The Ship That Never Was - USS SHANGRI LA and the Royal Navy

 

The Royal Navy has recently returned to operating multiple strike carriers at sea after a gap of almost 50 years. The news that both HMS QUEEN ELIZABETH and PRINCE OF WALES are operational and able to embark and operate the F35 jets is a welcome signal that the Royal Navy retains its place as one of the worlds most powerful and capable navies.

This return to capability marks the ending of a story that dates back to the 1960s, and the cancellation of the planned aircraft carrier ‘CVA-01’ which would have been the then next generation of carrier for the RN. The decision to cancel the ship and then withdraw from the fixed wing carrier business in the 1960s tore the heart out of the Royal Navy, which had spent the 20 years since WW2 building itself as a ‘carrier navy’.

The shockwaves of its cancellation led to massive changes in the fleet, which in turn helped set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the restructuring of the RN as an ASW force in the Eastern Atlantic for the remainder of the Cold War. The evolution of the resulting construction programme led to the creation of three ‘INVINCIBLE’ class light carriers intended for ASW operations, and with a limited fixed wing capability.

After HMS EAGLE paid off in 1973, the Royal Navy spent the next 48yrs without two large carriers at sea capable of embarking significant numbers of jets. Yet it could all have been so different had events taken a slightly different turn.

Files in the National Archives in Kew, London have confirmed that in the 1960s, the Royal Navy was offered the loan/sale of up to 3 ‘ESSEX’ class carriers, to bridge the gap between the old carrier force paying off, and the new one arriving.

The file is a fascinating read and contains many apt lessons for the modern RN and Defence – this article is an attempt to briefly tell the tale of the ships that never were and the lessons that this may hold for the future.

In very broad terms the story of the CVA01 project until 1966 is that of the RN trying to work out how to regenerate a carrier force in the late 1970s that was based on ships initially laid down and designed in the 1940s and 50s.

In 1965 the RN had five major fleet carriers in commission – ARK ROYAL, EAGLE, HERMES, CENTAUR and VICTORIOUS. All bar the last had been built after WW2 and were in varying materiel standards and conditions. The ships carried a variety of airgroups built around both strike and fighter jets, but numbers were dropping considerably as the next generation of jets entered service that were significantly larger than their predecessors.

The aim of the CVA class was to bring into service around three ships that could replace these vessels, and carry large numbers of aircraft well into the 1970s and 80s. The Royal Navy at this time operated forces both in home waters and the Med to counter the Soviets, and the Far East Fleet, which supported operations during the ‘confrontation’ with Indonesia and wider national operations.

During this period the UK still maintained a force of over 100,000 personnel abroad ‘East of Suez’ in a wide range of bases, airfields and dockyards to support a myriad of security commitments and alliances aimed at countering the risk from the Soviets. Part of this commitment included the permanent presence of an aircraft carrier in the region.

The carriers role was both to deliver air defence, and also ‘strike’ a euphemistic term covering everything from 500lb bombs to tactical nuclear weapons in support of wider nuclear operations. With five carriers in commission at any one time, the RN usually had 2-3 active to meet the challenges of operating globally, although numbers did vary.

CVA01 was a response to the challenge of larger jets, particularly the F4 Phantom, which was simply too large to embark in meaningful numbers on the smaller UK carriers (reportedly HERMES could embark 7 tops). The design was intended to provide the ability to embark 30-40 jets of the F4 and Buccaneer models which would be sufficient to cover the needs of the military well into the 1970s and beyond.

The problem with the CVA01 design was one of affordability – in a development that feels eerily familiar, the MOD was in financially difficult circumstances and struggling to develop the SSBN / Polaris force, maintain the army in Germany and deliver a new carrier force too. This was done against the backdrop of high tempo operations in some places, plus an ongoing personnel crisis caused by the loss of national servicemen and the move to an all-professional military.

By 1965 the plans were in deep trouble and facing likely cancellation. The Royal Navy was looking at a range of options, including papers on ‘a fleet without carriers’ as a serious planning option. The loss of carrier aviation would be a significant body blow to NATO and wider allied efforts around the world, and in an effort to help the UK out of a sticky situation, the US Navy stepped in with a surprisingly generous offer.

