracting out of the carrier role’.¹³

And yet, on that dark February evening in the House of Commons, the Defence Secretary sat with his colleagues in the Prime Minister’s room. He placed his proposal before them. Aircraft carriers could not be regarded as cost-effective. They were relevant only for the Far East, were too vulnerable in the Atlantic, and in the Mediterranean and Middle East air cover could be provided by land bases.

The Navy, he said, could not man more than four carriers, and the country could not afford more than three. One of them would be Hermes, with just twelve fighters and seven strike aircraft. It was not to be a good return on 1,400 million pounds. The only operation for which carriers were essential was landing and withdrawing troops against sophisticated opposition beyond the range of land bases. And his proposal did not envisage needing that capability during the 1970s.

There was some concern around the table, and an acknowledgement of the mobility and flexibility of carriers. But then the Prime Minister weighed in. Yes, carriers were a valuable bonus to capabilities. But the Cabinet had to face the fact that they could only be afforded if the government breached its target ceiling of 2,000 million pounds for the defence budget. Indeed, even phasing out the carriers would leave the government a little above its self-imposed ceiling, it seemed. No-one was prepared to go any further.

And that, essentially, was that. The decision was taken. CVA-01 would not be built. The carrier force would be maintained only as a stop-gap until 1975 if that were possible. A week later, it was all confirmed in a statement in the House of Commons, and in an accompanying Defence White Paper.

It was a body blow to the Royal Navy. The First Sea Lord resigned. So too did the Navy Minister. But there was no great public groundswell of disapproval. In the run-up to the First World War, in the 1909 ‘naval scare’, from an age when there were such things, the Admiralty was at loggerheads with the Treasury over the number of dreadnoughts to be built. A public cry had gone up, ‘we want eight, and we won’t wait’. The Admiralty got their ships. Indeed, Winston Churchill rather ruefully observed that the Navy ended up with more than it originally asked for. ‘The Admiralty had demanded six ships. The economists offered four; and we finally compromised on eight.’

But that was when there was real fear of looming conflict, the Navy was still seen as the nation’s indispensable shield, and the measure of national security was almost solely the preponderance of British battleships over all likely comers. There was nothing like that this time. There were other preoccupations now. The rest of the country – and the world – seemed to sail on. Within weeks of the carrier decision, Harold Wilson called a general election. Labour was returned with an increased parliamentary majority. And, pretty soon, the country was in the grip of a very different kind of public agitation, in the form of mounting expectation and eventual euphoria over the World Cup.

Louis Rydill declared that the day CVA-01 was cancelled was the happiest of his life. In his view, the design was a disaster. Neither of these sentiments was prompted because he was anti-carrier, but both were the result of his years of frustration over the project. If it had gone ahead, Rydill believed, the design would have been improved as the shipyards got hold of the plans and prepared actually to build the ship. It would not have been ideal, but then no ship ever is. But it would also have ended up being closer to 60,000 tons or more, and a lot more expensive.

In one sense, the explanation for the cancellation of the new carriers was simple. It was the most conspicuously expensive defence programme still in the offing at a time when cuts were still on the table. And yet it still seemed curious. Even those close to the whole argument were uncertain whether Denis Healey was really persuaded that the island strategy would deliver all that it claimed.

Much of the Navy persuaded itself that it was cheated by RAF dirty tricks. The story grew of dodgy RAF maps that were fixed to make the island strategy fit together. But the Navy in its turn was accused of some underhand leaking to the press. That was the spirit of the time. The Naval Staff was subsequently blamed by its own side for displaying arrogance and inflexibility in not being ready to consider something less ambitious than CVA-01 until it was too late. And why was the potential role of carriers in NATO, in the context of anti-submarine warfare, so readily dismissed?

But was CVA-01 really so exorbitant an ambition? It was a bit bigger, and a bit better, than the Navy’s biggest and best up till then, Ark Royal and Eagle. But it was nothing like on the scale of what the Americans were turning out.

In view of what was to follow in just the next two years, what was at stake was not the avoidance of pain, but merely the sequence of it. Even if CVA-01 had not been axed in early 1966, it would probably not have lasted much longer. The plans of everyone at the Ministry of Defence – Denis Healey, the Navy, and the RAF – were all founded on economic quicksand, and they would all in the end be consumed by it.

Ironically, had the Labour government decided at its outset in 1964 that the east of Suez commitment would be wound up as quickly as possible, that might have changed the equation for CVA-01. Without the need to sustain a commitment in the Far East, a more modest Navy proposition at that time of just a twin-carrier force in a NATO role might have looked both viable and affordable. But, by the time that idea was actually mooted, the die had already been cast.

As it was, the RAF would struggle to provide the air cover for the Fleet that it promised. And its ability to provide the support for land operations at the distances suggested by the island stance would continue to look suspect. Indeed, only more than 30 years and at least two generations of weapons later, did it begin to look truly feasible.