1952 жылғы Royal Navy-дің "Audacious" классындағы әуе тасымалдағышы

1952 Audacious class aircraft carrier of the Royal Navy

{|

standard (1957)
|Ship length=*803 feet (245 m)
|Ship depth=
|Ship hold depth=
|Ship decks=
|Ship deck clearance=
|Ship power=
|Ship propulsion=*4 shaft geared steam turbines
8 boilers

Although Eagle was completed in October 1951 without an angled flight deck, one was added three years later. In 1952 she took part in the first large NATO naval exercise, Exercise Mainbrace.

The s were intended as a larger follow on to the of aircraft carriers with armoured hangars, with the design being modified before orders being placed to accommodate larger and heavier aircraft, which led to the displacement growing from the originally planned to by the time the ships were ordered. Four ships were ordered, although one, Africa, was cancelled before construction began. The first of the class, Audacious was laid down at Harland & Wolff's Belfast shipyard on 24 October 1942. The third ship of the class, Eagle, which was only 26% complete, was canceled in December 1945, with Audacious being renamed Eagle on 21 January 1946. Eagle was finally completed on 1 October 1951. Displacement was standard, with full load of up to .

Eagle started Sea trials on 31 October 1951, with initial flying trials starting on 14 February 1952 and the ship being accepted into service on 1 March 1952. In early 1953 Eagle visited the Mediterranean, before returning to home waters when in June she took part in the Fleet Review at Spithead to celebrate the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. She joined the Mediterranean Fleet in February 1954, before returning to British waters in May. Eagles first wartime service came in 1956, when she took part in the Suez Crisis. with Captain H C D MacLean, DSC in command. The ship's aircraft of that period included Westland Wyverns, Douglas Skyraiders, Hawker Sea Hawks and de Havilland Sea Venoms.

The Admiralty had originally planned to give Eagle a complete rebuild on the lines of , but due to high costs, plans to fit new geared steam turbines and a stretched hull were abandoned. Eagle was instead given a more austere but extensive modernization that provided greater radar and processing capability than the systems fitted to Victorious. The changes included major improvements to the accommodation, including the installation of air conditioning. The island was completely rebuilt and a 3D Type 984 radar was installed, with processing capacity to track and rank 100 targets, twice the capability of the early 984 system fitted to Hermes and Victorious. The flight deck was modified and included a new 2½ inch armoured deck with a full 8.5 degree angle, two new steam catapults (BS5s, 151 feet (46 m) stroke on the port side forward and 199 feet (61 m) stroke in the waist) were fitted as well as new arrester gear (DAX I) and mirror sights. As well as an overhaul of the DC electrical systems, AC generators were also fitted to give additional power. It was decided that Eagle would have her anti aircraft guns removed and replaced by the Seacat missile system, though her aft four 4.5 inch gun turrets were retained, and all of her original machinery and equipment would be fully overhauled. In 1959 Eagle entered Devonport Dockyard to begin this extensive refit, and by May 1964 it was complete. Standard displacement had increased to around 44,100 tons (full load displacement was 54,100 tons) and Eagle was now the largest aircraft carrier in the Royal Navy. Total cost of the refit was £31 million. The refit was intended to extend her operational life for another 10 years, and she now operated Blackburn Buccaneer, de Havilland Sea Vixen, Supermarine Scimitar and Fairey Gannet aircraft, but water cooled jet blast deflectors (needed to operate the RN Phantom fighters) were not fitted, and therefore the full potential of the ship was not realized. In 1964 5 it was claimed Eagle and the proposed CVA01 and half sized Hermes would be a viable three carrier fleet until 1980. Victorious would have been replaced by CVA01 in 1973. In reality the 1958 Royal Navy assessment was that with affordable modernization of the existing carrier fleet, only HMS Hermes would be effective after 1975, and she was too small. These assessments by the Director of Naval Construction in November 1958 were very accurate, taking into account the slower than expected pace of reconstruction, corrosion of war built hulls, the obsolete power trains except in Victorious, and the cheap unsatisfactory mix of DC electrics with AC add on generators where needed in Eagle and Ark Royal.

In early 1966 Eagle was refitted at Devonport once more and was fitted with a single DAX II arrestor wire (no.3, her other wires were DAX I). She was recommissioned in 1967. Eagle was originally intended to receive a further refit that would have enabled her to comfortably operate the McDonnell Douglas Phantom (she had already successfully operated them in trials). Her two BS5 catapults fitted in her 1959–64 refit were already powerful enough to launch fully laden F 4s, but her Jet Blast Deflectors were still of the older steel plate design, and the reheated exhaust of the Phantom's Rolls Royce Spey engines required water cooled deflector plates. It was also planned to fit bridle catchers to the catapults as a cost saving measure, as the bridles would otherwise be lost after a single launch. During the Phantom FG1 trials (involving three newly delivered aircraft operated by 700P NAS) the longer waist catapult was used, and a thick steel plate was chained to the deck behind the catapult to absorb the heat of the Phantom's afterburners. The JBD was not used as it would have been damaged, and after each launch fire hoses sprayed water on the deck plate to cool it down before the next aircraft could be loaded onto the catapult. While fitting adequate blast deflectors and other minor changes for Phantom operation were estimated to cost no more than £5 million in 1968, refitting the ship to operate with a modern airgroup of Phantoms into the late 1970s was clearly going to cost much more, and the new Conservative government in 1970 confirmed plans to convert to a Commando carrier and withdraw Eagle. In February 1972, the Secretary of State for Defence, Lord Carrington, estimated refitting Eagle to operate Phantoms would cost £25–30 million, and the overall manpower and cost requirements of operating two large strike carriers were beyond Britain, particularly as Ark Royal was expected to serve to the end of the 1970s with only two short refits. To preserve Eagle in maintained or unmaintained reserve would require refits, estimated at around £4 million, every 3–4 years, and maintenance crew of 350–400 Navy personnel for £1.5–2 million a year. Reactivation would take four and a half months to a year, while maintaining a Sea Vixen squadron was unjustified expense for aircraft that were obsolete. The refit of Ark Royal cost £32 million to allow operations of a fully modern airwing, though it was generally accepted that even after her return to service she considered to be in a significantly worse overall material state in comparison to Eagle. Of the 48 Phantom FG1s ordered for the FAA, 20 were diverted to the RAF equipping 43 Sqn, though some were loaned back to the Navy to equip the Phantom FG1 training unit 767 NAS which trained both RN and RAF Phantom crews until it was disbanded in 1972.