All good arguments. So what if one of the USS Essex class carriers had been provided to the Royal Navy on a long term lease or as an outright gift during the cold war. The only problem is that to have one ready to go to sea there would be a need for two additional hulls to maintain such readiness. One in refit, one working up and one deployed in support of NATO in the Mediterranean or the North Atlantic. I suspect manpower requirements would have made that nearly impossible even with a free carrier but it is always nice to imagine what an FAA or RAN Savage would look like :)
Well presumably the Essexes would have been operated in place of other, less satisfactory carriers, so some crew could be re-assigned from them.
I suspect that there are very definite "windows" for an Essex loan/sale:
1. The classic, much discussed one is from the late 1960s to mid 1970s, the reason for rejecting it being given as the cost/time of converting them to RN standards and the fact that by then, they were as old and tired as the old, tired carriers they were intended to replace. The RV didn't "run out" of servicable carriers in that period, rather the government made a deliberate political/financial decision to get rid of them. With appropriate funding, we could have had any combination of
Ark Royal, Eagle, Victorious, Hermes and
Bulwark in service into the early 1980s.
2. There was another window between WWII and Korea, when a number of Essexes were laid up and presumably available. The UK government would have had to be quick and decisive to take advantage of it though (I know, pure fantasy...), because when Korea kicked off, all but two badly damaged ones were put back into USN service. It's important to remember as well that one of the reasons for the RN's 1950s carrier shortage was that many ships' builds/rebuilds were being repeatedly revised and extended as carrier technology and aircraft weights advanced in leaps and bounds. The USN was somewhat insulated from this by the sheer number and size of hulls they had, but presumably, a small RN Essex force would have spent much of the 1950s and early 1960s being re-built and re-built again, just as the real RN carriers were.
Of course, there's nothing to stop you from whiffjitsuing the history to make it credible: a slightly richer post-war UK, slightly more Essexes actually built, a later start to the Korean War, etc, etc....
I liked the idea of Red Beard arming the FAA Savage but the weapon was too late for matching up with the airframe. Still it would be a great what if to imagine that the Savage had been produced in greater numbers and remained in service for much longer to get that match up. Actual production numbers dictated an early retirement since there was no new airframes available to replace what was getting worn out in service but it is nice to imagine it as as a "coulda-shoulda-woulda" :)
Boeing page on the NAA Savage
You might imagine that if the RN bought Savages but was unable to operate the Skywarrior and didn't build the Buccaneer, then the Savages might have been re-built with turboprops and more modern booster jets, with UK industry buying the jigs and tooling from NA when the USN no longer wanted them in order to keep them going indefinately. There was a prototype turboprop Savage, but it foundered on the Allison T40 fiasco :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A2J_Super_Savage You could easily imagine it with Pythons or Double-Mambas....
The problem with taking the Savage very far into the 1960s as an attack bomber though, would be speed. 460mph at 41,000 ft was quite respectable when it was designed in the late 1940s, but it must have been looking a bit suicidal ten years later. It would be hard to ignore the alternative merits of hanging a Red Beard and two drop tanks on a Skyhawk, particularly since you could have it with a UK engine (the J65 was a US Sapphire, which means an Avon would also fit).
You could, of course, convert the Savages into tankers to extend the range of the Skyhawks....
Something else I'm looking at is an FAA Douglas Skyknight, either the real one or the projected swept-wing development. Can't find a UK engine that will slot in in place of the J-34s though. However, there was a plan to fit Skyknights with the J-46 in enlarged nacelles, and only another 3" diameter on that will get you a Metrovick Beryl....
