ORIGINAL: Don Bowen
Variations of British made carrier aircraft are also "nice to haves". Albacore was an intended replacement for the Swordfish that was only slightly used in the Eastern/Pacific fleets. Two versions of Seafire is also getting rather fine. I'm not familiar with any other new British aircraft about to come on line at the end of the war - anyone??
Don, I think that you should limit the British to what they have and any new US types (although that would require retraining etc).
What follows is a long passage (scanned verbatim and formatted) from: Grove, Eric (1987)
Vanguard to Trident (London: Bodley Head) pp15 - 18. Basically it shows that the Fleet Air Arm wasn't really going to get new British types fast. Also, as the British aircraft replacement service for the British Pacific Fleet had almost broken down by August 1945, I can't see them being able to able to cope with a slew of new types all complex and not fully operational.
Long Passage follows...
The intended shape of Naval Aviation in the late 1940s was given in an Admiralty paper of August 1944 that speculated that in four years' time the Royal Navy would have eight hundred first-line combat aircraft. Of these 385 would be fighters. These would be of five types: the Seafire, a modification of the land-based Spitfire and never a satisfactory carrier aircraft (although with good speed and climb characteristics for a piston-engined machine); the Firefly, a slow two-seater more useful for reconnaissance, strike, and antisubmarine duties than engaging enemy aircraft; the Sea Hornet, a new high-performance twin-engined aircraft but large and heavy; the Sea Fury, a promising new conversion of a land-based single-seater but with a high landing speed; and the Wyvern, a large, high-performance, heavy single-seater in an early stage of development. In addition to these there would be between eighty and one hundred Firebrand single-seat torpedo strike aircraft, a similar number of larger, single-engined Fairey Spearfish bombers, and one hundred Sea Mosquito and Short Sturgeon twin-engined bomber reconnaissance aircraft. Even before the end of the war, delays had occurred in this program, especially to the Wyvern project, which was given a low priority. In May 1945, 150 Supermarine Seafang fighters were ordered as a stopgap. Nevertheless, great hopes were placed in the new types when and if they did arrive, especially the Wyvern, Spearfish, and Sturgeon. They were massive and expensive aircraft, with an emphasis on range rather than speed. The main problem was, however, that, due to weight and size limitations, no existing carriers could operate them.
The Ark Royal-type fleet carriers and Hermes-class light fleet carriers were the only ships able to operate such big aircraft, but these were still far from completion. Moves were made to accelerate the Hermes-class ship, HMS Albion, at Swan Hunter on the Tyne in early 1946, but merchant shipbuilding prevented this. The Royal Navy would be forced to make do, in the short term at least, with its existing carrier fleet.
This was numerically quite impressive, but relatively large numbers belied significant qualitative problems. Britain's six armored-hangar fleet carriers had been conceived in the 1930s on the basis of some very restrictive assumptions about the role of the carrier and the number, size, and performance of the aircraft she carried. Even during the war severe problems had been faced in operating high-performance aircraft in sufficient quantities from British ships. Attempts were made to improve the problem of limited hangar space. Only three, the Illustrious, Formidable, and Victorious, were completed to the original design. Indomitable was given an extra half hangar while under construction, and Implacable and Indefatigable were heavily modified with two full-length hangars of reduced height. These expedients created problems of their own-Implacable and Indefatigable could not operate any American fighters as all types, when their wings were folded, were too high for their hangars. The new generation of aircraft promised still greater problems (see table at end of post - sorry about size, first time trying this)
When the fleet carriers finally came home after duty as transports repatriating prisoners and demobilized personnel, they were either put into a well-earned reserve or demoted to second-line duties. The Illustrious, with her limited modifications, continued in service as a deck-landing trials ships, while the Implacable became the training carrier for advanced flying. The latter was given modified barriers and arrester gear in 1947, and the same year the Victorious, unmodified and without aircraft, joined the battleships Anson and Howe in the training squadron. There was little point in running such large carriers operationally, as the size of a contemporary air group, around twenty-four aircraft, was well within the capacity of an unarmored light fleet carrier of the Colossus class. These little 13,000 ton vessels, built during the war to boost the Royal Navy's quantity of flight decks as rapidly as possible, had a ship's company of 850 men, half a fleet carrier's complement. Hardly surprisingly, therefore, it was these ships that provided the backbone of the Royal Navy's carrier force in the immediate postwar years. With two on loan and two, the Perseus and Pioneer, completed as aircraft maintenance support ships (a lesson of the Pacific War), the Royal Navy was left with six of these useful and economical aircraft carriers: the Glory, Ocean, Theseus, Triumph, Venerable, and Vengeance. No more than three or four were usually in commission at anyone time. With their relatively large lifts and hangars they could stow any of the new aircraft, although their arrester gear, crash barriers, and lifts required modifications to operate all the new generation. The Majesties were to be completed with a full set of modifications to operate 20,000-lb. aircraft, but work was proceeding on these ships only at a snail's pace.
