Flight Line

摘要

Pick up a daily paper and you'll quite likely read discussions on the wisdom - or otherwise - of the Royal Navy's bringing into service two new 65,000-tonne aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales. Along with questions such as whether we can really afford them comes the awkward matter of numbers. Will we ever have sufficient F-35B Lightnings of our own to provide the backbone of a suitably potent carrier air group on even one carrier, let alone two? It was all so different in 1981, when HMS Invincible (R05) was completing its operational work-up. Invincible, the first of three small, ski jump-equipped aircraft carriers, was the target of a quite different set of questions. At half the tonnage of the Royal Navy's recently retired 'last' conventional carrier HMS Ark Royal (R09), would it be able to embark sufficient aircraft to defend itself and to carry out all its assigned roles?