CVA-01
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The CVA-01 Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier was designed to replace the smaller, warbuilt carriers of the Royal Navy in the 1960s - ships like Ark Royal. Displacing over 50,000 tons and with capacity for up to 50 modern aircraft, they would have allowed the Royal Navy to maintain its significant position in carrier aviation. But the project was cancelled, along with the proposed Type 82 destroyers that would have escorted them, in the 1966 Defence White Paper. Had these ships been built, it is likely they would have been named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Duke of Edinburgh.
The Royal Navy did not totally surrender aircraft carrier capability, the first of the Invincible class carriers were ordered in 1973. Carefully named "through-deck cruisers" to avoid the stigma attached to full size aircraft carriers, these 20,000 tons ships had nothing like the fixed-wing aviation capacity of the planned CVA-01 carrier. They were to function as part of mixed NATO fleets primarily on Cold War anti-submarine patrols of the eastern Atlantic. They could still carry fixed wing aircraft in the form of the V/STOL Sea Harrier jets which allowed the Royal Navy on its own to deploy aircraft in the Falklands War. Laterly the Invincibles operated in the Persian Gulf, Bosnia and Sierra Leone.
The United Kingdom has returned to the big aircraft carrier idea, with current designs of the Royal Navy CVF programme which are larger than the cancelled CVA-01 fleet of the 1960s. It is interesting to note that the two new carriers have been named HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.
Projected specifications
| Displacement: | 54,500 tons standard |
| Length: | 271 m |
| Beam: | 37 m |
| Draught: | 10.2 m |
| Propulsion: | 3 × Parsons steam turbines providing 135,000 hp |
| Speed: | 28 knots (52 km/h) |
| Range: | |
| Complement: | 3,250 crew and airgroup |
| Armament: | 1 x 2 Sea Dart GWS 30 SAM launcher |
| Electronics: | 1 x Type 988 Anglo-Dutch 'Broomstick' 3D radar (later fitted on the Royal Netherlands Navy frigates Tromp and De Ruyter); 2 x Type 909 Sea Dart fire control radar/illuminator; ADAWS-3 combat direction system |
| Aircraft: | Up to 50 aircraft; Initial planned airgroup: 18 x Phantom FG.1; 18 x Buccaneer S.2; 4 x Gannet AEW.3; 5 x Sea King HAS.1; 2 x Wessex HAS.1 (SAR) [plus probably 1 x Gannet COD.4] |