Ah, okay - was it just water cooled jet blast deflectors and some internal changes to make the Eagle Phantom compatible then?
The F-4K was a make work sop to UK industry to make up for cancelled projects and stuffed work flow. RAF 74 Sqn were reportedly very happy with their F-4S (modernised Js) and were likely disappointed when they were repleced with F-4Ms once the Tornado F-3 began freeing them up.
From what I've heard, the Speys were more a political exercise rather than a RN requirement. The Spey reduced the top speed of the Phantoms but did result in them having amongst the best climb rate (and acceleration too IIRC) of the family.
I'm not arguing against this, what 1805 was suggesting was building 1 carrier then building another carrier years later at the same ship yard with amphibs built in between over a 24 year cycle, which sounds like a very good way of getting no economies of scale and 2 half sisters (like Eagle and Ark) at a greatly increased cost.
BIW virtually has a DDG 51 production line, or as close to it as you can get with a major surface combatant. There are in a bit of quandry at them moment as they are the lead yard on the DDG 1000 program that has been cut to 3 ships and had previously hand the lead for the DDG 51 over to Ingalls. Whoops looks like the production line is going to run out of work now the USN is doing the DDG 51 program restart. Sad really as the DDG 1000 was ahead of schedule and below cost before the Pentagon and USN started cancelling hulls and fiddling with the ships systems to save money, just like the Daring really, government engineered change blows the schedule and the cost and the contractor wears the blame.
I have been at the coal face trying to sort out what to do with multiple ship sets of material that has been bought in advance and then found to be unsuitable on the first ship. The procurement people achieved their KPIs, got their bonuses and saved lots of money upfront, while production and engineering have had their KPIs, budgets and bonuses blown to kingdom come as they try to fix things.
Just to clarify when I'm say buy in bulk I'm not saying buy everything in one go, that's just stupid and certainly not what happens in construction either (unless the company involved is stupid or has an enormous warehouse available), you get a price for your materials nailed down with you're supplier for the length of the contract and you order in lots as and when they are needed, this prevents unpleasant surprises when you're supplier puts prices up and blows you're costings out of the window.
But we don't know the take off weight.
Well, you'd definitely need the extending nose gear and the rework on the control surfaces to get them to be useful around the Ark and Eagle. I'm just unsure if the Spey's were a definite "can't do without" or just the make work for industry they seemed. The Phantom had a similar spot factor to the Bucc overall, just needed a longer cat stroke and better arrester gear to cope with the 150 knot touch down plus on the shorter Ark, water cooled JBD's.
Ian,
Thanks - that's pretty comprehensive - interesting about the increased ferry range too (15%)
Thanks for posting this, I did know the Jaguar was considered by the MN, I was not aware it had actually flow off the decks of a carrier. An interesting might have been, if the RN/UK Gov had show interest would this have seen a joint model in RN/MN services; more interesting still where would this have lead to with it’s ultimate replacement?
Very interesting, thanks for that.
IMO the Spey modification probably wasn't worth the cost, but AFAIK it did give improvements in range (due to greater fuel efficiency more than offsetting drag), low-atitude performance (thrust more than offsetting drag), & take off performance (ditto). More reliable too, I think.
Definitely more reliable - the Spey was used all over the place as a non reheat unit and was the first commercial engine to be permitted to fly for 10K hours without a major tear down as far as I understand it.
The commodities such as steel are the really cheap items. Computer kit you want to buy as you need, as they get dated quickly, a call off preferred supplier arrangement works well for this stuff, no need for a volume commitment. I was suggesting running one after the other not random orders, to avoid the very gaps in orders you are suggesting. For clarity, 3 x 8 years (50k tonner full load) with a 40 year cycle the other 16 years could be spent building 3 x 25t LPD. Alongside this 12 cruiser/destroyer types built at 3-5 a decade.
The USN has far greater spend than the RN, but the principle of building from one yard in a cycle is broadly what they do. They have more orders so can have more under construction than just one.
Putting aside the procurement arguement for 5 minutes, you've yet again decided to increase the size of the fleet by an aircraft carrier and an LPD against Government plans, and yet you constantly state the size of the MOD budget is too large and have stated that you want to see it reduced. Where is the extra money coming from to buy these additional ships and where is the money coming from for their running costs?