In simple terms it offered the lease / sale of a couple of modernised ESSEX class carriers (referred to in the RN papers of the day as the HANCOCK class). The ships on offer were the USS SHANGRI LA, YORKTOWN and LEYTE, and could be made available from 1966 – 1969.

The proposal was to provide the ships to the Royal Navy, modernise them to British standards and then use them for a period of 5-10 years to cover the gap while the RN built the CVA class carriers.

The offer made sense in a lot of ways. Firstly, from a US perspective the three ships were shortly to become surplus to requirements and no longer be needed operationally. At least one was already modernised to operate the Phantom in substantial numbers, and would require seemingly little work to bring into Royal Navy use.

The costs would also be not unreasonable, with the US offering the sale of the SHANRI LA to the UK in 1970 would have been $16.6m dollars (some $117m in 2021 prices) and then the cost of the refit to bring her up to UK standards.

This offer was seen as worth studying further, and during 1965 the Royal Navy seriously investigated it. The key findings were that the ship could be brought into RN service after a 2 year refit, and would be good for service till at least 1975, and able to significantly enhance overall aircraft numbers for the Fleet Air Arm.

The package of work envisaged would have seen a significant modification internally to workshops, sensors and radars and replacement of the 5” gun battery with sea cat missiles. The single biggest area of concern raised in the RN study was the very poor quality accommodation and concerns about how to improve it to meet UK standards.

The RN worked this information into a series of proposals that resulted in the development of a number of different scenarios. In broad terms they were built around the notion of acquiring one US carrier in the late 1960s, in order to replace HMS HERMES in the strike role.

This would result in a UK carrier force operating through to 1980 comprising of HMS EAGLE and the SHANGRI LA, with ARK ROYAL paying off by 1975 and the VICTORIOUS in 1973. HERMES would have been sold in 1970, probably for foreign service, and CENTAUR did not feature in any plans for direct ‘like for like’ replacement.

In total these plans would have ensured that throughout the 1970s the Royal Navy would have maintained at least two carriers available capable of operating Phantoms and Buccaneers, while still building CVA01 at a later date.

A number of concerns were identified with the plan though – firstly the issue of ship availability – there was a realisation that if this happened, then while there would be good carrier availability in the early 70s, by the second half of the decade, there would be real availability issues given the poor material state of both UK and US ships due to their age.

Secondly, finding sufficient manpower was deemed a major problem – it was unclear where the RN would find the nearly 1000 extra people from to crew the ship, and it was suggested that at least three frigates would need to be paid off to make this happen.

There was the longer issue identified of replacement and what to do with the CVA01 design. If this plan was adopted, construction of the design would slip considerably, potentially in some of the cases considered to seeing CVA01 and 2 enter service not earlier than 1981 – 1983. In those circumstances the UK could find itself facing a carrier gap of several years, particularly given the predicted reliability issues that would impact on the surviving carriers.

However, paradoxically the introduction to service of the SHANGRI LA would pose a costings challenge that would continue to make CVA01 unaffordable – the refit would be vastly more expensive than the one planned for HERMES (the cancellation of which was seen as a key financial saving for this option). The ship would also require more aircraft than previously planned, putting additional pressure on aircrew numbers and the numbers of new airframes needed – potentially making things even less affordable.

There was a wider concern that if CVA01 was deferred further, then the RN would find itself by 1980 potentially dependent on one (and at one stage two) ESSEX class carriers for its airpower, that the US Navy may either want back, or refuse to provide replacements for. There was tacit recognition that even if the RN could operate an ESSEX in the short term, in the medium term any replacement would need to be UK designed and built, as there were unlikely to be further UK hulls available.

Based on these challenges, and as part of the wider affordability discussion, the Secretary of State for Defence (Dennis Healey MP) asked for advice from the RN about what options would look like to run the carrier force on into the 1970s, particularly if CVA01 were cancelled, or if the RN decided to move to a future without carriers.

This led to a series of discussions inside the Royal Navy about what to do, and arguably the decisions made in this period may have been one of the greatest peacetime mistakes ever made by the Admiralty Board.

The Admirals had invested heavily in carrier airpower, and saw the delivery of strike carriers as central to the future role and purpose of the Royal Navy.  On the one hand their planned acquisition of three CVA01 vessels was clearly unaffordable in the short term costings, and could only be delivered by likely fatal compromises to the design that would render it almost ineffective.

