By 1945 the six armoured carriers of the Illustrious class were clearly not going to be capable of operating the heavy jet and turbo-prop strike fighters that were under development. Since none of them was more than five years old, the Admiralty Board ordered a study to be carried out by a group led by the Assistant Chief of the Naval Staff (Air) which was tasked with evaluating the possibility of modernising these ships. It reported that such work could only be justified if it brought the ships up to the most advanced standard, capable of operating the next projected generation of naval aircraft, of which fighters would be the most demanding. Carriers modernised in this way could, ACNS (Air) believed, offer a further twenty years' service for half the cost of new construction, and the Board accepted this view.
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