The short-term solution to the carrier aircraft problem was dictated by the financial climate as much as by any other single factor. The Royal Navy's aircraft orders were repeatedly slashed. As soon as, the war ended, the Sturgeon and Spearfish orders were reduced to a few development aircraft (the Sturgeon later saw limited use as a target tug; it was considered for ASW duties but never developed as such). Nevertheless, there were still over 1,500 naval aircraft on order in November 1945 for delivery before December 1946. The chancellor specifically singled out these for attention in his correspondence with the Admiralty. The numbers were duly cut once more, and still further reductions occurred later in 1946. The Seafang, for example, was cancelled as an operational type, perhaps no bad thing given its poor handling qualities. When not cancelled, aircraft were delayed, and those machines that did arrive had problems that prevented them getting to carriers. The Firebrand TF4 had to be grounded for an extended period as a result of aileron and elevator oscillation, and eventually the one squadron of these aircraft, 813, was temporarily disbanded. In August 1946 naval air strength was down to a minimum of some 122 operational aircraft, little more than a tenth the level of a year before. Even of this handful, the only available single-seat fighters, the Seafire 15 and 18 models, were temporarily banned from carriers because of supercharger problems.
This was perhaps the all-time low point of Naval Aviation. No squadrons were deployed in carriers in August, although the Glory, Ocean, and Theseus were back at sea-with all Firefly air groups-by September 1946. Slowly the aircraft situation improved in the following months. Seafires were reembarked and a semi-usable Firebrand finally appeared with 813 Squadron in April 1947. It was still not an entirely satisfactory aircraft, but at least it could be operated from carriers. Perhaps the most unfortunate squadron of this period was 811, equipped with the special naval variant of the Mosquito, the TR 33, in April 1946 (having operated an RAF version, the FB6, since September 1945). With no carriers capable of taking its aircraft, the squadron disbanded on 1 July 1947, having served only at shore stations. The Sea Mosquito had been intended to carry the large "Uncle Tom" rocket, an air-launched underwater attack weapon, ten inches in diameter and weighing 1,000 lbs. This was designed to be launched in level flight at a range of 2,000 yards, but was cancelled about the time the Sea Mosquitoes were taken out of service. Also abortive were rather odd air-to-surface projects like the "Zoster" winged torpedo, a "jet-propelled torpedo" called Bootleg and a "supersonic weapon with underwater run" code-named "Nozzle." Naval strike aircraft had to make do with bombs, 3-inch rockets, and the 18-inch torpedo.
It is a serious error to gauge British naval air strength in the immediate postwar period from a mere perusal of the pages about carriers that appeared in naval reference books. Carrier air power has always meant much more than mere numbers of flight decks, and in no period was that more true than in the years immediately after the war. It was unsurprising that this most expensive and taxing dimension of naval power should have continued to demonstrate the Royal Navy's serious shortfalls in resources. One way out of the problem was to attempt to spread the load more widely. The Royal Navy helped foster the aviation components of friendly navies within and without the Commonwealth…
So there you are, lots of development but highly unlikely it would see action.
I hope this helps aid thinking,
Regards,
Philip Bass