Cancellation or deferment was looking like the only two options on the table that made any sense – to the extent that in 1965 the Royal Navy did draft a paper on what an RN without carriers would look like, and concluded that if CVA01 was not assured by 1970, then the Fleet Air Arm would cease to be credible.  Indeed within this paper was a discussion about leasing the SHANGRI LA, not as a stopgap to CVA01, but as the final carrier to operate until about 1975 when new anti- ship missiles could enter service and cover the gap.

This led to a view that SHANGRI LA could fill the gap, and retain an essence of capability, pending its replacement by missiles and other technology in the coming years. It would also retain a British carrier platform, even in limited numbers, which could form the basis of regeneration in the event political wills changed.

The Naval Staff had to make a judgement call on whether it was better to recommend to the Minister that acquisition of an ESSEX class made sense, and could be done, or if it was better to not proceed at all and accept the end of the carrier force.

This may sound somewhat ‘cut off my nose to spite my face’ but the logic of the Royal Navy appears to have been that an interim temporary measure would actually undermine the case and argument for CVA01. This was built on the view that having said the carrier was so vital, to then essentially accept a pause in its delivery of many years would imply that it may not actually be needed after all.

In a memo from Vice Chief of the Naval Staff to the Admiralty Board the discussion read:

“The fundamental question for the Board is one of tactics. One the one hand it is tempting to grasp at any opportunity to run on the Carrier force for as long as possible, even without CVA01. On the other hand we have been adamant up until now that CVA01 is the key to any effective carrier force which continues beyond about 1970/71. If we now suggest, before a decision on CVA01 has been reached, that this is after all not so, then the prospect that CVA01 may be cancelled, or at the least deferred again, will be very real.

If we really believe that CVA01 is vital to our future plans, it may not be in the best interests of either the Navy or the Nation to imply that there is any sensible half way house between the premature demise of the carriers – with all that we have said this would imply  - and at least retaining the option to run them on until the 1980s; in which case CVA01 can clearly be shown to be cost effective”

In other words, the Royal Navy felt that it had to decide between ‘jam today’ in the form of a temporary fix to its carrier availability woes, and the prospects that this may actually do more long-term harm to its ability to stay in the carrier game, or playing a very dangerous gamble of saying that without CVA01 there was no point in staying in the game at all.

By trying to persuade Ministers that to run on carriers was less cost effective, the gameplan seems to have been to make the case that it was easier to build new now. A good idea until you consider that the budget was in deep trouble.

The Royal Navy had essentially turned down the option of the short-term carrier fix in order to stand what they felt was the best chance of keeping carriers. Arguably a tactic that proved to be dangerously wrong as the result was by arguing only for new build construction, the case became easier to make that the RN could do without carriers all – by showing that it was ‘CVA01 or bust’ it became a far more binary decision to make.

There are many lessons that can be drawn from this saga, and these are worth thinking about in more detail.

The first is that there is an inherent risk attached to ‘buying American / Country X’ to meet your requirements. The files are clear that the SHANGRI LA may have been a capable vessel, but did not meet the needs of the Royal Navy without extensive changes, and that her continued operation would require developing a bespoke supply chain for a singleton and increasingly elderly vessel.

It is often suggested that the UK could save money and ‘buy US’ for various ships, but the files remind us that this provides a solution that is not always ideal or workable. What it produces is a messy compromise and an increased reliance on external providers who may not be able to support in the longer term.

Had the UK gone with the ESSEX option, then its entirely feasible that a future government could have cancelled CVA01 anyway, leaving the RN of the late 1970s without carriers, or potentially the ability to source replacements of equal capability. At best the drama and difficulty of the 1960s may have been avoided for a few years, but not escaped altogether.

There is also a reminder that home grown systems may seem more expensive up front, but can provide more overall control and better logistics support. By building a home designed warship you are able to exercise control on the design and fitout that works for you, and not be reliant on the decisions taken 20-30 years previously by another nation.

It is telling for instance that one of the key RN concerns on the ESSEX class was the wooden flight deck provision on some, a throwback to WW2 design philosophy, but which could have a major impact on UK naval operations in the nuclear age, and which couldn’t be fixed without significant cost and effort.

The file makes clear that finding trained crews and securing sufficient personnel for ships remains a perennial problem. The continued crisis of a lack of sufficiently trained crew, and major headcount challenges shows how the story of the Royal Navy is not one of defence cuts, but arguably one of failure to properly manage personnel effectively.

