Editing CVA-01 (section)

==Origin==
In the 1960s, the Royal Navy was still one of the premier carrier fleets in the world, second only to the [[US Navy]], which was in the process of building the 80,000-ton {{sclass|Kitty Hawk|aircraft carrier|1}}s.

The British fleet included the fleet carriers {{HMS|Ark Royal|R09|2}} and {{HMS|Eagle|R05|2}}, and two smaller carriers, the completely reconstructed  {{HMS|Victorious|R38|2}}, and the somewhat newer light carrier {{HMS|Hermes|R12|2}}, both with 3D [[Type 984 radar]] and C3, but limited to air groups of 25 aircraft: at the most 20 fighters and strike aircraft and five helicopters, or alternately 16 fighters and strike aircraft, four turboprop [[Fairey Gannet AEW]], and five helicopters. A fifth carrier, {{HMS|Centaur|R06|2}}, was modernised to the minimum standard to operate second-generation [[Supermarine Scimitar]]s and [[de Havilland Sea Vixen]]s in 1959, but was never satisfactory or safe for operating nuclear strike aircraft and was a purely interim capability while ''Eagle'' was refitting.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Griffin |first=Rob |title=HMS Bristol: In a Class of Her Own |publisher=Gallantry Books |year=2022 |isbn=9781911658757 |edition=1st |location=Horncastle |pages=8–9 |language=English}}</ref>

While all four of the Navy's large carriers were capable of operating the S.2 version of the [[Blackburn Buccaneer]] strike aircraft, only ''Ark Royal'' and ''Eagle'' were realistically big enough to accommodate both a squadron of Buccaneers (up to 14 aircraft) and a squadron of [[McDonnell Douglas Phantom in UK service|redesigned McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantoms]], which the Royal Navy intended to procure as its new fleet air defence aircraft. With the remainder of the air group, this would give a total of approximately 40 aircraft, which compared poorly to the 90 available to a ''Kitty Hawk''-class ship. The increasing weight and size of modern jet fighters meant that a larger deck area was required for takeoffs and landings. Although the Royal Navy had come up with increasingly innovative ways to allow ever-larger aircraft to operate from the small flight decks of their carriers, the limited physical life left in the existing ships (only ''Hermes'' was considered capable of reliable and efficient extension past 1975<ref>D.K. Brown and G. Moore. ''Rebuilding the RN- Warship Design since 1945''. Seaforth Publishing, (2012) </ref>{{page needed|date=May 2020}}), and the inability of both ''Victorious'' and ''Hermes'', the most effectively and expensively modernised of the carriers, to operate the F-4 or an effective and useful number of Buccaneers, made the order of at least two new large fleet carriers essential by the mid-1960s.