"We need Ark Royal": America, the leading western superpower, pleading with Britain to keep an out-of-date aircraft carrier? It seems unlikely, but that was exactly what happened just months before HMS Ark Royal, the last of the Royal Navy’s old ‘big-deck’ carriers, was paid off — and the navy had already given it serious consideration
In the lexicon of nonsensical buzz-phrases increasingly beloved of the modern military’ higher echelons and the politicians who oversee them, ‘ capability holiday’ must be about the worst. When the Nimrod MR2 was retired with no replacement maritime patrol aircraft in sight, or the Sea King ASaC7 airborne early warning helicopter without an immediate successor, there was no admission of ‘ worrying gaps’ or damaging shortfalls’ No, those capabilities and others were merely taking a holiday, in some cases a decidedly extended one. But in 1975 corporate-speak had not yet infected public life, so when the Royal Navy found itself facing a lack of aircraft carriers, the talk was of “a severe diminution” in Britain’ ability to conduct antisubmarine warfare.
It could have been forecast for years, but long-term strategic planning has seldom been a UK defence policy-making stron…