That nearly 60 years later, the RN is still  struggling with finding enough crew at the right rank and rate to keep ships properly available and crewed implies that the naval career management system is perennial unfit for the role it is designed to do. Maybe the time has come to ask whether radical change is required to this to prevent the problems occurring again?

There is a wider point on the so-called ‘sunrise and sunset’ of capabilities, which is something that the MOD has focused a lot on in the recent Integrated Review. The early paying off of some increasingly vulnerable platforms to fund new ones in due course, and leaving an uncomfortable gap.

These papers highlight that this was not a new action, and that even in the mid 1960s, the Royal Navy was prepared to accept significant risks and gaps if this meant that it could guarantee new capability in due course. The view that the carrier force would be obsolete by 1970 without replacement highlights the speed of change, and the need to maintain a constant programme of replacements and updates. Failure to invest in procurement, science and technology will leave you with an obsolescent force, whether you like it or not.

To that end the RN decision to take risk on ‘CVA01 or bust’ makes a lot more sense – why invest scarce funds in platforms like SHANGRI LA, knowing the costs and risks attached, when this would merely be a sticking plaster not a solution to the looming problem?

The continued absence of funds and the battle of the equipment programme is not a new issue too. To those with the scars and wounds from Whitehall planning rounds, and who have drawn up options such as those seen in the file, setting out how different costings and measures could have had dramatically different savings, its clear that the art of delivering a balanced, properly considered and long term strategic plan is incredibly hard.

To make short term savings in the mid 1960s, the Royal Navy had to put forward plans that would irrevocably reshape 25 years of naval development, and completely alter its long term 25 year strategy too – all to make tactical or operational level savings to budgetary plans. One lesson of CVA01 is perhaps that the MOD excels at develop beautiful strategies, but that its also extremely bad at delivering costed strategies, and that British Defence Policy is arguably a policy built around justifying whatever group of planning round options got taken, rather than being a properly thought through coherent strategy.

A cynic would argue that this appears to be the case 60 years on, where the Integrated Review has set a high bar on ambition and presence, but that the reality of an overheated equipment programme and the pain of in year savings measures will make this ever harder to deliver or achieve without massive cuts to outputs.

Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

There is a lesson too about the risk of going all in on something and not being prepared to compromise to get it. The decision by the Navy Board to go ‘CVA01 or bust’ represented a very high risk tactic, and arguably destroyed carrier airpower in the process – in high stakes poker, be very certain of the risks you are taking.

Had the RN taken a more measured approach, accepting short term compromise for long term outcomes, then it is perhaps easier to see a case whereby CVA01 survived and entered service in the late 1970s, aided by the US ESSEX class loan. Yet this outcome was in the eyes of the Admirals at the time bad for the Service – leading to a series of decisions and outcomes that had very long-term ramifications.

To those dealing with expensive and potentially failing programmes, the lesson is clear – is it in in the interest of the Service to not look for a way out, or to proceed at any cost with the plan? There are highly expensive projects right now whose circumstances seem to mirror that of CVA01 and where the outcome may have a similarly painful impact on the Service in question.

The final lesson is perhaps that jointery is ever more important. One thing that reads loud and clear through the file is the inherent mistrust of the RAF by the Royal Navy. The language reeks of ‘them and us’ in all that is said, and seems intended to build a case for Naval Airpower, not maritime airpower.

The legacy of CVA01 is of mistrust between the Services and a myth of ‘evil RAF hurting the RN to gain control of airpower’. Even a rudimentary reading of the files shows this to be nonsense, and the documents are clear that the circumstances around the loss of the carriers was primarily due to the RN leadership of the time choosing to play their hand very poorly.

It is perhaps a relief to realise that joint thinking is now properly embedded in how the MOD works. The CVF project, by contrast was joint from the outset and saw over 20 years of genuinely close co-operation between RN and RAF to deliver not just ships, but fighters and ISTAR platforms as well.

Nearly 57 years after these events occurred, the file makes for a fascinating insight into the attitudes of the Royal Navy at the time towards a range of issues. But perhaps the most important lesson of all from this saga is that is that you must work together to deliver what is right for the nation, not just your own Service. Hopefully this appears to have been learned.